After a good sleep in our delightful hotel (2 floors if you don't mind) and of course free breakfast we headed out to see what Prague had to offer. It was a gorgeous sunny day again which worked well for me because I had to wash my entire winter wardrobe and so was baring my legs in a skirt for the first time since Australian summer!
We met up with a few midwives in the Old town square for our favourite sightseeing pastime; a free walking tour! We scored big time with a lovely Irish tour guide who has lived in Prague for the past 5 years. He was an excellent storyteller (and could talk under wet cement). He showed us the Church of Lady Before Time which is thought to inspire Disney in the creation of Sleeping Beauty's castle (so did a castle in Munich but we needn't go into that) which they started building in the 1300s and didn't finish until 1Pope
We then moved on and heard 6000 years of history starting with the first settlers of a Celtic tribe, to the founding of the Kingdom of Bohemia by a psychic princess and ploughman. Then the dynasty of Kings that lasted 6 centuries, Bohemia becoming part of the Luxemburg's and the birth of Charles the 4th and the Golden Age. Then into the multiple struggles of the Hussite's religion, the crusades from the Pope, The 30 year war (ended in a draw), several revolutions that were crushed (but led to the invention of fermented beer cementing the fate of the Czechs to be the biggest beer drinkers in the world), the invasion of the Nazis and then the Soviet Union and finally the Velvet revolution where Czechoslovakia gained independence (called Velvet because it was peaceful) and then the Velvet divorce which lead to the Czech Republic that we know today. Whew!
We heard a few hilarious stories, did you know that Frank Zappa was made minister for culture but the US refused to deal with Czech republic until he was removed because they couldn't take he seriously! We saw every place the Kafka lived in Prague (and he lived everywhere!)
The tour finished in the Jewish Ghetto where we heard the heartbreaking treatment of the Jews, the fact that they weren't allowed to bury their dead anywhere in Prague except the Jewish cemetery. Once the cemetery was full they ended up having to re open the graves and dig deeper down and pile bodies on top of each other! Some graves have bodies 20 deep! The next story tore at the heartstrings, in the Jewish Museum they have some very special paintings. During WWII, Jewish children were taken into the nearby concentration camp. While there they witnessed horrific tortures and pain. There was a teacher there who organised time with the children and she got them to paint pictures to help deal with the horror that they had witnessed. The Nazis stopped the classes when they found out but the teacher managed to smuggle the artwork into a suitcase and hide it. She was then sent to a death camp and she and the children were murdered not long after. The artwork was found after the war and is on display, the only reminder of these children's lives.
After this very excellent we headed off the Opening Ceremony of the 30th International Midwifery Conference!
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