more on day two

Its one in the morning and I'm getting tired, fortunately. That means, I think, that I am not jet-lagged! Skipping a night of sleep makes all the difference it seems. Indeed, I must wake up early tomorrow for orientation so it is all working out.

Today our house mother Zuzana took us on a brief tour of the neighborhood. She really is lovely. All of the students are quite taken with her. She holds our hand when it needs to be held but only so we can go off by ourselves with confidence.  A Czech native, she summered (or perhaps at one point lived) in the Berkshires and is fluent in English language as well as culture. Zuzana led a meeting this morning, giving us a mixture of rules, advice, and warnings about life in the dorm and in the city. We took a walk down toward the castle. On the walk we passed some lovely buildings, walked down streets to which pictures do no justice. The rustle of the trees, the first crisp brown leaves rasping against the cobblestones along with the wind and smell of autumn (at a point past the decaying flowers of late summer but before people begin to use their fireplaces)... it was magical. Perhaps with those thoughts in mind these photos may convey something more than their image alone:

This is a view of the street down which we walked to reach the cafe last night. Close-ups can be found in the previous entry.

Mozart actually played the organ here. Near the monastery down the road from the Kolej (our dorm).

The Loreto, just around the corner from the Monastery.

Pretty strange back story about this place according to my guide book: it is "an important place of pilgrimage" because of the legend of the Casa of Loreto. The book elaborates on "the legend of the Santa Casa" : The original house, said to be where the Archangel Gabriel told Mary about the future birth of Jesus, is in the small Italian town of Loreto. It was believed that angels transported the house from Nazareth to Loreto in 1278 following threats by infidels. After the Protestants' defeat in 1620 [...] Catholics promoted the legend, and 50 replicas of the Loreto were built in Bohemia and Moravia. This, the grandest, became the most important in Bohemia". (Prague, Dorling Kindersley Travel Guides, 1994, 2000.)

This Church of the Capuchin Monastery was damaged by the Prussians in 1757. Zuzana told us that the cannonballs in the facade were originals, but this site tells me they were molded there in commemoration.

Then we walked down some cute streets with a lot of history that is EXTREMELY LOVELY as I attempted to convey before with my sensory description. They also have a lot of history and it seems some pretty important people have lived in them (including, again, Mozart).

Apparently a romantic hotel for a honeymoon despite the maintenance equipment in the front yard.

Creative graffiti

Then I went to the castle with another student on my trip. He is a history major, which was extremely helpful as we were exploring the complex. For example, when we were trying to figure out why there was Cyrillic written in the Cathedral, he was able to recall the exact year  of the Great Schism (1054 by the way).

I took too many photos and had too many thoughts to explain them beyond the photos themselves. It was fantastic though.

More pictures and some videos of Prague castle tomorrow. I am up too late, a usual!