Nuremburg

Nuremburg Germany.  Hitler's mighty parade ground where each individual felt like an ant, but together could be great

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The Mormon church in Prague

One of our vacationing highlights is attending the Mormon church when we travel. All 3 hours and we usually meet fun people. We were pleasantly surprised to have headset translation for our meetings and met a handful of Americans working in Prague.  The Prague branch has wide boundaries, the farthest away lives 70 minutes from the church.  
They had Sacrament meeting with headsets.  2 Sunday school classes, English and Czech and one Relief Society class with headsets.  For Primary, they have English and Czech classes and sharing times, with a 20 minute combined meeting.   I brought some Nativity stickers and CTR wristbands and wanted to give them out, no one could find a primary worker. 
After church the YM/YW prepared a small program and I happened to sit next to a primary worker.  I gave her the presents and asked her for her email because I wanted to email a man who talked to me but had to leave early.
Her name was Susan Zmolic.  Zmolic?  I know Zmolics!  "Gennie Zmolic is my mother in law! "she said." you grew up in Short Hills Ward then?"  Yes, I grew up in Short Hills Ward in  NJ.  Susan married Ginnie's oldest son, Martin, who was gone from Short Hills ward by the time we moved there.  What a small world. 

For our Sunday school class, I shared how we have been blessed.  I shared the story of Janell, how she was developmentally delayed. I went through what happened and now she is on a mission. After the class a man, working at the US Embassy came up to me and said his son is 2 1/2 years old and is exactly what I described.  He asked some questions and I think we gave him hope!   He told us how sweet his son is and how he wouldn't hurt anyone..... just like Janell.  Sweetness to the core!

Kay and I rented a car and after church made a road trip to Kutna Hora.  We had terrible maps but made it.  I could hardly read the maps putting my glasses on top of Kays! Frustrating!  It was a nice drive and nice to get out of town.  They had some pretty impressive buildings there.   Prague is not for cars so Budget said we could park the car there overnight and take it out again in the morning.  The public transportation is amazing here and there is no need for cars.  Even Kunta Hora and Terezin are more accessible by train than car.  Kay was glad we rented the car because he loves the adventure but if adventure means driving down the one way streets the wrong way, driving through pedestrian only zones, driving down sidewalks and getting lost in a maze with no idea which direction you are going you can count me out. With the difference in signs ( some were not in the Budget guide), sometimes we didn’t know if we were doing something wrong except for the surprised looks of pedestrians.  He followed other cars up and down stairs in the streets. We realized the “Budget Rental Car” huge sticker in the rear window was a kind of “student driver” warning, people were very kind to us. Thank goodness for all the “CENTRUM” signs that point you back to downtown, assuming you are in the right town.

Prague continued

Saturday we stepped out of our hotel, the Cloister Inn and it was a sheet of ice in the street and sidewalk.  Very scary.  We slid to the public transportation and headed to the KGB museum.  A Russian has a large collection of KGB memorabilia.

 

After the  The second stop was the Museum of Communism and then walked around the squares and bumped into the… Missionaries! We took down their addresses to email some moms these two pictures.

 

Still in Prague

We started our day with a tour of the Jewish Quarter in Prague.  Our guide, Vida didn’t know she was Jewish until she was 14.  Her dad, as a young man was in several concentration camps including nearby Terizen, a  holding camp and Auschwitz.  Her mom was given to friends and was raised as their Christian daughter.  In the Jewish quarter...the Jews were forced to live in a ghetto, they were only allowed to bury in a small cemetery so 200,000+ bodies were buried one on top of the other, 12 deep.  The Jews in Prague were made to live separately for hundreds of years.  Whenever they left the ghetto, they had to wear yellow or a yellow hat.
Hitler believed Prague would be a German city.  He had plans to move to Prague and didn't destroy it. He had the Jewish artifacts sent to and  saved in Prague and was collecting things for his “museum of  an extinct people” thus many things were saved.  There were 350,00 Jews there at one time.  Now there are 3,000 registered Jews living in Prague, more unregistered.
        We went to Prague Castle where I took a headset tour and Kay had museum fatigue (an illness that comes on quickly) so he sat and waited for me.  For dinner we took a tram to a small restaurant we saw an advertisement for… a $5.00 dinner special, outside of the tourist area.  We were pleased with our meal!

Day 2 Prague

My goal was to be pretty casual and not get too caught up in doing everything so fast so we went to check out where our next hotel is, found our rental car place and added a day so we can drive to church and took public transportation all over Prague.  we went to an underground grocery store and then took the moving sidewalk down another level.  It was cool taking shopping carts down and up.  We went to Petrin Hill and rode the funicular up the hill (it reminded me of Zurich Switzerland) then we climbed the fake Eiffel Tower to get a fantastic view of the city.  It was a beautiful cold day

It took some work finding Mozart’s house museum since Rick (Steve’s travel book) was wrong- I will have to write him a note.  We finally found it and it was CLOSED!  ugh.

We passed by more Christmas markets and found a concert.  I love sing-a-longs and I didn’t know the words! I bought Janell a giraffe ornament.  I really wanted some street food so we shared a plate of sauerkraut and brats and potato it was yum….

 

Prague- We made it.

Kay and I arrived in Prague this morning after 12 hours of travel.  Our long flight was 8 1/2 hours of which I slept for at least 6…. interrupted of course but we hit the ground running.  Of course we took public transportation to our hotel and followed the carefully worded directions of the hotel.  the streets are Disney sized streets only they are real.  They twist and turn but we made it, dropped our luggage off and met up with a “free” tour- tips only, walking around for 3 hours.  We didn’t think we needed to dress too warm so we dressed warm but we needed more.  After the tour we came back to our hotel and I put on 3 layers of pants not including my undies!  I wore a  turtle neck, fleece pullover, fleece hoodie (using the hoodie and my knit head band)  Topping it off with my Olympic jacket.  Finally we warmed up.   We went to a recommended Czech restaurant.  I had goulash and Kay had turkey schnitzel.  Faa-aat-ning.  Believe me, they need fat here to keep them warm.

After dinner we took a tram ride out of town to buy water, just for the adventure then we hit the famous Christmas market and bought Chestnuts… roasting…..in a foodservice cart…It just doesn’t sound right. Chestnuts taste like pinenuts.  We liked them  Kay is zonked.  He let me overlap into the empty seat on the airplane flight so I slept  better than he did.  Perks  of being a woman.