Prague Weekend 2012

 Prague Weekend Thursday   26/1/12

We got to the Ben Gurion airport at 2.45 am and then Astrid slept there so as to avoid the crush of security as about 20 planes were due to fly out from 5.30 to 6.30
Arrived in Prague at about 10 am and took bus followed by the Green metro and then red metro and it got us exactly outside our hotel.
We are in the executive suit so were able to go and get tea and snacks in the lounge all day and in the evening there was soup and roll with cheeses for supper.   Astrif always figured out that this way we avoid having to go to a restuarant for supper.
We went out for a stroll around the city but at -2C our faces were freezing. We are warm in our eiderdown coats and thick sock and boots and hats but not on our faces.
We got back and I had a swim in the pool followed by a sauna, steam bath and shower.


Friday
We had an early breakfast and I ate enough for lunch as well.   I walked into the city  over an enormous bridge that spans over a valley with houses below it.  This bridge also carries the metro train under the car bridge. I reached the old city where I was just in time to see the 10 O'Clock display of the famous astronomical clock.
  Well I seemed to get lost in the old alleys of the city and eventually got to the Jewish Quarter where I went to see the museum display at the Spanish synagogue. This covers the period from 1800 till the WW2 and it is interesting that Jews were educated  till WW1 in German rather than Czeck. There is a display of Jewish artists , writers and poets in German and Czeck as well as Yiddish and Hebrew. A vast collection of religious silver stuff that the Germans allowed to by hoarded at this synagogue so it wasn't destroyed it was meant to be a museum to a vanished race.  This synagogue must have been reform as it had an organ built into it.
 Over 1300 young Jews from Czekoslovakia went to Poland after Hitler was given the Sudetenland and from there moved to Russia and somehow landed up fighting in the British army, some fought at Normandy

I went for a long walk over the Charles bridge this has a tower at each end and it h is like a mall with entertainers and people selling tourist trinkets.  It has dozens of statues on the sides, mostly medieval art. There is a statue of Christ on it with the Hebrew words   קודש קודש יהוה צבעות   I went for rides on the trams and subway but I still could not get my barngs around the city then at 4.30 I returned to the Jewish quarter and went to the Friday night service at the Altneushull which is one of the oldest building in Prague.  It is relatively small so felt full for the service about 35 people came half of them tourist and there was a very good young  chazan who said he is from Briton, England. This old shull people sat with their backs to the outer wall or to the bima, there are places for candles below convex brass plates that reflected the light down.  The stone pillars of the bima hold up the roof. The acoustics were very good

This is the first time I have been to Eastern Europe but I get the impression that the communist never managed to stop development in Bohemia which historically was always liberal and democratic.

Saturday

Today I took the Metro then a tram up the hill to the top of  Prague Castle.  Fantastic view and architecture  and it is so well looked after, I was with another couple and we walked down to the entrance of the castle through alley and steps but there was such a crowd there that I didn't go in and took and tram back down and walked around the city across the bridge, and then walked over Charles bridge again.
Went to the National Museum where there was a display of the works and inventions of importand Czecks in engineering ,medicine and electric engines etc.  The only one I have heard of was Mendel with his genetic theory of beans.
I also went to the Museum of Prague which has the story of Prague from the prehistoric time till today.  There is a model of  Prague built in about 1750 when the only bridge was the Charles bridge.
There is a lot about the Husite rebellion as this was an importand aspect of the Reformation but Catholisim forced its way back. It is from that period that the concept of Bohemians as free thinker came about.
There is a whole section on the Mecano set of construction toys invented in Prague and has survived the computor age , there were lots of kids playing with the stuff .  Also a display of art over the ages in Prague.  Most of the older writing is in German rather than Czeck.
I spoke to an older person who said they had to learn Russian at school.  When the cold war ended they could choose other languages.  Some kids still chose Russian as it is similar to Czeck but a different script, others chose German as it it nearby and useful but now English is compulsory at all schools so the youger generation can all speak English.
 I walked past a memorial to Widrow Wilson the American President who after WW! insisted that Czekoslovakian be an independant country under Masyrik as the President..



Sunday
Woke up late and after breakfast I went into the city to see the Museum on Communism.  When the cold war ended a Czeck living in the States returned and bought a collection of communist clutter that was no longer in fashion at the flea market.  Statues and painting of Marxs , Lenin, Stalin, as well as poster portraying the labourer as a hero.  The museum also gives the history of this  country from WW1 till  Vaclav Haval returned democracy.  It is amazing that a minority government supported by the Soviets kept the county under its thumb for so long and kept the people poor and stopped development. It is also amazing that the Czeck Republic has bounced back so fast in development.  Bohemia was always western in outlook and creative.
Amongst the pictures shown is of  enormous statue to labourers and  Stalin in a Prague park that must have cost millions to build from 1950 to 1955 to glorify the regime like a religious cult, by which time Stalin was already out of favour.  In 1962 it was destroyed by the government, a way of rewriting history.
They have pictures of the Prague Spring under Dubcek in 1968 and movies of the Russian tanks in the streets that I can now recognize.  One comment is that Poland fought against the communist regime for 10 years, Hungary 10 months, East Germany 10 weeks and Czechoslovacia 10 days.  The last few days of the old regime was noted by fires all over the place burning documents..