Day 3

April 30, 2008 (Day 3)

Today we woke up early and headed over to Vlad the Impaler’s for breakfast. We had a traditional Czech breakfast including bread, cherry preserves, stolen (homemade sweet bread), deli turkey, cheese, yogurt, and fish sauce. Yes, fish sauce. It was very fishy (probably the first Czech food item I have not totally loved). But everything else was VERY tasty. After our very early breakfast, we hoped on the Metro with George P’s wife Martina. She took us on a shopping tour of Prague and we got to visit lots of fun stores. I bought a ton of souvenirs!!! My personal favorite store was Luxor Books, which is the Czech version of Barnes and Noble. I bought a cool Peter Sis (or Petr Sis here) book in Czech since I love his illustrations and he’s a CR native. After that we went to the Czech National Museum of Natural History, which was actually a little bit of a let down because it was a Museum about dinosaurs and stuff but it was in Czech, we really couldn’t understand much of it. And it really didn’t have anything to do with the history of the CR. They did have an interesting exhibit all about feet throughout history- to enter you had to walk though a gigantic foot. Serious. After that we got to eat lunch at a cute little local Italian eatery. I had a pepperoni pizza, which here comes with pepperoni, salami, and hot peppers on it. It was SO good, but it took FOREVER for them to make it. After that we took a cab back to our flat where we had a short rest before we left for “The Burning of the Witches” (or as they say here in the CR- “The Burning of the Vitches”). Now, when first got our itinerary, we noticed that on day 3, that night we would be attending the Burning of Winter. However, when we asked the local Czech people about it, they would sheepishly smile and say “It’s not “Winter”. It’s “Witches”. Every single person we asked had that same sheepish smile and wouldn’t elaborate. We started to get worried we would be burning really Witches! Finally, the nice Doctor we met yesterday at the Rotary meeting explain to us that it is a tradition that started out in Pagan times as the celebration from the transition from Winter to Spring. Basically the villages would sacrifice a person (burning them) to please Winter, so she would go away and turn into spring. Later when the Catholic Chuch became more prevalent, they started to burn Protestants (which they excused their actions by proclaiming their victims “Witches” as they were heretics to the church). A few years after that action fell out of favor, they started burning effigies of a witch, calling it the “Burning of the Witches”. They celebrate it like we do Halloween, and it’s a National Holiday the day after. All day long leading up to the Burning, we saw little girls dressed like Witches (the witch plays a large part in Czech mythology. There are witch puppets, shirts, key chains everywhere in the CR. It’s very much more popular in this country than in our own where the symbol of the witch is considered by many to be satanic). With all of this in mind, and the attitude that we could keep an open mind, we set out for the Burning of the Witches. Our guide, Yurag (a Slovak name, which is prounounced “Yuri” or “George”) took us to a little park along the Vltava river. There was an area where a band was setting up, and local people were building a bonfire. Around 9, the band started playing. The highlight for me was hearing “Cotton Eye Joe” in Czech! Around 9:30, the bonfire started and they definitely burned a human effigy. While the Czech crowd cheered, I found it very disturbing deep down. It reminded me too much of our own US history- featuring the burnings of the Salem Witch Trials and other human burnings. Too many times we have used that manner of execution on undeserving individuals. I really felt very uncomfortable. Finally we convinced Yurag to leave and we went to a local swanky restaurant where we drank Hot Chocolate and got to meet an American exchange student named Christina who was awesome! She told us a lot about some local things we didn’t know about and tours to go on. We had a really great time, and finally got home around midnight. All in all, it was a very interesting day!