On each of the two days we visited Prague we drove the 60
miles from Jablonec into one of the city’s Park & Rides that connects to
the centre by metro. Both the parking and the metro were cheap (park: 60p all
day; metro: £1 per person each way).
It perhaps suits us to think of constructions from the
Communist era as clunky and crude compared to our Western equivalents, but
credit where credit’s due and the metro is a model of design and efficiency.
This is our Park & Ride station; the train itself is on the left side, and it
was all beautifully clean.
The centre of Prague is predictably impressive. You know
you’re in ‘A’ list tourist territory by the large numbers of tourist groups
gathered around a coloured umbrella or flag, and the Hop-on Hop-off buses, and
the Segway tours, and the street performers. I can’t complain because we’re one
of the visitors.
We started at the Old Town Square; this is one side of the
square, with the Tyn church dominating. You’ll notice the crowds are pretty
dominating too.
The most popular monument is on the other side of the square.
It’s the astronomical clock that forms part of the old Town Hall. Crowds gather
to watch the hour strike when parades of mechanical figures perform a
set-piece, Death, a Jew with his moneybags, a Turk, and so on. This is the
clock, but not in action, although the coloured umbrella clearly indicates a
flock assembling in anticipation of the hourly event.
In another must-see square, Wenceslas Square, we happened on
a small military tattoo designed to showcase marching and manoeuvring skills.
Some of it was quite entertaining, but on the whole it didn’t quite hang
together as it was too disjointed with a huge mixture of different military
participants.
This troop looks quite scary, as if they might be coming to
pluck you out of the crowd and whisk you away for interrogation.
Yet the next detachment could be the British Legion on
Armistice Day Parade back in the UK (apart from the rifles with fixed
bayonets).
Wenceslas Square is a large oblong boulevard with elegant buildings
mostly 100 to 150 years old containing up-market shops- even Debenhams and M
& S, where we had lunch.
The M & S café was part of the food hall and operated on
a different basis to the UK. We wanted soup, so asked the assistant (she spoke
some English) what sort it was. She led us into the food hall and pointed to
the soup section. We understood: pick any can and they warm it up. Bread rolls
to go with the soup? Just choose them
from the bread dept. We took our selection back to the café where they charged
us the food hall prices and a few minutes later hot soup, rolls & coffee. All
for about £3.
The square is named after “Good King Wenceslas” of Christmas
carol fame, a revered Czech historical figure. I’m not too sure why, because he
was a duke rather than a king and seems to have fallen out with a lot of people.
He was murdered by his brother Boleslaw the Cruel in 927 AD at the age of 22 so
hadn’t had much time to do a lot of good.
We visited the castle on the Hop-on Hop-off bus. It was one
of the largest castle complexes in the world, and is a huge palace rather than
a moats and keep kind of castle. It’s still the administrative centre of the
Czech Republic and includes the President’s official residence. The castle
profile from river shows the spires of St Vitus cathedral on the skyline. After
all that build-up, it doesn’t look that grand in the photo, just something in
the distance, but it’s a nice shot of the water.
It’s a lot more impressive when we get there. This is the
entrance into the first courtyard.
Then through the second courtyard and into the third, which
is a large square, where stands the President’s residence and St Vitus
Cathedral. But wait, there is another military parade just starting. This one
is different and starts with a display of precision riding by the President’s
motor cycle outriders. Quite brilliant.
The soldiers also performed some impressive drills to the accompaniment
of the military band you can just see dressed in red uniforms behind the soldiers’
ranks.
St Vitus Cathedral was started in 1344 and officially opened
in 1929! It was worked on all those years but still has the appearance, inside
and out, of a typical gothic cathedral like, say, Lincoln or Peterborough. The art
nouveau stained glass is less than 100 years old, and is beautiful. It looks
unexpectedly in harmony with the cathedral’s ancient appearance; in other old
churches modern stained glass designs usually seem to jar.
There are some nice views of the Old Town from the castle
gardens and we descend via a series of steps towards the river which we cross
on the Charles Bridge to arrive back in the Old Town. The bridge is one of the
icons of Prague and dates back to the 14th century. It’s full of
stalls and buskers and crowds.
On the Hop-on Hop-off tour we stopped to look at the second
largest sports stadium in the world, built in the 1920’s. It appears nearly
derelict, because it is.
The problem is that the football pitch is surrounded by a
large grassed area to cater for the massed keep-fit assemblies popular when the
stadium was built. So the stands are too far back to see the football clearly. People
seemed to put up with this until the fall of communism, but not since, and
keep-fit activities have changed too, so nobody uses it. Perhaps they should
turn it into a Hop-on Hop-off bus depot.
So that’s us done in the Czech Republic; the areas we stayed
in and visited were part of the ancient kingdom of Bohemia. Especially in the
Jablonec region we noticed a number of older men with long hair and scruffy,
outlandish clothes whose appearance you would describe as, yes, bohemian.
Next move on is a two day journey to the Black Forest.
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