Saturday, December 19, 2015

Schloss Guteneck Christmas Market: Meeting Krampus!

Today we visited probably our last Christmas market while living here in Germany. We have heard nothing but rave reviews for the Schloss Guteneck Christmas Market, which is only 45 minutes away from us, so we decided to spend the evening enjoying the festivities there.


One of the first things we saw/smelled was pork being roasted on a spit.


There were several "petting zoos" around the grounds.




I tried apple gluhwein, which I think I like more than the traditional red wine gluhwein.

 Part of the market was under a canopy of trees....this made it seem even more magical!

The sun was setting and the fog started rolling in. What a view!

The actual schloss (castle) was up on a hill above us.


 There was one little ride for the kids to enjoy.


We walked through the castle gate to explore the stands within the castle.





A stand selling roasted nuts

A magician was putting on a little show for the kids. They could not figure out how he was making a ball disappear and then reappear!


 We split a sausage on a stick wrapped in pastry with a cream sauce on top.

Inside a big room a band was playing some festive music for the guests. We decided this was a good spot to take a break and enjoy some beer.



The most unusual thing we saw at this Christmas market was a Krampus fire show. Krampus is a horned figure in Bavarian folklore who punishes children who have misbehaved. He is the counterpart to St. Nicholas, who brings presents to the good children on Dec. 6.

We were in the back of the audience and the narration was in German of course, but we definitely understood that Krampus was feared among all the children. They were shrieking and a few even crying, even though they weren't anywhere near the demonic creatures.




 After the show, we were able to approach the Krampus creatures for a good photo op.


Nothing says "Merry Christmas" like a greeting from Krampus!

I took a picture with Krampus. I must have been good this year because he just "smiled" in the photo with me.

Chris, on the other hand, must have been a little naughty this year! When he went to take a picture with Krampus, Krampus started to try to choke Chris!

After being frightened by Krampus, I found St. Nicholas who was much more pleasant!

Dinner at German markets is always a treat. There are so many choices, and they all look delicious! I decided on a cheese spaetzle topped with fresh mushrooms.



Germany is the birthplace of the modern Christmas traditions. There is no better place to spend the holidays than at a German Christmas market!

Friday, December 18, 2015

Thanksgiving in Prague

We finally made it to the "Golden City of a Hundred Spires"! After living in Europe for more than 2 years, it was about time that we made it to Prague, especially since it's only about 2 hours from our house!

We arrived in Prague around lunchtime on Thanksgiving. After a tasty Italian meal, we walked to the Old Town Square to start our walking tour of the city. Our guide Colin, from Scotland, gave us all of the history about the Czech Republic capital.

The city was getting ready to open their Christmas markets, and people were working hard to set up all the decorations in time, including a gigantic tree.




The Old Town Hall was one of the only buildings in Prague destroyed in WWII. You can see the edge of the red building below is the only part that remains.

The Astronomical Clock located on the side of the Old Town Hall, is the city's most famous landmark.


The top 4 characters represent the fears of the people: vanity, greed, death and a Muslim invasion.

The bottom 4 characters represent the age of enlightenment in the 1840s: a historian, an angel, an astronomer and a scholar.

Then we walked to Wenceslas Square, the largest square in Prague. It's in the heart of the New Town, the more modern part of the city.

The Old Town Square at night

For dinner our first night we ate at Restaurant u Provaznice ("By the Ropemaker's Wife). Legend has it that the ropemaker's wife asked her husband, who was often away for work, if she could have her own pub. Her husband agreed and soon heard stories that she was offering more than tasty food at her restaurant. He strangled his wife with a rope and her ghost still haunts the restaurant today.

We didn't encounter any ghosts, just good Czech food and beer!


Since it was Thanksgiving dinner, we ordered turkey skewers for an appetizer.

Chris ordered a pig's leg roasted in beer.

I ordered a pork tenderloin with cream sauce, cranberries and bread dumplings.

We saw many of these whole pigs being roasted throughout the city. Poor piglet!

The Old Town Square looks even more magical at night when it's all lit up.


A fire breather was putting on a show, so we stopped for a few minutes to watch him dazzle the crowd.




We returned to our hotel room to call it a night, but Prague had one more show for us....a firework display near the main square. From our hotel window we watched the pyrotechnic show. What a view to end our Thanksgiving Day!


The next morning we took a picture in front of the clock before the crowds arrived. We are pleased that no one else is in the picture.....this is nearly an impossible task at this iconic location!

As we approached Charles Bridge, it was hard to miss this epic tower at the beginning of the bridge.


The bridge wasn't crowded in the morning, and vendors were just starting to display their crafts for sale.



St. John of Nepomuk, the national saint of the Czech people, had quite a terrible fate on this bridge. He was a priest to whom the queen confessed all of her sins. Her husband, the king, wanted to know his wife's secrets, but John refused to tell. The king had John tortured and then thrown off the bridge. When he hit the water, five stars appeared, signifying his purity. Now, people believe that if you touch the St. John plaque you will have a wish granted.



We made our way up the inclining roads toward the castle complex.


The "castle" isn't just one building, it's an entire complex of churches, a castle and other beautiful buildings. It is the largest castle complex in the world.


Right as we were about to leave, we noticed that the guards were en route to relieve those currently on duty, so we stayed to watch the Czech's version of the changing of the guard.




The castle fountain decorated for Christmas

The St. Vitus Cathedral is so massive, I couldn't even fit the entire structure into my camera frame! The Roman Catholic Cathedral is where kings were crowned, royalty have their tombs, the relics of saints are venerated and the home of the crown jewels. Since 930 A.D. a church has stood on these grounds.



The nave of the church is more than 400 feet long and 100 feet high.

This stained glass window created by Alfons Mucha celebrates the birth of the Czech nation and the life of Wenceslas.


This royal mausoleum contains the remains of the first Habsburgs to rule Bohemia, including Ferdinand I, his wife Anne and Maximilian II.


This wooden relief of Prague depicts the aftermath of the Battle of White Mountain, when the Protestant King Frederic escaped over the Charles Bridge. Since the relief was completed in 1630, it was fun to spot many differences in the city's structure.


St. Vitus, who was martyred in Italy and never set foot in Bohemia, is the dedicated saint of this church because a piece of his arm bone was supposedly acquired by Wenceslas I in 925. Wenceslas built a church to house the relic on this spot, attracting crowds of pilgrims. A rooster sits at St. Vitus' feet because the saint was thrown into a boiling cauldron along with the rooster, but Vitus miraculously survived! The rooster did not.




Wenceslas Chapel is the historic heart of the church. It contains the tomb of St. Wenceslas, patron saint of the Czech nation. The crown jewels are kept locked up behind a door in the chapel. The door has seven locks whose seven keys are held by seven important Czech people (including the president) who must all meet here when someone needs to use the jewels.

This granite obelisk was erected in 1928 to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the establishment of Czechoslovakia. It was originally much taller, but it broke in transit.




Another Christmas market was being built by the castle.



We then visited Basilica of St. George, one of the oldest structures at Prague Castle. This is the burial place of Czech royalty.


After the basilica, we walked down the Golden Lane. This street originally housed castle servants, including goldsmiths. Now they house displays on the olden days - medieval torture, alchemy, etc. The houses themselves were occupied until World War II.



The author Franz Kafka lived briefly at #22. He moved here right after his famous book, The Metamorphosis, was published.


We stopped to warm up a bit with some hot cocoa and Irish Coffee. 


A cute gingerbread store had tasty and beautiful creations on display.


We ate a late lunch at Klasterni Pivovar (Monastery Brewery). Chris ordered a dark unpasteurized beer, and I ordered a half light, half dark beer.

Chris' fried schnitzel 

One interpretation on goulash 
Crystal is one of the biggest exports for the Czech Republic. Every street had tons of shops selling beautiful crystal.



One lucky couple was taking their wedding photos on the Charles Bridge.



We made our way to the Jewish Quarter to learn about another aspect of Prague's history. We weren't able to take any pictures inside any of the synagogues. 

We visited the Ceremonial Hall that was built in 1911 to prepare bodies and perform purification rituals before burial.

Next we visited the Klausen Synagogue where we learned about Jewish holidays and rituals of everyday life including birth, Bar Mitzvahs and weddings.

The most profound site we visited was the Old Jewish Cemetery. More than 12,000 tombstones are scattered throughout the cemetery. They are leaning every which way and seem to be placed without any order. From 1439 until 1787, this was the only burial ground allowed for the Jews of Prague. Over time, the graves had to be piled on top of each other. There are at least 7 or 8 layers of graves; it is estimated that more than 85,000 Jews are buried here. The graves were never relocated because of the belief that, once buried, a body shouldn't be moved. Now the cemetery is a small plateau. Over time the land has shifted, thus making the top tombstones crooked.

The plateau of graves


The final synagogue we visited was the Maisel Synagogue. This was a private place of worship for the Maisel family during the late 16th century. In World War II, this synagogue became a warehouse for Jewish artifacts. The Nazis had ordered synagogues all over the Czech world to send their riches to Prague. Hitler had a diabolical plan to eliminate the Jews entirely and then preserve their artifacts in a "Museum of the Extinct Jewish Race". Luckily this never happened!

We wanted something different for dinner, so we ended up at Agave, a modern Mexican restaurant. We started out with drinks, a raspberry frozen margarita for me, and a Corona for Chris.

The owner brought us a little appetizer on the house. It was tiny, but had great flavor!

Chris ordered a fresco hamburguesa, a fancy hamburger topped with fresh guacamole, garlic aioli, cheese and a fried egg. It came with some of the best sweet potato fries Chris has ever had.

I ordered a crispy duck confit over a garlic yucca puree with grilled asparagus. It was probably one of the best meals I have ever eaten!

We ordered another round of drinks, and this time I tried a mango margarita.

The owner came by after our meal with another free dish....dark chocolate truffles!

The next morning the Christmas market officially opened. The crowds definitely started pouring in to take part in the festivities.

The Memorial to Jan Hus in the Old Town Square is a tribute to an iconic Prague priest who stood up to the Catholic Church and the Austrian Hapsburg oppressors. He believed that Christians didn't need to pay their way to get to Heaven and that Mass shouldn't be held in Latin because most of the working class didn't go to school, and therefore didn't learn Latin. He sadly was ahead of his time and was burned at the stake in 1415.



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We walked back to Wenceslas Square and found the tiny memorial honoring the victims of 1969. 2 young men stood up to the Soviet occupation by lighting themselves on fire. Both men were killed, but the Czech people still honor their courage in a time when most were too passive to even oppose the Russian oppression.

Our tour guide from 2 days prior told us that the National Museum has been under construction for several years. Too bad we couldn't go inside!

The light-colored patches on the columns are covering holes where Soviet bullets hit during the 1968 crackdown. The masons repairing the columns intentionally did a sloppy job, so that dark moment in history could never be plastered over and forgotten.

This ugly communist-era building is an eye sore compared to all the other beautiful architecture in the city.

We walked to a smaller Christmas market, hoping to enjoy more of a local experience. Although most of the vendors were the same, it was much less crowded and not full of tourists!

We walked back to Wenceslas Square and enjoyed a quick snack of sauteed mushrooms.


We ate lunch at Zebra Asian Noodle Bar.

Chris enjoyed some Asian-style ribs

I tried noodles with duck and mushrooms

Prague is a big destination for bachelor/bachelorette parties. Our tour guide told us that it can be cheaper for Brits to fly to Prague and enjoy a night on the town than to pay for drinks locally in the U.K.
A stag party playing Twister on the street

Another tidbit our tour guide told us: the "traditional" Czech dessert called trdelnik is really a Hungarian dessert. Nevertheless, it it still very tasty!
The dough is wrapped around a metal tube and baked

Our trdelnik was covered in cinnamon sugar and filled with chocolate

One overly touristy activity that we participated in was the Ice Pub.

We entered the pub which was kept at a brisk negative 6 degrees Celsius.



Our bartender poured our drinks into glasses made of ice.

Cheers!
There were several ice sculptures in the pub, ideal for touristy pictures! We only were in the pub for about 20 minutes, which was more than enough time. We were ready to leave the cold bar even though it wasn't much warmer outside!

Chris taking a little "bear" nap

We walked to the beer museum to learn about the Czech Republic's most loved export, beer.

A graph depicting the different types of beer
Although the Czech Republic doesn't produce the most beer in the world, they do drink the most (148 liters a year per capita).
A small portion of Czech beer varieties
After the museum, we walked down into the basement and tried 4 different Czech beers. From bottom right clockwise we tried: Vevoda light lager (a balanced lager with a slight bitter taste, 4.5% alcohol); Rychtar Natur non-filtered lager (a light lager with 4.9% alcohol); Demon semi-dark lager (slight taste of honey, 5.2% alcohol); and Granat dark lager (caramel flavor with 4.5% alcohol). We both enjoyed the beers in ascending order (the dark beer was our favorite).

We stopped by the Christmas market one last time to see it in all its magical glory.

For dinner we enjoyed some kielbasa straight from the grill.


Visiting Prague at the beginning of the Christmas market was a great way to kick-off our holiday season. We were not disappointed by the city....it is now one of our favorite places we've seen so far in Europe!