My first stop on this last leg of this year's journey. What a wonderful place to kick off this segment. I highly recommend adding this incredible city to your travel list!
I started my first full day there by taking a walking tour of the city. In my previous cities I had done the "Rick Steves do-it-yourself tours", mostly because it was off-season and many tour companies either weren't doing tours or were at a very limited selection. However, for Prague I decided to try the advertised group tour and I am SO glad I did!!
Amy, the guide, was absolutely incredible! Her knowledge, wit, and amazing awesomeness made this a great tour. So good, in fact, I ended up taking 2 more of her tours! We walked all over the "old city" of Prague, heard great legends and learned some new words, to boot.
My most memorable legend was of the theif and the virgin. The shortened version goes something like this, forgive me for I have forgotten parts of it, sorry Amy. There once was a theif, who had his eye on some prize (I have forgotten what) inside a church. As the theif was about to steal said prize, the statue of a virgin comes to life and grabs his arm, quite forcefully, then freezes back to her statue form. Now the theif is stuck. He can't escape the statue's grasp, so he has no choice but to wait until morning when the priest comes. The priest says the only way to free the theif is to cut off the arm. The theif is thinking the statue's arm, however it is the theif's arm they cut. We were told this legend while outside of said church. We were able to look inside the window and saw the theif's hand, fingers and all, dangling from the wall, as a reminder as to what happens when you steal. Pretty crazy!
The following day I walked the Charles Bridge and visited the Lennon Wall. John Lennon's words and ideas gave the people of Prague hope and a vision during a very dark time. It was moving to see the impact Lennon had on the people here. Then I revisited the Jewish Quarter, the Pinkas Synagogue in particular, a memorial to the victims of the Nazis. The inside walls of the synagogue are covered with the names of over 77,000 Czech Jews who were sent to the gas chambers at various concentration camps. Each name is hand painted along with the person's hometown, birthdate, and last known date alive. Talk about Powerful! The feeling of awe and reflextion were incredible. Upstairs is the Terrezin Children's Art Exhibit showing artwork by children who were imprisioned at the Terrezin concentration camp.
The next day was a tour of Kutna Hora and the bone church. The story of the bone church is another of too many bones and not enough space.It originally served as a normal cemetery, but the plague of the 14th century and the wars of the 15th century added too many. Eventually a family came to own the church and burial grounds. They comissiomed an artist to help fulfill their vision of wanting to memoralize the living as well as the dead.The artist used the bones of 40,000 people to decorate the church. There are garlands made of skulls, bones were used to create the family crest, and a chandelier rumored to include every bone in the human body. Once you get past the morality of it all, it is prerty cool.
No comments:
Post a Comment