Czech This Out, Part III

Karlštejn Castle

On the first day of November (and our third day in the Czech Republic), we traveled outside of Prague, taking a train from Prague Main Train Station. While waiting to learn which platform our train would be departing from, I ventured upstairs to have a quick peek at the original art-nouveau entrance hall, designed by Josef Fanta and finished in 1909:

A plaque dedicated to Woodrow Wilson, the 28th President of the United States. Unlike Neville Chamberlain, Wilson is fondly remembered for his Fourteen Points, which played a key role in the establishment of Czechoslovakia in the aftermath of the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the end of the First World War:

Another foreign hero, Nicholas Winton, is commemorated with a statue on one of the platforms for his role in helping Jewish refugees flee the Nazi occupation of Prague:

Getting ready to board:

Forty minutes after pulling out of Prague Main Train Station, we alit in Karlštejn, a town situated along the banks of the Berounka River in Central Bohemia:

The purpose of our visit was to see the castle which gave the town its name. It's a 25-minute walk uphill to the castle, but alternative means of transport are available:

Like something out of an Akira Kurosawa 黒澤明 film, Karlštejn Castle sits atop a small hill, looming over the market town below:

We reached the castle with about an hour to kill before our scheduled 12:40pm English-language guided tour (the only way to see the interior), so I snacked on a vanilla wafer:

Ahem...:

Some history: construction of Karlštejn Castle began in 1348 as a safe haven for the crown jewels and treasury of Charles IV, the Holy Roman Emperor. The castle also served to keep the Bohemian and Holy Roman Empire jewels safe during the Hussite Wars of the early 15th century, but eventually modern warfare technology advanced to the point where the defenses were no longer effective, and the buildings fell into disrepair before restoration work was undertaken in the late 19th century:

Our guided tour first passed through the Knight's Hall...:

...followed by Charles IV's Bedchamber and then the Audience Hall:

Pausing between buildings:

The final stop was the Jewel House, containing treasures from the Chapel of the Holy Cross. The skull on the bottom shelf of the display case was thought to have been that of a dragon by people who had never seen a crocodile:

The above-mentioned Chapel of the Holy Cross is the star attraction of Karlštejn Castle, but it wasn't included on our tour. If planning a trip to the Czech Republic, keep in mind that a number of sightseeing spots shut down or scale back their activities at the close of the tourist season, which seems to be at the end of October:

Chapel of the Holy Cross

All three of us were pretty hungry by the end of our tour, so we descended back into the town and had the best Czech food of our entire trip. In my case, it started with a bowl of garlic soup, then proceeded to roast chicken covered in ham, cheese and pear, and served with Czech-style dumplings. All washed down with Czech beer, of course:

We then returned to the train station for the ride back to Prague. Notice the Budweiser sign in the photo below - definitely not an advert for the worse-than-piss American brew of the same name:

That evening, my wife decided once again that lunch had been enough, so I took Amber out in search of dinner, this time crossing over the river into Nové Město (New Town):

Our entrance into Nové Město was marked by the Dancing Building, built in 1996 by Vlado Milunić and Frank Gehry, and nicknamed the "Fred & Ginger Building" after Astaire and Rogers:

The two of us ended up at the Globe Bookstore & Café, which is Prague's finest English-language bookstore. The Essential Kafka and the Classic Globe Cheeseburger satisfied my intellectual and physical appetites, respectively. If the conversation between the young American man and his French female companion at the table next to ours was any indication, Prague seems like it would be a great place to be a student. Probably too late for me, not not yet for my daughter...:

Czech This Out, Part II

Looking out over Prague from the Great South Tower

Another day, another castle (or old town, or both). Prague's is pretty impressive, I gotta admit. Beginning with the first fortified settlement in the 9th century, Czech leaders have ruled from its roosts for more than a thousand years (the official residence of the President of the Czech Republic is part of the castle complex). The periodic reconstructions undertaken at various points in the castle's history (the last being in the 18th century) have left the castle with an eclectic mix of architectural styles, and have helped make it justifiably Prague's most popular tourist attraction.

We made our visit on Halloween, taking the tram for the uphill ride to a stop near the castle's entrance. Entering the first of several courtyards, we passed by one of the castle guards standing at attention. There's a changing of the guard every hour that we managed to miss:

The girls in the Second Courtyard, with its baroque fountain and 17th-century well:

The highlight of any visit to Prague Castle has to be St. Vitus Cathedral, home to the tombs of Bohemian rulers and saints:

Though the cathedral's foundation stone was laid way back in 1344, work to finish the project didn't begin in earnest until 1861, with the church finally being consecrated in 1929:

One of the first things you notice upon entering the nave is the stained glass windows dating from the early 20th century, with the most famous one being by Alfons Mucha and depicting the lives of Sts. Cyril and Methodius:

A carved-wood relief of Prague from 1630 depicting the city as it looked in 1620, when the Habsburg armies defeated the Protestant King Frederic in the Battle of White Mountain:

The baroque tomb of St. John of Nepomuk, made with the assistance of two tons of silver:

The beautiful 16th-century Chapel of St. Wenceslas, with its wall paintings depicting scenes from the life of the Czechs' patron saint:

Next up was the Great South Tower, which according to my Lonely Planet guide was left unfinished in the 15th century, with a Renaissance gallery added in the late 16th century and a spire dating from the 1770's:

297 steps lead to the top and some fine views:

Echoes of the Communist past visible in the distance:

Back on terra firma, we sauntered over to the Old Royal Palace, dating from 1135 and used by Czech kings from the 13th to 16th centuries. The Vladislav Hall was the setting for banquets, councils, coronations - and indoor jousting tournaments:

Time out for lunch. Beef goulash in a bread bowl...and beer:

The Basilica of St. George, established in the 10th century, though what visitors see today is the result of restorations made in the late 19th- and early 20th-centuries:

This creepy 16th-century statue of a decomposing corpse is an allegory of Vanity - according to legend, an Italian sculptor murdered his girlfriend, only to create the sculpture of her rotting corpse out of feelings of remorse after her buried body was discovered. Cool:

Gruesome folklore didn't stop my wife from working up an appetite and needing a snack break:

The Golden Lane is a picturesque alley included in the admission ticket for Prague Castle:

The cottages there were put up in the 16th century, and were eventually used in the 19th and early 20th centuries by artists. Many of the houses have been restored to show some of their former uses:

No. 22 was the former home of the sister of Franz Kafka - the writer frequently visited there from 1916 to 1917. It's now a bookshop where I purchased a copy of The Metamorphosis for Amber. It's never too early to start:

Color me unimpressed:

Taking in more views as we headed downhill from the castle:

My daughter takes a well-earned trdelník break (the addition of ice cream is a modern touch):

Shu-E was feeling tired by this point (who can blame her?), so she and Amber caught a tram back to our hotel:

I, on the other hand, still had energy to burn and so I headed off to the fascinating Franz Kafka Museum. Sure, it's pretentious as all fuck, but the museum does an excellent job of exploring the relationship between the writer and the city, through the use of letters, photographs and some creepy sound/video installations. I was most impressed with the file cabinet hallways, which serve to emphasize the claustrophobic bureaucracy that is woven through some of Kafka's most famous works. It's too bad photography isn't permitted (ahem):

Visiting the museum seemed especially apropos as I was going through my own version of The Trial at that moment, stuck in a...wait for it...Kafkaesque (!) bureaucratic limbo of not knowing where my next post was going to be. Call me K:

I decided to walk back to our hotel afterward, rather than taking the tram:

The Malá Strana Bridge Tower at the western end of the Charles Bridge:

The Hotel Julian, home for our first four nights in Prague:

My wife often eschews dinner these days, so I took my daughter out on a dinner date to the nearby Pizzeria Capretto for a break from Czech cuisine:

The Memorial to the Victims of Communism. Much like Lithuanians, Czechs understandably don't look back at the period from 1948 to 1989 with a great deal of fondness:

Back at the hotel, where the downstairs drawing room takes visitors back to 1905: