PRAGUE MAY 2000 day 2
Text by Pink Oboe, pictures from the Prague Information Service.
day 1 - day 2 - day 3 - days 4&5
The lack of orientation concerned me so I was up with first light and out to explore on my own and to try to sort out where we were and to make sense of the map and guidebook. Both the layout of the city of Prague and my guidebook were most confusing. As mentioned before, Prague is the amalgamation of at least five separate towns. The oldest part is based around a sacred hill at the unpronounceable Vysehrad to the south of the main city. Prague castle is on one side of the Vltava, the opposite side to us in the Old City. Around Prague castle is another town called Hradcany (see what I mean about the Czech language and I am leaving out the strange accents and circumflexes that abound in most words). Next to the Old Town is the quaintly named New Town but even that is relative as it was first laid out in 1348 by Charles IV. Right that will do for a start. At this stage I still did not know exactly where I was on the map or rather series of maps in the guidebook. I had sorted out that the way that we had come back from the Old Town Square was not direct. I rectified that without difficulty and went straight there this time.
The astronomical clock on the side of the Old Town Hall is something of a marvel.
It was built in 1410 but was dramatically improved i.e. actually made to work
in about 1499. It features a number of items not seen on a normal clock: saints
days, zodiacal signs, stellar time, phases of the moon. On the hour, Death in
the form of a skeleton rings the bell and inverts an hourglass and a parade of
apostles pass two windows above the clock and bow to the crowd. On either side
besides Death there are figures showing the things that worried the inhabitants
of medieval Prague: a figure showing Vanity, another which represented Greed
and looked surprisingly like a Jew until political correctness and the
suffering of Prague's Jewish population required some cosmetic corrections at
the end of the war. The other concern was Pagan invasion and so the remaining
gentleman looks remarkably like a Turk. At the end of the performance, a golden
cock crows and the hour is struck. The clock is in one part of the Old Town
Hall which received a tonking from the Germans in the last war. We were to
climb the tower later.
Opposite and really not in the square but still dominating it is the church of St Tyn. It has the most amazingly wonderful towers which out Disney Disney: all covered in additional turrets as though the originals had pupped. The Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe is buried there having reputedly died of a burst bladder caused by the consumption of too much Czech beer at a royal piss up. From personal experience, I have repeatedly said that the rules about not getting up from the table before the loyal toast were dangerous.
In the square itself is a rather sombre statue of Jan Hus or Huss. He was a Czech professor at the Charles University as well as being a religious reformer in the Wycliffe mode. He wanted to celebrate Mass in Czech instead of Latin and was a sort of proto-Protestant. The Pope had him impeached for heresy and he was burnt at the stake at Constance. His followers, the Hussites, were a formidable fighting force and effectively beat every Crusading army sent against them for a considerable time. Their leader was Jan Zizka and a lot of the success of his army came from the use of mobile artillery and battle wagons: carts used like early tanks.
Enough of the square for now. I followed an avenue out of one corner and found a broad street which seemed to be part of the Royal Way, a route to the old Palace. At one end was yet another blackened crenulated tower. I was still not particularly sure of my bearings. The guidebook did not help as it was divided up so much into the respective quarters that unless you knew exactly where you were it was disinclined to tell you. As on this occasion, I found myself standing outside some place of interest for perhaps ten minutes trying to work out where the hell I was and what the hell I was looking at. The place I was looking at was the most luxuriantly decorated place I had yet seen. Much of Prague is over-flowery Baroque which I can take or leave. This place was turn of the century and covered in the most amazing Art Nouveau decoration. By process of elimination and because it was directly next to the large crenulated tower, I managed to identify the place as the Obecni Dum or the Municipal House. This really was a find as what the guide describes as the most sensuous of the buildings in Prague. It sits on the site of a royal palace and was the result of the combined efforts of some 30 leading Czech artists in about 1905 and proved to be a focal point of the Czech National Revival. Knowing the artistic leanings of Rosemary and of Paul and Joan this was definitely marked down as the aim point for the day.
Having finally identified one fixed point, I was able to stroll back almost directly to our hotel. On the way my attention was taken for some unknown reason by an advertising hording showing a very nice pair of boobs and an equally nice bottom. Nearby was a 1890s advertisement for Campari and the juxtaposition appealed: so did the boobs and bottom.
Once returned and breakfasted in the cosmopolitan breakfast room at the hotel, we set out with my new won knowledge providing the itinerary. This time we went via the Old Town Square to the Obecni Dum and marvelled at the internal decoration. Much of it was designed by a gentleman called Alfons Mucha whose posters made him internationally known as an Art Nouveau artist. Amongst the interior rooms is an opera hall named after Smetana and at least two restaurants/bars. We determined to visit at least one. On the ground level was a cultural centre that was half bookshop and half booking hall for cultural events. It was also a temple of Art Nouveau itself, even down to the silver stools at the bar. I pottered around with the camcorder and the nurks decided upon some additions to our musical evenings. May is Prague's Music Festival and starts with a solemn procession from the grave of Smetana at Vysehrad to the Obecni Dum. The nurks chose an evening of opera highlights and another concert of light classical pieces in a local church. Fine by me.
We ventured out into the sunshine but the pull of the Obecni Dum still made itself felt. We wandered back into one of the bars and had a beer and surreptitiously photographed the glorious interior. There were signs saying no photographs but no-one seemed to object to the camcorder so we got some impression of it. Even in this bastion of good taste and one of the most expensive places in Prague the beer was still less than £1 a pint.
We wandered back to pause briefly at the hotel then set out again to investigate the other side of the Vltava. Back across the Charles Bridge and then, following one of Paul's guide book walks, disappeared down on the other side of the bridge looking for a wall on which there was an image of John Lennon. The postcard we had found had a completely different picture of John but had the same sense of anarchic calm. Apparently, in the Communist days, the wall was a centre for dissidents to vent their spleen. It was then under pretty constant surveillance by the Czech Secret Police. Now it is just a graffiti merchant's delight. One quotation I enjoyed, "Love is a colour only the blind can see".
On from there and we started on the climb up the hill towards the castle. First, we came to a square littered with cars but with a large Baroque church in one corner. We passed troops of youngsters coming down. Prague gives the impression of being a very youthful city. Backpackers abound and the cheapness of beer and spirits has made this truly a Bohemian Mecca. I even saw that old killer Absinthe advertised and you can scarcely get more decadent than that. (Dare I mention the old saying "Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder." Perhaps not.)
The steps went up quite steeply but provided on odd occasions beautiful views back to the city. At the top was a rather strange gateway of some large gentlemen knocking seven bells out of one another. This was apparently the Gate of the Battling Titans and not Irish as first advertised. What they had to do with the price of fish, I had no idea. On either side of the gate were armed guards as this was the entry to the official residence of the President, Vaclav Havel. He typically, choses to live in a more modest dwelling in the suburbs but had made his presence felt by having the guards' uniforms redesigned from their rather austere Communist days. He employed the costume designer from the film Amadeus to do so. The poor guards were having to put up with a variety of young ladies in various stages of undress drape themselves around them for the sake of photographs. It must be hell in there!
In we went to
the castle to slide through at least two further courtyards before finding
ourselves outside the Gothic magnificence of St Vitus. This is the main
Cathedral church of Prague and dates back to 1344 and dear old Charles IV
again. It was finally completed in 1929 so no cracks about the builders. We
went inside and wandered. There was some rather fine stained glass both ancient
and modern. One in particular looked like a pointillism picture: very pleasant.
Out and around the outside to a statue of St George barbecuing a dragon or at least appearing to mount him on a stick. Then onward further past the Royal Palace. I should have insisted on going in because the other useless piece of information I knew about Prague concerned the aforementioned defenestration. When I mentioned this to Paul he said that he had heard of the term but had considered it to be the consequence of some kind of window tax which resulted in the worthy burghers of Prague madly taking out windows to a save a bob or two or more accurately a crown or two. However, I could recall a picture of a couple of souls being forcefully ejected from windows and gathered that the term actually concerned an extreme form of political act where you demonstrated your disagreement with someone's policies by chucking their emissaries out of the window.
Prague has a sort of repetitive history and some events just seem to come back again and again. Apparently the first defenestration occurred at the time of the Hussites, or rather an extreme version of them. They threw some Catholic councillors out of the window of the New Town Hall in Nove Mesto in 1419 and they unfortunately did not bounce. This act precipitated the Hussite wars. The second defenestration occurred in 1618 in the old Royal Palace within the Castle. Nobles protesting against Rudolf II threw two of his councillors out of the windows. These gentlemen were somewhat luckier as they fell in the moat and survived.
One last defenestration occurred as late as 1948. The then Foreign Minister, Jan Masaryk, fell to his death from his bathroom window while trying to escape from the Czech Secret Police. The new Communist Government had good reason to get rid of this gentleman who was a staunch democrat. They said he committed suicide but to misquote Mandy Rice-Davies, "They would, wouldn't they?"
I missed the site of the second defenestration but did find the way to the Golden Lane, a row of colourful cottages built in about the 16th century to house the castle sharpshooters. In later years they housed goldsmiths and even, in the nineteenth century artists and authors such as Franz Kafka. Kids were dashing around the narrow lane and the sun shone down on the little houses: again very pleasant.
Time to descend to the Old Town again. We went down a different series of steps to those we had come up. We passed some more guards looking bored probably because their side did not seem to attract young ladies and I took some more video of the view over the city. Yet more characters were trying to sell their arty crafty stuff on the way down from the hill. At the bottom we found a bridge near the Rodolfinum and crossed that, admiring the Charles Bridge from a slightly different angle. Then back via the Jewish Quarter to see if we could find the graveyard which is apparently one of the major sights of Prague. We found several Synagogues for which they wanted about 600 crowns to buy a combined ticket: having mentioned that little in Prague was expensive this was one exception. In a city as cheap as Prague that seemed a bit steep and it was getting late so we decided to skip it for the evening and return the next day. We had tickets for the Opera at the House of the Stone Bell so needed to be dined and suitably booted and spurred before the off.
We got back to the ranch and then refreshed ourselves before venturing out. I had been looking for a suitable restaurant from those I had discovered on the Net. The one I fancied was the favourite local of the Prague executioner in medieval times. I found that, strangely enough, it was only a few steps away from his workplace, the Old Town Square.
"What sort of day have you had Fred?"
"Bloody awful. I had to top 27 Protestant Nobles."
We looked but could not find the right address. We walked a little further and found another place with a courtyard just opening or a downstairs with music which would be open when we were listening to the opera. Just before we had gone to Prague we had seen a programme on television saying that it was a glorious place but the food was crap. So we determined that we would overcome this by moving upmarket and finding the more expensive places to dine. The place we found here had distinct pretensions but the menu was in English as well as Czech and looked inviting. I can assure you that being able to read what you were eating in the Czech Republic is a distinct advantage. We could easily be attempting to eat what the band was playing if it was down to the indigenous language. We settled in the courtyard as the downstairs was not really open at the early hour we were dining.
I am pleased to say the meal was fine. It was of good quality, was beautifully presented and
cost only a little more than £6 a head. I chose to drink wine which arrived in
a carafe and looked a little rough but tasted fine. I got the distinct
impression as others came and viewed the menu that this was a place beyond the
means of the average or even the well paid Czech. We paid and made our way
across the square to the House of the Stone Bell. This is rather a fine stone
built house dating back to the 14th century that was rescued from a
bad Baroque renovation in the 1960s. The renovation has been done well and we
ascended a spiral staircase to a large room at the top of the building. The
harridan in charge looked askance at our tickets which had been carefully
ripped in two by the soul at entry point. The division had taken off the value
of the seats.
"Are these 600 crown seats or 490 crown seats?"
"I have no idea," I said truthfully as I was the only one of the party not to know. We were sat in the 600 crown seats. Pity we had only paid 490 crowns, as I later discovered. One thing that was occasionally apparent from the Czechs is that they have not really discovered the benefits of daily bathing or deodorants and the BO from the harridan made my eyes sting.
The singing was performed by two members of the Czech National Opera; the gentleman was a bass and he had the most amazingly prehensile eyebrows that bobbed up and down expressively; the lady was a complete doll with wonderful resonance devices to her front and the appearance of Heidi. Her soprano voice was beautiful and filled the small room almost to the point of pain when she really let rip. Several of the pieces of music were so beautiful as to bring tears to my sentimental eyes and I am not ashamed to admit it. When I fail to react to something as beautiful as the singing we heard that evening then I will be dead.
At half time for our 490 crowns we received not only a beautiful concert but also a full glass of champagne or at least the Czech equivalent which was not bad at all. One of the pieces was by Dvorak and had the young lady sing to the moon in a manner that I have just heard Leslie Garrett sing: very nice. Another piece had the gentleman with the eyebrows do his seduction bit on Susanna from Don Giovanni (stand aside while I have a go) with much guile, humour and wonderful singing.
Very pleased with our evening, we ventured out for a final stroll in the square before making our way back home to bed.
