It's All Right and Good Cheap Beer: Czech-Style

Our trip to Prague was cancelled last summer - we were supposed to cycle from Munich to Prague along the river when our cycling friend's mother died unexpectedly. The city never fell off our adventure list and we decided to squeeze in a quick trip before our move back to the States, this time without the bikes. We arrived with only a few preparations and no expectations - the best way to travel.

Saturday offered us the bluest skies and we used  the 
opportunity to cross the St. Charles Bridge to go see the Prague Castle. First off, the St. Charles bridge was almost a section of the city itself. It is a pedestrian bridge with religious statues along the way spanning the Vltava River. People weren't using it as a means to get from one side of the river to the other, but instead were just hanging out along the bridge, looking at the artist booths, the street performers and enjoying the nice day. We wandered along with them. Eventually we reached the other side and climbed the hill to see the Castle (Prazsky hrad -where the President of the Czech Republic lives) and St. Vitus Cathedral. The inside of the cathedral was mostly closed off, but not before we could appreciate the stained glass windows with the intense sun reflection on the inside. The guards with trumpet and drum patrol changed shifts with much pomp and circumstance. The ceremony to change guards was fun to see, not merely a handing off of the weapons used to guard the Castle.

As we left, we smelled the roasting sausages and decided to pick up some street food while watching the street performers. The brat sausages were to Paul's liking and I noticed that sauerkraut and potatoes were available for vegetarians. Yum! There were many outdoor markets and street musicians also in this vibrant area of town.


We left Castle hill and returned to our hotel on the right bank of the Vltava River, near Old Town Square. It was too glorious to be inside, so we hiked to the Old Town Square to people watch. We came across more food trailers and bought some Trdelnik - a roasted bread pastry that is either covered in sugar and cinnamon or slathered on the inside with Nutella. The smell from the rods of Trdelnik was very satisfying. We realized that we had not eaten at all in a typical restaurant, but had munched on street food all day - very tasty street food.

Sunday we got up early to be on the St. Charles bridge before it was busy to get some photos of the saints on the bridge. We thought we had an appointment for a bicycle tour of the city that morning, but there was a miscommunication with the tour company. We rebooked for the next morning and took the cycling guide's advice on finding some good breweries in the city to take in some inexpensive beer since we had some open time. We also wanted some traditional Czech food so we went to Novomestsky Pivovar for a beer and some Czech food - potato rolls, sausages, pork chops, sauerkraut, and boiled potatoes (for my husband, the meat eater). I had a pretzel with mustard and salad. We left there and considered going to some of the historic breweries on the west side of the river, but decided to halt on the day-drinking to see more of the market square and to be outside. There is a beer called X33 that has an alcohol content of nearly 12%. We also considered going to get some original Budweiser beer (we've had it before - it is truly tasty). We passed on it. The cobblestone streets are very uneven when walking sober, it's seemed dangerous to drink more.

Sunday evening, we bought tickets to a classical music concert with a soprano and string quartet. It was to be held in an old monastery, now converted to concert hall and office building. While we were waiting for the concert to start, a violin player was playing outside the open windows, courting the restaurant patrons outside. The bass player went to the window five minutes prior to start time to call the violinist upstairs so the concert could start. It was a fantastic venue and very nice music, complete with a mix of traditional Czech folk songs.

Monday we started our appointed bike tour, which included a history talk of various points around Prague. We started near the bike shop and saw the Powder Tower, one of the oldest structures that was part of the town wall. The gun powder was stored here to keep it away from the enemy. We pedaled to the Old Town Square at the Astronomical Clock. We waited until it dinged on the hour to see the twelve apostles at the top and the statues perform below as they have for several centuries. We looked around the Square to see the Church of our Lady before Tyn, as well as the original city hall that had been mostly destroyed by the Nazis on their way out of town. The National Gallery, a very unique building, holds a prominent place on the square.

We left the main square and rode down narrower streets to the Jewish Quarter, which for the most part was still in tact from WWII. Hitler decided to use this Jewish neighborhood as a Museum and therefore, most of it was not destroyed during the war. The oldest Jewish temple in Europe is located in this section of town. We crossed the bridge to see a few sites on the west side of the river, but mostly we found ourselves looking back at the view of the East side of the city. We found a couple unique pieces of art along our ride. We were within a block of the Lennon Wall, but our guide seemed to be pressed for time and didn't even mention it. We found Wenceslas Square and heard about the starts of revolutions by the people that have taken place over time, including the Velvet Revolution that started with 20,000 students protesting Communist rule in 1989. The next day there were 500,000 people in the square. Days later the Communist leaders resigned and it was the end of Communism in the Czech Republic after 41 years of control. We arrived back where we started at the bike shop after two hours of cycling. We ate lunch outside near the Municipal House at an active outdoor market to rest and people watch.

After lunch, we immediately went back to the west side of the river to find the Lennon Memorial wall and to figure out where to catch the funicula for our dinner at Nebozizek, on the peak of the Petrin Hill overlooking the city. We found the area where the wall was to be and at first was very disappointed. It was small and the graffiti to memorialize Lennon was not very artistic. There were over 500 locks on a bridge over a small waterway. We were not impressed. We were getting ready to leave, when I looked down an alley and caught a glimpse of the REAL Lennon wall. It would have been terrible to miss this tribute to John Lennon. A lone guitarist was playing "Imagine" as we walked up. I just wanted to be there. It occurred to me that though Lennon had never visited Communist Prague, his pacifism through music touched everyone. The Communist youth dared to paint this wall when Lennon died even though his music was banned by the communist regime.  The art on the wall has evolved over time, but it still seems like a coming together to celebrate not only Lennon, but a celebration of giving peace a chance. I was touched.

We traveled along the river and found out sadly that the funicula to Petrin hill was out of service, which would require a 30 minute uphill climb on our part to get to our dinner reservation for the night. As it started to rain and then became foggy, we decided that dinner back at our hotel sounded better and better. We would be missing the view at the top of Petrin hill anyhow. We dined on beetroot soup, and other Czech delights at our hotel and then returned to our room to log in to watch some of our favorite football teams in America as it rained outside. Yes in Prague as well as the rest of the world, Lennon taught us "whatever gets you through the night . . . it's all right, it's all right".

Berlin - The Presence of Absence

So far Berlin might be my favorite city in Europe. Paul and I decided to go there on a whim when our bike ride from Munich to Prague was canceled the week before we were supposed to go (that's another story . . . ). In Europe you can just jump on an airplane for the weekend easily and cheaply. And so we did. We arrived on a Friday afternoon and stayed at the Hotel Am Steinplatz in the Steinplatz neighborhood of formerly West Berlin. The hotel is decorated with a 1920s theme, There are videos playing in the hallway and lobby that were shot in 1920s Berlin in the neighborhood that we stayed in. Our room had a photo of a 1920s Berlin flapper on the wall. Germany had fought in WWI which ended in 1917, but the videos of the city at that time didn't show any effects of the war.

 We walked around the neighborhood and found nice shops and many outdoor restaurants. The neighborhood had a vibrant feel to it and the restaurant our first night was at a tapas bar called Mar Y Sol. The food was tasty and uniquely prepared. In a funny way, we felt like we were home. Berlin is a green city, the vibe was alternative and edgy, and there were bikes and street musicians everywhere. Except for the language difference, it almost felt like we were in Austin, Texas.

And then we noticed 4 inch by 4 inch brass nameplates
in the sidewalks in front of many houses and at the corner of many streets. These plates had the names of the Jewish person that lived in that house prior to being murdered by the Nazis during WWII. There is a concept called the Presence of Absence, introduced by Micha Ullman when Berlin started to be restored. What used to be there, isn't any longer. The people that used to live there had their lives cut short by evil. And the absence - what was lost by war - is noticeably present in the way the city was rebuilt. One monument had the shelves of a library with no books on them. Hitler had a book burning in 1933 in one of the central areas of town that was known for being an academic area. 40,000 people participated and they burned a total of 25,000 books identified by Hitler as being anti-German. Scars of Nazi Germany still exist throughout the city.

The next morning we jumped on the train and got off in the Alexanderplatz - in former East Berlin where we met a group from Fat Tire Bike Tours to tour Berlin. We met under a TV tower that was built by communist Russia who occupied East Berlin, to show off their advanced technology to West Germany. Communist East Germany had to have it's own broadcasting system to restrict the programming that it allowed it's citizens and to show West Germany that it didn't have a monopoly on new technolgoy. We could see in the sunlight that the shape of the ball at the top allowed for a reflection cross to be portrayed onto the ball of the tower. The West Berliners called this the Pope's Revenge. We were fitted with our bikes quickly and we were off.

Fat Tire Bike Tours is based in Austin, Texas and has a shop also in London, Barcelona, and Paris. Neal, our guide was very knowledgeable about the history of the city and was easily able to answer all of our questions on the 3-hour tour. We knew we would be very interested to see how the city has been restored after WWII, both in East and West Berlin and to see the differences between the two parts. We knew the city had been rebuilt after the Russians bombed and pretty much destroyed the entire city at the end the war.

On our ride, it was intriguing to me to see how they rebuilt the city to make it look old. The stone for many building restorations was burnt before it was cemented in place to give it a centuries old look. There were several churches restored after the war, but they were used as museums, not churches in Communist Berlin. Several buildings still had the evidence of artillery fire from the war - 70 years earlier. We saw the area where Hitler's bunker was located. Hitler committed suicide May1, 1945 and he had asked that his body be burned so that it wouldn't be hung in effigy as Mussolini's had been in Italy. There is a dirt parking lot where his burnt body was found. The bunker was later  destroyed and was so thick that it had to be bombed out of the ground.

We visited 2 of the 3 remaining stretches of the Berlin Wall. Like many Americans, I've always just taken freedom for granted.  In Berlin, the concept of freedom,  and how precious it is, permeated just about every block we traveled.  

There is an imprint of where the entire wall used to surround the city embedded in the streets as we rode along. The remaining sections of wall are almost entirely covered with graffiti, some of it very nice artwork. When Reagan said the famous words "Mr. Gorbechev, Tear down this wall", it was not taken down by government officials or a wrecking crew. It was taken down by the people in the streets who were reclaiming their freedom. My husband Paul thought the graffiti on the wall was a bit disrespectful of something historic, but I saw it an expression of freedom by the people that tore it down. A person affected by Communism, who was walled off from freedom, has the right and privilege to be creative on the very wall that restricted him for 28 years. In riding through Tiergarten, a large park and garden in the center of the city, many men were sunbathing in the nude in the open field. This might be another edgy expression of being free. 

We saw Checkpoint Charlie and the site of a museum that stands where the offices of the Stasi (SS) used to be. It's called the Wall of Terror, and is a memorial explanation of what the Nazi SS did in Warsaw, Poland. It's staggering the evil and destruction of so many lives that were caused by the Nazis. He oversaw the killing of 11 million people, 6 million of those were from Poland. This museum let the horrors be known and felt that were the result of the evil of Hitler's empire.

We rode by the Jewish Memorial. From the outside, it gives the impression of undecorated grave markers. To go into the memorial gives a very different experience. The floor of the park is created in rolling waves, and the stones are very tall. To walk along the rows, you get the feeling of not having sure footing and it's a bit disconcerting to not know what is around the corner as you turn. I felt it was a beautiful way to memorialize the Jewish people that were murdered.  Hitler also killed homosexuals, Roma Gypsies, as well as Jehovah's Witnesses, priests, and ministers of all denominations and the disabled. There are several more memorials throughout the city. I have been in many parts of Germany, but I was deeply impressed in Berlin to see the honor, solemn respect, and apology that is given the victims of the war. In the rest of Germany, it is hardly spoken about.

To visit Berlin is to have hope.

The practice of rebuilding, forgiveness, and healing gives Berlin a very unique soul to be enjoyed when visiting. Healing those wounds in history is the central story in all of Europe. Berliners are acknowledging the evil of the past, but are also letting hope, not the hurt, shape it's future.