Europe Tour Day 10-11: Part 1 of Prague, Czech Republic

We headed out again from our apartment on Monday, March 24. First we went to the car rental place to get yet another rental car since we weren't allowed to take the car we had been driving to the Czech Republic. From the rental place, we drove to Prague. We arrived that evening, checked into our hostel suit, and went to a nearby restaurant for dinner. That all actually took a great deal more time that we thought it would because when Nate went to park our car in the parking for the hostel, he couldn't find it. He didn't find any helpful people to direct him either. In fact, most people he met were quite rude. For example, after pulling into one garage, he asked the garage attendant if he was in the right place. The attendant told him he wasn't and insisted he still pay the parking fees for an hour's worth of parking to leave.

We actually found Prague to be the least hospitable place of all the areas we visited. As we quickly found out from Nate's parking experience, there are a good deal of unhelpful to downright rude people living there. This was confirmed to us at other points too, such as when our tour group the following day was yelled at with deplorable language by a young man trying to get by us. I was sadly not really surprised to read this story soon after we returned about people not stopping to help a man in the Czech Republic who got clipped by a train. There are plenty of other reasons that I am more than a little happy we don't live in the Czech Republic too. We are not exactly into the high beer consumption there (the Czech Republic is known to have the highest beer consumption per capita in the world - averaging over a bottle of beer per person per day), not to mention the rampant drug usage, or the prostitution. Restaurants all have smoking and non-smoking sections, most of the time right next to each other, making it difficult to find a place to eat where you don't suffocate from the second-hand smoke too.

Church of the Virgin Mary Before Tyn

That all being said, Prague turned out to be an absolutely fascinating place to visit. Luckily, not everyone there was rude; we did meet some very nice and helpful people too, including our tour guide. Tuesday morning we went on a free tour of the city (free meaning the freelance tour guides rely on tips from the tourists). This tour was my favorite of all the tours we did during our trip. Our tour guide was knowledgeable, enthusiastic, and a bit eccentric. She spoke clearly and made everything especially interesting, plus we didn't have to listen to her talk through microphone with ear phones.  She told us about the history, legends, art, and other essential things to know about being in Prague (like watching out for ripe off currency exchange rates). us Starting at the old town square, we walked around the city with her as she explained various buildings, sculptures, and other landmarks all while telling us of Prague's history. I would have to write a short book to include all the information included in the tour. I found myself completely fascinated by the story of Prague's history, which is wildly turbulent, frequently bloody, and painfully violent. We also learned about the city's art and culture on the tour.

Our tour started at the Old Town Square. Here we saw the statue of the Czech priest Jan Hus and learned about how he was the first reformer of the Church after John Wycliffe. He was ultimately burned at the stake for heresy in 1415, but after his death his followers, the Hussites, rebelled against their Catholic rulers, and the Hussite Wars followed. The Catholic rulers were defeated, and a century later about ninety percent of the population of the Czech lands were Protestants following the teachings of Hus.

We also learned about the defenestrations of Prague. Apparently, Prague is famous for its defenestrations, and in fact, the term originated here. It means to throw someone out a window. Defenestration most often ends in the death of the person being defenestrated. The First Defenestration of Prague occurred in July of 1419. A Hussite priest was leading a procession through Prague's streets when a stone was thrown at him from the town hall. This angered those in the procession, so they stormed the town hall and hurled the judge and thirteen town council members there out the window to their deaths.

The Second Defenestration of Prague occurred while Czech lands were under the rule of the Habsburg Kings. Initially, this dynasty allowed Protestants to worship freely. However, in May of 1618 a group of Catholic regents brought a letter to the Prague Castle ordering Protestant Estate Lords that they could no longer have churches on government owned land. This ultimately ended with all but two of the Catholic regents being defenestrated by the Protestant Lords. Somehow the regents survived their fall though. Some Catholics attribute this to rescuing angels while the Protestants said it was because the regents landed in a dung heap.

Ultimately, after this, the Catholic and Protestant sides began gathering and preparing for war. The Battle of White Mountain, an early battle in the Thirty Years' War, soon followed. The battle was between King Ferdinand II who sought to impose Roman Catholicism on the subjects of Protestant King Frederick (The Winter King), the king of Bohemia. Ferdinand II, who heavily supported the Catholic Counter-reformation, won the battle and subsequently had the 27 Protestant nobles beheaded in the square. The twenty-seven white crosses in the cobblestones mark a memorial to the nobles who were killed.

Prague and the rest of the area now constituting the Czech Republic remained in control of the Habsburg Dynasty until the end WWI. At that point it became part of Czechoslovakia, also known as The First Republic. However, the Munich Agreement of September 1938 put sections of the country under Germany's control as Western Europe attempted to make any concessions necessary to avoid war. Other areas were annexed by Hungary and Poland. The remaining weakened country, known as The Second Republic, lasted a few months. In March of 1939, its president, Hácha, surrendered to Hitler. Germany forces moved into the area, and Hitler announced the protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia from the Prague Castle. While this protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia had its own government, the real executive power for the region lied with a Reichsprotektor (Reichs protector) from Germany.  However, during Germany's occupation, the president of The First Republic, Beneš, set up a Czechoslovak Government-in-Exile that was recognized by Allied countries, and Czechoslovak forces fought alongside the Allied forces during WWII.

In May of 1942, Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš, two specially trained Czech soldiers, parachutted into Boheimia on behalf of the Czechoslovak Government-in-Exile and attempted to assassinate the acting Reichsprotektor in his car. The ensuing fight left the Reichsprotektor as well as Gabčík and Kubiš wounded. The Reichsprotektor later died from his wounds due to blood poisoning, but Gabčík and Kubiš escaped and were sheltered by the Czechs. A massive search for the missing assassins was ordered, and eventually the two men were found in Cyril and Methodius Cathedral in Prague. A six hour gun battle followed killing fourteen Germans and wounding others before the cathedral was taken. However, most of those inside committed suicide to avoid being taken. In retaliation for the Reichsprotektor's death, it was ordered that any village that had harbored the assassins should be burned and leveled. Consequently, the town of Lidice just northwest of Prague which was suspected at the time to have harbored the assassins was surrounded. All men were shot while woman and children were sent to concentration camps where nearly all were killed. Men who were absent from the village at the time were also found and killed. Even all the animals at the village were slaughtered, and the remains of those at the town's cemetery were dug up and destroyed. The town was leveled. Only 153 women and 17 children lived to return to the village after the war. Soon after the massacre at Lidice the small village of Ležáky met the same fate under the hands of the Nazis.

Czechoslovakia was liberated from its Nazi occupation by the Soviets in September of 1944. The Third Republic was established, in which the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) was initially favored. However, the KSČ collectivist ideas and other policies came into disfavor with many after a few years. Knowing the party was unlikely to win upcoming elections, a coup was planned, which is known as the Czech Coup of 1948. The communist head of the National Police Force illegally ousted all non-communists from the force and refused to reinstate them when ordered to do so. Communist police took over Prague, and communist demonstrations were set up. The KSČ leader, Klement Gottwald, gave a speech from the balcony of the Kinský Palace in which he threatened a general strike unless Czechoslovakia's President Beneš agreed to form a new Communist government. Beneš, who was worried about the Soviets invading and civil war, capitulated to Gottwald. The communists quickly took over, firing and arresting many people. Other dominate political parties were taken over by communist sympathizers, and a new constitution was approved by parliament. However, it was so close to that of the Soviet Union that Beneš refused to sign it. Beneš resigned and was replaced by Gottwald.

Statue of Jan Hus with the Kinský Palace behind it on to the right

Czechoslovakia remained a communist dictatorship until the non-violent Velvet Revolution of 1989. The Velvet Revolution started when riot police shut down a group of student protestors demonstrating in Prague. Subsequent demonstrations spread across the country and were followed by a general strike of the population. This lead the resignation of the president, the dismantling of the communist party state, and the first democratic elections held since 1946.

We also walked down Wenceslas Square during our tour. The song "Good King Wenceslas" that is often heard around Christmas was about the same man that this square is named after. Apparently King Wenceslas was not really a king, but a duke who lived during the first part of the tenth century. However, he was declared a king and a saint after he was murdered.

At the end of Wenceslas Square is the National Museum, which was closed while we were there.

National Museum

It was in Wenceslas Square that a student named Jan Palach famously committed suicide by setting himself on fire in 1969 to protest the Soviet Union's invasion of Czechoslovakia. The Soviet Union's invasion ended the short lived Prague Spring, which was a period of about eight months in which a communist elected official named Alexander Dubček attempted to loosen restrictions on civil liberties and change things to a more democratic and decentralized government. However, Czechoslovakia was under Soviet control, and the Soviets didn't like what Dubček was doing, so they invaded. Jan Palach's grave site became a symbol of those unhappy with the Soviets. Today there is a cross in the pavement to mark the spot where Jan Palach and where a month later, Jan Zajíc burned themselves in front of the National Museum. There are also other memorials in Prague to Jan Palach, including the plaque with his death mask pictured below, and the plaques that sit in Wenceslas Square above to the left.

The Czech Republic has changed hands and been a part of so many different governments in the last century! Our tour guide told us that her mother-in-law lived in the same house her entire life and yet was part of nine different countries.

Below is a picture of the Powder Tower, which is one of the thirteen original Gothic gates into Old Town Prague. It was originally called the New Tower and was not built for defense, but in the 17th century it was used to store gun powder and thus received its present day title.

Powder Tower

Above is a statue of the author Franz Kafka, who was from Prague. There is a design of a beetle worked into the cobblestones below the statue in reference to his strange story The Metamorphosis. There are a lot of strange sculptures and cubist buildings in Prague. Our tour guide seemed to have one overarching theory concerning any remotely controversial piece of artwork: "It is not rude; it is art."

The sign on the building above reminded us the current tensions between Ukraine and Russia. The threat of an aggressive Russia expanding its influence into surrounding countries seemed all the more real in a place like the Czech Republic.

Overall, we enjoyed our morning tour so much we decided to stay on with our tour guide for a pre-paid afternoon tour of the Prague Castle. This tour was also good, although harder for us to follow since Austin was getting tired by then and was less inclined to cooperate with the tour than he had been that morning.

Prague Castle

Basilica of St. George

The castle is said to have some representation of all the different architectural styles from the past millennium since so many things were added at different times. The first walled building of the castle was the Church of the Virgin Mary, which dates back to 870. The church is no longer standing though. However, the Basilica of St. George, which was founded during the first part of the tenth century, is still there today. The Basilica of St. Vitus was founded close to the same time as the Basilica of St. George, but was re-built as a Gothic Cathedral starting in  1344. However, work on the cathedral came to a halt during the Hussite Wars, and a fire also severely damaged it in 1541. The cathedral remained half finished until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when a renewed effort to complete and renovate it emerged, and the front facade was finished during the 1920s. It is the tallest and most visible portion of the castle.

St. Vitus Cathedral's front facade

The Rose Window, which depicts the creation

Inside the St. Vitus Cathedral

East end of the St. Vitus Cathedral

Decorative gate on the side of the St. Vitus Cathedral

Chair used for torture

While at the castle, we also enjoyed looking at a collection of armor on display and got to see a small room full of instruments of torture. We enjoyed the various courtyards and watching the changing of the guards. Unfortunately, my camera battery died after we left the cathedral, so I didn't get a lot of good pictures for the rest of the day. After the tour we were pretty tired, so we found a place to eat dinner and then returned to our rooms.