Day #9: Friday, February 22, 2019 (Warsaw/Prague)

Hi blog!! What’s up?
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​We’re in Prague! We flew in from Warsaw and arrived in Prague at 10 am. Then we checked into the hotel and had lunch at the mall nearby.


We met John Crane, who is our guide in Prague. He’s so cool; he’s been to 137 countries and can speak a ton of languages.

He took us to the Jewish Quarter in Prague, and we visited a Holocaust memorial, a cemetery, and a synagogue. There was an interesting Jewish situation in the Czech Republic because many Jews  were quite assimilated into the culture. Some did not even know they were Jewish...so it’s interesting to consider how the Nazis identified Jews.

I was surprised to learn that there is a Neo-Nazi movement developing in Eastern Europe. Especially because we came here specifically to remember and respect and learn this history, and yet there are people who live here who insist on ignoring and denying it. The government also has an important role in facing its history because all countries, not just Germany, violate human rights during a war.


Then, at the synagogue, I read that there was still a lot of anti-semitism after WWII. The horrors for Jews didn’t stop after the Holocaust was over. Jews coming back from concentration camps, came back to a home taken over by their neighbors. They came back to a community that was willing to take advantage of the discrimination against them and was unwilling to acknowledge the truth of the Holocaust. The situation has very slowly improved over the years but get this: “it wasn’t until 1989 -and in fact the first time since the war- that Jews were able to freely develop their religious and cultural life to the fullest and richest extent. At the same time, however, certain--however marginal--elements of society are now able to display their anti-Semitic and racist views in public.” Powerful stuff.


We then rode the metro to the castle and I didn’t think Mr. Crane was serious when he said that Czechs are super quiet on the metro...but they really are! They’re so silent, when we stopped talking it was SO QUIET you really could hear a pin drop. Unfortunately, the heir who was going to  give us a tour of the castle has surgery tomorrow so that was cancelled and the castle was closed :(. We still toured around the castle which was breathtaking. It’s like straight out of a fairytale.


I’m so excited for our next day in Prague. This city’s so so so beautiful!!!!!!!!!!!!!
--Gwen


Today started with a wake up time of 4:45, which was rough. I slid into the bus at 5:45, the last one to get on. We took a plane from Warsaw to Prague, and I  was not entirely awake the entire time, but I did notice that the plane had propellers, which I have not seen on a plane in a while. Kinda freaky but it went well. When we get to the hotel I was one of the few lucky people who didn’t have a room, but Lucia and Cynthia were nice enough to let us leave our luggage with them. We then exchanged money and had lunch in the mall. I didn’t eat the most traditional lunch, but my crepe was delicious.


After lunch we took a walking tour with John Crane of the Jewish quarter. We began with the Pinkas Memorial Synagogue. I really liked this memorial, mostly because they had so many names on the walls, and I think it’s important to name people and remember them. Seeing the original artwork of the children who were imprisoned in Theresienstadt was moving. These kids drew what was happening in their lives, and most of it was dark, and they never got to experience the good parts of life in their future because most of them did not live through the camp. That was the hardest part of today. We toured the Old Jewish Cemetery, which I loved because cemeteries are really cool. There’s no more room in the cemetery so they just kept adding dirt and burying people on top, so there’s 7 gravestones all in one place for all the people there. I just really liked that. We briefly stopped at the Old New Synagogue and then spent about 15 minutes in the Spanish Synagogue, which was gorgeous.


We next went to the Prague Castle, where everything we were going to do was closed. So we improvised and saw the Lobkowicz art collection, which was very pretty, but not incredibly interesting to me. There were a ton of paintings of the Hapsburgs and they were all ugly because they only inbred, so that was entertaining.


Finally we split up into 4 groups for dinner. I went with Ms. Sarkis to an Italian place and ate with people I don’t usually hang out with, and it was very enjoyable. Overall today was a good day. Tiring, but I had fun.

-Lucy