Finishing up Prague and a quick sojourn in London

As the title indicates, I still have a bit more to say about Prague. Plus, more pictures! Specifically a lot of pictures of things that I saw my last day there. I spent the last day there by myself, everyone who was left had taken a morning flight back to London but I stayed because I don't have class on Mondays. I left the apartment at a reasonable hour and left my bags with the reception for the day. I started where we had always started before, in the Old Square.

I tried to go into the Tyn church, which rises so dramatically above the square, but it was closed on Mondays. Instead I settled for the St. Nicholas church. A fairly small but quite striking Baroque church.

From there I changed my focus to the Jewish Quarter, which I wanted some time to explore in depth. I first walked past this sign on a door

 which says in Hebrew that it is the house in which Kafka was born. Then I walked down this beautiful street

until I reached the beginning of the Jewish Museum. The Museum is scattered throughout multiple old synagogues throughout the Jewish Quarter. Each focuses on a different aspect of Jewish History or Judaism. I started at the Maisel Synagogue

which was built in 1590 but has been reconstructed numerous times since then. It is home to an exhibition on the history of Jews in the area. The next stop was the Pinkas Synagogue, currently a memorial to the 80,000 Jews fromt he area who were murdered by Nazis. All 80,000 names are handwritten on the synagogue walls. They have been handwritten twice since the Communists destroyed the original memorial. I took a lot of forbidden pictures inside.

Upstairs was a fascinating, if small, exhibit of drawings created as therapy, by children held in the nearby Teresienstadt concentration camp before their deportation to Auschwitz.

The exit from the synagogue is through the Old Jewish Cemetery, in which 100,000 Jews are buried, including Rabbi Low (he of the Golem fame).

I continued on to the Klausen Synagogue, stopping in the gift shop so I could mark off which places I had already seen. I had to beg, actually, and question disapprovingly the clerk's claim that she had nothing I borrow for the purpose until she begrudgingly lent me a pencil. This Synagogue merited only a quick look-through as its focus was on Jewish religious practices and life events, which I happen to be pretty intimately acquainted with already.

 The most crowded stop on the tour was next, at the old Ceremonial Hall

 It's really small and really crowded, but it exhibits interesting information on the burial practices and society and has some beautiful mosaics.

As I left the Ceremonial Hall and passed the Old-New Synagogue I stopped to consider buying a ticket to see the inside of what is apparently the "oldest surviving synagogue in Europe  and the oldest working synagogue in the world outside of Israel" but it cost extra and I felt like I had learned enough just reading the information sign. So instead I continued on my way to the Spanish Synagogue. It is a gorgeously decorated building, outside and in

 (the organ below was used by the man who also wrote the Czech national anthem)

but the shul is otherwise full of extremely depressing stuff. It focuses on the recent Jewish history from the Enlightenment to the present day. It struck me as being all about how haters gonna hate, because it seems to me that attitudes towards Jews have not really changed that much in those parts. I cheered myself up by walking around the block for an Israeli pasta lunch

I still had hours and hours to kill and the day was cold but otherwise pleasant and bright so I walked along the river and took pictures of lots of things

 a random swan in the river, and the castle dominating the landscape

 A memorial, I'm assuming to King Wenceslas, because they really really like him there

 and the National Theatre, which was under some major renovation works

and a very unique hotel.
I finally ended up at my nominal destination: The Dancing House

a famous architectural landmark designed by Milunic and Gehry to evoke Fred Astaire dancing with Ginger Roberts. My next stop was up the street a giant public square (if I'm not mistaken the largest in Europe) that is home to the local

 and like the rest of Prague, some very nice looking buildings.

 I walked back down and across the river

to the sculpture memorial to the survivors of communism. The sculpture is a series of human forms that disintegrate as they move further up the hill, reflecting the damage done to those living under the Communist regime.

It was a particularly moving and appropriate memorial for victims that are frequently under-recognized.

My next destination was a church housing a wax baby Jesus venerated (for performing miracles) mostly by South Americans who tend to donate little outfits in which it can be dressed.

 this was the gift from Colombia

After leaving the church I turned my steps towards the Little Quarter where I wandered through the back alleys until I found this unexplained work of art in a canal

 which was right behind this easily explained wall of locks (apparently Euro travelers are big believers that placing a lock on these sorts of shrines symbolizes unending love or something along those lines)

 this was right near the Lennon wall. Apparently when John Lennon died the people of Prague, then living under a totalitarian Communist regime were devastated and overnight this wall was covered with John Lennon inspired hopeful graffiti. Which was painted over by the authorities the next day. And redecorated again with more graffiti the next night, and the next, and the next.

 After admiring the wall for what seemed a good amount of time I crossed back over the Charles bridge for the last time.

 This time I stopped to make note of a local hero who was thrown off the bridge due rather predictably to a religious disagreement

 and the below sculpture marks the exact spot where he was thrown over.

 I was pretty tired and had been walking for what seemed like a very long time so I stopped in this chocolate cafe for a cup of liquid spooning chocolate (YES, exactly what it sounds like)

 Somewhat refreshed I moseyed back to Wenceslas square, took one last stroll around it to snap this picture, and then picked up my bags and headed for the airport.

 Past this boy who had the biggest holes in his ears that I've seen in a long time.

As always I wasn't back in London until ridiculously late in the evening and had to drag myself unprepared to class in the morning.

The week after Prague was relatively uneventful, I went to class, hit up yet another free kosher bagel lunch provided by the Jewish Society with Jardena, Valerie, and her flatmate Doris. Thursday was the big night of the week. The Colombian society hosted a belated Carnival celebration at a club in Covent Garden. A large group of Sidney Webbers had pre-drinks in the Atlas common room and then traveled as a pack over the the party, which ended up being lots of fun.

 (above, me, Valerie, Camila, Lina) The best part about Doris' signature pose?

 

 

 That the DJ copied it when she went behind the decks to pick out a better soundtrack.

I don't really recall any specifics from the next few days, I think I recovered from the party most of Friday and then over the weekend went surfing in Wales. It was COLD. Really cold. I drove up to Porthcawl with the urban surf club. Our first stop was a spot that "we would have all to ourselves." I'm guessing because it was a 20 minute hike to get there, despite repeated claims it would take no more than 10. The waves were miniscule and the water icy. I was in physical pain in my toes from how very, very, very cold they were. Eventually we got out and hiked back, driving up to a nice cafe by the beach to warm up. After about an hour we sucked it up and got back into our wet wetsuits in the parking lot and trotted down to the beach. This was a beach located in a rather large bay, with green sweeping hills above it. The sun was shining as we started our paddle out, by the time we finished a thick fog bank had swung over us and completely obscured the shore. I paddled around for a while, not really catching anything and eventually the fog started to lift. Unfortunately it revealed nothing but sheer vertical cliffs in front of me. I had apparently been dragged quite some distance by a rip in the fog. I was a bit panicked to be honest. The cliffs looked nothing like anything I had seen getting into the water and the tide was coming in and pushing the water against the rocks so I didn't think I could walk back and I knew the current was too strong for me to paddle back. I resolved to ask the one surfer nearby if he could suggest a way for me to get back to the beach. As luck would have it he was one of the surfers in my group! Together we decided to paddle in and get a closer look at what we were dealing with. It turns out that the cliffs were not as impenetrable and sheer as we thought, it was possible to clamber around a large large boulder and then up a slope of them to the top of the large hill we were at the base of. From there it was a 15 minute walk across completely foreign countryside until we finally stumbled across the car park we started from. I will leave to your imagination how terribly miserable the changing process was as the sun set and the wind howled in from the ocean and fingers froze and wetsuits clung to wet skin. Then drove back and packed up for my trip to Portugal. Of course, I was leaving at 3:30 am again so I did my best to catch a few hours of sleep this time before my flight. 

Portugal update to come - I promise! How am I as I write this you ask? Doing well! I'm back in London from my second trip to Devon in two weeks and I'm looking forward to some visitors this week. I have some Eastern Europe travels planned that I need to start thinking about and this week is my last week of classes.

As always, miss you, love you,