Prague

[helenic]

I've been putting this entry off. When we got back from Prague Chris stayed with me in Cambridge for the weekend, and interesting things like Catriona and Yves' Becket readthrough, and subsequent parties, occurred, meaning that I didn't get to write anything in the immediate post-travel buzz. Most of this was written in the following week, but I never finished it, due to a combination of trips to Leeds and London, not having internet, moving back into college, not having a working computer, and term making me far too busy to think about it. Chris has just uploaded his photographs from the trip to his gallery, which prompted me to finally get to grips with posting this. (For some reason, he seems hesitant to put online a lot of the more amusing pictures of the two of us, which, being who I am, interest me far more than architecture. Maybe he's shy.)

This is, quite probably, far too long.


Where to start? Chris and I, making our sleepy way at 3am via taxi and coach to Stansted, taking a too-leisurely breakfast in the airport and very nearly missing our flight due to ambiguity with the boarding times, and having to sprint across the runway to catch it? As the plane slowly lifted into the air, the rising sun colouring the clouds, everything seemed to become still. He slept with his head on my lap and I dozed with my book still open on his arm. Three days in early September; a garret room ten minutes away from Karlov Möst; the two of us, flamboyantly over-dressed the entire time we were there. We'd decided very early on that if we were going to Prague to do the bohemian thing, we were going to do it properly, damnit, velvet jackets, absinthe and all.


i. The hotel we stayed in was directly on the tourist route, with the sort of aging, dingy beauty you only get in old European cities; paint peeling off the walls, and applied in purple and blue swathes, Expressionist-style, to doorways, staircases gated off by intricate metal cages reminiscent of free-hanging elevators. Our room was the Kupola, the room built on the top of the building with windows looking out over the rooftops of Prague, a four-pointed pyramid ceiling, and barely room for anything other than the double bed. From the room we could see the castle, the river, Staromestske námesti (the Old Town Square). Slanted, irregular rooftops, red tiles and chimneys. I wanted to climb out and sit on the roof, but Chris wouldn't let me.

There was, Chris noticed on the second day, a rather worryingly conveniently situated hook set into the centre of the ceiling, at the peak, but as he had not brought any rope with him we were unable to test how much weight it would take. The hotel seemed to make a point of boasting the privacy of its rooms and its tolerance of deviant sexuality, so it was certainly possible that it was not there by accident.

We were placed on the street leading up to the Prazsky hrad (the castle), the main tourist route between Sternbersky palác and Staromestske nám. We were two squares away from Karlov Möst, the Charles Bridge. This is a huge, old, cobbled thoroughfare of a bridge, ranked on each side by statues of saints and thronged with people, vendors, portrait artists and buskers. (It is far more crowded on a weekend in September than the memorable, empty, fog-and-night shots of it in The Unbearable Lightness of Being would indicate, when Tereza is standing perilously close to the edge of the bank and Tomas runs down to her.) We saw female acoustic duos singing Czech folk, a real organ grinder, and a couple of very good jazz groups, most of whom had instruments that looked like they had been used in several bar fights - which, Chris said, was to him the mark of a real jazz musician. We leaned on the stone wall, smoking cigarettes while a band led by alto sax and clarinet played At the Sign of the Swinging Cymbals and the tourist steamers came and went beneath us. Only coming back on the second night did we find it any less crowded, when high on jazz and absinthe cocktails I ran ahead of him in my ballgown skirt and ridiculous heels, spun round in circles until he caught me, laughing, and steered me between the passers-by.

From Karlov Möst there are narrow, cobbled tourist streets, lined with shops selling the usual nonsense, t-shirts and flags and beer mugs and lurid Russian dolls, crossed by the occasional tramlines, until you arrive at Staromestske nám. Halfway there on the first day we found, to our amusement, a Museum of Medieval Torture Instruments, which we decided we couldn't miss. It was quite a modest display and the English translations describing each piece were occasionally very bizarre, but it was fascinating; the idea of how many people had been hurt and killed on the strangely-shaped bits of iron furniture was difficult to take in. The only thing that really bothered me was an illustration of someone being sawn in half, upside-down, from groin to head, hung in such a way that the blood rushed to the brain and consciousness was retained for as long as possible. This was apparently for practising homosexuality, and made me immediately nauseous; for the rest it was historically and culturally fascinating, if somewhat informatively simplistic. At my insistence (and somewhat ironically) we gave the exhibit of spiders and scorpions next door a miss.

ii. Staromestske námesti itself is absolutely stunning. It was invariably crammed with people, locals and brass bands and tourist groups, with the tables and parasols of over-priced restaurants spilling onto it from the edges, but the buildings surrounding it are incredibly beautiful. There were Greek-style friezes in cream and brown covering the entirety of a forty-foot wall, and on the clock tower the famous horological clock, with its inexplicable symbols and series of images presumably telling unknown stories, the arcane swathe of metal indicating the constellations, and the two twelve-hour clocks underneath, one for the hour hand and one for the minute. The basilica was dark stone, gothic and pinnacles, and lit at night with unreal but rather magical shades of blue.

On the west side were small streets of stalls selling various ethnic and crafty things; my favourite was a metalworkers at which I bought two necklaces, and Chris a delicate brass hand-bell, but he liked the weapons stall, which had various swords, daggers, axes, and crossbows of varying quality for ridiculously cheap prices, although still outside our budget.

iii. On that first day, after spending the morning in bed to recover from our ludicrously early start, we ambled slowly towards the centre of town, having a leisurely lunch on the way at a little pub/restaurant characterised, somewhat randomly, by a huge wooden devil outside. We ascertained very quickly that Czech beer and food, even in the tourist areas, are both very good and very cheap. It is a place of cold winters that keeps being invaded: Beer comes in half-litres rather than pints, is often as strong as 12%, and costs less than a pound. This was something we approved of whole-heartedly; likewise the food, which seemed to mostly consist of red meat with garlic.

The restaurant we found on the first day was on a street leading off the north-east corner of Staromestske nám, the Restaurant Staromácek. After talking to Wesley about it I'd been hoping to find somewhere with live music, but there didn't seem to be any, and we wanted something as genuinely Czech as we could find in the tourist area. This place had the appearance of a traditional taverna; wood-beamed, the door adorned with fake vines, frescos covering the plaster walls, and the menu (which seemed to consist mostly of game, to our enthusiasm) was cheap.

We were a little more than overdressed for it, me in something gothy and vaguely Victorian, and Chris looking rather gorgeously Byronic in a ruffled white satin shirt and green velvet jacket, his hair curling to his shoulders. In fact, this might well have explained the high quality of service we received; as we were ordering our starters, the waiter (who was absolutely charming) said to Chris that his friend wanted to ask him if he was an actor. Chris, exchanging an amused glance with me (we'd had a similar experience when he'd come up to Cambridge in July) replied that he had done some acting, and the waiter, with a triumphant look, exclaimed, "I knew it! You were in that film - what is it - League of Extraordinary Gentlemen?" Chris expressed his apologies, but informed him that he had not been in that film, and they must have mistaken his identity. I don't think he looks much like Stuart Townshend, but to be fair, in that outfit he did look very like Dorian Gray.

The meal was absolutely wonderful. For about £4 I got a whole baked trout with Hollandaise sauce and about eight large heaps of sturgeon and salmon caviar, and Chris' duck with garlic and saurkraut had to be tasted to be believed, but I'm a sufficient fan of caviar to not regret my choice. Afterwards we had port rather than dessert, and left earlyish to continue the evening elsewhere, but when Chris was charged about £14 for a taxi ride we'd expected (apropos of our ride into town) to cost less than £1, it rapidly killed his mood, and we ended up just sitting in the hotel room talking. Be warned: always check what the fare will be before you get into a cab; there's a similar distinction as in London between the official and unofficial taxi services, only with an unbelievable difference in price.

iv. The backstreets surrounding Staromestske námesti were not as bohemian and interesting as I'd fantasised, but then, we were in the middle of the tourist district. There seemed to be a great deal of something called "Blacklight Theatre" (including a weird puppet version of you-know-what, yvesilena!); galleries of local art, most of which seemed to be images of the city painted in the same bright, chunky, post-cubist style, and the rest a cross between art nouveau and graffiti; churches, which were universally florid, crammed with statues and gilt and pink marble in true counter-Reformation tastelessness; and antique shops. The antique shops were interesting - I don't know enough about these things to know how valuable any of it was, but there was some real quality junk there, from old books to walking sticks to violins to crossbows.

v. I can't remember if we were looking for anything or just wandering, but on the first day we found a bar called, to our fascination, the Marquis de Sade. Inside, it was high-ceilinged and dark, with cocktail menus, a spiral staircase against the far wall, and things like saxophones and the string boards of grand pianos attached to the walls. We decided to come back on the last night and drink cocktails there.

Very near the Marquis de Sade, we came across what quickly became my favourite tea-bar, so far, in the whole of Europe. Vzpomínky na Afriku is decorated like a Moroccan opium den, with iron lanterns, tealights, and heavy carpets covering all the walls and ceiling. The wooden-covered, hessian-bound menus boasted a hundred different kinds of tea, from ginger to rooibos to things I haven't even heard of, but I was tired and opted for cinnamon coffee instead. About 50p bought you a beaten brass tray containing a small jug of coffee so thick it didn't move if you swilled it, and which appeared to be pure arabica; a crystal jug of water, a little cup, a little spoon, and a small bowl of brown sugar. The coffee was the best I'd ever tasted. It also made me high in a way I'd never experienced before, although this was possibly because I had more than one jug. This is what caffeine should always be like.

vi. The second night we dressed up in our best white tie: Chris in tails and brocade waistcoat and mother-of-pearl cufflinks and dangly earring, and me in my FantasticSkirt™ and too-high vintage heels. We came back from a lovely afternoon browsing the sidestreets and stalls and drinking beer in Staromestske nám, bought tickets in the music shop the next square down from the hotel, and were both showered and changed in about a quarter of an hour. This was because before we went out to eat, we wanted to go to a concert optimistically entitled "400 years of the Spanish guitar" at the church on Karlova, opposite Karlov Möst. We were the best dressed people in the place. The guitarist was a rather mad forty-something woman, with an amazing flamenco right hand, who had a disturbing habit of disappearing behind the carved edifice in the middle of the room and then striding out, looking pleased with her own stage presence, singing Czech folk songs in a sweet, if quiet, mezzosoprano. Her guitar playing was breathtaking. Afterwards she introduced a geeky-looking youth who was either her student or her lover, who proceded to entertain us with somewhat hesitant "freeform jazz" of his own composition. We all applauded enthusiastically, while the madwoman looked on, beaming.

That night we'd been planning to go to Plenská Restaurace, which the guide book described as an "art nouveau designer's idea of what a Bohemian beer hall should look like", but when we got there it appeared to be entirely closed, presumably because of a private function. Unfortunately we hadn't brought the guide book out with us, so lacking anywhere else specific to try we wandered around Stare Mesto and Josefov for an hour or so in search of somewhere to eat. Since Chris was in full Edwardian formals and I was in a bodice, floor-length skirt and high heels, this rapidly became tiresome. We asked in the Marquis de Sade for a recommendation (we'd been planning to have cocktails there, but it was full of teenagers in sportswear), but by the time we'd sat down we realised that it wasn't in the same league as Staromácek. It seemed foolish to go to a new city and eat in the same restaurant both nights, but it also seemed foolish to go somewhere worse simply for the sake of novelty, so we ended up in Staromácek again the next night as well. This proved to be an excellent choice. We were welcomed with a great deal of flair, given a candlelit table in one of the windowseats, and offered aperitifs. These had to be seen to be believed. Both were flambéed, Chris' cherry liqueur arriving in a tulip-shaped glass about a foot high, and my Becherovka (the local "herbal liqueur", which is about the same ABV as absinthe) tipped liberally into the bottom of a gigantic vessel which must hold about a pint and a half when full. The Becherovka was interesting; it was considerably improved by being hot, and was reminiscent of both mulled wine and pernot.

The second meal was as good as the first, if not better, and cost even less. My starter was highly memorable - it consisted of half-dried plums skewered with squares of gammon bacon, and drizzled in what appeared to be yoghurt and hot chocolate sauce. It was actually wonderful, although I'm not sure that bacon and chocolate would work as a general rule. Next we both had the chef's speciality, which was rabbit. Chris' was with garlic (again); I wanted to go for that one, but it seemed silly to both get the same, so I had the one with brandy and cream, which was delicious, if a little sweet for my taste. At some point during the meal the Becherovka went to my head and I got extremely drunk. We paid, and staggered through Staromestske nám looking for a jazz bar called Zelezna, but ended up, instead, in an underground place behind the back of the basilica, called Ungelt.

It had bare, curved stone walls covered in framed black and white film stills, steps that seemed to lead further and further underground, a strange cave-like quality, and an absolutely amazing live jazz band who were just starting their set. We couldn't afford tickets, so we sat at the bar next door (from where we could still hear them) and drank absinthe cocktails. Chris had a straight flambé with sugar; mine was with champagne. There was a menu full of them. It included things like absinthe and vodka, and absinthe and red bull. Any speck of sobriety left in my system was quickly drenched in a haze of wormwood and chlorophyll.

v. The next day we actually felt energetic enough to seek out breakfast at a little B&B, and explore all the little shops and galleries up the road to Sternbersky palác. The street was cobbled, and so steep you couldn't have driven a car up it. From the top of the hill there was an absolutely stunning view of the city; we leaned against the stone wall at the top of the rise, looking over the rooftops and the river, sharing a pipe. The palace complex was sprawling and somewhat confusing. There was the Katedrála sv Vita, a splendour of flying buttresses and gothic pinnacles, which we couldn't go in because there was a service, and there was the old palace, which consisted of one rather plain Great Hall and not much else. We bought tourist-priced Pilsner, wandered through the streets, talked about history, and ended up perched on some steps in the main square while I made a self-conscious effort to sketch the clock tower of the cathedral and Chris smoked his pipe and people-watched. Inside, when the cathedral was open to the public again, was beautiful, although far too crowded. There was something of a clash between the vast, arching beauty of the nave and the fussiness of all the gilt and cherubs on the tombs of historical aristocrats. We had to leave sooner than I would have liked to catch our taxi to the airport. By the time we'd left, it had suddenly become September.

(1) = Staromestske námesti, Old Town Square
(2) = Restaurant Staromácek, on the corner of Dlouhá and Tynská ulicka
(3) = Vzpomínky na Afriku, Rybná & Jakubská
(4) = Marquis de Sade, Templova 8
(5) = Ungelt, Tynská ulicka