Pears, Paddleboats, and Don Giovanni

Over the past few days, I did manage to recreate the tour that Rudolph took us on last Tuesday. I'll try and add any information I remember from his tour. However, don't expect it to be terribly accurate...I don't remember what he said about this statue, except about it being new. If you enlarge the picture, you will see it is depecting Franz Kafka, Rudolph said it was clearly his face. This other picture is of a sculpture of a college student who burnt himself to death in protest of an occupation in 1969 (I believe that was a Russian occupation?). His death was silenced for a long time, now the square this hangs in is named after him. We then walked over a bridge near one of the concert halls and Rudolph pointed out the metrodome (spelling?) in the following picture. The metrodome was built in place of where a statue of Stalin used to stand. I'm not sure when it was built, but it's meant to represent the passing of control of the Czech Republic in the past century. This small country has gone back and forth (back and forth, back and forth) between independence and occupation.

Once we passed over the bridge, we passed the above statue as well. Unfortunately, I have no idea what it was built for, but I think it's very pretty. After that, we wandered up a path to the castle, rather than take a tram. We ended up visiting a villa built for a Queen some years ago. Once again, I'm really unsure as to which Queen it was, but apparently she died before it's completion after having many children with her husband. There's a really beautiful fountain in the front and the roof is designed to look like the bottom bow of a ship. The park this sits on the edge of is separated from the castle by a valley. Once you make your way through the park, you reach a bridge connecting you to a back entrance to one of the castle courtyards. On the way to the castle, we passed an old tennis court. The exterior artwork was restored in the fifties and the artist left a little Communist symbol in the artwork.
At each entrance to the castle are guards that get changed hourly throughout the day. I don't know what they're exact responsibilities are, but I wonder if they get tired of standing statuesquely (right word?) while tons of people take pictures and do whatever else they do. Anyway, once you enter the castle through this back entrance, you go through a corridor and immediately reach the church. While I cannot really appreciate the value of these places as much as someone who is practicing, it is amazing how intricate these places are. Given you can see this church from almost any place in Prague, you know it's immense. Once again, the pictures don't do justice to what you actually see. Beyond the church, if you continue into the courtyard, you would see a balcony lining a purple colored building. This balcony is where the president conducts speeches. Again, I could have misheard this, but it's still interesting that their political leaders get to spend so much time in that place. It honestly doesn't really look like a castle because it must have been continually added onto. That's pretty much it for what we saw on the tour with Rudolph. Here's one more picture of the stained glass, luckily, it was sunny when I went to take pictures, so the glass is more luminous than it would be a gray day.

Saturday turned out to be fairly eventful. It's been in the seventies and we're having wonderful weather for the tail end of summer. Most of us ended up going paddleboating near the National Theater. The lovely Naomi Kaye (also from SLC, but in a different school in Prague) met up with me earlier, so we all tagged along. Turns out some friends from AU joined other AUers in my program. Josh, who is on the left, and Dan, who is on the right, were the designated paddlers of our paddleboat. Clearly, they enjoyed one aspect of the experience.

Later that night, we just barely made it into the opera, if you get there too late, they're supposed to close you out. We had tickets for Don Giovanni. I'd never been to the opera before, and while I valued the subtitles provided, which made it possible to follow the story, I wonder what it would have been like to experience the opera without any context of the situation. It really was a spectacular show. And who would have guessed it, the interior is very pretty as well. The main chandelier is pictured here. The demise of Don Giovanni did not go as I had expected it to. It was nice to go out with everyone and have to dress up for something. Only a few people left after the first act because they weren't feeling well. Luckily, not everyone has gotten sick since being here.

Sunday, I walked back up to the castle, mainly to take pictures, but also because I really enjoy the park across the valley from the castle. I sat to read and write for a while before heading back to fall asleep for a few hours. When I woke up, everyone from across the hall had come back from picking pears. Jason ended up making pear dumplings, which were really delicious, especially considering I don't really like pears.

Praha LP.2