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!

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.