Page has been tested for compliance with INDUSTRY (not MS-only) standards, using the free, publicly accessible validator at validator.w3.org. Mostly passes.I hope you will visit this historic city yourself one day.
Page contents © TK Boyd, 11/15 - 6/05, Sheepdog Software
I'd spent night at the airport in Amsterdam (Schipol), and had a 10:50... remember that number for later... flight to Berlin, so it was a leisurely morning, easy departure.
Sadly, my care in obtaining a good window seat came to nothing due to overcast. Oh well. At least there were things to see during takeoff (noon) and landing (13:10, same timezone).
As I came in from the airport, we passed just north of Hard castle, which of course was great... but very shortly after, one of the first things I saw was a building that is special to someone special to me!... Faculty of Arts, Charles University, Prague.
My hotel room... one of the nicest I have ever had! Iron Gate Hotel... very nice, very nicely situated for the Old Town. All checked into my room by 14:20.
Wandered town a bit, to get bearings. Very pleasant. . 8pm: Concert in Church of St Nicholas, at the east end of the Charles Bridge (The bridge is one of the Prague icons. Now pedestrianised, which is nice for the tourists anyway.)
Life in Prague is less "developed" than in England, Berlin, etc, and it doesn't cost an arm and a leg to Do Things. I'd booked myself into a fancier hotel than is my usual practice in more expensive places, and availed myself of their excellent help in sundry matters, not least transport from the airport. I was still making a mess of currency translations, and either gave the driver a too large tip, or too small. Oops. But anyway, the journey to the hotel was smooth and expeditious.
We came into the city from the NW, and the first think I recognized was bits of what I've always thought of as Hradčany Castle. In trying to find the proper spelling of that for this page, I learned all sorts of things. Ah, the educational value of travel! First, some would say that the castle is "Prague Castle"... which I can spell... in the Hradčany district of the town. (Immediately NW of the Old Town, on dramatic hill, overlooking the river.) So far so good. Then we come to the "funny c". To put something like that on a web page is a little tricky... not very, but a little... but I didn't even know what to call it, so I could send Google off to find č for me. It turns out that the punctuation mark is called a caron. Which diversion brings me do a diversion from the diversion. A number of times I had to use non-English keyboards. Always entertaining trying to find out how to get an "@", which I usually need, and which is usually not easy. And in Berlin, the "qwerty" layout was NEARLY "qwerty", but the y and the z are swapped, leading to hair tearing. Back to arrival in Prague!...
So... I'm in the hotel's car, driving in from the airport. We're running along the north flank of the hill with the castle on the south flank... what better start to seeing this lovely town, than to start with a glimpse of perhaps its best known icon?
Then down the hill, across a bridge. Not just any bridge, but one a close friend crossed every day for two summers on her way to work, while she was a teaching assistant on a summer program for a US university! And, at the other end of the bridge, the building she had worked in all those weeks! Better and better!
It was primarily her enthusiasm for the city that put it on my "to do" list. And, even without that encouragement, it ticked many boxes for me.
Sadly I didn't make arrangements to collect my bear. Many years ago, I helped someone I'd "met" on the internet. He was selling some electronic equipment that I became interested in, but the English on his web pages was pretty fractured. I did some editing for him, and at the end of it all, he sent an email saying "If you are ever in Prague, I will buy you a bear". (He may have meant "beer".) It was a long time ago. I had little time there, and just didn't want to open that can of worms. A similar situation obtained in The Hague, sadly. So many possibilities, so little time!
Oh, yes! The travel gods smiled upon me!
The location was perfect... right in the heart of the Old Town, but in a quiet side street.
The staff: Very helpful. The breakfasts: Good. Just right to set me up for the day.
My room.... stunning. Like something out of an architecture magazine!
Knowing nothing of Prague, and having limited time, I had, with the hotel's help, booked a grand tour for Tuesday... and "grand" it was... the hotel had advised me very well.
Collected from hotel 9:30. Excellent guide, good English.
Taken up hill in a bus, thorough tour of the castle, with explanations all along the way.
Walked down hill though a pleasant part of the town.
A major attraction of Prague is that it is one of the few European cities to have avoided massive destructions for hundreds of years. It burned to the ground in Kepler's day, but has done pretty well since then.
Boat trip on the river for a bit... a little sit-down not unwelcome! I'd been made welcome by a nice Swedish family... mom, dad, quiet 15 year old.
Thence old town, a bit of walking, of seeing things. Fancy late lunch in some atmospheric underground cellars.
Then, I think... will qEdit when I can... a bit MORE seeing sights, until day's end... virtually outside my hotel!
Organized tour ended in late afternoon. Back to hotel (it was close) for a brief "re-group"/ rest. Dozed just a bit too long, and was a little late for a tour "the Klementum"... sort of a center of learning, which included among other things a marvelous library, and what was for MANY years an important astronomical observatory in the center of town. Brahe and Kepler made observations from the site, although their buildings do not survive, alas. Kepler, my view, is more important than his well known near contemporary Galileo. Happily, the people there were accommodating, and let me in, got me to the tour, which hadn't got far. The tour was followed by a concert in grand hall there from 8pm. It was some night after a good day!
Up early, without strain. Nice breakfast... perfect fare to "fuel" me for another day's touristing... in the hotel's restaurant.
qEdit... Day was more than... but heart of: "Technical Museum", the Czech national Science Museum....
... and lovely time with some GOOD people, rearing owls and a golden eagle...
Re-visited castle...
Early "fancy" dinner, opposite my hotel, to close out my Prague time in style. Happily, the hotel's recommendation, as ever, was perfect and it was a grand meal, and good.
Remember that my flight to Prague left 10:50? I got it into my little head that my train left Prague 10:50. Happily, I am manic about being at airports, etc, in GOOD time... so when I couldn't find a 10:50 train to Berlin, but could find a 10:30 train, I was still in time for it. (My ticket was for 10:30, not 10:50. Trains run by the timetables, not by what's in my head. How inconvenient!)
I forgot to visit Nicholas Winton memorial at the train station... the station from which his Kindertransport trains departed. Probably as well, because I would have felt foolish, weeping on a train platform.
I count myself blessed that I happened to be watching BBC TV one ordinary evening in 1988 when the following first appeared. It was just "an item" in what was essentially a mere "variety show"....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKkgO06bAZk. I think that if I could ask you to pass ONE link to your friends, that would be it. By all means challenge that, if you can find me saying the same of any other link. You can use (and pass on) https://bit.ly/BeLikeThisMan if that's easier than PKkgO0... ! Takes you to the same place.
(If you want to commend the page you are reading to people, there's https://bit.ly/BeLikeHimNotes. Be sure to mention that the Winton material is down near the bottom "near the man in bronze on the right")
Ask the Washington, DC Holocaust Museum why his contribution doesn't appear in their (in some ways excellent.. lots of filtering choices available, naive-user friendly interface) database of people. They didn't even deign to reply to my enquiry. I'm told it is because one grandparent repudiated Judaism when Nicholas was a baby.
Getting the kids out is what he is remembered for. He should be remembered for getting the kids in to the UK. And the 200-something who died needlessly should be remembered too. Not only did he take care of the huge problems of finding parents who would trust him with their children, of laying on the transport, of finding people to take them in... but he also had to raise the money for a huge bond to "buy" an entry visa for each of them. The British government wasn't having the land overrun with 6 year old "foreign" refugees. I can't find my notes at the moment, but as I recall, the 2000 equivalent of about $50,000 per child had to be "found". The time that took limited the number of trains that could be filled to depart Prague. One with, again, from memory, more than 200 children WAS filled, DID depart Prague... but the Nazis were already on the border. They disappeared. If finding funds for the entry visas had taken 3 days less, they would not have died.
Sir Nicholas lived from 1909-2015... yes, he was 106 when he died. And mentally bright in 2014, when presented with a high honor by the Czech Republic. (You may remember the mental brightness, if you saw his comments on that occasion... sadly, I can only find YouTube clips of the formal parts of the proceedings. The mental brightness shone later, in more informal, self deprecating remarks when he was speaking from his wheelchair to some members of the press. Something along the lines of "perhaps it is a pity I have lived so long. It's given you the chance to make all this fuss of my little effort." And it was said with completely convincing sincerity and humor. Me? I'd be bitter it took so long. (There had been some other honors previously, it must be admitted.))
Married from 1948 until his wife passed away in 1999. Three children of his own. 669 saved from the Holocaust through his efforts. And he didn't speak of them for many, many years. The story only emerged in the late 80's, first broken "publicly" by the TV programme shown in the YouTube clip. The emergence of the story began when his wife came across a scrap-book while cleaning the attic, and asked "What's this, Nicky?" In it were the names of the children, of their parents, and of the families who gave the children homes in the UK. He may not have spoken of it... but he kept the records. But didn't trouble them in their new lives.
Sadly, in some ways, many of the children were toddlers, and raised "as British", "not troubled" with their backgrounds. Many did not / do not know that Sir Nicholas saved them. Perhaps as well. They also think they have / had parents, grandparents.
Oh dear. It is as well that I forgot to look out the statue. I have become emotional, again, just typing this up, and it is far from the first time I've told the story. (And emotional again, 5/2020 while kids rot in cages in the USA, as I merely give this a small edit. And the emotion started before I got to what the GOP is doing.)
Photos from Wikipedia. The right hand one edited somewhat. That one by the sculptor, Ludek Kovár, made available at Wikimedia Commons
In a related vein: See Tom Stoppard's breath-taking Leopoldstadt. Not "all" about the holocaust... though in some ways it is... Dr Zhivago-esque in scope and scale. Not utterly grim. Not "The Sound of Music".
Next was Berlin. That page includes my splendid Prague- to- Berlin train journey, too.
Or, to return to the main index, you can probably just close this tab (or window)... if you came here from my Netherlands/ Czech Republic/ Germany trip's main index page. If not, just click on that link.
I have done a "menu" for you of links to reports with photos on trips to other destinations. (It will open in a new window or tab.)
If you find yourself wanting to use a photo on this site, please see my page about using web-published material which is © TK Boyd. If you want to contact me, here's my eddress, or you can use the contact form.Please cite "prague.htm" if you write. (Email best, as the contact form is often abused, and I don't read all messages arriving that way.) Corrections to bad information on the pages very welcome... don't be shy!
Page has been tested for compliance with INDUSTRY (not MS-only) standards, using the free, publicly accessible validator at validator.w3.org. Mostly passes.
AND passes...
. . . . . P a g e . . . E n d s . . . . .