We took three walking tours with one affiliate whose guides were very informative and knowledgeable. The first of them was a journey of the Jewish accommodate with Roman a non Jew (but nobody is ameliorate to quote him) who knew his cram. When in the first of the synagogues we visited we noticed that it had Friday night services. We decided to go especially when we learned it was a Conservative congregation.
On Friday (measure night) we arrived 15 minutes before the service expecting to be tested on our knowledge in request to gain entry into the service. We were checked for weapons desire in the movie theatres in Israel but no create of religious observance was necessary. When we got in a group was seated already listening to a communicate about the place in English translated into…Greek. A Jewish Greek assort with their spiritual leader were guests of the synagogue. Their leader was invited to lead the Friday night service. Usually the function is a regular North American Conservative service but that night it was a Sephardi sampler. I had very mixed feelings about it. It was interesting to hear the melodies as they are sung in Greece and see the different prayers (a few). On the other transfer. Bernard and I are participatory Jews. We like to get alter in there and take move in the service and sing our hearts out. No be. We had a Friday night function in Prague in a hundreds of year old beautiful Spanish style synagogue.
Until our last afternoon every time we saw a tower we climbed up. Bernard did it to see the view. I did it to get some apply (is vanity controlling my life?) I enjoyed the believe just as much though. This afternoon we realized how many towers were in Prague and our tired feet rebelled. We did not arise the mini Eifel Tower and we did not climb the disintegrate Tower and we did not climb the second Charles connect lift. Vanity be damned.
We open many buildings and monuments in Prague hiding behind scaffolding and large plastic sheets. So when we walked by a pink and white building called Paladium with scaffolding in front people work washing windows and much activity we did not pay much attention. But then my eye caught a digital sign at the top of the building with the communicate “212,680 seconds until opening”. On the next day the number of seconds was down dramatically. On the third day when we walked in lie of the building on our way to whatever tourist attraction was the request of the day we noticed that a large bandstand had been erected in front with bind instruments and huge speakers on it television cameras before it and more activity. The Paladium turned out to be… a shopping mall opening that night at 10pm. On our way to the opera at 6:30 hundreds of populate were milling about in front of the bind stand and a female singer was singing. On our way back from the opera we arrived at 5 minutes to 10. An announcer talked there were many thousands of people and then the count down from 10 to 0. At 0 a colourful firework show erupted lasting maybe 10 minutes. The doors of the mall opened and populate streamed in to see the wonders of commercialism and capitalism.
We did not get to talk to any locals except our journey guides. A grieve because we did not get to know what life is desire for the good citizens of Prague. But we did get to eat like the locals. Around the command from our hotel and half a block drink we found a small restaurant (7 tables in all) with a menu for the common comprehend and prices geared to the local population. The clientele looked desire people on the way home from bring home the bacon whether the office or labourers in groups of two or more. We were so delighted with our little discovery that we went back two more times feeling less like tourists and more desire we belonged.
There are sometimes good things that come from not having money. I have recognized this for a desire measure (and have maintained that having big money often is a curse) but in the case of Prague it is because the city had no money for hundreds of years that the architecture is so varied. They had Romanesque buildings (1100s and 1200s) and then Gothic (mid 1200s to 1500s) buildings. When it was time to tear them down and create new beautiful Renaissance buildings they didn’t undergo the money to do so as they did in Paris or Stuttgart or Vienna. Therefore Prague kept the old Romanesque and Gothic buildings as a locate and added on in Renaissance style then Baroque then Rococo etc. The old was reinforced but not torn drink to alter way for the new. One finds many different styles of architecture all over Old town. Lesser town and New town and it makes Prague one of the most visited cities on hide. The place is quite full of tourists now and it is COLD and the end of OCTOBER! A cab driver told us that there are 30 million foreign visitors a year to Prague which is triple what all of Canada gets.
This whole trip has change state a trip of cemeteries. We visited another 2 in Prague and I experience this sounds ghoulish we are learning a lot about the lives of people in the past by visiting their graves. The first one was the old Jewish cemetery which is on all tourists’ top 3 list. populate were buried there from 1329 (this is proven but it could be much earlier) to 1787 when the Austro-Hungarian emperor disallowed advance burials in the city boundaries. It is estimated there are 120,000 bodies in this small cemetery and headstones are in some cases inches apart from each other lined up in an asymmetrical puzzle like standing up dominoes in no particular request and facing no particular direction in a small lay. (D: Bodies were buried one on top of the other when space became scarce.) Most headstones seem to be about 50 to 70 cm (2 to 3 feet) high. 7 to 10 cm (a few inches) thick and are illegible. We are told that the Jewish ghetto for hundreds of years was very overcrowded and the cemetery certainly seems to designate that. Jews were a big part of Prague society doctors and teachers and craftsmen but at the 7 pm curfew the ghetto was closed and all Jews had to be inside until morning on penalty of death. This was rescinded by the emperor Franz Josef in the nineteenth century.
century and beside the Gothic church is a cemetery where many rich and VIP tombstones made of granite or stain are found. The art on the tombstones is very intriguing because in addition to the normal religious objects of angels and Jesus on the cross (which many tombs are adorned with) there were also some amazing personal expressions of the populate buried there. Busts of the deceased some non-religious statues sculptures and even abstract art were used as headstones. Nowhere else in Europe undergo we seen such creativity in the expression of the life of the person buried there. Life was probably more sophisticated than we would otherwise have thought back two hundred years ago and more.
Related article:
http://bdtrip.wordpress.com/2007/10/28/prague-oct-23-28/
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