Prague 3
Trip Start
Nov 14, 2008
1
42
102
Trip End
Feb 26, 2009
Prague,
Bohemia,
Czech Republic
Friday, December 26, 2008
Today for the first time we experienced a white Christmas (technically, as there were tiny specks of snow). Following 10 hours of sleep, Deutsch, Shanthi, Mich and I went to the Jewish Quarter to meet up with Mich's parents, Michael and Iris. They were both kitted out like her in their frilly coats. I feel sorry for Michael - Deutsch, Tow and I had enough trouble lifting Mich's bag up stairs, I have no idea how Michael will cope when he's with both Mich and Iris. Maybe that's when David started bulking up.
We each bought the pass taking us to 6 sites in the Jewish Quarter and a few of us hired the audioguide too. At the first Synagogue all the Czech Jews who perished in the Holocaust were listed in order of town, I found some Schnabls that Michael thought he could be related to, but unfortunately couldn't find my grandfather's little town. We went through quite a few synagogues and museums, including the Jewish graveyard with graves from several hundred years ago. Before today I was saying I'd been inside more churches on this trip than synagogues in my entire life, but I now have to rethink that statement. The best site was the Spanish Synagogue which was far more ornate than the Ashkenazi synagogues - its outside looked like a mosque, and its inside looked like a church. Mich will be staying with her parents after the trip, it turns out they're in Prague and Budapest at the same time as us by coincidence, so we didn't have to witness any painfully emotional goodbyes.
Museum of Medieval Torture Instruments
Lance Abel, with his twisted mind, recommended this to me. Tow had already been to one in Amsterdam with Deutsch, but decided to join me on this rather than join Deutsch and Shanthi at the Sex Museum. Secretly Tow and I were getting ideas to use on Mich (while Deutsch was getting other ideas at his museum). It was cool how next to each instrument was a detailed description, and a painting (sometimes even photos!) of how the instrument had been used. I won't go into detail about the most gruesome ones, but let's just say some of them gave you the honour of surviving them for a very long time.
Traditional Czech Evening
Yet another expensive optional, though this one was quite good. Everyone else had to eat pork for the umpteenth night in a row, while I had a large piece of chicken with more stuffing than I've ever seen before. We also had musicians and Polka dancers, who arbitrarily chose Mich and Deutsch to join them on the dancefloor.
I put in a request for the one Czech piece I know - Smetana's "Moldau", which you know as the Israeli national anthem Hatikvah. That's right, yet another piece of Israeli culture has been copied from overseas, like Hummus (Lebanese), crap driving (Italians), rudeness (French), and suspicion of Arabs (Persian). They played it nicely, the other 3 Jews recognised it immediately as a modified version of Hatikvah, and I felt compelled to tip them, which consisted of emptying my coin pocket of all the small-value coins I could find, I think the musicians got their hopes up when I put a stack of coins in their basket without realising they totalled about 2 Euro. Tomorrow we're off to Vienna with some cool stops along the way.
