To put it shortly, Prague was fantastic...

(note: I haven't had a chance to fully proof-read this post yet, so forgive me if there are errors here or there, I'll get back to them soon)

to put it in length though...

Basically, I couldn't have hoped for a better weekend. We were a bit worried going into our trip because the forecast called for rain all weekend. Luckily though, it only rained for about 15 minutes, all while we were inside a restaurant eating.

But I should start from the beginning.

I'm extremely glad that we decided to take the train to Prague instead of flying. I've always heard that the travel across Europe is half of the trip, and that couldn't be more true. The first hour or two from Germany to Dresden was a bit drab, seeing as how the majority of that stretch is just farmland, but even then the massive windmill fields that dot the countryside are extremely impressive to see.

Dresden itself was a pretty amazing city to drive though. I've never really heard much of the town, which is south-southeast of Berlin and one of the easternmost large cities in Germany, but even from the train tracks beautiful cathedrals and other buildings were clearly visible. I never had any intention of visiting the city before, but now I might if I get the chance. Unfortunately, at this point, the train was pretty packed, so it was impossible to get out of my car and take any pictures, but many people got off the train in Dresden and I was able to reach an open window and take more pictures.

Outside of Dresden was easily the most beautiful part of the trip. A huge network of rivers make up the border between Germany and the Czech Republic, and we were lucky enough to have the chance to ride along this border river, as well as a river leading into Prague from the border, for a few hours with almost no one else on the train. It was amazing to see all of the bordering houses and cities. Even cooler to see were the castles and other ancient architecture that exist to this day. It was funny to think that on one side of the river, you were in Germany, but on the other, you were in the Czech Republic. They even had a nice little row of buoys that cut the river in half so you could know which nation's part of the river you were on.

After our 5 hour ride was over, we got dumped off about 5 minutes away from our hostel. Fortunately there were signs, because Czech does not even kind of resemble German, and we couldn't read a thing. We made out extremely well with our hostel though. We were able to stay there for 25 Euro for the two nights, and because there were 8 of us, we got to stay in our own room without any other travelers. It was funny to see how many Americans were staying in our hostel with us though (we met some kids from California and Arkansas when we arrived). Being the tourist city that it is, almost no Czech was spoken to us at all the whole time we were in Prague. I can't help but feel lucky that I know English, because it's definitely the world language, and you can get by just about anywhere if you know English and have patience.

On Saturday, we were able to go on a walking tour of Prague with a fantastic company known as New Europe Tours. They offer entirely free walking tours, as well as very reasonable bike tours. The idea between the tours is that if you feel that you were given a great tour experience, you'll tip your tour guide, though it's not required. It's an excellent way to see any city on a dime, plus you know that you're getting a guide who is passionate and involved in his or her tour, because if they don't put their all into it they don't get paid, haha. Our tour guide, Isaac, was a ridiculous guy, but he was very knowledgeable and he knew how to keep a crowd of mostly 20-somethings engaged for 3 hours while walking around Prague under the sun.

Prague itself though is probably the most beautiful city I've ever seen. As it was almost untouched by World War 1 and 2, the city exists in nearly original condition (unlike Berlin for instance). While most of the buildings have been modernized, everything has its original (typically Baroque) facade, so the entire city looks like it came out of the past. Prague is also extremely cheap to visit. Their currency, the Krone (translated to English as crown), can be exchanged at a rate of 18.5 Krone's to an American Dollar. It wasn't hard to find good meals for under 100 Krone, with some excellent, restaurant quality meals costing around 200 Krone. Basically, we ate like kings and queens for less than 10 dollars a meal, which was excellent. Also, The Czech Republic just entered the European Union this year, so they are slowly converting to accept Euros as well. Typically you get a slightly better price on things if you use Krones, but sometimes it varied either way, and it was nice to know that we could always fall back on our standard European tender.

Also, Prague is one of the top five visited cities in Europe, and has everything you could hope for from a tourist destination. Namely, the shopping is fantastic, and if you are willing to venture a little out of the city center, you can find excellent deals on almost anything you like. The best part for me, as an American, is seeing how different a brand's clothing is from country to country. Carhartt, for instance, is typically purely workwear and rough-and-tumble clothing in America, but in Prague there were skate and snowboard shops that stocked Carhartt clothing that was entirely different. If nothing else, window-shopping can be extremly fun and novel. Of course, if you have a few hundred thousand Krone to kill, you can stop at Gucci or Versaci or whatever you'd like too, but I don't fall into this category so I won't dwell.

Beyond that, Prague was full of more sites and stories than I could hope to learn and remember in one day. That said, I'll try to recap places and figures as best as I can. Be warned, I am not wikipedia, and I'm just telling things back as best as I can remember, haha.

Where else to start but Old Town Square? The most amazing thing to me about Prague is that Old Town Square has been the center of the city since it has been created. In Old Town Square, two sites dominate, and this picture captures them both. The large cathedral that you can see in the background there is called the Church of Our Lady before Tyn. In its conception, Prague was a very Catholic city, and this giant gothic church was the basis of the religion in Prague. In the foreground is the Monument of Jan Hus. Like I mentioned earlier, Prague was a very Catholic city. Jan Hus, on the other hand, was an open minded guy, and was largely responsible for the spreading of Protestantism in Prague. The powers at be were pretty cool with Jan for awhile, but eventually they felt that his heretical teachings were getting out of hand, and he was burned at the stake. Brutal, right? Don't worry, Prague is full of Karma.



In another corner of Old Town Square stands, quite creatively, Old Town Hall. This is one of the few buildings in Prague, to my knowledge, that underwent substantial damage. If you look closely, you can see how the pink wall on the front of the tower juts out a bit. I don't remember the exact cause, but at some point in time a large portion of the building that would exist in the foreground in this shot collapsed. Fortunately, the tower, another landmark of the city of Prague, still stands. Now that the intro is out of the way, let's talk about that Karma. As I mentioned before, the Catholics decided to burn Jan Hus at the stake for his hereticism. What they didn't know though is that Jan Hus' right-hand man, Jan Zizka, was, as our tour guide Isaac put it, "one of the greatest badasses of all time." To provide some perspective on that comment, Jan Zizka lost an eye at age 5 in a fight, which he supposedly went on to win. He also, typically unaccredited, invented the flail, utilized the "wagon-wheel" tactic that is so commonly attributed to American settlers, used armored wagons loaded with cannons and muskets (the first tanks ever used) as well as housed small cannons which were the first field artillery ever used in combat, and finally was the first general to effectively use the handgun in his army. Oh, did I mention that he never lost a battle, even after he lost his other eye in combat and would literally have people explain things to him and make commands off of that knowledge? Yeah, badass is correct. Anyhow, after Jan Hus was killed, Jan Zizka was obviously pretty upset. In protest to this action, Jan Zizka and the Protestant followers of Jan Hus, known as Hussites, invaded the Old Town Square and through seven members of the town council out of the top windows of Old Town Hall in what came to be known as the First Defenestration of Prague, defenestration literally meaning the throwing of someone out of a window. In case you caught that, yes, there was more than one defenestration in Prague. Another fun fact about the first defenestration is that, as gravity wasn't well understood, Jan Zizka and his pals weren't too sure if a toss off of the top of Old Town Hall would be enough to kill someone, so they set up spears down below for them to land on at the end of the fall (I call that overkill). A war between the Catholics and Protestants broke out at this point in what is now known as the Hussite Wars, with the conflict culminating in the Catholics allowing the Protestants to live peaceful among the Catholics, and the Protestants allowing a Catholic to remain king. Long story short though, don't go burning someone at the stake because you don't like his ideas, because his crazy best friend might through seven of your friends out of a window onto spears and start a war.

While Old Town Hall its own special history, perhaps more famous than the tower itself is this piece of art and technology that is attached it, known as the Orloj. Unfortunately, my little camera doesn't have a panoramic lens, but suffice to say that at the top of this tower is also a beautiful clock, but these two circles, and their outlying elements, are more interesting. The top one is actually a very old clock based off of the sun dial. I have no idea how it works, but that's what it is, and it's cool to see it in action. The lower circle is actually a calendar. Unlike other calendars which typically just named their months after numbers and added embellishments as rulers saw necessary (See Roman emperors Julius Caesar and Augustus on getting July and August renamed and adding January and February to mess everything up), this calendar was based off of agriculture. As Isaac explained it, "June basically means berries. July means bigger berries. August means, well, pick those berries." The statues around the clocks and calendars are also important. The top four embody four deadly sins, while the bottom four symbolize (I believe) four salvations. Additionally, at every hour, the two windows above the sun clock open up and the 12 apostles emerge from them in succession. It is an amazing spectle, and was basically the 15th century equivalent of holographics when it came out. The town senators were so taken aback by the completed tower'ss beauty that to reward its creator, Hanus, they burned out his eyes so he could never make another one elsewhere. Yeah, the life of an artist is rough.

This is the Saint Nicholas Church in Prague. While its uses were varied while the wars between Catholics and Protestants were going on, when there was peace, Saint Nicholas was the Protestant place of worship in Prague. It's Baroque architecture was intended as a juxtaposition to the jagged and intimidating Gothic Church of Our Lady before Tyn. The idea was that if someone had to pick between two churches, they'd pick the one that scared them the least and therefore take the Protestant approach.










This is the famous Divadlo Hybernia theater in Prague. Little information exists about it online, but our tour guide Isaac informed us that this is the theater where Dracula was first played on stage. It is easily one of the most iconic and famous theaters in Prague. Fun fact: In the Vin Diesel film XXX, this is the theater that Vin was eating in front of before a sniper attempted to kill him. Okay, it's not really fun, but it's a fact.












I realize that I have in no way attempted to put up a group photo of the kids in the program. I'm going to half address that problem (only 8 out of 16 kids went on the trip to Prague). From left to right, we have Ryan, Calvin, Lauren, Andrew, myself, Paul, Steve, and Mike. Don't we look cute?







You've already seen bits and pieces of Prague's Old Town Square, so I figured I'd bring it all together with a video.


Prague is broken up into multiple areas, one of which is the Jewish Quarter. While the people in the Jewish Quarter were denied many of their rights when Hitler rose to power, somehow many of their buildings stand to this day. This picture shows two of the most famous of those buildings. In the foreground on the left is Central Europe's oldest synagogue, called the Old New Synagogue due to a translation error that caught on. In traditional Hebrew, the synagogue was actually called the "On Condition" synagogue because its cornerstone was an original stone from the Temple of Jerusalem, and this was only allowed on the condition that when the messiah appeared, the stone had to be brought back to Jerusalem. Unfortunately, the term "on condition" must have been pretty close to "alt-neu" (old new in German), because that's what the Germans who really didn't care about the synagogue's story called it. The building is famous for another reason as well. Legend has it that an old rabbi used a blessing from god to turn a clay figure into the Golem so that the enchanted creature could defend the Jews and help them construct their city, but in time because aggressive and dangerous, so the rabbi drained the Golem of its life and stored it in the attic of this synagogue. According to legend, no one who has gone into the attic to look for the Golem has returned alive.
The building to the right in the background was the old Jewish Town Square. Important desicisions may have occured in that building, but we weren't told about them, so I wouldn't know, haha.

This is the Church of St. James, which is located in the heart of Prague. Apart from being an absolutely beautiful church, a legend also accompanies St. James. At one time, inside the church was a statue of the Blessed Virgin which was adorned with a large gold necklace. One day, a theif tried to steal the necklace, but right before he was able to reach it, the hand of the statue reached up, grabbed him by the arm, and again became innanimate. The next day, the priests who ran the church found the thief in a panic. The thief promised to never steal again and become a devout follower if they would help him release his arm. The priests believed this to be a miracle, so they refused to damage the statue. Instead, the theif's arm was cut off. However, immediately after the man's arm was cut off, the statue released its grip and returned to its original position. The priests decided to enbalm and hang the arm as a reminder to sinners and thieves everywhere, and it still hangs in the Church to this day.


This is the Charles Bridge, the most famous bridge in Prague and one of the most famous in all of Europe. It was designed by King Charles IV to be a sturdy bridge that would not collapse in a flood as the bridges before it had. The bridge is also surrounded by three guard towers which are also beautiful in their own rights. While before the bridge was one of the major land connections between Eastern and Western Europe, today it is just an extremely popular and frequented tourist stop.




While the bridge's architecture alone may be beautiful, the 30, mostly baroque, statues that adorn its length add a great deal to the site. Typically biblical in nature, though varying widely in terms of size and content, each statue adds its own story and flair to the bridge. Another fun fact about Prague is that it is the city with the most statues in the world, period. Statues can be seen everywhere on top of buildings, lining bridges, decorating streets, and fulfilling other tasks. Heck, they even have a statue of a statue holding a statue, haha.










This is a shot of Potsdam castle from the Charles Bridge. Clearly, it is a massive structure, and it can only be fully captured from such a great distance. Unfortunately, we didn't get a chance to take the full castle tour, but we got to walk around the grounds ourselves and get some great shots.








As the last image made it pretty clear to see, it's hard to get a good shot of the entirety of Prague castle up close, but you can see some cool details of the castle when you draw near. One good example is the Prague castle entrance. I can't say that I would ever feel too welcome in a castle if I was greeted by two guys, stabbing and clubbing other people. But hey, what do I know about ancient cultures?






This is a shot of St. Vitus Cathedral at Prague Castle. This is the largest, and arguably most important church in all of Prague. It's presense dominates the castle, both up close and at a distance. We weren't able to look inside unfortunately because the tours had ended, but I hear it is gorgeous inside.








The other church in Prague Castle in St George's Basilica. We weren't able to glean much info about it, but have read a bit about it online. It is both the best preserved Romanesque church in Prague and the oldest church building on the Prague Castle grounds. Literally in the shadow of St. Vitus, it doesn't look like much, but it's unique and cool in its own right.







And so concludes my wrap-up of Prague in so many words. Obviously we saw so much more, but if I included it all I'd never get this post done, and I'd really like to have it finished so I can get to work on a Munich post next week, haha. Man, all these trips keep me on a tight schedule.

Be sure to tune in next week for a post about my lab experience so far as well!

Until next time,

Cody