Category: Czech Republic

Despite the terrible weather we are enjoying Prague. It rained almost all night last night. When we woke up in the morning it was both cold and wet so we were in no hurry to get going. Finally about 9:30 we decided to head out, and just as we were about to leave François another downpour came. So we settled back down and finished our morning coffee. About 11 the rain let up, so we hustled down to the dock to take our pedestrian ferry to the right bank of the river.

The river bank had been converted into a weekend market, and despite the weather there were quite a few people there. Today because of the weather the big sellers seemed to be anything that was served hot, including sausage sandwiches and mulled wine. There was a microbrewery selling beer, and we were impressed that they were offering it in proper glass. No plastic cups in Czechia. You took the glass full of beer and consumed it while shopping in the market and when you were done, you returned the glass to the brewery tent, all very civilized.

Our primary destination for today was the Mucha Museum. Alphonse Mucha is a famous Czech artist, and one of Ton’s favorites. The last time she visited Prague she was unable to visit the museum, so she had set aside one day for the museum in our three day itinerary.

Mucha was born in Czechia in 1860. He studied art and architecture and in the 1890’s a rich patron payed for him to study in Munich and Paris. In Paris he began to make a name for himself as an Art Nouveau artist.

He became famous when he was commissioned at the last minute to provide a poster for a new play by the most famous actress in France, Sandra Bernhardt. His poster when displayed caused a sensation and she signed him to a contract to produce posters for her for six years.

He parlayed this fame into a great deal of advertising work. He also designed furniture, jewelry, and even cookie tins during this time. He made a lot of money, and eventually he decided to return to Czechia as he was very patriotic.

During the early 1900’s he visited the US for a couple of years to lobby for Czech interests, and for commercial reasons. His work was very popular in the US in the early 1900’s.

After the founding of the Czechoslovak Republic in 1918. Mucha designed the currency, stamps, and the medals for the army as his contribution to the independence of the Czech and Slovak people from the Hapsburg Empire.

After independence he dedicated himself to art. He began working on his grand masterpiece called the Slav Epic, which is a series of over 20 very large paintings showing the history of the Slavic peoples. He worked on it until his death. Yesterday one of the stained glass windows at the cathedral really caught our attention. We really liked it, and thought it was one fo the most interesting stained glass windows we had seen. It turns out it was designed by Mucha.

When the Germans invaded Czechoslovakia in 1939 Mucha was arrested. He was only held for a few days, but the arrest broke him, and he died a few days later at age 78.

We really enjoyed the Mucha museum. It is not a large museum, but we spent a great deal of time there. Ton then asked me to check on a restaurant she had read about to see if it was close. It turns out it was just down the street. The restaurant is a modern take on local food. They serve Czech food in Tapas sized portions. This allowed us to sample a bunch of different Czech dishes. It was quite delicious.

To keep up with the culinary tour, Ton had picked out a coffee shop in the Municipal Symphony House. It was built in the early 1900’s, and Mucha contributed much of the art in the building. When we got there it was packed, but we got the only empty table. The room was beautiful, and the desserts were superb.

Prague has been a great experience. I see why it is one of the must see places in Europe. Normally after three days in one place we are ready to move on. In the case of Prague I think there may be more to see, and while we are moving on, I am not in a hurry to do so.

Yesterday we spent most of our day in the old town of Prague which is located on the east bank of the Vitava River, today we spent the day in the interestingly named Lesser Town on the west bank of the river.

Despite having the diminutive name of Lesser Town the west bank of the river has the Palace and main Cathedral for the city. They are located on a major hill that looks down on the river and the rest of the city.

The climb up the hill is very steep. As we were beginning the climb an Irish Pub (Ton and I believe that it is a EU law that every city must have at least one Irish Pub.) had a great sign, “Look at how steep that hill is, you are going to need a Guinness to make it up there.” Despite the warning we took on the hill without a Guinness.

The Cathedral and the Prague Castle are part of the same grounds, with the Castle and Government buildings surrounding the Cathedral on all sides. There was very little historical commercial activity in the vicinity of the Cathedral which is unique to what we have seen in most cities. In this case the Cathedral was integrated with the center of government, not commerce.

The Cathedral is considered Gothic, and there has been a church on site here since the region was converted to Christianity around 1000 AD, construction of the current Cathedral was begun in 1340, but building ebbed and flowed over the next 500 years and the building was not completed until the 1870’s. For this reason it has elements of Renaissance and Baroque architecture also.

When we got to the entrance there was quite a line to get in, but we decided to buy a ticket because it looked interesting, and also because we were cold, and it looked warmer than outside. It was quite crowded inside, but the building is immense and could handle the crowd.

We both really enjoyed the stained glass windows. They also seemed to be from many different eras which was interesting to compare.

The Cathedral was undergoing repair in the center, so parts of it was roped off. Most of these giant buildings require constant maintenance, so it is rare to visit one that does not have part of the building closed off or covered in scaffolding.

After the Cathedral we moved to Prague Castle. Prague Castle was begun in 970 AD and is the largest castle in the world at 750,000 square feet. Part of it is the official home of the President of the Czech Republic. It was originally built as the home of the King of Bohemia, and has also served as the residence of the Holy Roman Emperors.

Only a small part of it is open to the public, but the scale of the rooms, especially the coronation room is very impressive. The public areas are sparsely furnished, but given the crowds that makes sense.

There is a small street next to the palace that is supposed to represent typical merchant shops from the middle ages. Mostly it looked like an excuse to capture some money from the tourists visiting the Castle. But one of the buildings had a collection of armor from the era which was interesting.

The walk back down the hill was much easier than the walk up the hill, so we decided to reward yourselves with a Pilsner (after all we are in Czechia, not Ireland), and some Goulash. We picked a restaurant at random, and had a nice warm meal. When we ordered our beers the waitress asked a large for the gentleman and a medium for the lady? We said sure, my large beer turned out to be a full liter, which was twice as much as I expected, but I managed to finish it.

After lunch we decided to head back as the forecast called for heavy rain in the late afternoon. It was a good call as a few minutes after reaching François and firing up his heater the rain hit. We spent the rest of the afternoon staying cozy and dry.

We made a short shift up the freeway to Prague. Before we left Pilsen we went into a Lidl near the campground to stock up on some food, and stopped for some fuel. Parking at the Lidl was tricky as the lot was very small and parking was awkward. But in the end we have a full refrigerator and some interesting Czech foods to try. The drive over to Prague was busy, and near Prague the right lane came to a complete halt with trucks backed up for several miles. We never figured out what caused the back up.

I had picked out a campground on an island near the center of the city. After having a campground to ourselves for the last two days, I did not think to call ahead. When we arrived at the campground, the lady at the reception said they could not accommodate us for the three days we plan to stay in Prague. Fortunately there is another campground on the same island, and they had no problem accommodating us, and the manager had lived in the US and visited Oregon so we felt at home. After we settled in we headed over to the water taxi to get us across the Vitava River to the tram stop to get us down to old town. We are really enjoying Prague already because if you are over 65 all public transport is free.

Our first stop was the Charles Bridge that is a medieval bridge that is now used for pedestrian traffic, and is one of the main tourist stops in town. Despite it being April, and the temperatures in the low 40’s, the bridge was buzzing both with foreign tourists, and Czechs out for the day. Despite the crowds we enjoyed our walk across the bridge.

After the bridge we headed to the main square to check out the astronomical clock which is one of the other main tourist attractions in Prague. When we got to the clock I overheard an English speaking guide saying that the clock here is considered the second most disappointing tourist attraction in Europe. (The first is the Mona Lisa in the Louvre.)

We hung around with a bunch of tour groups until the top of the hour to watch the parade of faces that are part of the hourly chime of the clock. Since I did not have high expectations I was not disappointed.

We based a lot of our agenda for today on a blog from a local guide. We enjoyed her takes on places to go, and also places to avoid. We got a kick out of her description of a popular treat that is sold near the bridge, and around the market. It is called Trdelnik, and consists of sweet dough with cinnamon on a stick with a bunch of cream. She said in her blog that it is not a traditional Czech desert, that in fact no Czechs eat it, but use it as a sure fire way to spot tourists. Whoever invented it for the tourist trade had a sense of humor as Trdelnik in Czech means “dullard”.

But we did take her advice on a good local beer place to go to try out Czech beers. Pult was located near the old town hall, and had a small but well chosen menu of Pilsners from all over the Czech Republic. The service was excellent and the guy behind the bar did a great job of matching up our taste with the appropriate beer. We really enjoyed ourselves.

After a few hours downtown we decided to head back before it got too cold. Despite it being closer to the end of April than the beginning the overnight temperatures are still in the mid-30’s with a frost warning for Saturday. We are going thru a lot of propane keeping François warm.

The most common type of beer in the world is Pilsner, and today we visited the brewery that originated the beer. Pilsner Urquell Brewery has been brewing beer in Pilsen since 1842 when all of the people with brewing licenses in town decided to consolidate beer brewing in one location. They hired a German brewer from Munich to start up the new brewery and cold brewed Pilsner style beer was founded here.

Today the brewery is a major industrial site capable of producing 880,000 bottles of beer per day. We have toured breweries before, but they were microbreweries. This is the first time we had visited a modern macro brewery.

We had signed up for a tour at 12:30 and decided to drive over. The weather is still unstable, and it rained overnight, and once in the morning. Today was a little better than yesterday, as there was more periods of sun than rain and the high was around 45 degrees.

The tour was led by a local medical student who does these tours to work his way thru college. He was very knowledgeable and had a good sense of humor. Besides providing us with the history of the brewery, he was full of facts about the capacities of the brewery, and their worldwide distribution.

They have 9 kilometers of tunnels under the brewery which in the past were used for production of the beer, as pilsner requires periods of cold storage as part of the process. Some of the tunnels were used for the cold production, and some was used for storage. Today the cold production is done using modern refrigerated equipment to control the temperature exactly, so the caves are empty.

It was an extensive and interesting tour and we enjoyed ourselves. It ended as all good brewery tours do with a sample of unfiltered, and unpasteurized beer. The beer was quite good. While all of the beer sold as Pilsner Urquell in the world is produced here, the company is now owned by Asahi Brewery in Japan, so they do bottle other products at the plant.

After we finished the tour we headed to the town center for a visit. Our target was the synagogue which is the third largest in Europe. We have seen other synagogues in Europe and they are usually understated because of the complicated history of Christian/Jewish relationships. This synagogue is one of the most prominent buildings in Pilsen.

The synagogue in Pilsen was built in the 1890’s. It is a beautiful building inside and out. We were the only visitors while we were inside so we were able to enjoy the interior and look at architectural details.

Unfortunately, Czechoslovakia was the first country conquered by the Nazi’s in WWII so the Jewish population of Pilsen was decimated. Less than 100 Jews from Pilsen returned to the city after WWII so the synagogue fell into disrepair during the communist era.

In the late 1990’s funds were provided to restore the synagogue to its past glory. The restoration was beautifully done and the interior of the synagogue is striking. Unfortunately the Jewish community in Pilsen is still quite small so services are held in a smaller building. Today the main synagogue is also used to host concerts as well as being preserved as a memorial to the past.

While we were touring the synagogue it had rained pretty hard, but the rain let up just as we left. We decided it was time to head back, we wanted to stop at a Lidl near the campground, but when we got there we could not find a place to park François, so we decided to try again tomorrow.

We were up early so that we could join Dang and Jeap for breakfast. They skipped the tour groups morning walk thru town so that they could join us for coffee and another long conversation. Ton speaks to them frequently on the phone, but nothing beats a face to face conversation. Finally they had to depart at 9am for Frankfurt and then Thailand.

We had decided yesterday afternoon to head over to the Czech Republic for a few days. We selected Pilsen as our first stop as it is the originator of Pilsner Beer. Tomorrow we will head into town to check out a brewery and take a look at the town.

On our drive over the weather continued to be unsettled. On the drive we saw hail, rain, and at one point I saw snow mixed in with the rain, though Ton refuses to confirm my observation. The temperature on the drive was around 40 degrees the whole wayand at one point dropped down to 36 degrees. Not the spring weather we were hoping for. Despite the weather we made good time and pulled into Pilsen around 2pm. We found the campground without any issue, but when we pulled up the gate was closed and no one was inside. There was a note to go to the restaurant down the road 50 meters, and since this is the only campground in Pilsen I was hoping for the best. It all worked out and we are now the only guest at a large lake side campground, hunkered down in the rain with the heater going in François as the over night low is supposed to be around freezing.