A Weekend in Prague, Czech Republic

Whenever I hear the country name 'Czechoslovakia', I at once remember my dad's dictation, it was always a tough name to spell (By the way, from 01.Jan.1993 Czechoslovakia was split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia and hence the word 'Czechoslovakia' is permanently lost). I had never thought I will visit Prague - capital of Czech Republic (the heart of Europe) in my life, but, its fate that I should spend the 2009 Deepavali (Oct 17,18) at Prague (or Praha)!! Life is indeed a beautiful puzzle to solve.... Praha is the sixth most-visited European city after London, Paris, Rome, Madrid and Berlin. Prague suffered considerably less damage during World War II than some other major cities in the region, allowing most of its historic architecture to stay true to form.
I booked my travel from Hamburg to Prague (in Deutch Bahn - German train service) in August and for the first time in Germany, I was traveling alone for a trip. Balaji (my colleague at Capgemini) who at present works in Belgium, joined me at Praha. I was expecting the train travel (6.5hrs) to be boring, but it wasn’t. I had two cute Czech kids with their mom as the co-passengers. The kids spoke English and taught me Czech language too (Dobry den (Dough-bree-den) for Hello, Yokayoo/Dekuji for Thanks and Prosim (Pro-seem) for You’re Welcome). Also, the train line from Berlin to Praha passed through the Erzgebirge mountains, for a couple of hours enjoyed the series of beautiful alpine river valleys, surrounded by rocky escarpments and mountains. Sometimes, it feels good and better to be alone and I felt it at that time.
As always, I invested much time in planning this trip too. The major constraints were the time to spend and the vastness of Prague. Prague is a city which requires minimum a week to admire each and every beauty, I had just 25hrs to cover the must see places and was really a challenge to plan this trip. After few weeks of surfing the internet and reading reviews, I came up with a feasible itinerary. I decided not to visit the world's largest Castle in Praha, as I had visited the famous Neuschwanstein castle and Schwerin castle, it was a tough call but took it for good. Advised Balaji to spend half a day alone at the castle before I reach Praha at 1330. Praha has two central train stations and we decided to meet at the McDonalds near to the Praha Hostivice station. There was no big confusion in finding him and we started our trip taking a 24hrs travel pass for 100 Czech Korunas (CZK). We noted that the conversion rates are pretty low in the railway station and went to Wenceslas Square and converted Euros for CZK (24CZK/Euro).
Wenceslas Square is 750m long and 60m wide boulevard (a wide street or thoroughfare), it was laid out over 600 years ago during the reign of Charles IV. It was originally used as the Prague horse market. Wenceslas Square is where the Czech's come to let off steam (e.g. anti-communist uprisings or celebrations of national sporting achievements). It can comfortably hold up to 400,000 people! Behind St. Wenceslas is the monumental National Museum, and just off to the left is the Prague State Opera. The sides of the boulevard had many important houses, banks, shops, hotels and restaurants. The notable one was our famous brand "BATA shoe" company store, later when I surfed for this blog, I came to know that BATA's founder is a Czech entrepreneur, Tomas Bata!! walked the length of the square and without hassles reached the Old town square.
The Old Town Square is one of the largest and most impressive open public spaces in Europe. The most notable sights are the Church of Our Lady before Tyn, the Old Town Hall Tower & Astronomical Clock and the St. Nicholas Church. As soon as we reached this square, we saw the BIG astronomical clock. The Astronomical Clock consists of the windows with apostles at the top, the Astronomical Dial, the Calendar Dial underneath and various sculptures around. The clock announces every hour with 12 apostles passing by the window above the astronomical dial and with symbolic sculptures moving aside. The Astronomical Dial shows the medieval perception of the Universe: the Earth is the center. There are three circles on the astronomical dial, showing different time: the outer circle shows the Old Czech Time (“Italian Time”), the circle with Roman numbers shows the Central European Time and the inner circle with Arabic numerals shows the “Babylonian Time”: the length of an hour differs there according to the season – it is longer in the summer, shorter in the winter. The Prague Astronomical Clock is the only one in the world able to measure it. We were lucky enough to reach the clock at 1550, enjoyed the clock's performance at 1600. Decided to climb 69.5 meter tall Town Hall Tower (hosting the astronomical clock) and enjoyed the elevated view of the old town. Enjoyed the Prague's view for 45mins and came down to get along with the clock performance (for the second time) at 1700. The fun is to stand under the clock and look at the tourists looking at the performance. It’s really funny to watch about 300+ digital cameras all pointing upward at the same time.
The Church of our Lady before Tyn is an impressive Gothic cathedral. It is located just opposite to the town hall tower, the church's towers are 80 m high and topped by four small spires. The church is Prague's most important gothic sanctuary and is a very impressive sight. Enjoyed this info which I discovered during my trip preparation: A close look at the two spires reveal that they are not symmetrical. This is characteristic of the gothic architecture of the time and is a representation of both the masculine and feminine sides of the world. Also, we admired watching the St. Nicholas Church, the Jan Hus monument situated in the middle of the Old Town Square.
After cherishing the beauty of the old town square, we walked in the Jewish Quarter (Josefov) crossing few Synagogue (the place of worship for a Jews) to reach the Old Jewish Cemetery (founded in 1478), it is the Europe's oldest surviving Jewish cemetery. People had to be buried on top of each other because of lack of space. There are about 12 layer and over 12,000 gravestones. 100,000 people are thought to have been buried here. No idea, the gates to the cemetery was shut, I said to myself 'God doesn’t want me to enter the cemetery so soon :)'.
Traversing the city was so simple, they have three metro lines and numerous tram lines. Traveling in Prague tram, I remembered my travel in Kolkata (the only city in India where tram is still in operation). Accompanied Balaji to TESCO (an international retail chain, the Walmart of Prague). Balaji is a smoker and wanted to save money in purchasing cigarettes in Czech! Wonder why people spend so much for smoke, as I had never tried it, I know, I can never understand it. He did not do his enquiry properly (how much to carry in flight back to Belgium) and couldn’t decide whether to buy 2000 or 400 cigars, finally ended up in 400.
As per our plan we reached the Krizikova fontana (fountain show) to be part of the music-light show carried out to the Beethoven - Symphony No.9. It was a mind-blowing performance for 40mins and I loved to be there. I recollected my experience of the musical fountain show in Brindavan gardens, Mysore. The amazing fact is, a general search of 'Prague's must see places' doesn’t yield Krizikova fontana. as it is in the outskirts of the Prague centre, even the tourist info center guys were not much aware of this place. Don’t miss this show, when you are in Prague! The hotel we have booked was near to the fontana and after the show, we rushed to the hotel. While getting back it was too cold, a perfect autumn weather of central Europe and had a comfortable sleep.
Touring Europe in this part of the year, needs preparation w.r.t weather. Before my trip, I checked wetter.de, it said 6°C (max) and 2°(min) for the weekend. But the Sunday morning was damn cold than expected, plus it was rainy. Good that I had my umbrella and woolen gloves! We checked out the hotel and reached Charles Bridge. The best time to visit the bridge is early morning or late evening to avoid the tourist rush. Charles Bridge is built between the 14th and 15th century, spans the Vltava River with 16 pillars and boasts some 30 statues of various saints. Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV laid down the foundation stone on 9th of July 1357, at 5:31 a.m. It is no coincidence: this date was carefully chosen, because it makes an interesting numerical scale. When it is written in the chronology the year – the day – the month – the time, it makes a scale, going upwards and then downwards: 1 3 5 7 9 7 5 3 1. Strange enough to know that the great Emperor Charles IV too believed numerology!!
The bronze statue of St. John of Nepomuk is the oldest statue on the Charles Bridge. St. John of Nepomuk was a parson (A person authorized to conduct religious worship), who refused to betray a secret, confided to him by Queen Sophia, to the king Wenceslas IV. He was tortured on the king’s demand and then thrown to the river Vltava from the Charles Bridge in 1393. The inseparable attributes of St. John of Nepomuk statue are the five stars, a surplice, a cross and a martyr’s palm tree. The five stars allegedly appeared above the river, after the martyr was thrown there. They are supposed to symbolize the five letters of Latin word “tacet”, which means “silent”. There is a brassy cross with five stars at the place on the parapet, where he was thrown to the river. Its told that if one places his hand on the cross, so that every finger will touch one star, he can wish something and it will be fulfilled. I too did it :). In one of the review, I read an advise to visit Strelecky Island (small island in Vltava River). At the northern end of the island, it was said to have a incredible view of Charles Bridge. When we reached the particular island, the area was cordoned off by Czech police from some crime investigation. Hence missed the opportunity to have a beautiful view of the complete bridge from a distant point.
We marched towards the Petrin Hills. As per my itinerary, we should use the funicular (cable) train to reach the top. Bad luck, it was closed for maintenance. It was drizzling and we started to climb the 327 meter hill. The cold invariably increased as we climbed up and it was a tough experience, I don’t have a handy thermometer, but it must have been below zero. The Petrin hills has number of tourist attractions, we wanted to cover few of them: the Hunger Wall, the smaller replica of the Eiffel Tower 8Petrin Observation Tower) and the Mirror Maze.
Charles IV build the Hunger Wall thru the poor people in the 14th century. He wanted to give some work to those, who suffered from hunger at the time of bad crops. The Hunger Wall is 1178 meters long and about 8 meters high (sort of copycat of Great Wall of China). The Petrin Observation Tower is an imitation of the Eiffel tower in Paris. It is 60 meters high, so it is five times smaller than the Eiffel Tower in Paris. As we climbed the hill, we lost time (as well the energy) and couldn’t climb the 299 steps of tower! I had never entered a mirror maze before and was excited. I know that this is made for kids, but sometimes its nice to become a kid and enjoy!! It was funny to find the way through the mirror maze. I saw my picture in the mirrors all around and felt like there is no way forth or back. It was an amazing experience. Then I entered the other room, which is equipped with variously bulging mirrors and I can see my picture amusingly deformed. It was funny to check out how I would be looking tall or short, skinny or fat etc. There were 14 misrepresenting mirrors in the maze altogether and we enjoyed it.
It was time to catch the train to get back Hamburg, walked down the hill and had a nice lunch at a Subway (I couldn’t taste a Czech beer with lunch (mostly with pork), as I don’t take either of them). I should say that Praha is a cheap European city, I have been. I converted 70Euros and ended up having more than 100 Czech Korunas to spend, even though I expended like an average European tourist!! When I was returning Hamburg, a nice thought came up comparing Praha with Madurai! I lived in Madurai for more than 10 years and the resemblance is as follows:

- Praha is founded in 8th century and not as old as Madurai whose cultural heritage goes back 2,500 years, and the city has conducted trade as far as Rome and Greece since as early as 550 BC!!

- The Praha Castle being the center of attraction, Madurai has the Thirumalai Nayakar Mahal (palace);

- The Old town square is not old enough to compare with Madurai's Meenakshi Amman temple;

- The astronomical clock is as similar to the Porthamarai Kulam (Pond with the Golden Lotus) inside the temple;

- The Church of Our Lady before Tyn has the same architectural galore of Madurai's Aayiram Kaal Mandapam (Thousand Pillar Hall);

- The Praha is situated on the banks of River Vltava, Madurai on the banks of River Vaigai (Vltava faces floods often whereas Vaigai hardly sees water);

- Praha nicknamed as "city of a hundred spires", Madurai is "Temple city" or "Athens of the East";

- Praha has innumerous Synagogue (the place of worship for a Jews),in Madurai you will see a temple in every corner of a street;

- All the streets of Old town of Praha gets connected to Old town square much similar to the concentric rectangular streets surround the Meenakshi Amman Temple, Madurai is built around the temple;

- There are many bridges crossing Vltava, Madurai too has many bridges crossing Vaigai. The view of Praha I saw from Charles bridge is as similar to the view of Madurai from the Aaarapalayam bridge;

- The Petrin Hill of Prague is a nice place to leisure out from the city life, Madurai has the similar Azhagar Kovil (Alagar temple) Hills;

- I can keep going on comparing like these... let me stop sharing with this last thought: Praha is filled with tourism and economy depends on it, interesting fact is 'one-half of the Czech income from tourism is spent in Prague', I don’t have any comparison with Madurai's tourism development :(
I wish to see Madurai as developed as Prague, an European/American should plan himself easily (like me) to visit Madurai, I wonder whether my wish turns true in my lifetime!!! I celebrated 2009 Deepavali as well as my 250th day in Europe (thanks to diary writing habit, it gave me this count, its been 250 days I left my mother(land) ) in a grand style at Prague, one of the beautiful cities of Europe. Thanks for reading my experience, if you are reading this line, you must have enjoyed my narration!!! See you in my next endeavor from Switzerland, till then take care.....