Kicked out

Not a particularly interesting day, I suppose. Tomas is sick, which is not fun (he's coughing right now...I think there's a Prague bug going around, a lot of people in the program are sick too).

After our last day of language class (yay! just a test tomorrow), we took a trip to the National Library for a tour. It was about as interesting as it sounds. Afterwards, I took the very short walk from the library to the Jewish quarter to make good on my plans.

I got there at 4, paid my admission (not cheap, but I got a student discount), and first walked through the Holocaust memorial - a nice synagogue, walls covered with the names of Czech Jews murdered. I like those. Upstairs was the really neat part, though - an exhibit of artwork made my children in concentration camps. I've never seen anything quite like it, and it was really interesting to see their interpretations of all of the terrible things happening around them.

But the real impressive stuff came after this. There are a lot of fantastic sites in Prague, but so far, the Old Jewish Cemetery is the only one to take my breath away. It's a tiny space in the middle of the old Jewish ghetto that, according to gravestone ages, has been around since at least the early 1400s(!). They didn't have much room to bury people after a while (they could only expand it so much, and they weren't given any more space to live), and in Jewish custom, you can't touch the bodies of the deceased (which would be why there are no bone synagogues in Kutna Hora). So, they began stacking coffins on top of each other, eventually piling more dirt into the cemetery to raise the level of the earth and make room for more people. Over 12,000 people, all in about an acre of land, all with their own gravestones. Quite the dramatic site (Flickr soon).

So you could imagine my state of mind when the security guard yelled "excuse me," making me think I had stepped somewhere I wasn't supposed to. He turned away, I started another way for a bit, and then I heard "EXCUSE ME...WE'RE DONE" loud and angry. The whole cemetery? I asked. "GET OUT!" Damn. Ok. They closed at 4:30, turns out (that exchange happened at exactly 4:30, not a minute after), but they guy was still a jerk.

This weekend, I'm going skiing with the fam on Saturday (though we might not, since it might be raining in the mountains), then museuming/Brian Urlacher worshiping/welcoming Dan on Sunday. Next weekend, it really does look like I'll be going to Krakow, which will be amazing I'm sure. It also really does look like I'll be turning 21 next weekend...