Day 102 (slide show)
Several days ago I saw a post from a lady in the Couchsurfing group. She was looking for someone to see the sites of Prague with. I responded not thinking anything would happen. I didn’t have a phone and neither did she so it was not likely to happen. Well it did though and turned out to be a fun day. Quite cold though but we made it. Her name is Dani from Vancouver and she is a stage manager in the theater. She was in Prague doing some work for a few days.
I decided to take her on a small tour of a rampaging mob that ransacked the city in 1417. It’s a great story about one of early Hussite mob uprisings. In this one they the Hussite really did a job on the Catholic’s. You can follow the route they took and see many spots where they went crazy. The same streets and many of the churches are still here at least in part.
I’ll try to tell a short version of it here. So there is this crazy Hussite priest who gets about 200 of his sheep all leathered up in the Wenceslas Square because the Church and the King decide to allow the rich to receive absolution the day after a sin as long as they pay for it. Now the poor can’t do that and they sin just as much as the rich so their pissed off. “You can’t pay you go to Hell” basically. So these two hundred leave the center of Prague on Jan 26th (I think) and start to the New Town area to reap a little revenge. They trash a couple of churches and other business of the Church of Rome. Then they come to the New Town Hall and proceeded to throw out the third story window all 18 of the city fathers who had locked themselves in there thinking they would be saved by the King. All but one is killed and he lives because he landed on a big pile of horse shit. Of course he is all broken up but the church claims it was will of god that he lived. O’ ya right. Now this goes on for three days until the King decides to send in the troops. By this time there are 10,000 of his sheep trashing and burning everything in sight. The king only sent 1000 knights and 200 didn’t make it to the location. The nights looked over the situation and turned around heading back to the castle barracks. So it is fun to walk the route they went on and try to figure out what happened. O’ one more thing I have to saw is after the third day all the beer was gone so the mob decided to move to Jewish Town and burn it, over 100 Jewish people died.
The New Town Hall was burned down sometime later and the New Town Council Building was built around 1451. Here is a link to a panoramic view from the tower as it is now.
Later we went to the “Lennon Wall” and stopped for a late lunch at the John and George restaurant. This place has some great food at good prices. This was the first meal I have had here. I’ve only had coffee and carrot cake before. It was a nice treat. We split up about 6PM and decided to meet tomorrow for a military Parade that was taking place out on the road to the airport.
I didn’t hear any news on my bikes today. What’s up with that?
Somethings Wrong (Junior Watson) Bluesman
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