Day one in Praha

Day one in Praha, it has been very good. Today my sister and I started off with a trip to the harbor and did a boat tour around the river. There are many interseting sights to see in Prauge, but one of the most interesting that we saw from the water was a red pendulum, that apparently had started off as a statue to Stalin. It was 30m high and was the tallest Stalin statue in the world, until, after Stalin left power, it was revealed that he was not so much a hero and more of one of the lowest criminals in earth's history. It took them three tries to disassemble the statue, they ended up blowing it up with dynamite. Then, a few years ago after the fall of the wall, Michael Jackson decided that he wanted a statue to himself when he heard the story, and so they built a large blue plastic statue... I didn't really get why, but apprently they felt that it was important enough, but it was eventually taken down and sent to Neverland Ranch.
The next stop was the Jewish Ghetto, which had the oldest intact synagoge in Europe, built around the early 1300s. It wasn't archetecturally impressive, but it was amazing that it had lasted so long. The sad story is that the reason why it survived World War II is that when the Germans first occupied Cezchoslovikia, they were convinced by a local leader to make it into a museum. The Germans called it 'Cradle to the Grave, the museum of the extinct jewish people.' Thus the Ghetto was preserved, but despite this, almost 160,000 Jewish people were massacured. The Ghetto in Prauge had 180,000 Jewish people before WWII, and today only has about 1,000.

After that we went to one of the main squares, and had a rolled up cinnamon pastery, and listened to a cajun jazz band, from Praha, which was quite strange but highly entertaining. The rest of the afternoon was spent in idle walking, but tomorrow we head out to the castle.