Japan to Australia via Eastern Europe - Part 10, Day 8 - Day of ignorance in Prague...

After sleeping in this morning (considering how early we had went to bed the night before) - it was refreshing to sleep in so late...

We had another leisurely breakfast - although this day - we didn"t have to move to a another apartment...

It was a coolish but sunnz day outside and we headed down to the old Jewish Quarter in Prague. We spoilt ourselves by having a Czech jam donut and a coffee in a little bakery right next to the Jewish Quarter. There was the added bonus of all of these naked women body painting art around the bakery (as you do)...

We bought the "mega" Jewish Pass for 450 krown - which entitled us to access most Jewish sights in the city.

It was pretty much a day of learning and discovery - as we both had found out that we were pretty ignorant to most jewish traditions and culture... I mean - Ant and I went to the Halocaust Museum at Berlin which was somewhat enlightening about Jewish traditions - but the stuff in Prague was in much greater detail.

First - we visited the Ceromonial Hall which had a small exhibit on Jewish burial traditions... Why burial traditions you ask - well the hall was situtated right next to the cemetary (which we will talk a bit later)... I didn't realise that it is normal Jewish custom to bury the body within 24 hours of passing and that family members are expected to morun for more than 11 mths after the death...

We visited heaps of renovated jewish sites - most of which housed more exhibits and displays on Jewish traditions, the religion, culture, integration with other cultures (and zionism), persecution and a jewish history in Prague. Some little ditties include:

- food - I mean we all knew about Jewish kosher food (eg: no pork and kosher food preparation) but I didn't know about how birds of prey, crustations and oysters, etc isn't kosher...

- marriage - bride and groom have to sign a pre-wedding contract and divorce is allowable under certain circumstances. If the husband dies - then the widow is obligated to marry the ex-husband's brother... But the brother can "get out of jail" by undertaking some ceromony by removing one sock or something...

- integration - jews (in order to fit into western society and because of persecution) had to stop using hebrew and start going to integrated schools, etc... When discrimination (cuminating in the holocaust) was abound in europe - this started the whole Israel-Zion movement... or something.

- skull caps - jewish men are supposed to wear skull caps in syangogues as it shows their humility under god... or something.

All the mueums were really interesting and definately enlightening. It was pretty incredible that all of these synagogues weren't destroyed in the second world war. Of scary note - LP mentions that the nazi's were planning to use some of these sites as a Museum to an "extinct race"... as you do. The old-new synagogue and the jewish cementary were highlights. Because the jews used to live in ghettos before the second world war - land and space was at a bit of a premium so they had to bury people on top of one another... hence that is why most jewish cemetaries are dense affairs. All of the jewish sites were pretty popular tourist attractions and thank god we got there early-ish because the line for tickets at the cemetary was very mosh pit style. We also "borrowed" a couple of skull caps from the mueums as souvenirs. Mine kept blowing off all the time so I used my hooded H&M hoodie jumper instead...

After taking all morning to do the Jewish stuff - we walked back to the city centre. It was a little ironic that the former Jewish ghetto was now the rich beetch side of town complete with Gucci shops...

We settled on some "kransky" stzle sausage rolls for lunch. These put the pi$$weak Aussie BBQ thin sausages to shame. I think we got ripped by the woman serving us - I had handed over 80 krown for the two of us to have sausages (40 each) - but she then proceeded to get another 40 krown off Ant for the second sausage. Where is the Czech version of the ACCC when you need it...!

After lunch we attempted to find the Propaganda Muesum - but instead we found the Mucha Museum which was definately worth it...

Continuing the theme of educating our ignorances - both Ant and I hadn't heard of or understood the art of Mucha. He turned out to be the founder of the movement known as "Art Nouveau" - think of Parisian cafes styles and turn of the century theatre posters and you are probably close to the style of Art Nouveau. Mucha (a Czechoslovacian) designed heaps of theatre posters, advertising and building designs back around the turn of the century. The muesum (although smallish) was very enlightening and worth while. It was interesting to find out that Mucha had designed art work for the local theatre in Prague and many Prague buildings have been influnced by Mucha's style.

Although we finally ended up finding the Propaganda Museum - we decided to do it another day and exploit the 1 krown entry day at the Prague Museum (1 krown equals about 5 Aussie cents or something). The Museum was situated on the "wrong side" of the tracks and it felt a lot more grungy and struggle town than the old part of Prague. In terms of the mueum itself - the price was right and it had a pretty good pre-history section on Prague. Although it was a little old school and there was some freakish Marionette exhibit. The Czechs seem to have a bit of a hard on (excuse my French) for stewpid Marionette puppet shows. Although I have to say the Czech puppets seem to be pale in comparison to the Thunderbirds and Team America puppets (how could anyone beat the Thunderbirds?!).

We head to the main apartment building to exploit the free internet there... However we had to wait 45 mins for some dumb Yale Freshmen-girls to get off. Ant and I surpressed our desire to throw the computer at them. Once on the internet - we take the plunge and book the "Lemon Hostel" in Krakow (you gotta love that name - what balls for calling a hostel the "Lemon" hostel?!).

Ant discovers that in another bizzare BA twist - that they have cancelled his Dubrovnik flights due to a alledged "no-show" at Heathrow - you know - the infamous "Narita BA" incident where they had put us on an earlier flight but had cancelled the rest of our ticket... Ant quickly sent off an email to fright centre demanding them to chase this up as we definately showed up for our flight from Narita to London. I do a bit of blogging - I'm only one week behind thus far - which is OK considering there was no internet in Japan. I pi$$ off some nasty american woman for staying on the computer too long or something.

We went back to the apartment where I caught up with my "favourite" channel - Eurotica where they were demonstrating the second example of innapropriate music to strip by - Hillary Duff music... I think they need to rename this station the "Nurotica" station.

After walking around a bit searching for a Czech place for dinner (which isn't all that hard in Prague) - we have dinner at this atmospheric underground joint where we have a bit of potato soup and pork goulash with dumplings (although I could have sworn goulash was a Hungarian concoction - the Czech's seem to be passing it up as their own cuisine). It was all verz filling and I loved the fact that they added a $5AUD service charge onto the final bill. Tipping is expected in Eastern Europe - but normally at 10% - I'm sure we didn't have $50 worth of food.

After dinner - we decide that we should have some coffee and cake action at another cafe. We walk into a nearly dead cafe and sit down for five minutes whilst looking at the menu. A girl walked up to our table and asked us what we wanted - Ant mentioned a "Hot Chocolate" and she suddenly cut him off and said "Kitchen Closed"... As Rove would say - Whatthe???! Perhaps she could have said this five minutes ago when we came in... although I'm not quite sure what sort of kitchen cooking is involved in a hot chocolate. They could be serving a Donna Hay special or something?! I walk out of this place in a bit of a huff and a puff (Russell Crowe style). We are finding that the service here is a little communistic at best - and this was a good example...

We found a place called the Café Louvre (I can type all of this weird sh++ on this Hungarian key board where the y is where the z should be and öüóéőú and stuff) where Albert Einsten had alledgedly been. We take advantage of a stewpid note pad and play Year 6 games including the one where you write a sentence and fold the piece of paper and get someone to continue to write stuff and so on.... My favourite sentence was "Mimi fo-fo, the magical pony, waved her vaginal fluids spread across his chest implants. I want chest implants baby!"... as you do.

On the way home - we go to a gay bar called "Friends" (where everyone knows your name or something). According to Sparticus - our world Gay guide - there was supposed to be a younger crowd... all of which was untrue. The place was packed with over forty something tourists with maps of Prague... Sparticus looks like it is trying to compete with the "most crap in a tourist guide" with Don't Know and LP...