A big day today, the car is being picked up at our hotel in the morning. It has been a wonderful ride, a lot of fun, more tense than we had imagined, but we reached places in France, Portugal, and Spain that we never would have been able to see without the vehicle. And on our schedule rather than the train schedule. It has been a blast, but we are a bit road-weary now so its time to finish off this roadtrip and head for home. To Jonathan, who made the road part of the trip possible, thank you.
After dropping off our keys at the front desk for the pickup driver, Jan and I headed out to Wenceslas Square to find our day's tour. This is billed as a six hour maxi-tour of Prague's highlights, followed by a one hour 'ghost tour' of the haunted quarter of Prague later in the evening. Sounds like fun.
Jan and I went to the square and met the tour guide and the rest of the tour members, getting there just about on time. We set off, our tour guide pointing out many details from the long and colorful history of the Czech people and the history of invasion of this city by Germany and Russia in the distant and not-so-distant past. She was balanced in her treatment of Prague's famous citizens and contributions to our modern society. I particularly liked her jokes about the Skoda car, a Czech-engineered product on the roads of Prague. Question: 'How do you double the sale price of a Skoda?' Ans. Fill the tank with petrol. Question: 'What do you call a Skoda at the top of a hill?' Ans. A miracle. Question: 'Why do Skodas have heated rear windows?' Ans. So you have someplace warm to put your hands when you push it. There were others, lots of them about various subjects, she had a great sense of humor. Also a few laughs at the expense of Franz Kafka, a local philosopher and writer who made good.
As well as a tour of 'the new city' - started in the 1400's, we also saw the old city and the old Jewish Quarter, and even the Jewish Quarter had its old and new buildings although clearly, to us from the new world of Vancouver, we considered everything to be as ancient as dirt. Between North America and Europe, the age of things is a truly relative topic; our 'old' doesn't rate much on the European scale of history. For example, a cemetary that we saw in the Jewish Quarter has been operating so long in its confined space that the dead are piled fourteen layers high. Indeed, the level of the current markers are near roof-level of adjoining buildings. Presumably, this vertical growth will continue as time passes.
Part of our day included a river tour, with symphony music by Bedrich Smetana, a Czech composer (the piece was the famous 'Die Moldau') playing on the riverboat's speakers. Complete with excellent Czech beer, which our guide claimed to be the best beer in the world. It was good, but how do we rate it next to the Bavarian beer that we had in Furth? To me, beer tastes like beer, more or less the same, and to have truly great beer requires being in great company while drinking it. The taste is about the total experience of the drinking of the beer, who I am with and what I am doing. Beer, by itself as a beverage, is rather bitter actually. But beer after a rugby game, or after working hard on the farm, is elevated to a religious experience.
Then lunch (goulash and dumplings, coffee and desert) with more beer. As I recall the day now, writing this, it really was a rather excellent tour. After lunch, hiking again, across the river and catching a tram. These trolley street cars, travelling the roads of Prague by rail tracks, are unpredictable beasts. We got on, Jan found a seat but I found myself standing, and the car lurched forward. Fine, I was hanging on. Then it turned very quickly, left around a 90 degree corner, and if I hadn't been hanging on I would have flown out the window. I guess the driver saw a hole in the traffic over his tracks, and went for it much like the Italian drivers do. After that I hung on with both hands. Up to the top of a hill to a, what else, castle and church. 'Oh look, a castle!' We went in, wandered about, saw many more antiquities and religious artifacts. Jan and I were struck once again by the sameness of the religious buildings we have seen on our trips, the basillicas, churches, cathedrals. While they are lovely in a cold and harsh and rigid way, they also, all of them, have such violent events associated with them, such cruelty and hatred and barbarism, which they celebrate in the iconography present on their exteriors and interiors, on the walls and doors and carvings and paintings. Lovely in a way but brutal in its subject, loaded with sad and cruel symbolism. We endured, saw the presentation, and left, wandering through the old quarter of the castle, and ended the tour on an open area of the castle grounds that had a commanding view of the city of Prague. Our guide's humor struck again when she pointed out a dominant landmark of the city, a tall tower built for TV broadcasting in the communist era. She said that you can go up the tower if you want, there is a lift, and locals say that you get the best view of the city from there. The reason it is the best view, she said, is that when you are up there, the tower is not part of the view because you are already in it. Frankly it is an abomination on the skyline, so starkly out of place against the medieval background of the city.
From there, the tour over, we hiked down into the city with a Norwegian couple that we met on the tour. He was a lawyer for NATO, now retired, and had many interesting stories to pass the time on our return to the city. We also sat with them over lunch, and chatted with them on other parts of the walkabout, and I found out that my name, spelled as my father originally spelled it, 'Fuhre', is legitimately a Norwegian name and a not uncommon one. I don't know why, but I felt somehow connected to some long-missing roots. I was born in Vancouver, my father left Norway in 1912, and we weren't a close family, there was never talk of family ties and I always missed that. Jan and I have plans of visiting Norway now, after we complete the exploration of her family history by visiting Birkenhead, where her father was born, near Liverpool.
Jan and I had dinner in the old town square in front of the 'Astrological Clock', a truly remarkable piece of machinery that, still working, dates bach to the 1400's somewhere. At 8:30pm we met our friends from the tour and our tour guide for the 'ghost tour' of old Prague. Our guide, Nina, a highlight of the whole tour, was in fine form again this evening. She promised surprises earlier in the day when she mentioned the tour, and she delivered.
We expected a heady dose of realism, hauntings, murders, all the poltergiest stuff. What we got was a very entertaining one-woman standup comedy act, on a moving stage. We walked about five minutes to an old church, then down to a beat-up side door, where she told the story of a 'spirit raiser' in the 1400's who over stepped his skills and raised a bunch of angry spirits instead of only one. The spirits, annoyed at their slumber being disturbed, chased the man from the church and tore him limb from limb, including tearing off his head. To back up her story she showed us a carving in the arch above the door of just such a character, mangled, his head depticted as severed from the body in the carving. Ok, the story supported by the church carving, how could her story be disputed. But I suspect the actual event was bloodthirsty whereas her tale was humorous.
Next stop was a doorway in a narrow lane, where we heard the story of a lecherous red-haired vegetarian butcher who dalied too long with his lady in bed, an unlikely character but a terrific tale nonetheless. Her story was full of laughs, though she left the outcome 'hanging' a bit at the end as we walked away down the alley, simply saying that the ghost of a butcher, with cleaver and apron, haunted the nearby lanes. As our group followed her, an aparition suddenly appeared from behind a building, roaring and waving a cleaver, a large fellow in a big ugly rubber mask. Predictably, the ladies scampered and screamed, the men too, everybody startled. A joke of course, it was one of her sons playing the role, but she laughed and warned us again of the evil spirits. We, all of us, laughed too and moved on closely behind her, somewhat shaken. The aparition, in bloody apron and mask and cleaver, followed us for about a block.
On from there to a building with a ring depicted above a door. She did a bit of standup there, and told us to remember 'Umgelt, the Turk, and the Ring', then we moved on. A long and funny story ensued as usual, with a warning to beware of this big Turkish guy carrying the severed head of a young lady. We looked around, waiting for the apparition, but nothing. Relieved, we turned and followed her down the alley and then, on cue, screaming up behind us in a bloodthirsty fashion, came #2 son as the Turk. Screaming, laughing, scampering about, our little group thoroughly bonded by our scary experiences, we followed Nina out of the alleyway. Closely, our heads turning from side to side.
More stories, more frights, a skeleton appeared after another story, etc, until finally the tour ended with a story of a demented barber and Nina 'shaving' a fellow of the group with her buzzing cell phone. Good fun, a great evening, we enjoyed ourselves immensely the whole day long. As a guided tour it compared very favorably with ones that we had on the world cruise. We learned a lot about the locals, we had good laughs, met great people, and experienced the local landscape by foot, tram, and riverboat. This city tour is a quality product, highly recommended.
Finally, Jan and I home to the hotel and down for the night.
