After a day from hell, I have arrived in Prague. I am staying at a very nice apartment in the Letna area of the city.
Yesterday was not fun. I guess more accurately, yesterday and the day before: three hours on the tarmac in Raleigh before we took off, which caused me to miss my flight to Prague out of Atlanta. Then a flight to Paris upon which I did not sleep much. In Paris I had a seven-hour layover, but I was too tired and dazed to take the train in to explore Paris for a few hours. And finally a flight to Prague. What was suposed to be a 18-or-so-hour trip morphed into 31 hours.
Anyway, now that I am here, I am quite happy. I have uploaded my photos to Flickr. My apartment is in a cool little building. And I have a balcony! Also, there’s a bike lane on my little street, which was totally unexpected. The walking areas are properly marked as well with the required haberdashery.
Today I went to two of the local parks, Letna and Stromovka. Letna is a large hill that sits directly to the north of the center of the city, and is probably best known now for a giant metronome sitting upon it. This is the same location, however, that the world’s largest monument to Stalin stood. Now the area is known for skateboarding. There was also a large group of preteens having a dance party, which was odd, especially considering that this was at 11:00 am or so on a national holiday (VE day). The plaza, once statue base, is not as well maintained as I am guessing it was when Stalin stood above it.
The park is much larger than this, however, with beer gardens, bike and running paths, as well as some great views of the city.
Next I went through Stromovka park to see the old fair grounds, Vystavizte. There was some sort of athletics trade fair on, including people testing out these crazy leg extender spring things.
Most of the fair was inside, in quite beautiful rooms. According to my guidebook, it was in the latter room that the Communist congresses met. In it, the fair people set up a big tent, which I thought was interesting: this beautiful urban room in which people thought to put an outdoorsy meeting place (the tent is far too large for one or even eight people). The shapes kind of match eachother, though. Once you leave this space, this tension continues, with temporary paint gun course and some sort of additional fair space. The tent is bucky-ball modern, the paint gun course is a soft bubble of a Quonset hut, and the additional building is kind of trying to imitate traditional architecture with its windows. Meanwhile, the original building could have been a train station. Interseting stuff.
There was also this building, which I post for those of you who took Historic Preservation. Remember there was one house that Myrick showed us where the panelling had painted-on shadows giving depth? Myrick also said that the painter was Russian, and this building in Prague shows the type of shadowed panelling that is painted onto lots of Czech buildings. As you can see, it isn’t trying to fool the eye.
One last thing from the fair: this guy. Maybe if Amtrak had such cuddly mascots it would get more riders?