Czech Republic

Prague

We landed in Prague late afternoon, October 29 and checked into our hotel room. We lucked out at the hotel, it was over booked, so we were upgraded to a business suite. 

We had our orientation and met the cruise director. We will have a full boat of 158 passengers. People from 12 countries - mostly Canadians, Americans, and Brits, a few from Singapore, Malaysia, India, Thailand, Puerto Rico, South Africa, Thailand, Phillipines and one Aussie. After the orientation we went to a Czech restaurant/beer hall close to the hotel. It was good - I had Beef Svickova, it is a beef sirloin in cream sauce thickened with veggies and bread dumplings and Loreen had a Bohemian potato mushroom soup - it was better than the Svickova, and a pint each of Pilsner Urquell lager which about was $2.00.  Pilsner beer was first brewed in the Plzen region of the Czech Republic, up until then most of the beer in the Eastern Europe area was a heavy unfiltered lager. 

Our first excursion in Prague was a visit to Prague Castle and then a walk around part of the old city of Prague, by old I mean areas where the buildings are from the 1100 to 1300s. The buildings have been modernized, but the structures themselves are the original stone and brick from that period. Old Prague is a gothic city, that is the Cathedrals, etc, all use gothic architecture style of towering spires, animal statues and intricate carvings, not my style, but interesting to see. The castle was the home of the rulers of the republic for centuries and now, as well as a tourist attraction, houses some of the cities administration and a large military base.  

The old city consists of narrow cobble streets, three and four story buildings with common walls and a multitude of large open squares where all the markets and celebrations were held. Today these squares still function the same way, only the shops sell souvenirs, jewelry and other touristy items rather than meat and bread shops. There are still a number of eating and drinking establishments around the squares and down both sides of the connecting streets.

We went to the Nazi concentration camp and prison at Terezin. This is not a place that I had heard of before. I had heard a lot about Auschwitz and Dachau, but not Terezin. Terezin was a community of about 5,000 civilians and had a massive military fort built in the  eighteenth century to protect against the Prussian army. During WWII as the Nazi army was eradicating the European Jewish population the community was turned into a Jewish ghetto, concentration camp and prison.

Approximately 150,000 mostly Jewish men, women and children where processed through Terezin on their way to the death camps. They had been told that they were being sent to a "country community" where they could have better protection and be relieved of the stress of living in war torn cities. Little did they know! There were others, mostly dissidents or other minorities also processed through. These people came to Terezin from all countries that had been invaded by the Nazi armies. Some 35,000 died while confined at Terezin and of the 150,000 or so that were processed through, only about 4,000 survived, the rest were exterminated in places like Auschwitz-Birkenau and Dachau. Terezin was later used by the Soviet Government as an internment camp for the expulsion of the Sudetenland Germans from Czechoslovakia. It is a sad place where now some descendants of the people imprisioned there are trying to rebuild it and their families. The Czechs we visited with, mostly people employed in the tourist industry, see Terezin, both Nazi and Soviet occupation and the expulsion of the Sudetens as black spots in their history.

Then we were off to an evening of culture, music, food and drink, at a family owned restaurant/hall. The band consisted of two fiddles, a cello and a xylophone. The matriarch played the xylophone and sang and made sure everything ran smoothly, she apparently is the owner and was very animated. One of the fiddle players and the cello player are both professional concert musicians and very talented. They played mostly Czech folk songs as well as some classical solos by the two professionals. They were accompanied by two dancers and a singer, very entertaining and covered from the classic to the funny. The meal, which we had thought would be authentic Czech, was unfortunately altered to cater to the tourist crowd, and as such was a Czech/western meal of a pork and chicken shish-kabob and scalloped potato. I would have preferred schnitzel or roasted pork knuckle with spätzle. The beer was, at least, Czech pilsner and very tasty. All in all it was a good evening, we enjoyed the traditional music and dance, which is very similar in style to the Ukrainian dancing we see at home.

The next day we toured through the Bohemian countryside to visit a castle and take a wine tour. The countryside is quite attractive with lots of farm fields and country villages. The farms here do not have farm homes as in Canada, but everyone seems to live in the villages. This is partly as a result of the Soviet era where all private land was taken from the owners and given to the state, farms then became run as a collective and the people moved into the villages so that everyone was the same. The Czech government is still attempting to get the original land owning families back on the land. This has been somewhat successful, but some families no longer know how or want to farm and have sold their holdings to corporate type farms where the farming is all completed by workers. Main crops are cereal grains, with malt barley the most prominent.

The castle was originally the home of the Bohemian Royalty and is now owned by some of the heirs of that family. The Castle is pre 1500 construction and has had the interior renovated over the years as architecture and amenities have changed. Now it is partly a home to the family and mostly a tourist attraction to help the family maintain it and their lifestyle. 

The family is one of the larger wine producers in the region and have the wine tasting room and wine cellar area in what used to be the dungeons. The cellar was interesting, the wine not so much. Part of the cellar was built in the 1200's and another part in 1400. 

This ends our time in the Czech Republic, glad we came, Prague is a beautiful city, the country side is awesome and the pilsner very good. Now off to the German state of Bavaria where we will board our river cruise.