Is this the Praha I used to know?

I last came to Praha when I was at University in 1993, when the country had just split.

It was common practice at the time that University students organised a trip abroad half way through their degrees. That year we came up with two choices; Tunisia and Praha. I could have gone for either of them, as, unfortunately, at the time, I wasn’t well-travelled. I’d never flown, and the only place I had been outside Spain was Portugal, although I was lucky enough to have been to many parts of Spain with my parents. I had some friends, who at the age of 25, had never seen the sea . That I had never been abroad wasn’t unusual. Spanish people had never been good travellers. It is only in the last fifteen years that going abroad has become trendy. Still, it is rare to see Spaniards in unusual destinations.

Tunisia wasn’t appealing to me for my first time abroad. Praha, on the other hand, sounded more sophisticated. It was part of Europe and it had just gone through the fall of the communist regime, a historic event which I had always been very interested in.

Forgetting things as time goes by is inevitable. Although it could be an advantage, it could also be quite annoying. It was a special trip for me; my first time abroad, my first contact with a different culture, and I can hardly remember it. Perhaps, if any of my friends who came on this trip happen to read this post, they may help bring those good memories back.

Yesterday I tried hard to remember the places we went, the things we saw, where we ate, where we went clubbing. Nothing. If only I could have those photos with me…

However, although I don’t remember much of Praha, I have the feeling that this place had changed massively over the last 23 years.

Today is our second day in Praha. We are visiting the castle and its surroundings.

The city looks very quiet on this side of the river, which is rather strange, as today is Saturday. The fact that it is only 9.30am may have something to do with it. Yes, you have read correctly, it is 9.30am. The 2wanderes are early birds today.

We spoke to soon, as we are walking up the castle, people start to appear.

The castle’s complex consists of a cathedral, basilica, and a a few palaces. There are two ticket prices; full or reduced. We go for the latter, which includes the four main buildings.

We first go to the top to see the views, the main reason why we always visit castles.

Praha is still a unique place.

The centre has kept to its Renaissance houses style. The modern part of the city has kept intact from aggressive, skyscrapers, typical of a western capitalist city.

A beautiful picture of the Vltava river, although not the Danube, it is equally stunning.

St Charles bridge. No matter what time of the day it is, it is always packed with people.

It is the huge amount of tourists that I cannot recall. Now, the brain can play nasty, distort memories. I may not remember because I came in low season; or because I didn’t mind tourists at the time, partly because I was also one of them (you can call me snob, but these days, I think we are ‘travellers’ rather than ‘tourists’). Praha was still the unknown, mysterious, gloomy city, which was waking up slowly from its communist hibernation. These days, it has changed, a lot and too fast. To the point that they have lost control of it, they are not managing the affluence of tourists particularly well. Praha no longer looks like a living city, but is now a living museum.

The number of museums is phenomenal, toy museum, museum of culture, museum of artefacts, this museum, that museum I am surprised not to see a museum of London buses. You get the impression this is not because of the merit of museums, the education value, the quality it will add to visitors experience of Praha. You do not expect to see any locals here, this is purely a commercial exercise to extract as many euro out of the tourists pocket! GDR

As we arrive in the main square they are changing the guard. There are too many people to film this, but the music is impressive.

Flying buttresses, amazing. These used to be big solid walls that propped up the main nave. Later they realised they could carve out much of this solidity leaving these dramatic, delicate arches supporting the wall, and using a lot less stone in the process. This was all trial an error, no doubt with the loss of many lives, all in the name of god, but the result is beautiful. GDR

The first out of our four sights included in the reduced price ticket is the Basilica of St George.

Strangely, the place is not cramped with statues, paints and images of saints, virgins, jesus’s, gods…

We fall in love with the light that the stained glass windows create, it is magnificent.

This window is impressive for its size, the symmetry of its patterns and the light it brings into the church.

Beehive window style also play an important role in lighting the church.

Sometimes, beauty can be achieved with very little.

This window, on the other hand, it has everything you can possible think of; convoluted forms, multicolour glasses, biblical scenes. There is so much detail that I find it hard to appreciate it all.

And that is the problem of building such large, complex structures built over centuries. Inevitable, many architects and artists, with different styles, get involved in the design, and eventually, these buildings end up lacking uniformity and therefore, they are hard to comprehend.

We have ticked one sight out of four. We move on to the next one; The Old Royal Palace.

We see St Vitus Cathedral from outside, as it is not included in the reduced ticket. Do I remember it?

…I don’t think so, considering that I don’t even remember coming here…

There is a lovely stepped spiral staircase hidden beneath all of that carved stone somewhere. GDR

There is not much to comment on the Old Royal Palace, other than on the big salon, where kings were coroneted. I feel the salon is worth mentioning because of the scale of it and the beautiful intertwined forms of the arches

which have not internal support.

We have to photograph this, a replica of the Bohemian crown jewels, a vivid example that money can’t buy style.

It looks like some naff depiction some child would draw of a crown, oversized gaudy gems only appropriate for ill educated monarchies and rap stars! GDR

This church was our last sight. It didn’t leave any impression on us, to the extent that we don’t even remember its name. It was poorly lit and small.

And they made it even smaller by placing a set of benches in the central nave, forcing visitors to walk awkwardly around the sites. They haven’t thought this through, really .

After ten minutes of negotiating with people, we walk up to the altar and go down to the crypt, which is nice and cool, and rather sinister. That may explain why there is nobody here.

Our ticket also includes a visit to the Golden Lane. The Golden lane is a very narrow street dated from the 15th century. It comprises 11 historic houses, which have been decorated to show the life of the employees of the castle who once worked, ate, drank and slept in them.

This place packed is with people, you can’t even walk, although this is becoming a norm in Praha. Golden Lane consists of tiny coloured houses, some of them are linked to famous people. For example, house no 22 is connected with Franz Kafka who used this house for approximately two years.

This place looks fake. How much do the houses resemble the original dwellings?

Were the furniture, objects and carpets the original they had? The workers weren’t wealthy. This looks to me more like decoration used by middle class people. If that is the case, this is rather disingenuous. But I guess, as long as it looks pretty, your ticket is worth it.

A medieval museum of armoury within the former 14th-century fortification is also accessible from here, so we pop in.

We go through it quickly. There is so much excitement you can get with armour,

swords and guns. I didn’t realise that children were allowed to fight in those times.

Gary surprises me here. He has been captivated by this sword-gun hybrid. He has been looking at it for minutes, trying to figure out how it worked. Working out systems is one of his passions.

The museum has a room dedicated to torture methods.

And it is packed. No matter how much we hypocritically deny it, human beings are so morbid.

The room is a bit of disappointment. It looks like my grandmother’s attic. A tiny room stuck with a pile of dusty, rusty, old items.

Most of these items we are familiar with, not because we use them, of course, but because we visited the museum of torture in Toledo, Spain, back in November (see our previous post). I don’t want to sound macabre but that was a proper torture museum, and not this one.

Still, people queue to take photos. I do the same.

This ‘comfortable’ chair must have been really effective, it appears in every torture museum we have been. The heretic sat here naked and be pushed down from the shoulders for ‘extra feeling’. It is just horrendous.

Anyway, it is lunchtime and we are thinking of heading off. Part of us feels like we could stay in Praha a bit longer; part of us feels we have got a good gist of of the place. Staying for another half day would mean more museums, more wandering with lots of people around, this doesn’t really appeal to us. So we decide to drive to our next stop: Cesky Krumlov, a town 100 mks south Praha.

That lovely landscape again. I will always remember Czech Republic as being one big golden wheat field.

After two hours, we arrive at Cesky Krumlov. When we get out of Dora at our stopover, we find a nice surprise. Don’t miss our next post.

SM