I woke up on Friday with a sore throat. I rarely get seriously sick, so I just drank a lot of water and went about my day. I stayed east of the river yesterday, so today I wanted to go across the river and see Prague Castle. First I headed out to the bake shop a few steps away from my apartment to pick up a coffee my roommate Elizabeth. She was heading to the Jewish quarter afterwards, so I decided to head there with her then go to the castle.
The Jewish question quarter in Prague is made up of many different synagogues located near each other. The oldest synagogue is the Old-New Synagogue, which was completed around 1270 and is the oldest working synagogue in Europe. In one of the synagogues (I think it was the Pinkas Synagogue) I found my surname on the walls, which had the names of all of the known Prague Jews who died in the Holocaust. Finding it among all of the other names was one of those big moments in life where the breath gets knocked out of your body. I felt both connected and disconnected to my past. Connected because I was looking at my name and my history. Disconnected because I had no idea who the people behind the names actually were and what they had gone through.
I headed to the Jewish Cemetery afterwards. At this point it had started to rain. The graves, practically laid on top of each other, looked extra old and significant in the rain. I didn’t take any pictures because I wouldn’t want someone taking a picture of my grave.
After I was done touring the synagogues I headed across the bridge to see Prague Castle. At this point my throat started to get really sore. My nose was also running nonstop. I made a quick pit stop in an apothecary. I had to act out my symptoms to the pharmacist behind the counter, but she finally caught on and got me some high strength throat lozenges (pro tip: ask for lozenges NOT drops or mints).
It had also started to rain harder, so when I eventually arrived at the castle I didn’t know how long I would last.
I ended up staying about an hour. I headed to St. Vitus’ Cathedral first, which has really unique stained glass windows. Then I went to the main castle and finally to the remants of the working class village. There were so many people pushing and shoving down small little stone hallways and my nose was running like crazy. I called off being a tourist for the day and began a rainy walk back to the apartments.
The tour group got together to have dinner since we were heading out of Prague in the morning. Even though I had spent a good portion of day the blowing my nose and popping lozenges, I still thought that it had been a success overall. It’s important not to be too hard on yourself (though much easier said than done), and it wouldn’t have been fair to myself to stay at the castle and see more with a sick body.
Anyways, on the walk back from dinner the sun was just setting and I got some pretty shots in the square.
an american in europe 