Catching up on posts from Bratislava, Slovakia, on a rainy November 1 planning my long train trip to Ukraine where i hope to receive my new Visa card!
Subject: Prague
AHOY, as they say in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, for hello and goodbye, even though they aren't near any sea, Ahoy, Disaster! They don't use Euros in the Czech Republic! I got off the bus expecting to find a change counter in the station, why didn't I change money before I arrived? Information told me to try the shop, but they wouldn't take Euros. I needed funds for Metro tickets to get to my couch. Riding without a ticket means heavy fines in these countries. A kind young Czech bought me a ticket to the main train station, two stops away, but here too the change offices were closed for the day.
Another man led me to Wenceslas Square, carrying my heavy suitcase and urging me to beware. The first place open had a very poor rate, $20 wouldn't even pay for a three-day pass. I asked a waiter what to do. Someone overheard and directed me to another place. Off I dragged myself but they had just closed. It was 11 pm and the streets were full of people. I found another place, and the more money I changed the better the rate became. Finally armed with a new strange currency, I found the Metro, and a drunk and friendly young Czech named Peter saw me all the way to my tram and to my door, and then disappeared. As arranged, the keys were in a vitamin bottle under a second set of stairs by a tram stop named for Charlie Chaplin. There is a movie studio nearby and the paving stones are arranged like film strips. Chaplin's silhouette hangs over the walkway.
Kate had left detailed instructions on Couchsurfing.org. It was midnight and the flat was deserted. I found the couch, the sheets, the kitchen, and eventually my hostess returned, and her roommate, who spoke no English and worked three jobs.
Kate came home like a whirlwind, She had lived in Scotland a few years, doesn't drink, works for an IT company and dotes on her nieces and nephews. She really enjoys speaking English and filled me in on how life used to be under the Soviets. Everyone earned the same pay, nobody cared, obsequiousness and tiny bribes were the order of the day.
Kate would always come home in the wee small hours and the gabfest would begin. She wasn't such a live wire first thing in the morning though!,
Kate recommended the free city tours (tips accepted) like I'd enjoyed in Porto, Portugal. The first day I stayed home with Kate's computer, only venturing to the supermarket nearby, buying a bottle of wine for the silent roommate who was not a Couchsurf devotee and needed a little token to tolerate visitors. But she had a pile of clothes to get rid of and at Kate's urging I helped myself to a couple of warm sweaters, for the next day it snowed. I dashed a little late into the old town and couldn't find the tour, so I went on to the Alphonse Mucha museum, the gifted 19th century illustrator who found fame advertising Sarah Bernhardt's appearances and eventually devoted himself to promoting the Slavic homeland. Another native son is Franz Kafka with statues and a museum of his own.
I wandered over to the bus station to get the schedule for my next journey to Brno, Slovakia. At another ornate square I heard a broadcast in English. There was an outdoor video of slaughterhouse practices for cattle, pigs, chickens, and vivisection. I stood in the cold transfixed by the cruelty and vowing never to buy meat again. Even dairy cows have no freedom of movement. I had hoped Europe was kinder to animals than our factory farms but the young volunteer disabused me of that notion. I headed off for Wenceslas Square and forty minutes later found I had made a circle, so I caught the Metro back home. I finished The Forsyte Saga and started The History of Love, which another Couchsurfer had left behind.
Kate returned that night with stars in her eyes, she had met her idol at a pub and had her picture taken with...Clive Owen, moviestar! I managed to find the free tour the next day, conducted by Colin from Scotland. Kate had showed me on Youtube free tour Prague snippets with stories of the assassination of a Nazi chief - those who killed him hid in a room which was flooded, so that they drowned, and the village of Lidice was wiped out in revenge.
Another lighter story was of the four statues of composers above the music hall on the river. Mendelssohn was one of them and known to be Jewish but the statues were not labelled, so the one with the biggest nose was tossed to the ground and it turned out to be Richard Wagner's!
Colin the Scot explained the astronomical clock, the statue of Jan Hus, the martyred Protestant, and led us to the old Jewish quarter which was noticeably low and prone to flooding. He took us to Wenceslas Square, and answering my query said he was not a king but a kindly prince, murdered by his brother; the Christmas carol is a total fabrication. At the end of the boulevard the museum is being renovated, but there is a small portrait in the pavement of the young student who set himself on fire after the failure of the uprising. Dying in a hospital bed he begged his followers not to imitate him, but nine of them did.
My last full day in Prague I headed for the castle across the river on the hill, hot on the heels of Belgian tourists. Part of it was closed, the gallery I visited was inferior, I sauntered down the cobblestoned hill past a vinyard to the river and over the famous, crowded Charles Bridge, and stopped at a student art museum with four huge plastic revolvers hanging in a courtyard pointing at each other. Another memorable exhibit in the derelict palace where Ämadeus" was partly filmed was a take-off of Manet's Dejeuner Sur L'Herbe, a video of naked girls re-enacting the painting with Camembert and sex for money. I took a last look at the Old Town, Stare Misto, which it seems to be called in every country.
My last morning I headed for the Museum of Communism but worried about making my "student agency" bus to Brno and turned away after taking pictures of a frowning Marushka (the Russian dolls within dolls). The bus was nicer than Eurolines, with free coffee, tea or chocolate, magazines, movies and Internet. I sat next to a portly monk in a brown cassock but he spoke no English. I had read in Kate's Lonely Planet guide to Thailand never to sit next to or touch a monk in that country!
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