Prague

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Saturday, June 23

We got a late checkout and relaxed in the hotel until 1 pm. Then, we took the local bus to the airport. We arrived in Prague around 6 pm and took public transportation (a bus and a tram) to the hotel. After wandering around for a while, we found the hotel. Mikhail (the person manning the desk) had no record of our reservation. Fortunately for us, he had an Internet connection so I was able to pull up the confirmation. Unfortunately for us, he did not have any rooms left. He offered the computer to us to check our email and made some calls. After about a half an hour of him talking to various people in Czech and our understanding none of it, he told us that he got us a room at Hotel Mucha—a four star hotel, one star more than his hotel—that was closer to the city center for the same price. In addition, he had called us a cab and paid for the cab ride to the new hotel.

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We arrived at Hotel Mucha, and after checking in, we realized that this could not have turned out any better. The location was better and the room was awesome. The hotel room was more of an apartment—it had its own bathroom (with a bathtub!), a long entryway, and a large room with wood floors that was filled with antique furniture. The two large windows opened up and overlooked the street below. We were ecstatic.

The hotel also had a sauna room that you could book and use privately. I convinced John to take a sauna with me at 12:30 pm that night. Although this was not on his agenda, he did go to the sauna with me. So sweet! Hotel Mucha is named after a famous Czech artist most known for his sketches and paintings of French art nouveau women.

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Before the sauna, we did go out for dinner. Although it was about 10 pm at night (most restaurants stay open until 9-9:30 pm), we did find a Mediterranean restaurant that was still open.

Sunday, June 24

We had breakfast at the hotel and set out to find the bus or train station to look into getting to other Czech cities we wanted to visit. As in Scandinavia, we thought this would be a breeze. We immediately found out that this was going to be a little more complicated. First, the language is completely different so there is really no hope in deciphering the signs and none of the signs are in dual languages, much less in English. We went to one train booth only to find out it was only for domestic travel. We went to the international travel train booth, and were told that we had to go upstairs to find the travel times and then come back with the specific time you wanted to book. They could not tell you the train times at the booking window. We eventually did get some useful information from a private bus company, but in the end decided to deal with getting to one destination at a time. This was very different from Scandinavia, where, for the most part, you could book everything including domestic and international travel at once and from one ticketing agent.

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Nearing our time to meet our tour guide for the “Prague Insider Tour,” we abandoned getting any bus or train tickets until the next day. We met with our tour guide and the other five tourists who had the same idea we did, and spent the next four hours learning about Prague. We saw the New Town (including Wenceslas Square where the Velvet Revolution took place in 1989), the Old Town (including the Old Town Square with the Astronomical Clock), the Jewish Quarter, the Charles Bridge over the Vltava River, and the Prague Castle. In the evening, we saw the Prague Royal Symphony Orchestra perform at the Municipal House. They performed My Country-Vltava, From a Cycle of Symphonic Poems by B. Smetana and Symphony No. 9, in E Minor, Op. 95 by A. Dvorak. It was a great performance and the Municipal House was beautiful.

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Monday, June 25

We made our way back to the area known as Josefov (Jewish Ghetto) where we toured the Jewish Museum. This Museum consists of six different sites, including the: (1) Maisel Synagogue—originally built in 1590-92 in Renaissance style, but suffered a fire in 1689 and was subsequently rebuilt in a pseudo-Gothic style; houses an exhibition of the history of Jews in Bohemia and Moravia from the formation of the settlements to emancipation (10th century to end of 18th century) (2) the Spanish Synagogue—built in 1868 in a Moorish style complete with ornately and colorfully painted walls and ceilings; continues the exhibition of the history of the Jews in Bohemia and Moravia from emancipation to the present, (3) the Pinkas Synagogue—built in 1535; now serves as a memorial to the Jews of Bohemia and Moravia who were murdered by the Nazis and includes inscriptions of the 80,000 names of the Jewish victims on the walls (prior to the Nazi occupation, approximately 113,000 Jews were living in Bohemia and Moravia; some Jews did manage to flee, but about 90,000 Jews were still in this area when it came under Nazi control), (4) the Old Jewish Cemetery—established in the first half of the 15th century and the oldest tombstone (of the poet and scholar Avigdor Kara) dates from the year 1439; the cemetery contains about 12,000 tombstones and the number of people buried there is estimated to be around 40,000 as the cemetery contains multiple burial layers, (5) the Klausen Synagogue—completed in 1694, this synagogue was the largest synagogue in the ghetto and served as Prague’s Burial Society (the Society that stayed with an ill and dying person and aided in preparation and burial of the body)—houses an exhibition of Jewish customs and traditions, and (6) the Ceremonial Hall—houses more of the exhibition on Jewish customs and traditions. I tried to get the student rate, but instead ended up getting yelled at in Czech by the old woman behind the counter. I ran out and made John go and buy full price tickets.

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There is another famous synagogue in this area called the Old-New Synagogue that can be seen from the outside and dates from the middle of the 13th century. It is the oldest synagogue in Europe that still holds divine services.

The Jewish Museum was founded in 1906 to preserve artifacts from the Prague synagogues that were liquidated during the reconstruction of the Jewish Town at the beginning of the 20th century. It was closed after the Nazi occupation of Bohemia and Moravia in 1939. In 1942, the Nazis established the Central Jewish Museum that housed artifacts from all of the liquidated Jewish communities and synagogues of Bohemia and Moravia. The Central Jewish Museum was proposed by leaders in the Jewish community as a way to save memorial objects that were confiscated by the Nazis. The Nazis agreed to its formation based on the idea that it would be a memorial to an extinct race.

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It was not until 1994—five years after the collapse of the Communist regime and the Velvet Revolution—that the Jewish Museum was returned to the Jewish Communities of Prague and the Czech Republic.

After the Jewish Museum, we had a typical Czech meal of pork leg, Bohemian dumplings (which are more like bread), sauerkraut, and potato pancakes. After lunch, we walked back to the hotel to pick up our luggage and then walked to the station to take a bus to the spa city of Karlovy Vary, located about 80 miles west of Prague.