As I left off in the last post, we left Naples for Prague in a downpour.
We were not optimistic about the weather sure to greet us in the Czech Republic and wore sweaters and coats on board the sketchy Hungarian airline taking us there from Italy. The flight was, not to mince words, wretched; the sketchy Hungarian airline neglected to properly pressurize the cabin, and the entire flight was punctuated with the groans of passengers whose ears were popping like corn. My ears were the very worst of all and I spent the flight cradling my head in my hands, wishing for the vast sweeps of Czech land to up and get there already.
When they finally did, I was amazed.
I suppose one never hears of the famous scenery surrounding Prague, but I will rectify that here: the Czech Republic is utterly beautiful. The fields were, at this point in late April, bright and verdant green, bordered all around by groves of trees that are currently cloudlike and covered in white blooms. There were pastoral towns speeding by under the wings of our plane and, on the horizon, the skyline of Prague itself.
On the ground it was even nicer than Naples, warm with a mild breeze to stir one's spirits and send the little white flowers from the blooming trees drifting like snow. Clearly, my inability to hear anything, thanks to the wretched Hungarian airline, forced me to wax poetic. We immediately engaged a van to take us to Prague castle, the magnificent complex of royal and clerical buildings that presides over the city. Massive backpacks in tow, we marched through the streets North of the city proper until we reached the great gate of the castle.
Prague castle hosts a brilliant changing of the guard ceremony that rivals that of the many palaces of London, and it was the rhythmic clack-clack-pause of boots on cobbles that greeted us at the entrance. We got our backpacks stowed behind the ticket counter thanks to some extremely kind ticket takers and headed out to experience the wonders of Prague castle.
The structure that dominates the castle grounds is Saint Vitus' (like the dance) cathedral, which features some of the most incredible stained glass I have ever seen- and having wandered through a goodly number of ancient cathedrals, churches, chapels, ossuaries, monasteries, and basilicas in my day, that is saying something. The highlight is a fantastic window designed by none other than Alphonse (or Alfons, if we want to split hairs) Mucha, Prague's favorite artistic son. In fact, Mucha is everywhere in Prague, as is fantastic architecture from every neoclassical period so far. The name "Prague" usually does not conjure delicate plasterwork, flowing carved vines, fragile shades of spring colors, or scantily-clad Art Nouveau ladies in the mind of the traveller; its deep, serious, monosyllabic name points more towards the stately, dark Gothic towers of its old town buildings. However, the ornate and colorful structures that dominate its more renowned districts exemplify Pragueian aesthetics far better than anything dark or heavy, which took me by surprise.
We spent our day tooling around the massive castle, stopping by the torture museum, law rooms, recreated village street, and wandering the amazing gardens that stretch for acres and afford the perfect view of the rest of Prague. We also had the first of many traditional Czech pastries- called trdlenik (but conjugated in a multitude of other ways, since the Czech language has seven tenses for nouns. Ouch), they are tasty little cuffs of pastry rolled in cinnamon sugar and served piping hot. We thought that we would fall into the tourist trap just this one time and have just one between us, but by our final day in Prague we had admitted to becoming full-on trdlenik fiends, actively seeking them out among the vendors in old town square. It would have been shameful were they not so delicious.
Anyway, not having eaten anything all day besides the trdlenik and having walked all over Prague by the time evening fell, we took refuge in a traditional Czech cafe on Vaclavske Namesti, the main square in Prague's new commercial district. We would probably not have found our way there from the castle, given the difficult nature of reading Czech tram instructions, had not an extremely kind elderly British man hurried us along and shouted at us instructions. He was quite the character and corrected our pronunciations of the places we sought in loud and precise Czech. After we parted ways with him finding our way to the city center was a snap and we enjoyed resting our feet and dining on fried cheese (reportedly a local specialty) while we waited to meet up with our awesome couchsurfing host.
The next morning we were up with the sun and headed off to Charles Bridge over Prague's great river, the Vlatava. There we met up with some fellow Cork travelers and took a trip to the John Lennon wall, a block's worth of "imagine-" inspired graffiti that visitors are welcome to add to. After perusing generations of paint and pen messages and making our own marks we headed back to Old Town for lunch. It was there we got to watch the astronomical clock work.
This clock is perhaps the Eiffel tower of Prague, the site that draws every one of the millions of tourists who visit Praha each year. It is fairly unassuming at first glance; it just looks like a slightly strange clock slapped onto the side of an old stone tower. However, it measures not only the time but the days of the year, the changing of the seasons, the zodiac cycle and stars, and Roman time. At five minutes to the hour every hour, doors to the side of the clock open and figures carved to look like the twelve apostles come spinning out, showing the viewer a glimpse of heaven before disappearing behind the shining gold face of the clock. Below this face figures representing death, greed, and other vices cast shifty looks up at the heaven-sent and shake their heads. The whole production seems to say "tempus fugit; memento mori."
It was under this clock that we met up with a free walking tour that took us all around Prague's main center of history, with stops at its national theaters, colleges, museums, churches, and parks. As I previously mentioned, Prague could serve as a textbook on the history of architecture with buildings spanning from Europe's oldest operational synagogue in the Jewish quarter to scores of pastel baroque galleries to the "second ugliest building on earth," a thoroughly modern shining white radio tower fitted with globular restaurants and shops like blooms on a lupine. No word, however, was given to whatever the first ugliest building on earth is. Our tour guide was a hoot and a half and kept calling for a political defenestration- following, of course, the tradition of defenestration, or the act of throwing something or someone out of a window, pioneered by Protestant nobles in 1618 when their counter-reformation Catholic counterparts were tossed from the third floor of the assembly chambers. That was not the first defenestration to appear in Prague's fascinating history and if Martin the tour guide has any say in it will not be the last.
Our third and final full day in The Czech Republic was spent outside of Prague, as we took a train to the lovely town of Kutna Hora, home to the world-famous Sedlec Ossuary.
You may have never heard of the Sedlec ossuary, and that is okay; it is not exactly a structure without controversy and is more likely to be mentioned in sensationalist conspiracy pamphlets than actual scholarly literature. This is because this chapel, Cistercian and otherwise sparsely furnished, is decorated by human bones.
Form the outside the ossuary looks like any smallish, unprepossessing place of hermetical worship. When we found it swathed in green waving grass and sunlight, surrounded by quietly gleaming tombstones of a modern vintage, it was hard to believe we were at the right place. A step inside, though, is an even more powerful memento mori than the shaking heads of death and greed and vanity on the astronomical clock. A coat of arms, made from the bones of human arms, crowns the vestibule. Pyramids as high as a giant man made entirely out of human skulls regard you with silent equanimity from each of the four corners. Delicate quatrefoils wrought from jawbones decorate the ceiling and a chandelier made from vertebrae and ribs and literally every other bone found in the human body dominates the room. There is a small alter with flickering candles and a cross, but all of that is overshadowed by the hundreds or thousands of people (approximately forty thousand, to be precise) strung up for centuries just a few feet from your head. I'm not at all sure how to categorize this place, but breathtaking may be closer than not to the word which I seek.
After spending a sobering while absorbing the ossuary (which is, historically speaking, the oldest Cistercian monastery building in Eastern Europe; the bones come from a mass grave of plague victims and Hussite soldiers unearthed many years after their violent demise in epidemic and war) we burst back into the warm Czech sun and continued exploration of Kutna Hora. It's a sweet whistle-stop of a town, bones aside, and we got schnitzel for lunch, viewed the other three cathedrals in town as well as the Jesuit college, and soaked up the sun and the wide open spaces by the railroad tracks before trundling on back through glorious evening fields to Prague. After a trip consisting primarily of cities, bustling streets, tall buildings, and communal sleeping situations, it was very nice to get away from the madding crowd and see the countryside for a change.
That evening we went to dinner at the world-famous James Dean near old town square. This is an American eatery in the sense that it serves hamburgers and milkshakes and plays Elvis on the radio- and, it is covered with memorabilia featuring the original rebel without a cause. The place is called simply James Dean- not the James Dean or James Dean's, but James Dean, like the person. Its description on the menu reads like this, and by this I would like to draw your attention to the picture that should have attached itself somewhere to this blog post. I am still accustoming myself to the strange working of the blogger app. So happy hunting for the thing that I attached.
We couldn't NOT go. Besides, we were at this point the tiniest bit homesick for screaming eagles and water with ice and soul music and all of those other American delights that Europe just can't emulate. We saw some of Prague's famous sights by starlight and lamplight afterwards on our way to dig the scene, if you'll pardon my beatnik, and sample some of Prague's multilevel dance clubs which were quite different from any venue I'd before witnessed.
It was tough bidding farewell to beautiful Prague the next morning as we made tracks for the bus station and our ride West. However, the Student Agency bus that cost us a fiver just happened to be the single best travel mode we had yet experienced. Compared to the handful of awful airlines and ice-cold channel ferries and trains with pushy salesmen we had been subjected to, sitting in an armchair while speeding through Eastern Europe, with complimentary personal movie screens and peach tea served hot, was a welcome surprise. And it was a tiny fraction of the price of any of those planes, trains, and boats we had relied on so far.
The rest of the world clearly needs to jump on the Student Agency bandwagon. Or bandbus, if you will. Buswagon? I don't know.
America, get on that.
I am now operating only two cities behind my current location, so look forward to more frequent postings! In fact, the eurotrip ends for me tomorrow and I will be at last back in Cork sweet Cork.
I remain ever your humble servant
No comments:
Post a Comment