Prague

Around a week after having returned from my summer vacation to Africa in June, I was back on the road, taking short trips around Europe. I decided to concentrate more on countries I hadn’t yet visited. One place of cultural wealth that I hadn’t yet explored was the Czech Republic, and its capital Prague. I had four nights in Prague, but even that wasn’t enough to explore all of the city and its surroundings.

MONDAY, June 18th

My flight with SWISS to Prague was delayed due to the wind direction in Zurich.

Easterly winds reduces the capacity at the airport, because it changes the flight paths. Anyhow, we eventually got in the air, and the delay wasn’t too bad. I took a bus from Prague Airport to a nearby metro station. From there I took the metro the rest of the way to my airbnb apartment, located not far from the city center.

When I arrived in Prague it was already past closing time for most attractions. However, the TV Tower was still open.

It also had not yet turned dark, so there was still enough time to see the city from above with some daylight.

The TV Tower was constructed in the 1980s by socialist architects. It is often rated as one of the ugliest buildings in the world. Some people do enjoy coming up there for the views though. I do agree that it is not one of the prettiest buildings, but it has a futuristic look to it.

For dinner I went to a Czech restaurant in downtown Prague.

Then I went out to experience some of Prague’s nightlife.

TUESDAY, June 19th

I started out by exploring downtown Prague. First I passed the central Wenceslas Square, which was just a 10 minutes walk from my airbnb apartment. I got some breakfast at a café on the square.

I continued north past the Old Town Square, and further on towards Charles Bridge, one of Prague’s most iconic landmarks.

It spans the Vltava River, and it has stood since 1390. Charles Bridge is lined with beautiful baroque statues, and has two watchtowers at either end. From the bridge there are nice views along the river, and of the Prague Castle. There are however also lots of hawkers and street vendors, which aren’t all contributing positively to the atmosphere. I had a look inside the watchtower at the western end of Charles Bridge. I went up to the top for the views of the bridge from above.

My next stop became the St. Nicolas Church, a highly decorated baroque church, finished in 1755.

The inside is covered with frescoes and gilded statues. The tower is accessible for visitors, and offers some nice views as well.

The views from up here of the American embassy were especially nice during the Cold War. The Czechoslovak intelligence service had a unit stationed in the church tower to keep watch.

I continued towards the Prague Castle, opting first to explore some of the sights on the hilltop outside the castle. First was the Loreta Monastery, which has a beautiful chapel as well as a small museum exhibiting religious artefacts.

I continued walking through the Novy Svet quarter, a few streets with houses that haven’t changed much for hundreds of years. Eventually I came back around to the castle, and the timing was perfect. It was time for the change of guards at the front gate.

After having witnessed the whole ceremony from essentially the front row, I went inside the castle itself. My first stop was a restaurant just behind the castle actually, for lunch. It was a nice spot with views of downtown Prague.

Back inside the castle, I visited a lane of houses and shops inside the castle walls. These have all been mostly preserved, showing various crafts and trades. There was also some medieval armour and weapons on display.

After having a look inside a smaller chapel at the castle, I went inside the former banquet halls in the Royal residence. My last stop inside the castle became its centerpiece, the St. Vitus Cathedral, built over a span of almost 600 years.

Construction started in 1344, but it took until 1861 before the last phase of the construction could begin. It was finally finished in 1929. Just like some other large cathedrals in Europe, there just weren’t enough funds to complete the grand project at once. The attention to detail on the outside is staggering. Add in the numerous decorative pieces and stained-glass windows on the inside, and it’s no wonder that the construction was costly.

After seeing the St. Vitus Cathedral, I left the Prague Castle and walked south to have a look at the John Lennon Wall. When John Lennon was murdered in 1980, he became a pacifist symbol for the young Czech generation. They weren’t allowed to listen to Western pop music by the communist Czechoslovakian government. They painted his face on a wall across from the French embassy, and quoted Beatles lyrics. Repeated attempts to whitewash the wall were met with even more graffiti, and it became a symbol of resistance. After the collapse of communism, there’s not much left of Lennon himself. Visiting tourists keep adding graffiti to the wall.

The wall and the building it belongs to are now owned by the Knights of Malta. They have also tried a few times to clean the wall and paint it over. Lennon and the graffiti keeps coming back, so they have given up cleaning it.

Not far from the John Lennon Wall was the KGB Museum. It showcases a private collection gathered by a Russian that lives in the Czech Republic. Visits are on private tours only. When I first arrived, a sign at the door mentioned that the museum was essentially “on break” for 30 minutes. So I took a walk around the Mala Strana neighborhood. When I returned there was a larger group of people waiting outside the museum, waiting for the tour to start. I joined the queue, and it didn’t disappoint.

Admittedly, it has little to do with the Czech Republic or the former Czechoslovakia. The exceptions are a couple of items and some photographs of Prague made by the KGB.

The collection is private, all gathered by this Russian enthusiast that lives in Prague. It’s a very impressive collection. The tour is quite an experience, as you can really feel the passion of the museum’s owner. There are some really limited edition spy weapons in his collection. I have to say I’m still not sure how he got his hands on some of this stuff.

The tour was accompanied by the sound of Moscow military parades. Having finished the tour at the KGB Museum, I went for a much longer walk around the Mala Strana neighborhood, to take a look at some of its many gardens and parks.

I wanted to visit the Petrin Tower as well, situated on a hill just west of the river. Before going up the hill with the funicular, I made a stop at the adjacent Monument to the Victims of Communism. It is dedicated to those who were persecuted by the communist government throughout the 20th century.

When I reached the Petrin Tower, there were some construction workers outside. I was told the tower was closed due to maintenance, but would open the following day. I took the funicular back down, and then I had dinner in a nearby restaurant.

One place that I knew for certain was still open was Prague’s Apple Museum. It was open until 10 PM at night.

It claims to be the World’s largest collection of Apple products. The museum houses one copy of every product made by Apple between 1976 and 2012. Outside of Cupertino, California, I think they are definitely right about the claim.

On the way back towards the apartment, I picked up a Prague classic for dessert, a “tunnel cake”, or trdelník.

WEDNESDAY, June 20th

Wednesday morning I started out exploring Prague’s Old Town, on the right bank of the Vltava River. I went inside the Old Town Hall for a look inside some of its rooms open to the public.

Some parts were being restored, but the spaces open to the public were quite pretty in their historic style. It was also possible to get up to the top of the tower for views over central Prague and its Old Town area.

The Old Town Hall is also famous for its big astronomical clock face, but this was covered up as parts of restoration projects.

My next stop became the Jewish Museum. It’s actually not just one museum, but several exhibitions spread out across several Jewish buildings in the neighborhood. They cover Prague’s Jews historically, particularly centered around the gruesome terrors of the Holocaust.

Inside one of the synagogues.

There’s a Jewish cemetery, and several synagogues in the neighborhood that combine to form the Jewish Museum. One of the synagogues has been turned into a memorial, with the names of the Czech Jews who perished in the Holocaust written on the walls.

There’s a total of 77,297 names on the walls. It’s difficult to comprehend the magnitude of the tragedy, more so when standing inside the synagogue and seeing all those names that indicate the loss of life. It’s sickening to know that this was just a small fraction, of the total number of people murdered as part of the Holocaust.

After visiting the Jewish Museum, I had lunch at a nearby Czech beer hall.

I then got on a city bus to visit another place with a connection to World War II, the National Memorial to the Heroes of the Heydrich Terror.

In 1941, Reinhard Heydrich became the Reich-Protector for the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, the Nazi name for the territory that today belongs to the Czech Republic. Heydrich became known for a particularly harsh and brutal approach to suspected resistance fighters. He terrorized the Czech population in general. At the outbreak of the war, some Czech soldiers fled to England. They received special training by the British SOE for sabotage missions in their homeland. One of these missions became the assassination of Heydrich.

On December 28th, 1941, seven Czech soldiers were parachuted by British Royal Air Force planes into Czechoslovakia for various missions. Jozef Gabčik and Jan Kubiš were assigned to Operation Anthropoid, to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich. On May 27th, 1942, they succeeded in hitting their target. They attacked Heydrich’s car as it turned a corner in downtown Prague. Gabčik attempted to shoot Heydrich, but his Sten gun jammed. Kubiš threw a modified hand-grenade from behind the car and it exploded, sending several pieces of shrapnel into the body of Heydrich, but he initially survived.

Heydrich died a week later in a Prague hospital. He collapsed from a sepsis infection after having initially shown signs of improvement. The two Czech agents along with other paratroopers, initially sought refuge in safe houses. After a few days they hid themselves in the crypt of a Prague church, under the assistance of a sympathetic priest. The Nazis initiated brutal reprisals, killing family members of the paratroopers. Entire villages were burned to the ground, their occupants being killed in revenge. Some of the murders were committed in villages falsely believed to have provided safe shelter for the paratroopers. A Czech traitor, Karel Čurda, who had parachuted into Czechoslovakia as an SOE agent himself, informed the Gestapo about the hiding place inside the church. Presumably he did so in an attempt to save his own relatives from being executed.

German SS soldiers besieged the church, but were unable to take the paratroopers alive, and a gun battle ensued. Bullet holes are still visible on the outside of the church near a window leading into the crypt. The Germans tried to flush them out using tear gas. They even had the Prague Fire Brigade flood the crypt with water. Those resistance fighters that didn’t die from the battle itself all committed suicide. The church itself is still functional and open, but the crypt has been maintained in its WWII state. Complete with bullet holes and damage from the battle, it’s a memorial to the Czech heroes that died there.

After visiting the small museum and seeing the crypt itself, I continued to the National Monument on Vitkov Hill. It is situated just east of downtown Prague.

The Monument itself was built in 1930 to celebrate the creation of Czechoslovakia, thus, it wasn’t actually built by the communists. However, it is remembered by most locals for their influence on the monument. When the communists took power after a coup in 1948, the structure, particularly its inside decorations, were turned into a monument for socialism. There are murals inside a hall dedicated to the Red Army soldiers who liberated Czechoslovakia from Nazi Germany.

Today, there’s a much more open-minded exhibit inside other rooms, regarding Czechoslovakian history from throughout the 20th century. The most interesting or repelling part of the National Monument is its basement though. When Soviet leader Joseph Stalin died in 1953, doctors advised Klement Gottwald, the leader of Czechoslovakia, to not travel to Moscow. His syphilis-induced heart condition would suffer from flying in an airplane.

Gottwald went anyway, and died himself two weeks after Stalin. In true communist fashion, his body would be presented lit de parade inside the National Monument. However, his body didn’t respond to the embalming as intended. Every single night the casket was lowered into the basement. Down there, Soviet doctors performed “maintenance” on his body in order to keep the decay somewhat hidden.

There are dozens of switches and gauges in an adjacent room in the basement. All of them were used by the Soviet doctors to monitor Gottwald’s corpse and its temperature and humidity during the night. This process was repeated until his body was cremated in 1962. The National Monument also allows visitors to enter the rooftop, which offers nice views of Prague.

My next point of interest became the Prague City Museum, which I found a little confusing. The exhibits covered a vast period of Prague history. The way in which most things were displayed seemed very random. But there were some interesting tidbits for sure. The museum had a few old photographs of the city, some from around the time of World War I.

A lot more interesting for me personally was the next sight. It was displayed in a much more logical fashion too. The Museum of Communism wasn’t far away from the City Museum. It centers around the time just past World War II, particularly after the communist coup in 1948. It covers the communist era in Czechoslovakia until the fall of communist governments throughout Europe around 1990.

The museum is however not a celebration of socialism. Large sections of the exhibits deal with the influence of the secret police. It also mentions the vast spying network that was set up to monitor the population and the borders. A recurring theme is the hardships that the population suffered due to communism. There’s a plethora of propaganda posters from the era, and also some more ordinary objects and pop culture items.

There’s even a mock apartment and store, designed to appear like a typical look from the time. The museum definitely covers the period between the 1940s and the 1990s, and the effect socialism had on Czechoslovakian society, in great detail.

After dinner, I made a second attempt at the Petrin Tower. Unfortunately the tower was about to close in just under 30 minutes. Even though it probably would have taken 10 minutes to visit the tower, I was told the ticket office had already closed.

Before going back to my apartment for the night, I went to have a look at the Hotel International.

It was built during the communist era, and its design closely resembles the Moscow State University, for propaganda reasons essentially. No one batted an eye when I went inside to lobby to take photos. It too has been maintained in a relatively original, old-fashion style. The Hotel International is a luxurious hotel today.

THURSDAY, June 21st

In the early morning I went to the Vrahseny neighborhood in southern Prague, to visit its fortress, or rather the ruins of it. There’s been a citadel here for over 1000 years, housing a former religious residence and important religious buildings. Today, the centrepiece of the Vyšehrad Citadel, as its called, is the Church of Sts. Peter & Paul, and its adjacent cemetery.

Once I got there however, the church itself was closed for visitors. I took a walk through the cemetery instead. Then I went over to the ramparts of the citadel for some views over the city.

I then went to downtown Prague to meet up with a tour group. We left Prague for a day-trip to the city of Kutna Hora, east of Prague. It proved easier transport-wise to do it as part of a group tour, even though I mostly try to avoid these when possible.

The city of Kutna Hora is known first and foremost for the Sedlec Ossuary. Most people know it by the nickname “Bone Church”. It is truly a sight like no other. When a wealthy family purchased the Sedlec Monastery in 1870, they also acquired a crypt with the remains of over 40,000 people. They gave a local wood carver free reins to do what he wanted, and the result is what you see today.

The outside of the church looks very normal. However, the inside decorations are almost all somehow connected to the bones. There’s even garlands and chandeliers made out of them. Archaeological excavations immediately next to the still-functional church are revealing even more bones, that have been buried in the soil beside the church building.

In stark contrast to the Sedlec Ossuary is Kutna Hora’s other primary sight, St. Barboras Cathedral, decorated in a more “traditional” style. Construction started in 1380, but it wasn’t finished until the 19th century due to financial issues. It rivals St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague in size. Most of its frescoes are from the 15th century.

We walked around the back of the church and towards the town centre for some views of the cathedral. We then also stopped by a few buildings in Kutna Hora’s old city centre. This was followed by a coffee break. Some other tour group members used that break to have a bit of dinner already, but I wasn’t hungry. While we were at the café, it began raining quite heavily, but fortunately the terrace was covered. The bus picked us up nearby, and we drove back to Prague. I had dinner in the city before going to bed.

FRIDAY, June 22nd

I checked out of the airbnb apartment, but almost locked myself in. I had arranged with the owner to leave the keys in the mailbox. These are found just inside the building, not outside the front door. To my surprise, the front door was locked. It hadn’t been all the other days. So now I had dropped the keys in the mailbox and they were out of reach. The front door could only be unlocked with the keys. Oops. I obviously had a flight to catch back to Switzerland, so this presented me with a bit of a dilemma.

I called the owner of the apartment, who wasn’t surprised. Apparently this is somewhat of a regular occurrence. As it was early in the morning, he assured me that someone would be leaving for work soon and open the door for me. The owners themselves would have needed about 20 minutes to travel across Prague to get to the apartment. Just about five minutes later, another resident came back from walking her dog. I then slipped out of the apartment building and down to the metro, to head to the airport. I reached the airport and still had plenty of time before my SWISS flight to Zurich.