The faces of Prague

How to describe Prague?

I had come to believe that this city, once oppressed by the grey strictures of communism, must be gritty and grim-faced to this day. To be sure, local neighborhoods have their share of stern men in watch caps and buildings decorated with stolidly carved workers and soldiers.  But the city is also, and at once, medieval, Bohemian, crafted in Art Nouveau and cobblestones (forget your stilettos, ladies), Classical, Romantic, hilariously inexpensive, bursting with tourist traps and bizarre street performers, a delight for students and backpackers who come here to party. It has Roma, of course, dark gypsies working their hustles up and down the midnight streets, but it also has a Roma Pride festival.

One of the more creative street performers we saw, far better than the usual painted people acting as statues along tourist routes.  This horse lay sleeping on his instrument until someone on the sidewalk stepped tentatively forward. Then he sprang to life and launched into a lively, discordant tune, punctuating the score by bashing his snout on the keyboard. Another pair of performers demonstrated the gullibility of any audience when it is presented with a mystery. In the middle of a square stood a six-foot-tall, squirming bag. "I think it is a bear!" one little girl cried. "Maybe it's two bears," I replied. By the time the performers peeled their way out of the sack, what a let-down to find they were merely two young backpackers with a gimmick.

The town sells more whimsical toys, brightly colored and pop-up children's books, and marionettes than were ever dreamed of in FAO Schwartz's imagination. They are grotesque in such a playful way that few could truly frighten a child.

Prague is plastered with signs reading "Divadlo this" and "that Divadlo," so of course I had to ask what divadlo meant. That the city is so full of these signs reflects what a concert- and performance-oriented place it is. Divadlo means "theater," and any day of the week, one has the choice of countless concerts and performances to attend.


But one can also hear strains of Mozart and Dvořák on the street. We heard a Strauss orchestral piece played, entirely pizzicato, by a virtuosic seven-person string chamber orchestra in the grand Municipal House. The crowd went wild.

Every dog owner here seems to be a Whisperer who has trained his or her pet to follow leashless and sit like a statue outside whatever shop or bar the owner is visiting. These dogs are strikingly different from U.S. and (now that I've seen them) Italian canines. Not only are they either prancing, foxlike mini-Pomeranians or long-legged Viszlas, but their training regimen seems to have come from the communist era. The dogs in Italy, by contrast, are just dogs. There, one finds golden retrievers, schnauzers, min-pins, and bulldogs. They are leashed and act like dogs.  No dog statues in Italy.

Here, as in the rest of Europe that I've seen, restaurants allow a leisurely pace just slightly above a napping state. Unlike American establishments that rush one out by presenting the check as soon as a dessert fork is set down, one must ask for the check here. What must they think of us Americans for finishing our meals and paying up so quickly? I could have stayed in any number of places all day long.

In Amsterdam, we feared for our lives crossing the street. Here, motorists screech to a halt at crosswalks as if pedestrians were surrounded by force fields.

And, unlike we Puritan Americans, Europeans, male and female, have neither a problem with public nose picking--sometimes up to the first finger joint--nor with giving one's nose a good loud blast when necessary. The Seinfeld episode in which a new girlfriend dropped Jerry for the mere appearance of picking his nose, in the private space of his own car, would thoroughly baffle these earthy people.  "No pick!" Jerry protested.  "Huh?" a European would reply.

Of course there were fellow travelers and other transient workers whom we met as we moved through the city, and will remember.

The formidable Sasha, guardian of the breakfast room at Hotel Golden City-Garni. Nothing was allowed to leave the breakfast room, so I smuggled out Bill's bread and cheese stuffed into paper napkins. Nothing went quite as expected at the Hotel Golden City, whose rooms looked like turn-of-the-century classrooms.  I tried to phone Bill in the room while I was out doing laundry (see blog about  laundromat), only to learn that I must first call the owner's cell phone to be put through. It was easier just to leave a message. One pleasant girl at the front desk spoke very little English, instead nodding and smiling, "Yes," no matter what one asked. We prayed for her days off.

Our tour guide, Ladislav, who gave us a Cliff's Notes overview of all the places we want to see in more depth later, when we return. He spoke English in an earnest, robotic monotone but was also able to answer such complex questions as "Are those rain spouts in the gargoyles' mouths?" and "Whom were the people in Prague Castle defending themselves from, exactly?" (Somehow, it was the Swedes.) See how attentive and puzzled Bill appears.

Erna, from Belgium, and Janine from Normandy, retired and on holiday in Prague. In the hippie days of 1969, Janine's great adventure was taking the Greyhound across the United States, seeing the moon launch from the beach near Cape Canaveral, then watching it on TV.

Anand and Sonavi Desai from Mumbai. A marriage based, not on caste, but on love, for Anand (whose name appropriately means "happy") could not have even spoken to his wife twenty years ago. She brightened when I told her I worked for a publisher, knew of Cengage, and told us she is CEO of Indus Source Books, a press specializing in spiritual topics. She taught us--though they are so alien to our thinking that I can't remember them--the key questions one asks of a potential date in India. Fortunately, love mattered more to them.

One day, we were sitting at a sidewalk cafe when a street musician began playing "La vie en rose"
on his accordion, in front of a Lebowski shop across from us. "I bet his moustache is penciled on," I quipped. The store's staff shooed him away, but we stopped to thank and tip him for his performance. Trained as a pianist, Dominic spends the cold half of the year on the street corners of Florida and St. Croix. His moustache was penciled on.

Eventually, we somehow found ourselves at an underground neighborhood joint (pun intended) called the Woodoo Bar, where one must prove one is not polizie by being embraced by one local or another. We managed this, and Pavel proved to be one of our most poignant encounters. He had lost his father just three days earlier and couldn't bear to talk about it. So we talked of other things--travels to Bali and Scandinavia, and where one might safely find weed. "Geez, I can't make this the 'Weed Tour of the World' blog,' I whined. "Why not?" laughed Pavel. Then he proceeded to tell us how he once made herb pancakes at home, left them on the kitchen counter, and fell promptly asleep. When he awoke, he found his mom splitting her face laughing at Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and his now-deceased dad asking her what was so damn funny. One of the pancakes was missing. She never knew, and he never told her.