This weekend we took a trip with
the whole group to spend three nights in Prague. Since this was my second trip to Prague, I
knew where I was going a lot better than the first time I was there. The first day (Thursday) we went on a tour
around the city and saw all of the main tourist attractions. When I was in Prague the first time I saw all
of the tourist spots, but I didn’t go on a guided tour so it was nice to hear
some of the history about the city.
We woke up
early on Friday morning and toured the Prague Castle and the St. Vetus
Cathedral. We had to walk up a long
flight of stairs to get to the castle and it showed how out of shape we all
were since we were all tired by the time we made it to the top. The outside of the church was dark and gothic
style, while the inside was much more elegant, and you could tell how much work
people used to put into the atheistic beauty of their churches. I feel like new churches that are made today
aren’t nearly as extravagant as that one was.
St. Vetus Cathedral in Prague
We woke up
early again on Saturday and got on a train to Dresden, Germany. Dresden was one of the last places bombed in
World War II, so a lot of the city was destroyed and rebuilt. Because of the reconstruction, a lot of the
city looked more modern and more like the US.
There was a huge cathedral that was bombed, but the city rebuilt it
along with all of the buildings around it to recreate the city center. We went to the top of the cathedral and could
see the entire city, witch was majestic.
We went through a museum that showed old Turkish weapons and armor along
with very old forms of currency. The oldest
forms of coins were from the 12th century and looked like a piece of
leather with a stamp on it. Jan and
Martin (our tour guides) walked around with us in the museums and I was amazed
that they knew so much information about every room that we walked into.
Sunday we
walked back up to St. Vetus Cathedral for the church service. The service was all in Czech language, so I
didn’t really know what was going on, but it was still interesting. There is no form of heat in the church so it
was freezing inside and everyone was ready for the service to be over. I think most of the people who attended were
tourists, because it didn’t look like many people knew when they were supposed
to stand up or sit down. After church we
went to the old Jewish Ghetto and went through a few old synagogues. One of the synagogues had the names of all of
the Jewish people who lived in Checlosovokia who were killed by the Nazis. There was an old Jewish cemetery that had so
many gravestones that they were all on top of each other. Jan and Martin said that there were seven or
eight layers of graves on top of each other because they didn’t have enough land
so they just had to stack the bodies on top of each other.
I think
Prague will always hold a soft spot in my heart because it was the first
European city that I was ever in. The
city is full of history and there is always something going on to do
there. My favorite view of the city is
the Prague Castle behind the Charles Bridge at night. Although I really like Prague, it also makes
me miss Olomouc. Prague doesn’t give us
a real feel of the culture of Czech Republic since it is so full of tourists.
Prague streets packed with people
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