Rain Needs to DIE.

This post is actually about my Pfingstferien. But rain needing to die was a thought I repeatedly had during it. Pfingsferien was a two week break from school for Baden-Württemberg, so I did a bit of travelling. My host mom was in China, my host sister in America, and my host dad is too sick/weak to really take care of himself, so we went to visit his sister in Regensburg for a week. To be honest, they are old. So it wasn’t exactly very exciting, but I enjoyed myself and saw Regensburg, which was really pretty. The Donau river and all the other rivers that flow through the area were beautiful. It rained on a number of the days that I was there during that first week, but on one of the nice days I went on a bike ride with my host dad’s sister through the countryside. It was gorgeous, until it suddenly got cloudy and started to rain, but whatever. I got cake at a small, local Biergarten before that happened, so I can’t complain. On another day we also went to a traditional Bayrisch (Bavarian? I don’t know the English words for stuff anymore) Biergarten thingy that served Bayrisch food. I got a Schweinebraten with a Kartoffelknödel. Um, just Google it. Then I was in Nürnberg (Nuremberg) for a day or two. It was a cool city to see with a lot of history. Practically everything in the inner city was leveled or severely damaged in World War II, which is a shame. It never ceases to amaze me when I go to cities and learn about how much they were affected by both World Wars, and how much was destroyed. That’s just not something you really understand from history class until you see it. But I’m glad I went, I enjoyed it. Plus, I went to this place that serves original Nürnberger Würstchen with fresh baked pretzels, and it was SO GOOD. I have never had such a good pretzel and I swear I’m going to figure out how to bake them before I die.

 

           

  

 

That was the first week of break. Not very exciting. Kind of like me second week, where we were in Stuttgart. Though I did go to the Wilhelma Zoo! That brought out my inner child. I still think the zoo in Omaha is better, but I may just be biased. Though, the Wilhelma was really prettily landscaped and they had a lot of cool monkeys. And I got ice cream.

On Friday at the very end of the break, I headed to Prague, in the Czech Republic. It is trips like this when I wish the weather channel would not lie to me. When I packed, it said it would be partly cloudy in the 60’s. It’s good it was raining it Stuttgart when I left or else I wouldn’t have brought an umbrella. But I was still woefully unprepared for 40-50 degrees and NONSTOP RAIN. NONSTOP.  Well, okay. I arrived around 5pm and had three hours to wander around until I could meet up with Valerie, my friend on this venture. In those three hours the weather was nice enough that I actually could take off my jacket. 3 hours. I didn’t want to sit around in those three hours, so I went to find the middle of the city. Which I did without getting lost, which I consider quite a feat, because Czech is a crazy language! I have no idea how to pronounce anything I saw on a map (I won’t even say read on a map because that isn’t possible). I have heard that Prague is like a fairytale city, and I can understand why. There are so many towers and churches that look like they were either built by Dracula or Cinderella (take your pick). The architecture there was just really, really cool. I think there are buildings built in the style of every era since 1000AD (or some such ridiculously ancient date). And some have multiple styles on the same building. For example, the cathedral on the castle grounds has a Gothic front and back, I think the side is Baroque or Renaissance, with a tower top made out of copper and there’s a clock. And some of the statues on the Gothic front have dudes in tuxedos, but whatever, right?! That happened because that church took 600 years to build. The famous church in the Old Town Square took 100-200 years to build, and that’s why the towers look funny in comparison to each other and the bottom part of the building. There has just been a lot of stopping/starting of construction, or reconstruction to fix buildings, so there are some weird things. Like a random Greek styled entrance on the side of a Baroque building, or facades that cover an ancient archway, but which you can still see through a window of said façade. …

Anyways, on Friday we met up and went to our hostel, and we began on Saturday. Unfortunately, that’s when the rain started and didn’t stop ALL DAY. Luckily I had my rain jacket and an umbrella, but I don’t think my feet have ever been so wet for so long in my whole life. By the end of the day, my lower six inches were soaked. And I promise I wasn’t jumping in puddles. It was crazy. But going beyond the miserably wet state of my feet, I had an interesting day. We did a free walking tour around the Old Town area and the Jewish District and learned a lot of very interesting things. For instance: the astronomical clock was the first of its kind, which made Prague unique, and only the creator knew how to make it, but then the government at that time got scared that he would build one for another city, so they blinded him. In revenge, he committed suicide by jumping into the clockwork and it was broken for the next 100 years until they figured out how to fix it. And there is a tradition of throwing people out of windows when they are very angry about the government or some issue, like early clashes between Catholics and Protestants (there may or may not be pointed stakes at the bottom). The Jewish District of today (which is now the more wealthy and desirable area of town for shops) was a Jewish Ghetto for a very long time because it was the undesirable land. It was several meters lower than the rest of the city and when the Moldau River flooded, the area basically became a swamp. So naturally anti-Semitists forced the very high Jewish population to live very cramped there. For hundreds of years there was a large Jewish community, but after the Holocaust, not many survived, and of the ones who did, not many returned, so the Jewish community today is very small. In my opinion, the most interesting surviving part of the original Jewish Ghetto is the Jewish Cemetery. They were forced to use only a small piece of land to bury people, and with such a high concentration of people, they naturally ran out of space very fast. So they just kept layering more dirt on top when they ran out of space and moved the tombstones to the top layer. They estimate that in the 9-12 layers, there are around 100,000 people buried, and the earliest (that they can read, many tombstones are illegible) is from the 1400s. Crazy stuff. Later we were told about the “most haunted” church in Prague. The legend goes that a long time ago, a thief wanted to steal some of the treasures in the church, so he snuck in during the day and hid, so that when everyone was gone he could take what he wanted. In the act of taking a necklace off of a Mary statue, the statue came to life and grabbed his arm, preventing him from getting away. In the morning, the priests “rescued” him from the statue’s grasp by cutting off his arm, and after they had cut it off, the statue let it go and went back to its normal position. So you know what they did?!  They kept the arm and hung it from the ceiling as a warning to all thieves. I don’t think that story is true, but what is gross is there is a skeletal arm hanging from the ceiling! Who does that, seriously? Probably the same people who decorate the interior of a church entirely with human bones! (I didn’t go there; I just heard that that church was an hour outside of Prague). Honestly. For dinner that night, we went to a place that served Czech food, which was a lot like German, I thought. We went back to the hostel a bit earlier because the weather was just too miserable to withstand much longer.

 

Sunday we got going a little later because we slept awhile. But that’s the day we went around the Jewish district and saw all the synagogues (we didn’t on Saturday because that’s their Sabbath and everything was closed). Cool stuff. Then we did a tour of the castle area at 2. We learned some more history and stories, but not as many “interesting” ones as Saturday’s. The most interesting thing that I learned was that J.K. Rowling used to live in Prague and taught English there and led some tours in the castle area. One of those areas was the Golden Lane (I think that’s what it’s called), which is a street of adorable, tiny houses/shops. This was pretty much (part of?) her inspiration for Hogsmeade/Diagon Alley. There’s even a legend from that street that there’s a house that only certain people can see (Leaky Cauldron, anyone?). I’ll stop being a silly Harry Potter fan after I mention that Norbert the dragon came from a person. We got a really nice view of the city from the castle area, and the area itself was really beautiful. I already mentioned the cathedral, which we unfortunately couldn’t go inside. There was an armor exhibit with all shapes and sizes, which brought great amusement. The weather that day was tolerable; there were long periods without rain (YEEEEEEEEEEES) but then it would randomly start to pour really hard. It had been raining so much that the river was flooding a TON. Enough to call in the army, which we saw. A bajillion cars with flashy lights and trucks with soldiers peering out the back passed by. At that point we didn’t know the river was dangerously rising, so we were getting all sorts of wild ideas. After dinner (Mexican tacos… in the Czech Republic… pretty good… and there were refried beans! Which I was thoroughly excited about) we were tired of being wet and went back to the hostel.

Valerie had to leave extremely early in the morning, which was further complicated by a number of metros and trams being shut down due to flooding (the worst flooding in about 10 years). After she got on her way, I went back to bed. I had planned to go to a museum, because I had lots of time till I had to go, but the still-miserable weather made me too lethargic. I really liked Prague, it reminded me of Vienna a lot, but it was really hard to enjoy because of the rain. I’m still glad I went. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what I did and learned this break. I only have about two weeks left till I go back to America and that thought is weirding me out beyond all reason. I don’t know if I should rejoice or cry. But I still have a bunch of things to do till then, so I’ll decide later.