This Weeks Activities in Prague

What a beautiful week it was in Prague! It seems that the snow has melted, the icicles have dropped and everyone was out this weekend to play. I enjoyed some great activities this week!

National Gallery of Prague at St. Agnes of Bohemia Convent
It started with a class field trip on Wednesday to St. Agnes' Convent which is now the National Gallery of Prague. Full of mostly medieval art from Central Europe and Czech. My favorite thing about his Convent is it's ghost story, what is an old convent without one? It says that one of the nuns was killed by her own father, when he found out that she is in love with a poor young man. Then he cursed her for putting the family in shame and said she shall never rest in peace as long as the convent is there. The ghost of the girl reputedly rambles around the convent in the night, moaning and wearing a habit stained with blood. It is said that she helps young people who are unhappily in love. So a friendly ghost!

Unfortunately I forgot my camera (but we couldn't take many pictures anyway) here are some I found online:

Country Night at Local Bar
Czech country music is very popular to this day, it is linked with the so called tramping movement, which was a pastime that was born out of the interwar period's pressures and opportunities. Saturated with idyllic images of the American Wild West and seeking respite from the pressures of modernizing urban life, many Czechs fled into the woods. Tramp settlements with names like "Hudson," "Little Bighorn," and "Swanee" soon became the temporary homes for scores of Czechs impersonating cowboys, "Red Indians," forty-niners, and other American characters.

The restaurant Na Mělnické is tipical for the outskirts of Prague, we got to meet locals, have a cheap dinner and enjoy the happy atmosphere created by the musicians.

Cirkus Cirkus 2012
Did ya'll hear? The circus is in town!! After reading the Night Circus I had an itching to see those big tents and flashing lights and that's just what I did! After a 4 metro stops the wrong way and a little doubts on the direction we were heading we saw a heavenly symbol in the sky- the spotlights! It was a very exciting 3.5 hour show, for only fifteen dollars! My favorite part was the cute guys dressed as pirates doing flips off swinging platforms! 

Carnival in Prague

There's not much to do in Prague for Carnival (Mardi Gras celebration) that is free or even cheap! We saw a performance in Old Town Square that was mostly geared towards kids and an act that included references we're not sure anyone one understood! 

Locks of Love

On a small bridge next to Lennon Wall you can find a tribute to individual love. Here lovers attach a padlock to the bridge and through the lock into the water, symbolizing their ever lasting love! 

John Lennon Wall

The weather was beautiful this Saturday so we crossed Charles Bridge and headed to the little famous ally way known to house a wall of inspiration. John Lennon never experienced Prague for himself but was a hero to the pacifist youth of Central and Eastern Europe during the totalitarian era. Prior to 1989 when communism ruled, western pop songs were banned by Communist authorities, and especially John Lennon´s songs, because it was praising freedom that didn’t exist here. Some musicians were actually jailed for playing it!

When John Lennon was murdered in 1980 he became a sort of hero to some of the young and his picture was painted on this wall, for whatever reason right here, along with graffiti defying the authorities. Don’t forget that back then the Czech people had few opportunities to express their feelings with their lack of freedom. By doing this, those young activists risked prison for what authorities called “subversive activities against the state”.

But the threat of prison couldn’t keep people from slipping there at night to scrawl graffiti first in the form of Beatles lyrics and odes to Lennon, then they came to paint their own feelings and dreams on the wall.

The Communist police tried repeatedly to whitewash over the portrait and messages of peace but they could never manage to keep the wall clean. On the second day it was again full of poems and flowers with paintings of Lennon. Even the installation of surveillance cameras and the posting of an overnight guard couldn’t stop the opinions from being expressed.

At first glance the Lennon Wall is like any graffiti-covered wall you see around the world. But this wall is special thanks to its history. I’ve heard people saying that it is Pague’s equivalent of the Berlin Wall. They are not far from the truth. Some people also believe that the „John Lennon Peace Wall“ helped inspire the non-violent Velvet Revolution that led to the fall of Communism in the former Czechoslovakia in 1989.

In 1998 the wall had to go through reconstruction of its crumbling facade but the spirit of the wall lives on. It used to be covered in anti-Communist graffiti, now it is covered in messages of love and peace. The original portrait of Lennon is long lost under the layers of new paints but if you look hard enough you can still find tributes to Lennon and a yellow submarine!

The wall, located at Velkoprevorske Namesti, Mala Strana, is owned by the Knights of the Maltese Cross, who allowed graffiti to continue. It will be a symbol forever.

http://www.prague.net/john-lennon-wall