Praha
 |
| St. Vitus Cathedral emerging from Prague Castle |
JULY 2
I think (I know) that this is the very first River Cruise Travel Post that was not begun by waiting for the dawn to appear on the river. Different part of the trip; different schedule.
No birdsong this morning, or dawn on the windows. I was in the atrium again – imagine a hotel in a square that is ten rooms on a side, ten stories high. Imagine that the rooms are only on the outside of each floor – from outside to inside: a room, a hallway, a room. Imagine that everything else inside the cube is open, and that's where I was this morning – on the floor of the atrium, on one of a number of black leather couches. It was pretty quiet. Every once in a while an employee would walk across the space, silently, and disappear.
I practiced all my lines for the play. I've “learned” them all now, and now I have to get good at them. I reconnected to wi-fi (every time you close and open your laptop, you need to reconnect...) and, not being as inspired as usual (no sunrise coming up; no birds or breeze), I ended up reading instead of writing. Oh well. That's why yesterday's post was late.
I went into breakfast at 6:30 when it opened; the on-bus guide had told us that it was really worth spending some time on, and she was right. Endless (it seemed) breakfast items along one whole side of the hotel, on the mezzanine level, with seating areas for a lot of people scattered around. Everything you've ever thought might be cool for breakfast was there, in three different varieties. Pastries and croissants and muffins and donuts and cakes that looked like pizzas with fruit on them. Carafes of dairy-free milk (OMG!). Two guys making eggs and omelets to your specs. Every kind of breakfast meat and more. And on and on. I got Abbey up fifteen minutes early (which is normally a hanging offense) so she'd have more time with it.
Unfortunately, I still didn't know what was going to be what on the five hour walk today, so I didn't eat or drink much. Abbey, on the other hand, had a ball.
Oh – I forgot to mention – they had five different kinds of sorbet – that you scoop yourself!
Very nice. Looking forward to tomorrow. We went down to the Viking floor and got our receivers. Every day of the trip that we had an excursion (which has been every day except the Intermezzo day and yesterday's bus ride), we've picked up the receivers from their recharge cradles in our room, put them around our necks with the lanyards, plugged in the wired earpieces, and tuned in to whatever channel the guide yelled out at the beginning. Then we could hear the guide easily, for the whole tour. The system works pretty well. We got our receivers at the desk today, gathered up, and boarded the bus.
You may remember that we were signed up for an included (i.e. didn't cost extra) excursion today which was a five hour walking tour of Prague. We had been assured that it wasn't five hours straight of walking. No. It was five hours of straight walking with 45 minute break early on.
STATS:
Five hours walking and standing
3.6 or 4.0 miles of walking, depending on whose Apple Watch you believed
9,000 steps
Ninety one degrees.
I brought my Ta-Da cane which transforms into a seat; both Abbey and I used the seat part at different times.
Guide talked for five hours straight – even during the break, when she joined groups, explained things, and answered questions. Didn't seem tired at the end. She's 37, has a day job, and a 14 year old daughter. How does she do it?
By the way (this is my journal and I can interrupt myself if I want), she said that Koutnik is a pretty common name in the Czech Republic, and that it means “uncle.” Well. One would have hoped for a more dramatic meaning.
 |
| Powder Tower and Municipal Hall |
As noted, we walked three and a half to four miles, and at all times we were within what looked like a medieval or Renaissance setting (no Baroque today!). We did start with the Powder Tower and Municipal Hall (right). The Tower was part of the original city walls, and separates Old Town from New Town (see below). Municipal Hall, despite its name, is a popular concert venue today, and one of Prague's most prominent examples of Art Nouveau architecture.* It's also where the Czech Declaration of Independence was signed in 1918 - Prague's Independence Hall.
A crowd was gathered to watch it strike the hour – it's famous for that, but the joke is, apparently, that people gather to see a show, not knowing that what happens on the hour is: figures move slowly past two dark windows above the clock, and some of the four figures around it move parts of their bodies slightly. And it strikes. That's it, and it's over in 45 seconds. Our guide told us to watch the crowds waiting for more to happen, and she was right. “Nominated for the most disappointing tourist attraction in Europe,” she noted.
 |
| What? That's it? |
Not disappointing, at least to me – it's a marvel, I've read about it, it can do all the stuff above, it was invented five hundred years ago and it's been up there, working, ever since. Very cool. I can go to Disneyland for dazzling displays.
Beautiful historic churches, from Gothic to Baroque (couldn't go in that one) were scattered around willy-nilly, and used most often for concerts, because apparently most Czechs don't go to church. We passed two churches with attractive concerts planned for tonight.
Many of the really great things we saw, including the Charles Bridge and the Charles University (Univerzita Karlova, one of the oldest universities in the world), were built by King Charles IV in the 14th century. He was king of Bohemia and Holy Roman Emperor. His was the only statue (below) on the Charles Bridge which is original (well, actually, his and Jesus'). The Charles Bridge is half a kilometer long, about 35 feet wide, cobbled, and must have been a wonder to the medieval artisans, traders and peasants who used it. It replaced the Judith Bridge, which, after 200 years of service, was washed out by a flood. The Charles Bridge apparently solved the flood problem.
There were wooden structures upstream of the piers which each resembled a bunch of tree trunks stuck in the water, facing upstream. Our guide said they were old, and protected the piers from ice floes each spring. “But we do not have ice now,” she said wistfully.
The Prague Castle was uphill from the other end of the bridge, uphill enough that the bus met us and took us to the top, about a five minute ride. The castle is, like the one in Bratislava, more Renaissance looking than medieval; it didn't look at all like a defensive position. It's the biggest castle in the world, probably because it contains a whole lot of big old buildings that are used as offices, including the offices of the Prime Minister. We saw the balcony on which Vlaclav Havel and the Rolling Stones appeared (Vlaclav and Mick were friends). It didn't seem like a real castle, but there was plenty of security in the form of armed soldiers guarding each of the entrances.
And, of course, the elephant in the room, St. Vitus cathedral. St. Vitus is huge, compared to the castle, and rises right up out of the middle of it. A church was built on the spot (the top of the highest hill in Prague) in 930 by Duke Wenceslaus I of Bohemia who happened to possess the arm of St. Vitus, a holy relic of great value, and so was named the church that housed his relic. If this isn't a Gothic church story, nothing is. It gets better. There's also speculation that he chose St. Vitus because that name sounds very much like the name of the local pagan sun god, and Wenceslaus was trying to convert the heathens.
Anyway, he must have been successful, because another, bigger church was built starting in the 11th century, a Romanesque church, which was the style at the time. In the 1300s, the seat of Prague was elevated to an archbishopric, and Gothic construction started in earnest.
It wasn't finished until 1929, because of reasons. This is a Gothic story on steroids.
In 1997, the cathedral was renamed The Metropolitan Cathedral of Saints Vitus, Wenceslaus and Adalbert, and about time. They had had Adalbert's head for about a thousand years (literally), and Wenceslaus got the whole thing started, built the church and filled it. By the way, the Wenceslaus of the Christmas carol (“Good King Wenceslaus looked out, on his feet uneven...”) was this guy, but he was never a king, just a saint. There have been a dozen or more King Wenceslauses but none of them became a saint and none of them had a Christmas carol written about them by Pogo.
Anyway, Abbey and I were very disappointed that we couldn't go inside. It's a really stunning pile, even though chemical weathering of the sandstone has left it very dark, as if it's been stained. The fact that you're so close to it in the castle really adds to the drama.
From this hodge-podge commentary it might be evident that there was not a lot of order or organization to our tour, no historic progression, no story from beginning to end. This is the case. There was an incredible amount of information (five hours of it), and I loved it, but there was no organizing story – it was one thing after another. The heat and the walking would have been a little better if we were on the trail of a story.
Dinner: After I worked on my lines more, and Abbey took a nap, we went off for dinner to a place the Viking people recommended, La Republica. (for those who are counting, another mile walking, round trip). We never found out why there was a restaurant with a Spanish name in Prague, but the sign did say they did “Latin Dancing.” The food, however, was all Czech and central European, and it was great. I had goulash, Abbey had wiener schnitzel. I had a dark Czech beer; she told me the name twice but I never got it. Abbey had honey cake for dessert. It was a dark-wood restaurant with an interior balcony, where three middle-aged guys appeared soon after we got there and started tuning up – guitar, bass, modest drum kit. We listened to the music and enjoyed it; jazzy versions of songs we knew and didn't know, loud enough to enjoy but not loud enough to overwhelm. They really got into their solos – lots of solos by each of the three – but didn't take them really seriously, which made everything better.** Then we walked home in the only a little less unbearable heat; I wrote, Abbey read.
And here we are. Goodnight!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
| Did not investigate |
* - Art Nouveau architecture looks like it was designed by elves; Art Deco was designed by dwarves.
** - A mystery! What happened to all my pictures of this restaurant? This video is all that's left. When I have a lot of time, and some really good music to listen to while I do a lot of boring, tedious work, I'll look through all the files where they might be. Until then, enjoy the ambiance!
*** - The Baroque Church of St. Nicholas, on Old Town Square, that was closed. The column with the statue of the Virgin Mary on top is the Marian Column, built in 1650 to celebrate Bohemian victory over Sweden in the Thirty Year's War.**** It was toppled by popular acclaim in 1918 (remember the Czech Declaration of Independence?) because it was seen as a symbol of monarchy (the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which was about to expire) and Catholicism. What you see here is new construction, just five years old.
**** - I think it's hilarious that of all the great wars in European history, three of the most significant ones are know mostly (not entirely) by how many years they lasted - and not even accurately! The Hundred Year's War, featuring Joan of Arc and the Battle of Agincourt, lasted 116 years and won, sort of, by the French. The Thirty Years War, fought for thirty years in the 17th century, is considered one of the most brutal and destructive wars in history, even though it involved the Swedes. There was no real winner, although the political center of gravity shifted some, and the Peace of Westphalia set the stage for the modern European state. The Seven Years War, known as the French and Indian War in America, between Britain and France, featured George Washington's only defeat, fighting the French in the forests of Pennsylvania. Go figure.
Although now that I think of it, the two biggest wars Europe has ever seen were known by their numbers, as well.
Comments
Post a Comment