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day eleven Having seen the both the castle and Charles Bridge yesterday, we concentrated our sightseeing in Wenceslas Square and the Jewish Quarter of Prague. Our first stop was the Square, which has to be the most modern aspect of Prague with tourists and shops everywhere. Actually we probably spent an hour or two just sitting there on a bench people watching. The strangest thing that we saw was a car with Ontario license plates. Both of us wondered how much it must have cost to have the car shipped over to Europe and why that car was so special to him. From what we could tell it wasn't that fancy of a car. We weren't the only people to notice it either. A pair of Asian businessmen stopped to take a second look at the plates. After we had had enough of the gawking we decided to browse in the bookstore next to where we had been sitting. Near the front of the store was a small section of English language books and I knew that I had to get something. As pretty as the scenery might be outside the bus, there were times when there just wasn't that much to see and I needed something else to occupy my time. It was here that I bought my copy of Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee and a copy of Ecstasy by Irvine Welch. What I found interesting was that instead of using bags for us to carry our purchases, they wrapped everything in paper with a picture of their store and address on it. I could understand this being done for books, but they also wrapped the postcards that my brother had bought in the same way. It seemed like overkill to him. My main objective in the Jewish Quarter was to see the old Jewish cemetery where there were so many bodies buried over the years that the gravestones are now leaning on one another. One generation bumps into the next. I may not be Jewish, but I can sympathize with the suffering that they as a people have endured in Europe. This one spot in the city of Prague was the only place that they could bury their dead. My brother wasn't nearly as eager to go and to convince him to come with me I ended up paying for both of us. It didn't bother me, and I'm glad that I went, because what I saw was very memorable. While we were there I finally learned the meaning behind placing small stones on the gravestones. When I saw this being done at the end of the movie Schindler's List, I could only guess at the meaning. One other tourist attraction that we managed to see was the astronomical clock that displays the time in three different ways. It was also one of the few times when we had perfect timing in Europe. We had just rounded a corner when we saw a large group of people gathered in a semi-circle. At first I thought that it might be some kind of public speaking event, but then I saw the clock at the front of the crowd. It was almost eleven o'clock and we were just in time for the show. Maybe I'm too modern to fully appreciate these displays, but all that I could think about when I saw the clock was how much smaller it seemed in life than what I had imagined after seeing it in photos. I don't regret seeing it, but it wasn't quite what I had expected. In fact I didn't even take a picture, because I didn't think that it would show up that well due to its size. From the Jewish Quarter we made our way back to Wenceslas Square, because I knew that a Mucha Museum was located a block off of it. Most people probably don't recognize the name, but they've probably seen a print or two done by Mucha. He was the man that immortalized Sarah Bernhardt, a famous actress at the beginning of the twentieth century. Actually his name is now better known than hers is, but at the time the reverse was true. Since I have a background in lithography I could truly appreciate the amount of time and effort that went into these huge prints. I though that they were amazing and they highlighted the true beauty of Slavic women. Beside all of the famous sites that we saw in Prague, there is one other thing that I won't forget and that's their subway system. For some reason I just loved it. One book described the interior as having Dalek walls and they were right. The sides of the tunnel did in fact look like the alien beings from the British science fiction show, Doctor Who. From what I had read before we got there, I knew that the subway was modeled after the one in Moscow and I have to admit that some of the stops had very Russian sounding names to me. When we heard Ceskomoravska over the loudspeaker, we knew that we were home.
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