Behind The Curtain

Following a good night’s rest and breakfast we started our day with a guided walking tour of 6 miles beginning with Praha, Ulice Na Příkopě, connecting Wenceslas Square with the Republic Square. It separates the Old Town from the New Town.

This included banks, former banks, municipal buildings, churches, squares, architectural and historical interests, narrow streets, bronze and stone statues, oddities, interests and other ephemera from an old European city featuring the oldest university in Europe.

Highlights included: The Marian Tower located at the 50^th Meridian, Charles Bridge, Prague Castle and Palace, Czech parliament buildings and St. Vitus Cathedral.  More stops for Czech Pils, wine and food!

Church of St. Gall

Marian Tower

Charles Bridge - Built in 1357, this medieval bridge spans the Vltava River connecting Old Town and Lesser Town.  It features two Gothic towers and lined with 30 Baroque statues of significant religious figures in Czech history.

Prague Castle and Palace

St. Vitus Cathedral

 

 

Random Street Scene

Staroměstský pivovar U Supa

 

Behind The Curtain

Prague is home to a Jewish enclave situated between the Old Town Square and the Vltava River.

What is called the Jewish Quarter traces its roots to the establishment of the Jewish Ghetto in the 13th century when Jews were forcibly settled in this particular area.  Over the centuries Jews were prohibited from living anywhere else in Prague and it became more crowded as additional people forced to flee Germany, Austria, Moravia and Spain joined them there.

Compounding their difficulties the inhabitants of the ghetto were subjected to the whims of whoever ruled at the moment.  The most recent occurring from 1893-1913 with the destruction of buildings and reordering of the streets. Fortunately, the most significant historical buildings were spared destruction and remain a testament to the history of Prague's Jewish community.  Today these buildings represent the best-preserved  collection of Jewish architecture in Europe.

The Jewish Quarter is home to six synagogues and the old Jewish Cemetery.  

The Spanish Synagogue and the Old-New Synagogue are the most famous ones..The Spanish one is named for its Moorish interior design elements.  Constructed in 1868 it is the newest.  The Old-New Synagogue is the oldest active synagogue in Europe.  Built in 1270 it is the first Gothic architecture in Prague.

Maisel Synagogue 1592

Pinkas Synagogue 1535 

Klausen Synagogue 1694

Spanish Synagogue 1868

The Old Jewish Cemetery is the most remarkable of its kind in Europe and was in use from the first half of the 15th century until the last half of the 18th century.  Designated a National Cultural Heritage in 1985 there are approximately 12,000 gravestones.  The number of burials is estimated to be 100,000.

Ironically, all of this survived the Nazi occupation as Hitler laid plans to preserve The Quarter as a Museum to an Extinct Race. Plundered Jewish artifacts from Nazi-occupied territories were relocated to Prague.  Because much of this property remained after the war - the original owners having perished in Nazi concentration camps - the Jewish museum became the second largest in the world.

Birthplace of the Bohemian Jewish author Franz Kafka

 

Behind The Curtain

No trip behind what had formerly been a Soviet communist puppet state behind the iron curtain without a trip to the Cold War Museum on Wenceslas Square in historic Old Town Prague.

The Hotel Jalta (Yalta) was erected from 1954 to 1958 on the location of a building destroyed by allied bombing during WWII.  From the 1950s until 1989 the hotel was home to a cold war secret.  20 meters underground is a bunker spread over three floors designed to provide shelter for up to 150 prominent state officials and espionage officers for as long as two months in event a nuclear exchange occurred between Warsaw Pact countries and the West.

The bunker had its own power and water cistern and operating theater.  The concrete walls are two meters thick and include a steel slab designed as a radiation shield.  Two emergency exit tunnels lead to Wenceslas Square and an adjacent building.

Following the Velvet Revolution and return to democratic government the bunker was declassified and turned over to the hotel.  It is now a cold war museum.

If you like espionage and intrigue this is worth a visit.  The Secret Police occupied the space for  four decades creating a listening post to eavesdrop on the hotel's guests who were largely officials of Western countries.

West Germany's embassy was located on the premises in the 1970s and the Secret Police tapped their phones and bugged their offices.  Here you will see how hotel room bugs were hidden in items as innocuous as a shoe brush.

Our guide at the entrance

Soviet era propaganda  

Medical facilities

Air handling equipment (still works)

Telex, communications equipment and switchboard used to listen-in and record bugged hotel rooms 

Show me your papers!

One of the escape tunnels

You can learn more about the museum here

Behind The Curtain

The first couple of days of our trip (yes, flying east adds another calendar day in a compressed time period) was eventful and fraught with miniature interruptions.

Everything began with a weather delay of our flight from Milwaukee to Chicago necessitating a mad dash to connect with our flight to Brussels.  Which was delayed anyway.  More bad weather and a visit from armed agents (and their dogs) from Immigration and Border Control selectively stopping to question selected individuals in the jet way.  We were personally witness to the removal of six passengers from the aircraft accounting for further delay.

Following departure,  an undisclosed medical emergency requiring the attention of a couple of doctors traveling as passengers 700 miles into the flight.  The aircraft commenced a course correction to Iceland; cancelled 90 minutes later with the stabilization of the initial emergency.

Arrival in Brussels was late, barely making the connection the Prague.  Three firsts:  No boarding pass in Chicago - facial recognition technology was used.  All of our luggage made the Prague connection; which was the first on-time flight in two days.

Checked-into the Art Nouveau Palace Hotel in the oldest part of Prague, freshened-up and walked to a local joint for great food and the most excellent Pilsner Urquell we ever had.

With the arrival of evening we began what would become a daily routine of walking on cobblestone sidewalks and streets, sightseeing, more food and more terrific Pils.

Church of Our Lady before Týn

Old Town Hall and Clock Tower

Pivnice Stupartska Bar

Republic Square and Powder Tower

St. Nicholas’ Church

On Celetná street, in the heart of the historic Old Town district, Prague's Černá Madona cafe has been selling out of a confection that looks like the coronavirus 

Czech-in periodically (pun intended) for more travelogue from our trip behind what formerly was behind the iron curtain.

 

Behind the Curtain

In case you are scratching your noggin over the title of this post we recently returned from a trip of almost two weeks through Eastern Europe.  

Formerly a satellite nation in the orbit of the Soviets; in 1993 Czechoslovakia separated peacefully into two new countries - the Czech Republic and Slovakia.  A great number of Slovaks were of the opinion that the country was too Prague-centric and a great number of Czechs felt they were subsidizing Slovakia.  Neither country garnered a popular majority supporting independence.  Nevertheless, the divorce was orchestrated by the Czech and Slovak prime ministers - Vaclav Klaus and Vladimir Meciar following the 1992 elections.

The German Democratic Republic (GDR), aka East Germany, was reunified with West Germany on October 3, 1990.  The GDR was neither a democracy nor a republic.  Another former satellite nation in the orbit of the Soviets, free elections were nonexistent.  Citizens were generally forbidden to travel and lived under the iron rule of a puppet state answerable to Soviet Russia.

The people I met in both the Czech Republic and formerly East Germany have now been freed of Soviet domination for three decades.  They do not speak fondly of the Communist Years nor do they harbor any fondness for their former Russian overlords.

The boundary that divided Europe into two spheres of influence for more than three generations following the end of the Second World War and the end of the Cold War in 1991 was metaphorically known as the Iron Curtain.  

The Iron Curtain was a symbol of the effort made by the Soviet Union to keep its satellite states from the influence of the decadent west.  Unintentionally, this became our trip behind what was previously on the other side of the iron curtain.

The front end of the trip began with several days in Prague and ended with several days in Berlin.  Before, after and in-between were plenty of sights to be seen, food to eaten and terrific adult beverages to be quaffed.  

Speaking of which, if you've ever consumed an imported Pilsner Urquell from a green glass bottle in the states you might comment that it is a good beer.  Highly-hopped, almost to the point of skunkiness, nevertheless a good beer.

Pilsner Urquell served from the tap is milder, full-bodied yet mellow and delicious.  Of course, I would say the same thing about Guinness stout in Ireland.  A Guinness consumed in the shadow of the brewery is better.  But I am biased.  And I digress.

Czech cooking famously features pork, duck and chicken, cabbage and various dumplings swimming in delicious gravy.

One Czech Koruna is worth about .046 USD.  500 Koruna is worth about $23 and a mug of delicious Czech pils will set you back about 5 CZK.  The Czech Republic is both a member of the EU and NATO but does maintain its own currency.

If you fetch a couple thousand CZK from the ATM at a bank you'll feel like a high roller.  Live it-up as the exchange rate is in your favor.

And don't sweat deciphering the bill after dinner.  Learn a little Czech to match a little English.  The rest is gestures. 

Pro Tip: Euros and American dollars are readily accepted.