Travelling Hopefully

I'm walking everywhere in Prague.  Well when I say everywhere I mean somewhere.  Sometimes I walk to the same place twice, occasionally deliberately.  Walking is definitely the best way to see Prague especially if you can't figure out the public transport and a helpful German has made you petrified of taxis.

Today I walked to Josefov near or possibly in the Old Town, the signage isn't explicit.  Josefov is the old Jewish quarter or it was before a city development at the beginning of the twentieth century demolished most of it.  Bizarrely what was left was preserved by the Nazis who intended it to be the centrepiece of a "museum of an exotic and extinct race" and shipped Jewish memorabilia in from all over.

I visited the Pinkas Synagogue which now serves as a memorial to Czech holocaust victims.  The building is virtually empty inside but the walls are covered in writing.  The lettering is black, red and gold and has quite a visually pleasing effect from a distance.  Up close you can see it is just a list of names.  All the nearly eighty thousand Bohemian and Moravian Jews who perished in the holocaust are given by name.  As I said the walls are covered in writing.

On the way out I passed through the old Jewish cemetery.  It was cool and dark and absolutely crammed with gravestones and memorials.  Some people think cemeteries are creepy but compared with the synagogue where death had essentially been reduced to a telephone directory I found it a peaceful and even happy place.  Death, the ultimate act of life, had been given the respect it deserved.  You had to leave the synagogue via the cemetery and I rather think that was deliberate and very appropriate.

I'll try and be funny next time OK?