End of October

October 23 - 31

Most of October passed in the haze of days that were nothing special, filled with tasks not really worth recording. The trees finally accepted it was Autumn, and the leaves began to change colour.



This magnificent tree is in our front garden. The beautiful golden colour didn't last, of course - the branches are bare now and the beautiful leaves are a nasty khaki coloured mulch which needs to be swept up!

Towards the end of October, we set off for Manchester as it was half-term and we had the prospect of seeing our grandchildren. Unfortunately, the weather wasn't great as it rained quite a bit during the week, and both children took it in turns to be unwell during our visit.

Our grandson had been unwell before we arrived, and then his sister caught it, so she became quite miserable. As our grandson was starting to feel better, we took him for some days out. Our first visit was to Heaton Park Tramway Museum, which I had previously had no idea even existed, though it opened in 1980. It's a heritage tramway running old trams as a visitor attraction in Heaton Park. Of course it is calculated to appeal to old codgers like us rather than our grandson, but we thought he might like it, and he certainly did. This is the tram we rode in, built in 1901 for the Hull Corporation


On a freezing cold day, it wasn't at all warm inside the open tram, but our grandson was delighted to watch the ticket collector punching the old paper tickets and quite fascinated by the method of getting the tram to go in the opposite direction by disconnecting the rod from the overhead power lines, changing the angle of it and re-connecting, and having the driver go to the controls at the other end. He even asked, very politely, if he could please drive the tram! The ticket collector explained very kindly that only a few real experts were allowed to drive it, but said if he came on another occasion he would be able to operate the model tramway in the Museum, which was not on display that day. So we promised him another visit, and bought him a model tram in the shop. He obviously enjoyed his visit, as he asked to keep his ticket.

He asked to go to another museum, so we opted for the Manchester Museum as he wanted to see a dinosaur. He was quite excited by this, so he put on a dinosaur costume himself.




So we were able to take a small dinosaur to see a big dinosaur



I think he was a bit taken aback by the size of it. I'm afraid the photo is slightly out of focus, like a lot of those taken in poor light indoors.

After that, he was unwell again and it poured with rain, so that was more or less the end of the expeditions I'm afraid. Towards the end of the week he felt well enough to go to the playground near the house, hoping to find somebody to play with. Unfortunately, it was such a cold day that there was nobody there. After a while, a little girl arrived, but not somebody he knew, and sitting on the next swing to her and hoping to make friends unfortunately didn't seem to work.




Things got a bit better as Halloween approached - a friend came to visit and cupcakes were made and eaten. Then we made a gingerbread house.




It was a bit of a shame that it was done before my son got home, as Paul 'helped' with it and felt he didn't do too good a job on the purple spider web on the roof. We had tried the same thing with our younger grandson the previous week, and our eldest son made brilliant spider webs, which quite put Paul's efforts to shame. Anyway, our grandson wasn't really interested in the artistic merits or otherwise of the house, he just wanted to eat it!

There were, of course, various visits from people in scary costumes, so our grandson felt he had to dress up too.




I felt that was a rather horrid costume, but it seemed to make him happy!

We stayed the weekend after Halloween so Paul could help with a bit more DIY, and came home again on Monday November 2nd.

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Busy week

September 26 - October 2

This has been a very busy but rather dull week, which exactly explains why very often there is no blog for weeks at a time - our lives are far too tedious to write about. This week was an absolutely typical example of what our life can be like. It went like this:

Saturday - the start of 2 week's holiday washing. Always takes ages - reasons below.
Sunday - to South London to eat grandson's birthday family lunch with various relatives
Monday - more holiday washing, then Doctor's appointment
Tuesday - ironing fest
Wednesday - Hospital appointment, then to South London to grandson's birthday tea
Thursday - to South London again to do my sister's shopping and gardening

Washing here always takes a long time because, like many apartments, we aren't allowed to hang washing out, and there isn't room in the house for a separate dryer. So either you festoon your house with wet washing, or you accept that each machine load takes several hours.

Every trip to South London takes around an hour each way, depending on traffic. So trips to visit my son and grandson or to help my sister, who is awaiting a hip replacement operation, take most of the day.

Friday was a different day, fortunately. I wanted to go out early and visit another garden, as it was the most beautiful sunny day, but I had to wait in for a delivery which tried to come yesterday when we were out. The garden I wanted to visit is in Sussex near here. I had long wanted to see it, and hoped to visit it while the sun was shining, but though it's been such lovely weather all week, each day has just been too busy. And Friday was allegedly the last day of good weather this week, but we couldn't go out until the parcel arrived!

Eventually, we had time for a short visit of almost two hours in the afternoon, after the parcel was finally delivered.

The garden is called High Beeches, it's in West Sussex, on the Weald and hence steep in places. It is 27 acres (about 11 hectares) of woodland and water garden, and is certainly spectacular. I had expected to see more of the autumn colours, but perhaps the recent warm weather had deceived some of the trees into hanging onto their leaves for a little longer.

The maples had already started to be ready for autumn though. Their glowing colours contrast with the greens of the other trees, and the deeper greens of the conifers.




The garden pamphlet says there are many unusual plant specimens here, and apparently many of them were provided by Frank Kingdon-Ward, the plant hunter I mentioned when I wrote about our visit to Borde Hill Gardens - the intrepid chap who was somewhat inconvenienced by the murder of his mail runner.

As High Beeches, though a very different garden, is not that far away from Borde Hill, I suppose it is not surprising that the same plant hunter supplied them both.

Although many of the trees were not yet in full autumn colours, I am told it has been an amazing year for berries and seeds. The wonderful weather at the moment is providing perfect conditions for a spectacular display of autumn colour in berries, and we were directed to these.




This is a plant called Symplocus paniculata (I had to photograph the label, there's no hope I would remember that) which is a small deciduous shrub that has little white flowers in May and June and brilliant blue berries in autumn. It was introduced in Britain in 1871 and is a native of China, Japan and Taiwan.

I was surprised to see Hydrangeas in flower so late in the year, since our ones in the lane have been finished for weeks, but this is a slightly different variety.




It's something called Hydrangea paniculata 'Unique' and seems to begin a rather pale colour, from what I can gather, then it turns pink.

There are vibrant beds of cyclamen glowing under some of the taller trees.




This reminded me that the cyclamen my sister gave me for my birthday was going to be very unhappy on the bright windowsill where I had put it. Sure enough, when I got home I looked at it and it was miserably droopy. It looks much happier now I've found it a dark corner - just like these ones under the shade of a huge tree.

There are more open areas in the garden, with vistas across the hillside and some of the ponds.



As you can see, as well as the maples, there are some autumn colours, but many of the trees are still green.

The photo below is fairly typical of the garden, one of the ponds with open areas and glades in the woodland.




All over this part of the world you can see the huge leaves of gunnera, like those on the right of this photo. I think this must have been a very popular plant in the early 1900s, I can't think of many gardens where I haven't seen it.

At the one of the lowest parts of the garden is the largest pond.




There's a beautiful view up towards the entrance of the garden, higher up the hill, and it was such a still day you can see all the reflections in the water.

Because High Beeches is a woodland garden, many of the paths are unmade, just mowed into the grass. This means they are bumpy and lumpy, steep in places and probably very slippery at times. By the time I'd got this far, my knee was aching and I was wishing I'd brought my walking poles. The doctor I saw earlier in the week suggested I might have done some serious damage, as the knee was still swollen and painful. I suppose it hadn't been all that sensible to be scrambling about on bumpy paths, rather than resting it. However, the garden is very well supplied with seats, so I was able to rest the knee several times when it got too painful.

As is traditional with us, we were the last people out and found the garden staff waiting for us to leave. The garden closes for winter at the end of this month, so perhaps we will find time to go again when there are more autumn colours - only this time I'll take my walking poles!


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Going home

Friday September 25th
This is another day to forget, the day of 5 trains.
The first train is from Berlin to Cologne
The second is Cologne to Brussels
The third is the Eurostar to London
The fourth is St Pancras to East Croydon
The fifth is East Croydon to Oxted

Then it's just the taxi home.

We were up well before 7, as our cases had to be packed and ready to collect outside our rooms at 7.45.

Berlin station was no problem this time, with no crowds of coaches and hordes of demonstrators. We were in Cologne after lunch, where we had over an hour to wait for the train to Brussels. This was late, but it hardly mattered as we then had over an hour to wait for Eurostar when we reached Brussels.

Eurostar was on time, and we found our seats. But then we were told that the tunnel had a power failure so nobody knew when we could set off. We were served dinner anyway - we were travelling First Class, so you get a tiny meal. You also get wine, and the staff were so anxious to keep everybody happy that the wine flowed like water, so everybody got very jolly. In the event, we only had to wait an hour, so we were in London by 9pm, which meant home by 11, after 15 hours of travel. I just fell into bed.

This is a very boring post, so here is a cheerful photo, which I meant to post but never found space for. Probably only people of a certain age will recognise it.



Did you guess right? It's a statue of Peter Falk as Colombo, with his trademark cigar and untidy Mac, and it's in Budapest. I had no idea that Peter Falk was originally Hungarian. You live and learn! It's quite close to the Danube, so a lot of tourists come to visit it, and as you can see, they all stroke the dog. I rather like the fact it isn't on a pedestal but just on the street, looking like a person who inadvertently just turned to bronze.

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In Berlin

Thursday September 24th
As we had been unable to visit all the planned places yesterday because of the demonstration and because of the streets blocked off in readiness for the Berlin Marathon at the weekend, our tour leader took us on a walk round some of the sights. We walked from our Hotel up to the Tiergarten, an urban public park located in the middle of the city. It's huge, apparently 210 hectares or 520 acres, and dates back to1527 when it was founded as a hunting area for the king. It has far more trees that Hyde Park in London, so from the outside it looks more like a forest. We only had time to walk round the outside, as we were making for the Holocaust Memorial which is, of course, a memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust.

The memorial is on a big sloping site - 4.7-acres - covered with 2,711 concrete slabs arranged in a grid pattern. The slabs are big. They are all about 8 feet long by 3 ft wide but they vary in height from 8 inches to almost 16 feet. They are organized in rows, some of them going north–south, and others heading east–west at right angles.




They are apparently designed to produce an uneasy, confusing atmosphere, aiming to represent a supposedly ordered system that has lost touch with feelings of humanity, and it certainly is an odd place. If you go right in, it's like a maze and you can quickly get disorientated and lost among the high stones. Some people have also remarked on its resemblance to a cemetery.

We went on to the Reichstag building, but it was impossible to get a better photo than the one I took yesterday. There were stands being built, probably something to do with the marathon, and the whole area was cordoned off so photos were spoiled by the fences and obscured by the stands. I was glad I had managed a decent photograph yesterday.

Not far away is the Brandenburg Gate, probably one of the best-known landmarks in Germany, an 18th-century neoclassical triumphal arch, built on the site of a former city gate that marked the start of the road from Berlin to the town of Brandenburg an der Havel. It was commissioned by King Frederick William II of Prussia as a sign of peace and built between1788 and 1791.

On top of the gate is the Quadriga, a chariot drawn by four horses. The gate was originally named the Peace Gate and the goddess is Eirene, the goddess of peace.




I stood on an open square called Pariser Platz to take this photo. Up until 1989, I would have been standing in East Berlin to take this photo - except I couldn't have stood there at all, it was no man's land between the two walls, and just a wasteland of gravel and weeds.

The gate is nowadays restored to what it once was, the monumental entry to Unter den Linden, the famous avenue of linden trees, which originally led straight to the city palace of the Prussian monarchs. (In England, I am told we call them Lime trees.) Apparently, Duke Frederick William wanted to spruce up the route from his home to the Tiergarten hunting ground, so he ordered the planting of long rows of Linden trees, which would not only beautify Berlin but would also keep his route to the Tiergarten shady.



Nearly a century later, King Frederick II expanded the avenue by adding a collection of cultural buildings to the area, including the national opera house and the national library, making Unter den Linden larger and more prestigious, and it became a popular gathering place. It doesn't look too prestigious at the moment I'm afraid, since it's full of cranes and hoardings and huge holes, all connected with the building of new subway lines and stations. It's planted with four rows of Linden trees, about a thousand in total. I read somewhere that Hitler had them all cut down and replaced with Nazi standards, but it was so unpopular he replaced them. It's hard to think of Hitler caring about his unpopularity!

Unter den Linden is a long street, stretching 1.5 kilometres from Pariser Platz to the Palace Bridge near Museum Island, and we walked right along it to where the Royal Palace is being re-built. It will be a replica of the original Royal Palace, so Unter den Linden will once again lead from the Brandenburg Gate to the Royal Palace.

We stopped off at Bebelplatz again to see if we could photograph the memorial to the book burning this time, but it was behind a hoarding; it seems that the whole of the centre of Berlin is being re-built at present. It was a pity to miss the plaque, which includes a line from a play by Heinrich Heine, which translates into English as: ’That was only a prelude; where they burn books, they will in the end also burn people'.

When we finally reached Museum Island, I wanted to go to the Pergamon Museum, but it was closed, to my great chagrin. I've wanted to go there since I visited Pergamon itself in 1975, so I was really upset not to be able to see it. I thought briefly of visiting the Egyptian Museum to see the head of Nefertiti, but Paul wasn't keen, and we couldn't find good information about which Museum would be best for paintings, as things seem to have been moved about a good deal. So we decided to visit the Museum of German History, of which we had heard good reports.

This museum is housed in what used to be the Zeughaus arsenal, the oldest building on Unter den Linden, built between 1695 and 1706, and absolutely enormous. We decided to concentrate on the ground floor, which deals with the history of Germany between 1918 and the re-unification in 1989.

We began with the period after 1918, when the victor nations in World War I decided to assess Germany for their costs of conducting the war against them, and most German people suffered great hardship. This cartoon by George Grosz, shows the average German family looking hungrily through the delicatessen window at the food they couldn't afford.




George Grosz was a German artist known especially for his caricatural drawings and paintings of Berlin life in the 1920s. He was a prominent member of groups like the Berlin Dada during the Weimar Republic, before wisely emigrating to the United States in 1933. The Nazis didn't like those who caricatured them!

With no means of paying the reparations demanded, Germany printed money, causing the value of the Mark to collapse. Between 1914 and the end of 1923 the German mark’s rate of exchange against the U.S. dollar plummeted. In 1914, $1 was worth 4.2 marks; in 1923, $1was worth 4.2 trillion marks. It was said that many Germans carted wheelbarrows of cash to the shops to pay for their groceries.

During this hyperinflation, higher and higher denominations of banknotes were issued. Before the war, the highest denomination was 1000 Marks, equivalent to approximately £50 or $238. In early 1922, 10,000 Mark notes were introduced, followed by 100,000 and 1 million Mark notes early in 1923, then later notes up to 50 million Marks. The hyperinflation peaked in October 1923 and banknote denominations rose to 100 trillion Marks. This is a heap of some of these very high denomination notes.




At the end of the hyperinflation, these 100 trillion Mark notes were worth approximately £5 or $24.

The chaos in Germany lead to failures in Government, coups and attempted coups, and ultimately, the rise of the Nazis. I could fill this post with photos I took of posters of Hitler, exhortations to the populace about how to behave and so on, but I'll just content myself with showing the way National Socialism tried to permeate every aspect of people's lives. This is a child's Doll's House.




It may look fairly ordinary at first sight, but the wallpaper is covered in images of children taking part in Hitler Youth activities, and actually the whole house is decorated with posters and photographs of Hitler and other Nazi grandees. You could buy toy cars with Hitler in them, and children were encouraged from an early age to venerate Hitler and conform to National Socialist ideals.

There were many images from the war, though not perhaps as many as you might think. I like this photo of the Enigma machine.



An Enigma machine was actually a series of cipher machines developed and used originally for both commercial and military usage. Early models were used commercially from the early 1920s, and adopted by the military and government services of several countries, most notably Nazi Germany.

By the time we had got to the end of the section on the war, we were both a bit tired, but we had a brief look at the period between 1945 and re-unification. There were a lot of information boards on the politics involved, but to my mind the most interesting displays were those contrasting the different material goods available to people in West and East Germany.

The West German consumer goods included the famous VW Beetle. The East German equivalent, of course, featured the Trabant.



The Trabant was the most common vehicle in East Germany, and it was also exported to other countries. It had an outdated and inefficient two-stroke engine so it had poor fuel economy and produced a thick, smoky exhaust. It was designed with a steel frame and a body made of Duroplast. Duroplast was a hard plastic (similar to Bakelite) made of recycled materials. This could well have been responsible for the popular misconception that the Trabant was made of cardboard. Although more than three million were made, production could not keep up with demand, and many people had to wait years for one!

By this time, we had spent about 4 hours in the Museum and both of us were exhausted. It would have been nice to look at the earlier German History on the upper floor, but we didn't have the stamina. We had no information about public transport, so we walked all the way back along Unter den Linden, all round the Tiergarten and back to our hotel, arriving around 5 o'clock. After this, we were fit for nothing and just ate in the hotel before packing for our journey home.

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Prague to Berlin

Wednesday September 23rd
Today we had to get up at 6am in order to catch an early train - then the train was half an hour late! It made up time on the way though, so we were only a few minutes late arriving in Berlin, around 1.30

We were due to have a city tour, but the traffic was truly awful because of a demonstration of some sort which started at the main station, where we arrived, and ended at the Brandenburg Gate, where we were supposed to visit later but couldn't because of appalling traffic and blocked off streets. At first we couldn't even get to our coach because of all the demonstrator's buses and the press of people. Because of the heavy traffic due to the demo and the road closures, we couldn't follow the tour plan, and didn't see everything that had been planned for us.

Our first stop was the Victory Column. It wasn't night time as you might think from this photo, it was just a dreadfully overcast day.



The column was designed1864 to commemorate the Prussian victory in the Danish-Prussian War, but by the time it was erected in1873, Prussia had also defeated Austria in the Austro-Prussian War (1866) and France in the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71), so it different from the original plans. These later victories inspired the addition of the bronze sculpture of Victory on the top.

Our next stop was the Charlottenburg Palace which is the largest palace in Berlin.



The original palace was commissioned by Sophie Charlotte, the wife of Friedrich III, Elector of Brandenburg. It was designed in baroque style and completed in 1699.

Friedrich crowned himself as King Friedrich I in Prussia in 1701, and had the palace extended the following year. Sophie Charlotte died in 1705 and Friedrich named the palace and its estate Charlottenburg in her memory.

We also stopped at the Olympic Stadium, built to house the 1936 Olympic Games.



The area was used by the British Military after World War II, and during the 1960s it was used by the American forces for American Football. It was renovated in 2000, and today it is a multi-purpose arena and is used for international football matches.

We made a stop for coffee at The Topography of Terror, an outdoor and indoor history museum located on the site of buildings which during the Nazi regime (1933 to 1945) were the headquarters of the Gestapo and the SS.

The buildings were largely destroyed by Allied bombing during early 1945 and the ruins were demolished after the war. You can still see the walls of the basement, used for a prison. The boundary between the American and Soviet zones of occupation in Berlin ran along here, so the street soon became a fortified boundary, and the Berlin Wall ran along the south side of the street. The wall here was never demolished, so we were able to take photographs of it.



People are standing in what used to be the basement prison, with the remains of the Berlin Wall behind. The dreadful totalitarian looking building in the background is not contemporary with the Nazi headquarters but looks very threatening I think.

We drove past a public square called the Bebelplatz, which is known as the site of one of the infamous Nazi book burning ceremonies held in 1933 in many German university cities.



Joseph Goebbels made an inflammatory speech before the burning which was attended by members of the Nazi Students' League, the SA ("brownshirts"), SS and Hitler Youth groups. They burned around 20,000 books, including works by Heinrich Mann, Erich Maria Remarque, Karl Marx, Albert Einstein and many other authors.

I'm afraid I wasn't quick enough with some of my photos as we drove past - I ruined a photo of Checkpoint Charlie, and a bus got in the way of my attempt on the Brandenburg Gate as we drove past. I hope to do better tomorrow.

I did manage to photograph the Reichstag building, constructed in 1894 to house the German Imperial Diet (equivalent of the Parliament I suppose).



It housed the Diet until 1933, when it was severely damaged in a fire. After World War II, the building fell into disuse; the parliament of the German Democratic Republic met in East Berlin, while the parliament of the Federal Republic of Germany met in Bonn.

The ruined building was made safe against the elements and partially refurbished in the 1960s, but no attempt at full restoration was made until after German reunification in1990, when it underwent a reconstruction, led by Norman Foster. After its completion in 1999, it once again became the meeting place of the German parliament.

It had become quite late by then, so the coach took us to the hotel to check in and have dinner. Tomorrow is another day!

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In Prague 2

Tuesday September 22nd
I'm on the most appalling connection, so I might have to post these photos one at a time - come back if you don't see 7!

Tuesday was a free day for us to do as we liked, but my hip and knee were so painful after two days with hours of fast limping over cobblestones that I determined not to go too far. So we caught the Metro 4 stops to Wenceslas Square and went off to find the Communist Museum.

This is ironically placed above the McDonalds in an ex-palace of an aristocrat and is next door to the Casino! This is the staircase outside the museum; the museum is on the left of this photo, and the Casino is on the right.




Although it is only a small museum there is a lot to see of interest to those looking for a view of life in a Communist State. There are information boards in every room which outline the historical background, beginning with the founding of the Czechoslovak state through to the Communist putsch, Normalization, and finally the Velvet Revolution. These explanations are in Czech but have also been translated into five other languages - otherwise I imagine it wouldn't be much of a tourist attraction.

Some effort has been made to recreate the experience of living under the regime. You can peer into a schoolroom with rows of wooden benches, the blackboard chalked over in Russian, the living room with worn and shabby utilitarian furniture, or a grocery store with a conspicuously empty chiller cabinet, which stocks only two kinds of canned goods.

The most successful mock-up, however, is probably the interrogation room. There are no instruments of torture on display: simply glancing around the spartan office is enough to make you imagine the horrors that took place here. There are more of those information boards, again detailing the most violent excesses of the period.




There is a short film, with some footage from the failed 'Prague Spring' in 1968, with images of Soviet tanks rolling in to the streets of Prague, and the events of 1989 that led to the end of Communist rule in what was then Czechoslovakia.

The museum seems a bit one-sided - it tries to give visitors the impression that all Czechs were hapless victims of totalitarianism, which I'm sure isn't quite accurate. But it does paint a chilling picture of life under a totalitarian regime, with the population at the mercy of 'planners', denied any culture or intellectual pleasure, expected to work and not to question and encouraged to spy on one another for examples of politically incorrect thinking.

After that, seeking something more cheerful, we walked a short distance to the Alphonse Mucha Museum. For some reason I had a vague idea he was French, which just demonstrates my ignorance because he was Czech. He is an Art Nouveau painter and decorative artist who had considerable influence on the British Art Nouveau movement, and known for his very distinctive style. In the West, we know him for his many illustrations, advertisements and postcards.



He was born in Moravia and moved to Paris to study art in 1887, where he also worked at producing magazine illustrations and colourful advertisements. Around Christmas 1894, Mucha happened to go into a print shop where there was a sudden and unexpected need for an advertising poster for a new play featuring Sarah Bernhardt. Mucha volunteered to produce a lithographed poster very quickly, and the resulting poster on for the play Gismonda attracted much attention, so much so that people were cutting it down and taking it away to keep.


He visited America between 1906 and1910, where he did a lot of work and also met millionaire Charles R. Crane, who used his fortune to help promote Slavic nationalism. Mucha returned to the Czech lands and settled in Prague, where he decorated many public buildings and worked on his Slav Epic, 20 huge paintings in a more serious and much less decorative style, which are not really known in the west. When Czechoslovakia won its independence after World War I, Mucha designed the new postage stamps, banknotes, medals and other government documents for the new state.

After that, we felt in need of a late lunch, and found a Bistro nearby, which was convenient as both my knee and my hip were becoming more painful. However, I was determined to see the Old Town properly in daylight, so we set off for the Old Town Square, stopping at the Astrological clock.




As I think I said before, the clock was first installed in 1410, making it the third-oldest astronomical clock in the world and the oldest one still working.
The clock mechanism itself is composed of three main components: the astronomical dial, representing the position of the Sun and Moon in the sky and displaying various astronomical details; "The Walk of the Apostles", a clockwork hourly show of figures of the Apostles and other moving sculptures—notably a figure of Death (represented by a skeleton) striking the time; and a calendar dial with medallions representing the months.

I was extremely disappointed not to be able to see the figure of Death striking the time, but close perusal of my photo and comparisons with other photos on the Internet revealed that two figures are currently missing from the upper area of the astronomical dial, and one is the skeleton! I also waited until 4pm, but there was no parade of the Apostles - they are supposed to appear from the two doors at the top, just below the golden bird. The clock is clearly under renovation at present.

There are many beautiful buildings in the Old Town Square. This used to be the Kinský Palace, built between 1755 and 1765 and felt by many to be the most beautiful Rococo building in Prague. In 1768 it was bought by Štěpán Kinský, an Imperial diplomat, hence the name. In1948 communist rule in Czechoslovakia was proclaimed from the palace balcony. Nowadays, it belongs to the National Gallery.



Another notable fact was that it is where Franz Kafka attended high school and where his father, who was a haberdasher, owned a shop.

I tried desperately to get a proper picture of this amazing Gothic church, the Church of Our Lady before Tyn, but the building in front of it is actually built into the wall of the church, and there are only narrow alleyways all round, so this is the best I can do.



The church was built in 1365 on the site of an earlier Romanesque church. Its magnificent multiple steeples are 80m high and dominate the Old Town Square. Between the early 15th century and the year of 1620 it was the main Hussite (Protestant) church in Prague. I would have liked to go in because close to the altar there is a tomb of the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe who worked at the court of the Emperor Rudolph II, but it seemed to be shut.

By then it was getting quite late, so we decided to return to the Metro and go back to the Hotel. We didn't want to have a late night, as we had an early start in the morning, and needed to be in breakfast at 6.30.

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In Prague 1, Part 1

Monday September 21st

We set off in the early morning for Prague Castle, though there is so much to see there I feel we only scratched the surface, and we intend to go back tomorrow. The castle complex dates from the 9th century, and I'm told is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the largest ancient castle in the world.

Although the construction of the first walled building was in 870 AD, you won't find many examples of such early building, as the current ground level is well above what it would have been then. What you see is a real hodgepodge of architectural styles, with virtually every architectural style of the last millennium. It includes the Gothic St Vitus Cathedral, the Romanesque Basilica of St. George, Renaissance palaces, Baroque Palaces and Neoclassical style wings.

There are three courtyards and several streets. An ornate entrance gate at the Castle Square leads to the first courtyard, decorated with large sculptures of fighting pagan Gods and Titans.




The third and largest courtyard is dominated by the enormous St Vitus Cathedral, started in 1344 but not completed until the 20th century.




It is so enormous there seems to be no way of getting a decent photograph. It isn't open on Mondays, so we intend to go back tomorrow to see inside it, and perhaps see some other things as well. There is a magnificent 14th century mosaic and a clock, but I'm limited to the number of photos I can easily post, so I might manage some of those tomorrow if we go back.

The courtyard opens up into St George's Square, where you will find the Basilica of St George.




This was built in the twelfth century and replaced an older, tenth century church. The façade was added in the seventeenth century. Our Czech guide told us the the two towers were of unequal sizes because they represented man and woman, so they are called the Adam and Eve Towers.

In the same square you also find the Royal Palace, also known as the Old Palace. Romanesque and Gothic stories were built on the remains of the first, ninth-century structure. The biggest part you can visit is Vladislav Hall, built in 1493. Unfortunately, this is a place you have to pay to photograph, and we had not yet visited an ATM so we couldn't pay anything! The photo here comes from the Internet, and I hope it isn't too small to see, as it's quite impressive.




The last place we visited in the Castle was Golden Lane. Originally, there was just a wall behind Prague Castle. In the 15th century, the first very modest houses were built along it. As the original name of the street was Goldmakers Lane, it is thought most of the first inhabitants were probably goldsmiths. These houses were demolished in 1591. Six years later, Emperor Rudolph II allowed the 24 Prague Castle´s fusiliers to build their houses there, and because the area is small, the houses were tiny.

Later, various craftsmen and servants lived in the houses. According to local legends, Emperor Rudolph II had some of his court alchemists accomodated in Golden Lane, where they tried to turn metal into gold, so that could also be the origin of the name Golden Lane.

One of the more famous ones was number 22.



Frank Kafka lived here for two years, 1916 - 17, as he was looking for a quiet place to write. At the beginning of the 20th century, the owners of the houses became aware of their unique charm and many moved elsewhere to more comfortable apartments and opened their tiny Golden Lane houses to tourists, charging a fee. Others let their houses to writers or artists who were looking for inspiration.

Perhaps the saddest one is the little house of the psychic who called herself Madam de Thebes. She was a widow who could never believe that her son, who was killed in the First World War, was never coming back, and set the table for him every day.




She became a fortune teller and card reader, but her constant predictions of the end of the Second World War and the fall of the Third Reich led to her arrest by the Gestapo and she was tortured to death.

On that happy note, we left the castle and descended an interminable number of steps to the Lower Town at the foot of the hill. So I'll continue that in the next post.

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In Prague 1, Part 2

Monday September 21st

Once down from the Castle, we walked through some very picturesque streets with beautiful buildings, on our way back down to the Charles Bridge.




I mentioned the bridge last night, so I won't repeat myself here, but will just add that originally the Charles Bridge was devoid of any ornamentation, except for a wooden cross that was placed at its center. In the seventeenth century the cross was replaced by a bronze crucifix. The first statue - of St. John of Nepomuk - was added in 1683. There are now 30 statues, of which I think the one below is the biggest.



It represents the time the area came under the rule of the Turks. You might just be able to see the raised arms of the miserable people kept in prison under the main group. This photo isn't helped by the passer-by in the blue coat, but it's hard to take photos on the bridge, there are so many people.

There are beautiful river views from the bridge, so we spent some time admiring them, though the sky had unfortunately clouded over by then.



This is a view from slightly further along the bridge, showing the back of the Old Town, with many beautiful buildings.



It takes a while to walk across the bridge, there are so many people. Eventually, we made our way to the Old Town Square.



This is another picturesque place where we'll try to return, but there's so much to see, it's difficult to imagine how we will find the time.

By now it was lunch time, so we stopped to eat. After lunch, we walked through some very smart streets full of expensive shops located in some of the beautiful buildings.


This was absolutely the most beautiful, and if my photo doesn't end up too small, you will see that it is occupied by Bulgari. I was standing outside Prada when I took this photo, and had recently passed Louis Vuitton. There are not places where we shop - you may see Paul striding swiftly past! (He can't buy me a birthday present anyway, he has no money and no cards, thanks to the pickpocket.)

Eventually, we made our way back to the coach which returned us to the hotel about 3.30. Many of our group stayed in for the rest of the day, being too exhausted to do any more walking, having walked for about 4 hours.

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Budapest to Prague

Sunday September 20th
We had a distressingly early start this morning, so we were at the station in very good time for our train to Prague. The station has some wonderful murals in the entrance hall, though the platforms themselves look very old fashioned.




Our Hungarian guide was very keen for us to take photos of the murals, suggesting we could use Photoshop to select the angel above and use it to send in Christian emails to our friends! She didn't leave us quite enough time to take the pictures though, so mine was too hurried and not satisfactory. I really need to photoshop out the stray hand which got into this photo!

The train journey took 8 hours, taking us through Slovakia and eventually bringing us to Prague where a coach collected us to take us to our hotel, which is the smartest yet. We had dinner there - a very nice buffet - and then set off with our tour leader to see the city centre by night. It certainly is beautiful.

We caught the Metro to Wenceslas Square, then walked to look at the medieval astronomical clock.



Later, we were back to hear it strike 10, but somehow we missed the figures coming out, I think perhaps they do it at the beginning.

We then walked through the old town at a pretty fast pace, our tour leader having forgotten my painful knee. It was very crowded and the shops were all open even though it was after 9, but we didn't have time to stop and look at anything as the party galloped on towards the Charles Bridge.

This is the tower that protects the entry to the bridge. There's one the other end too.



The Bridge crosses the Vltava river. Construction on it was started in 1357, and when it was finished at the start of the 1400s, it was called the Stone Bridge.

The bridge is 621 m long and nearly 10 m wide, resting on 16 arches. It is is decorated by a continuous alley of 30 statues, most of them baroque-style, originally erected around 1700 but now all replaced by replicas. I'll take photographs of them in the light, you couldn't see them in the dark.

This is the tower at the other end of the bridge.



It marks the entry into what is called the Malá Strana or "Little Side", because it was on the left bank of the river Vltava, on the slopes just below the Prague Castle.

Thank goodness we went no further, but turned back to retrace our steps. My back and hip both hurt from walking fast on the irregular cobbles. I hope to be recovered by tomorrow, as this is clearly a beautiful city and I look forward to seeing it.

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