Bohemian Like You {A Few Days in Prague}

    Our final stop on the Grand European Adventure was Prague. We arrived in Prague after a 5-hour bus ride from Munich.  The bus was set up as almost an airline, with a hostess who brought you drinks and snacks (if you paid for them, of course), and the man across the aisle from me was taking full advantage of the service.  On our 5-hour bus ride, he had 6 beers; after the 3rd, even the hostess was giggling.  He would scratch his hairy beer belly as he drank, and after one too many accidental hairy-belly sightings I had to close my eyes and pretend to sleep.

   We finally arrived in Prague, completely exhausted despite the fact that we had done nothing but sit for the past 5 hours, and walked into the central station for train tickets.  The lady at the tourist information counter could not speak English, so instead yelled at me in Czech and gestured wildly when I tried to ask for directions.  Lady, I wanted to say, be nice to me. I fuel your economy here.  The least you could do would be to help me get to my hostel so I can spend some money.

   We did end up making it to our hostel, and essentially threw down our suitcases and headed out straight for dinner.  We had reservations for the Ice Bar afterwards, but the line was long and we wandered around the surrounding club.  Now, this club was advertised as pretty much the coolest place in Prague; 5 floors, with tons of different rooms and different styles of music, DJs, lighting effects, it sounded like The Place To Be.  And it would have been, if not for the 14-year-olds who inhabited it.  I do not know how so many preteens and high school freshmen got into the club that night, but we had accidentally stumbled upon Preteen Mecca.  It was ridiculous. I've never felt old, except in the club.

      We made a hasty exit from the club and finally found our way to the ice bar.  Our relatively expensive ticket allowed us only 20 minutes inside, so we had to make the most of it.  The ice bar is completely made out of ice--the floor, walls, counter, tables, cups, and everything is made out of ice.  They give you superwarm jackets before you go inside, along with gloves, so you don't completely freeze. It was pretty cool.

Our ice-barman.

The bar itself.

My drink was in an ice cube cup! So awesome.

   We hopped out of the ice bar satisfied with our night's excursions, and got back to our room just in time to hear the girl underneath my bunk bed throw up repeatedly right next door.  Needless to say, I was quite perturbed by this turn of events, and immediately switched to another, less vomity bunk bed.

   The next morning we awoke and set off for our official walking tour of Prague.  Our guide was ridiculously tall and also ridiculously entertaining, and we spent the morning learning about some of the history of Prague and seeing some of the most beautiful places.  We walked around the Jewish Quarter, saw statues of Franz Kafka, learned about the astronomical clock...

Apparently, Prague is The City to get married in.  Here we have 15 brides getting married at once in the Old Town Square; I saw at least 19 total for the whole day.

The Astronomical Clock! Still ticking after 600+ years.  The story goes that the city was so pleased with its  clock that they blinded and cut the tongue out of its creator, so that he could never produce another one like it.  He got his revenge, though, by sticking his hand into the machinery and messing up the clock for 100 years.

Old Town Square.

Part of the Jewish Quarter.

Statue of Franz Kafka riding on the shoulders of a body-less suit. The story goes that Kafka always had nightmares about this empty suit chasing him, until in one of his dreams he turned around and faced it, and it picked him up and put him on his shoulders so he could see better.

The entrance to the Charles Bridge.

Gardens!

     Directly after our three-hour walking tour, we decided to be crazy and hopped on another tour, this time of the Prague Castle, a huge complex of buildings that are all part of the castle.  This time our guide was a born-and-bred American Southerner, complete with a George accent and the attitude to go with it.  Let's just say he wasn't the most sensitive of guides.  Nevertheless, we learned even more Czech history, and got to see lots of the castle as well.

If you've seen the movie Amadeus, this is the outside of Mozart's house!

The cathedral in the center of the castle.

Golden Lane. Kafka lived in #22.

   We arrived back in the center of town completely exhausted, and wanted to get some dinner.  We found a restaurant that our guide had recommended, and sat down to eat.  By the time we noticed that they charged for water, it was too late; we were stuck at this tourist trap, whether we liked it or not.  We had water bottles and did not much feel like paying, so we took turns sneaking to the bathroom to drink from our water bottles like fugitives.  I'm sure the waiters knew exactly what we were doing, and were immensely entertained by it.

I felt left out of all the beer pictures, so I borrowed Breanna's beer and took a picture with it.  I realize this is pathetic.

   That night we decided to be adventurous, and went to an absinthe bar.  Absinthe is a type of alcohol that supposedly makes you hallucinate, but is actually just hyped-up normal alcohol.   We all had a drink and were completely fine, and felt mildly cheated out of a legal hallucinatory experience.  Oh well.

    The next morning, Breanna and I headed out to a modern art museum.  Some of the stuff was interesting.  Some of the stuff was....art.

Stairway to heaven?

Wow, look at that. So inspiring.

Ditto.

Ooh. This is cool.

It's my family!

    I spent the rest of the day wandering around and buying hippie jewelry.  That night, though, we had something special planned: the opera.  It turns out that Czech opera tickets can be extraordinarily cheap if you get bad seats, so we capitalized on the opportunity and made our way to the State Opera House to see La Boheme.  The Opera House was gorgeous, and the opera itself was lovely.  I wasn't expecting much, since I usually don't like too much vibrato, but it really was beautiful.  We were also surprised to see how similar the plot was to the Broadway show Rent; they paralleled each other almost exactly.

The State Opera House in Prague.

     Our final morning in Prague, we walked across the Charles River Bridge and bought more hippie jewelry.  Then we headed back to the airport and found our way back to Dublin.

Google'd picture of the Charles River Bridge.  There were too many tourists for me to really get a good shot.

    And thus our EuroTrip ended. Those were the best three weeks of my life, and ones I won't forget for a long time. I will probably never have the chance again to travel for such an extended period, and I'm really glad I took advantage of it. There's still so much more to do and see, though--I have a list a mile long of cities I want to visit.  But for now, our lineup--Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Munich, Prague--was an excellent one, and there's not a thing I would change.

Current update: I am in exam mode!  I've been studying for the past few weeks for my two exams.  I had one today, and my last one is Monday.  Despite my pressing need to study, I visited the Aran Islands last weekend, and next week (after my exams), I'm going to London.  Living it up while I still can!

Dachau

    Our final full day in Munich, we decided to visit the nearby memorial site for the former concentration camp of Dachau.  We took a guided tour of the memorial site, and had a very tiny, very Irish man who told us all about the site and the former concentration camp on our way through.
    I'll write a bit of what I learned on the tour and save the pictures for the end.

    Dachau was originally chosen as a site for a concentration camp because it already had many of the structures (such as fencing, etc) required for the camp.  Dachau served as a model, both in the camp setup and in prisoner treatment, for all other concentration camps.  The site was opened in 1933 and used to house political prisoners--not Jews!  The political prisoners would have to be "re-educated" in a military-style way, with meaningless labor (moving stones from one place to another, and then back; digging a pit and then filling it back up) and very strict rules until they were fit to be released.  The re-education was designed to break the spirits of Hitler's political opponents. They were forbidden to speak of their imprisonment after their release.
   In 1938, Jews and other "unwanted" races such as Roma and Siri people began arriving at the camp, and Dachau evolved into the concentration camp we think of today, with one major exception--it was not a death factory.  While tens of thousands of people died here, there were no mass exterminations like at Auschwitz.  The approximate count was about 40,000 dead from Dachau, while over 1 million were killed at Auschwitz.  However, prisoners from Dachau were routinely sent to Auschwitz for extermination.  Dachau did have a gas chamber, but it was mostly used for experiments, not mass murders.
    The conditions at Dachau were unspeakably horrible.  Guards routinely murdered prisoners for no reason, or would torture them until they could no longer work, and then kill them because they weren't working. There were many medical experiments performed on prisoners as well. The camp was filthy, disease-infested, and essentially a pit of death.
    At the liberation of Dachau, one of the American units found a train nearby full of bodies to be cremated at Dachau.  The memorial at Dachau showed some of the pictures and the original footage from the discovery; it was horrifically appalling.  The bodies were so wasted away that I couldn't even tell they were human remains.
    When the camp was finally liberated on April 29, 1945, the American troops were so horrified at the conditions in the camp and at the mounds of bodies waiting to be burned that they murdered between 30 and 50 SS guards on the spot.  While the incident was investigated, the soldiers responsible were never charged.

     Of all the surviving concentration camps, Dachau is by far the best preserved.  All the buildings and crematoriums are original, with the exception of the barracks, which were so disgusting and filled with vermin that they had to be destroyed.

"Work makes you free."

"Smoking is forbidden"--to taunt prisoners when they first arrived.

Model of whipping post used by guards.  Although this and other tortures were eventually outlawed by Nazi command because too many prisoners were dying, Dachau guards continued to torture using these methods.

A young boy, victim to Nazi medical experiments.This particular experiment involved altitude changes for plane pilots. When the Americans liberated Dachau, they confiscated all the medical research, and it's never been heard from since.

Recreation of the barracks.

Communal toilets.

"Think on how we died here."

The opening where the gas canisters would be dropped for the gas chamber.

"Shower." The gas chamber.

Inside the gas chamber.

The large crematorium.

Small crematorium.

Memorial to the countless victims.

   Perhaps it is a bit gruesome to visit such a place, but I think it is so important to see a concentration camp and realize just how evil the human soul can become.  The Nazis did not all start out this way--it wasn't just people with a history of cruelty who got attracted to the party and to the SS.  Many were everyday people, just like you and just like me, who got sucked in by propaganda and lost their sense of right and wrong.  Granted, I'm sure many of the guards were predisposed to cruelty before the war, but so many of them were normal before. I'm not excusing them; I just think that the potential for atrocity lies in everyone, whether we like it or not. One of the most chilling exhibits displayed letters from a Dachau SS guard to his home, and he begins by being disgusted by the whole camp and the way it was run.  By the end of the series of letters, he would write home and calmly list off how many Jews he had murdered that day, and say it was a good day.  It was awful. Awful. I'll never forget.

Munching in München

 
     In Munich, we discovered a sad truth: Germans do not believe in vegetables.   We had suspected this after our Berlin restaurant excursions included no more than bratwurst (sausage) and schnitzel (fried breaded pork), but Munich confirmed our suspicions.  Vegetables are not a thing in Germany, unless they are put on top of bratwurst in the form of ketchup or mustard.  The vegetarians in our group were a picture of noble suffering, eating bread and tiny side salads as they bemoaned their fate.
    We arrived in Munich on a Sunday night after a grueling 7-hour bus ride and trekked to the hostel.  After dropping all our stuff off, we decided to head over to Springfest, a mini Octoberfest.  Our arrival during the festival was actually a complete coincidence, but once we discovered what was happening, we were pretty excited.  A real German festival, with beer and leiderhosen and German things?  We could not wait for the impending culture shock.
      What we actually got was, essentially, an American carnival with lots more beer and the occasional leather pants, called leiderhosen.  There were the traditional vomit-comit rides and cotton candy stands, and (of course) the obligatory bratwurst stands.  All of the rides actually blasted American pop music, which was disconcerting, not to mention annoying. The main features, however, were the biergartens--essentially enormous tents where everyone drinks beer.

Ferris wheel! We rode it; too expensive, but it was in Germany, so that made it cool.

What.

The biergarten itself!

    We wandered around, gawked at some leiderhosen, ate some bratwurst, and finally entered the biergarten.  Now, in Berlin we were surprised because they served beer by the half-liter, which we thought was somewhat ridiculous.  At Springfest, they serve it by the LITER.
     Needless to say, my companions were fully satisfied with just one liter.  I almost wished I actually enjoyed beer, just for the satisfaction of being able to say that I drank a liter of German beer.  Alas, my taste buds are too finicky, and I remained beer-less.

The next day, we learned the chant of Munich middle-schoolers.  It goes something like this: DISCO DISCO BOOM BOOM. DISCO DISCO BOOM BOOM.
    We were taking the U-Bahn towards the central square to hop on a free tour, and we accidentally sat down in Middle School Land.  As soon as the train started up, they started their strange mantra: "Disco disco boom boom.  Disco disco boom boom." and chanted it for the whole ride.  While this particular combination of English words has absolutely no meaning to me, they persevered in their chanting with an admirable dedication.  I'd like to think that I now have proof that middle-schoolers are strange around the world.
   We arrived in Marienplatz, the famous central square in Munich, and hopped on the free walking tour.  It began with a visit to the Glockenspiel, the largest cuckoo clock in the world.  We walked around the city and learned about some of the history of Munich.  The land was protected by a regent until Napolean married his niece to one of the regents of Munich.  At the engagement celebration, he remembered that he had promised to marry her to a king, so right then and there he pronounced the regent a king.  Later on in history, Munich was where Hitler started the Nazi party; it was his favorite German city.  During WWII, the city got heavily bombed, and afterwards there was a massive rebuilding effort to reconstruct things exactly as they had been before.  They ran out of money, though, and for the palace, one entire wall is made out of stone where they drew the decorations and carvings onto the wall.

New Town Hall in Marienplatz.  The cuckoo clock is right in the middle of the tower.  The statue on the left is a statue of St. Mary, made of pure gold.

The Glockenspiel itself!

Famous statue of Juliet from Romeo & Juliet.  Apparently, if you rub the statue, you get good luck in love....guess where you're supposed to rub?

Crazy lavender hair on one of the former rulers of Munich.

Legend has it if your foot fits the imprint, you might be the devil. I guess Mommy was right...

    After our walking tour, we had lunch at the enormous farmer's market called Viktualenmarket, and my companions took advantage of the liters of beer.

The beer is bigger than her head. Just sayin'.

    The English Gardens were only a few U-Bahn stops away, so we headed up there for a few hours.  The English Gardens are unequivocally gorgeous.  It's enormous complex of grounds and gardens and cool little structures.  I could have spent all day there.

The Temple of Apollo.

Little pond in the middle of the park.

The man in black started feeding the birds, and they swarmed.

    We met one of Breanna's friends from school for dinner at beer hall.  Prompted by the sight of everyone else ordering beer, I decided to give this beer thing a go.  Maybe it wouldn't be so bad.  Maybe it would even be drinkable.
    Wrong, wrong, wrong.  Even this special "fruity" beer still tasted like beer.  I eventually managed to get the others to drink my share, and left feeling that my beer-tasting skills are very inadequate.
   After dinner, Breanna's friend brought us down by the river, and we walked by the water in the moonlight. It was beautiful and serene; I never wanted to leave.

Our final day in Munich, we paid a visit to Dachau, the concentration camp nearby....