It's All About Me...

A Day at the Jewish Quarter

11:30 pm, Mon, Oct 9, 2006

Poor Neil cracked a tooth last night; even though he said that it was not hurting, they decided that it is best to get it looked at instead of waiting. Besides, May Shiu and Neil will be going on a sailing trip in Turkey right after their week here in Prague. Luckily, the hotel was able to get him an appointment right away with an English-speaking dentist and he got a temporary filling.

After May Shiu and Neil came back from the appointment, we headed out to tour the Jewish Quarter. We visited 5 synagogues (Pinkas, Maisel, Klausen, Old-New and Spanish), the Old Jewish Cemetery and the Ceremonial Hall next to the Cemetery; all but the Old-New Synagogue (New in the 13th century!) are managed by the Prague Jewish Museums and are used for exhibitions these days.

Pinkas Synagogue is now a memorial for the Jews from Bohemia and Moravia who were murdered by the Nazis. On the walls within the synagogue are more than 80,000 names of the victims. Amongst the names, we found surnames from both sides of Dan's family. In the upper section of the synagogue is a permanent display showing drawings by children from the Teresin ghetto/prison established by the Nazis. What surprised me when I saw those drawings was how colourful most of them are; they depicted daily life, e.g. the family sitting together for the Sabbath meal, flowers by the window and so on. I was expecting much darker drawings... Granted there were also drawings of the dormitories and communal showers, but I only remeber seeing one drawing about death - a skeleton.

The Old-New Synagogue is a Gothic style synagogue where services still take place. It is the oldest synagogue in Prague; it was called the New Synagogue when it was built in the 13th century, but when others were built in the 16th century, they changed the name to Old-New. Goes to show you that the whole age thing is all relative!

The other synagogues and the Ceremonial Hall all have exhibits that show the history of Jews in the region and all aspects of the Jewish culture and religion. They are all very informative and because they were built anything from the 14th to the 20th century, there was a huge variety of architectural styles with respective interior decorative styles. Of the 5 synagogues that we visited, I was most impressed by the Spanish Synagogue. It was so named because of its Moorish style - exterior and interior. The rich colours and the intricate details of the design was absolutely wonderful.

We took a break during our tour of the Jewish Quarter by having lunch at King Solomon, the oldest Kosher restaurant in Prague. It is a good looking restaurant with really good food. And when we were done with the tour, we headed back to a cafe at the Old Town Square to have coffee and dessert. I had apple strudel with my latte and I must say that the apple strudel here was much better than the one I had in Vienna!

We wandered through the alleys near the Old Town Square some more before going back to the hotel and discovered this carpenter who has made a huge marionette of Pinocchio over 6 feet tall and it was all rigged up so that it could paint! In fact, it is in the Guiness Book of Records for being the largest marionette in the world that could paint. The guy had another much smaller Pinocchio that does the same thing. He is an amazing carpeter/artist and this is his passion; his day job actually involves restoring old buildings. Quite amazing!!

After a bit of a rest at the hotel, we went out in search of a place for dinner. Our wanderings took us to an excellent restaurant... will write about that tomorrow. Since we didn't take a nap today, I really need to hit the sack now!

posted by Anne-Gigi @ 11:04 AM