Czech Republic (Eurotrip_2012)

                After leaving Germany for good we arrived in Dresden, Czech Republic at about 5 AM for a quick layover, where I marched up to the vending machine on platform #9 and ordered my breakfast. After buying a cherry flavored Capri Sun and some shitty peanuts, I received a two week old package of processed salami infected with mad cow disease for free. With my stomach still rumbling and the trash can on platform #9 a little bit fuller, Bridget, Margot and I boarded the train to Prague.  We got into Prague Central Station at around 6 AM on October 10^th and my first objective was to find some free wifi. I had used AirBNB to book a room in an apartment that was occupied by a young man named Ondra, who is a Czech native. However, I had booked the room starting the previous night and since we were stuck in Hof I was forced to send a frantic message to Ondra late the previous night, after he had already spent half an hour waiting for us at the train station, telling him that we would actually be arriving in Prague the next morning. After finally attaining some free wifi with a very weak signal, I crawled through the AirBNB website to find a message from Ondra informing me that he wouldn’t be able to meet us at the train station and bring us back to the apartment until 8 PM that night. So there we were, exhausted beyond our wits with fourteen hours between us and some sleep. So we did the only logical thing we could think of, we saw the city!

              After storing our bags in a locker at the train station the three of us walked into the heart of the city. We stopped at this restaurant where they had a TV screen displaying the chefs making your food and enjoyed a nice Czech brunch together. After finally curbing our hunger and forcing our eyes to re-open with massive amounts of coffee we walked a bit farther down the walking street to drop Bridgett off at her hostel. After saying good bye to our travel buddy we continued along the walking street that we had previously been on and ended up right in the middle of Staroměstské Náměstí  (Old Town Square). The entire square is surrounded by historic and beautifully decorated buildings. The first site on the square that we decided to check out was the astronomical clock, which has so many informative hands and circles on it that reading the time is completely impossible. However, the clock is decorated with two figures on each side of the clock, one of them being a skeleton, and a golden rooster perched just above the clock. Every hour this clock does something unique, the roster cock-a-doodle-do’s while the three figures dance to the side of the clock and the skeleton rings the rope that is supposedly attached to the huge bell. It lasts about five minutes and although I thought it had been a little over hyped it was still something that was pretty cool and definitely something that you don’t see every day.

                The next thing that Margot and I explored on Staroměstské Náměstí was the baroque style St. Nicholas Church, which was gorgeous. In contrast to the rich & vivid colors that we saw at the churches in Russia, this one was covered with paintings and ceiling frescoes that utilized light & mellow colors. In addition, the paintings weren’t all over the walls and ceiling either, instead they were spaced out with clean white walls bordered in golden designs in between them. It was beautiful in a completely different way. It was a cozy, clean and modest church that while relaxing still had a certain splendor. For instance, there was this amazing diamond chandelier in the middle of the church that was left over from the period of 1870-1914 when the church was Russian Orthodox; the hundreds of diamonds reflecting light all over the walls are in the shape of the Russian coronation crown.

After sitting down and gazing up at the ceiling frescoes for a while we left St. Nicholas Church and walked across the square to the imposing Týn Church, which was built during the 14^th century. It has two huge 80 meter tall towers looking down on Staroměstské Náměstí and unlike St. Nicholas Church across the street this one is decorated with a striking collaboration of the colors black and gold. The walls and ceilings were pure white, but all of the small altars, the main altar, and the organ (which happens to be the oldest organ in all of Prague) were decorated in black with gold designs running across them. Hanging above the main altar is a sculpture depicting the crucifixion of Christ, also decorated in black and gold, and on both sides of each of the twelve columns lining the side of the church was a tomb with a lavishly decorated black and gold altar behind it. In addition, this was the first church in which I’d noticed that all around the walls of the church was a collection of paintings telling the story of Christ’s Crucifixion. It was a collection of about twelve paintings depicting the story from the moment his attackers came to get him until his lifeless body was brought down from the cross and the Virgin Mary began mourning his death. This is something I’ve noticed a lot in the Catholic churches I’ve seen since the Týn Church and I always like comparing the quality of these depictions. The black and gold designs worked incredibly well in this church and it turned out to be just as impressive and imposing on the inside as it is from the outside. 

After the church, we simply wandered around the square taking in the sights and enjoying ourselves before we did a little bit of window shopping on the square and in the surrounding area. After being continuously hassled by the employees who we kept telling that we were, “just looking around,” we left the touristy area and came across the Powder Gate, which was one of only thirteen entrances into Prague’s Old Town when it was built in the 11^th century. If you pass through the gate and continue on the same street it leads you directly to the Old Town Square, so guests of the city would use this gate on their arrival in order to be immediately introduced to the glory of Prague. It was originally called the New Tower but changed its name in the 17^th century when it was used to store gun powder. It definitely appeared to be an 11^th century structure, with its blackened stone structure crumbling to pieces all over the sidewalk below. After walking through the gate, in the opposite direction from Old Town Square Margot and I got the chance to see the glory of the inside of a Czech post office. While Margot bought stamps for all her post cards I searched for the building's non-existent bathroom.

After successfully sending Margot’s post cards we walked over to the National Museum and the National Bohemia Museum, spending five minutes at each; which was just enough time for us to discover that they were both closed for renovation, one for two months and one for five years. Instead of blaming Margot and myself for insufficient research into the openings of these museums, I blame Prague for not having either of their two most popular museums open at the same time. I took this as a sign that we should take a break so we ventured into a Starbucks where we knew we could use the restroom, utilize the wifi, and where I ended up sleeping on a table for a good hour in a half (note that I had been up for 33 hours with just a short two hour nap on a cold train station floor in Germany at this point).

After walking up with the Starbucks emblem on the table imprinted on my forehead I felt even more exhausted than when I fell asleep, but since we still had five more hours till Ondra would come pick us up, I agreed to go to the Communism Museum with Margot. This turned out to be by far the most informational experience of the day, as my brain was bombarded with information about the Velvet Revolution and the Soviet Occupation of Czechoslovakia. I found it comical as I read about how the communists installed set prices for food in Czechoslovakia but found that the demand ended up far outweighing the supply when half of the food was put aside and sold under the table to wealthier merchants, benefiting the very people that the communists were trying to hurt. Way to think that one through, Stalin. Then the museum got really morose when I started learning more about the immense brutality that the Czech people had to endure during the occupation.

The Soviets had already stated that they would not hesitate to occupy any country included in the Warsaw Pact if they attempted to establish a pluralist system with several political parties representing different factions of the capitalist class. True to their word, in August of 1968 the Soviets invaded and occupied Czechoslovakia after Alexander Dubcek (the then leader of Czechoslovakia) initiated political liberalization reforms known as the Prague Spring. The 1968 occupation served as an opportunity for the Soviets to enact the Brezhnev Doctrine, which from what I understood pretty much melts down to forcing bordering states to adhere their national interests to those of the Eastern Bloc. In 1969 a twenty-one year old student named Jan Palach committed suicide in Wenceslas Square (in front of the National Bohemia Museum) in order to protest the occupation and to make a statement to the Czech people, telling them not to give up in their battle for freedom. And finally, after years of bloodshed and forced occupation the Velvet Revolution occurred in 1989. On November 17^th a peaceful protest was held in Prague and met by police suppression and brutality; over the course of the next month the number of protesters swelled. After the collapse of the Warsaw Pact the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia relinquished power on November 27^th and in December of the same year the borders with West Germany and Austria were torn down and the first largely non-communist government since 1948 was established. In June, 1990 Czechoslovakia had its first democratic elections since 1948 and in 1993 the country split into Slovakia and the Czech Republic.

After greatly enhancing my knowledge on the Soviet Occupation in Czechoslovakia the sun began to set and our stomachs began to resume their rumbling state.  Margot picked out this restaurant near Staroměstské Náměstí called Svejk and while popping inside we discovered that we were the only ones at the restaurant. Enjoying the solitude we each ordered a Pilsner Urquell, a very popular beer in the Czech Republic and most of Eastern Europe, and with the time remaining until we would see a bed at just over one hour we began to drool over the anticipation of finally getting some sleep. Margot ordered Mrs. Muller’s beef and cream sauce and I ordered goulash with these potato dumplings, which in contrast to what I’m used to in a dumpling looked like a really doughy and soft potato bread. We split an order of potato pancakes for dessert and took a stroll down to Staroměstské Náměstí to see the square under the moonlight.

Content with our day of sightseeing in Prague we finally made the walk back to the train station to pick up our bags and took the metro to meet Ondra.  When Ondra eventually waltzed down the stairs to come pick us up we promptly introduced ourselves while letting out a big sigh of relief and while riding the tram back to his apartment we began to learn just how cool this guy actually was. He was born in the southern part of the country but his parents moved to Prague when he was really young and he’s lived here ever since, he has an American girlfriend from California who is currently working in Berlin, and wasn’t at all afraid to talk politics. Once we got back to his place we began a discussion that my exhausted brain limped through, sustaining only minor casualties when I completely forgot what we were talking about or couldn’t put together a comprehensible sentence. We compared and discussed our school systems as well as American study abroad programs, he told us all of the hilarious stories about previous Airbnb visitors, and we inquired to know more about the Czech attitude towards the Russians. I found myself surprised when Ondra told us that Czech-Russian relations aren’t actually as bad as one might think.  He said that the Czechs are one of the few people that understand how to properly do business with the Russians and even though they have a complicated history the younger generation holds no resentment or anger towards the Russians for the occupation that their ancestors endured. It seemed so weird hearing this nonchalant attitude towards the Russians after spending two hours at the Communism Museum seeing how awful the occupation was for the Czech people.

We also got a run down on Czech culture and Ondra gave me insight into the difference between his American friends and his Czech friends. In America, whenever you invite your friends to a future event, whether it be playing basketball, attending a party, or joining on a road trip, they always initially say yes, but when the day of the event finally arrives nobody shows up. Which I couldn’t find to be more true! But in Czech culture, under the same circumstances all of his friends initially give outlandish and creative reasons why they won’t be able to make it to the event, but when the day of the event finally comes around, everybody that said they couldn’t come shows up. What this says about our two cultures I don’t know, but it would seem that neither of us is capable of holding our friends to their word and that the Czechs end up doing a lot more cool shit with their friends than we do. After finally saying good night to Ondra we took to our rooms and upon finally seeing the blessed bed immediately passed out from happiness, not to regain consciousness until twelve hours later.

After a week bursting from the seams with fun in Trebur, spending the night in a freezing train station in Hof, and seeing half of the entire city of Prague on two hours of sleep, we found ourselves beyond exhausted when we eventually woke up on October 11^th. And although I know I will get absolutely no sympathy for this, and rightfully so, traveling is a hectic and draining business. So I’m not in the least bit embarrassed to say that we spent this entire day in bed just working on applications, blog posts, emails, and planning the next leg of our Eurotrip. At one point we left the apartment for an astonishing fifteen minutes so that we could grab some groceries from the local store, acquiring the ingredients for making lunch, dinner, and some insanely cheap carbonated wine that came in a two liter plastic bottle to keep ourselves company.

 

Half of me enjoyed the shit out of this relaxing day since it was literally the first day since August 8^th that I hadn’t spent exploring a new city, but the other half of me was anxious to get back out there and see more of Europe’s endless list of incredible sites. This ‘break day’ also gave me my first chance to actually look back on this amazing trip that I’d been experiencing and I suddenly released how fast yet long this trip has been. In one aspect it’s been such a long trip; whenever I think about where I was and what I was doing a week, a day, or even that very morning I’m aghast at how long ago these events seem to have occurred. Every day is just so jam packed full of experiences and events that when I look back on where I was a week ago it feels like it was over a month ago. But then when I consider the fact that the trip is over half over and I’ve only been on the road for just over two months, I realize how quickly the trip is actually passing me by. I wish I could put the metaphorical brakes on this drive through Europe and somehow make it last another year.

The next day we woke up refreshed and ready for another two and a half months on the road before deciding to trek through the rain all the way out to see the Prague Castle. We spent an exorbitant amount of time exploring the seven Royal gardens that surround the Prague Castle, reading something new about each bush and tree that we passed. By the time that we eventually made it to see St. Vitus Basilica it was already in the process of closing, but we made due by circling the Basilica and admiring its impressive exterior and taking pictures from a distance. We continued walking within the castle walls however and achieved breathtaking views of the city’s skyline from the castle’s advantageous vantage point. After wandering through the fortress and down its gigantic stair case, which leads you to the Vltava River, we crossed back over to the heart of the city in search of the Old Jewish Cemetery. But as luck would have it, the cemetery was also closed for the day.

With darkness approaching and our hunger returning, we decided to grab some dinner and immediately noticed this cozy looking restaurant called Golema and decided to give it a try. On our menus we read a very interesting story about the Golem and its connection to the Jewish faith. According to the story on our menus, there was a rabbi named Yehuda ben Bezalel who lived during the same time as the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II (so sometime during the second half of the 16^th century). He created a servant out of clay, which he made come to life by writing some magical words on a piece of parchment (called sem) and placing it in Golem’s mouth. He served the rabbi proudly and humbly, never growing tired, or hungry, or thirsty. Every Friday night the rabbi would remove the sem from Golem’s mouth, which reduced him to a heap of clay on the ground, where he would remain until the end of the Sabbath when the rabbi replaced the sem. However, one time while preparing for the Sabbath the rabbi forgot to remove the sem from Golem’s mouth. When he started reading the first psalm at the synagogue, his neighbors stormed in with dread in their eyes. Golem had become angry and taken to destroying all of the rabbi’s possessions, but “not only did he destroy the rabbi’s possessions but also killed everybody.” The rabbi was split between finishing his reading of the psalm so that the Sabbath could begin and stopping Golem. He raced home to discover dead cats, dogs and chickens everywhere. With his trembling hands the rabbi removed the sem from Golem's mouth where he was returned to a heap of clay. While the town’s folk cheered, the rabbi was busy running back to the synagogue so he could finish reading the psalm and begin the Sabbath. He never returned the sem to Golem's mouth and ended up hiding the heap of clay somewhere inside the synagogue, where it remains to this day.

In addition to learning the awesome story behind Golem's existence, the restaurant had a great atmosphere. There was this really old man on the piano playing everything from Chariots of Fire to What a Wonderful Life to Hallelujah during our entire dinner. And for food, I had deer with a cranberry sauce and a Budweiser. Now I know that you’re thinking, ‘what the hell is Everett doing, he goes all the way to Prague and has a fucking Budweiser with dinner?’ Well just calm down right now because it wasn’t the Budweiser that you’re thinking of, this was a Budvar Budweiser. You see, Budvar is a Czech brewery that started brewing Budweiser in the town of Ceske Budejovice (pronounced Budweis in German) in 1895, nineteen years after Adolphus Busch choose the name randomly off a map for his American beer. However, in the 19^th century the international sale of beer wasn’t fathomable for either brewery, so in 1911 they agreed that Anheuser-Busch couldn’t sell Budweiser in Europe while Budvar couldn’t sell Budweiser in North America. But as Anheuser-Busch grew rapidly, the draw to selling beer in Europe grew stronger and stronger until they eventually started selling the American Budweiser in most European countries, using the name Bud instead of Budweiser when appropriate. Since the fall of the communist regime in Czechoslovakia, Budvar has been pushing their product harder and harder into western European markets, where the two beers have been butting heads. The past twenty years has been full of lawsuits and arguments over the matter and neither side is a clear winner as of yet. My take on the matter was that both of the beers are decent, not excellent, and could each use a little more flavor.

After dinner at Golema, we walked across Charles Bridge with only the moon and its reflection off the Vltava to light our path and illuminate the thirty baroque statues lining the sides of the bridge. The bridge was constructed during the second half of the 14^th century under orders from King Charles IV, which is why at the end of the bridge you’ll find a statue of the king fully clad in his armor looking very heroic. The bridge was the only means of traveling across the Vltava River until 1841, making it a vital connection between the Prague Castle and the Old Town across the river. We entered the bridge walking underneath the Old Town Bridge Tower, which is said to be one of the most incredible gothic style buildings ever constructed and meandered across the river before returning again. It was a really old and unique bridge and I thought that my experience with the bridge was enhanced during the night time rather than being diminished. After checking out the bridge we took the metro back to Ondra’s place to get some more rest.

We woke up on Saturday the 13^th and caught the metro out to the Prague bus station, intending to catch a bus to Terezin to see what remained of the internment camp that the Nazis used during WWII. Terezin had an interesting story though, because even though it was a camp used to detain Jewish people from Prague and all of Czecholslovakia, it didn’t have a gas chamber and was instead used as a half-way point for Czech Jews on the way to their demise at camps like Auschwitz or Treblinka. In fact, the Nazis often shipped the majority of the Jews held here away and cleaned the place up, using it to show foreign countries and organizations like the Red Cross that they were treating their prisoners well. The prisoners were warned that if they acted out during these visits then severe punishment would result. The people here still endured malnutrition, disease, and cramped quarters just like everywhere else, but it was effectively used as a smoke screen to fool a lot of people for a long time.

When we arrived at the bus station we checked the schedule and saw that our bus would be leaving from platform seven in thirty minutes. So we walked over to platform seven and plopped our butts down on the bench, watching the ancient buses struggle their way into motion and the rusty bus stop fall to pieces around the spider web fractured windows as my watch's hour hand completed a full 360 degrees. After eventually consulting some Czech natives who had just asked for information from one of the bus employees, we learned that the bus wasn’t actually coming for another two hours. Since it was already noon at this point we decided to just go to Terezin the following day, instead catching the metro out to more efficiently visit the Prague Castle.

This time we bought the full tickets so that we could explore the castle and its buildings to the fullest extent. We finally got to go inside St. Vitus Basilica, which was just as amazing on the inside as it was on the outside. The gothic structure whose construction started in 1344 but wasn’t completed until 1929 is the seat of the archbishop of Prague. When the church was raised from a bishopric to an archbishopric, then King of Bohemia, Charles IV, intended the new cathedral to be a coronation church for when he would become a Holy Roman Emperor, a family crypt, a treasury for the most precious relics of the kingdom, and the last resting place for the patron saint Wenceslaus. However, due to the frequent deaths of the building's architects, fires, war, and money insufficiencies the building took almost 600 years to be completed. But all of that hard work and determination was definitely worth it because the St. Vitus Basilica was absolutely incredible. The stained glass windows were beautiful, the extravagant tombs were eye popping, and the ceiling frescoes were breath taking; I was in awe when I finally stepped out of the Basilica.

After St. Vitus we went into the old Gothic floor of the Royal Place to see the exhibition ‘Story of Prague Castle,’ which was a museum about everything and everyone who was ever connected to the Prague Castle. I learned about Duke Vaclav (Wenceslas) who was born in the year 907 and assumed power around 924. Strongly influenced by his grandmother, the princess St. Ludmila (who was murdered by her daughter-in-law in 921), he restored unity to the land and tried to avoid conflict. However, when he decided to pay tribute each year to the Emperor Henry II, Wenceslas’ brother Duke Boleslav I protested against it. This dispute was settled in 935 when Duke Boleslav I invited Wenceslas to his castle and murdered him in front of the church, entombing his brother several years later in the Rotunda of St. Vitus at the Prague Castle. Eventually, the cult of St. Wenceslas emerged and in the 12^th century St. Wenceslas became a patron of Bohemia, making him the eternal ruler, lord of all the property, territory and people in the land. Any particular ruler from that point on was only a temporary representative of St. Wenceslas, whose body is still entombed at the St. Vitus Basilica to this day.

I also learned about St. Sigismund, who was born sometime during the 5^th century to Gundibald, the King of the Burgundians. Although he was known for his religious fervor, he believed the insinuations of his second wife when she claimed that his son from his first marriage was plotting to kill him. He immediately had his son strangled to death but felt so bad about it afterwards that he imposed a harsh punishment on himself (though I can’t believe that any punishment could rectify the murder of your own son). In 523 the Franks invaded the land and captured Sigismund, throwing him into a well a year later. He was venerated immediately after his death and his wrongdoing was thereby atoned for. In 1356 Charles IV relocated Sigismund’s remains to the St. Vitus Cathedral and was from then on considered one of the patrons of Bohemia.

After exiting this exhibit, we looped around and took a quick tour through the Royal Palace. The first room that we entered was the huge Vladislav Hall, which was constructed in the 15^th century under the rule of King Vladislav Jagiello. The magnificently large hall was also very drab, with no banners or coats of arms or really any color whatsoever. The ceiling was constructed of huge wooden beams, while the walls and floor were made completely out of grey stone. It reminded me more of the grand hall that I imagine Lord Frey would have inside the Twins rather than the lively Czech Hall that is still used for the elections of the president of the Czech Republic and national ceremonial gatherings. The next room that we went in was the Land Rolls Room, which contained all of the rolls containing the laws of the land. The thing that I found odd though was that the state wasn’t given power over land disputes until centuries after the land rolls had been established. So why were they called land rolls? While trying to wrap my head around that question my empty stomach prompted my mind to fall victim to the distraction of the word ‘roll,’ allowing my thoughts to quickly fade off into a day dream full of rolls and massive quantities of food. To make things worse, the next room that we went into was called the Diet Room, which was constructed in 1627 and was where proceedings of the Diet used to take place. With my stomach rumbling we made our way into the final portion of the Old Royal Palace, the Ludwig Wing, which contained the offices of the Czech Chancellery and in 1618 witnessed the defenestration of two governors and a scribe who were thrown out of the very window that we were standing next to.  This event lead to the uprising of the Czech Estates which became the first conflict of the Thirty Years’ War. Luckily for Margot, when she suggested visiting St. George’s Basilica before heading back into the city to grab some food I found the top notch security of coat hangers wrapped around window handles was enough to keep me from defenestrating her as well.

So we walked down the street and stepped inside St. George’s Basilica which was built in 1142 after a fire had destroyed the previous structure. Underneath the main altar is the tomb of Ludmila of Bohemia, while the shrines of Vratislav and Boleslaus II of Bohemia were also inside the church. The historically old ceiling frescoes were gorgeous but in need of much renovation, and we found the church also odd in regards to the flat roof that we literally hadn’t seen in any church since we’d arrived in Europe. It was still a gorgeous church and definitely worth our time to visit it. After exiting the Basilica we decided to take a brief stroll down the Golden Lane, which is this really tiny street with even tinier houses dating back to the 15^th century that got its name due to the large quantity of goldsmiths that used to reside within the quaint little houses that shared a close proximity to the Royal Nobility that they were working for.

After thoroughly visiting the castle we decided do some quick crystal shopping across the street, but without anything jumping out at us we took the metro home empty handed, stopping along the way to grab some groceries. We ended up just cooking dinner at Ondra’s place and enjoying half a glass of the worst wine I have ever had in my entire life. Since we had run out of the plastic bottled wine we decided to get some more, this time splurging on a one euro box of white wine whose taste and smell I can only describe as a mix of urine and tortillas, which very well may be because that’s what the wine was made out of. It was hands down the worst wine I've ever had in my entire life.

The next day we woke up early, or at least it was early when compared to the previous two mornings that we’d spent in Prague, and got ready in a fury, trying to catch a 10:30 bus out to Terezin. We cleaned up the apartment and lugged our bags all the way down to the metro, where we rode it out to central station. There we ditched our bags in a locker and then rushed down the stairs to hop on the metro again to take us to the bus station for our ride out to Terezin. As we ran down the stairs we found the metro waiting for us and hopped on, only to realize that we were on the wrong side of the tracks right before the doors closed and jumping off. It was now 10:25 and sensing defeat we decided to just catch the metro out to Vysehrad, which is another lesser known and less touristy castle in Prague, and then catch the 12:30 bus out to Terezin. We wandered around inside the castle walls shuffling through the cemetery, side stepping around the huge Basilica of St. Peter and St. Paul that we’d been spotting all over the city the past few days and wondering what it was, and skipping along the top of the embankment walls.

After the castle we grabbed some sausage and hot chocolate and ate it on the go while we took the train out to the bus station once again. But our bus schedule ended up being different from the one posted at the bus station, maybe because it was Sunday, so we had accidentally missed the 12 o’clock bus and the next one wouldn’t leave for another hour in a half. Disgruntled, we agreed that our trip out to see Terezin just wasn’t meant to be and decided to spend the day down at the Jewish Corner instead. Here we saw the Maisel Synagogue, which was dedicated to the Jews that were killed by the Nazis during WWII; the inside was covered with the 80,000 names of Czech Jews that were murdered. Then we saw the Old Jewish Cemetery, which was used from the early 15^th century until the late 18^th century and was astonishingly different from any cemetery I’d ever seen before. There were gravestones everywhere! Occupying the space that would usually only contain one grave stone were probably ten grave stones, and the whole cemetery was one big lump, slopping down from the center. The reason for the lumpish hill and the exorbitant amount of grave stones cramped into the cemetery is that there is actually twelve layers of graves in the cemetery. According to halakhah, the collective body of religious laws for Jews, Jewish people must not destroy Jewish graves and they are especially not allowed to remove any of the tombstones. So when the cemetery was running out of space and purchasing extra land was impossible, they simply put more layers of soil on the existing graves  before burying their dead and all of the tombstones were consequentially moved up to the top layer of soil. After the Old Jewish Cemtery we saw the Klausen Synagogue, which was dedicated to the traditions and ceremonies of the Jewish faith, the Pinkas Synagogue, which was dedicated to the history of Jews in the land of the Czech Republic since the 10^th century, and the Spanish Synagogue, which was just plain gorgeous. The entirety of the churches and exhibitions within the Jewish Corner gave a very well rounded informational overview of the Jewish faith and its history in the Czech Republic and ended up being a great way to spend our last afternoon in Prague.

After seeing everything that there was to see in the Jewish Corner we took a short metro ride back to Central Station and caught our train out to Kutna Hora, a place in the middle of nowhere that Margot really wanted to see but hadn’t gotten around to explaining why just yet. When we arrived, we looked at our map and the coordinating directions and set out in the direction that we thought our hostel was in. Eventually we stopped, looked around, looked at the directions again, and stared walking in the opposite direction. Then we stopped again, examined our surroundings, and came to the precisely calculated conclusion that we didn’t know where the fuck we were supposed to be going. An hour after our train had dropped us off at the Kutna Hora Central station we were right back where we started from trying to compare maps and figure out why we couldn’t figure this shit out. Eventually, I realized that the map made no sense because we were in the wrong part of town; we needed to take another train to get out to the Kutna Hora Mesto station. So we hopped on this little local train that was like 80% plastic, barely broke 10 KMPH, and at one point the train had to completely change direction so that we could change tracks, which meant that we came to a complete stop, the conductor came running through the middle of the train, and then we set off in the opposite direction. Eventually we found ourselves in the correct part of town and took a brisk stroll through the cold night air until we reached our final destination. However, the fun wasn’t over yet, because the hostel wouldn’t accept credit cards, which of course meant that I had to walk around town in search of an ATM. Returning successfully we checked into the hostel, which was really actually a hotel, and went across the street to get some pizza. With our delicious home-made pizzas we each had a glass of local wine and some slivovitz, which is a plum brandy that is very popular in the Balkans. The drink falls into a category of drinks called rakia, which is just flavored brandy, and is something we would become well acquainted with later in our trip while in Hungary (however the drink is called pálinka in Hungary).

The next morning we woke up early and ate our free breakfast of bread, ham, an orange, and this apple pie kind of thing, before setting out to see what the town had to offer.  We walked the twenty minutes over to the Cathedral of the Assumption of Our Lady which was actually a really unique tourist experience. We were allowed to go up to the second floor, walk through the innards of the Cathedral, and get an amazing view of the inside of the church from the vantage point just above the entrance where the organ is usually located.  Here, once again I saw the story of Christ’s crucifixion painted all the way around the Cathedral and started doing a comparison of which European Cathedrals I though did the best job with these story paintings. The best one I’ve seen so far was at a church in Hungary where they were all carved out of a piece of wood. The church also included the skeletons of St. Vincent and St. Felix inside of a glass tomb on either side of the main altar. And all of this for just a $1 entrance fee.

After the Assumption of Our Lady we walked a couple hundred meters down the road to the Sedlec Ossuary, which is why Margot had thankfully dragged me all the way out to Kutna Hora. The entire inside of this church was decorated with the bones from over 40,000 dead human skeletons, it was mind blowing!  In 1278, an abbot of the Cistercian monastery in Sedlec was sent to the holy land by King Otakar II of Bohemia and returned with a handful of dirt from Golgotha, where the crucifixion of Christ occurred, which he sprinkled over the abbey cemetery and thus made the now hallowed ground a highly desirable resting place. However, due to the influx of dead bodies that the church received during the 14^th century from the Black Death and during the 15^th century from the Hussite Wars, the cemetery was eventually over run with dead corpses.  In 1400 a Church was built with an Ossuary to take care of the mass graves that were unearthed during the construction and in the early 16^th century a half blind monk was given the task of exhuming and stacking the remaining exorbitant quantities of bones still buried in the church's cemetery. And finally, in 1870 a woodcarver named Frantirek Rint was hired by the Schwarzenberg family to decorate the Ossuary with the thousands of bones that occupied it.

After the Ossuary we figured that we would stop by the Church of St. Barbara, realizing when we finally glimpsed it around the corner that we were totally unprepared for such magnificence. St. Barbara is the patron saint of miners, which is why the Church of St. Barbara was so appropriate for a town whose prosperity was totally reliant on the silver mines that it contained. Construction of the Church was started in 1388 but wasn’t completed until 1905, halting for a period of sixty years during the Hussite Wars. I can’t tell if it was the double arched flying buttresses that encircle the entire exterior of the Church, the amazing view over the valley that lies directly beneath the church, or the magnificent frescoes painted all around the walls behind the main altar but this church totally blew me away. Unfortunately, we were in a hurry to catch our train at this point so we didn’t get to spend as much time here as I really would’ve liked, but that’s just the way it goes when you’re traveling.

While walking back to our hotel to grab our bags we happened to walk past the city’s Memorial for the Black Death, which initiated a conversation about why we’ve seen so little memorials or museums surrounding something that ravaged an entire continent. Failing to come to a common conclusion we caught the tiny local train back to Central Station to catch our connection to Valtice, finally we were going to wine country.

We got into Valtice at about 6:30 PM, which meant that it was pitch black outside. After taking another local train from the main station which was occupied by nobody that I felt comfortable asking for help and felt like it had the exhaust pipe hooked up to the window right next to my face, we started walking down the deserted dark streets of Valtice looking for the non-reviewed and only hostel option I could find when booking our trip here. Starting to feel a little skeptical about the place that we were supposed to be staying that night, I found comfort in the fact that the houses in this area had BMWs parked out front and … well I guess that was the only thing I could possibly find comfort in while walking through the eerily quiet pitch black streets that were leading us to god knows where. But sure enough when we arrived at the address there was this lady taking the trash out who enthusiastically ushered us into her house when I asked if this was where the hostel was. As Margot and I quickly found out, this wasn’t as much of a hostel as it was a bedroom on the top floor of this lady’s house; and since her English vocabulary was extremely limited, the check in process turned out to be quite difficult. However, while the owner, Dana, was running around trying to explain all of the maps and brochures she had on Valtice with her broken and mostly incomprehensible English, Margot once again saved the day when she finally asked the lady: "Pa-Russki?" (Russian). “Ahhhh Dah Dah Dah,” she said while letting out a huge sigh of relief. The two of them then proceeded to pour over the maps and brochures while I studied the floral pattern on the wall for an hour in a half, but of course Margot filled me in on everything later.

The next morning we woke up and before we even left the room Dana was knocking on the door asking if her new friend Margot was awake yet. I couldn’t help but chuckle as Margot went out to have another lengthy conversation with Dana, but was pleasantly surprised to hear that she’d offered to take both of us Crystal shopping in the nearby town of Lednice with her personal car. After shopping in Lednice, which turned out to be an experience in and of itself, we went to do the one thing that I had dragged Margot out into the middle of nowhere to do, a wine tasting. The Czech National Wine Salon is a collection of the 100 best wines in the country, all of which were currently contained in the wine cellar of the Valtice Castle, and for less than $20 Margot and I were allowed two hours in the wine cellar tasting them all. I had no idea what I was doing and simply followed Margot’s lead, swirling my wine around, smelling it, and staring blankly at a spider web chart that was supposed to tell me all about the wine I was now drinking. Hindered by the extensive use of Czech and the non-existent use of English, I couldn’t really get into the technical part of the wine tasting, but fortunately two Slovakian women who did know what they were doing helped shed a little wine tasting knowledge on us.

After this we walked around the town in the chilling weather checking out a couple more buildings and churches before we went back to Dana’s, had a cup of tea, and hoofed it down to the train station. Here we caught our exhaust infested local train to Braclav and then caught our train down to Vienna.