August 17
Charles Bridge and Prague Castle in the distance...
* Today we crossed Charles Bridge to discover Lesser Town. As mentioned in “Prague in Black and Gold,” King Charles contributed to an extensive amount of development for Prague and Bohemia under his reign from 1347 to 1378 making the city “a wondrous heart of European power, religious feeling, creativity, and erudition.” To have the most famous bridge in town named after him is very suiting since it brings both banks of the city together, reflecting the actions of Charles himself. We went inside the Catholic St. Nicholas’ Church (there is a Protestant St. Nicholas’ in Old Town Square) and here Radka sat down with us a talked about the Communist ere, which she lived through. Hearing stories of repression from someone who lived through it is far beyond anything that a history book could do. It sounds like Radka had to live under so many restrictions and couldn’t live freely because certain things were altogether forbidden. One such thing was religion in school. It was absolutely not allowed so this is part of the reason why the Czech Republic has a high percentage of Atheists.
* We continued up the hill to see Prague Castle (which has a hodge-podge of buildings from different rulers; even the Habsburgs left their mark) and saw the famous window that started the Thirty Years’ War in the Defenestration of Prague. I don’t think there is a better story than an argument between Protestants and Catholics ending with a person being chucked out of window intended to fall to his death, yet miraculously saved by a heap of dung. Whoever said history was boring?!
posted by lauREN @ 9/11/2006
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home