Prague Blague

One can’t help but feel a little empowered when going on a trip like this. Everyone at home is doing their regular jobs and going to their regular classes, but for a minute I think I, the traveler, am doing something different. That is, until you meet all of the other travelers along the way. As soon as I’ve proudly told my story about living in Italy for a few months while going to school and then doing a whirlwind travel of several countries afterward, someone else talks about how they just camped in Mongolia for 3 months, or got an internship in Prague for 2 years, or have been living out of their pack for 7 months and have 14 left to go. Well ,aren’t you all just great and more extreme than me. Put me in my place, why doncha.

The last two days in Prague were pretty go go go. We left our nightclub hostel on Wednesday and stepped into the morning sun to see what Prague had to offer, and the first thing we saw was a woman holding her little pantsless child above a grate in the street to pee. A good image to get us motivated for the day. This was our across the river day so we crossed the famous St. Charles bridge, with its old dark statues, and gothic design and started with the Kafka museum on the other side. Kafka would have been proud to have such a place dedicated to him. It has the atmosphere down pat. The building is small and dark and each section is dimly lit and accompanied by erie music- not in a cheesy “I’m in a Halloween haunted house” way, but in a creepy, “this house could be haunted way.” It’s different. From it you learn about his life, his loves, his writing, and his death but there are also sections devoted to creating the atmosphere to feel that you were in one of his books. Everything was dreamlike and whimsical. One room was white with some walls made entirely of mirrors and one screen. Playing on the screen was a film created to trick the mind into creating mirages. A mirage machine, it was called. It was created from ideas that came from his book The Castle. There were also a few winding hallways made entirely of black file cabinets. A few were open to display an exhibit, and in others were tvs playing bizarre soundless images not unlike the movie in The Ring. One just had severed mangled hands floating into the distance. There was also a black rotary telephone mounted on one wall that would occasionally ring and when picked up there was a recording of a man yelling in German on the other end. Anyone thinking of traveling to Prauge, I would highly recommend that place. It is bizarre and fascinating.

We then stopped briefly by the Lennon Wall. A Graffiti art wall that began as a symbol of protest to the communist government but is still kept up and ever changing. Finally, we went to the Prague Castle. This place is enormous and let me tell you, you’ve got to have energy to go there. Already exhausted from walking and climbing the hill to get there, we probably should have given the castle more time than we did, but it was all we could do to not collapse from hunger and exhaustion by the end. It is many buildings including cathedrals, palaces, galleries, towers, and bastilles. It was quite amazing but a ticket is actually good for two days and it’s easy to see how it could take that long to see it all.

Finally, we dragged ourselves home for a quick rest and then it was off to see Swan Lake at little theatre in Old Town, which was delightful.

Our last full day in Prague, we actually spent out of town. First I woke up with a rash covering my whole face and my lower forearms. It’s itchy and red and has yet to go away. Hopefully that will be resolved soon. I’m sure everyone is anxious to know how it turns out. But anyway, yesterday morning we took a train about an hour out of town to see what had been described to us as a church made of human bones. And.. That’s because that is what it was. It wasn’t actually built with bones, but it was highly decorated with them and contained huge, unsupported pyramids of bones throughout. Apparently it began when holy dirt had been sprinkled upon the grounds of this church and it became a highly popular place to be buried. Then the plague came and everywhere became a popular place to be buried. Soon they started piling bones up along the outside of the church and finally moved them inside- simply as a place to put them. Finally they began to make a design out of it, and I’m not sure how recent that was. Definitely a sight to see though the church itself is quite small and quite crowded.