The Ryndex

Well, summer is winding down, and I’ve been scrooging my vacation days away for Christmas. Apart from the business trip to Washington (where I stayed locked inside the hotel room) and a couple of weekends with Mom and Dad, I really haven’t done much travelling this year. Fortunately, Justine and Shelley had already organized a trip to Prague this weekend — all the arrangements were already made, and all I had to do was book a flight.

I booked Smart Wings, which I assume is a smaller charter running between Prague and Paris. I left Friday night, and got the emergency exit seat — excellent! Enough room to stretch out my legs, nearly without touching the seat in front. There was an odd moment when I realized that the sandwiches that were selling for 1.5€ on the plane, when they were selling for 5€ in the airport… An odd and disquieting inversion.

I was bored on the plane, so I learned how to speak Czech. This is as far as I got:

Speaking Czech

• ano – Yes
• ne – No
• prosím (PRO-seem) – Please/Pardon
• prosím vas – Excuse me
• prosím ochet – Check please
• děkuji vám (DYE-kooee vahm) – Thank you
• dobrý den – Hello
• dobrý večer – Good Evening
• mluvite anglicky? – Do you speak English?
• co to stoji? – How much does it cost?
• jedna, dvě, tři, čtyři, pět, šest, sedm, osm, devět, deset – one to ten

Notes: The stress is always on the first syllable. The ‘c’ is usually pronounced ‘ts’, so anglicky is pronounced ‘anglitsky’. The half-circle (called a caron) adds a ‘y’ sound to vowels: devět (nine) is pronounced ‘DEV-yet’, but deset (ten) is pronounced ‘DES-et’. Other sounds with the caron are č (‘ch’ as in church), š (‘sh’ as in shush) and ř (‘rzh’ as in rzhurzh).

The number four is hard enough to say; čtyři is pronounced ‘CHTY-rzhi’.

Many words don’t have vowels where we expect them: my guidebook teaches me strč prst skrz krk (meaning ‘stick a finger in your throat’). Useful.

Friday Night

I got confused at the bank machine and took out 1000 Kč (Czech crowns). At an exchange of 20Kč to the Canadian dollar, this was obviously not going to last me for the weekend.

I’m normally anxious when I travel, and this time I focused my anxiety on the taxi at the other end. I was arriving late, and all of the shuttles and direct buses were done for the day. All of the guidebooks warned me to avoid taxis in Prague. No problem here, however. I negotiated the price before leaving, and it was within the range of the guidebook. The taxi driver even charged me less than his initial quote, which was a pleasant surprise. I gave him the difference as a tip.

At the other end, Justine was keeping an eye out for me as I arrived. We were in an apartment (not a hotel), so someone had to let me in. The building was just beside the National Theatre (Národní Divadlo), and it was an easy late night walk up towards Charles Bridge (Karlos Most), the centre of tourism for the city.

This was my first indication that Prague is spectacular. It’s surreal at night, with the castle, the cathedral, the bridge and the river magically lit. It was overly perfect, as if someone was photoshopping the inside of my eyes.

Saturday

The best tourism can be found in the supermarket, so Justine and I headed out to Tesco’s to buy breakfast. We ended up spending an hour looking at the chocolate bars, desserts, yoghurt and smoked fish. Shelley had to wait for us — but I’m sure it was worth it. We returned laden with breakfast pastries and candy.

As it turns out, many of the pastries were ‘joke’ pastries, designed to entice the tourist with red jam and cream cheese, but were secretly inexplicably vile. Also, from the carton, there isn’t any way to distinguish buttermilk from milk, which makes a difference in coffee.

Having walked across Charles Bridge the previous night, we went directly to the tourist centre of town: the old square (Staroměstské náměsti). Like all tourist centres, there were shops full of crap to buy. We duly looked at Bohemian crystal, russian dolls, Kafka T-shirts, wooden toys and soap.

There is also an astronomical clock, built five hundred years ago and still in working condition. Every hour, the tourists crane their necks to see it go bing, but we just missed it.

Instead, we ate lunch at a little bar off of the main square, and visited the churches on the square. There was the Church of Our Lady before Tyn, which looms over the square with very distinctive and ornate gothic spires. There’s also the St. Nicholas church, which has a chandelier in the form of a Russian coronation crown.

Afterwards, it appeared that we missed the astronomical clock go bing, so we signed up for a coffee and cake cruise down the river Vltava.

On our cruise, we had the pleasure of meeting Francesco (he gave us his Czech name, but even though I was motivated, it was too difficult to pronounce). He gave the tour in both English and German. It suffered from the translation.

“The river is clean enough to swim in, but I don’t like to swim. Would you like to hear about my hobbies?” he implored at one point. I couldn’t actually say yes, but I managed to smile in his general direction.

“Would you?” he asked us in general, waiting for a response. Finally, one of the British tourists on the boat managed to vocalize a feeble “Uh, sure?”.

“Skiing and Gymnastics!” Francesco snapped before going on to translate for the Germans on board.

He also pointed out the English-speaking church, where we were welcome to worship our English gods in our own fashion. He pointed out where Franz Kafka nurtured a terrible body image (and was terribly anxious about his proportions in the nude). He started some sort of commentary about a bridge that was particularly Czech in nature, when a passing waiter mumbled “czech czech czech” quietly to us, rolling his eyes.

“Czech czech czech!” enthused Francesco seconds later, as if it were a punchline remotely related to whatever he had been saying.

Speaking of punchlines, he told us that he had a friend that worked at the German embassy, which was beside the American embassy, and the Germans had a favourite American joke. After making us verbally confirm that we wanted to hear his joke (“Would you?”) and that we wouldn’t be offended, he offered: “My German friend tells me that the Americans learned the Czech language so that they could read Franz Kafka’s work as he originally wrote them! Ha!”

Franz Kafka wrote in German.

We got off the boat and walked back to the city centre, through the Jewish Quarter. Everything was closed, so we planned to return on Monday morning.

Walking through the streets of Central Prague is architecturally delightful. If you’re a fan of the sinuous grace of Art Nouveau, or the geometrical precision of Art Deco, you’ll find everything. There are even Cubist houses, an architectural movement that never really did take off elsewhere in Europe. Gothic and Rennaissance churches, Medieval and Moorish synagogues — it really is a jewel.

We returned to the town square, and missed the astronomical clock go bing. At this point, we were deeply seized by the need to see the damn clock go bing, so we took up residence at the cafe just outside the clock and stayed there. Some elderly German tourists sat beside us, all wearing the same offensive yellow shirt and waved their beers in circles in some sort of insane ritual involving the tune to “Auld Lang Syne”.

On the hour, the astronomical clock went bing. The windows above opened, and the apostles shuffled past, and then some figures wobbled a bit. Well, it wasn’t It’s a Small World, but I imagine even Disney will look quaintly dull in five centuries.

We went back over Charles bridge and walked through the town on the other side. We passed the John Lennon wall, where graffiti artists have been scribbling layers of peace and love messages since his death. Oddly enough, we didn’t recognize it at the time.

Back at the hotel, we put our feet up and ate ham-flavoured chips that we bought at Tesco’s that morning. Ham!

We went through the guidebooks looking for an authentic Czech restaurant, and we found one on the other side of the river. Crossing the bridge again, it turned out that the restaurant didn’t exist, so we picked another. I had the traditional veal and dumplings, which was covered in some sort of sickly sweet sauce and garnished with whip cream. Justine’s goulash was also cloyingly sweet. The bread dough dumplings were hearty, though — and that’s about the nicest thing I can say for the local cuisine.

On the way back over the beautiful Charles Bridge, I noticed a girl sitting on the rail with her boy on one knee before her. I pointed them out to Justine and Shelley, and as we passed, Justine saw the ring box. The castle was lit behind them, and the moon was big and bright.

We stopped to watch (although taking care to look as if we were looking at the view, and not them). The boy put the ring on the girl and I think she hugged him, obviously accepting. I took a picture. As we walked away, they followed us. At the end of the bridge, Shelley approached them and congratulated them. I did too, shaking their hands.

Sunday

Sunday morning, it was rainy and grey. We walked to Wenceslas Square, the other major square. It’s much more modern than the old square, with a tendancy towards Art Deco. As it rained, we walked towards the National Museum, passing odd and disturbing modern sculpture along the way. We also shopped for shoes.

That being done, we went back to the hotel and repacked to go to the Castle. As we crossed the bridge to the other side of town, I realized that I forgot my camera! Oh well, leaving some part of the voyage unfilmed frees the imagination and spirit.

On the way to the castle, we stopped at St. Nicholas of Lesser Town. It cost 50Kč to get in (I might as well start including some price info in this log). The church was undeniably baroque, which meant that it was undisciplinedly ornate. The dominant tones were pink and seafoam marble and gold foil. If there was space for a statue, they crammed in two and then gilded them. This was a church meant to prove a point — that wealth and good taste don’t necessarily go hand in hand.

We then climbed up to the castle, which overlooks the city. We arrived as they were changing the guard, and went in.

We bought our tickets (at 220Kč) to see St. Vitus’ Cathedral, where the “Good King” Wenceslas was murdered by his brother, and where his relics remain. The cathedral is neogothic, having undergone constant renovations during seven centuries. The stained glass windows are spectacular, easily the most beautiful that I have seen. They were constructed in the thirties, which goes to prove that we’ve learned a thing or two about stained glass windows since medieval times.

There’s also a solid silver tomb for Saint John Nepomuk. He was known for taking the confessions of the queen, and then refusing to relate the scandalous tales to the king (who had him thrown into the river from Charles Bridge). Now, he is the patron saint of discretion.

We climbed the gothic spire (290 steps) to see a panorama of the city. Wow, humans certainly like to climb up high and see things.

At the bottom, we took a break at a coffee place, where Justine found my camera, where it had been hiding in plain sight in my otherwise empty backpack.

We went through the old royal palace, with oddly vaulted ceilings.

Then we went through Golden Lane, a picturesque street, where legend places the alchemists who strove to turn lead into gold for the king. More verifiably, Kafka lived there at number 4. The Lane ends at Dalimbor tower, where a knight was imprisoned to starve to death — but with his violin. Apparently he played so beautifully that the locals came to listen to him, and bring him food.

We crossed back to the other side of the city and ate pizza and strudels for supper in the old town. We were intending to see one of the concerts — there were concerts advertised everywhere — but we misread the concert time.

So we went back to Wenceslas Square and the sausage vendors for a late-night snack, walked back and forth across Charles bridge once more, and then went home to sleep.

Monday Morning

We had a lot to cover Monday morning, so we woke up early and headed back out to the Jewish quarter. We found a French patisserie along the way (cleverly avoiding the vile Czech pastries).

The sites in the Jewish quarter are well-organized into a single ticket for 300 Kč. Our first synagogue was the Piska Synagogue, which has been converted into a memorial for those deported to the concentration camps at Terezin. The two stories of the synagogue were covered in names, carefully hand-written in tiny script. There was also a thoughtful exhibit on the drawings of Jewish children during those hard times.

According to the custom, I wore a yamulka for the first time, keeping my head covered through the synagogue and the adjoining cemetery. The old Jewish cemetery is very crowded, haphazardly filled with 100,000 graves from over 400 years. Given the lack of space, there are apparently twelve layers of graves, and the tombstones are tightly pressed against each other, leaning precariously at odd angles.

We stopped at the Spanish Synagogue, which was constructed in the 19th century, and named after it’s Moorish inspiration. The inside is bright and colourful.

Justine and Shelley’s last stop was at the old town square for last minute souvenirs, and then they took their shuttle to the airport. I said good-bye, and went wandering until it was time for my shuttle.

First of all, I went back across Charles Bridge (I counted eleven separate crossings during the trip — an odd number because we took a different bridge back once). There’s a plaque where the king allegedly had Saint John Nepomuk thrown into the river, and you rub it for good luck.

I returned to St. Nicholas of Lesser Town and went up the old tower that was joined to it, but is unrelated to the church. Then I went back into the church to take some photos, and to sit for a bit.

I bought Czech booze and some gifts (and some gifts of booze), some traditional wooden toys. I walked around to the Republic Square to see the Powder Tower and the Town Hall, and then I went into Kotva, the cheerfully grim department store. Then I went back to Tesco’s for more Czech beer and candy.

Finally, I took my shuttle back to the airport, and went home.