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I woke up this morning with a splitting headache and briefly forgetting where I was. Oh yeah, the Manhattan, in Prague, in Europe. I drank a touch too much last night. I didn't get destroyed... but the volume alone was too much for my body to handle, I must have had to use the bathroom nearly every hour over night. Around ten, we were woken up by receptionist. We were told if we don't leave in five minutes we would have to pay for another night. Brent and I did a gut check. The place wasn't so terrible and neither of us could get ready in five minutes so we agreed to it. Another night at the Manhattan.
After finally crawling out of bed, we stopped by the supermarket to grab breakfast. (the food - fresh baked bread cost a nickel, the gatorade was 95 cents) and we ventured towards the Jewish community. Brent had heard about it and really wanted to see the Jewish museum. Its really more than one museum, more like a series of them in the old Jewish village in Prague. It consists of seven sites and synagogues... and we saw five of them. Just so you're aware - as cheap as the food and drink is in Prague, the museums are at prices similar to Western Europe. Entrance to the first six sites (one of which was temporarily closed) was 240 Crowns ($8.50), 170 Crowns for students ($6). But in this case, definitely worth it.
Following the second world war, what was left of the Czech Jewish community (it shrank from about 200,000 in 1938 to 10,000 in 1946) put together a museum of the major sites still in Prague. The series of exhibits is to a degree understated but still stunning. There's the Jewish cemetery which is over 800 years old and has at least 12,000 people buried within. It's actually become a hill because land was scarce for the Jewish community so they added earth to fit more people within the cemetery. Nobody has been buried there in over 200 years but it is still kept open, in accordance with Jewish law.
There are also in depth exhibits on what the Jewish Community did during its life and death. In particular, the balcony of the Spanish Synagogue offers quite a jarring showing of life in a Nazi era ghetto. It's nothing huge, just simple pictures of unknown victims, craftworks and small toys of children who lived there. Prayer rolls to honor the dead, by the thousands.
A personal note here. You may notice that a lot of these museums have no pictures attached. Sometimes it is because I haven't the pictures developed yet. Other times, it is because the museum specifically asks people not to take pictures. My biggest pet peeve with people who travel abroad, are those who don't pay those places the simple respect of following local custom. For example, there are specific instructions in the Jewish cemetery to wear a headcovering (provided) and not to take pictures. There was a family of Americans ahead of us in the cemetery who (father and son) took their head coverings off as soon as they got into the cemetery and took pictures the whole time. Part of what gives travelers a bad name, is the inability to make an effort to show respect to the people you visit. Remember, it's their house and you are the guest.
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