My Adventures in Prague & Beyond

Sunday, April 24, 2005

 My Adventures Finding
Matt Ziska’s Statue…..

Twice in two days, I know… I don’t write in forever, and
then two times in two days. Anyways, it was beautiful out again today so I went
exploring again. Today I went to Vysehrad after church and then later to Karlin
and Vitkov Hill.

Vysehrad was the first seat of Czech royalty. Today, there
is no castle on the grounds, but there are parks, the church of St. Peter and
St. Paul, and a national cemetery.

There are a lot of pictures from today in my Prague folder.
These pictures of Vysehrad, Vitkov Hill, and Karlin are above the pictures from
yesterday.

Zizkov is a suburb of Prague next to Karlin, another suburb.
I went to find a statue of a man on a horse for one of my high school
classmates, Matt Ziska. He said his family has an ancestor that has a statue. I
had heard about a similiar statue near Karlin in my History & Theory of
Urbanism, so I decided to see if it was the right statue. I want to see as much
of Prague as I can, so even if it wasn’t the right statue, it was okay.

When I got off the metro, I realized that the statue was on
a freakin’ mountain in the middle of Prague. I am not kidding you. I had to
search pretty hard just to find a path up the mountain. LOL! After walking a
fourth of the way around the bottom I found a road up. I was so out of breath
by the time I made it to the top of the huge hill. The statue of the man on a
horse was really big too. I later found out that it is the largest equestrian
statue in the world, standing at about 30 feet tall!!!!

I talked to Matt later today and he said that his uncle told
him that the statue is on the east side of Prague, but Prague is huge! This one
that I had found was on the northeast side of town, maybe it was the right
statue; we weren’t sure.

Later tonight, I was looking through my Prague guide book
and to my surprise I found the statue that I had seen today. It was a statue of
Jan Zizka! I had found the statue! 🙂 Jan Zizka is huge in the history of
Czechoslavakia (now split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia). He defeated an
army of several thousand on Vitkov Hill (the hill I had called a mountain) with
his small army of Hussites. The area around Vitkov Hill was later renamed
Zizkov after Jan Zizka.

Jan Zizka was born in Tabor, Czech Republic. Tabor is south
of Prague and in this town there is also a statue of Jan Zizka there in a
square that is also named after him. I was really happy that I had finally
found the statue for Matt. All my family has is a dumb metro stop and Matt has
a whole suburb named after his family and a 30ft tall statue of his ancestor.
LOL!! It’s okay, I was shocked just to have a metro stop. 🙂

Hope everyone had a great weekend! I know I did. This was
probably the best weekend site-seeing in Prague that I have had yet.

posted by Dalyn @ 7:12 PM