Prague Pictures

The title of this post is stolen from John Banville. Prague pictures; portraits of a city; one a series published by Bloomsbury in which serious writers riff on cities they know well. Peter Carey writes about Sydney, and Edmund White does Paris.

Anyway I was only in Prague for a few days and what I did was take pictures. On my last day I walked down the Vltava River to the Vysehrad fortress. It was raining on and off and freezing cold and there were hardly any tourists and I had the best day.

The walk took me past the famous Dancing Building and I took the lift to the fifth floor to see the views. The building was a collaboration between a local architect and Frank Gehry. The restaurant at the top is called Fred and Ginger. I had a surprisingly good coffee in the cafe on the floor below.

There's a small terrace, but the room inside is very elegant, all glass, with mirrored floor. I can't imagine what it would be like on a hot sunny day but this morning it was perfect. The glass art works must have been chosen or commissioned as each one perfectly suits the view beyond.

Some famous people are buried in the cemetery at Vysehrad - Kafka, Dvorak, and others. If I was to be buried, and I really prefer not to be, then I'd be buried right here. This is the most beautiful cemetery I have ever seen. (Maybe the Chatham Island lilies had some influence.)

I'd gotten one thing out of the way early - trying Prague's signature dish, dumplings (knedliky). My dumplings came with several bits of stringy tough meat in a salty glue-like, slightly lumpy dark brown gravy. The dumplings themselves? John Banville says their most striking characteristic is extreme viscosity. 'It [the dumpling] sits there on the plate, pale, tumorous and hot, daring you to take your knife to it, and when you do, clinging to the steel with a kind of gummy amorousness, the wound making a sucking, smacking sound and closing on itself as soon as the blade has passed through.' Enough said.

On this day I sat near the wood-fired oven in a local pub where two men were playing backgammon, and ate a perfectly done Al Capone pizza - eggs and ham - with a large bowl of salad.

Prague, magic city

Prague, City of a Hundred Spires, a UNESCO monument and one of the most beautiful cities in the world. 

A walk up the hill to get oriented.

How can you not love a city that
has a vineyard in the main park?

Although it is the capital of Bohemia, literally, and World heritage listed, Prague didn't grab me immediately, as Budapest had. Maybe the cold was a factor - there were light snowflakes in the air two of the days I was there. But Prague eventually snuck into my heart bigtime. 

Petrin Tower

Day Two. The best way to walk around the Old Town is just let it unfold. Every new corner brings another beautiful streetscape. I was drawn down alleys and around corners, across squares and through arcades and into courtyards and around little gardens, and into pastry shops and cafes, until I started to recognise particular buildings and realised I was making circles.

A day or so later having got used to dodging the segways and being mobbed by groups of tourists on walking tours, I joined one of the many tours on offer. Tomas was my guy - follow that yellow vest. He studied history and culture at university in his provincial city before moving to Prague and he is now a full-time guide ("so be generous with your tips if you enjoy the tour").  He told us you don't say Czechoslovakia, and you especially don't refer to anyone as Czechoslavakian. That is a bad thing to say to a local, but now we can't even say Czech Republic, because just as I was crossing the border a few days ago this country quietly changed its name to Czechia. So it is not only me having trouble keeping up with the name changes.

Tomas told us "we are very proud of our chick peas. Our chick peas are very good and very cheap, cheaper than water." Oh, he said Czech beers. OK, now I get it. Tomas had lots of delightful stories to share. The Czech President is known to imbibe. Not just now and again, but consistently. He entertains his people endlessly, one example being when in the middle of some lengthy and deadly serious talks at the European Union, he rose unsteadily to his feet and announced very loudly "Death to all all vegetarians and abstinence" and then just sat down again.

From Tomas' clever, brief and entertaining talk about the nation's history, there is one word that I will forever remember as a key to what it is to be Czech. Defenstration. The political act of throwing people out of windows. It has been such a recurring theme in history that there is a common saying here 'never argue with the windows open'.

Defenstrations have happened more than once at the hilltop complex that includes the Prague Castle. The fortress is beautifully lit up at night. Tomas told us that the Rolling Stones played there once, when the country was just coming out of the communist era. His parents still talk about going and how they cried, it was such an event in their lives. There were few lights then, and when the Stones met Vaclav Haval they asked why. They were told, we have so many things we need to spend money on, it is simply not a priority for us at this time. Tomas said "Mick looked at Keith, and Keith shrugged, and Mick said, our boys will sort that." So the lights that illuminate the castle today are those set up by the Stones' road crew. Or so the story goes.

At the statue of Jan Zizka Tomas told us about this heroic and talented but largely unknown bohemian general from the fifteenth century who never lost a battle, even after he had been blinded. He always led his men from the front, and when dying he ordered that his body be skinned, and the skin made into drums, so that he would continue to lead his men into battle. (Janet, take note.)

Standing in Wencelas Square where it happened and hearing the story of the so-called Velvet Revolution sent shivers down my spine.  The result was the end of 41 years of communist rule and the creation of a parliamentary republic. Friday, Nov 17, 1989, a few students on a march that was not even overtly political in intent. Some police violence, students panicing, some blood in the streets. Saturaday, rumours flying around the whole town, 15,000 people gathering. More rumours. Sunday, 500,000 people in these streets. Vaclav Havel on that balcony up there, taking his keys from his pocket and shaking them to emphasise something he was saying, and then across the whole square, silence; except for the sound of 50,000 sets of keys being shaken in the air.

The result of this uprising? The Rolling Stones, jeans, McDonald's, the euro, and segways.

Kafka has only just been
'discovered' by young Prague-ites

Bridges over the Vltava - an old photo. 

Library Paradise

When in Prague, don't miss the libraries. Here are three of them.

The library at the Strahov Monastery is mentioned in all the tourist guides but many people don't know that there is another library that is even more beautiful right in the Old Town just near Charles Bridge in the Klementinum complex.

The complex was founded in 1232, but the baroque library hall was opened in 1722 to serve the Jesuit University and when the buildings became home to the State and National Library, it came under the care of the state and has not been altered since the eighteenth century.

There are guided tours of the Astronomical Tower.
After the first spiral staircase I could only fix on the bum in front of me, step by step with clenched teeth, heart in mouth and sweaty toes and palms, clutching the handrail with both hands. I hate those spiral staircases. Each time we got to a small platform, we'd huddle in our group to wait for another group to go down before ascending - 172 steps in all. Up into the tower we went. Some people may have been there just for the 360 degree views from the platform at the top of the Tower, others may have been enticed by the description of a 'Harry Potterish' library, but I was fulfilling a dream I'd had for years, since I gazed at the picture of  it in a calendar featuring The Most Beautiful Libraries in the World that I had mail-ordered years ago, BI (before Internet) and decided that THIS was the The Most Beautiful of all. Stairs-schmairz! It was so worth it.

No photos are allowed but here is one I found via google.

And here's an example of the views from the Tower.

 The Municipal Archives and National Library now are located nearby. In fact, the Archives are in an outstanding baroque mansion that includes a theatre where Beethoven once played. I loved these little statues and a plaque high on a wall outside the building.

Inspired, I stuck my nose into the public library next. Well, to tell the truth, it was this nice little cafe that drew me in.

John Banville writes in Prague pictures "There are as many Pragues as there are eyes to look upon it - more: an infinity of Pragues".

He reached this conclusion by pondering on the question of how one can know an entity as amorphously elusive as a capital [city]. I got there by sticking my head into an opening in a tower of books I spotted in the foyer of the public library.

The effect was unnerving. There are mirrors on the floor and ceiling, delivering an image of an infinity of books (and even more terrifyingly, an infinity of Judiths). Four Russian teenagers arrived and hogged the view for ages, taking selfies and pictures of each other. A father encouraged his little girl to look in but she baulked, even though he held her hand. Off they went into the children's floor, and I thought about what it would be like to grow up in this city, and how young people would have engaged with the Klementinum library in Jesuit times. I dove into the depth of books again and thought, I have found Prague.

So, anyway. Now I'm at the Strahov Monastery, which has its own brewery.

Here's marketing for you, St Norbert's Antidepressant. Pale Ale. I'm happy, and I'm here to see another library.

The monks have been here since at least the tenth century, though during communist times many of them were taken into prison.

The library is located in two halls with Baroque ceilings. It is the largest monastic library in Czechia, with over 200,000 volumes, 1,500 of which were created before the year 1500. The oldest book is the ninth century Strahov Gospel, and there is a facsimile on display in the vestibule. Actually you can only get into this vestibule, and you need an extra ticket to take photos. The library halls are roped off and people are jostling around - not so much as to see in but primarily to take a selfie or have their photo taken with the books. "Wow honey, I'd love a library like this at home". And, "I wonder how long it would take to read all those books". Beware the selfie stick, owner unaware of surrounding crowd. Can we go have a beer now?

Images from http://artial.net/2015/09/02/biblioteca-strahov-prague-prag/  

Meantime here's a library I personally would quite like to have at home, in fact, as it is just over the foyer from that lovely bistro/cafe, it could BE home. It is the Friends' reading room at the Prague public library.