In our medieval dungeon restaurant in Prague:
Tristyn and friend in the Museum of Communism:
I don't see the resemblance.
Group at the end of Wenceslas Square in Prague.
Closeup of group. Are we missing anyone?
We left Rothenburg (in the sun) and arrived in Nuremburg (in the sun). Here we visited the Nazi Documentation Centre - an excellent museum that documents the rise of the National Socialist Party in Germany and its devastating consequences throughout Europe. The museum is a modern mix of video archives, 3-D animations, pictures, objects, and documents. It is very well presented, in logical order, with excellent English explanations. Many of the students lingered a long while at the various displays.
Next was our long drive to Prague - we enjoyed delicious (really!) lunch packets along the way, and continued our sunny journey into the former Eastern Bloc without a hitch. Except when the control panel started beeping and flashing "stop" in front of Rens' steering wheel. A few choice Dutch words and a rebooting of the onboard system later, and we were on our way into the centre of Prague (where the sun continued to shine!).
Prague is uniquely beautiful and uniquely authentic central (or some would say Eastern) European city. Virtually untouched by the bombs of World War II, it's medieval, renaissance, and baroque architecture has remained intact. A former capital of the Holy Roman Empire, and seat of Hapsburg power, it has been a city on the threshold of the Slavic and Germanic worlds, as well as the communist and capitalist worlds of the cold war era. This is suiting, as Praha (Prague in Czech) originally meant "threshold".
Originally for today I had just planned to walk some of the city after our late afternoon arrival and before dinner. But we had extra money left from missing the catacombs in Paris on the first day due to our flight delay, so I called ahead and booked us into the Museum of Communism. Though the cold war was history when these kids were born, the adults in the group certainly have distinct memories of the arms race between the Soviet Union and the United States and the war of words and ideologies, the escalation of which could have meant global annihilation. This is the main thing I remember from Mr. Chow, my favourite Social Studies teacher in high school - constant talk about nuclear proliferation, tanks moving closer to the border between East and West Germany, and the insanity of flawed human beings holding the power to destroy everything.
We made it through, communism collapsed in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, and now Prague is filled with.... McDonald's restaurants. Seriously.
The Museum of Communism is not quite as high tech as the Nazi Documentation Centre, but it contains some very fascinating objects, documents, and explanations of life under communism in Czechoslovakia. The highlight is the short film documenting the events of 1989 (and during the decades of Soviet control) that led to the Velvet Revolution. Some of the footage is quite brutal (of student demonstrators being attacked by the government forces), but it isn't called the Velvet Revolution for nothing - it was not an armed and bloody revolution like the American or French ones, it was an ongoing and eventually overwhelming resistance of tyranny by mostly young people, gathered in the streets, refusing to leave, that brought the soviet backed communist regime to an end.
We ended our day with delicious "authentic" Czech food in a restaurant located in an old medieval cellar off of Wenceslas square. The hostel we are staying in tonight and tomorrow night is funky and young, with clean rooms and interesting artwork. It is definitly not 5 star (or 2 star for that matter) - but it's right off of the old town square, which is very convenient, because tomorrow, we don't have Rens - it's his day off.
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