Prague, Czech Republic, May 2022 - Jan & Jan-Jan's Rejseklubben

The Statue of Saint Wenceslas formerly stood in the middle of Wenceslas Square, near Grandhotel Evropa, it was moved to Vyšehrad in 1879. During the Czech National Revival movement in the Czech lands of Austria-Hungary in the 19th century, a more noble name for the street was requested. At this time the square was renamed and new Statue of Saint Wenceslas was built in 1912. On 28 October 1918, Alois Jirásek read the Czechoslovak declaration of independence in front of the Saint Wenceslas statue. During the 1938 May Crisis, the square was the site of massive demonstrations against Nazi Germany's demands for the Sudetenland and the appeasement policies of the First Czechoslovak Republic's allies the United Kingdom and France.[3] Under the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, the Nazi occupation force used the street for mass demonstrations. During the Prague Uprising in 1945, a few buildings near the National Museum were destroyed. They were later replaced by department stores. On 16 January 1969, student Jan Palach set himself on fire in Wenceslas Square to protest the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. On 28 March 1969, the Czechoslovak national ice hockey team defeated the USSR team for the second time in that year's Ice Hockey World Championships. As the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic was still under Soviet occupation, the victory induced great celebrations. An estimated 150,000 people gathered on Wenceslas Square, and skirmishes with police developed. A group of provocateurs then attacked the Prague office of the Soviet airline Aeroflot, located on the street. The vandalism served as a pretext for reprisals and the period of so-called normalization. In 1989, during the Velvet Revolution, large demonstrations (with hundreds of thousands of people or more) were held here.