Sunday

It was nice to sleep late and relax today. I started later than usual since it was a weekend. I think I left the hotel at 10 am. I had checked the Mass schedule at the Church of Our Lady Victorious and found that the regular Czech Mass was at 10 and the English Mass was at noon. So I planned to go to English Mass and then go up the castle and look around.

The first challenge was finding the church. It's in my guidebook and there is a map, but I'm not that great with directions. Those math skills again. It was easy enough getting to the Charles Bridge and crossing it. It was early enough and raining just a bit that the tourists weren't out in force. It's been a busy weekend with the tourists. Prague is apparently a hot European weekend deal. I've noticed a lot of wheeled suitcases, and more horse drawn carriages since Friday.

The artists were just setting up on the bridge while I crossed it. I took my time walking along the river as well. I didn't have to hurry since I had plenty of time for the noon Mass. It was nice to stroll along the Vlatva in the morning. A few people were out walking their dogs(lots of dogs here in Prague) and some just walking.

I poked into a few shops, mostly window shopping, along the route. Saw some really ugly clocks and a massive antique vase that someone should have smashed years ago, but hey that's my taste....Had some cute antique dog figures and some highly tempting tea cups(handpainted)catch my interest, but luckily the place wasn't open.

I took the stairs down into the Kampa area, as the Church was right off the Kampa streets according to my reading of the map. I saw some signs and landmarks I recognized. The Lennon Wall for one, and a few European embassies. As well as a restaurant. I knew I wasn't lost, exactly. And quite by accident I found both the Mandarin Oriental Hotel of Prague and the church I was looking for.

The Kampa park is a really nice place to spend some time. There was a very cute terrier mix running around with his owners. Had to be a West Highland terrier crossed with a larger terrier somewhere. Was way too big for a pure Westie, but very friendly. Came up to me and grinned at me. Like dogs sometimes do. Then ran off and caught up to his/her owners. Not a lot of leashing here. But the dogs are extremely well behaved. So far.

Kampa is also known as Prague's Venice because of the small canal off the river. It's a nice ritzy, but not snooty area. There are places to sit and think and look at the river and flowers.

I found the Church and caught the tail end of the Czech Mass. So about 10:45. The organist was pulling out all the stops. The first thing that hits you about this church is Baroque. Even if you don't know the style you know exactly what it is. The pictures over the mini altars weren't just pictures, they were oil paintings. Every place had gilt. Very ornate. The main altar had 2 twisted gold pillars. The ceiling had coats of arms on it and the altar rails were all marble. But the shrine for the Infant of Prague took it to another level. Silver and gilt statues flanking the case. Orchids and roses, lilies and carnations in glass vases were ranged around the altar. A crowned angel(?) at the top of the altar guarding the case this tiny wax statue was in.

It's a big deal. Photos were being taken, which I kinda have a problem with....seems wrong to take pictures in a church. The church tries to limit what can and can't be done while services are going on, but it's hard. Since the shrine is on the right hand side of the church and not tucked away in a nook somewhere there's a lot of traffic. And the little museum and shop is carved out of the sacristy. They are fundraising to fix that. But they emphasize that it is first and foremost a place of worship. Not a tourist place only.

English mass took me back to my childhood. The full deal with the organ and choir. They sang some of the prayers and chants. Even heard (for the first time) the Kyrie elesion in a Mass. I mean they did it in Greek as well as English. Very cool. Plus they killed on How Great thou art for the Eucharistic hymn. Czech music! They had all parts of the Mass. Which I remembered from being a kid. It was the feast of the Trinity so we heard how we are finite and how the important things we can't understand will be explained. (cause the Trinity isn't easy to understand)

Then the religious tourists came in. Photos and crowds. Crammed up the aisle right before communion. The most interesting guy was the American in shorts and a David Ortiz Red Sox shirt. He could have at least saved the shirt for another day. Nothing like screaming out American tourist in a Baroque European church. He didn't stay long. I don't believe he even said a prayer. Just looked and left.

After services ended I headed up the hill. To get to the castle there's only one way to go. Up. No matter which route you take you go up. I walked up a side street and halfway up there were stairs. I really don't like stairs anymore. My knees hurt. But the cardio is great. I think they are getting easier. Our hotel has stairs. And while the number says 4, it's really the 5th floor.

To explain Prague Castle, it's a complex, not just a building. There's galleries and gardens, the royal palace, the cathedral, churches, and now where the President of the Czech Republic lives. Probably administration too. So it takes longer than a few hours to see it all. I really wanted to see Golden Lane, but it's closed for renovations. : (. As you can imagine there are guards. Real ones. With guns and military orders. Not just police and tourist security.

I checked out the line at St. Vitus and skipped it. Saw the Royal Palace and St. George's. Had lunch in the garden and then walked back down. Stopped at a gelato shop along the way and I saw a print in an old book store that I think I want.

Terezin

A group of us, Patty, Louise, Judy, and I, planned a trip to Terezine, which is an hour away from the city. Terezine is an old garrison town founded by the Hapsburg Emperor Joseph II. In German it is Theresienstadt. It has a long history as a prison, a fortress, and a military town.
The most famous prisoner held there was Gavrilo Princip, who died in Cell 1 in 1918. The cause of death was listed as TB, but considering the conditions....Princip was the man who finally managed to kill the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 thus starting the First World War.

I found that cell very unnerving. The way it was lit and just the feel of it.

Terezin, is more well known than just as a place for long dead assasins. Terezin was the Nazi version of a Czech concentration camp. While never a death camp per say many people died there of beatings, malnutrition, disease, and neglect.

As a fortress dating back to the 18th century it was uniquely adapted to Nazi uses. It was first used as a police prison(Gestapo) for patriots of the Czech homeland, outlawed parties(Communists mostly), resistance fighters and some POW's. People from all over the world were held here. Australia POW's, Czech patriots, Soviet Union citizens, religions that the Nazis disliked, and of course Jews from the area. The small fortress was first a political prison. People who were 'dangerous' or broke the rules of the Jewish ghetto in the nearby town ended up in the Small Fortress.

According to our guide(Louise hooked us up with a tour group from Boston who had a great guide) the conditions as a prison worsened as time went on. Food became rationed, more and more people were crammed into cells together, heat was not turned on, and bugs and disease became rampant. The cells were very humid and with only 15 kg of fuel per week, you could turn on the stove once or twice a week at most. Not enough to dry out the air and kill the bugs. Plus all those people sharing a toilet.

One of the old barrack cells we saw would have between 80-90 people in them at once. It was probably constructed for 20 or so men max. The Jewish cells were even worse. About 1/3 the size of the barrack cells. Indeed they weren't even made for humans originally. The Jewish cells were horse stalls. They would pack 50-60 Jewish people in those tiny rooms at once. You couldn't sit down or move.
The only window was always closed(for escape prevention I guess) and the only oxygen came from a tiny hole in the wall near the door. People suffocated because the air couldn't circulate fast enough and they were all crushed together.

Any medical attention came from Doctors who were prisoners themselves and supplies had to be smuggled in from the town, by sympathetic guards and workers. Those people risked their lives to help any in the fortress.

We saw the shower room and the delousing station. Once a week you were allowed one 5 minute cold shower. You removed your clothes and tried to kill the germs, and lice that infested them by using steam and pressure in the machine. If it worked right your clothes were clean for a while. But they were still wet and so were you, when you put them back on and went back to your hideously overcrowded cell.

But there was time to visit with other people. To learn news, say hello to relatives and find out if others were alive. The shower time was a shining moment of hope for the prisoners there.

Some of the prisoners feared the showers at first, because they often were disguised as a gas chamber in other camps. Not in Terezin. The Nazis were building one outside the fortress but it was never finished. The Red Army liberated the camp first. Although the forced laborers from the camp did everything they could to sabotage it before it was done.

As the war went on and more Jewish people came to Terezin the barracks in the town filled up and they were sent to the fortress. At the end of the war it was estimated that nearly 60,000 people had been packed into the whole town of Terezine, which maybe was built for 12,000 people.

We went through the old Austrian tunnels which had been blocked up during the war. Very cold and spooky. The tunnels were part of the defense of the area. They could flood the moat and still control the waterways and be safe in the tunnels to defend the area.
They come out onto the execution range of Terezin. The Gestapo used to use it as target practise, but that didn't last long. One of the group members was a survivor of Terezin. He had been forced into the ghetto at the age of 21. He had a hard time in the tunnels, but to come back even years later had to have been hard.

I know just seeing some of it was hard for me, and I didn't live through it.

And life didn't get easier after the war was over. With the overcrowding and more refugees arriving everyday and the Nazi administrators fleeing the place was in chaos. Epidemics were rampant. Typhus, dysentery and typhoid were three major disease that ripped through the camp.

Here's the link to the Terezin Memorial website. http://www.pamatnik-terezin.cz/showdoc.do?docid=164.

So a very heavy day. I'm glad we went, and it's something we won't forget, but it wasn't a fun thing.
I will be posting all the photos of Terezin, probably on Facebook. If you want to see them all.

Weekending in Prague

Well, we finished our first week of classes. It's really nice to have some free time. While so far it has been great, it's tiring, and not a lot of time to do touristy things. I haven't yet stormed the Castle, gone to the Loreto, OR the Church of our Lady Victorious(where the Infant of Prague is) or seen the Mucha exhibit. I have yet to go to a concert, but I will. Plans for the weekend are to go to Terezin on Saturday with some of the class, and then on Sunday find a Mass schedule and tour the castle.
I'm looking forward to 'storming da castle' and going to Mass. I'm not sure if I will go to the Loreto or the Church of our Lady Victorious. But I'm leaning toward the latter. I know the Mass schedule there, and they have it in several languages. Mass in Czech would be challenging to say the least. I can barely say thank you correctly in Czech. Although with Mass I know WHAT they are saying.
So probably go for the English Mass at noon then hang around to storm the castle.

Czeching out the local scene

I am falling in love with Czech wines. I have had 3 or 4 white wines and 1 red. All were really nice. Drawing on my vast knowledge of wines gleaned from 2 hours at Vinopolis in London, I have determined they are more fruity than dry. The whites were clean and the scent and the taste were pretty balanced. It's quite a nice surprise. One thinks of beer, which is really good, but the wine is also well done.

I have to find a good liquor store and get some to bring home. They remind me more of the German and Alsatian wines I like than the more popular Italian pinot grigios.
I have some names of the wines I drank, and liked so am going to look for those. Sometime in the beginning of the week I think.

Zlaty Koruna

Today we got up early. On the bus at 6:45 am. Heading to Southern Bohemia in search of medieval monastaries and walled island hill towns.
Found both. After a few hits of tea and some bread and cheese the switch was thrown. We got a great lecture on rare Czech manuscripts dating from the 14th century to the 18th century.
The curator kept pulling more books out for us to look at and explained all of them. Herbals, and atlas, facsimiles of music books written for the coronation of the king in the 1100's. Books bound with other older books that were really part of the trash heap, but historians now find most fascinating.

It's a beautiful place. Zlaty Koruna means the Golden Crown in Czech. It started out as the Holy Spiny Crown and became so wealthy with the villages and lands and rents that it was known as 'golden' Was decommissioned in the 19th century by Franz Josef II and went through many other incarnations. Steel factory, private library, parish church, school.

During our monastary tour we all had to wear slippers over our shoes. It was fun to see us all sliding around in these oversized slippers trying not to fall out of them.

The artwork in the place was amazing and interesting, considering the order started out very asetic. Then changed. First no one could have meat then only the sick, then as a treat, they they had it on a regular basis....

Cesky Krumlov

After we left Zlata Koruna we headed to the island hill town of Cesky Krumlov. It's a UNESCO site and very touristy, but overall amazing.

Our hosts took us to lunch at and we had chicken and pickled vegetables and potatos. The food here is very potato and meat heavy, but amazingly good. As was the Czech wine I had.
Most everyone had beer, but a few people enjoyed the real sugar in the Coca Cola. After lunch I found a gelato stand and wandered the town. Being a Bohemian fortress town there are lots of hills there. I walked up the castle there, but didn't go in. I'd prefer to see Prague castle instead. And to be honest I was more interested in shopping. I found a nice teapot, some lace and looked in all the jewelery store windows. There is a LOT of amber and garnet here. Plus some interesting jewel called Moldovite from a meteor or something. It's only found in the south of the Czech lands.

All the streets are cobblestones, so it's a bit hard on the feet. Not to mention the angles of the streets. The views are really nice and as it's an island town a lot of the restaurants have terraces that sit on the water.

We met our hosts at this really interesting medieval house that's a traditional Bohemian restaurant. Very good food. The potato pancakes are awesome here. And there was this blueberry dumpling dessert thing that defies words.
I am learning poppy seeds, potatos, blueberries, pork and cabbage have been staples of Czech food for centuries.

Wednesday

We were in lectures at Charles University Library Science Faculty today. The actual school is in the suburbs of Prague so we took the subway there.
Very steep elevators and they move very very quickly.

We had an overview of the library school and how many students there are (616) overall. They issue 3 degrees here at Charles University in Library Science. A Bachelor's, a Master's and a Ph.D.
We then moved to Czech history. Our guide from yesterday was our history teacher. We got about 1000 years of history in an hour.
It's really interesting. Well the way Vaclav told us it was. Political backroom deals by the church, fraticide, arranged marriages, religious wars, Nazi and Communist occupations, uprisings and censorship, violent crackdowns(Prague spring anyone?) and then finally freedom.

We learned about digital librarianship here and a new project that just got approved by the EU to convert 19th century Bohemica into digital format. And we learned about the marginalia in some of the older manuscripts.

We then headed to the Libri Prohibit to see the banned writer books. After 1968 many authors were banned outright. Didn't matter what they wrote, they couldn't be published. So they wrote their own stuff in secret and typed them in multiple copies to distribute. Which was highly illegal. It's one reason Vaclav Havel was in jail in the 1980's.
Some stuff was banned not because of the author but the translator. Like Shakespeare translated into Czech.
Fascinating. Yes I am a geek.(or intellectual badass...)
No photos, sorry...was on a mission to find a European battery charger. Blew a fuse in the hotel trying to plug in my American charger. Found one!

Tuesday afternoon

We took a break when we crossed the Charles Bridge. Lunch, wine, relaxing. I had garlic soup with croutons. Yum. And Czech wine. I really like Czech wine. Sort of smooth and dry but just enough fruit to not be pucker-y like a chardonnay.

The garlic soup was good. It was a cool day to start with so it seemed like a good idea. And it wasn't too heavy. I have been seeing a lot of meats and potato heavy stuff on menus. Which is good. I love potatos and bacon. I mean hello, Irish ancestors! But not for today. Downside is my breath smells like garlic, but tough.

We took the tram up the hill to the Strahov monastery library. The tram is cool. A bit like the T in Boston. Except they are more relaxed about paying. You buy a card, they check it on occasion. You have it, sure. You don't...uh-oh.

Strahov was great. The old books and the art. They are renovating one hall of the library, so we saw the Theological Hall...I felt right at home. It was amazing. THey have some interesting artifacts as well. The monks collected all sorts of stuff so it's like a museum too. Dried sea life, shells, armour, weapons, and cannon balls. And narwhal tusks and penis. Those were fun.
I think my two favorite things were the portable library desk. It is a desk and the chair folds down to fit inside and on the other side was a mini stepladder to reach the books.
And the second thing was a huge book holder that turned. You placed your texts on it and could spin it so that you were reading what you need to interpret the texts. I know a few exgesis classes that would want that.
The librarian at Strahov had to have me explain exegesis, but he got it when he knew what I was talking about! He laughed and agreed that's what it was for.

After leaving the monastery we had great views of the city. Which reminded me of Edinburgh castle actually. Being so high up and seeing all of the area.
Some of us walked down back to the hotel. We did stop for wine. Martin, one of the coordinators, knew a place. It's very good wine. So we did Happy Hour Czech style.
And of course we found a gelato shop. I had nutella gelato. Oh yummy. But the strawberry was good yesterday too.

I found the John Lennon wall. I had read about it, but didn't think I'd see it. Very cool.

Tuesday morning

Today was a late day. Got to sleep until 9 because we had a walking tour of the city. We met our guide at 10:45 and then proceded to walk all over the city. We did take a tram to the Strahov monastery as it's all uphill.

We saw the Astrological Clock in action and learned the history of it. It was built in the 1400's and more than 70% of it's parts are original! The apostles march, the statues move, the seasons and zodiac signs are shown. And there's a modern part too.

We went to the Basilica of St James, which is an amazing Baroque/Rococco church. It also has a mummified arm hanging in chains. Fun! The legend is that a thief tried to steal from the church and the Virgin Mary grabbed his arm and he was so terrified he left the arm there...

We walked all over the city. Our guide knows all the hidden alleys and short cuts in the area so we bypassed some crowds.

Some of the house signs he pointed out were very interesting. Instead of numbers(that was the Hapsburg invaders) they used pictures on the houses to tell people what house and what occupation they were at.
There are gold snakes and violins, stone bells and statues of the Virgin Mary. The double headed eagle and gold rings.
I liked the unicorn and the medusa head best.(two different houses) Each means something. The bells are for the bell makers and the snake for a pharmacy. The unicorn was a place where Jewish intellectuals used to gather.

First day of class

Today was my first real day in Prague. As you all know I am not a morning person. So to be ready at 8:45 was a bit tough, especially after so little sleep the past few nights.

But after tea and breakfast the switch was thrown. Although I would have killed for some Greek yogurt and fresh fruit. Lots of meats and cheese on the breakfast buffet here.

We got a tour of Charles University and a history lesson. As Charles University went so did Prague. They are intrinsically linked. The ideas at the university flowed to the city eventually. Karlos IV founded the University with the idea in mind that Prague would be a cultured educated capital of Europe. Very far thinking and generous was Charles IV.

The university area is amazing. Very historical and artistic. One thing we learned was that during the Communisit times here the socialist were anxious to promote the Czech ties to the West rather than the East. Being Catholic rather than Orthodox. Having ties to old Germany going back to the founding of the university and the idea of a democracy. Our lecturer told us that to the socialist image was everything and that's why they kept the old buildngs up and functioning in the same conditions rather than making them over or tearing them down. (Money was a factor too)

We got our photo taken outside(no Larry wasn't in it) then split up to wander. Some of us were still a bit jet lagged. I went to lunch and touring with a few other people from the class. It rained a bit here on and off.
We walked all the way across the Charles Bridge and looked at some of the art and jewelery set up there.
The Bridge Band played Ellington's It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing and the vocalist sang it in Czech. Good but funny to hear it in another language while recognizing what it was.

Had dinner and our "official" welcome on a boat tour on the river. It rained. Hard. But the riverbank sites are beautiful. The lock was fun. Some of the sites reminded me of Edinburgh actually.