Prague - sensory overload

Like a child who has stuck his finger in a cultural light socket, I am left reeling.

 Prague (Praha to the locals) is a flash point of art, culture, architecture (and political history).

Offset by an incredibly understated people, the old city oozes history and modern feet from around the world.  Whether it’s Kafka, Mozart, Mucha, you get giddy everywhere you look.  

I’m not sure what the cultural equivalent to fear of wide open spaces is, but I suffered it on my first day and needed to decompress from the sights and sounds – glad that I had 5 days to let it all filter in.   This is, by far, the most beautiful city I have ever seen. 

Prague is a walking city.  While the public transport runs like clockwork   I prefer to walk around.  There are a myriad of sights I have on my list and, along the way, I let myself get lost in the side streets and stumble on yet another museum that I never knew related to a Prague local.  The streets are like Russian dolls; what looks like an alley-way down a back street opens into a courtyard with even more impressive buildings and small though historic landmarks – which then open into yet another small courtyard with historic landmarks.  It’s not so much about getting lost as a journey of discovery.

What was once the centre of the Roman Catholic world, the treasures left here dwarf the balance sheet of the Vatican – and , more importantly, in true Czech style, are available to the masses. 

 

 

 

Dominik -Guide with the Free City Tours

 

Of local people

Dominik lives by his wits.  At 24 years old he is a child of the velvet revolution.  His mother was pregnant with him when she was protesting as part of the 300,000 strong Czech crowd in Wenceslas square in the turning point from Russian Communism to an independent state.  And independent is what Dominik is.  I met him on the free Prague City Tour.  “Free?.”  you ask.  “What’s the catch?”  There are many companies offering tours of Prague. The “free” tour operates by tips alone. You go on the tour, if you like the tour and depending on how much you like the tour, you tip the guide.  Now that’s real commission work.  He does a good job, he gets paid, he doesn’t and he misses out.




The tour was great.  Very informative and very funny (Dominik has a very dry sense of humour).  Later in the day I bumped into him in the old square.  He had given me directions to a post office and wanted to know if I had found it OK.  As fate had it, Dominik had finished for the day and I had no other plans so he invited me to join him at the pub (where he started to spend some of his tip money on us in beer). 

Mozarts home - across the road from the pub

 



Kakfa statue

He took me to a small pub that is famous for 2 reasons.  The first, it brews its own (very good!) beer. The second – it was the local for Mozart (I kid you not). Right next door to Mozart’s old home and a block away from the opera house where Don Giovanni  had its debut.  Turns out this is a bit of a local for some of the tour guides after they’ve finished work.   The next three hours were an opportunity for me to get a real insight into the Prague culture and people.  A couple of Domnik’s tour guide friends joined us part way through the conversation.  This really was like being “back stage” in a Prague production.

 

Mozart's local pub

Dominik’s sole employment is as a tour guide.    He left school young - he was working from the age of 14.  Although still young it soon becomes apparent that he has a Masters in psychology and people from the University of Life.  You don’t have to pay tax on tips (that’s the up side), but you also then have to rely on tips paying you a living wage.  In addition to this, he pays the tour company a set amount for every person who  goes on each of his tours (regardless of whether or how much of a tip those who take the tour pay him).

 

No girlfriend or wife?  No, he replies.  Apparently about 70% of the average Czech wage goes toward housing if you live in Prague.  He lives with his mum and sister in one of the outlying suburbs.  While I am sure that he is not short on opportunity to meet many eligible women in his line of work he informs me that living with your family has both up-sides and some limitations.  He goes on to give some general outline of personalities by nationality.  In his line of work, he gets to see a lot of people.  “Czech women of my generation are emancipated,” he comments.  They are fiercely independent. 

I run the question that’s  been running through my head past him.

“Prague is beautiful.  A centre of culture and heritage.  The buildings are colourful and beautiful.  However, the people seem very sombre and almost distant.  I find it hard to reconcile these two things.” It’s an observation of mine and a question as to why?

He smiles wryly.  “Czech’s  smile on the inside.  We are independent and cautious.  If you lived when my parents did you learnt not to comment directly in criticism of communism.  Instead  many of the Czechs turned to sarcasm as a dry way of commenting on Communism without fear of reprisal for by an informant for being overheard to criticize Russia.  That seems to have passed down to the next generation.” 

 

And what of the Czech Republic’s political future? “

We are watching the Ukraine with interest” he muses.  “What’s happening there with Putin and his rationale of protecting those people with Russian cultural heritage and preserving the culture is not too dissimilar to Germany’s logic in the late 1930’s.  As a country we’ve been caught in that hurricane before.” 

 

Good company and good beer.  We exchange email addresses.  He would love to come to NZ at some point.  “Well,” I reply, “we can certainly show you some nice countryside but we won’t be able to offer you Mozart’s local pub as your local watering hole.” 

 

Two independent Prague Women

As if to punctuate the point about Czech women made by Dominik, I have coffee around the dining table at my AirBnB host’s apartment.  The apartment is turn of the century with 12 foot ceilings, spacious and parquet flooring throughout.  It is large, airy and comfortable.  Hana has lived there for three months and helps subsidise the rent by renting out two of the rooms through AirBnB (I highly recommend that apartment and the location in Navratilova  Street – in the old town and 10 minutes’ walk from the old square).  Around the table sit Hana and her friend Silvia.  Both are young, independent and driven.  Hana teaches geography and biology at a local high school and, in the holidays subsidises this by working as an administrator for the Social Democrat party.  As if this is not enough to keep her busy, she has bought the old family home 2 hours away from Prague (her father died last year) and is in the process of renovating it (it has not been lived in for 10 years so there’s much work to be done).   Silvia suffers from the same disease of overwork they both explain.  I met her originally as my “taxi driver” from the airport into town and got to know a little about her.  She is the logistics manager for one of the large Oil companies.  She and her partner also run a small shop and restaurant in Prague in addition to renting out a spare room in their house under the AirBnB system.

Prague is a city that never sleeps.  Some of its people apparently share the same characteristic.

Exhibitionism

I don’t count the ½ day in Prague Castle as an exhibition.  That’s just a mandatory (and very rewarding) experience in and of itself.

Spoilt for choice, I go to a number of exhibitions.  The main ones that I really enjoyed were Mucha (pronounced Muk-a), Dali and Kepler.

Mucha http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphonse_Mucha  is probably mistaken many times as the French artist that you see fro1920’ s and 1930’s advertising French Champagne, Soap or all manner of things.  You might have one of his prints somewhere in your house of your bathroom wall already though you may not know who he is.  The French adopted him (along with the Americans).  He was responsible for making art available and affordable to the masses with his prints that were enjoyed by aristocracy, rich and middle class alike.    While he  travelled the World and was responsible for some very famous “poster art”, he returned to the Czech Republic in later life and was responsible for some other (lesser known but large and magnificent) artworks that depicted the suffering of the peasant people.

Mucha, for me, typifies the Prague and Czech psyche – beauty and art in an egalitarian way but with a deeper and darker side too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eine kleine nachtmusik

My last night in Prague was a night of music.

I head  to the St Nicholas Cathedral where the Prague string orchestra  is playing a concert of Mozart and various other composers (Bach, Dvorak, Vivaldi). 

The classical concert was beautiful and the acoustics in the cathedral really lent themselves to an orchestra. 

I congratulated one of the orchestra afterwards and apologised for being heretical enough to ask her where one of the local Jazz clubs was – I had the name from my AirBnB host of AghaRTA club which is one of the more famous ones.  She said it was a 5 minute walk off one of the streets near the astronomical clock.  “I go there quite often,” she said “It’s quite good but here are three others you might also enjoy.  The one I go to most often is actually in one of the metro stations.”   She gave me directions there and walked off, violin under her arm. 

 

So, off I went.  In the course of my travels I came across several street musicians, pubs with jazz, the 14^th century basement that houses the AghaRTA  jazz club and the Jazz Republic in the MuzTek B metro station.   Apparently I only scratched the surface.  There are a myriad of music venues especially jazz clubs around including 4-5 on the other side of the river and a few Jazz Boats plying the river.

 

I’ll be back

Prague , while a relatively brief trip, has really got under my skin.  It is a romantic city.  I’ll stick my finger in that light socket again knowing that it will shock me – though looking forward to it.  Next time I will make sure I bring Carolann.  Though not a city girl (OK, well she has lived in London and Paris) I know she will love it here. It’s a place to be awed by its beauty – but also a joy to be shared with someone you love.