Prague (Amber) - Blogabond

We woke up fairly early this morning to bells ringing from the church next door for about 15 min straight and then I thought I could hear a choir but I am not so sure. The bells were so loud they rattled the light bulbs, it was kind of irritating and I am sure the guys in our room who had just gone to bed didn't appreciate them either.

The free Internet at the hostel still wasn't working so we headed for a delicious breakfast before our free walking tour of Prague through the same company as the tour in Berlin. The tour was good and again we learned a lot about the city's history and architecture(which I love). A few interesting things we saw were the old and new town square, the old powder gate from a portion of the old wall that used to stand around the city to protect it. We saw the Jewish quarter and the "new old synagogue" as well as an d Jewish cemetary which was actually part of the inspiration for the holocaust memorial in Berlin. The cemetary is really highbecause in places bodies are burried 10 people deep. When the cemetary was full they would just put more people on top. We also walked by the Prague holocaust memorial which houses every name of the 70 000 Prague Jews killed as well as some artwork done by children in concentration camps. We saw the Charles bridge and later walked across it as well as got a great view of the largest castle in the wolrd according to genuis book of world records. ( it really is absoutly unbelievably massive). We saw the Lennon wall which depicts freedom of speach in a now non-communism country.

During the tour the guide told us some very interesting stories about the city. Trevors favorite story talks about how Prague was going to be invaded by russia in a move to reinforce communism in the country and so the people take action when they receive word and replace all street signs expect the ones pointing to Moscow to "dubcheck" to confuse thenarmies when they come. This genious tactic worked for a few days before the army sorted it out. The funny part is that during the second wolrd war they use this same tactic against the Nazi soldiers and they take down all german shows.

After the tour we hurried and got our bags from the hostel ( who's Internet was still down) and headed off to the train station hoping we could find a place to stay when we got to vienna.

written by

Trevor and Amber on May 31, 2009 from Praha, Czech Republic

from the travel blog: Europe Trip

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