The City of a Thousand Spires

It has been about 2 weeks since I last wrote, I first did nothing exciting and then got busy and somehow I ended up not writing anything until now. This post is about Prague, the sights of Prague anyway. I figured it was a good time for this with Maude's Grandparents trip just past and my family arriving in just a few short days. So I suppose this post will just be a brief description of a few of the most famous sights in Prague that I have seen and will be taking any other visitors to see. First up is old town square. Old town square is really just a large square where all the tourists congregate and things are more expensive. However, it does have some good history, it contains some of the oldest buildings in Prague and is a world heritage site. It also contains the infamous Astronomical Clock, where every hour people gather to watch the chime (this is completely and utterly underwhelming, but I guess it can't hurt to see it). The building however is extremely old and is attached to what once was the municipal house for the city of Prague

Here is a shot of a portion of old town square and one of the astronomical clock. The statue in the picture is of Jan Hus, a man any good student of history knows. He was a religious dissenter and was the founder of the Hussite movement, one of the many movements opposed to the Catholic Church. He is sort of viewed as the founder of or the symbol for the "Czech nation".
After you see old town its just a short walk down the road to check out the Jewish Quarter. The Jewish Quarter isn't that exciting really, there are a few really old synagogues. One synagogue is actually called the "Old-New" Synagogue. The only really cool thing in the Jewish Quarter is this old cemetery where graves are literally stacked on top of one another and in some places look like they are about 15 feet high. The tombstones are just pushed together and jut in every direction on top of a massive pile of bodies.

At the moment I seem to be unable to locate a picture of the cemetery, though I have no good ones and plan on getting more when my parents arrive. So instead this is a picture of the Old-New Synagogue, its actually very old. Also, just a note, if your ever in Prague (or anywhere) don't go to the Jewish Quarter on Saturday...nothing will be open. You probably realize this, but when your showing people around you don't think of it and you might just show up with everything closed.
From the Jewish Quareter, its not such a long walk to the Charles bridge. This is an old bridge, only for walking, adorned with a number of statues and usually covered by tourists and street vendors. However, it really is the best and most scenic way to cross the Vltava river to get to Mala Strana or up to Prague Castle. Unfortunately, I have yet to take good pictures of the bridge itself, but below is a picture of the tower that you pass that is the end of the bridge.
On the other side of the bridge there are a few cool small things to see like the Lennon wall and some David Cerny statues, but the real attraction is Prague Castle. I'll spare you all the details of the castle, but just know that its less of a castle and more of a royal complex set up on a hill. The two most impressive things about it are the views it offers of Prague (though this is what Petrin Hill is for) and St. Vitus Cathedral. St. Vitus is an impressive church...
and this is a picture from the back of the church. Just a note, Maude's grandparents had hired a private tour guide to show them the city and tell them about everything and we thought we would go along to learn some things we didn't know. Well the first stop was here at the Cathedral and we were already forced to fire him, he sucked. Despite promises of excellent english, he was young and Russian and his command of the english language made me seem proficient in German (haven't even studied it for over a year). Also, he hardly ever talked and really didn't know much, Maude and I combined with a little help from a guide book knew more than he did. So don't ever hire a guide name Maxine (male) from Russia, he is just bad. But after ousting Maxine that day ended up being fine with Maude and I giving the tour.
If we now head back to the other side of the bridge, I'll name just a few other famous things worth seeing and maybe I'll add some others after my parents come to visit. Next is Wenceslas Square, it really is just a enormous square filled with people and some cars and a lot of shops. Nothing too historical on most of the square until you get to the end where you see the national museum and the statue of Wenceslas and the memorial to Jan Palach. Wenceslas was one of the most famous rulers of the Czech lands, I believe he actually united all of bohemia and maybe moravia under his rule. He is seen as the founder of the "Czech state". Jan Palach on the other hand was a student during the communist era who burned himself alive in protest of the Communist rule. I'd just like to say I think this is ridiculous, its obviously not going to accomplish anything and it would be really painful. Palach didn't even die while of fire also, he died 3 days later in a hospital...so he had to suffer for 3 days from that. Moral of the story, don't light yourself on fire its not effective and its painful.
Here we have the end of Wenceslas I was talking about and Carole (Maudes Grandmother) in Wenceslas enjoying a smazeny syr or fried cheese, a delicious snack you can find all over Wenceslas.
For now, I'm just going to mention two other things briefly that are worth seeing. The first is the "baby tower", the baby tower is an enormous radio tower built by the Soviets for jamming radio, radar, whatever. However, just after it was completed, the USSR fell and the tower was converted into an actual radio and television tower. David Cerny, the famous and controversial artist, was commissioned to redesign it somehow. His idea for this was to put giant statues of babies climbing up and down the tower, its sort of ridiculous really but interesting to see. The other thing worth seeing is Vysehrad. This is the neighborhood where my school is located. It was once a fortress (it sits high on a hill) and was actually the seat of the first Czech queen. Everything there is old and pretty and it offers another great view of all of Prague. However, I will write more about Vysehrad later and maybe some of the other things to see after my parents come.

This is the baby tower at night so you can't really see the babies but later I will get one during the day so you can see them
Right, I forgot to explain the title of this post in full. I said that The City of a Thousand Spires is Prague's nickname. This is because if you look out over Prague there are a lot of spires from various churches and buildings. However, the actual number of spires is somewhere around 100. Though I will say if Minarets counted, Istanbul would have an insane number of spires because of all the Mosques. That leads me to my next post, two days ago I got back from Istanbul. Within a few hours a post on Istanbul should be up as well. And I promise to do a better job so look for a post on Berlin on Monday or Tuesday.