Wednesday 25th August mileage 6391 Prague Czech Republic

Good nights sleep just me in the 3 bed dorm.  Breakfast is better than previous hostels, cereal, juice, coffee, bread, chees and ham.  Decided to book another night at the hostel and spend the day exploring Prague.  From the guide book I had located the Museum to Communism.  This was very good and included a 20 min video with subtitles in english of the events leading up to the spring 1968 uprisings and also the velevet revolution with Vacvlav Pavel in 1989.  A good display of communist propaganda of the timer including a potato epedemic that the authorities blamed on the western powers saying they had sprayed the disease from the air !   There was also a couple of old east european motorcycles.

The whole of the secret police and informer society was well explained.  If you didn´t inform on your neighbours then suddenly nasty things would start to happen to your family !!

At 11:00 went to the old town square and joined a free tour of the city.  This is a walking tour of 3 hours given by the Sandemans and was excellent.  I learned so much about architecture, all the different styles, baroque,gothic,cubism, art nouveaux and socialst realism.  Also the medieval history of the place with people being thrown out of castle windows, and 27 martyrs who were executed in the market square and then beheaded and their heads put into a basket and hung from one of the bridges for 10 years just to remind folks what happens if you disagree with the ruling order !!

The last picture is a location where the largest statue of Stalin existed, but the Czech people pulled it down and now replaced it with a huge metronome that is meant to represent the need for society to keep in tune with developments and not get bogged down in antquated ideologies !!

The people of Prague have been dominated by three major families.  The Hapsbergs from Austria, the Luxemburgs from Germania, and one that I cannot remember !!  Then there were the Nazis and then the Russians but finally the Czech people have there own Republic.
The Jews were persecuted here by the Nazis but their property and culture were preserved here in Prague by Hitler who wanted it to be a Musem to a destroyed race of people.  We were told a story about 15000  children who the Nazis pretended were being treated properly for the Red Cross at the time and were given books and art matertials to draw, but the minute the Red Cross left these were removed and the children sent off to Auschwitz.  Some of the pictures the children produced were hidden by a Jerwish woman and after the war these were recovered and are on display here in Prague.  In total about 100000 Jews lost their lives here in Prague.
Prague was undamaged by the war and one of the reasons for this is that when the Germans knew they were going to be overthown by Russian troops they made an agreement with the remaining Czech population and in return for not slowing down their retreat they left the city undamaged when they left.

We were pointed out good places to eat and I went back and had a lovely meal at a bagel bar just around the corner from the hostel.

Now washed my dirty clothes and updated the blog.

Went out in the evening and what a great night!!   Decided to go to Charles Bridge which is an experience that you should not miss apparently if you go to Prague.  Thought I knew the directions now but got dissorientated in the side streets and ended up walking for about two hours but eventually found my way to Charles Bridge via Wenseslas Square.  Had three very moving experiences tonight.
By the river side there was a guy playing the guitar dressed in stripy pyjamas style trousers aged 50 plus playing Leonard Cohen/Bob Dylan style songs but not recognisable so may have been his own, but he was very good, people were stopped on the roadway above and listening to him.
Then went to Charles Bridge, and as I arrived at one end there was a Lavka River Stage Company playing songs from operas.  The woman singing was a soprano and had a superb voice.  Continued onto the bridge to go and stroke the cross and hands of a statue that is meant to bring you good luck.  There was a hippy type character 40 plus years old playing music, a tamborine with his foot, bongo drum, nose flute and occasionally a digirido.  He had a group of about 30 people stood around him watching him.  I arrived and stood watching him for about 1 min, and then he looked at me directly (like you would expect Jesus to look at someone!) then he gts up still holding and playing the bongo drum between his legs and he comes over to me smiling and puts his arm around me !!  Now you all know how I love to be the centre of attention !!(not) well everyone looked at me and wondered what he was going to do.  He just then went and sat back down and continued playing without a word of explanation!!  I checked my wallet and phone and all was still present and correct, so I still dont know what it was all about.!
I then walked back to the start of the bridge and now the Lavka River Stage Company were playing classical music and a bigger crowd had gatherede to see something.  They were now projecting images of moonwalks and rocket launches onto a screen that was made from a huge spray of water.  It must have been a curtain of water in a hemisphere of at least 10 metres radius ( I expect what we were trying to achieve at the back of No2 plant to suppress the ammonia cloud !!)   All this was accompanied by music from Carmen Birhana, a very moving and evocative type experience.  I had come out without my camera !! Why I do not know, and my mobile phones battery was flat but an experience I will never forget !!
Savi and I must come to Prague together !!

More later

TOR