A Rocky Beginning
What would turn out to be a lovely visit to the equally lovely city of Prague started out pretty ugly. We were to connect in JFK from Atlanta and had allowed a generous four hours to make that connection. However, with about five minutes to go before scheduled boarding, the announcement came that the flight would be delayed by two hours for maintenance issues. OK, we could live with that and we congratulated ourselves on having allowed four hours for the connection. We boarded our new plane, two hours late, and everything seemed to be fine with our drinks in hand, but it is never a good sign when the maintenance men are on board with you, and they were. Ultimately, it was determined that although the aircraft was flight-worthy, they couldn’t fly it because there was a light that was on that should be off and maintenance couldn’t just unscrew the bulb (my solution to the problem). So now we would change gates and aircraft for a THIRD time, with yet another departure time that pretty well ensured that we would miss our connecting flight to Prague from JFK, meaning an unexpected night in New York and changing airport transfer and Prague apartment times. Tim even went so far as to double book us on the next day’s Prague flight just in case the obvious happened. But, by a twist of airline fate I have never been privilege to before, it turned out that our late arriving aircraft from Atlanta was the plane that would continue to Prague anyway! We were saved since we too were continuing on to the same destination as the late equipment. What were the odds? As it was, we were only about an hour delayed into Prague, and despite forecasts of rain and clouds, it was clear and sunny until our last night in town when we were treated to a loud and bright thunderstorm.
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First Impressions of Prague
The first thing to strike me about Prague was the profusion of lilac in huge mounded bushes everywhere I looked. The scent was overpowering and wonderful, to say nothing of how beautiful the blooms were visually. On more prosaic notes, I couldn’t help but notice that Prague seemed awash in cash, at least based on the number of new and expensive model cars on the road. Prague also was not a shell-shocked and devastated city of the Eastern European model along the likes of the former East Berlin, Warsaw, or Bucharest. Instead, Prague was a European city like many others with stucco buildings of multiple colors and tile roofs with Beaux-Arts facades from the late 19th century. Sure, there were the occasional concrete edifice or apartment block, but mostly on the outskirts of town, testimony to the days of Soviet overlord-ship, which still seemed to have had a lighter hand here than in many places. The only rather jarring note was that some Czech people, presumably youth, seem very fond of spray paint and graffiti is almost as omnipresent as the lilac. Our driver noted that while graffiti is common, crime is not and that Prague would be a very safe city in which to walk and explore. We never had any experience to suggest the opposite.
We Have An “Ooooops” Moment
We had such an amazingly stressful experience getting to Prague and neither of us slept well on the flight, which was only slightly over 7 hours. Therefore, once we got into our rented vacation apartment, we were pretty wiped out. We arrived in the apartment about 1pm and had a look around. It was a nice 2 bedroom, 2 bath place, recently refurbished, with extremely high ceilings and hardwood floors. It was sparsely furnished, but it had everything we really needed. And best of all, it was in a quiet residential neighborhood which was silent in the evenings except for the tram line outside, but that simply meant that transit was easy to access, in the form of both the tram which was right outside and the subway which was all of a two minute walk down the hill. If nothing else, Prague is VERY easy to get around in.
But as I was saying, we were pretty wiped out and we decided to take a short “nap” before heading out into the world to see what there was to see. Neither of us thought to set an alarm, and despite all expectations, we awoke from our “nap” at 1am!! Yep, we basically slept through our first day in town, which was a real shame, but one has to imagine that we were pretty exhausted since we promptly took evening medications and went back to sleep easily enough until about 8am the next day.
Off to Kutna Horá
For our second day in town we had arranged with the same folks who owned our rental apartment to take us on a drive outside of Prague to the town of Kutna Horá. Kutná Hora was a silver mining center in the 10th to 15th centuries and at some point during the 13th to 14th centuries there was a royal mint built on the site which can still be visited today. Now just pause for a moment and think about how LONG ago we are talking about now. That is some 600-1000 years ago, long before the United States was even a concept, and in fact, even merry old England wasn’t in a form that most of us would recognize quite yet. The Czech land is extremely old and it is a common occurrence to encounter stunning medieval architecture at every turn and every glance. Kutná Hora is a great place to experience the antiquity of the Czech Republic as well as to soak up some amazing ecclesiastical architecture in the form of cathedrals.
One cathedral in particular should grab your attention. The Bone Church (‘Ossuary’ to be more correct or ‘Kostnice’ in Czech) in Kutná Hora is where, in the 13th century, Jindřich, the abbot of Sedlec monastery, returned from a visit to Palestine with a pocketful of soil and sprinkled it on the cemetery surrounding the Chapel of All Saints.
This direct association with the holy land led to the graveyard becoming a sought after burial site among the aristocracy of Central Europe. At the time of the Thirty Years’ War in the 17th century, the number of burials outgrew the space available, the older remains began to be exhumed and stored in the chapel, and it’s estimated that the chapel now contains the bones of up to 40,000 people.
The lower floor of the chapel is partially below ground level and its square floor plan is divided into thirds both across its length and breadth, something like a giant noughts-and-crosses board. In each of the corners, there is a gigantic pile of skulls and bones, maybe four meters square on the ground and three meters high.
This leaves a cross shaped area open to walk around. One point of the cross is taken up by the staircase leading down from the street and a small altar occupies the opposite arm. Above the center hangs the chandelier that is often touted as the highlight of the bone church because it contains at least one of each bone in the human body.
The decorations and sculptures were created by a woodcarver named František Rint. In 1870, he was commissioned by the landowners of the time, the Schwarzenberg family, to decorate the chapel with the bones and create a reminder of the impermanence of human life and inescapable death.
As well as the chandelier, there are strings of skulls and bones hanging from the ceiling, skull candelabra, a display case showing skulls with wounds inflicted by various mediaeval weapons, chalices that stand in alcoves either side of the staircase, and Mr. Rint’s signature picked out in finger bones.
My personal favorite is the coat of arms of the Schwarzenberg family, especially the segment depicting a raven picking the eye from an invading soldier. If you’re going to depict a raven eating somebody’s eye, what more appropriate medium could there be?
Having visited the Catacombs of Paris, I found this to be a more tasteful and artistic display and surprisingly, it really doesn’t come across as morbid at all, at least not to me. However, if you are scared of the dead be warned before you go. Personally, it is the living who scare me the most.
The other major site in Kunta Horá is the mint building itself where you can see tools used to mint coins of the realm long ago. You may even encounter historical re-enactors on the site, at least one of whom will demonstrate how to hand strike a coin, which you get to keep as a souvenir. Given today’s silver prices, I am pretty sure what you get isn’t silver! But it is a beautiful location and it gets you out into some of the Bohemian countryside (the Czech Republic is composed of the regions of Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia).
Americans and Geography for 100 Please
One point of humor for me during the drive was the constant quizzing on the part of the driver and guide, Karol. He would frequently pose questions about central European history and geography, especially around the Emperor Charles the Fourth of the Holy Roman Empire, who was Czech. In these matters Tim, who while brilliant in many areas is not so bright when it comes to history, deferred to me and I was able to do remarkably well on this impromptu quiz. Karol was impressed and even conceded that American’s ignorance of geography and history was well known and expected by the Czech people, to the degree that making fun of our ignorance is the actual focus of some Czech comedy shows on television. I think they are especially annoyed by the belief that something called Czechoslovakia still exists (it doesn’t) or that such a place should ever have existed in the first place (it was created at the end of World War I from parts of the Austro-Hungarian empire despite the Czech and Slovak peoples being from different ethnic groups with distinct languages and histories). Now you know this if you should ever choose to visit Prague and find yourself being quizzed. The history of the Holy Roman Empire and the geography of the region, well, that I learned that in high school and retained it, so you will need to study up a bit more to get beyond the basics. But if you do, I assure you that the Czech people will appreciate it!
Prague Castle
Back in Prague, the focus of attention is the enormous castle which dominates the city on the hilltop across the Vltava River. The earliest dated masonry of the castle is from 885 and it has been added to and expanded over the centuries since, especially during the two times the city was the seat of the Holy Roman Empire. The most visually stunning part of the castle complex is without doubt St Vitus Cathedral. The first church here was completed in 925 and the current version started in 1344. It would take hundreds of years to finish and the Huttite Wars with the Germans would slow things down, but eventually it would be completed in the 19th and 20th centuries. It is visually stunning, visible from throughout the city, and features amazing stained glass. Other sources on the Internet will provide more extensive histories for those who are interested in any of the facets of Prague, the Castle, or other historic sites, both those mentioned here as well as others. For my purposes, suffice it say that the cathedral of St Vitus and the castle complex itself made for a wonderful afternoon and the views over the city are fantastic and unparalleled. And, me being me, I couldn’t help but think of St Vitus’ Dance, which is a common lay term for an arthritis-like complication of rheumatic fever, caused by Strep Group A infection, in children. What can I say? My mind is full of relatively useless microbiological tidbits.
Other features of Prague that everyone mentions and sees are of course the Charles Bridge and the Astronomical Clock installed in 1410, the third oldest in the world and the oldest one still working. If you want the skinny on the clock, visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_Astronomical_Clock.
Charles Bridge
The Charles Bridge is a famous historic bridge that crosses the Vltava River in Prague. Its construction started in 1357 under the auspices of King Charles IV, and finished in the beginning of the 15th century. As the only means of crossing the river Vltava until 1841, the Charles Bridge was the most important connection between Prague Castle and the city’s Old Town and adjacent areas. This “solid-land” connection made Prague important as a trade route between Eastern and Western Europe. The bridge was originally called the Stone Bridge or the Prague Bridge but has been the “Charles Bridge” since 1870.
The bridge is 516 meters long and nearly 10 meters wide, resting on 16 arches shielded by ice guards. It is protected by three bridge towers, two of them on the Lesser Quarter side and the third one on the Old Town side. The Old Town bridge tower is often considered to be one of the most astonishing civil gothic-style buildings in the world. The bridge is decorated by a continuous alley of 30 statues and statuaries, most of them baroque-style, originally erected around 1700 but now all replaced by replicas.
During the night the Charles Bridge is a quiet place. But during the day it changes its face into a very busy place, with painters, owners of kiosks and other traders alongside numerous tourists crossing the bridge.
Some Suggestions and Considerations for Visiting
I must be clear about one thing about Prague, especially the Prague Castle, the Charles Bridge, and the Old Town Square in particular. They are VERY popular and in fact, Prague receives over 4 million foreign tourists every year. Wherever you go, and whenever you go there, except perhaps in the dead of winter, you won’t be alone. The crowds were moderate during our shoulder-season visit, but enormous enough that I cannot conceive of the city being even possible during the peak summer months. If you want to visit Prague, and you really should because it is stunning with medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, etc buildings at every turn, try to do so in either the spring or the fall to avoid being crushed!
Also, instead of staying in a standard hotel, seriously consider using a vacation apartment rental. The sense of place you get in any city staying in a residential area versus the tourist or business centers is incomparable. By staying away from the heaviest of the tourist areas, we paid about half price for food alone and without doubt we ate better than most tourists since we ate at places popular with our local neighbors. Czech food is heavy but delicious, with generous portions of pork or ham standard. Be sure to have the goulash though, even though it is more strongly associated with Hungary to the southeast. Czech goulash was a delicately spiced beef stew with a flavor so complex that I can’t describe it aside from saying that it had notes ranging from sweet to hot all in one delicious plate. Also a must are the dumplings which are surprisingly light and airy, not the dense chewy things you usually end up with, and the potato pancakes are to die for, richly spiced and crispy, but not deep fried round balls in the German way, instead being smooth and flat. I absolutely couldn’t complain about anything I had to eat while in Prague.
If the eating in Prague is great, then the drinking has to be considered divine. When in Czech Republic, be prepared to drink beer, and I mean some serious beer. The Czech people on average drink something in the neighborhood of 350 liters per person, including children and infants, which doesn’t mean that children and infants are drinking beer, it just means they are included in the population count (in the denominator for the math types), so once can infer that adults consume on average even MORE than 350 liters per person. And while this makes the Czech the #1 beer consumers in the world (and you thought it was the Germans didn’t you?), I only once saw any evidence of public intoxication and there is a very clear ZERO tolerance for drinking and driving. Thank goodness for all those trams, subways, and taxis. Somewhere along the way, I personally lost my taste for beer, but Tim was perfectly happy to drink his share of the suds. And when you consider that a half liter of beer is cheaper than a 0.2 liter bottle of Coca-Cola Lite, you have to wonder, why not?
I suppose I should be completely honest and acknowledge that part of the tourist attraction to Prague is because prostitution is legal. Pandering, or “pimping” isn’t but the line seems thinly drawn. Of course this is true in Amsterdam as well, and having been to both cities, I would say that the trade is more subtle in Prague than it tends to be in Amsterdam, but as is true of both cities you won’t be much troubled by this business unless you intentionally seek it out.
Prague is also a great city for business of other types and of the eastern European cities it seems to be the most readily westernized and open for business, a feature regularly noted in international business ratings. While the Czech Republic itself has about a 10% unemployment rate, seemingly standard for the western world these days, Prague itself has only 4% unemployment making it visibly prosperous.
The Final Word
I found Prague to be simply delightful and a feast for the eyes and the stomach. You could spend the better part of a lifetime visiting all the cathedrals and other historic buildings. Granted, the profusion of churches is strictly an historical artifact; the Czech people are very unreligious with less than 5% claiming any affiliation at all. But this trend is increasingly common across Europe, which views the American obsession with religion with a bemused but also cautious eye. The lilacs are beautiful to see and smell and the Czech people are hospitable and welcoming. You might want to visit before the Euro is adopted to help keep your costs more reasonable and besides, there is no reason to delay, the beauty and intrigue of Prague are too delightful to wait to experience.