Walking Tour

Feb. 13, 2013
Everyone in the dorms was hung over and groggy from clubbing the night before. “Americans have no idea what partying is compared to these people,” I heard one girl say. Her American accent gave her away.

I, my-sober-self, also over slept and missed the tram to school. I caught the next one, but arrived about 5 minutes late to the orientation session. This one had been optional but since it covered transfer of credit info, I wanted to be there. It turned out to just be for European Union students since their exchange program is universal. American students had to make appointments to get it set up.

There was an hour long break between that session and the second part of the Czech history presentation. This portion was covering WWII and communism so I knew it would have a great impact on the modern culture I was seeing around me.

While waiting for the session to start, I decided to go exploring. Ivana had gone home for the rest of the week to visit her family in Slovakia, so I really was on my own now. There was an old cathedral a few blocks up the street, past the tram stop, that I’d seen each day on the ride to school. Being Ash Wednesday, it felt appropriate to tour a church on this day. I’d learned from Ivana that it would be hard to find a church that did any sort of service or mass besides on Sunday, but going into a Cathedral to pray would be powerful as well.

As I walked up the block, I again tried to blend in as a straight-faced Czech. I noticed that as I looked at shops, some of the words were starting to make sense to me. The word “Nova” was on many of them, and from context it appeared to mean “New.” I also noticed that it was easy to pick out the shops that locals would go into, and the ones that were pandering to tourists (English menus in the windows were the biggest clue.)

When I reached the cathedral, it was even more massive than it had looked from the tram. I physically couldn’t get far enough back to photograph the entire thing from either my camera or my iPod. There were pigeons and doves flying all around it. As a woman walked by carrying groceries, one landed on her head and she swatted it away.

As I started to walk up the steps, the birds swirled around me as well. There were two large wooden doors at the top of the staircase. Two young women, maybe a little older than I am, came out. They laughed at the birds and tried dodging them as they ran down the steps past me.

When I got to the top, I pulled open the one wooden door. It creaked loudly. Stepping inside, I’ll admit I did check my hat and shoulders to ensure the snow was the only thing that had fallen on me as I walked through the birds. Surveying my surroundings, I was in a small entry way that led to another set of large and ornate wooden doors. There were signs in Czech which I assume listed services and tours based on the fact there were several times listed on each sign. There was also a sign with a red “X’ through a camera.

Darn! No photos to remember this one.

I walked towards the doors and my steps echoed in the entry way. Pulling open the one wooden door, it too creaked something awful. If there was a service or anything inside, they would surely know I was here.

Beauty exploded as I looked into the room. I could only take about a step in before I was met with a locked gate that kept people out. The wooden door didn’t close all the way, but rather rested on my shoulders.

I will do my best to describe the intricate detail and color that filled that sanctuary, but words are completely in adequate. In reality, pictures probably would be too.

There were probably seventeen or so rows of pews, with a wooden alter situated closer to the middle of the room. At the front of the room was another smaller gated fence, and behind it was a massive, wooden and gold crucifix. Above the cross, the entire wall was stained glass. It wasn’t the picturesque colored stained glass that we visualize to be so artful, but rather, vivid images of Christ and his disciples.

The room was filled with pillars and arches supporting the ceiling. I couldn’t go in far enough to look all the way up the central spire, but it seemed to extend all the way to heaven. In three of the corners of the room—the front two, and one in the back left had shrines to various saints. In the back right corner was a small wooden confessional. Along each wall were paintings and carvings on Christ, saints, and crosses.

I moved my hand to my forehead and made a cross touching my face, stomach, and both shoulders. “Thank you God,” was all I could think to say.

After a few minutes, I stepped back out and walked down the steep marble stairs. I tried again in vain to get a good photo of the outside, but was still unable to frame it just right.

I started walking back to school and decided I would cut over a few blocks to take in some different scenery. When I came upon an ally with a group of hooded men smoking marijuana, I decided to turn around and go back the way I knew. I was trying to be more adventurous, but I wasn’t there just yet.

Back in school, I tried to find a bathroom. They are marked with WC on them doors, along with the male and female signs we use on bathrooms in the states. I’d seen a few WC’s labeled for women in the school but I was yet to find one for men. After wandering through a few hallways, I eventually did come upon one. Stepping inside, the layout of the room surprised me. There were about 3 urinals on one side of the room, and 3 closets on the other side. Opening one of the closets, I discovered that the toilets were actually housed in there.

As I left the bathroom and headed up stairs to the cafeteria, I heard two people ahead of me speaking English. Picking up my pace to meet them, I saw that I recognized one of them. “You’re Jacob?” I said when I’d caught them.

“Carl,” he said, in a French accent.

“Oh,” I said. “So Jacob was nowhere close?”

“That’s okay, I don’t know anyone’s name,” he said.

“But you’re Ryan’s roommate?” I said. Ryan was one of the other exchange students from my university.

“Yes,” he said.

“I am too,” said the red-headed boy talking to Carl. He had a thick Australian accent. He stuck out his hand and said, “Nick.” With the accent, it sounded more like “Nuck.”

“Zach,” I said.

“We are going to get lunch. You want to come?” Carl asked. I agreed and joined them.

After a few miscommunications with the ladies behind the counter, we eventually got our food and paid for it. I got pasta this time that was covered in some sort of cheesy sauce and a lot of garlic. Sitting down, we exchanged questions about each other’s home towns.

Carl was actually from Quebec. He spoke French back home but was learning English. He’d occasionally ask Nick and I how to say certain words, along with teaching us a few words in French.

Nick on the hand was from New Zealand, but was going to a university in Australia. “Everyone says that our accents sound like sloppy English,” he said.

“I think American accents are hardest to tell,” Carl said. “They are all so different.”

“We really have about four distinct accents in America,” I said.

“You have Texas,” he said, “and New Jersey.”

“Right,” I agreed. “There is the Northeastern accent, and then the southern accent. We also have what we’d call a ‘mid-west’ accent for the center states, and then kind of a western accent for the western states.”

“Which are you?” Nick asked.

“I’m from the western states,” I said. “The biggest thing people notice is we are sloppy with the “T” sound in the middle of words.” I said a few words like “Mountain” “Clinton” and “Clayton” both correctly and then incorrectly so they could hear what I meant.

They too were very interested in American politics.

“Is it true,” Nick asked, “that if a man collapses of a heart attack, you can’t do CPR on him in America until you’ve confirmed he has health insurance?”

“No,” I laughed, and actually told them a bit of my Dad’s CPR story. “My Mom works for an insurance company and here’s how I understand it.” I tried to lay out the basic American health care—both before and after the Affordable Care Act—as well as explained some of the arguments for and against it.

“Why America no wants to give care to everyone?” I said.

“America does want to give care to everyone,” I said. “The amazing thing about American health care is that you can get the treatment you want when you want it. If I broke my arm today, in America, I could have surgery on it this afternoon. If I needed antibiotics, I could go see the doctor right now, and get them. And I always see the same doctor so he knows all about me.”

“That’s very nice,” Nick said. “When I needed surgery, I had to wait a few months.”

“Yes, me too,” Carl agree. “And I go to see whichever doctor they tell me to.”

“So what America is trying to figure out is how do we keep this high standard of immediate care available and share it with everyone instead of changing our standard of care.”

“That make sense” said Carl.

“It can’t be easy to do,” Nick said.

We wound up talking for hours and missed the final session on Czech history. By the time we noticed what time it was, it was time for the walking tour of Prague. We went downstairs and met the other exchange students—at least the ones that had woken up from the hang over—out by the Winston Churchill statue in front of the school.

One of the instructors broke us up into groups of 8 and assigned us to two tour guides. Nick, Carl, and I were added to a group that included another student from Canada, a student from Poland, a student from Denmark, a student from Turkey, and a student from Italy, and a student from Mexico. Our guide’s names were Petra and Victoria. Petra was from Czech and Victoria from Slovakia.

The tour they took us on included many of the sites Ivana had already shown me. We went to Wenceslas Square, the Old Town Square, and the Charles Bridge.

In Wenceslas Square they showed up the spot where the Velvet Revolution took place. This was the group of students that sat in and demonstrated that Czech and Slovakia should be split. I realized I was standing on the very spot where this protest had occurred. It was the same place where the communists had arrived in town and enslaved the people. The ground, the air, and everything I was seeing suddenly felt sacred.

In Old Town Square, we got to see the clock tower change. There are actually two faces on the tower. The one at the top is a standard 12 hour clock face. The lower one is much more ornate with various gears and handles pointing in different directions. It apparently tells the month of the year and the day of the week, but, being written in Czech, I can’t tell exactly what it says.

“At each hour, those windows open and you can see the gears turning,” Petra explained.

“I’ve already seen it,” one Korean student from another group said. “It isn’t that cool.”

We all stared up at the windows waiting for the hour to strike. Large groups of tourists were gathering around and joining us. I was again reminded that personal space was not as important in this culture.

When the hour rolled around, there was a small bell and the windows flew open revealing the very ornate gears inside. They were each intricately carved with various saints and church leaders, and as the gears turned, the carvings appeared to dance in the windows. Actually, the entire tower seemed to dance. Even the small statues of gargoyles, skeletons, and fairies that lined the outside of the tower spun and danced. The bells chimed, and slowly the big hand made its way to 5:00.

After the clock tower we proceeded onto the bridge. The group was getting cold and decided to go get something to eat. Petra and Victoria took us to a pub (a smoke free one thankfully) where we got that same roast beef a dumpling dish that Ivana had ordered for us the first night.

“Your accent is the hardest for me to understand,” Victoria told me.

“My accent?” I said. Everyone around the table agreed. “Five days ago I didn’t know I had an accent.” Everyone around the table laughed.

Back at the dorm, I had a strong Wi-Fi connection and was able to get a lot of stuff online. Pictures were still difficult, but all of the posts I had saved made it up.  The blog was now officially “live” (only behind by one day) and I was exhausted. I took a shower and went to bed.