Prague day 3 - happy 100th!

This is the 100th post on my blog. I never really planned for it to last this long but since I apparently have a small following, I will shoot for another hundred.

A funny thing happened to me as we were waiting for a tram this morning. This was a long wait, since there are way too many lines and they come way too infrequently. A teenage boy walked up behind me, hit me on the butt a few times with a long stick made from braided reeds, all the while chanting some kind of rhyme. I didn't know what was going on, if I was getting somehow assaulted or targeted as a foreigner or slapped with greenery, but I backed off and said "what are you doing?" way too loudly in English. Then the guy then hopped on the tram that was just leaving, and acted like everything was normal. Brian, my faithful protector, stood back and started to laugh. So did I. Later on at the old town Easter market, I saw two boys do the same thing and shake their sticks at a woman selling painted eggs. She smiled and said something back to them and gave them each an egg. I asked her what was going on and she said it was what boys do to girls at Easter. We had seen these braided sticks around, some for sale at markets and flower shops, some with ribbons on the top, so it seemed like mine was not an isolated incident of attack with twigs. Not totally satisfied with the egg woman's explanation I looked it up on the internet, font of all cultural information. It's a Czech tradition to make pomlazka whips by braiding pussywillows together. Boys sing carols and whip women on the legs on Easter Monday. The pomlazka is supposed to bring the women health and youth. Here is a link if you want to read more: http://www.myczechrepublic.com/czech_culture/czech_holidays/easter/
I should have been honored, not bewildered. I was participating in a centuries' old Czech Easter custom. And some teenager on a tram was giggling about it.

Today in Prague we wandered. We started in the Jewish Quarter, looked at some synagogues and the old Jewish town hall, then decided not to pay to go in any of them. Next we ended up in the old town square, shopping (just me, not Brian) at the Easter market stalls selling crafts and stopping now and then to watch people, and horse carriages, and street performers. We kept wandering after lunch, stopped in a park, walked along the riverfront, passed the botanical gardens and a few dozen churches, and came back to our hotel. It's a lot warmer today. The sun is shining and snowflakes are not falling, and our trip is winding down.

Prague is a very beautiful city. It's a fun place to go out to one of the million bars and restaurants. It's an easy place to be a tourist and you could fill entire days looking at churches here. We are, however, a little weary of sleeping in strange beds and finding our way around and eating out. Our train back to Hannover leaves tomorrow afternoon so we have several more Prague-filled hours to spend.
I will be on alert for more pussywillow attacks. Easter Monday is not over yet.