prague
Just now I got home from a leisurely trip to the secondhand shop up near Nollendorf Platz. I bought a skinny burgundy leather necktie. I wasn't even aware I needed a burgundy leather tie until I saw it there on the table among many other leather neckties, but now I'm not quite sure how I've managed so long without one.
See? Great, right?
Anyway, on to what I'm really here to blog about. (Hang on, cause it's gonna be a long one.) At long last, I made it to Prague. Met up with James here in Berlin last Wednesday and boarded the train for a quick little four-hour jog over to the Czech Republic. (Have I mentioned how much I love how easy train travel is? Cause I love it.) The city was absolutely as beautiful as I'd always dreamed. If you happen to find yourself in Prague, try to see the Charles Bridge for the first time by moonlight. And if you can manage it, add a little misty rain too. Here it is during daytime:
It's lined with old, blackened statues of saints, which are eerily cool by night. Also there were fewer people. During the day, artists set up shop on the bridge and sell watercolors and sketches (and caricatures, too, for the most touristy of tourists).
We saw the lunar clock, where on the hour a row of saints files past and peeks out two little windows at the top, and a skeleton rings a bell. The Jan Hus memorial is also really striking at night, though you might not believe it from this picture:
Thursday we went up to the castle and walked around, then wandered the city some more and sat in a super cool cafe and bookstore for a few hours, during which we played (but did not finish) the first and only chess game of my life. Now if I never play chess again, at least I can say I played once in Prague.
Later on we went in search of a brewery James read about in a guidebook, and when we found it, it turned out to be one of the best parts of the whole trip. These guys were walking around playing Czech folk songs, and hearty old Czech men with mustaches were singing all the words:
This place, U Fleků, is supposedly the oldest brewery in Prague--founded 1499. Right around Columbus' time, you know? It's always crazy to me how young my country is compared to Europe.
On Friday we got back on the train to head over to Dresden, where James' friend Alice was kind enough to put us up for the weekend. On the way out, I took this picture, because I found it interesting how shiny and polished the (touristy part of the) old city was, while the scenery surrounding the (not main) train station is clearly a holdover from socialist times:
Dresden was beautiful too, and the cool thing about that city is how recently it's all been put back together. Only last summer was the restoration on the Frauenkirche finished; before that it was completely in ruins. The East German regime didn't put too high a priority on rebuilding a giant church after we bombed it to pieces.
Alice lives in Neustadt ("new city" part of Dresden), which is full of university students and all kinds of cool clubs and cafes. We met lots of great people. On Saturday we wandered around the city a bit. It was very cold. But the architecture is all really impressive because Dresden used to be the seat of the Kaiser. Here's the court church:
I didn't take that many pictures in Dresden, but there are a few, along with more from Prague, on my Flickr page.
Sunday we headed home. Our last hurrah in Dresden consisted of getting fined for not having tickets while riding the tram to the train station. We wanted to buy tickets from the automat on the tram, but neither of us had enough coins. So we're like, oh well, what are the odds the controllers will come around? We'll have to chance it. Should have known, though, that as soon as we said that, the controllers were pretty much guaranteed to come around. Which they did, leaving us with no choice but to play dumb American. We're all, ticket? what ticket? We had day tickets from Saturday, and in a stroke of creative idiocy, we took to arguing that we thought the 4:00 on the ticket meant it lasted until 4 pm (16:00), though we were perfectly aware that it was good till 4 am (that morning). The controller, who was WAY nicer than I would have been to a couple of stupid tourists waving around American passports, patiently explained multiple times that our tickets were expired and only made us pay €10 cash instead of the €40 normal fine. He also refrained from calling our bluff when we insisted on speaking English to him, even though when he asked at one point, in German, how far we were going on the tram, we both answered "Hauptbahnhof" without missing a beat.
On the train back to Berlin, there was an elderly couple in our compartment who told us they were from Prague. When James asked whether they'd always lived in Prague, the old man smiled a little and said he'd spent some time moving around a bit too, pulling up his sleeve to show us his ID tattoo from a concentration camp. Six different camps, actually, for six years starting when he was 17. He spends his time now traveling around to schools and talking about his experiences during the war, which include having met and worked under Dr. Mengele at Auschwitz (because he'd told them he'd been a medical student).
The woman said that students always ask the man whether he harbors any hate for the Germans, but he always answers that he doesn't because some Germans helped his family during the war. He's like God judging Sodom, she said, willing to spare the city if only ten righteous men could be found there--he's forgiven all of Germany for the sake of the few Germans who were kind to his family. So there I am, a girl from South Dakota, sitting in a train compartment with an 80-year-old Czech man showing me his ID tattoo and telling me he's forgiven the Germans, having just left a city which only recently finished putting itself back together after we bombed it to rubble...and I'm thinking, how did I get here?
This isn't history class anymore, you know?
See? Great, right?Anyway, on to what I'm really here to blog about. (Hang on, cause it's gonna be a long one.) At long last, I made it to Prague. Met up with James here in Berlin last Wednesday and boarded the train for a quick little four-hour jog over to the Czech Republic. (Have I mentioned how much I love how easy train travel is? Cause I love it.) The city was absolutely as beautiful as I'd always dreamed. If you happen to find yourself in Prague, try to see the Charles Bridge for the first time by moonlight. And if you can manage it, add a little misty rain too. Here it is during daytime:
It's lined with old, blackened statues of saints, which are eerily cool by night. Also there were fewer people. During the day, artists set up shop on the bridge and sell watercolors and sketches (and caricatures, too, for the most touristy of tourists).We saw the lunar clock, where on the hour a row of saints files past and peeks out two little windows at the top, and a skeleton rings a bell. The Jan Hus memorial is also really striking at night, though you might not believe it from this picture:
Thursday we went up to the castle and walked around, then wandered the city some more and sat in a super cool cafe and bookstore for a few hours, during which we played (but did not finish) the first and only chess game of my life. Now if I never play chess again, at least I can say I played once in Prague.Later on we went in search of a brewery James read about in a guidebook, and when we found it, it turned out to be one of the best parts of the whole trip. These guys were walking around playing Czech folk songs, and hearty old Czech men with mustaches were singing all the words:
This place, U Fleků, is supposedly the oldest brewery in Prague--founded 1499. Right around Columbus' time, you know? It's always crazy to me how young my country is compared to Europe.On Friday we got back on the train to head over to Dresden, where James' friend Alice was kind enough to put us up for the weekend. On the way out, I took this picture, because I found it interesting how shiny and polished the (touristy part of the) old city was, while the scenery surrounding the (not main) train station is clearly a holdover from socialist times:
Dresden was beautiful too, and the cool thing about that city is how recently it's all been put back together. Only last summer was the restoration on the Frauenkirche finished; before that it was completely in ruins. The East German regime didn't put too high a priority on rebuilding a giant church after we bombed it to pieces.Alice lives in Neustadt ("new city" part of Dresden), which is full of university students and all kinds of cool clubs and cafes. We met lots of great people. On Saturday we wandered around the city a bit. It was very cold. But the architecture is all really impressive because Dresden used to be the seat of the Kaiser. Here's the court church:
I didn't take that many pictures in Dresden, but there are a few, along with more from Prague, on my Flickr page.Sunday we headed home. Our last hurrah in Dresden consisted of getting fined for not having tickets while riding the tram to the train station. We wanted to buy tickets from the automat on the tram, but neither of us had enough coins. So we're like, oh well, what are the odds the controllers will come around? We'll have to chance it. Should have known, though, that as soon as we said that, the controllers were pretty much guaranteed to come around. Which they did, leaving us with no choice but to play dumb American. We're all, ticket? what ticket? We had day tickets from Saturday, and in a stroke of creative idiocy, we took to arguing that we thought the 4:00 on the ticket meant it lasted until 4 pm (16:00), though we were perfectly aware that it was good till 4 am (that morning). The controller, who was WAY nicer than I would have been to a couple of stupid tourists waving around American passports, patiently explained multiple times that our tickets were expired and only made us pay €10 cash instead of the €40 normal fine. He also refrained from calling our bluff when we insisted on speaking English to him, even though when he asked at one point, in German, how far we were going on the tram, we both answered "Hauptbahnhof" without missing a beat.
On the train back to Berlin, there was an elderly couple in our compartment who told us they were from Prague. When James asked whether they'd always lived in Prague, the old man smiled a little and said he'd spent some time moving around a bit too, pulling up his sleeve to show us his ID tattoo from a concentration camp. Six different camps, actually, for six years starting when he was 17. He spends his time now traveling around to schools and talking about his experiences during the war, which include having met and worked under Dr. Mengele at Auschwitz (because he'd told them he'd been a medical student).
The woman said that students always ask the man whether he harbors any hate for the Germans, but he always answers that he doesn't because some Germans helped his family during the war. He's like God judging Sodom, she said, willing to spare the city if only ten righteous men could be found there--he's forgiven all of Germany for the sake of the few Germans who were kind to his family. So there I am, a girl from South Dakota, sitting in a train compartment with an 80-year-old Czech man showing me his ID tattoo and telling me he's forgiven the Germans, having just left a city which only recently finished putting itself back together after we bombed it to rubble...and I'm thinking, how did I get here?
This isn't history class anymore, you know?
Labels: travels
