Jachym, our Czech Tour Guide

Sunday came too fast... Having felt like we barely fell asleep, we awoke to a bright and clear day. We had to get up and moving to meet Dustin's friend (whom he met at the summer conference he attended last summer) at 9:30am. Jachym proved to be a fun Czech guide!

We spent the first half of the day roaming around the Castle and Cathedral. On Sunday (Easter), we tried to attend services at the National Cathedral, but to no avail. Oh well. Dustin and I sang some Easter songs (most notably Jesus Christ is Risen Today) and made light of a slightly sad situation (no family and no Easter service on Easter :(...). On a side note, we learned that Czechs tend not to be religious... Religion has been the rationale behind some pretty brutal wars (most importantly, I think, the Thirty Years War, fought between Catholics and Protestants). With a sad history of religious intolerance combined with a Communist legacy (which was not outwardly opposed to religious groups or people -- they, the state, still apparently paid priests/pastor salaries and for the upkeep of the churches... However, people who were religious and needed something from the state were not granted their wishes as quickly and those who worked at/for religious institutions were among the worst paid, leading to a stigmatized existence) led to a small percentage of the country being religious and the rest being professed Atheists. Additionally interesting because of the Easter holiday and "pagan" celebrations, which occur on Easter Monday -- more on that later.

With Jachym, we stopped by where Franz Kafka did some of his writing...










spent a good deal of time in the Castle gardens...

















and along the Charles Bridge (made most recently famous in Mission Impossible)...




















and to the Infant Jesus of Prague, which I had never heard about. Apparently, it is quite famous. Links can be found here and here.

We then took the bus north to Louny, where Jachym is from, to be in his town for EASTER MONDAY! The bus ride was uneventful... But that evening, we had dinner in the restuarant and dance club (what is it with dance clubs following us wherever we try to sleep?) attached to our hotel -- Hotel Louny. I had ice cream :) for dinner -- Dustin had a kind of fried pork. (Everything that is a specialty of Czech Republic, I think, is fried. That is, of course, except for the beer. It rather reminds me of England.) We had a great time that evening. We danced with a bunch of middle-aged Czech folks singing English songs by all sorts of bands while not speaking much English themselves. All of this singing, dancing, and revelry occurred underneath a 16th century cathedral. Weird.

The neatest thing about the evening was seeing the Czech people have fun. Most of the time, unless you talk to someone, people do not smile -- at all. I know that I am generally a smiley sort of person, but to literally not have one person smile at you, even when you smile at them, gives the impression of coolness... However, that cold exterior is not so thick, as we discovered that night. Side note -- many English/American songs that were popular before 1989 were translated into Czech and words were changed. The melody, however, remained. It was part of the Communist Government's way of allowing people to here the music without really hearing it -- interesting, huh?