7 Days In, 104 Days Out
After an afternoon of debating should-we-shouldn't-we go on this tour when it looks like the heavens might pour at any moment, Helen and I decided to follow red-headed tour guide Katka to Vysehrad for my second tour in Prague.
Margie had said to me at some point that being in Prague means being in a place where almost everyone has lived under Communism. Listening to Katka talk more or less hammered that point home for me. Katka looks like she's 25, but, ahem, she's not. As we all walked into the Vysehrad castle complex--which is now the secondmost important castle complex in Prague after Hradcany--Katka began telling us about the students who marched through Vysehrad during the Velvet Revolution. Please correct me if I'm wrong, you all know my history is terrible, but communism essentially fell in the Czech Republic after the Velvet Revolution in 1989, right?
Katka recounted how students marched through Vysehrad, visiting graves of relevant figure in the National Cemetery there, marched down what's now Narodni Street in Old Town, which not so coincidentally translated to 'National' Street. Where there began only a few hundred students protesting, they numbered in the thousands by the end, the crowd being joined by students along the way as they marched. Katka remembers this because she as 14 at the time. Along Narodni, there's a statue depicting open hands, which represents the gestures the students made as they clashed with the police (Policie, in Czech). They held up their hands, saying, "Our hands are empty," and it became a symbol of the Velvet Revolution. I have yet to find this statue, which is why I was loathe to write this post quite yet. It'll be a mission, since I don't have much direction to go on besides "one of the little arches off of Narodni... It's quite easy to miss."
We also learned that the National Cemetary at Vysehrad was one of those things the Czech people started to try to break out from under... whatever rule they were under... and begin to establish their own national identity. When you hear the words 'national cemetery', you might be thinking Arlington, but it's not true. We don't have anything like this in the U.S. The closest thing I can think of is Arlington. A great number of important Czech people (artists, scientists, etc.) are buried there, jointly chosen by the Czech Ministry of Culture and the individuals' families and last wishes. As I'm not familiar with Czech political history, and as a former musician, the one that hit me the hardest was the tombstone in this picture. Antonin Dvorak. Smetana was also buried here, but my camera was dying and I was saving my pictures for the most famous. Sorry, Smetana.
Vysehrad being so much less touristy than the Prague Castle (probably because no castle still stands at Vysehrad besides some ruins), the grounds and the National Cemetary are shiver-inspiring in a much quieter way. Walking through the cemetery, it's not hard to feel the tremendous weight of history settling down on you like a cloak, walking among so much of the Czech people's historical past. One of the inscriptions on the oldest shrine says, loosely translated and interpreted by me, THOSE WHO ARE BURIED HERE STILL SPEAK.
Walking over to the Vysehrad overlook, we passed the statue of Libuse and Premysl, two people who are entwined with the legends of the beginnings of Prague. Libuse was one of three daughters of a king, and she was apparently very different (and possibly nuts). But she was a visionary--saw visions of Prague as the magnificent city it would become, when it was still made up of a couple sticks. Libuse sent out a horse to find a husband, and the husband came back carrying Premysl, a farmer. Premysl goes on to become the founder of the Premyslid dynasty.
And from the overlook, you can see Petrin Tower on top of Petrin Hill. Courtesy of Katka, we learned that underneath Petrin Tower, below where all the tourists go, there rests an exhibition to someone called Jara Cimrman, whose name I actually couldn't actually remember (or spell... I thought it was Jana Zimmermann), and had to google to come up with. What I googled?
"Prague figure never existed"
You read that right. There's a monument/museum under Petrin Tower, which I have yet to go to, dedicated to Jara Cimrman, a fictional person. Never actually existed. It's insane, right? Cimrman (It's the Czech obsession with using r's as vowels again) was someone dreamt up by the Czech theater during the 70's or so as comic relief from underneath the shadow of Communism. In jest, they gave Cimrman the credit for helping invent all sorts of important things, helping Mr. Eiffel think up the base of the Eiffel Tower, for one. Thus, Petrin Tower (a four or five times miniature copy of the Eiffel) stands on top of Petrin Hill in tribute to this joke.
Cimrman is apparently very popular with the people, though. Katka said when there was a contest/poll regarding the most important Czech people of all time (kings, etc. included), Cimrman almost won. So they had to change the rules.
After an afternoon of debating should-we-shouldn't-we go on this tour when it looks like the heavens might pour at any moment, Helen and I decided to follow red-headed tour guide Katka to Vysehrad for my second tour in Prague.
Margie had said to me at some point that being in Prague means being in a place where almost everyone has lived under Communism. Listening to Katka talk more or less hammered that point home for me. Katka looks like she's 25, but, ahem, she's not. As we all walked into the Vysehrad castle complex--which is now the secondmost important castle complex in Prague after Hradcany--Katka began telling us about the students who marched through Vysehrad during the Velvet Revolution. Please correct me if I'm wrong, you all know my history is terrible, but communism essentially fell in the Czech Republic after the Velvet Revolution in 1989, right?
Katka recounted how students marched through Vysehrad, visiting graves of relevant figure in the National Cemetery there, marched down what's now Narodni Street in Old Town, which not so coincidentally translated to 'National' Street. Where there began only a few hundred students protesting, they numbered in the thousands by the end, the crowd being joined by students along the way as they marched. Katka remembers this because she as 14 at the time. Along Narodni, there's a statue depicting open hands, which represents the gestures the students made as they clashed with the police (Policie, in Czech). They held up their hands, saying, "Our hands are empty," and it became a symbol of the Velvet Revolution. I have yet to find this statue, which is why I was loathe to write this post quite yet. It'll be a mission, since I don't have much direction to go on besides "one of the little arches off of Narodni... It's quite easy to miss."
Vysehrad being so much less touristy than the Prague Castle (probably because no castle still stands at Vysehrad besides some ruins), the grounds and the National Cemetary are shiver-inspiring in a much quieter way. Walking through the cemetery, it's not hard to feel the tremendous weight of history settling down on you like a cloak, walking among so much of the Czech people's historical past. One of the inscriptions on the oldest shrine says, loosely translated and interpreted by me, THOSE WHO ARE BURIED HERE STILL SPEAK.
Walking over to the Vysehrad overlook, we passed the statue of Libuse and Premysl, two people who are entwined with the legends of the beginnings of Prague. Libuse was one of three daughters of a king, and she was apparently very different (and possibly nuts). But she was a visionary--saw visions of Prague as the magnificent city it would become, when it was still made up of a couple sticks. Libuse sent out a horse to find a husband, and the husband came back carrying Premysl, a farmer. Premysl goes on to become the founder of the Premyslid dynasty.
And from the overlook, you can see Petrin Tower on top of Petrin Hill. Courtesy of Katka, we learned that underneath Petrin Tower, below where all the tourists go, there rests an exhibition to someone called Jara Cimrman, whose name I actually couldn't actually remember (or spell... I thought it was Jana Zimmermann), and had to google to come up with. What I googled?
"Prague figure never existed"
You read that right. There's a monument/museum under Petrin Tower, which I have yet to go to, dedicated to Jara Cimrman, a fictional person. Never actually existed. It's insane, right? Cimrman (It's the Czech obsession with using r's as vowels again) was someone dreamt up by the Czech theater during the 70's or so as comic relief from underneath the shadow of Communism. In jest, they gave Cimrman the credit for helping invent all sorts of important things, helping Mr. Eiffel think up the base of the Eiffel Tower, for one. Thus, Petrin Tower (a four or five times miniature copy of the Eiffel) stands on top of Petrin Hill in tribute to this joke.
Cimrman is apparently very popular with the people, though. Katka said when there was a contest/poll regarding the most important Czech people of all time (kings, etc. included), Cimrman almost won. So they had to change the rules.
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