CZECH REPUBLIC
This state, which separated from Slovakia in 1994, has become a point of reference for Central Europe and is made up of two regions: Bohemia with Prague and Moravia with Brno.
PRAGUE is one of the most beautiful cities in Europe, the fifth richest, it has around 2 million inhabitants, is crossed by the Vltava River and has a glorious past. It was the capital of the Holy Roman Empire in the Middle Ages and one of the most important and populous European cities.
Two German emperors were decisive in launching and consolidating it: Charles IV who brought the capital of the Holy Roman Empire to Prague around 1350 and built the cathedral of St. Vitus, the old bridge and the university and then Emperor Rudolf II who around 1570 he relaunched the city politically and artistically with the enlargement of the castle, the largest in the world still active as the residence of the President of the Republic and began the Habsburg dynasty which dominated the country for 4 centuries.
The baroque city is striking for the facades of its buildings which deserve admiration like in no other city on the planet.
The main attraction is the stone Charles Bridge which has become a salon with its painters selling their works next to the religious statues that adorn its sides while admiring the entrance and exit towers, the boats that pass the river for the joy of tourists while admiring the hill overlooking the castle and the other elegant and ancient buildings that line the banks, especially that of the Opera Theater with its round golden yellow roof.
The other attraction is the main square with the Tyn church with two towers, one of which is slightly smaller than the other due to a quirk of the emperor and above all the astronomical clock tower, the most photographed of the many attractions of the city .
Walking around the narrow streets of the historic center is like walking around the streets of Venice and you always come across new surprises such as the house of Franz Kafka, the famous German-speaking Prague writer who left various traces around: a strange statue with a man headless carrying another small man on his shoulders, his birthplace and his sister's house in the historic and toll alley located on the right edge of the castle.
n Prague we visit the Jewish ghetto of Josefov to admire the old synagogues, even one from 1270 that Hitler had ordered not to damage and in which he ordered various objects of Jewish culture to be brought together because he thought that people would be curious to visit the testimonies of an extinct race.
The Jewish cemetery in which Franz Kafka, also a Jew, is also buried is impressive. The small cemetery contains around 12,000 deceased buried in various layers that reach great depths.
Another interesting area of Prague is the one that houses the beautiful town hall with an art nouveau facade, a well-known and loved historic café and concert hall, an old overlooking tower and beautiful buildings all around in a square that is a landmark also for the important metro station below.
The castle is a huge building with various courtyards and houses the President of the Republic and various museums of which the two most important are those in front, one of baroque art and the national gallery at the Sternberg palace which I visited and which houses a very rich art gallery with works by great Italian, French, German and Flemish painters, statues and other artistic works contained in beautiful frescoed rooms which are sometimes more impressive than the works on display.
At the end of the castle, in addition to the alley with low pastel-colored houses including the house of Kafka's sister, there is also a prison tower with a torture room.
There is also a beautiful panoramic vineyard and a villa with a luxury bar and restaurant that I crossed to go down to the river and meet the Senate building housed in the beautiful classic Wallenstein villa with a large Italian garden with classical statues, strange walls that recall the inside a cave and even a pond and a beautiful fountain.
On the other side of the river, the theater with the statue of the composer Dvorak and some buildings housing university faculties including the one frequented by the suicidal hero of the Prague Spring, the famous Jan Palak who set himself on fire in 1969 after the Russian invasion and he sacrificed himself in protest.
There are commemorative tombs of him and another suicidal hero, Jan Zajic, right in front of the building of the National Museum in the enormous longitudinal square of St. Wenceslas with the statue of the same saint on horseback.
The square is another landmark of the city as along its sides there are very beautiful buildings home to luxury hotels and representative buildings as well as many elegant shops.
I remember a beautiful park under the castle and the high wall containing colorful graffiti and writings in homage to John Lennon and the Beatles near a little bridge with many padlocks that the lovers attached as a sign of love near an old mill wheel .
In Prague I stayed in a nice central hostel, the Down Town where I met many nice people including a local boy who one evening accompanied myself and another guest boy to visit the Vysehrad hill along the Vistula which houses the beautiful church of .Peter and Paul and a small cemetery with the tombs of Svetana and Dvorak, the two great Prague musicians.
That evening we even admired the fireworks near the castle lit up with special and spectacular effects.
Then we went to a typical restaurant to taste some local specialties and drink the good beer that was invented by the Czechs, exactly in the city of Pilsen whose name is still reported today on most of the beer bottles of various brands, including Budweiser which Budeovice is Czech, a city that I will visit later on a short excursion even though another family member later founded a branch in the USA with whom a long legal dispute over the name continued. The same hostel invited me to take part in a guided walking tour from the central square of the historic center which I did by joining the Spanish group which was smaller than the English one and led by a nice Andalusian from Seville who has lived in Prague for years, married to a Czech girl .
These visits are free but in the end those who are satisfied can give a tip to the guide who then invites them to a paid afternoon visit of the castle at a cost of 10 euros which I avoided because I preferred to visit it on my own even if I then met the group along the way.
I visited the contemporary art museum in a modern 5-storey building with a lot of paintings and statues which I didn't appreciate very much because I don't understand and I don't like paintings with colored spots or lines that a kindergarten child could make and which they are inexplicably judged to be masterpieces.
There is also a hill that housed a statue of Lenin or Stalin and which today has been replaced by a gigantic metronome, an object that marks time for musicians.
The biggest disappointment in Prague is the fact that visiting all the churches requires the payment of an entrance ticket and there is a desk in front of each one selling tickets for classical music concerts for the evening, at a cost of around 40 euros for concert.
I was unable to visit the church of S. NIcholas under the castle with the sacred image of a small Madonna which is venerated by European Catholics and an object of worship and pilgrimage because it can only be visited for a fee from 8.30 to 9.00 in the morning.< br /> An absurd thing even if the country is almost completely atheist after 50 years of communism while, on the other hand, nearby Slovakia is profoundly Catholic, like super-Catholic Poland not far away, also dominated by communist regimes that opposed religious worship.
The weather was very hot despite it being the end of August for this summer which lasted for over a month and there were many tourists despite the high season having already ended.
The city is not expensive, apart from the hotels which charge around 50 euros for a double room while you spend 20 for a bed in a 6-bed dormitory in a hostel.
On the other hand, you spend little for a meal in a restaurant, being able to eat well for 10 euros but also for half as much by being satisfied with a pizza and an excellent draft beer which costs around one euro.
Prague is served by an excellent metro and many trams, but if you are staying in the centre, they are not needed because the historic centre, the castle, the bridge, Wenceslas Square, the central train and bus station can be reached in a few minutes by crossing large pedestrian areas given that the city is free from traffic like many other European cities unlike ours which are invaded by cars, smog and noise. and without the cycle paths, parks and gardens of which the most civilized cities are rich, but not the Italian ones.
I left Prague with a certain sadness because it is a city that I loved so much and to which I returned after a sad visit 30 years earlier when the city, although beautiful, was very sad, dark, with very few shops, bars and restaurants because the Russians, after the occupation of 1969, had subjected it to every oppression unlike Budapest which had then been the subject of experiment, liberalization and privatization with shops found everywhere and even on the second and third floors of houses.
The next stop was the town of CESKY KRUMLOV, the second tourist attraction in the Czech Republic, on the UNESCO list since 1992 and about 5 hours away by bus and located almost on the southern border with Austria.
This beautiful town has a Baroque and Renaissance castle belonging to important families of the Austrian aristocracy, the Schwarzenbergs and Rozmberks, and a pedestrianized historic center within the bends of the Vistula river which almost form an island. Along the river, dozens of canoes, dinghies and rubber boats travel the circuit, favored by the current fed by differences in height that test the hikers, whose less experienced ones end up capsizing in the water amidst the laughter of the spectators who crowd along the banks.
The castle is truly worth a visit for its richly decorated rooms furnished with antique and precious furniture, period paintings and furnishings belonging to the many families who have inhabited it over the centuries starting from an important prime minister of the empire Austro-Hungarian Empire of which the city was part.
I spent a nice day walking along the narrow streets and beautiful squares, eating excellently in a typical restaurant that offers a very high steak with blood and pepper and frequented by Japanese tourists who can't believe their eyes when they pay 7 euros for a steak that in the their country costs twenty times as much.
I walked along the banks at sunset, enjoying a good beer in a panoramic bar and then along the castle park which is located in the upper part.
I also slept in a hostel in Cesky Krumlov, but in a single room for only 20 euros.
I spent the evening in the company of three thirty-year-old Americans, one from New York, one from Chicago and one from San Francisco. They were taken by cheap beers and I brought them back to serious conversations about the state of the world economy and America's fault in this crisis from which we are all suffering.
They listened to me a little incredulous, a little skeptical and quite ignorant, to the point that one of them, a graduate in Economics, didn't even know that in the previous days the American Congress was discussing the expansion of the American public debt with the risk of bankruptcy. of the state in case of failure to reach an agreement between the Democratic and Republican parties.
Incredible, but not so much for those who know Americans, cheerful and joking children who don't realize what's happening in the world and are poorly informed and interested in world events and their country's responsibilities.
Fortunately, in these days, I am getting closer to the American people for the rebellion of the INDIGNADOS who are besieging Wall Street and the centers of various American cities, in an attempt by the American people or at least by those most aware and rebellious to the power of the banks and finance which are 1% of the population and which have badly reduced the remaining 99% due to their infinite greed and their reckless speculations which have sunk the international economy and which politicians are unable to resolve, being mostly more on the same side as financial power, including Barack Obama and disappointing.
Returning to the Czech Republic, I reach by bus after a journey of about 5 hours the beautiful capital of Moravia, BRNO, with a difficult and short name and famous mostly for the motorcycling sports circuit which, according to what I was told, is about to close due to lack of of funds.
Brno is a beautiful, very elegant, clean city, with beautiful parks and gardens, beautiful squares with ancient buildings and modern buildings that blend and alternate with each other.
In particular the attractions are a white tower of the town hall, the beautiful central Piazza della Libertà with a column to commemorate the end of a plague and the palace with the statues of 4 giants who seem to support it, the market square with an ancient fountain and many stalls selling fruit and vegetables in the midst of ancient buildings, the hill with the cathedral of St. Peter and Paul which overlooks the historic center and from which you can enjoy the city panorama and then the incredible Spielberg fortress which recalls the events of Silvio Pellico and his book "My Prisons". In fact, in this prison castle all the dissidents of the Austro-Hungarian empire were imprisoned, including our hero-writer, of whom a plaque on the walls recalls, in Italian, some of his famous phrases praising freedom and democracy.
The fortress is now transformed into a gigantic museum hosting exhibitions and art displays that I did not have time to visit.
Also in Brno I stayed in a very original hostel, the Mitte which has various rooms each of which recalls historical figures. Mine was called Austerlitz and had gigantic posters on the walls of Napoleon and the famous battle, as well as furniture, a very original imperial style living room.
In Brno I spent a nice evening in a pub where I ate... a Greek salad, as I felt the need for some vegetables after so much meat and potatoes.
In the club I met two beautiful local girls who allowed me to take a photo of them to remember the beautiful evening and which I invite you to take a look at to confirm the well-known beauty of Czech women.
PRAGUE is one of the most beautiful cities in Europe, the fifth richest, it has around 2 million inhabitants, is crossed by the Vltava River and has a glorious past. It was the capital of the Holy Roman Empire in the Middle Ages and one of the most important and populous European cities.
Two German emperors were decisive in launching and consolidating it: Charles IV who brought the capital of the Holy Roman Empire to Prague around 1350 and built the cathedral of St. Vitus, the old bridge and the university and then Emperor Rudolf II who around 1570 he relaunched the city politically and artistically with the enlargement of the castle, the largest in the world still active as the residence of the President of the Republic and began the Habsburg dynasty which dominated the country for 4 centuries.
The baroque city is striking for the facades of its buildings which deserve admiration like in no other city on the planet.
The main attraction is the stone Charles Bridge which has become a salon with its painters selling their works next to the religious statues that adorn its sides while admiring the entrance and exit towers, the boats that pass the river for the joy of tourists while admiring the hill overlooking the castle and the other elegant and ancient buildings that line the banks, especially that of the Opera Theater with its round golden yellow roof.
The other attraction is the main square with the Tyn church with two towers, one of which is slightly smaller than the other due to a quirk of the emperor and above all the astronomical clock tower, the most photographed of the many attractions of the city .
Walking around the narrow streets of the historic center is like walking around the streets of Venice and you always come across new surprises such as the house of Franz Kafka, the famous German-speaking Prague writer who left various traces around: a strange statue with a man headless carrying another small man on his shoulders, his birthplace and his sister's house in the historic and toll alley located on the right edge of the castle.
n Prague we visit the Jewish ghetto of Josefov to admire the old synagogues, even one from 1270 that Hitler had ordered not to damage and in which he ordered various objects of Jewish culture to be brought together because he thought that people would be curious to visit the testimonies of an extinct race.
The Jewish cemetery in which Franz Kafka, also a Jew, is also buried is impressive. The small cemetery contains around 12,000 deceased buried in various layers that reach great depths.
Another interesting area of Prague is the one that houses the beautiful town hall with an art nouveau facade, a well-known and loved historic café and concert hall, an old overlooking tower and beautiful buildings all around in a square that is a landmark also for the important metro station below.
The castle is a huge building with various courtyards and houses the President of the Republic and various museums of which the two most important are those in front, one of baroque art and the national gallery at the Sternberg palace which I visited and which houses a very rich art gallery with works by great Italian, French, German and Flemish painters, statues and other artistic works contained in beautiful frescoed rooms which are sometimes more impressive than the works on display.
At the end of the castle, in addition to the alley with low pastel-colored houses including the house of Kafka's sister, there is also a prison tower with a torture room.
There is also a beautiful panoramic vineyard and a villa with a luxury bar and restaurant that I crossed to go down to the river and meet the Senate building housed in the beautiful classic Wallenstein villa with a large Italian garden with classical statues, strange walls that recall the inside a cave and even a pond and a beautiful fountain.
On the other side of the river, the theater with the statue of the composer Dvorak and some buildings housing university faculties including the one frequented by the suicidal hero of the Prague Spring, the famous Jan Palak who set himself on fire in 1969 after the Russian invasion and he sacrificed himself in protest.
There are commemorative tombs of him and another suicidal hero, Jan Zajic, right in front of the building of the National Museum in the enormous longitudinal square of St. Wenceslas with the statue of the same saint on horseback.
The square is another landmark of the city as along its sides there are very beautiful buildings home to luxury hotels and representative buildings as well as many elegant shops.
I remember a beautiful park under the castle and the high wall containing colorful graffiti and writings in homage to John Lennon and the Beatles near a little bridge with many padlocks that the lovers attached as a sign of love near an old mill wheel .
In Prague I stayed in a nice central hostel, the Down Town where I met many nice people including a local boy who one evening accompanied myself and another guest boy to visit the Vysehrad hill along the Vistula which houses the beautiful church of .Peter and Paul and a small cemetery with the tombs of Svetana and Dvorak, the two great Prague musicians.
That evening we even admired the fireworks near the castle lit up with special and spectacular effects.
Then we went to a typical restaurant to taste some local specialties and drink the good beer that was invented by the Czechs, exactly in the city of Pilsen whose name is still reported today on most of the beer bottles of various brands, including Budweiser which Budeovice is Czech, a city that I will visit later on a short excursion even though another family member later founded a branch in the USA with whom a long legal dispute over the name continued. The same hostel invited me to take part in a guided walking tour from the central square of the historic center which I did by joining the Spanish group which was smaller than the English one and led by a nice Andalusian from Seville who has lived in Prague for years, married to a Czech girl .
These visits are free but in the end those who are satisfied can give a tip to the guide who then invites them to a paid afternoon visit of the castle at a cost of 10 euros which I avoided because I preferred to visit it on my own even if I then met the group along the way.
I visited the contemporary art museum in a modern 5-storey building with a lot of paintings and statues which I didn't appreciate very much because I don't understand and I don't like paintings with colored spots or lines that a kindergarten child could make and which they are inexplicably judged to be masterpieces.
There is also a hill that housed a statue of Lenin or Stalin and which today has been replaced by a gigantic metronome, an object that marks time for musicians.
The biggest disappointment in Prague is the fact that visiting all the churches requires the payment of an entrance ticket and there is a desk in front of each one selling tickets for classical music concerts for the evening, at a cost of around 40 euros for concert.
I was unable to visit the church of S. NIcholas under the castle with the sacred image of a small Madonna which is venerated by European Catholics and an object of worship and pilgrimage because it can only be visited for a fee from 8.30 to 9.00 in the morning.< br /> An absurd thing even if the country is almost completely atheist after 50 years of communism while, on the other hand, nearby Slovakia is profoundly Catholic, like super-Catholic Poland not far away, also dominated by communist regimes that opposed religious worship.
The weather was very hot despite it being the end of August for this summer which lasted for over a month and there were many tourists despite the high season having already ended.
The city is not expensive, apart from the hotels which charge around 50 euros for a double room while you spend 20 for a bed in a 6-bed dormitory in a hostel.
On the other hand, you spend little for a meal in a restaurant, being able to eat well for 10 euros but also for half as much by being satisfied with a pizza and an excellent draft beer which costs around one euro.
Prague is served by an excellent metro and many trams, but if you are staying in the centre, they are not needed because the historic centre, the castle, the bridge, Wenceslas Square, the central train and bus station can be reached in a few minutes by crossing large pedestrian areas given that the city is free from traffic like many other European cities unlike ours which are invaded by cars, smog and noise. and without the cycle paths, parks and gardens of which the most civilized cities are rich, but not the Italian ones.
I left Prague with a certain sadness because it is a city that I loved so much and to which I returned after a sad visit 30 years earlier when the city, although beautiful, was very sad, dark, with very few shops, bars and restaurants because the Russians, after the occupation of 1969, had subjected it to every oppression unlike Budapest which had then been the subject of experiment, liberalization and privatization with shops found everywhere and even on the second and third floors of houses.
The next stop was the town of CESKY KRUMLOV, the second tourist attraction in the Czech Republic, on the UNESCO list since 1992 and about 5 hours away by bus and located almost on the southern border with Austria.
This beautiful town has a Baroque and Renaissance castle belonging to important families of the Austrian aristocracy, the Schwarzenbergs and Rozmberks, and a pedestrianized historic center within the bends of the Vistula river which almost form an island. Along the river, dozens of canoes, dinghies and rubber boats travel the circuit, favored by the current fed by differences in height that test the hikers, whose less experienced ones end up capsizing in the water amidst the laughter of the spectators who crowd along the banks.
The castle is truly worth a visit for its richly decorated rooms furnished with antique and precious furniture, period paintings and furnishings belonging to the many families who have inhabited it over the centuries starting from an important prime minister of the empire Austro-Hungarian Empire of which the city was part.
I spent a nice day walking along the narrow streets and beautiful squares, eating excellently in a typical restaurant that offers a very high steak with blood and pepper and frequented by Japanese tourists who can't believe their eyes when they pay 7 euros for a steak that in the their country costs twenty times as much.
I walked along the banks at sunset, enjoying a good beer in a panoramic bar and then along the castle park which is located in the upper part.
I also slept in a hostel in Cesky Krumlov, but in a single room for only 20 euros.
I spent the evening in the company of three thirty-year-old Americans, one from New York, one from Chicago and one from San Francisco. They were taken by cheap beers and I brought them back to serious conversations about the state of the world economy and America's fault in this crisis from which we are all suffering.
They listened to me a little incredulous, a little skeptical and quite ignorant, to the point that one of them, a graduate in Economics, didn't even know that in the previous days the American Congress was discussing the expansion of the American public debt with the risk of bankruptcy. of the state in case of failure to reach an agreement between the Democratic and Republican parties.
Incredible, but not so much for those who know Americans, cheerful and joking children who don't realize what's happening in the world and are poorly informed and interested in world events and their country's responsibilities.
Fortunately, in these days, I am getting closer to the American people for the rebellion of the INDIGNADOS who are besieging Wall Street and the centers of various American cities, in an attempt by the American people or at least by those most aware and rebellious to the power of the banks and finance which are 1% of the population and which have badly reduced the remaining 99% due to their infinite greed and their reckless speculations which have sunk the international economy and which politicians are unable to resolve, being mostly more on the same side as financial power, including Barack Obama and disappointing.
Returning to the Czech Republic, I reach by bus after a journey of about 5 hours the beautiful capital of Moravia, BRNO, with a difficult and short name and famous mostly for the motorcycling sports circuit which, according to what I was told, is about to close due to lack of of funds.
Brno is a beautiful, very elegant, clean city, with beautiful parks and gardens, beautiful squares with ancient buildings and modern buildings that blend and alternate with each other.
In particular the attractions are a white tower of the town hall, the beautiful central Piazza della Libertà with a column to commemorate the end of a plague and the palace with the statues of 4 giants who seem to support it, the market square with an ancient fountain and many stalls selling fruit and vegetables in the midst of ancient buildings, the hill with the cathedral of St. Peter and Paul which overlooks the historic center and from which you can enjoy the city panorama and then the incredible Spielberg fortress which recalls the events of Silvio Pellico and his book "My Prisons". In fact, in this prison castle all the dissidents of the Austro-Hungarian empire were imprisoned, including our hero-writer, of whom a plaque on the walls recalls, in Italian, some of his famous phrases praising freedom and democracy.
The fortress is now transformed into a gigantic museum hosting exhibitions and art displays that I did not have time to visit.
Also in Brno I stayed in a very original hostel, the Mitte which has various rooms each of which recalls historical figures. Mine was called Austerlitz and had gigantic posters on the walls of Napoleon and the famous battle, as well as furniture, a very original imperial style living room.
In Brno I spent a nice evening in a pub where I ate... a Greek salad, as I felt the need for some vegetables after so much meat and potatoes.
In the club I met two beautiful local girls who allowed me to take a photo of them to remember the beautiful evening and which I invite you to take a look at to confirm the well-known beauty of Czech women.
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