April 19th; Prague, Czech Republic

After a quick breakfast at the hotel we all boarded the bus for a half hour drive into Prague. We parked just across the Moldau River from the old town section of Prague and walked across the Czech bridge to get into the city. I was pleased to see that Prague still had a streetcar system running; the tracks ran right across the Czech Bridge. Some of the streetcars that passed by were vividly painted; I even saw a pink one!

Our guided walk led from the Czech Bridge north through some city streets toward historic Charles Bridge. There are 70 statues on Charles bridge, and one of them was dedicated to the conflict between church and state in the Good Old Days. Apparently Saint Nepomuk had his tongue cut out by the government and was tossed over the edge of the bridge for good measure in 1393. Of course, he wasn't a saint until much later and had his bronze statue put on the bridge even later than that. Local folks apparently make a wish and then rub the statue for good luck, so we tried that. Call us superstitious if you will, but it seemed a whole lot easier than kissing the Blarney Stone!

The tour ended at the old town hall next to the central market square. The city hall looked for all the world like an old church, complete with a bell tower. The bell tower had a extraordinarily fancy astronomical clock on the side. An auxiliary display below it had each month of the year paired with a picture of what activities would be appropriate activity for that month. All together it reminded me of the astronomical clock we saw in Luebeck during Wanderung 5.

After being turned loose from the tour, we started exploring the city on our own in our usual haphazard way. We started by wandering around the central market square, which was still decorated for the Easter Market. Apparently the Czechs had an Easter Market complete with lines of small booths for food, drink, and various products that was quite similar to the Christmas Markets we had seen just a couple of months earlier in Hamburg during Ausflug 33, even down to the mulled wine! One product that they had in Prague that was unique was a cylindrical roll of bread baked on the spot and covered with sugar and cinnamon. It tasted great and only cost 40 Kroenen, or about $1.70.

Besides the Easter egg decorations and an "Easter Tree" leftover from the Easter celebration, the Easter Market folks had left an elevated stage of some kind sitting in the middle of the square. That turned out to be a huge bonus to amateur photographers like myself. Climbing about 15 feet to the top got me just above the clutter of the market place to where I could get wonderful pictures of the surrounding buildings.

Actually we enjoyed the fascinating architecture all over Prague as we walked around for the rest of the afternoon. The streets were narrow, crooked, and often paved with cobblestones, but you never knew what you find when you went around the next corner. Usually, of course, it was a fascinating building or facade that I would stand and gape at. While I was taking a photograph of one such facade, a tall man in a black trench coat suddenly appeared at my elbow and whispered in a deep, throaty voice, "Hey mister, want to change some money?" I was startled and didn't know whether to start laughing or start running, so I settled on just gruffly saying, "No thanks!" and he sidled off.

As we strolled along in the warm sunshine Monika kept looking at the shops, particularly the artistic glass shops. In one shop winder we saw tiny glass figures of a guy playing a recorder and a girl playing a violin. They were small enough to take along and we had never seen anything quite like them, so we finally broke down and bought them.

After an hour or so of aimless wandering, our stomachs started growling so we curled back around to the central market to have a snack to tide us over for the afternoon. I had a chicken shish kabob and Monika had a bratwurst while we sat and watched the folks bustling around the Easter Market. Re-energized, we worked our way north past a convent with a pretty church to another bridge over the Moldau and continued uphill on the other bank to a long but narrow city park. The park stretched in a large "U" on the bluff on the north side of the river, and as we strolled along the paths we had some great views of the city. Ultimately the park led us to Prague Castle, one of the major tourist attractions of the city.

Much of the original castle had apparently, been destroyed over the centuries, but the cathedral in the center of the castle was completely restored. I purchased a photography permit so that I could take pictures of the graceful high Gothic interior of the cathedral. The stained glassed windows on the sides were almost totally intact, unusual for a church in Europe, and really beautiful.

Not having time to take a real tour, we wandered along through the castle area surrounding the cathedral to a viewpoint at the other end. After stopping for a nice view of the old town part of Prague spread below us, we continued to work our way downhill. Somehow we took a very unofficial route through a restaurant and hotel to arrive at the bottom of the hill a block away from the Czech Parliament building, a plain building that I noticed only because there were bored looking policemen stationed at each corner.

Our feet were starting to get tired by that point, so we slowly worked our way back through the city streets to the other end of Charles bridge. There we found a small grocery store selling a local brand of bottled water. A 1.5 liter bottle of drinking water cost only 9.50 Crowns, or a little under 50 cents U.S., which was a relative bargain given how expensive everything was in the Czech Republic in general and Prague in particular. Grabbing a couple of those to take with, we wended our way back to the meeting point beside the Czech Bridge.

After a quick bus trip back to the hotel, we had dinner there and were off again for an evening of folk music and dancing. The wine flowed freely, but I was so busy taking pictures that I never finished a glass. The entertainers played on authentic instruments including a hammer dulcimer, two violins, a cello, a hurdy-gurdy, a Czech version of the bagpipes and a fujara. The fujara was a five foot long wooden tube with a air pipe up to the "mouthpiece" at the top. The fujara had only three holes down near the bottom end, but the gentleman playing it could product a remarkable set of tones from the thing. In certain ranges, the eerily resonating notes reminded me of the tonal qualities of the Australian didgeridoo.

As the evening progressed we had more and more audience participation in the songs and dances, and that was a lot of fun. At the end of the performance we borrowed money from the folks across the table so that I could buy a CD of the group's music and Monika could buy a beautiful little Czech doll dressed in an authentic costume. Since this wasn't classical opera, I never heard the fat lady sing, but finally it was all over and our bus whipped us back to the hotel for the night.