By Larry and Joan Dolinski
The focus of the city is the Prague Castle, which is much more than a mere castle. It is a section of the city commanding the heights, and has been the residence of Czech monarchs and presidents since the 9th century. The key treasure at the "Castle" is the St. Vitus Cathedral (dating from 1344). Simply said, it is magnificent.
Prague had the good fortune to have escaped WW II unscathed, hence one is able to see the original architectural beauty of this impressive city. The architectural styles include Baroque, Gothic, Romanesque, Rococo, Renaissance, and Art Nouveau - all intimately integrated.
Prague is very proud of its Jewish Quarter, which commands a great deal of tourist focus. It is the most beautiful in Europe and dates from the 10th century. While the rest of Europe discriminated against Jews and denied them entry into the professions and guilds (forcing them into the roles of money lenders and merchants) something different occurred in Prague. The King (Rudolph II), having very expensive habits and often falling into debt, desperately needed the support of Jewish money lenders. In return for these financial services he allowed Jews to become professionals and live outside the Ghetto. Among the points of interest we encountered was Europe's oldest preserved synagogue, the world's oldest Jewish cemetery, and the home of Franz Kafka, the literary legend.
Before departing the Czech Republic, we visited Terezin, the site of the W.W.II concentration camp. The town still looks like a gigantic prison. With the encouragement of a very creative art teacher, the many imprisoned children of Terezin produced a history of their lives and experience through drawings and paintings. These artifacts, of course, are all that define their lives. There is great content in these "manuscripts", and the experience was one we will not forget.
From the Czech Republic we pushed on into Austria and Germany (again), through the tiny swatch of Liechtenstein and into Switzerland. There was a good deal of crisis crossing back and forth among these countries on our bicycle route as we often wiggled along borders. It was a reasonable challenge to recall which country we were in at certain moments of time (" If it's 2:00 PM, it must be Germany...for the second time today").
In any case, the bicycling was beautiful, the weather lovely, and most every home was decorated with flower boxes set with colorful flowers; many of the homes were also decorated with large, lovely gardens.
Among the cities and villages we enjoyed along the way were Salzburg, Munich, Oberammergau, and scores of smaller villages whose names we did not recognize, but which oozed with charm.
[The Tale of Lola]
While in Munich we heard an interesting story relating to King Ludwig I, who is credited with much of the building in Munich. As the story goes, there was a young woman, Lola, a dancer, who schemed to get introduced to the King. She wanted to plea for privileges to carry on her dancing, a pursuit that was apparently denied to women of that society. She seduced and took up with the King. When his ministers protested, he fired them. When the academics protested, he fired them too. When he began to receive death threats, he abdicated the throne and went into exile with Lola. Lola, who liked where the action was, tired of him, left, and somehow got involved with the gold rush in California. She eventually died of poverty in Greenwich Village, NYC. Apparently the song "Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets" had its inspiration in this story and the Ludwig/Lola story surfaced (abstractly) in the musical "Damn Yankees", where a baseball player becomes the allegory for King Ludwig.
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