The Bandits adopted two honorary members for their first venture into the Czech Republic, James and Emma joined us for the weekend jaunt to Prague, the Czech Republic’s capital city.
Praha (as it’s known to the locals) has had a czechered past (note the first use of the pun on Czech, there will be more to follow), known as Bohemia up until 1918; the country has been through 8 territory and name changes up until 2010. Prague is now a fully cosmopolitan city of 1.9 million people, centred on the Vltava River and the Prague Castle.
Praha began to flourish during the era of Charles the 4th in the 14th century, hence why so many things were named after him including the famous Charles Bridge. And according to the locals - they loved him. We arrived late on a Friday night to rain and cold, as well as a speeding driver known as Jakob who delivered us in record time to our hotel. We stayed in the Red and Blue hotel that was really nice, although there was a distinct lack of blue that we saw. After czeching in (note the other pun), we had a quiet drink in the bar and then headed to bed to rest up for the day of sightseeing that would follow.
Saturday morning, and the first thing we noticed was that it wasn’t as cold as we were told it was going to be, in fact it was warmer than London - result!
We headed to the hotel café for the buffet breakfast, which included a random selection of cheese, ham, bread, tomatoes, cucumber and capsicums, and then the sweet options of random cakes and biscuits. It was delicious.
Next we ventured out to soak up a little of Prague’s atmosphere before the walking tour began. We found a few of the interesting sites including the ‘Dancing Building’, the National Theatre and the first of the hundreds of clocks we were going to see over the weekend. Clocks seemed to be a consistent feature of Prague, each intersection on the road has a clock - this was great when the game was made up that every time you saw a clock you could hit Hamish…
We met out guide Filip and we began the walking tour of Prague. We learned heaps of interesting facts including the origins of the word Bohemia (the original name for the Czech Republic), how the translation of the title of the Czech national anthem is “Where is my home?” and all about how “Good King Wenceslas looked out….”, and he wasn’t even a King, he was a mere Duke.
We saw some amazing examples of Gothic, Art Nouveau and Baroque architecture, including the Church of Our Lady before Týn where if you look closely you will see that the right tower is bigger than the left tower, and no one knows why. Also in the Old Town Square was the statue of Jan Hus who was burnt at the stake on the very spot where the statue is now for his religious beliefs.
The astronomical clock takes centre stage in the old town square, it’s ok. It’s a large clock that includes the zodiac signs on the face, and on the hour a few things happen on the clock and a trumpeter blows his horn for a bit. Slight let down considering how many people were there to see it.
Next stop was Wenceslas square (where I guess he was looking in the Christmas Carol). This was the place of many protests in Prague’s history, the most notable being in the 1993 where over 800,000 people stood in the square and jangled their keys to show that they wanted to be in control of their destiny.
We came across another Church where our guide told us a story that went something along the lines of this thief went into the church to steal a necklace off the Virgin Mary and the statue came alive and wouldn’t let his arm go. Eventually the Priest came along and cut his arm off and there is a petrified remains of a human arm still hanging on the church wall. We went into the church the next day to see if this was fact or fiction and this was confirmed (in a way - although we couldn’t really tell if it was an arm or not).
We also saw the giant metronome perched on top of a hill above the city, which is in the location where a massive statue of Joseph Stalin used to stand. Built in 1991, its constant ticking is meant to remind people of all the time wasted during the communist era.
Prague has a reputation for having some examples of Cubist buildings, we saw a good examples (pictured), can’t say I was blown away by it, but the shop was cool.
The city also has a Jewish quarter, which originally was one of the poorest slums of the city due to the racism brought on by Hitler and because it was up to 2m lower than the rest of the city and prone to constant flooding. However there are beautiful examples of old Synagogues as well as the Jewish Cemetery which is now on a slope due to the number of people that were dying and the religious ban on cremating, people simply piled more earth on top of the graves and buried more people, meaning in some areas there would be about 8 bodies deep. On the outskirts of the Jewish quarter is a monument to Frank Kafka, of a guy sitting on top of this other guys shoulders and that guy had no head - apparently in reference to one of his stories.
Post bridge we decided to head to the monastery underneath the Castle where the monks brewed their own wine and beer. It was a long steep walk but the view from the top was worth it, and the beer was good too. Surely drinking beer made by monks gives you God on your side?
Then it was All Blacks time. James had handily looked up an Irish bar in Prague that said it was playing the rugby so we found our way to JJ Murphy’s where we nabbed a couple of sofas and some beers. We watched a great game, drank some great beer and some nice mulled wine and thoroughly enjoyed the international experience of watching the All Blacks play Scotland, in an Irish bar in the Czech Republic….
Post rugby with a glow on our cheeks we were on a mission to get some dinner - Czech style! After a few false starts we found a local café that served up local food for very local prices. We sampled goulash, stroganoff, pork neck and goose, all of which were outstanding. Not so sure about the overdose of cabbage and dumplings though. We rolled back to our hotel and went to bed full of good food and beer.
Interesting fact #1: The clothing manufacturer Hugo Boss manufactured the Nazi war uniforms in World War 2 and they have a store smack bang in the middle of the Jewish Quarter…. ironic juxtaposition?!
Interesting fact #2: Czech beer is very good. Very good and very cheap.
Interesting fact #3: Back in the day when people couldn’t read or write, streets were known by the gable on the corner, so instead of saying “I’ll meet you on 8 Smith Street”, you would say “I’ll meet you on the corner of the black spider and the golden bucket”.
Interesting fact #4: Nobody knows why the towers are different sizes on the Church of the Lady on Tyn. Some Czechs will say it represents Adam and Eve, Adam being larger and protecting Eve from the harsh weather, but more honest Czechs will say that someone stole their building materials and they had to cut corners, or they made mathematical errors….we think this is more likely.
Interesting fact #4: Nobody knows why the towers are different sizes on the Church of the Lady on Tyn. Some Czechs will say it represents Adam and Eve, Adam being larger and protecting Eve from the harsh weather, but more honest Czechs will say that someone stole their building materials and they had to cut corners, or they made mathematical errors….we think this is more likely.
