Prague

[fivemack]

Prague was wonderful.

On the ground it seems to be a labyrinth of narrow passages between tall buildings, though from the air (there were aerial photos, paired with very clear high- resolution maps, hanging in the hotel), or from the walls of the castles, it's clearly following a Grand Plan with avenues and squares. The buildings range from deep Baroque, pastel-painted with contrasting stucco (addedentry even ventured to suggest that it was possible for a building to have too many pieces of turquoise ironwork trimmed with gold leaf), to the kind of Art-Deco Functionalist buildings produced when Functionalism was an artistic statement rather than a standard for corporate headquarters. Oh, and the Zizkov TV tower, looking like a grounded Saturn V.

We stayed in the Unitas hotel, in minimalist rooms which seemed over-comfortable and well-ventilated for what was a converted political prison; though one day I ventured down to the basement and saw the cells (five pounds per person per night, four to a room, thick steel doors with complicated locks; Havel was incarcerated in #8). I noticed that seldom have I seen so many attractive women as on the streets of Prague.

We were offered free beer, free sausages and the freedom of the gardens of the Wallenstein palace (the parliament building) to celebrate joining the EU; Pat Cox and Vaclav Havel spoke. There were fireworks over the Vltava at midnight. There were incredibly cheap rock concerts on ten islands in the Vltava; we saw the Levellers, they were loud and enthusiastic. I ate much good Mitteleuropaische food: steak Esterhazy; pork in cream sauce with gnocchi; lamb in a spicy fruit sauce which tasted of Christmas puddings, with deep-fried potato pancakes; a single hot-dog and a quantity of cocktails at the James Bond-themed bar on U. Polska. And wonderful coffee and cake in the Narondi Dom on Namesti Miry.

We visited the zoo, where they still haven't repaired the landslide caused by their efforts to evacuate the elephant (slon in Czech) during the flooding of 2002, and admired the cage containing six large Ural owls, so contented that one of us wondered if they were wooden models. We looked inside churches built for the Counter-Reformation and restored in neo-Gothic style in the 1910s, and saw where Socialist Realist sculpture came from. After some search, we visited the Czech answer to Hamleys and admired the range of consistent-scale animals from piglet to sperm-whale; I bought a giant octopus which now hangs on my bedroom coat-hooks. We saw the Museum of Communism (next to the casino, opposite Benetton, and above McDonalds; my Czech is not sufficient to translate all those prepositions) which was a little on the McCarthyite side but had entertaining postcards. huskyteer convinced us to catch a bus out to the far side of nowhere and see the excellent aviation museum; an attractive female recruiting officer handed out useful identification cards for MiG-series aircraft and Warsaw Pact anti-aircraft weapons.

I spent an hour one evening speaking, alternately in English and German, to a Swedish tourist who expounded in depth the difference between Ostslavisch and Westslavisch languages and talked of his desire to visit the monasteries of the Golden Ring around Moscow. Our Czech vocabulary has expanded substantially, though it'll probably have recontracted by the time I get to Prague again. I have 480 pictures, which is enough to sadden the soul, make me think of impractical ways of filing them, and end up just leaving them in one large directory – the electronic equivalent of a shoebox – and showing all of them in uninterrupted progression to those of my guests who don't strangle me with a conveniently-placed giant octopus at the mention of the idea.

What are the remaining jewels of Mitteleuropa? Krakow, I suppose; you can't get there by Easyjet, yet. And I've been sticking very much to the middle; the Hanseatic ports have a different aesthetic, Zagreb and Ljubljana another one still. Nor Berlin, yet.

And, of course, Bucharest in 2007.

Comments

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

Oh, is it turquoise ironwork all over the place then? I thought it was all oxidized copper.

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

Lo for the low-cost airlines! Indeed, Prague is the only destination served by all five of bmibaby's bases, so it is easier for me to get to Prague from Teesside airport (a 300-yard walk and an hourly bus service away from my door) than it is to get to prosaic, useful places like Paris, Brussels or Berlin. (Oxford would be nice, too, come to think of it, if unlikely.) Prague seems to me to have been one of the biggest winners in the UK low-cost airline market boom.

Easyjet serenade their Ljubljana service (http://www.easyjet.com/EN/news/20040428_01.html) already, as of last Wednesday, with Budapest also being served as of Saturday past. On the other hand, Ryanair are keeping their toes out of the water (http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=391&id=481472004) for now. To me, it seems more likely that a low-cost airline might establish itself in Poland and serve a single flight daily, or less, to Stansted and back. Heck, it may well be the case that one has done so already; who's to say?

Just how giant is your octopus?

Fivemack

[(Anonymous)]

Hey Five-mack,

My name is jenny and I'm from wisconsin. Your journal is great! I love your stories and all your made up places! Have you published any fantasy novels (from which your 'Prague' piece is taken perhaps?). Are you from England? I'm on holiday in England right now actually - I love all the great castles!

Anyway, if you wanna chat some time, write me - jennyt3101@yahoo.com

Re: Fivemack

[ex-lark-asc.livejournal.com]

Jenny, I hate to tell you this but Prague is a real place. It's a city in Europe - in fact it's the capital of the Czech (pronounced "check") Republic, which is just to the south-east of Germany. Check it out on a map of Europe, or look for a travel guide about the city of Prague in a bookshop. You'll need a recent map, since there have been some wars and changes in Eastern Europe in the last twenty years or so.

Re: Fivemack

[jojomojo.livejournal.com]

Interestingly, Ms. Jenny's Yahoo profile is written in German...

http://profiles.yahoo.com/jennyt3101

I think someone's having you on, old son ;)