The Bustling City of Prague

Today is my second-to-last day in Prague.  This city is just so large, even in five days, it's impossible to see and experience everything.

On Friday after my last blog post, I went to the Museum of Communism.  It surprised me by being a lot more expensive than I was expecting, but I was really interested in seeing it, so I paid it anyways and went in.  I'm a little picky about museums - I get really bored in them unless they have something worthwhile to see.  As I came up the stairs, there was a bronze statue of Lenin, with the words "The Dream, The Reality, The Nightmare" pasted on the walls behind it.  I had a good feeling about this museum.

Museum of Communism

As I walked through the museum, there were block text exhibitions on that explained the start of communism in the Czech Republic at the end of world war ii, its rise, and then its fall in 1989.  I found the museum very informative, and chilling - the Czech people have been through a lot.  There was one audio exhibition discussing torture methods during the reign of the USSR, and I found it uncomfortable enough that it was a relief to leave the museum at the end.

Wenceslas Square

Just a random pretty building.

I tried to cheer myself up in the sunshine of the market outside after, and I tried a smoked wild boar sausage with mustard.  It was actually really good.  I could only eat half of it before it abruptly became too much meat for me, but I packed the other half away and munched on it later.  I am still not comfortable with eating meat, and find I can really only do it slowly and thoughtfully, and I experience a lot of guilt and shame involved with it.  I've been vegetarian for a long time.  It's hard thinking of animals as food again.

Tourists standing around on Wenceslas Square

I also got myself a trdelnik (I cannot pronounce this), which is an offensively delicious rolled pastry that's cooked on a cylinder, so it's huge and hollow inside, and then coated in cinnamon and sugar.  You can get them filled with things (at one place I walked past, it was filled with mac and cheese), but usually they are filled with baked apples (my favourite) or caramel sauce, or nutella.  I keep buying these.  They're marketed as a tradition Czech food, but they're totally not, it's just a tourist trap.  A delicious, delicious tourist trap.

The memorial to Jan Palach and Jan Zajic. 

Just a random intersection.

After that, I walked around for a bit and wandered up to Wenceslas Square.  Nowadays, it's just a big pedestrian shopping area, but it has been used in the past for huge protests, and during the Cold War, two protesters set themselves on fire here.  There is a small memorial to them in the square.

Because no day is complete without something really strange happening, while I was wandering around there, a panhandler came up to me asking for money.  When I said I had nothing to give, he whipped out his penis and peed on the flowers next to me.  So, I saw an unsolicited penis on Friday.  Since there's absolutely no appropriate response to that, I just said nothing and walked away.

St. Cyrill Church.

Note the bullet holes to the left of the frame.  That airshaft led into the crypt where the four parachutists were hiding, and SS soldiers funneled tear gas and also water in through there in an attempt to kill them.

Then, since the day wasn't somber enough, I went to St. Cyrill church.  In 1942, Prague was occupied by the German Nazis, and being run by the SS-Obergruppenfuhrer and acting Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich.  He was one of the men responsible for Adolf Hitler's rise to power, as well as the guy in charge of the Final Solution (the genocide of the jews).  Aka, he was a bad, bad man.

Inside the church.  The four other parachutists stood off in upper alcoves, defending themselves before they were overrun and shot.

A few Czech parachutists exiled in the UK were asked to participate in what was called Operation Athropoid.  They were dropped into the Czech Republic, tasked with assassinating Heydrich, and given a network of rebels to work with in Prague.

Inside the crypt where they hid and died.  There were more bullet holes on the walls, and these eight busts left as memorial.  Some of the busts had fresh flowers left at them, and drawings, or rosaries hanging nearby. 

They managed to succeed, though there were steep reprocussions for the Czech people.  In retaliation, the nazis wiped two entire towns off the map, shooting all the men, and sending the women and children to concentration camps (where they later all died).  The buildings were bombed to the ground, and the towns were erased from maps at the time (they've since been rebuilt).

Eventually, one of the parachutists betrayed the hiding location of the others to the Nazis, and 750 SS soldiers were sent in to siege the church (where the eight parachutists were hiding).  Some of them were killed, but the four people hiding in the crypt (who had committed the assassination) eventually committed suicide, rather than be captured.

So...I went to that church.  There were still bullet holes in the walls.

I don't actually remember what I did after that.  I think I just walked around for a bit to try and clear my head.  I stuck my fingers in bullet holes in a church made of stone, holes made from nazi firearms.  It was strange and sad and surreal.

Prague at sunset.

I went for a walk through Letna park in the evening to clear my head.

Shoes randomly thrown across a telephone wire at the Metronome in Letna Park

There's a bar directly underneath, so people come here to drink and watch the view.  There was a live DJ playing nearby.

On Saturday, I hung out with those people from Utah that I spent time with on Thursday evening.  Logan, Claire, and Aubrey.  They're all 22, just finished their bachelor's, and are moving to separate states to attend post-grad.  It's basically the story for the next hollywood film.  I really liked them.  Logan and I exchanged numbers and we've been texting while they're traveling in Poland.

It took a little while to round everyone up, and I went out twice Saturday morning while I waited for them to finally be ready, so I wouldn't be an obnoxious ass about it.

Prague Castle in the distance.

Hey look, a picture with my entire body in it for once!

Once everyone was ready, we went for a long walk.  We got some pastries and just wandered around with our books in our bag.  The end goal of the day was to find ourselves in the park with a couple of beers and read our books together.  We ended up walking to Petrin, where we took a funicular up to the top of the hill.  It was the price of the metro, and it was kinda neat.  Like an old-timey railway straight up a steep hill.  I also saw the biggest pomegranate of my life (I almost couldn't hold it in one hand!), and we passed a memorial to the victims of communism.

Memorial to the victims of Communism

Once up there, Claire and Logan plopped themselves down on a bench and read, while Aubrey and I ran around and took a hundred photos of roses.  There was a beautiful rose garden at the top of the hill, and an observatory, and also what we've been referring to as the fake Eiffel tower.  We didn't go up it because it was all stairs, and there was a line-up, and we were lazy.  We got beers, and laid in the grass and chatted and read books, until an earwig tried to get a little too cozy up my dress, and we decided the grass was a bad place and got up and left.

The top of Petrin.  Rose bushes everywhere!

Logan and Claire reading on a bench while Aubrey and I run around and take photos

After that we slowly ambled our way down the hill, opting to walk the path instead of taking the funicular again, and wandered over to Kampa, an artificial island in the middle of the Vltava River.  We were mostly in search of the loo, but we passed some crazy giant baby alien sculptures, and also some giant yellow penguins.

Creepy babies

Penguins!

We also rented a pedalboat, which might actually be the highlight of my time in Prague thus far.  It was so cool, and I said as much a dozen times at least while we were paddling (cycling?).  We paid for an hour, and the first thing we did was paddle/cycle over to boat serving beers.  I got a mojito, everyone else got beers, and we played some country music and just paddled around.  It was actually so cool.  I immediately googled where to buy pedalboats when I got back to the hostel that night.

The funicular!

the view from a path on Petrin

Wee little mushrooms

Another view of Prague Castle in the distance

Later in the evening, we went for Indian food with a big group of us.  I enjoyed the food, but I struggled with the company - we were a group of six, and everyone was getting a little disrespectful and silly.  Two people in our group started spilling salt on each other, and stacking spoons and things on top of each other.  I found it super obnoxious, like I was traveling with children.  I was happy when we left.

I'm pretty sure everyone else was being candid, but I have a feeling Logan's face was because he caught me taking a photo.  

The tourist chaos that is the Charles Bridge area

Everyone else (read: everyone in the hostel) got ready to party and go out, but I stayed behind to prep for the hike I wanted to do Sunday.  I'm going to make that a separate post though, because yesterday was it's own whole day.