Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 2, 1994 TAG: 9401050173
SECTION: TRAVEL PAGE: F-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By BARBARA M. DICKINSON
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Sparkle it did. Not merely with the thousands of winking white Christmas lights lining every eave, dormer and doorway and festooned across the narrow streets, but with a vitality and spirit that had been lacking on my previous visit in '92.
There was a magic in the city. This is a metropolis of 1.2 million, in a country that has virtually been beneath a boulder for nearly 50 years. To awake, blink and emerge into the pale sunshine must be as startling as rebirth. I was expecting stasis; what I found was synergy. People are energetic, hard-working, honest to a fault. Their love of literature and fine music is evidenced in their support of same. Most have welcomed the challenges and changes inherent in the new democratic ways.
But let me explain. I did not go to Prague in the numbing chill of December to analyze the Czech people. My son (described by the New York Times as a YAP - Young Americans in Prague) has been wildly successful in a unique business venture that also interested me, and I could contain neither curiosity nor concern. Despite his warning that he was working 28 hours a day, I determined to catch what scraps of his company he threw my way and booked a Lufthansa flight directly to the Prague airport. This was done after I secured a hotel room. In 1992 our accommodations were less than convenient, less than clean, less period. This trip I decided that creature comforts were a necessity.
My room was a simple, clean, drab rectangle in a modest hotel distinguished mostly by its excellent location. Cost, including breakfast, was approximately 140 U.S. dollars per night. This confirmed advanced tourist propaganda that modern hotels were the priciest item in Prague. For my part, the safety and warmth of my colorless cubicle was worth every crown.
(Currency in the Czech Republic is the koruna, commonly called the. crown, or Kcs. Today's rate of exchange is about 30 crowns to $1.)
Worth every crown, also, was the five-day transportation ticket my son purchased for me upon my arrival. For Kcs100 I was entitled to sail through metro turnstiles, hop on trams that circled the city, queue up for buses that stopped at every other corner. The metros were a marvel of communist efficiency: spotless, rapid, punctual. There was a major stop near my hotel and this was particularly convenient for returning in the evenings. Not once was I asked to show my ticket; it is all honor system. But, as my son told me, the minute you leave the ticket at home is the minute the conductor stops you. Failure to produce a ticket results in an immediate fine. I literally velcroed my Turisticka Sitova to my inner pocket.
Yet Prague is a walker's city, and walk I did. You just see more as you walk. I believed that for one week Prague truly did belong to me, and I wanted to cover every mile. I knew this was the impossible dream, but I soon became familiar with umpteen areas of it.
Prague sprawls lazily on a broad plain that is sliced by the sinuous Vltava River. The Vltava divides the city between ``old and new'' towns (we are talking 12th century and 14th century) and is crisscrossed by more than a dozen bridges.
The most famous of these is the oft-photographed, ever popular Karlov Most (Charles Bridge). This is the oldest preserved Gothic bridge in the city, preserved and standing, perhaps, because of the eggs donated by townspeople and mixed in the mortar when it was rebuilt early in the 15th century.
Charles Bridge is a phenomenon not to be missed. Like that of the whole of Prague, its beauty is not overstated. As it belongs strictly to pedestrians, one can walk unhurriedly (everyone does), examining any of the statues of the 30 saints perched upon the railings, looking at the offerings of the vendors, leaning on the parapets to watch sculls gliding by on the rapidly flowing Vltava below. At every hour it is a visual delight.
My daily program quickly settled into a quasi-routine as I determined to scout the city. By 8:30 a.m. I was waving good-bye to the smiling young doorman in his ill-fitting uniform at my hotel and exiting onto Vaclavske namesti. This is the Fifth Avenue, the Champs Elysee, the Bond Street of Prague.
At the top of the street looms the National Museum, a neo-Renaissance structure of immense proportions. In front of the museum, astride his great horse and facing down the slope of the wide avenue, is St. Vaclav (``Good King Wenceslas''). Hence, the boulevard is known as ``Wenceslas Square,'' making absolutely no sense at all to the uninitiated tourists who peer over maps in vain looking for THE Wenceslas ``square.'' Although I hiked up and down and across this route every day for a week, often three or four times a day, I never tired of the busy scene.
The grand Hotel Europa, a superb example of pure art nouveau architecture (inside and out), rubs shoulders with an always-packed McDonald's (there are four in Prague). Across and down from the Europa is another art nouveau gem, the Melantrich Palace (No. 793/36), where in November 1989 Vaclav Havel stood on the balcony and spoke galvanizing words to throngs of Czech people. And watched as the ``velvet revolution'' began.
In addition to the hotels grand and small lining the Vaclavske, dozens of nondescript and elegant shops crowd next to each other, selling everything from electronics to jeans, baby goods to Bohemia glass. Large trucks rumbled in from the country, backed up alongside the curb, and unloaded hundreds of scruffy pine trees about 3-5 feet in height. These were eagerly snapped up by a holiday-hungry public.
Smells of smoky hot sausages cooking at nearby takeaway stands mingled satisfactorily with the scent of fresh-cut pine boughs. Street vendors leaned against facades and hawked Russian lacquerware, silver bracelets, neckties and pocketbooks. They never hassled, just looked hopeful.
As this is a major pedestrian thoroughfare, the broad sidewalks were always crowded. Crowded five, six abreast with men, women, children and every breed of dog in canine kingdom. With taxis zooming north and south on the street beyond, it was not a quiet oasis.
During my wanderings I never exactly got lost, but my navigational skills did waver once or twice. Then my landmarks were not exactly traditional ones, either. At Mostek (halfway down Vaclavske), for instance, I turned to the left when I saw the Persil billboard. To find the tram stop for No. 22 I turned left once more at Little Caesar's Pizza, next to the Kmart.
En route to my son's enterprise across the river, if I spotted the collection of trash cans on the first corner after the Metro exit, I knew to walk two blocks and hang a left at the Novotny (ammunition) store, and continue walking for two blocks. My north stars were stationary objects of all varieties.
Once past the grandeur of the main boulevard, the streets narrowed and meandered toward Stare Mesto (Old Town). Impromptu and festive Christmas markets intersected every street. Traditional music filled the air. Small stalls offered handmade ceramic pieces and cuckoo clocks, vegetables and Yuletide greens. Gold-painted mistletoe became a familiar sight. the Czechs use it for decoration; it has no connotation for kissing.
Although I never spoke a word of the very difficult Czech language (except ``thank you,'' which sounds like ``decoy''), I had no trouble with a ``yes''-smile or ``no''-frown. Many of the older people spoke no English, but we communicated thus. The younger Czechs all knew enough English to speak haltingly and enthusiastically about their wares.
Passing through this holiday maze one enters 0ld Town Square. And is this a square! If Vaclavske is the major spoke of the wheel that is Prague, then Stare Mesto (0ld Town) square is the hub. It is easily large enough for two football fields to be stretched out on its cobbled surface. Happily they are not.
Jan Hus surveys the activities from his rocky perch. Patient horses nod at the curbside, willing and waiting to take customers around the 0ld Town in gleaming open carriages guided by drivers in long coats and top hats. Fire-eaters, jugglers, dog-and-pony acts, hot chestnut vendors and hat salesmen with a multitude of ``hats on a stick'' all vie for space. (0f course I bought a hat.) The square itself is among, if not THE, most beautiful in the world. Both architecturally and spatially it is overwhelmingly beautiful.
Tourists and residents gather hourly to watch the medieval astronomical clock on the Staromastska Radnice (0ld Town Hall). A miniature procession of apostles, spectral figures and a crowing cock appears to announce the time of day or night, every hour on the hour. Its one of the best shows in town.
0ff to one side and around the corner is the State Theatre of Prague, carefully washed with a fresh coat of celery-green paint and trimmed with cream and gold. Here it was that young Mozart premiered his Don Giovanni. And here, too, it was that my son and I enjoyed a stellar performance of Chamber ballet one evening.
On another side of the square is the famed Gothic Tyn Church. This was closed for Mass, but I did get tickets for the Christmas Concert in neighboring St. Nicholas Church. The poster advertised that the choir would present Mozart's Alleluja and that ``The seats are heated.'' Obviously they do not know about the truth-in-advertising act; the seats were most definitely not heated. My two hours in St. Nicholas were the coldest two hours of my entire week in Eastern Europe. When the choir appeared wearing mufflers, hats and mittens I knew I was not alone in feeling chilled to the bone. The temperature did not affect their vocal chords: They sang like angels.
The area known as Hradcany (Castle Hill) is full of so much to explore. I barely covered the essentials in two days, and The Castle complex (seat of the president of the Czech Republic) is huge, and within this area looms St. Vitus Cathedral, the Basilica of St. George (the only Romanesque architecture on the hill), the National Art Museum, the Loretto Monastery and of course, Golden Lane.
How do I adequately describe this charming group of early artisans' houses dating from the 15th century? Built into the wall of the castle they are a combination of early gingerbread-house Gothic and late Walt Disney. Each tiny house is different in color, style and decor from its neighbor. They are alike in their miniature size and enormous charm. Present-day craftsmen ply their trades in them now, and No. 22, where Franz Kafka wrote in 1916 and 1917 is a bookstore. (Heavy on the Kafka, of course.)
My adventures took me to Josefov (the former Jewish quarter and cemetery) on one dark and gloomy morning, the skies matching the gray of the landscape before me. Centuries of burials have left thousands upon thousands of crumbling tombstones literally piled on top of one another in a plot of ground no larger than a half-acre. The earliest stone is dated 1439. I was alone in the cemetery, and the eerie silence conjured up ghosts of centuries past as I walked through this sacred spot.
My son did manage to meet me most evenings and we enjoyed a gala party given by PROGNOSIS, the English language newspaper in Prague. It was all the more glamorous because the party was held at the Rudolfinum, a colossal palace overlooking the Vltava. We savored good meals in smoky cafes and listened to the famous Czech writers Ivan Klima and Zdenek Urbanek read (on separate nights) from their latest books to rapt audiences at the GLOBE Bookstore & Cafe.
Prague personifies a beautiful, sophisticated aging grande dame: proud, erect, conscious of all glances and aware of all stares. She is most comfortable in the winter season, when daylight enters tentatively around 8 in the morning and exits rapidly at 4 in the afternoon. She looks better in the deepening tones of evening, better yet by candlelight. With the many Christmas lights one tends to see the sparkle and not the silt.
I repeat, the city of Prague weaves a gentle magic around its visitors, beckoning them back for one more visit, one more walk. It was the Christmas present of a lifetime. Oh, yes. The hat I purchased in Old Town Square? Red, of course!
Barbara M. Dickinson is a Roanoke artist and writer.
by CNB