Our trip to Prague was both good and bad. We did not enjoy the actual city of Prague that much, however our daytrip to the concentration camp made the entire excursion to Prague worthwhile. The city of Prague is absolutely chock full of tourists. It is so packed with people, that there is absolutely no way to navigate your way through the streets near the main sights of the town. We quickly learned however, that if we walked a few blocks away from these sights, we were lone travelers. It is however, a rather beautiful city that spans the Vltava River and is a mess of suburbs and maze like streets. The river runs south-northeast through central Prague, separating Stare Mesto (Old Town) and Nove Mesto (New Town) from Mala Strana (Lesser Side.)  While it is a bit dirty and slummed it has a rich collection of Gothic, baroque and Renaissance buildings that were stunning to look at.

We dropped off our stuff and immediately headed into the city (about a 3-5 minute walk from our hotel.) Nearly everything of interest to us lied within the compact downtown area. Our first stop was the Staromestske Namesti (Old Town Square) (which is the heart of Prague.) The square is surrounded by eight magnificent towers and is packed with tourist, colorful craftspeople, cafes and entertainers. My favorite sight in the town was the Old Town Hall, which was a multi-facade building that contains the famous Astronomical Clock. The building is missing a piece of the front façade where the Nazi’s partially demolished it in the final Days of WWII. The clock performs a glockenspiel spectacle daily on the hour. There were all sorts of little statues moving about including the skeletal Death who emptied his hourglass as a procession of apostles marched by. It was really quite entertaining.

Our next stop was the Cathedral of St. Nicholas, which is situated on the corner of the square. While we were only permitted to view the church from the doorway (it was all roped off for some reason) we were very impressed with the enormous stunning crystal chandelier that loomed over the entire cathedral as well as the beautiful ceiling frescos. (The chandelier was really quite a sight though. I have NEVER seen one that big (even in all of the palaces we visited))

After this we just puttered through the labyrinth-like streets of the city trying to escape the throngs of people.

For dinner we found a restaurant.  Czech menus are packed with heavy, fatty meat and can be summed up with three works: Pork, cabbage and dumplings. (Right up my alley.)

In the morning we first headed to Charles Bridge, which is a bridge that spans the Vltava River and connects Prague Castle to Stare Mesto (the Old Town.)  The bridge dates back to the 14^th century and is Prague’s most celebrated structure. The entire span is a pedestrian promenade that is filled with hordes of people walking among artists and musician. The bridge is lined with gorgeous statues and defense towers. There is also a spot along the bridge that is marked with five stars on a cross where St. Jan Napeomucky was tossed over the bridge for guarding the queen’s extramarital secrets from the king.  (We had no idea who this person is but we of course had to do the whole touristy thing and find the spot because it was in the tour book.)

Once we left the bridge and passed through the giant defense towers, which are situated on either side of the beginning and end of the bridge, we headed up to Prague Castle. On the way we of course stopped at McDonald’s for the Chicken McNugget tasting. Even though the chicken nuggets were obviously from the day before those three little nuggets may have been the best food I ate all weekend in Prague. 

We must have made a wrong turn because we wound up at a random entrance of the castle and somehow managed to miss the main entrance. We wanted to see the main entrance because it has ornate gardens and a Singing Fountain. (We just could not find this darn thing.)

Prague Castle is an enormous hilltop complex that encompasses dozens of houses, towers, churches, courtyards and monuments. A thorough visit of the entire complex could easily take more than a day but we a limited list of the top sights we wanted to see . One particularly cool sight in the complex was a reconstruction of a wooden crane from the 13^th century.

The most memorable ones were the Pinkas Synagogue and the Spanish Synagogue. A sobering requiem of about 80,000 names of Czech Jews persecuted during the Holocaust line the walls of the Pinkas Synagogue. The upstairs part of the synagogue housed drawings by children interred at Terezin camp (the concentration camp near Prague.) These drawings were haunting and really memorialized the inhumanity of the Holocaust. The drawings were haunting. Who could ever subject children to such horrors?

The Spanish Synagogue was memorable for its ornate Moorish interior. All of the walls were painted from top to bottom. The museum inside has exhibits of Jewish history in Prague.

We attempted to visit the Old-New Synagogue but we learned that our ticket did not include this synagogue even though it was on the pamphlet tour of the Jewish settlement, which we received when we bought our pretty expensive tickets. Although it would have been nice to see this see this synagogue because it us the oldest operating Synagogue in Europe, we opted not to and instead headed to the Old Jewish Cemetery.

This cemetery was probably one of the coolest cemeteries I have ever seen. Between the 14^th and 18^th centuries, 20,000 graves were laid in the cemetery even though the cemetery is only a 1-block area. The local government of the time did not allow Jews to bury their dead elsewhere, so the graves were dug deep enough to hold 12 bodies vertically. Each tombstone was placed in front of the last. The graveyard is packed full of clusters of headstones, which were formed as older stones rose from underneath. Some of the headstones are on top but some are partially buried which only the very tops visible. 

The rest of Sunday was spent meandering through the streets. After dinner we went back to the Jazz place to sit outside and enjoy some more Jazz.

Monday was by far the most memorable day of this entire 3-month trip, and probably one of the most memorable days of my entire life. I will never forget what I saw at the concentration camp. 

We took the bus to the town of Terezin, which is situated about an hour from Prague. Today the town has been repopulated to about ½ its former size. Families live in former barracks and supermarkets occupy former Nazi offices. The town is still rather bleak, dark and depressing.

The Terezin camp is situated right outside of the town (about a 5 minute walk.) It is actually a small fortress, which was built at the end of the 18^th century as part of the fortifications names Terezin in honor of Empress Maria Theresa. It was mainly used, almost from the very beginning as a prison for both army offenders and people involved in a national liberation struggle.

The Small Fortress became the Prague Gestapo Police Prison in 1940 and by the end of the war, 32,000 prisoners passed through it. For most of the inmates this was just a stop over, as they were later sent on to Nazi courts, other prisons, penitentiaries and concentration camps where 5,500 of them died. About 2,600 prisoners died in Terezin due to harsh living conditions, diseases and torture by wardens and guards.

The camp is set up exactly as it was during WWII; there has been no renovation work. Therefore, all of the rooms are dark and dirty and fit the mood of the camp. Although there were people there it was absolutely silent.

At the entrance to the camp we received a pamphlet that walked us through the entire camp. There were 34 designated sights to see within the camp including such places as the clothing warehouse, bathrooms, the mortuary, cells, solitary cells and Nazi offices. These were the most memorable ones:

·          The gate with the inscription “Arbeit mach frei” (Work will set you free) which is typical of most nazi concentration camps.

·          The execution ground where executions of prisoners began in about 1943. A total of 250 to 300 prisoners were shot dead here. The gallows were also in the field. They were used just once for the hanging of 3 prisoners.

·          The mass graves where 601 bodies were exhumed in the summer of 1945. The remains were buried in the National Cemetery which is located right outside of the gates of the camp

·          The National Cemetery, which was built between 1945 and 1948. It contains the bodies of 10,000 Nazi victims. Only about 2,0000 of them are buried in individual graves

·          The pool, which was built in 1942, served as a reservoir for fire fighting purposes and as a means for bathing for the families of the locals guards. The pool was built by students and Jewish inmates who were beaten and tortured to death during the work.

·          The Fourth Yard Administration Center which today displays a small amount of soil from each of the concentration camps to which prisoners from the small fortress had been deported to during the war.

·          The SS barracks which today is the site of a museum exhibition, which put Terezin in a wider context of WWII. There were exhibits of everything from how the camp got started to how the camp was eventually closed. The most haunting exhibits of the museum were

o        The displays of pictures of some of the inmates and descriptions of why they were arrested and their eventual fate. 

o        The display of actual prison garb and daily food portion

After visiting the camp we got on the bus and headed to back Prague. Near the bus stop we stopped at KFC.  We then just strolled through the streets enjoying our last night in Prague.  

On Tuesday we headed back to Vienna and arrived at about 1pm. After lunch we headed back to the “Palace” to unpack and do some things that needed to get done. At night we headed into the main city for city and a nice walk through this gorgeous city.

Paris, France    June 10 - 14

Brussels, Belgium    June 14 - 17

Brugges, Belgium    June 17 - 19

Strasbourg, France    June 19 - 21

Luxembourg, Luxembourg    June 21 - 24

Dijon, France    Jun e 24 - 27

Turin, Italy    June 27 - 30

Rome, Italy    June 30 - July 3

Florence, Italy    July 3 - July 6

Verona, Italy    July 6 - 8

Vienna, Austria    July 8 - ?
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