Prague, Czech Republic - the rough version

I will confess now, so as to avoid your future heartbreak... I went to Prague simply because I was going to an IAMX concert.  And I got so vigorously trashed at the concert that a lot of my tourism was conducted as an afterthought while severely jaded and hobbling around on a torn calf muscle.

But here goes...first up a quick photographic duck through the grounds of Prague Castle...

Here is yet another gold gilded gate... with requisite cherubs and such finery...

And of course the mythological hero slaying some poor fool for daring to gaze upon the gold with his filthy beggar eyes.

Haha, I hope you have the correct permissions to observe my shininess!

These guys are rather a lot like the guys at Buckingham Palace, only they use the letter Z way more often in their words.

Oh look another massive Gothic styled church...um, yes, we have seen these quite a few times now.

This one has some brightly coloured graffiti though!

This is the view from the castle grounds... you can see in the distance the Charles Bridge... its rather a big deal which is why I have no dedicated photos of it.

Then we scurried away from the seriousness of the castle..

And encountered this glorious example of street lampery!

And this... um... I don't know what this is trying to be, but it was unnerving.

Then we apparently teleported inside the world famous Astronomical Clock, which is so famous I have no pictures of that either.  But I did take this rather vertigo inducing picture of part of the main square.

And this one too, which shows the big important statue I can't remember the name or meaning of.

There was also this church, it had some significance, something about a god.

Oh good grief what this? probably some other religious thing or a town hall.... I don't know.

OH! But here are some things I do remember.

IAMX were absolutely amazing as always...even during the sound check I got to see before the show

And Chris Corner was a truly awesome man, the other meet and greet visitors and I chatted with him for a little while, we all swooned like teenage girls for a little bit, and then I watched the best gig of my life.

Ok guys that's all I have for this entry... I am actually heading back to Prague next month, so I will try to document things a little better this time around and either update this article, or write a much better one then.

References:
Astronomical Clock - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_Astronomical_Clock
Prague Castle - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_Castle
Charles Bridge - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Bridge
IAMX - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAMX
Chris Corner - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Corner

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The Old City and New Town Hall, Hannover, Germany

My first real day in Hannover was spent walking the old parts of the city as well as visiting the "New Town Hall" which is still over 100 years old, rather than get too carried away with a lot of writing for this one I will just post a lot of pictures which highlight the area.

This is the steeple of the market church, if you notice it is old enough that there is still a pentagram there to ward off evil, this was a long time before pentagrams were considered satanic or otherwise.

And here is the entrance way which also looks quite intimidating and evil, Ben tells me there is a much better example of a proper Gothic style church, which is a black cathedral somewhere nearby so I will go and try to take a look at that sometime soon too.

Random shot of the old city, just to show it has an old timey type feel to it.

This is basically the entrance to the old city.

And this is a fountain where you can throw in a coin and make a wish, normally speaking I would have taken this picture from the front, but there was a young couple making out and I felt like it might have been a little weird to take photos of them doing that.

It turns out Germany actually contains quite a bit of "Roman" style architecture, and historic monuments, this is because Germany was actually a part of the roman empire, and in around the 1500's declared themselves The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation (which is also where the modern German Eagle comes from, the old Roman symbol)

This was an interesting addition to the wall on the Roman style building

Though it is not very clear the words are "Meine Waffe war das Lied" which translates to "My weapon was the song", there are many different names engraved around the picture one of which is Wilhelm Grimm (one of the Brothers Grimm, who happened to write The Pied Piper of Hamelin)

Hannover is also a city which grew from a medieval castle, so much of the oldest part of the city still has parts of the moat and city walls, these next several pictures show that. 

Later there are some pictures of scale models of the town at various stages which show this more clearly.

These were one of the towns gates, which were right by the bridge over the moat.

And that fairly well concludes the brief walk through the Old Town, next is the New Town Hall

The New Town Hall was opened July 20 1913

In the entrance foyer are a series of scale models showing Hannover at various points, this first model shows the city during a time where it was still largely based around the castle style, with full city walls as well as the "moat", the moat was largely a natural river which was then shaped around the city. 

By 1939 the city had grown to the point that while the city walls were still mostly intact the city itself had grown around them.

This picture is one of the hardest, and shows just how much of Hannover was destroyed during the war, the Market Church which started this blog entry had its roof destroyed, and the New Town Hall itself had most of its rear section destroyed.

And here we have Hannover mostly as it is today

These pictures are taken from the observation deck at the top of the dome, which actually requires riding an elevator which operates on a curved track (quite a unique and weird experience)

I don't want to get too far ahead of myself, but this park, and this tiny little lake, they actually are probably going to be my absolute most favourite place in all of Hannover, I basically moved here because I saw pictures of this in a book, and I have to say it is totally worth it and so much more scenic and amazing in real life.

The Lower Saxony State Museum (there are arts and things afoot here, but I have not been yet)

And that wraps up Day One in Hannover! The next entry will be about the Historical Museum!

Links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_roman_empire

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pied_Piper_of_Hamelin

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_City_Hall_(Hanover)