10:57 a.m. - 2003-06-16
Prague: Clock and Signs
My Diaryland pal, Tater, is planning a trip to Prague. I promised her (ages ago), that I would do a special entry just for her with about the trip Bruce and I took there in 1994. After we got back I very diligently made up a little artist�s book about the experience, and organized all our photos, and now I�m going to subject you all to the blow by blow recount. I�m sure you all will be thrilled that I made such a careful record of this trip!

Yeah, especially when it takes the page half an hour to load because it�s so image heavy. And when I do multiple entries over the next few days, all with ponderous, overly detailed prose and a few out of focus pictures. I know that you�ll LOVE it!!!

And this information may be useless anyway. It�s been almost ten years since we were there, just when the Czech Republic was barely opening up to tourists. So bear in mind, you�re reading a ten year old travel guide�.

You know what would be cool? If Seth wrote up his account of visiting Prague in 1969 (which must have been the most insane and amazing time to be there), and then would come my account, and then Tater could write hers, and we could start a whole web site of various people�s accounts of visits to Prague throughout the years.

Anyway, for Tater, and anybody else�s viewing pleasure, here are the contents of my little book about Prague. If it seems a bit stiff, it�s because I�ve left it pretty much as I wrote it then, and I think I was having trouble being back in the States after spending such a happy time in that fairytale country.

***********************************

Arriving in Prague makes me feel like I�ve landed in Moscow in 1950. Emerging from the airplane, everything suddenly seems to go from colour into black and white. We�re greeted by a grey landscape, a rickety set of metal stairs, and a troop of beige uniformed guards.

After praying my way down the steps we�re hustled onto a little bus and driven the 20 or so yards to the terminal entrance. I can only imagine they don�t want us to make an unauthorized escape into Prague and are planning to interrogate us under a bare light bulb. Even the airline crew looks nervous. However, not to worry. Our passports are barely stamped and we are waved through the doors towards a line of 10 to 15 taxis, all brand new. So much for my images of dirt poor Czech Republicans.

Our taxi has a driver who is a bit reckless but none the less seems honest enough. At least he turns on the meter which is something I�m told Czech taxi drivers seldom do.

The road into town is an eyeful. It seems there are run down palaces everywhere. There�s too much of a language barrier to figure out what these buildings are so I lean back and enjoy the eye candy as the driver plays chicken with bicyclists, old women, other drivers, and the occasional farm animal.

******************************************8

Our first day in Prague is spent trundling around the environs of the Old Town and getting used to being in a 15th century city. Or rather, a 15th century city which still has vestiges of the 13th and 14th centuries and occasional sparks of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. And over the whole of it is a wafer thin veneer of the 1950�s.

What century you are in is wholly dependent upon what street you happen to be walking down.

************************************

What is my first impression of Prague? That it�s too big. Standing in the middle of huge Old Town Square and looking at all the surrounding buildings, with the Tyn church rising up behind them makes me feel like an ant on the face of the universe.

See that painted building in the middle? Here�s a close up of it:

And notice the statues at the top of the building. Prague is full of huge statues on the tops of buildings. They stare down at you disapprovingly, as though you are a small, naughty child. I found it unnerving.

Here is the other side of the huge square, with more disapproving ancestors:

This feeling that Prague is too big turns out to be a wrong impression because Prague is actually very small. The winding streets make you feel like you�ve landed in Hobbit-land rather than the former seat of the Holy Roman Empire.

********************************8

I wanted to go to Prague for years because of it�s medieval astrological clock in the Old Town Square. The clock dates from 1410, and the legend around it states that its maker was blinded so that he wouldn�t make a more beautiful clock somewhere else.

It�s a huge clock built into the side of the Old Town Hall. It shows the time as well as the astrological place of the sun and moon, and on the hour it gives a little entertainment as well. The two doors in the top open and wooden statues of the apostles parade by, each stopping to bend over and �look� at the crowd. Meanwhile below this a little puppet skeleton Death rings his bell and turns his hourglass, Greed shakes his moneybags, and all the other figurines shake their heads. At the end of the procession the cock crows (sounding more like a kazoo than a cock) and the hour chimes. It�s an endearing little performance, and if you want to see it without going to Prague, you should rent the film �Kafka�!! I highly recommend it!!

Crowds gather every hour to see the clock perform and everyone claps and yells when it�s done. I�m left with a feeling of being part of something that has always been and will never stop � this river of people looking up at the apostles watching over us. For 600 years people have been looking at this clock! I can�t imagine what they were all like, what they believed in, how they dressed. It�s a strange feeling of groundedness not available in the States. I am an ant, after all, but at least I am an ant in the midst of a centuries old ant hill.

*********************************8

Prague originally didn�t have numbers on its buildings. Instead, each building had a sign or ornament and most of these remain even now. A casual look over brings to sight a black sun (on Kafka�s old house),

a coiled golden snake,

two gold carp, three violins (on a house with a history of violin making occupants � it's been turned into a restaurant), and three roses. There are several buildings with swans.

It�s a much more interesting building identification than numbers and gives rise to fantasies about the building�s history and occupants. I mean, the three ostriches? What was that all about?!

And it makes it easier to figure out that you�ve gotten lost. We were often heard mumbling things like �Damn! There�s the freakin� roses again!�

*****************************************

Ok, Peeps, I�ll end here for now. If Tater hasn�t passed out from boredom maybe tomorrow or the next day I�ll do the Charles Bridge and some other stuff.

previous - next