Prague (Day)

While we were in Berlin Abby and I decided, with the help of a ticket agent, that we should go straight from Prague to Milan on Friday June 23. An Italian train strike was potentially scheduled for that day, and that particular train would be exempt, the only train exempt for an unknown amount of time.

This meant that we’d have to leave Prague early on Friday for a 13 hour train adventure so we only had one full day in Prague.

To start the day we grabbed breakfast at a café and walked to the Astronomical clock, built in 1410. I tried to get a video of it, but it didn’t turn out too well. 

Essentially, this clock tells everything but the time, including but potentially not limited to: the suns position in the sky, the lunar cycle, the calendar date, and the name day. Every hour, on the hour (between 8 am and 8 pm) the 12 apostles go on a parade and a death skeleton, a vain person, a corrupt person, and a greedy person all do a little shake and dance. This was added in the 15^th century and at the time it was the best tourist attraction in the world, today it is joked as being the most overrated. 

 The whole clock complex, the clock's on the left.

 The part that showed the moon and sun and astrological cycle

 The part with the Name Day (all that writing along the outside states a name and a day)

Abby and I only waited for it for about five minutes and we found it entertaining, but later in the day we noticed people gathering for it about thirty minutes before the hour. In that case, I might understand calling it overrated.

The clock has a creepy history though. Purportedly, after it was completed the king of Prague had the maker blinded so that he would never be able to repeat his masterpiece elsewhere. The maker responded by throwing himself into the mechanisms of the clock, killing himself, and throwing the clock off slightly for about a hundred or so years.

From the Astronomical Clock, we walked to St. Charles Bridge. This bridge has over thirty statues of various saints on it, including St. Barbara. The statues were added over the course of a few hundred years and today most of them are replicas for preservation reasons but they are beautiful nonetheless.

 

St. Barbara's in the middle mom

 

 

A man, his music, and a "monkey" on the Charles Bridge

The view of the Prague castle from the Charles Bridge

For lunch we met up with Ally, a friend of Abby’s from Loyola who happened to be doing a study abroad in Prague. Ally’s Czech professor let us join the class for the day, which also happened to be the day they were going out for lunch to practice ordering food in Czech. Obviously, Abby and I attempted ordering in Czech as well. I don’t know how well we did, but I know we ended up with what we had wanted to order, so I will call it a victory.

One last picture of Abby on the Charles Bridge for good measure: