Czeching In

Dear everyone,
I am still alive and literate, but I've been procrastinating on updating this because there's so much to write about, and you know how I tend to wax verbose on good writing days. So I shall try to make this succinct, yet interesting and informative - a worthy challenge for any fledgling writer. Also, just to warn you, I just reread Pride and Prejudice for the gazillionth time, so if I start to sound like I'm writing from Regency England, well, that's the reason.
So I have returned from my Continental adventures with pictures and postcards, full of delicious and incredibly unhealthy food, and with a new appreciation for England. This kind of crept up on me, especially since I left the United Kingdom greatly annoyed with its general inability to accomplish anything without stepping on its own feet. I started keeping track of points after Sarah and I landed in Prague. For instance, there were about three inches of snow on the ground at the airport, but our plane still managed to land without issue. Point for Prague. We received correct and helpful instructions to our hostel from a gentleman at the airport. Another point for Prague! Our tram drove on the right side of the road. Five points for Prague! Sarah and I successfully navigated a bus, the metro, and a tram in Czech without getting us lost once. Point for us! By the end of the first day, Prague had five points, Sarah and I had one, and England had a disappointing zero. The next day, the sun shone in Prague, so all of England's chances at a comeback were completely ruined, as Prague gained eighteen thousand bonus points. When it comes to desserts, however, a most important category, there's a draw: Prague has hot chocolate that is out-of-this-world good, but England invented Cadbury. Enough said.
Back to Prague, which is a beautiful, beautiful city.
We arrived in the city around dinnertime, and unfortunately Rebecca was down with a violent cold/bubonic plague, but Sarah and I investigated a Czech pub for food. We tried some Czech specialties, including garlic soup (like French onion but with an extra zing and the ability to ward off vampires), unidentified varieties of pork, ham, and potatoes, and the aforementioned hot chocolate from the dessert gods.
Rebecca was still out of commission the next day (plague does that to you), but Sarah and I got ourselves to Starometske namesti, the old town square, to catch the Sandeman's New Prague Tour.
Yes, the same tour company that I have found and loved in every other city that I've visited! Seriously, they're amazing - go forth and take fun tours. It was a beautiful sunny day (although it was FREEZING), and we saw many delightful sites around Prague:

Astronomical clock upon which it is absolutely impossible to tell the actual time of day. It was built in the fourteenth century, and on the hour the skeleton on the right, representing Death, shakes his hourglass and all of the other figures, representing various sins, begin to shake, rattle, and roll, and the Twelve Apostles appear in the windows on top of the clock. To finish this grand display, which tourists block the entire square for, the little gold bird makes a sound that sounds like a cross between a balloon being deflated and a cow being strangled. It's quite something.


Communist architecture - it was really interesting to learn about what life was like in a former Eastern Block country.


The Estates Theatre, where Mozart premiered Don Giovanni and many other operas.


Franz Kafka, Prague's darling. This is only a recent development, as Kafka's work wasn't translated into Czech under the communist regime.


The Old New Synagogue in Josefov, the Jewish Town. The name comes from a mistranslation, but this synagogue is supposedly home to Rabbi Low's golem (large creature made from clay, as opposed to Gollum). The rabbi created the golem to protect the Jewish people of Prague, and it supposedly still resides in the attic here.


Charles Bridge.

Sarah and I also went through the Jewish Museum in Josefov, which was really interesting. There was an art exhibit of drawings that Jewish children did at Terezin, a concentration camp just outside the city. The Czech Republic was the longest-occupied territory during World War II, and Terezin was used as the "model" concentration camp. The Nazis photographed the people held there and made it seem like they were being treated well. In reality, Terezin was a holding camp, and people were sent from there to death camps further north in Germany and Poland. Really sobering stuff. We also got to walk through the Jewish graveyard, which has hundreds upon hundreds of gravestones all piled on top of each other. Basically, the city government wouldn't give the Jews more land to expand their graveyard, so they kept piling in more earth to house another layer of bodies, and they would put the old headstones on the top layer, so there are literally centuries worth of headstones piled into the graveyard.
We shivered our way back to the hostel after a lovely day sightseeing, had more delicious food at the Czech pub from the previous night, and settled into our room full of Australians.
The third day of our trip was not as sunny as the previous day, but we headed up to Prazsky Hrad, or Prague Castle. Hrad is Czech and Slovak for castle, and it is one of two Czech or Slovak words that I picked up traveling. The other is namesti, which means square.
The coolest part of the castle is St. Vitrus Cathedral, which is the gothic-looking, spiry bit. The church itself is beautiful, and Sarah and I climbed to the top of the South Tower to see some amazing views of the city.
So beautiful! We spent the afternoon at the castle, where we were forced to take a hot chocolate break in order to warm up our fingers. Don't you hate that? That evening we decided to take in some culture and to take advantage of cheap student tickets, and went to see Carmen at the National Theatre. I have to say, not really a fan. I'm glad that I went - I mean, when else am I going to be able to say that I saw an opera in Prague? But it was really strange. The orchestra was phenomenal, but the plot was excessively over the top. I think that I just couldn't take it seriously. Someone would sing beautifully for about five minutes, and the translation would inform me that they had spent all of those notes remarking, "There are strange people in the square today!" Necessary? I'll just say that it certainly wasn't what I expected, and I'll have to see another opera in order to determine if it was just Carmen that I didn't like, or if it's opera in general. I kind of want to see The Magic Flute now.
So those are our adventures in Prague! The next morning saw our very, very early departure for Bratislava, Slovakia, but that will have to wait for another post because I want dinner.