Prague

We started the day by visiting Lebokowitz family museum, who has a rich family history that dates back to the medieval period. They knew exactly who their ancestors were, and had several paintings of all of them. There were quite a few royal members of the family, and the narrator of the audio guide we had had grown up in castles around Europe. We were unable to take pictures, but we saw the original manuscript of the Eroica symphony no. 3 by Beethoven, and mozart's original adaptation of Haydn's "The Creation". 

After, we were finally able to go to U Fleku, the oldest restaurant in Europe. Dr. Powell treated us. We even had an accordion player. 

The next day we visited the instrument museum in Prague. We saw and heard some amazingly old instruments, including a piano that Mozart had played. And of course, baroque oboes. The reeds that were in the oboes were French scrape- which is when you only scrape about half of the reed. I've never played on a French scrape reed, but I imagine it is really difficult!

Afterward, we walked a couple of blocks to the Lennon Wall, which was painted and drawn on during the Soviet Regime after John Lennon died. Although it was painted over by the Soviets, elaborate graffiti art was painted over it the very next day. This continued and became a symbolic part of the city. In 2014, we learned that a group had painted the wall white and wrote "The Wall Is Over!" Well, obviously it didn't last long. In fact, someone wrote over it, "The Wall is Forever!"

That night we saw a great string quartet play a lot of cheesy, well-known classical music arrangements in a very, very cold 12th century church. They played just great, especially the violist!

-Lydia