We have a late breakfast, on account of Carol having to stay in bed to
recover from the shocks of the day before.
Now, when I was not going into any of the Josefov synagogues I noticed
people being driven around in old cars. When I was up at Vysehrad one of
these tourist cars stopped to let the passengers visit the site, so I
trotted over and asked the driver where he started from. Consequently, we
know exactly where to go this morning for a car ride.
We scamper into the Old Town square, go past the Old Town Hall on the
right
instead of the left, and arrive in a small square (probably Namesti Franze
Kafky) which is notable mostly for a row of inter-war Czech cars - Tatras
and Prahas, it seems. We're not quite sure about the etiquette - is it
like
a taxi rank where fights can start if fares are picked up by the wrong
driver? or do we choose a car we like the look of? - but we're quickly
approached by one driver (and it's not the one whose car has the bonnet up
and several blokes poking the engine) and are directed to a 1929 Tatra,
ready for a drive up to the Castle and around the Old Town.
We settle down in the back seat, fretting slightly over the total lack of
seatbelts; the driver cranks the engine into life, and we set off towards
Prague Castle (aka Prazsky hrad) with the driver turning around in his
seat
to point things out. As we cross the Vltava by the Manesuv bridge, I ask
about the Metronome in the hills opposite (mainly, why?) and he explains
that it was built for a tem****ary exhibition some time after the Velvet
Revolution as a symbol of regime change, and has stayed there ever since.
There was a nice big flat plinth for it because the largest statue of
Stalin - as high as Christ in Rio - was blown up in 1962.
Across the river we chug up winding streets between largish squares, with
numerous palaces (mostly built by nobles rather than monarchs, and now
mostly used as embassies) and churches. There's also a lot of cobbles
which
are great fun with 1929 suspension, and a long incline during which the
car
gets noticeably slower and louder, and a bright red lamp lights upon the
dashboard ("Ah, you didn't need to push" says the driver at the top). We
glimpse the President's house for various angles and end up in the
Hradcanske Namesti, the square outside the first courtyard of the castle.
We
stop here to watch tour groups following guides waving umbrellas, to have
our photo taken by the driver, and to be photographed by the tour groups
(it
is just possible that it's the car they're interested in). The square
seems
to be massively overcrowded, which implies that the castle itself will be
massively overcrowded, but our driver explains that it's due to the time;
every day at noon the guards are changed, with flags and a band, and
everyone who knows about it - which obviously includes the tour leaders -
gathers in the square to watch.
Then we set off down the hill on the other side of the castle, coming
interestingly close to a tram on the way down, and cross the Checuv bridge
into Josefov. We drive past various synagogues and down the most expensive
shopping street in Prague and loop around the back of the Old Town
Square,passing a strange statue representing the work of Kafka and a
statue
of Rabbi Low with his golem. And then we're back where we started, and the
driver explains the oddity that I realised, belatedly, is an actual oddity
-
all the cars are right hand drive. Apparently Czechoslovakians drove on
the
left, and had been planning a staged changeover to driving on the right
until the Germans invaded in 1938 and made them change overnight.
Leaving the tour cars we scamper to the Old Town Square and stop for
coffee
at a cafe near to the Astronomical Clock. This is an interesting thing.
There's a big roundel packed with smaller roundels showing astrological
creatures and pictures of activities appropriate for that month; above
that
there's a clock face which may or may not show the time - it's numbered up
to 24, there's a disc with astrological symbols which moves around the
numbered to 24 bit, and there's a small sun and a small moon floating over
the symbols. Behind all this there's a set of Roman numerals, which don't
match the more or less Arabic numbers on the outer rim, and some lines
labelled 'occasus' and 'crepusculum'. There are numerous figures
surrounding
the faces, but what the crowds are there for only happens on the hour.
Cunningly,we've made sure we're there just before the hour. The clock
starts
striking, two shutters above the clock open, and a collection of 12
figures
take turns to appear in the windows, while a skeleton nods his head and
waves something that looks like a cage but is probably an hourglass
around.
When the doors slam shut, the assembled m***** applaud. This is the first
time we've ever seen people clapping a clock.
Refreshed by the coffee, we set out towards Charles Bridge again. This
time
we're going to see it close up, in daylight, and cross it. Okay, the
Charles
Bridge. It's supposed to be one of the crowning glories of Prague but...
well, it might be heresy but it's just a bridge. Quite a nice one,
probably,
though it's rather difficult to see the bridge under its covering of
tourists and stalls selling things to tourists. There are lots of statues,
but they're mostly religious and they're mostly rather histrionic Baroque.
And if you try to look at them, someone leans against them for a photo. I
almost get to touch the plaque showing St Wencelas being thrown off the
bridge (it's supposed to be good luck) but a crowd of scouts need good
luck
more than I do, apparently. The magnificence of the bridge is also a
little
impaired by having construction work at one end.
By the time we get across the Vltava we're feeling a little peckish and
we've spotted cafes on the waterside, so we scurry down a convenient set
of
steps before quite coming to the end of the bridge. We find a small
restaurant with some tables that aren't quite falling into the river, and
I
have a cheese sandwich while Carol has Moravian onion soup with croutons
(apparently this is completely different to French onion soup). Then Carol
has apple strudel and I have hot raspberries and ice cream.
Then we set off in search of a funicular station, which turns out to be a
little further away than we'd expected. Worse, we don't have change for
the
ticket machine. So we nip down to the main street and buy a bottle water
and
a banana frappe. After we're nicely rehydrated we go back to the funicular
where there more people waiting, buy tickets and then wait until we're
suddenly allowed on to the funicular. Soon we're on the top of Petrin
hill,
which is a sort of a park overlooking Prague.
We ignore the observatory and trot off in search of the observation tower,
passing the Hunger Wall on the way. This doesn't look particularly
interesting and is mainly notable for being a medieval job creation scheme
by which the poor of Prague were paid to build a not totally necessary
wall
by Charles IV; it also took the unsightly poor out of the city.
When we get to the observation tower, a sort of mini-Blackpool tower,
Carol
decides she doesn't want to go up a spiral staircase and finds a handy
bench
(where she texts her mum and finds Czech girls stopping their texting to
stare at her mobile). I scamper up the spiral steps into a half way cabin,
and then up another set of steps up to the very top. This is a small
greenhouse, with a number of windows open to make looking out easier
(unless, of course, there's a couple fondling each other standing in front
of the window, which there is. In front of one window, anyway. Everyone
walks round them, until they're put off by an influx of French
schoolkids.);
there's an excellent view of Prague on two sides, the castle on another
side, and a fairly ugly stadium on the other side. I scurry downstairs to
the halfway stage, which has an external balcony allowing you to see the
same things as before only with more ventilation and less height.
I spin back to ground level,find Carol, and we scurry off to the mirror
maze, housed in a 19th imagining of a Bohemian castle. As a reward for
finding our way around the maze (which wasn't that hard but is visually
very
entertaining) we are shown a 19th century mural showing the students of
Prague defending Charles Bridge against the Swedish army in 1647 (this is
probably a direct result of the Czechs starting the Thirty Years War with
one of the ever-popular Defenestrations of Prague) .
Then we take the funicular back down the hill, and scamper as quickly as
possible over Charles Bridge. On the way we stop to buy tickets Don
Giovanni
at the marionette theatre. After showering we scurry back down to the
marionette theatre, which is through an archway in a courtyard, up a set
of
stairs, past a door with a sign saying "please wait here for ever" (which
we
realise is open when someone comes out), up some steeper steps and into
someone's attic.
After a short wait, in which the audience increases to about 10 including
us, a recording of Mozart's Don Giovanni starts and the curtain opens
beginning a slightly weird artistic experience. There's a single set, a
house with steps running up to central French windows from both wings and
large windows on either side, and an empty area in the fore ground. This
allows a mix of shadow puppets inside the house, stringed marionettes at
the
front and puppets sup****ted on sticks for the stairs and balcony. And one
of
the puppeteers painted grey to be the Stone Commander at the end. It's
partly Muppet-like at points, and there's an emphasis on some of the
comedy
aspects (people fall downstairs a lot, and much ribaldry) but overall it's
rather excellent and very enjoyable.
And then we realise we really need to eat. We wander up a street we've not
tried before and find the Alla Stella Nera (At the Black Star, so-called
because it's on the ground floor of a building with a big black star on
it's
front; there are quite a few of these medieval survivals from the days
before houses had numbers or written names).
We start with bread, oil and balsamic (high quality gloopy sweet
balsamic),
Carol has bruschetta pomodoro then gnocchi pomodoro, I have tortellini in
brodo and gnocchi al pesto; we share a caprese salad and a bottle of
Moravian rose, and finish with tiramisu for Carol and ice cream with
balsamic vinegar. After coffee the bill comes to 2334 crowns, which causes
me a certain alarm until Carol tells me to "Calm down, and divide by
thirty".
Then we wander down the street, have a closer look at Rabbi Low and his
golem, walk several times around the Jan Hus monument in the Old Town
Square
and scamper back to the hotel. After a final drink in the bar, being
forced
to listen to an English buffoon wittering on about the Falklands war and
his
***ual past to a couple of obviously uninterested American colleagues (who
both suddenly realise they need early nights and run away, taking their
drinks with them), we retire to bed.
|
