Hello, again, Blogonauts! My goodness, what a delightful city is Prague! Many European cities had to rebuild following WWII's aerial bombing, but Prague was spared the rain of explosive ordinance. Thus, most of the architecture worth preserving has survived. Not that Prague avoided incursions and upheavals. Many of the downtown buildings bear bullet scars, indicating the repeated moments where Wenceslas Square was filled with tanks and troops. In spite of retaining its beauty, Prague sits in the bull's eye of disputed territory! The shifting tides are calm for the moment, but the Czechs seem to repeatedly face invaders of every stripe, each laying claim to this hunk of landlocked Europe. I will avoid the temptation to recite the litany of the rude incursions inflicted on the Praguelodytes. But it bears mentioning that more than a century before Martin Luther took up hammer and theses against the Roman church, Jan Hus began to lambast the elitist decrees of the Roman Pope. His followers and those of the Pope came to often fatal blows, all over what now appear to be the most diminutive details of how to be Christians. And Hus himself was eventually burned at the stake, and Prague returned to the Catholic fold. And yet today a monument the size of a bungalow stands in the Old Town square, and on it stands an oversized Hus glaring at the facade of his former church. It is hard to miss the tension evident here: Catholic churches abound, but Hus remains a hero. Where exactly do the Czechs stand? Today it seems on the side of freedom. They will deal with the necessary tension between factions in order to keep the liberty that tension represents. So after all these centuries, the Popes and the Hussites have learned to coexist. Soon after we arrived by train and subwayed to our hotel, Gary and I plugged in our iPhone earphones and took an audio tour of the city's highlights. Although I usually avoid such a style, this late time suggests that bullet points may be the best way to describe Prague as of now: • Architecturally, Prague is a combination of medieval and modern designs. But more than any city I have seen before, the cache of outstanding Art Nouveau buildings is outstanding. It is not unusual to see block after block of Art Nouveau structures. Oddly, this is never more true than in the Jewish Quarter, which was renovated in the decades before World War II. • Wenceslas Square, a site where popular uprisings occurred, where communist police wielded clubs, and where Nazi and later Russian tanks and troops rolled in to assert their control, remains a vital gathering spot and shopping district. It is less like a traditional city square, and more like a boulevard with a broad, pedestrian median. Good King Wenceslas (now Saint Wenceslas), bronzed and beautiful, sits astride his battle steed at the head of the square. And nearby are memorials built to honor three students who, one by one, died in the 1968 by setting themselves ablaze to protest the Russian invasion. • The old city wall is mostly gone, but a couple of towers remain. One stands next to the Charles Bridge, a 14th-century pedestrian crossing over the Vltava River. It is now lined with statues and memorials. But this parade of sanctified statuary are a legacy of the Habsburg rulers, who used the ornate iconography to reinforce Catholicism against the Protestant thinking of many Czechs. • Prague Castle sits high across the Vltava River from the Old Town. On its own, it is perhaps the largest castle in Europe. Within the castle stands the enormous St. Vitas Cathedral, where are entombed St. Wenceslas and St. Vitas. The Castle itself can take almost a whole day to adequately tour. • The Museum of Communism provides a slanted but detailed view of how the Czechs endured communist rule, both local and under the increasing scrutiny of the Soviet Union. Ironically, the museum itself is located next door to McDonald's and shares its a building with a casino. • There are scattered about Prague small performance spaces called Black Light Theaters. They offer delightful mimed shows that include tricks performed via the magic of ultraviolet light. It appears to be a uniquely Prague institution. We attended one, which was delightful. That's a brief portfolio of Prague-ish impressions. There is more coming up about the old Jewish neighborhood (de-populated by the Holocaust), and later a day-trip to Kutna Hora. Blog to you later!