PRAGUE – Czech Republic (Wed 29 July)

We found Veronica under the parrot green umbrella this morning, she was to be our guide. We were the only two that turned up for the tour. In the afternoon we were joined by a couple of girls from Belgium, but it seemed that we got a lot more out of the tour by being a small group. As you pass other groups of 50 or more, you can tell by their faces that most of them are bored out of their brains, they are only persisting because they have paid for it and it is what they must do. Veronica took us on a most informative and interesting tour of the city, pointing out things that we would have just walked by, telling us the story behind other things that we would have just wondered about, and adding the personal touches and humour.

We covered so much ground it is hard to remember it all (particularly the names and dates which she rattled off so easily), or to relay it. But there are certain things that do stick in your mind. Like the statue in Old Town Square of the founder of the Protestant movement which started here. Like the 27 crosses on the cobblestones by the Town Hall, that represent the 27 people killed and beheaded there for their beliefs, and then had their heads left to hang from the Charles Bridge for the next ten years as a warning to all others. We saw the John Lennon wall, which was a wall covered in graffiti which was started in communist times. Most of the graffiti is themed on John Lennon and revolution. The quote ‘You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one’, appears quite frequently. We saw the building that was the office of Heinrich Himmler, the office that he was on the way to when he was assassinated (I read a book about that when I was young and going through my war story phase). We also saw the monument to the Second World war with the dates 1938 – 1945. And with this we were reminded that this country was annexed to Germany in 1938 (hoping it would satiate Hitler’s desire). So the war started here a year earlier than it did for the rest of us.

We saw a few of the David Cerny sculptures. It seems that he goes out of his way to offend and shock people, it makes you wonder why he still gets commissions. We had some incredible architecture pointed out to us, and the house signs that are so easy to walk by. In days gone past before the time of addresses as we know them now, houses were known by a feature on that house such as the house of the ‘red lamb’, ‘stone bell’, ‘white turnip’.

One of the things that interested us was the different attitude and perception of people that we had been hearing about previously. An example of this was Franz Joseph who we had been hearing about in Austria as the ‘Peoples King’. Amongst other things that we were told about him was that he just “threw our artwork out of the castle windows because he needed more office space.” And other stories that were less favourable still.

When we got to Charles Bridge we found that quite a bit of it was under repairs. We were told that the renovations were going to take another five to ten years. Evidently there wasn’t a lot of care given to the bridge during communist times and the chemicals that they put on the bridge when it froze over, had worked its way down through the stonework and into the foundations. They are in the process of lifting out every stone and cleaning it. A big job, but when you think about the history of these countries and areas, twenty years is hardly a blip on the radar. Once again we are faced with history that is almost beyond our comprehension.

We could go on forever about this city, and what there is to see, suffice to say it really is an amazing place. Everything that we had imagined and hoped for. Lots of history, but lots of future too.