Gateway to the Black Sea-#15: Prague Jewish Quarter and Terezin

Fri. June 19--Prague: The morning began with a walking tour of the Jewish Quarter and its synagogues and the Jewish Cemetery. The oldest synagogue was built in the tenth century and is the only one still used for services; the others are now museums. Prague had a Jewish population of 120,000 before the war and their systematic extermination. Now there are about 1800 and the small, old synagogue is plenty of room for them. In the Pinkas Synagogue we saw the walls full of tiny hand printed lists of the names and dates for the many who died. 

Jewish Quarter in Prague

Interesting clock on the City Hall in Jewish Quarter

Pinkas Synagogue

Name after name after name....

...on every wall for room after room after room.

Then we went through the cemetery where bodies have been buried for several centuries so people are stacked 12 deep and the old stones are piled together. It was very sobering. 

We strolled down the Street of Paris, the most expensive part of Prague with its beautiful Art Nouveau apartment buildings that were built around the turn of last century and visited the Spanish Synagogue (so named for its interior decorations, not for its nationality). The Old Town Square was a short walk away but the group got smaller and smaller as we made our way there because it was lunchtime. 

Pařížská (Paris) Street connecting the Jewish quarter to Old Town

Beautiful Spanish Synagogue is now a museum

Tyne Church on Old Town Square 

Streets of Old Town

St. Nicholas Church on Old Town Square

Astronomical Clock 

Buildings on Old Town Square

Enjoying a Trdelnik: Dough wrapped on a fat metal rod and cooked over a fire,
 then sprinkled with cinnamon sugar from the stand in the background

Ross, Pat, Marv and I stayed for the whole tour and then hustled back to the hotel. We picked up the lunches we had packed and met our Gray Line Bus for a trip we had lined up ahead of time to Terezin, about an hour away. Terezin was built as a military post in 1789, to stand between the Prussian and Habsburg empires. It consists of the big and the small fortifications. The smaller was used as a prison and the larger was barracks and homes for troops. Both are well fortified and surrounded by walls and moats. During WWII the Nazis put political prisoners in the prison far exceeding its capacity and known for its inhumane conditions. Jews from all over were brought or death marched to the larger fortification which became a village sized ghetto. A propaganda film was made there promoting it as a Jewish sanctuary where it was self-governed and a generally happy place to stay. After it was made every actor was taken to Auschwitz and immediately gassed. Terezin became a sort of way-station where Jews were gathered and registered and then sent on to Concentration Camps. Many died in Terezin as sickness and lack of sanitation and supplies overwhelmed the growing masses. Dissidents were sent to the prison, where conditions were even worse. It was very chilling and not exactly enjoyable, but it was an important trip to make. 

Building we saw from the bus as we rode to Terezin

Castle District on the hill as we left Prague for Terezin

Countryside driving to Terezin

Cemetery/Memorial outside the gates of the smaller fortification

Large and small fortifications of Terezin with photos from the area

Work shall make you free

Bunks in one building of the prison

Sinks installed to impress the Red Cross inspectors but never plumbed with water

There are many yards of passageway within the wall of the
fortification of the prison. We followed this one for a long way.

Memorial Statue

The streets of the larger, village-like fortification of Terezin

Wall of pictures in the stairway of the village Museum

Cemetery/Memorial at the Crematorium in Terezin

Crematorium maintained as a Memorial 

Back at the hotel we rested and cleaned up and then walked over to the Czech restaurant across the street for a traditional dinner of duck, sausage, two kinds of cabbage, and dumplings. It was yummy and filling. When it got dark Marv and I again ventured out, this time walking all the way back to Old Town Square to mingle with the boisterous and energetic crowds of people. 

          Na zdraví !

Czech Good Eatin'!!

Gateway to the Black Sea--#14: Brno and Prague

Fri. June 18--Brno & Prague: After getting our bags packed and in the hallway by 7:45 and the full buffet breakfast, we were on our way by 9:00. Our new guide explained that she was born in Slovakia with a Hungarian mother and therefore had a Hungarian name. She went to Prague for schooling in the 90s. While there, the politicians split Czechoslovakia into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Like others had told us, she said it was purely political and the people had no say in it. When asked if she wanted to be Czech or Slovak for her passport she told them, "No, I want to be Czechoslovakian!" But she had no choice. We drove mostly on a freeway to Brno. Around Bratislava the signs and even the pavement were marked with CZ if they went to Czech Republic, H for Hungary, A for Austria, or left plain for Slovakia. It was a good indication of how close together the countries are in this area. It took us about 2 hours to drive to Brno, an industrial, drab looking town in the Czech Republic. It has a handsome Roman Catholic Church of St. Peter and St. Paul that the residents call St. Petroff. Nearby and of the same vintage is a protestant church that was finished just after the Catholic Church. In spite, the architect added a small figure above the window facing St. Petroff who has dropped his pants and is mooning the Catholics. Brno also has Spilas, which was built as a fortification then turned into an inhumane prison. It became even worse during WWII when the Nazis turned it into a Concentration Camp for the local Jews. We stopped first at the International Hotel for an early, big lunch of onion-pork soup with bread, roast beef in gravy with big french fries, and creme brulee with ice cream and caramel sauce on top. I skipped the bread, most of the french fries and the creme brulee and was still full. Afterwards we took about an hour walking tour of the limited old town including two squares, neither of which was square and a few interesting Art Nouveau buildings. Our guide told us some of the local lore and legends. Brno is the capital of the region called Moldavia and the locals consider themselves Moldavians and NOT Czechs. Their language is only a little different with a few words of their own but mostly as related as London English and New Zealand English. 

The cloudy day made the main square in Brno look even more drab

The Protestant Church in Brno

Small figure mooning St. Petroff's

St. Petroff's Church

We circled back to the hotel and got back on the buses to drive the rest of the way to Prague (or Praha, as they say). The Prague Hilton Old Town is just about a block and a half from The Powder Gate into the Old Town area. After checking in Slava took the group for a short orientation walk to Old Town, arriving in time for the 6:00 chiming of the intricate astronomical clock on the no longer used City Hall. Afterwards the Dunns and Macks walked back to the hotel on our own with a stop to buy groceries at the Billa grocery store across the street and had a light supper, similar to last night's. 

The final stop of our journey: Prague, Czech Republic

Our hotel was a block off of Namesti Republiky (Republic Square)
All the pictures below were just a few blocks away

Opera House

Old Town's Powder Gate where gunpowder was stored

Old Town walking street

Renovating one of the churches on the City Hall Square

Astrological Clock

Republic Square

Gateway to the Black Sea--#13: Bratislava, Slovakia

Wed. June 17-Bratislava, Slovakia: After a nice buffet breakfast at the hotel the whole group was picked up by The Golden Express, a small tram that looked like a train and drove us up the hill to the Rhad Castle. Along the way our guide, Katrina, thoroughly entertained us with her dry, sardonic wit as she pointed out the high points of the city. At the castle, she walked us around, filling us in on the history of both it and the city in general. From the grounds one can look out to the south and see Hungary, Austria, and Slovakia.  Around the other side there are the beginnings of the Carpathian Mountains. She said there are still people who can say they lived in three countries (Hungary, who used the city as its capital when the Turks took over Bucharest, Czechoslovakia under the USSR, and Slovakia) while never moving out of Bratislava. 

Our map showing Bratislava, Slovakia's location

Rhad Castle

Courtyard of Rhad Castle

How the castle used to look.

Posing by one of the gates

Looking south over Hungary(left), Austria(right), and Slovakia(foreground)

The Express then took us to the Old Town where Katrina led us on about a 45 minute tour of the area, part of which is still walled and where there are some vestiges of the moat that surrounded the city in the 1400s. At the end of the tour, we had the choice of taking the Express back to the hotel or staying to wander on our own, so, of course, we stayed. We went in and out of the many intriguing courtyards and narrow cobblestone streets, and explored every nook and cranny. Around lunchtime we went to a traditional Slovak restaurant just inside one of the old gates of the city where we sat outside and enjoyed sour cabbage soup with hearty bread and a dark Slovak Golden Pheasant beer. It made for a very filling and satisfactory lunch. 

Looking down one of the larger streets in Old Town

One of seven comic brass sculptures in Old Town.
This one looks like soldier coming out of a manhole

Charming straw animals in the Market

Traditional beer, cheese and cabbage soup for lunch

A narrow lane

Another narrow lane

After about an hour more of wandering, Pat and Ross headed back to the hotel while Marv and I continued walking. We headed to the Hospital Garden, beside the hospital from the 1800s, and after a short rest on the benches by the swan fountain, continued past the old cemetery and into a neighborhood district. The day was windy and had turned cloudy with a high in the 60s, a stark contrast to the mid-90s of the past few days. We came across a neighborhood coffee shop full of locals, where we shared a piece of Kuba Rec (chocolate-banana cake) and had .99eu coffee--a third of the price anywhere else. It made a nice place to refresh but was very hot in there so we didn't linger like we might have. 

Eventually we made it back to the hotel having walked for several hours so who knows how far. We had a short rest then went with the Macks to one of the cafes behind the hotel for more coffee while they had creme brulee. There is a grocery store in the lower level of the mall where we bought cheese, bread, sausage, raspberries and chocolates. With the bottle of champagne from the ship and the bottle of Serbian wine we had bought, we had a delightful dinner sitting on benchlike steps beside the Danube and agreed it couldn't get much better than that. It was cool, as it would be for the rest of the trip, which was a contrast to the week before. Since we had to have our bags outside our door at 7:45 the next morning to be loaded on the bus, we made an early evening of it, having thoroughly enjoyed learning about and experiencing this totally new-to-us part of the world.

A Feast!!