Pra-HA!

This weekend's getaway from Vienna (and ugh, who wouldn't want to get away from Vienna) was Prague. I took an impulsive, almost-literally last-minute-decision trip up a day early so that I could surprise my dad at a concert he was playing with his university’s symphonic band and choir. It was incredibly well-worth it. I got to listen to some fine singing and playing, and afterwards we wandered a bit of Prague’s gritty eighth district looking for late-night food and catching up on our mutual travels. Mostly it was just incredibly worth it to see how delighted and surprised he was to find me in the audience. Gosh I like my dad.

I promptly got incrediblysick – this weeks-old cough giving way to a full-blown cold – but was largely undeterred from exploring the city. And that’s what I loved about Prague – it was a perfect city to explore on foot, wandering through parks and side streets and enjoying the quiet bits tucked away from the tourist frenzy of Wenceslas Square, the Charles Bridge, Old Town Square and so forth. (I did visit those spots, but at 6:30 AM they are delightfully quiet and atmospheric rather than swarming with visitors and vendors.)

Anyhow, here’s a sliver of the pile of photographs I took, and another “maybe videos are a way to communicate my experiences?” attempt. This one’s score is pulled from dad’s concert – my one nod to that impulsively delightful night, since I completely forgot to take pictures of the concert or the two of us. (As I similarly did not get pictures of myself with an old friend from high school who now works in Prague - a really enjoyable evening of catching up after an ungodly number of years.) More written thoughts in future posts, as I am beginning to Discover Things About Myself And The Places I Am, but for now let's just lookit the purty pictures. (I may eventually post more in albums elsewhere but we'll worry about that one later.) Click below to seeeeeee...

Prague has so many excellent horse sculptures. This one was just sitting around on my walk to Vinohrady!

Again, just a random street in a random neighborhood headed from my cheapo hotel room to my cheapo AirBnB. Colors are nice even (especially?) on cloudy days!

Astronomical clock! Ol' Pappy Death hangin' out there just making sure we are all appropriately aware that all is as dust, happy sightseeing everybody!

I know nothing about this carving (although icons like this used to take the place of house numbers until recent times) but I'm pretty sure if you put a coin in that fish's mouth the fella will sing you a tune!

Rarrr (Prague Edition)

Foxy ladies on every corner in Prague, although some of them are KIND OF UNSEEMLY.

Prague is also full of these little parks scattered throughout the city (along with a few big ones). It's a city built for walkers and you are constantly near some trees and greenery, and basically that's all I want out of life I think?

Stumbled into a nature preserve (with a greenhouse that I did not visit) between the New Town and Vinohrady. This was such a blissed-out peaceful spot.

Speaking of blissed-out peaceful spots, KFC is huge in Prague! That may have to do with the fact that, as my friend put it, Czech cuisine is "basically like Thanksgiving dinner every night," so maybe there's some associative taste at work there. Still: weird and unnecessary!

The show I intended to see at Laterna Magika! They rescheduled (I assume still working on it) and instead I saw their 1970s warhorse "Wonderful Circus," which was bizarre. Very clearly groundbreaking in its time (constantly mixing projection and live performance), it read as a super dated period piece for tourists. Not a bad time, but boy would I like to see one of their newer pieces...

An attempted panorama from the castle just a little before sunset.

A slightly more defensive view of the city from - I believe the technical term is "them little arrow-shootin' slotty-holes in the wall of the castle."

Tiny part of one of the twenty massive canvases in Alfons Mucha's Slav Epic. This face fascinatingly recurs through his depiction of Slavic history - not in every canvas, but enough that it feels like a motif. The collection as a whole is pretty stunning - the tryptic depicting Jan Hus in particular is remarkable, and there's a mystical canvas ("The Holy Mount Athos") that strangely felt like finding the template for a whole subgenre of comic art - shafts of light, otherworldly shades of green, windswept hair, etc. It's a pretty groovy project, guys!

ALSO GROOVY: MORE PARKS! This one (Stromovka, north of the river) is a sprawling blend of trails, trees, ponds, playgrounds and food spots. It was slightly anti-charmed by the presence of a ton of bulldozers in the midst of some Sunday re-landscaping, but there were still plenty of pockets of loveliness. It was a magnificent way to spend my last afternoon in Prague

My final meal in Prague, meanwhile, came at Lokal, just outside the park. Incredibly friendly waitstaff and delicious food - their tripe soup was one of the best things I've eaten all trip, rich and with none of the textural grossness that tripe soup can have. High-quality pivovar rounded out a great meal, even if I made the mistake of ordering the house "specialty" of "fried cheese with tartar sauce." You might think, as I did, that its presence among other entrees would imply additional ingredients, but NOPE. Ah well - it was literally the one not-great thing I ate in Prague (a roasted duck leg in Vinohradsky Pivovar and a burger dinner at Dish being the other significant highlights), so I'll take it.