10:11 p.m. - 2003-06-17
Prague: Charles Bridge and the Jewish Cemetary
Have you all recovered from trotting around the Old Town Square? Good, then we�ll just proceed right on across Prague to�..
The Charles Bridge is a footbridge that goes from the Old Town to the Mala Strana (The Lesser Quarter). By the way, I didn�t take this photo. It�s a postcard. Seriously, do you really think I could capture the misty perfection of this with a cheap, old point-and-shoot?
Every few yards across the bridge is a large sculpture of one or another saint.
I�m very impressed by these until Bruce tells me that the originals are in some museum somewhere. Somehow knowing that they are reproductions takes the glory out of them.
The Bridge has a beautiful, if somewhat grey, view. This is looking over to the side that the Castle is not on. Note the far off look on Bruce�s face. He�s probably reviewing his encyclopediac knowledge of Czech history, or perhaps wondering why good beer can�t cost 37 cents a draft in America.
The bridge is the best at night. All kinds of musicians come out, people dance. Weirdly the musicians tend to play Dixieland jazz. Big Czech men with overgrown mustaches playing Louis Armstrong. It�s lovely. And the buildings of the Mala Strana are lit up so they glow.
During the day the bridge is a flea market scene, and there are at least as many vendors as saints. For a 100 or so crowns you can get fancy barrettes, perfume bottles, puppets, or the ever present matryoska (wooden nesting) dolls. Since we�re there at Easter there are also a few dozen Easter egg vendors.
There�s an old woman selling lace who steals my heart. The first time we see her she is wearing a dingy, baby blue fake fur coat held together with straight pins. I worry about her but the next day she has on a well-insulated parka so I guess she was ok. She pulls out all her fancy collars for me and explains in German how she and some other women make lace, the different kinds they make and how she sells every day on the bridge.
It�s very intricate work. I buy a few pieces from her. Not because I use a lot of lace, but more because I want something to remember her by.
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The flat we�ve been given by the accommodations service is near Old Town Square. It�s tiny, spotless, and in a building that�s straight out of 1950�s-built-for-the-Proletariat-Communist-rule. it has bland rugs, cheap veneer furniture, a tiny little stove, and several short wave radios that don�t seem to pick up much of anything. The apartment has two rooms: a small living/bedroom and a tiny kitchen/dining room with a metal daybed in the corner.
Bruce enjoyed it. Although he could barely turn around in it.
The bathroom is, of course, just a bathing room. It has a huge sink and way-too-huge bathtub that Bruce loves, but which brings up all my fears of drowning. It�s the biggest bathtub I�ve ever seen in my life. The walls are tiled with a cheap, green plastic tile that was printed with soap bubbles. I vainly wish there was some way that I could bring this tile home with me � if only because I could never do it justice in trying to describe it.
The W.C. is around the corner with the requisite waxy toilet paper and toilet that flushes from above. We keep pulling the flush accidentally thinking it�s the light cord and so flush the toilet way too often.
The kitchen is randomly stocked with a mish mash of things. Some herbal tea, salt and pepper, bottled mustard. I find generic soap and �Meister Proper� � the Czech equivalent of Mr. Clean.
The bedroom has two tiny beds pushed together to make a double, with huge pillows and body swallowing comforters. There�s a table and chairs, some books in English about Prague and some books in Czech about incomprehensible Czech things.
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Our flat is in Josefov, the old Jewish Quarter. It�s right around the corner from the old Jewish cemetery. There are about 12,000 tombstones and 80,000 graves in what is really a VERY small space.
Jews were forbidden to dig up the bones of their dead and there was not another cemetery in the Ghetto so for years and years (since the 15th century) they buried their dead in layers. In some parts or the cemetery the graves are 12 deep. The tombstones are crammed together � they lean and sway like quiet drunks.
They are so close it�s hard to believe there are that many bodies under the ground. I expected it to be a creepy place, but it�s actually very calm and peaceful.
On most of the tombs are symbols for the deceased�s name or position: a crown for the head of a family, grapes for the tribe of Levi, a cat for a person named Katz, scissors for a tailor, or the sun and the moon which are associated with the Kaballah.
There are pebbles on a lot of the tombstones. As I understood it, they are given as gifts of respect to the deceased. Also pieces of paper on which people have written their wishes are left under the pebbles or pushed into the cracks in the tombstones.
I brought a white beach stone all the way from Duxbury Beach. It goes on a tombstone with two hands raised in blessing. And yes, I put a piece of paper with a wish under it, but I don�t remember my wish�..
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Ok, enough for today. Tomorrow, perhaps the Castle and my brush with fame (seeing Vaclav Havel) and maybe the infant of Prague or perhaps some Dachshunds��.
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