Live blogging from Prague Czech Republic and Germany

Oh look... free WiFi at Vaclav Havel airport. Airport socked in with fog and cold. Should be an interesting trip to London.

London and now home.

I want to thank everyone that responded to my Prague/London/Germany travel pictures with the "likes" and comments. I usually don't do Facebook, but I thought this would be an easy way to share this trip. So forgive me if I haven't responded to each and every one of you.

For those interested, I will be continuing to post some stories and pictures about the trip on this thread. I have some interesting tales to relate, and I will try to go into detail about my time spent with 84 year old concentration camp and death camp survivor Dr. Dagmar Lieblova (oh... she likes to be called "Dana" pronounced like "Donna").

Ok... now it's time to post some pictures. First up... the Powder Gate (or Powder Tower), a night shot looking from the Old Town side of the gate.



The Powder Tower or Powder Gate (Czech: Prašná brána) is a Gothic tower in Prague, Czech Republic. It is one of the original city gates, dating back to the 11th century. It is one of the symbols of Prague, leading into the Old Town.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powder_Tower

A Lenin statue at the Communist Museum in Prague

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One of the advertisements for the Communist Museum in Prague

[thumbnailpop:3gv9intt] landlopers.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/communism1.jpg [/thumbnailpop:3gv9intt]

The Museum of Communism is the primary attraction of its kind in Prague, leading visitors through the life of the Czech people during the times of the Soviet Union.

Displays include many original artefacts from the communist era, such as statues and pictures, reading materials, military objects, and there is even a fully reconstructed school classroom.

Visitors gain a good understanding of the way things were during the communist era; the propaganda, and the good and bad experiences of the Czech people.

http://www.pragueexperience.com/places.asp?PlaceID=617

A must see in Prague. This was the first place we visited right after we arrived and unpacked our bags.

A night time shot of the National Museum on the upper end of Wenceslas Square

[thumbnailpop:coftpt2v] newton.acrossthebow.com/national_museum_small.jpg [/thumbnailpop:coftpt2v]

The National museum (Czech: Národní muzeum) is a Czech museum institution intended to systematically establish, prepare and publicly exhibit natural scientific and historical collections. It was founded 1818 in Prague by Kašpar Maria Šternberg. Historian František Palacký was also strongly involved.

At present the National Museum houses almost 14 million items from the area of natural history, history, arts, music and librarianship, located in tens of buildings.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Museum_(Prague )

Unfortunately it was close for renovations until 2016. Maybe that was good, otherwise we could have spent our whole two weeks exploring it.

Hi Walter, Cool Czech thread,thanks for the "trip"tidbits.....welcome back to America.

What factor did you find to be the most unusual or unique (something that surprised you on
your travels)?

What factor of the trip was the MOST memorable (something you would savor/remember if you
were bed ridden in the hospital)?

Your post on another thread about the HARD ROCK CAFE (Praque)just upended my vision of
that city..... :faint:

homeagain wrote: Hi Walter, Cool Czech thread,thanks for the "trip"tidbits.....welcome back to America.

Thanks.

homeagain wrote: What factor did you find to be the most unusual or unique (something that surprised you on your travels)?

People. I'm always surprised by people. When I travel I probably spend as much time watching and studying people as I do looking at the physical sights. Frequently I will even go up to strangers and ask them questions, or politely interject myself into their conversations.

Example. We were in the breakfast room of our hotel one morning and there was this man and women talking at another table. They were British (and by the accents obviously very "northern" Brits) and I overheard them (actually the proper word would be eavesdropping) talking about Romeo and Juliet.

Now I knew that there was at least two productions of Romeo and Juliet playing in Prague at the time, one a ballet version at the National Theatre and a rock and roll version playing someplace else.

I heard part of a sentence by the woman which sounded like "I can't believe they added ??? to our play."

Well... "our play" certainly sounded like she was surprised by something added to their British play by Shakespeare.

I just had to know what the missing word was in her sentence. The next morning I caught them in the lobby (they were waiting for a cab to go to the airport) and I just had to ask about the conversation.

It turns out that they were brother and sister, who had the resources to travel on certain weekends around Europe to see live theatre. And they were Brits living in Edinburgh Scotland (I got the accent right... northern accents... real far north). And they had seen the Romeo and Juliet ballet two nights before.

The missing word was "dance." She had said "I can't believe they added dance to our play." I was surprised. She was well aware that she was going to see a ballet, but she was questioning the artistic merit in turning the play into a ballet.

She also related another story to me. She wanted to see a show that was playing in Edinburgh and her husband (yes, she was married but her husband doesn't like live theatre, hence the trips with her brother) was not interested in attending. He finally gave in and said "Ok... ok... book the tickets, I don't care where or when, just book them."

She proceeded to book tickets and plane fare for two to see the same show that was playing in New York City at the same time. She won, they went to NYC.

People surprise me all the time.

homeagain wrote: What factor of the trip was the MOST memorable (something you would savor/remember if you were bed ridden in the hospital)?

Part of the purpose of my trip was to do some on the scene research about the concentration camp Terezin for a possible new play I am thinking of writing.

I made arrangements to spend the day at Terezin with Dr. Dagmar Lieblová who is a 84 year old survivor of that camp. Unlike death camps, concentration camps were designed as places to hold Jews before further transport to the death camps. Concentration camps were also used as work camps "employing" the prisoners for work details in nearby factories and such.

Dagmar was eventually sent onward to the death camp Auschwitz where she was lucky enough to be cut out and put to work at the camp where as her father, mother and sister were sent directly to the gas chambers.

Savor would be the wrong word here, but memorable, memorable would be the picture I took of Dagmar on the platform of the Bohusovice train station, which is 2km from Terezin and it was the train station that she and many Jews arrived at before walking to the camp.

Later on the Nazis built a spur track that ran from the Bohusovice train station right into the camp so the local towns people would not see the multitude of folks being transported into the area.

Click on a picture for a larger image

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[thumbnailpop:1zg5cd84] newton.acrossthebow.com/dagmar_small.jpg [/thumbnailpop:1zg5cd84]

homeagain wrote: Your post on another thread about the HARD ROCK CAFE (Praque)just upended my vision of that city..... :faint:

I will go into that in detail sometime later, in this thread or the other thread. I think I can change you mind about this.

Walter, thank you for sharing your trip with us. I'm really enjoying your pictures and narrative.