September 19

I awoke with a vacant,  stupid cow-like brain this morning, jet-lagged to the extreme. Mary is not much better. We ate an enormous buffet breakfast, most likely ensuring a fragrant bus ride to our meet up with our bicycle guides from VBT. Mahler in my head all night, as well as the memory of several tall Czech women who stick out in the right places.

We began meeting with our new companions. This is always confusing, and a bit more so on this trip. I think there are five sisters here, and several Marys in addition to my Mary. It will sort out. We were placed on the bus by a local guide, not a cyclist, but a person hired by VBT to make sure we all arrive at our first day stop. Unfortunately, she decided to give us a little information on Prague and the environs. She might have been a little more boring if she read from the Prague telephone directory. The bus had an annoying 12-second repeat of its GPS transponder, not fixable until we are long gone.

Filip and Zuzana, our bright, effervescent and athletic guides show up at a road side rest area, and things get better right away. Filip wears a wool scarf around his neck, because he is fighting a cold (which, fortunately, he does not pass on to any of us during the trip). They are a fountain of information, they pass out forms for us to sign away all of our rights and award our bodies to medical science. And they tell us about our first destination, Krumo Zeste is it? No, Ceste Krumlo, an important city dating from the 1300s, cut clean through by the Vltava River (which is much smaller in CK due to it being up stream from Prague).

We are introduced to our local walkabout guide, Stan the Man, who takes us through some important pathways and buildings while our bags are sorted and loaded into our rooms. I like Stan. He takes us into the very neo gothic church and says, "The interesting thing about this church is that it has Baroque equipment inside. "And indeed it did.

Some of the group's names are matching up with their faces, and we go off with a couple of them for a nice lunch at a vegetarian restaurant along the river. We quickly return for our first bicycle outing. Several adjustments to the bikes and instructions to us follow, and then we are off on these clunky beasts over irregular cobblestones, dodging literally hundreds of tour groups, each with its own guide corralling the participants. I wonder how this can end well, but soon we are on our way out of town, and things improve. We don't go far enough to escape the suburbs of Ceste Krumlo, but we do accomplish our objective of finding a way to stay on our bikes. I observe with more than a little interest a tour bus almost clip Mary as it exits one of the lots.

We stop on our way back at the VBT snack layout, hardly necessary given the short ride. But, impressive nonetheless. They have everything one could possibly want to eat on a ten minute break. Zuz and Filip are both outstanding, paying attention to details, making sure everyone's seat and handle bars are adjusted.

Stan the Man

September 18-First Full Day in Prague
I am a little surprised how few people know of the history of defenestrations in this city. I did not spend a lot of time at open windows. If folks were on the outs with the prevailing religion or political will, why, someone would toss them out of windows high and low. One of these events in the 1600s precipitated the Thirty Years War, which took the population of Prague down by about 100,000. During that same sad event, Count Waldenstein, whose castle dominates the Old Town Hill, fled to the Austrian border, to no avail. Soldier of  fortune Devereux chased him there and ran him through with a pike.

But what a beautiful city. Charles IV, the first Holy Roman emperor, built this city after moving here from Vienna to wed his beautiful Czech princess. Things went well for the Empire, and Charles hired hundreds of Italian and French architects and painters. The result is all around, enormous stately rococo, baroque, and some neo-gothic public buildings and churches. The Vltava River (Smetana's Die Moldau, the German name, comes to mind) bisects the town in a lovely arc. Several bridges span the river, including the Charles Bridge. Poor St. John Nepomuk was thrown off this bridge to his death in the late 1300s for failing to reveal confessional secrets of the Queen of Bohemia. The instigator? The supposedly 'good' King Wenceslas.

Which brings me to another moment of wonderment. Remember the Christmas Carol? Yes, the one that goes "Good King Wenceslas looked out, On the feast of Stephen, etc.". Well, Wenceslas was assassinated at the orders of his brother. Not sure what that was all about. But also, St. Stephen ended poorly. Stoned to death in mid speech by Jewish elders who he harangued about their old fashioned religion. I guess the kiddies would have nightmares if we pointed out the truth behind the Christmas jingle.

Jews have not been forgotten here. 3,800 were slaughtered in a sort of religious ecstasy on Easter Sunday in 1389. Of the 130,000 Jews in Czechoslovakia in 1939, approximately 10,000 survived to liberation in 1945. More on this a little later. There is a fabulous Jewish neighborhood right in the middle of Prague. Unfortunately for us, we didn't get around to visiting it until it was shut down during Sukkot. Instead we went to Theresienstadt for a real downer of a day in early October. But I get ahead of myself.

At any rate, back to Prague. Our bicycle group is gathering. Good friends Betsy and George are here, and we are doing stuff. They have one free day and we have five (we are coming back here after another trip), so negotiating what to do is problematical. Until we decided that beer drinking is a necessary duty. We also went to a great symphonic performance of Mahler's Second, by the Prague Symphony (there are two great symphony orchestras here, the second being the 117 year-old Czech National Symphony).

Before the evening's activities we hiked around, admiring all of the buildings, and even climbing up the Astronomer's Clock tower (OK, in an elevator). A later ruler, Rudolph II, loved astrology and imported Tycho Brahe, who was best known for some of the earliest accurate observations of comet movement. He was also an instrument designer. But Rudolph loved him because he went along the ruler's love of Astrology. Brahe showed up without a nose, which he lost in a duel in Holland. He died of the plague in 1601. Then Rudolph imported Johannes Kepler, a much more serious scientist, whose laws of planetary motion still astonish beginning students of physics.

After the symphony we walked home to our hotel. While crossing one of the bridges over the Vltava all heck broke loose. We had wandered into the beginning of a mighty fireworks display. While Mary, George and Betsy admired to activity from mid-span, I high-tailed it to the river bank.