Prague, part II
Prague is an incredibly beuatiful city. Walking anywhere ends up taking forever because everything along the way catches your eye and forces you to ponder. Fortunately, our room was in the middle of town, so we didn't have to go too far afield.

We visited the old Jewish neighborhood, where Jews were forced to live for about 5 or 6 centuries. Believe me, this was not a large chunk of land that they were restricted to. The paltry amount of land alotted to them forced them to have a cemetery of only about one acre. There they buried over 100,000 people over four centuries, one on top of the other.

As if this persecution wasn't bad enough, in 1939 the Nazis began their "final solution" to the "Jewish problem." The texture on the walls in this photo are names of every Czech Jew murdered by the Nazis. This temple also displays drawing by children that were forced to live in Terezin, a small Czech city turned into a holding camp for Jews by the Nazis. Many of the people interred here were shipped to extermination camps.

I visited the Dachau concentration camp some years ago, and felt guilty about not feeling worse than I did; the preserved camp was so empty, so sterile, it just didn't convey the horror of the Holocaust to me. The drawings by these children, and the names on these walls, really stirred my emotions.

So as to not leave you too depressed, I'll include a little bit about beer. Jenn took this picture of me at U Flecku, a famous, although touristy, Czech brewpub. They make only one kind of beer: a dark lager of about 4.8% ABV. The beer was tasty but not in the least bit lager-like. It was fruity, with notes of roasted malt and tartness. It was quite quaffable, but not what I expect from a lager.

The food we ordered was delivered to the table in - no hyperbole - 1.5 minutes. Do you think it was made fresh? Try the beer, but not the food if you come to this place. If you only have time for four beer places in Prague, skip this one.

After U Flecku, we went on to U Medvicku, where we had dined the previous day. They have three separate sections to their establishment: a bar, a brewpub, and a hotel.

This photo is from the bar, where we had, hmmm, about 5 beers each while chatting and watching the Czechs watch the U.S. Open tennis match.

They serve Budweiser Budvar Pilsner, dark and their own brew. Unfortunatelyk they don't tell people they have their own brew, so we didn't even get any this night. And I thought I was a poor marketer!

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