Grabbed my camera and realized I still had pics from our Prague trip a while back. This place had an enormous influence over history: -The castle in many of the pics is where Protestants rebelled against their tyrannically oppressive Catholic rulers in 1618 and overthrew them, literally hurling them out the windows to their deaths, kicking off the 30 Years War, which was one of the driving forces of mass European immigration to the Americas...and why our Constitution expressly forbids a national religion (1st Amendment). -The power struggle in Prague produced Arch Duke Ferdinand--the one whose assassination at the hands of Turkish Muslim fanatics in Serbia CAUSED WWI. -Hitler considered the tolerance and inclusion of lesser peoples like the Slavs and Jews to be the downfall of the Hapsburgs and what was wrong with Austria/Hungary (Mein Kampf)...and was therefore especially vicious to these people, decimating their huge Jewish population and tormenting the Chechs so badly (after annexing their country) that they actually rose up and overthrew the Nazis as the Soviets came to liberate them. Germans in Prague were treated equally viciously in the aftermath of WWII and even expelled from the region. Other tidbits: -Founded by Germanic tribes in ancient times, shared with Celtic tribes for a long time, and co-existed with massive surge of Slavic peoples over the proceeding centuries...until Hitler. -When Freddy Mercury wrote Bohemian Rhapsody, this is where he was talking about. Prague is effectively the capitol of Bohemia (region named after the Bohem tribe). -Exchange rate is insane (as the pic shows: 500 Euro = 10,000 Czech koruna).
Posted on: Sun, 27 Oct 2013 09:37:02 +0000
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