Jewish Quarter

Prague has something that many other European capitals don't, which is a past couple hundred years of buildings undisturbed by war. I'm only appreciating this now, after having been in Berlin, where the Second World War still dominates many of the stories of buildings and people. Prague's oldest active synagogue was finished in 1270 and the New-Old Synagogue has weathered a lot, including flooding in 2002.

All in all, it was pretty interesting to look around three different synagogues and a slew of museums, but I'm beginning to realize that I should really limit my focus to Christian sacred architecture and this will be more than enough. I honestly didn't know what a traditional synagogue looked like until I walked into one and, having only been to a part of a service at Hillel, I don't know how the space would be used in a service either. Still, I liked looking at the different arks for different Torahs and exploring the different rooms.

There weren't any pictures allowed in the museums or in the synagogues, and the rules were much better enforced here than anywhere else in Prague, so all I have for you are pictures from the Old Jewish Cemetery, which is rather beautiful. I don't yet have an appreciation for a synagogue, but I'm quite comfortable with a graveyard. People sleeping peacefully in the comfort of the perpetual remembrance of their tombstones.

During my interview, I was asked what makes a space sacred, since I had proposed looking at a variety of locations. I kinda flubbed my answer, though I think it's still true- a space is made sacred by the people who visit there. Even though some buildings are purposed to be sacred spaces, places where the divine is invited to fill the space, we fill other places with a sacred atmosphere. It's amazing how easy it is to be contemplative among the graves, and how difficult amid the pews.

Our Lady of Victory

This next church is one that I actually really researched and was excited to see. It was built as a Lutheran church dedicated to the Holy Trinity, but then the Catholics won the Battle of White Mountain during the Thirty Years' War and the church was given to the Catholics by the emperor in 1620. It's named Our Lady of Victory after that victory. I thought it'd be fascinating to see if the architecture was any different between Protestant and Catholic churches at this time, and to see if the inside was laid out differently than the other churches I had looked at.

In my planning for Prague, I had placed it alongside Prague Cathedral, thinking that I would have plenty of time that day to go looking for other places. As I got more involved in directions and looking around Prague, I realized I had no idea where it was and I got a little disheartened. Maybe I wouldn't see it at all.

Christine and I were exploring, looking for a good place for dinner, when we walked by a building that caught my attention.

Clearly, my attention is easily captured.

I wonder what that is, I said aloud and Christine gave me a look that I've gotten used to seeing any time I ask her, a person who has seen this city for the exact same amount of time that I have, what something is. I bet two dollars it was a church and internally I thought, wouldn't it be funny if this was Our Lady of Victory and it was just here the whole time?

It was.

I was so delighted to know where the place was when  I went back the next day that I hadn't even bothered to check the opening times of the church. I remembered it being free to view, since so many pilgrims would come to see the Infant of Prague, a statue of baby Jesus that originally came from Spain and, legendarily, St. Teresa of Avila. I bounded up the stone steps and took a second to compose myself at the door, noticing the sign requiring that I be silent. I pushed open the heavy wooden door and...

walked right into a communion mass. It was a great opportunity for me, because I got to see the church in action, but also extraordinarily embarrasing for me, because I walked in in the middle of mass. Of course, I wasn't the only one- there were a hefty number of people with cameras around their necks chilling in the back. Since I was wearing a dress that day, I decided to fake like I was just late. I sunk down into a back pew and listened to the service (in Czech). I stood when everyone else stood and mumbled something when everyone else responded. After the service, I walked over to a side station where they had copies of a missionary magazine that I perused in order to look like less of a tourist while I waited for the crowd to clear and processed the service.

It never ceases to amaze me how people are just, you know, chilling in a church I came halfway round the world to visit.

The thing that stuck out to me most was how far away the priests were. I could see them lifting the bread and the cup for communion, but I have no idea what their faces look like. They also came down out of the chancel to give communion to the people, but went back for the end of the service. After the benediction, they precessed out the side and the congregation stuck around, greeting each other and chatting while a nun came to reset the altar after the service. It was like the priests carried out a function- they gave you your communion, they blessed you on the way out. They made the space function.

With the service over, people went feely to the altar on the right side of the church. There was a general wave of people, all waiting to stand or kneel before the Infant of Prague.

He avoided any better pictures that I could have taken.

Now, I know that I've got to stop walking in the Catholic churches like a Methodist, but I just cannot yet understand how such an altar came to be. I can tell you the story- the Infant came to be at the church after being handed down from mother to daughter as a wedding gift when the final daughter only had sons. She gave the wax statue to the church with the prayer that the statue would bless the church. Years later, after war had wracked the city and the church, a monk found the statue sitting abandoned in a pile, broken and without any hands, and heard the statue say something like, "Give me my hands and I will bless you." So the monk did and the statue has. The church has witnessed miracles and the plaques of the wall are all outpourings of thanks for the good things that have happened in people's lives since praying for the Infant to help them.

This is just one side of the altar.

Like the distant priests and the ornate buildings, the Infant of Prague is foreign to me. A church like this, a statue like that, these are things that you visit and look at and ponder, not somewhere you build a life and a fellowship. It's very different from the early church, meeting in houses to survive as a community, or even from many churches in America today, so focused on small groups and personal faith. Then again, I'm fascinated by this little baby Jesus, dressed up and enshrined. And who am I to remark at all about the validity of people's beliefs? I myself believe that a common man was the Son of God and rose from the dead over two thousand years ago, leaving a community of believers with a mission and two milleniums of an unfulfiled promise of return. If nothing else, the Infant works as a focus of devotion in the main nave of the church.

I walked around back to check out the museum and the gift shop and got distracted by the sacistry on the way back. I walked by confessional booths and an altar and found myself in a room with glass cases holding mini-figurines of other statues of the Infant Jesus around the world. There are so many, in so many different styles, from all over the place. I think I was in front of the South American cabinet when a monk approached me. He asked if I was from Brazil, which absolutely surprised me, but which I will take as a compliment. After explaining that I was from the US, he proceeded to tell me all about visiting Boston and New York and I think DC, though I'm rather unsure about the whole conversation. Then he talked about the church's mission in the Central African Republic, taking me over to the pictures he had on the wall. "I leave June 16th. You come?"

"Oh. no, I am traveling. I can't be there on June 16th."

"No, no, Americans, you are elastic. You come, June 16th. See, here, I built this. These people, they know me. You will be known here, you will be famous here. Not like in America. Well, I don't know, you may be famous in America. But here, you will be noticed."

I laughed and thanked him and told him not this time. "Ah, if you are sure. Still, you can tell people that you were invited to go. An invitation. That is something. Good-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye," he said, waving and walking back to the case of the mini-statues.

I walked out of the church, feeling like I should stop and at least cross myself before walking past the Infant, but the room was crowded. I thumbed through the pages of the missionary magazine I still held in my hands. Water for people who need it. Gifts to the world around. An invitation. Something indeed.

St. Nicholas Church on Lesser Town

Before you go all Google crazy on me and tell me that the pictures I have are not of St. Nicholas Church on Old Town Square in Prague, let me tell you that you are absolutely right. My pictures are of St. Nicholas Church on Lesser Town. There are three St. Nicholas Churches in Prague. How is that fair to my research endeavors?

St. Nicholas wasn't a church that I was originally intending on visiting, but since my doorstep dropped itself near the baroque giant of a church, I decided I might as well go visit. As a point of reference to my life, I've been sleeping a lot. Like, at least ten hours a night. Not that I'm that tired, just that my days are full enough to allow for things like excessive sleeping, and I do love to sleep. But, as I found out when I climbed the front stairs to the church surround by French tourists, sleeping too late can be vaguely detrimental. If you get into the church between 8 and 9 in the morning to pray, it's free. They only start to charge you (a couple dozen Czech crowns- I don't think it was much over a dollar or two) if you get there after that. So, as has been suggested before, the best way to see a church is to go to church, because they won't charge you then. But then again, I wouldn't have all these wonderful pictures to show you. And I have many wonderful pictures to show you.

Upon walking into the sanctuary, I was astounded. So. Much. Decoration. Like a baroque piece of music, with a billion notes flying across at least four different keys and three time signatures, there was ornamentation everywhere, from the side chapels to every single column to the side altars in the transept to the ceiling, decked out in a mural.

This is why I'm going on this trip- because there is no way, in word or in picture, that I can accurately express the amazing ornamentation of this space.

Even the ceiling is trying really hard to impress you.

It's amazing how something as simple as a pulpit can be so ornate.

I'd have to go back to my guide book to see what everything was, though my favorite part were the four virtues above the four Eastern Church Fathers on the four columns in the transept. They're Wisdom, Righteousness, Moderation and Bravery, which don't seem to be exactly the same as the cardinal virtues, though, honestly, English leaves us with quite a few words to choose for translations.

Figuring out the meaning of the statues, beyond what my little pamphlet tells me, has been quite an adventure. Trying to figure out what they meant by the Four Eastern Church Fathers has been particularly confusing. I just thought you called particularly influential men the early church Church Fathers, like St. Augustine and people like that. I have a real need of a church history class.

My deductive reasoning tells me this is a church father. Just look at his hat.

It's hard to pick what to describe in this church- there's a lifetime supply of statues and carvings and pictures and details and I almost felt guilty brushing by them with just a picture or two. The organ was apparently played by Mozart, but I looked at it long enough to appreciate the plethora of instruments in the decorations and take a few pictures.

The pulpit is crazy ornate- I can't imagine standing up there, much less preaching from there. There are many side altars, each with their own story. I could talk about the dome and the bell tower, which are visible in the Prague skyline. The bell tower was apparently used during the Cold War era to monitor the western embassies. Did I mention there are many embassies in Prague? There are many embassies. Everywhere.

Maybe the least tourist-y of the sights of the church was the chapel of St. Barbara, just to the left after the entrance. It's a chapel of the dead, which is sad because I like St. Barbara's story. She was locked in a tower by her father but secretly converted to Christianity. Her father took out his sword to kill her when she found out, but she was miraculously taken to a field nearby. The shepherd who told on her got turned into stone. In the end, she was beheaded. The sentence was carried out by her father, who was struck by lighting on the way home. She's now the patron saint of anyone who works with explosives.

St. Barbara's chapel was quiet, though. It had a prayerful atmosphere. It also reminded me that St. Nicholas is an active church. There were candles in the main nave to light, and in the chapel there was a statue of St. Anthony, with pictures of loved ones surrounding it.

And to my poor little over sentimenatlized heart, this one statue was more beautiful than anything I could see in the nave. Oh, these people.

St. Vitus Cathedral and St. George's Basilica

As a warning, I'm not entirely sure how I want to go about sharing the churches I see. It's almost always a pretty safe assumption that people aren't going to want to read anything about churches, and the pictures tend to get repetitive. Any time I walk into a place, I have an internal monologue commenting on every aspect of the place. Some of it's funny to me, because you've got to laugh at some things. Some of it's not, so my second strategy was to talk about the architecture and the decorations of the building. And even though I might be fascinated by the difference in this depiction of Mary or that crucifix or the construction of this nave (none of which I can talk intelligently about... yet....), I'm going to guess that you won't be. My other strategy was to find a story for each place and recount that, along with pictures, because every place has a story, but not every place is willing to tell that story. So what follows will be a combination of all of the above.

Prague Cathedral, or St. Vitus Cathedral, is situated entirely in the Prague Castle complex. Now, a cathedral is different from a church not necessarily in the architecture but in the fact that it is the seat of a bishop. So it's a bit interesting right there in that the cathedral is inside the castle. Construction was started in 1344, over the site of the original church founded in 925 by St. Wenceslaus of Christmas carol fame.Turns out he was a prince of Bohemia. There's a Wenceslaus chapel in the cathedral where the crown jewels of Bohemia are kept behind a door with seven different locks that have seven different keys, one of which is held by the Czech president, but the chapel was closed. Construction on the cathedral was halted before the west end and towers were finished, due to the Hussite Wars and the Thirty Years' War. The west end and towers were finished in the 20th century using the plans of the original architect, Peter Parter. Not Peter Parker, like I originally read. Spiderman has no place in cathedrals, except maybe to swing from spire to spire.

Now if it were Batman...

It's a Gothic cathedral, so it's very pretty and very cold. There are high, vaunted ceilings and dozens of side chapels and, when I was there, many tourists and school groups. I naturally went to my right once I stepped inside and looked in a chapel whose description was in Czech, with a small boy smiling for a picture in front of a statue of Mary. To my left, a goodhearted guard was shooing children away from the exit sign and smiling as they ran off to find their parents. In a space full of so many people to be distracted by, it's hard to be overwhelmed with the grandeur of it all.

The church is like most other western Gothic churches in that it's got a long rectangle in the middle with the door at one end and the altar at the other. The main nave is separated from the side chapels with columns and side aisles. There is a division between the wooden pews in the nave and the altar in the chancel of the church called the transept. Statues hang from the columns and the left side opens up to the organ, which is ornate enough on its own, while the right opens to a door out to the courtyard, I think. The pulpit (and I cannot get over how ornate the pulpits are) is raised and on the left before the altar. The main altar itself is pretty unassuming compared with the rest of the architecture, though it is decked out in lilies. Behind the altar is a huge construction, which I'm learning is common, to draw the eye to the altar and the front of the cathedral

Around the back of the main altar (which is called the retr-ochoir- bam church architecture knowledge!) is the tomb of St. John of Nepomuk.

While I was walking around this crazy ornate tomb with curtains and red and white drapings, one of the ladies walking around in front of me said, "Ridiculous." I mean, I almost have to agree- there are kings in the side chapels with less show for their tombs. This man acquired sainthood after being martyred by drowning- he was tossed off a bridge by the king of Bohemia for not revealing the secrets of the confession of the queen of Bohemia and earned his spot as a strong supporter of rebellion against crazy governing figures and the sanctity of confession. So decorate the tomb as you will. The woman went a little red in the face and backpedaled when she saw the man walking behind me kneel and cross himself, offering a short prayer.

I was really excited to go down in the crypt, where you can see not only dead people but also the layers of the building of the cathedral, but it was closed. On the bright side, I did get to see this awesome lion holding a candle, so there's that.

I am a lion. Holding a candle. I do not find this ironic.

Also in Prague Castle is St. George's Basilica. I wasn't expecting to see two things in one day, as I've tried to take it easy on my schedule, but hey, why not. When there's a basilica to see, there's a basilica to see. Now, basilicas were the Roman meeting halls back in the day, with a big wide meeting space and generally an aspe (Bam! Church architecture term again!), which is a curved section with a semi-dome, at the end away from the entrance. But a building can also be designated as a basilica by the pope if it houses a relic or the remains of a saint (or so wikipedia tells me), so even though this building is done in the Gothic style, which is different from the Roman style from whence basilicas came, it can still be called a basilica. St. George's Basilica was built by in 920 Vratislaus I of Bohemia, father of Wenceslaus, who was killed fighting the Magyans (or, more commonly but less fun to say, the Hungarians). The structure that's there today was redone after a fire.

Up in the corner, there's a chapel dedicated to Ludmila of Bohemia, the grandmother of Wenceslaus who acted as regent for him when his father died and who was strangled with her own veil by Wenceslaus' mother, jealous of his grandmother's influence on the child. She was also married to the first Christian Duke of Bohemia, so I quite think she deserves the chapel. Vratislaus is buried in the crypt beneath the basilica.

I don't have a good picture of the chapel, but look, it's Gothic! It's got a pointed arch on the window!

The basilica has a little side rooms, one of which has a statue of Mary holding Jesus after his crucifixion, but neither Jesus nor Mary have any heads, so it's hard to tell.

In the opposite room, there's a little bit of history about the basilica, and you can find out the head abbess associated with this basilica had the right to crown the queen of Bohemia. Fun facts all around.

I liked the basilica. It was quiet, with many fewer people than the cathedral, and you could almost sit down to pray. There wasn't an altar up, since there was a concert planned there that evening, and the ceiling wasn't high and vaunted, just simple and wooden. At the same time, I like my altars and I like my high ceilings. It helps me focus when I'm in a service. And though I love music, a church set up for a concert is not the same as a church set up for worship. So I guess for me, to make a space seem like a church, it has to be built like a church, look like a church and have people in it who are acting like a church, which might be why it's so much easier for me to see God in an empty sanctuary. But it's good to learn the history of these buildings and to see and feel their beauty and space. Of course, these are not the end of my church-related adventures in Prague. More to come!

Church History (as retold by me)

It has also occurred to me that the different styles of churches and a little (tiny, absolutely miniscule) bit of church history might be new for some people (i.e., me, a lot. We need church history in Sunday school. I heard the parable of the woman and the lost coin sixty times, but I had no idea who Constantine was or why he was important to Christianity). So here's a couple of things you should know.

I. House Churches
Before Christianity was legal, Christians would worship in synagogues (since most of the early Christians were Jews) and meet in houses. Thus, for the first oh, say, three centuries of Christianity, you didn't have church buildings. People would meet, share a meal, maybe listen to a letter or word of encouragement, and fellowship, none of which required a church building. Most of these aren't around- they've either fallen down, or early churches were built on top of them.

II. Constantine! and Basilicas
Constantine (the Roman Emperor, not Keanu Reeves) converted to Christianity purportedly after the Battle of Milivian Bridge in 312. The guy he was fighting, who I think also wanted to be emperor, Maxentius, was drowned in the river Tiber during the course of the battle, which shows what cheering for the Christian God can do for you. Christianity was made legal and a favored religion and church building started happening like crazy. The first churches were modeled after Roman basilicas, which were meeting places. They had a big open areas (nave) and side aisles, separated by columns from the nave. The east end with the apse was where a statue of the emperor and the magistrates sat to hold court, but this was replaces with the altar and the place where the bishops sat in the early church.You see the basilica structure in other forms as well.

III. Latin and Roman crosses
Life progressed and things started to be added to churches as the liturgy required. The cross-bar of the church made a division of the space and enabled processions to happen more easily. Eventually, a split happened between the eastern and western sections of the church. There's the Great Schism of 1054, when the church really split into what would become the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, but even before that, church architecture was reflecting the differences with western churches (mostly) following the Latin cross (short cross bar, long nave) and eastern churches having a Greek cross (with equal arms). From these two branches we get the terms Romanesque and Byzantine (after the Byzantium Empire, ruled from Constantinople). The Romanesque church was spread to western Europe by St. Benedict (who is the patron saint of Europe and students, according to wikipedia) when he went a-monasterying, spreading monastic cheer to all of Europe in the 5th and 6th centuries. This style was spread to Britain with the Norman Conquest which started in 1066 (Battle of Hastings, anyone?). Byzantium architecture is preserved in the Hagia Sophia (sigh) which has influenced other churches throughout the world.

V. Gothic
Gothic churches got going in the 12th century when construction methods had gotten far enough along that they didn't need big heavy columns and walls to support the high ceilings they wanted. In a Gothic church, you'll see larger windows, lighter vaulting and most noticeably, pointed arches. There's also the fancy things like flying buttresses and stained glass windows. I kinda really love Gothic churches. But it could just be that I fell in love with Notre Dame de Paris and decided that I'd have to make that my type.

Preeety. The facade of St. Vitus.

VI. Renaissance
There was a rebirth of Roman architecture during the Renaissance. This is when Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome was planned. All the styles go through their own rebirths at different times, but since this happened in during the actual Renaissance, it gets its own name.

VII. Baroque
After the Renaissance was done happening, people decided that they could bend the rules. The word baroque actually comes from "imperfect pearl" which I think is beautiful. But holy goodness, baroque churches are crazy. I don't have a good definition of the style, other than "Let's cram as many shiny and distracting things as possible into the church and hope it looks good."

Wow. Just wow.

VIII. Printing Press and Reformation
Many things changed with the invention of the printing press. People could get bibles in their own languages instead of that pesky latin, which kinda got rid of the need for the Poor Man's Bible- scripture told through statues and stained glass windows. All those statues of Moses and the crucifixion and people going to heaven and hell with angels and demons and animals were ways of telling the Bible before people could read the Bible. Then, this guy named Martin Luther comes around in the 16th century and starts changing up things. There was also a Catholic counter-reformation, so while the Protestants were throwing out stone altars in favor of tables for the Lord's Supper and moving their pulpits to center-scene, the Catholic church was adding statues and stained glass to make mass an emotional, spiritual experience for everyone, including the people not familiar with the liturgy.

IX. Modernist and Post-modernist
Like everything else, church architecture had a modernist phase. Churches we see today are built in these styles or based off of these styles or are built to suit the needs of the congregation. My home church is modernist- it has the chancel surrounded on three sides by the congregation. My church in Chapel Hill is more Romanesque- it's got a nave and a chancel set back into an apse where the choir sits, with the organ up in the balcony and high windows meant to let in light (Bam! I knew I'd get to work in clerestory somehow!). And, also like everything else, there's a post-modernist movement back to the way things used to look.

So there. Now you know everything I know. PS- this was really more for me. I learn more by expounding than I do by reading. Sorry for the boredom. I'll add pictures of others as I get them.

The Church Architecture Glossay (as defined by me)

You're going to think I'm going crazy with blogging, but I'm really just behind on starting all of this up. Some extra things are required. It has occurred to me, after several hours of looking for good definitions of church-y terms that I'd read but wasn't sure I ever understood, that there's no way anyone's going to understand anything I'm going to say without their own foray into the wonders of Google and Wikipedia. To alleviate this strain from your life, I've compiled a list of terms that I'll probably use, with definitions. Feel free to Google any that seem unclear.

First, before I get to that, most churches are laid out in a cruciform shape- that is, they look like a cross. Western and Romanesque churches have Latin crosses, like what you traditionally think of when you think of a cross, whereas eastern and Byzantine churches have a Greek cross, with even arms. Most are oriented east-west, with the altar at the east end and the door at the west, though that doesn't have to be the case. OK, so, here goes.

Nave- the main body of the church, where the congregation sits. It stops at the transept, before the chancel. It normally includes the pulpit and the lectern.

The nave at St. Vitus Cathedral, my example church of the day

Transept- the cross-bar of the church, where the north-south arm meets the east-west arm. It's normally an open floor space, but you'll have a tower above it, or a dome, seen from the outside. The north-south arm can have side chapels or can be a means of entrance for processions, I think.

Dome above the transept in St. Nicholas Church in Lesser Town, Prague

Choir- (sometimes also called quire so you don't confuse it with the people who sing) the area in between the transept and the chancel. It normally has the choir stalls in it, though congregation and clergy can sit there in some churches. It can have the organ, or the organ can be at the back. It can hold the choir or the choir can be up in the balcony. It just depends on the church, and some churches don't have choirs. Quires. They mostly have choirs.
Chancel- the part of the church where the altar is. It's normally raised and can also be called the sanctuary, though we've used the term sanctuary to refer to the entire inside of the church. It used to be, any criminal who could get to the chancel could call sanctuary, which makes me imagine a mad dash through the church and an epic slide to the chancel, which is unfortunately normally raised and separated from the rest of the church by a rail or a screen.

And tourists.

Lectern- a podium you read the Bible from.
Pulpit- the place you preach from. It's central and in the chancel area in protestant churches, but is normally off to the side in the nave in most of the churches I'll be looking at.

So. Fancy. Normally has eagles on it for St. John.

Altar- an altar? One of those things in the middle of chancels that you put crucifixes on, and candles and stuff? They're normally stone and permanent in Catholic churches, but moveable and wooden, more representative of the Lord's Supper, in Protestant churches. Thanks, Martin Luther!

Candles. Required.

Apse- a semi-circular recess covered by a semi-dome. Also known as that awkward curved space behind the chancel and altar where the choir sits in Methodist (and apparently Anglican) churches, but originally was where the Roman emperor sat in basilicas, changed to where God would be in early churches.

Apses. Very poisonous. You go first. (OK, in real life, this is a smaller apse in the staircase of St. Nicholas)

Clerestory- (this is just here because I think it's fun)- the upper level of the nave or just high windows, meant to let in light.
Retro-choir- in big cathedrals and churches, it's the space behind the main altar where there can be another, smaller altar back to back with the main altar. Chapels can also radiate out of this curved portion of the church.

I was so proud when I recognized this architectural feature that I think I actually said Bam! aloud.

Ambulatory- the procession way around the cathedral, where you can amble. It goes back 'round by the retro-choir.
Arcade- a series of arches. Win.

OK, I think that's all I've got right now. Expect this post to be edited as I find more terms that are weird and need defining, or pictures that better show what I'm talking about.

Prague

So I'm not as good at this as I thought I'd be. I have a journal and that's got entries for most days in it, but the blogging is a little different in that it has to be something people might actually want to read. Following that idea, the blog from Prague is going to come at you in 5 parts. Part 1: arrival and events, the general or-somethings of life; part 2: Prague Cathedral and St. George's Basilica, both of which are in Prague Castle; part 3: St. Nicholas Church in Lesser Town (because there's two St. Nicholas Churches in Prague- how is that fair?); part 4: Our Lady of Victory, featuring the Infant of Prague; part 5: The Jewish Quarter, Old-New Synagogue, Pinkas Synagogue and old Jewish Graveyard. For your reading convenience, parts 2-5 are going to have their own separate posts, so that you can skip around of skip them entirely, should you so choose. There will also be pictures. I just have to pick which ones.

Thus, without any further ado, Part the First: Arrival and events.

Firstly, Toronto airport is the most improved airport in the world, has free wi-fi and a little play area involving bronze tigers, and announces everything in French, English and the language of the airline you're taking, which, in our case, was German. Also, Canada has money of its own that is neither dollars nor euros, so we didn't buy any of the wonderful things that the duty-free station had to offer.

The plane was nice and even though Christine and I didn't have seats beside each other, the lady sitting beside me switched seats with Christine so we could be together, which was kind. The flight was long but not too long, and the screens had this awesome, constantly updating map of where we were and how long it would take us to get to Dusseldorf, which was exciting. I watched about half of that movie with Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman because the girl in the seat diagonally in front of me was watching it. I read about half of Paper Towns by John Green and fell asleep to the opera station, giving Christine the opportunity to steal and read about a third of Paper Towns.

With another short flight from Dusseldorf to Prague, I had gained a good view of the city from the air (also a good view of the wind turbines- congrats on the renewable energy source, Europe!), an airplane blanket and an airplane pastry, both of which are still hidden away in my bags. Here's the part of the story where I become really proud of Christine's and my senses of direction. We found a transportation map of Prague, an ATM, the bus to the metro, the right metro and the right metro stop and the way to our hostel (even though we walked past it and had to turn around once) with the assistance of Christine's iPod and the difficult-to-locate Prague street signs (hint-they're on the walls of the buildings). Check-in was easy and after updating our respective families of our still-alive status, we took a nap... for eight hours.

This kinda put a damper on the intention to visit the castle that afternoon, so we adventured out to get food and wander in a totally safe way. On a recommendation from two people in the next room over in our hostel, we headed toward the Charles bridge to find food, but were accosted by a small man outside a fancy restaurant and ended up eating there instead. Good, but pricey. Also, the Czech currency are Czech crowns, about 16 of which equal a dollar. It used to be about 50 crowns to the dollar maybe ten years ago. I learned this thanks to our economics-studying tour guide from Wednesday night.

We wandered across the bridge listening to the man playing the recorder by the gate before making it to the Old Town square by the astrological clock. We took pictures and sat around and wandered back. 

As much as I hate light pollution, some things are pretty at night. Statue and Tyn Church.

The next morning we climbed the hill by our hostel to the castle, which still had a wonderful view of the city, even if it wasn't the bell tower of the cathedral. We moseyed around the castle and its grounds, looking at the cathedral, the palace where the Defenestration of Prague happened (I know you shouldn't be happy because of the death of someone, but defenestrate is such a wonderful word and it wouldn't have entered my life without the Defenestration of Prague, so thank you, 17th century man being thrown out a window to begin the Thirty Years' War) and St. George's Basilica.

It's much more impressive in person, I think. But so pretty!

DEFENESTRATE!

That afternoon I went wandering and found a park by the river where there were families picnicing, people biking and people walking.

Vltava river, looking back at the Lesser Town side of things.

As with any good park, there were pretty statues, my favorite of which was hidden in the trees...

...and as with any interesting place, there were creepy post-modern statues. Faceless babies. Huge, creepy, faceless babies. Even though I had been warned by Cracked.com (the faceless babies had made number nine on the 14 Most Unintentionally Terrifying Statues in World list), I was unprepared for their barcoded heads and huge, crawling bodies. Seriously, they're taller than me, just crawling around.

You think it's cute...

but then you see this. (Tourists are included for scale.)

On the cheerier side of the park, a family lit a sparkler, put it on a cake and gave it to the children to carrying to one of the women at the picnic, singing Happy Birthday in a language I didn't understand, but I'm going to guess was Czech or Russian or some other Slavic language. That's the wonderful thing about an international city- there are so many languages floating around. I heard snippets of French followed by a barrage of German all amongst the background of Czech and the all-too-frequent English. It was a nice way to spend an afternoon, people watching in a park in the summer.

Day 3 in Prague was taken up with St. Nicholas Church and Our Lady of Victory in the morning, a late lunch on the square which took on quite a different personality by daylight, teeming with people, tents and a stage, a long afternoon in the Jewish quarter and an interesting evening on a guided tour. So, to give you the last flavor of Prague, I bring you thoughts from our guided tour.

There's a statue of Freud hanging off a building which I never would have noticed unless our guide pointed it our. The Tyn Church right off of the main square has two intimidating towers, and being a gothic church, the whole effect is rather imposing. Our guide said it looked like something from Lord of the Rings, like Cirith Ungol or Minas Morgul, which is a geek win for sure. I didn't get a chance to check out the inside of the Tyn Church, but at least I have a story to associate with it. The Lord of the Rings reference also probably explains our guide's wish to travel in New Zealand and Australia. Good choice, tour guide, good choice.

Along the way, we talked about the unfortunate multitude of tourists, especially Japanese tourists with their cameras and substantial memory cards, St. Patrick's Day, different traditions on Easter and traveling around world. Our tour guide was finishing his masters in economics, apparently for free because public school is free in the Czech republic, after earning his bachelors in three years and finishing the masters in one and a half. He really wants to travel, though, and didn't sound super excited about an internship involving economics, his inevitable future.

You see a lot of people in Prague. Well, I guess you see a lot of people in any big city, but I was fascinated by some characters here. The man playing the recorder on the bridge the first night, sitting outside the tower door playing haunting melodies that belonged to no song at all, only to be replaced during the day by an unfortunate soul in red and yellow garb and armor, standing watch over the musician's spot with his fake sword.

The guards inside the castle, marching through crowded plazas in full uniform, sunglasses guarding against the summer morning. The woman sitting watch in the synagogue, perched over the main room, observing the tourists from a hall covered in remembrances of unfortunate times come to pass. Our tour guide, content in his work but ready to see more of the world. Finally, this poor man who walked to the back of the train, hoping to get a room by himself, ending up with the two of us and our backpacks on a four hour ride to Berlin (another public transportation success, I might add). He's stuck watching the beautiful scenes go by outside our window, accompanied by the melody of my typing. I feel a little bad, especially since he helped me put my pack up on the rack. But life is full of eventual inconveniences. There are worse things in the world.

Obligatory Introductory Post

I don't often sit and stare at blank pages. Normally, I have something to say and the purpose of getting out a notebook to start writing or opening up a document to start typing is to get that message out of me and into a safer medium.

But the project this summer is a good little bit different from anything that I've written before. I'll be in new places with (mostly) new languages and new ways of seeing the world. I'll (hopefully) be busy each day being inundated with culture and buildings and people. I will definitely be extraordinarily familiarized with the European rail system by the end of my time across the pond. And even though I'm sure there will be many opportunities for experiences that will be blog-worthy, I'm equally sure that there will be many that are not and that I'll have to write anyway, regardless of experience or desire.

Because this summer is about documenting the unexpected awesome. If you think I'm talking in hyperbole here, you don't even understand the scale of the undertaking that is about to occur. In less than 3 months, we'll be visiting 9 countries and over 20 cities. There's at least one church per city that I plan scout out, looking at its history, its architecture, its purpose and its use in the lives of the people that surround it. If I only take 3 pictures per church, there will be at least 150 new pictures in the world of buildings that have been photographed time and again. But the important difference is that these pictures will be mine. The experiences they commemorate will be mine. My life will be tied to these places through the stories I'll tell (again and again, forgetting that you've heard them all before) and that wonderful experience that so many people and yet so few people have, the experience of being there. It imparts a particular kind of epic to one's existence. In short, my life will be awesome. QED.

So congrats to you, dear blog reader, for making it through the first of many posts with (hopefully) only the smallest twinges of jealousy or annoyance. With any luck, my time spent in far away places through the generosity of the Frances L. Phillips Travel Scholarship will be able to bring you the joy of good stories told through pictures, words and the obligatory song lyrics that follow me around in my daily life. In the meantime, feel free to take a second and imagine the explosion of emotions that an airport can carry and send happy thoughts and prayers my way. From Charlotte to Toronto to Dusseldorf to Prague, I've got a lot of traveling in front of me. A lot of thinking about where I'm going next.