Prague 3

This morning we explored the historic district of Prague, consisting of beautiful palaces, bridges, castles, and churches.  I got lots of great photos (even though I still can’t post them—I have yet to come across internet that is fast enough to upload photos), so I won’t do these buildings injustice by attempting to describe them in detail.

Since this was our last day in Prague, I thought I would attempt to summarize the city.  There seems to be a lot of forgotten culture and forgotten history here.  Prague was once a powerful and prosperous city but was in decline for many years.  Particularly during the Soviet occupation, any shred of national pride or vibrant culture was nearly erased.  When USSR dominion was so abruptly halted, a huge influx of culture, primarily American, filled this waiting vacuum.  This is why, once you leave the historic district, the feel of the place is very much like a young American city—complete with American stores, music, and restaurants (there is a fairly prominent TGI Fridays).  The most amusing juxtaposition is that the people don’t speak English very well.  You’ll see a restaurant owner rocking out to M.I.A.’s Paper Planes, only to find out he doesn’t speak a word of the language the song is written in (debatably English).  That really happened by the way.  One more thing:  As usual, the subway system is phenomenal.  I am truly envious.

This city also marked my first experience with 100% communication failure.  In every other non-English encounter, I have managed to fumble around a few words in other languages and use body language and hand motions for everything else.  A rather desperate sounding Czech approached a group of us in the metro station and was trying to ask us for something.  It wasn’t money, but I honestly have no idea beyond that.  He seemed to speak a very small amount of English, but I think he had the meanings of the words he was using confused.  He would frantically refer to objects with words that can’t be used to describe objects at all.  Anyway, he eventually gave up and left.  At that point I was feeling rather embarrassed at being monolingual and expecting other people to speak my language (a little pretentious of me, don’t you think?).  Anyway, this situation of failing at human interaction was a fairly large culture shock for me.  I understood the concept of other human beings that I absolutely could not communicate with, but actually being in the situation seemed absurd.

Prague 2

I’m going to stop mentioning class at the beginning of every blog post.  We have class a lot of mornings.  You get it.  On our first full day in Prague, we went to a modern art museum downtown.  It had the widest range of quality that I’ve ever seen in a museum (I now consider myself a seasoned art critic—I’m being facetious here, but I’ve seen quite a lot of art in the past two weeks).   There were paintings by Manet, Picasso, Van Gogh, and a number of other extremely well-known artists—and then, in the same museum, there was a spoon with paper ears taped to the sides.

Anyone who is aware of my poor penmanship (that would be everybody) would be amused to learn that we are required to sketch 3-5 works in each museum.  I will take some pictures of my notebook and post them online at some point for your amusement.

Prague 1

We woke up this morning and shoved off for Prague.  Prague is a really interesting town to me.  While virtually every city in Europe has its own share of ancient history, Prague has two stories—the once affluent cultural center and, more recently, the capital of an oppressed communist state.  On the way here, I listened to a great composition that depicts the turmoil in Prague during communist rule.  “Music for Prague” by Karl Husa was introduced to me several years ago by Michael Brown, and I have really enjoyed listening to it.

Fans of Karl Husa would be shocked upon visiting Prague for the first time.  These days, it’s a rapidly growing and prosperous city.  The sky-line is dotted with new buildings and they have the most efficient subway system I have ever used.  We didn’t have much time to explore the city this first night, but we did go to a strings concert at around 8 pm.  I’ll probably have more to say about the city and what it has to offer in the next two days.