Well, let's just get this out of the way before I get any grief about it. This is me and my mom...
This is me and my dad...
We took the overnight train from Amsterdam to Prague, via Cologne and Berlin.
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We chose Prague largely because it's one of the most historically preserved cities in the world, escaping the destruction of World War 2 that destroyed the centers of many major cities on the continent.
This would be my first and only visit to Eastern Europe (if you don't count half of Berlin), and I was excited to see one of the former Soviet bloc countries. The Czech Republic is one of the more successful ones; it has seen steady economic growth and is making preparations to adopt the Euro. Prague is not a cheap city anymore--a little expensive, actually.
The train station we arrived at looked rather 'eastern', however. It mirrored many of the desolate landscapes and abandoned factories seen from the train as we left Western Europe; leftovers from a failing economic system that lasted a good chunk of the 20th century.
The metro was modern.
We disembarked the underground a few block from our hotel and took a tram the rest of the way. The neighbourhood around here was, again, very 'Eastern European'.
Our hotel was pleasant.
We then took off for the center of the city. This is looking down over Wenceslas Square, the go-to place for shopping, culture, and political rallies. Every important event in Prague's recent history has centered around this square, including Prague's ice hockey Olympic gold medal in 1998, when they defeated Canada through sheer luck (and a rascally-good goaltender).
That's the namesake of the square up on the horse, Saint Wenceslas, one of the patron saints of the Czech land.
This is looking back up from where the first picture was taken: the National Museum, with the statue of Wenceslas in the foreground.
In 1968 the country went through a period of liberalisation, trying to create 'socialism with a human face'. This was known as the Prague Spring. The Soviets responded by sending in tanks to Wenceslas Square and they fired at this museum, mistaking it for the parliament buildings.
Some of the architecture and sights along Wenceslas Square:
Later that afternoon we took a boat tour down the River Vltava.
The tour, as it turned out, was not really a tour at all since there was nobody on a microphone to tell us what we were seeing. The views were nice though. And we got cake.
That's Prague Castle up on the hill, the largest ancient castle in the world. More on that in the next post.
This is the Charles Bridge, built in 1357. Again, more on that later.
We finished up our day with a walk through the Old Town, which centers around the Old Town Square.
The square is dominated by the Tyn Cathedral, a 14th Century gothic church. To the left is a statue of Jan Hus, a guy who believed in reforming the Catholic church a century before Martin Luther came along. Hus, of course, was executed--as if the Catholics were going to let somebody get away with that.
But the main highlight in the square is probably still the Astronomical Clock. It's quite a neat-looking contraption, built soon after the invention of mechanical clocks in the 15th Century. The Czechs were quite happy with their clock and supposedly gouged out the eyes of the clock-maker to prevent him from building one for anybody else (Wikipedia casts doubt on the truth of this story, however).
Every hour on the hour there's sort of a special little thing that happens, where some of the dolls on the clock start moving around and stuff. All the tourists gather around to see what's going to happen when the clock strikes the hour, and the end result is pretty anti-climatic.
We ate supper at the Pizza Colosseum and then retired back to our hotel, enjoying the view of our neighbourhood out the window. Thanks, communism!
[NEXT PRAGUE POST]
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