Czech out Prague

Prague officialy ranks among my top 5 favorite Europen Cities (so far). It has a history worthy of history class and some of the most beautiful buildings I've ever seen. Our first day there we went on a free walknig tour, where we accidentally landed a tourguide who is legitimately famous with travelers, he is so good. His name is Issac and apparently through word of mouth he is the tourguide that people seek out. It was like a history lesson and a standup comedy act all rolled into one, and even if it wasn't free I still would have gone.

One of the coolest things we did was go up and see the Prague castle, where all sorts of political goings-on happened way back when. In fact, my favorite ever political event occurred there, the Defenestration of Prague. Basically the Protestants got mad at the Catholics and started throwing them out the windows of the castle, and this started the 30 Years War. Defenestrate is my favorite word, and that's the truth. You better believe that I got a picture next to the actual window, and Kristin is pretending to throw me out of it. It's pretty cool.

Another neat thing about Prague is that beer is, honestly, cheaper ounce for ounce than water. Maybe this is because Prague is so close to Pilsen, where pilsner comes from, but I still find it mind-boggling.

It wasnt all fun and games, though, and we were serious for some of the time. We had decided a while ago that we weren't going to go to any concentration camps over here because we heard that they are seriously just too awful. However, there is a concentration camp called Terezin just an hour outside of Prague and there is a Synagogue in the Jewish quarters of Prague that pays homage to its victims. We were told that the experience of the memorial is a more reflective and uplifting one than a concentration camp would provide, so we decided to go. Inside were the names of the thousands of Czech Jews who were murdered during WWII, all hand-painted alphabetically and by region on the walls (Madeline Albright found her grandparents here). From far away the words just looked like patterned wallpaper, and the effect was pretty powerful. While I was looking I found the name Ferencz (I'm a little Jewish?) with a birth to death date of 1910-1941. Upstairs the memorial turned into something totally unique. A little background: Terezin was one of the less awful concentraiton camps out there because nazis used it to document & show the media that life in the camps 'weren't so bad'. However, almost everyone who went through there ended up in Auschwitz. There had also been a baby boom in the area, so children in the camp outnumbered adults 7 to 1 or something like that. Understandably, the kids were battling depression although the adults in the Jewish community were doing their best to make life as normal as possible for them. A Jewish psychologist sat down with every single child in the camp and gave them markers, newspapers, and construction paper and asked them to draw exactly what it was in their mind that had them so ditressed. Amazingly, many of these drawings survived the war and they are on rotating display in the Synagogue. The subject matter ranged from traumatic events to images of home to Bible passages, but the effect was heartwrenching. Next to every drawing was the name and dates of the child artist, and almost every one died in the summer of 1944. It was so sad but the best war memorial I've seen so far (and there have been several). It was definitely one of the best experiences I've had over here. Sorry for ending on such a downer!