JOIN USQuirky Prague
Prague isn’t straight. And neither do you expect it to be so. As the Prague-ites themselves swear that Franz Kafka, their most celebrated citizen, couldn’t have been from any other place.
Prague is devilishly handsome and incomprehensibly quirky. Even in its long and recurrently arduous history. When the summer of 1989 was bidding goodbye, instead of bracing up for the harsh winter ahead, Prague ushered in the Velvet Revolution. And the four-decade-long vice-like grip of the communist regime slackened and within a year lost its grasp. This had an illuminating effect on the fairyland-like Prague Castle up the hill, nestled like a crown, as seen from across the Vltava River. But how?
‘Tanks Rolling Out. Stones Rolling In.’
The twin news-flashes floated across the airwaves of Prague, on the radio, over the television, in groups huddled in cafes. ‘Tanks rolling out. Stones rolling in.’ Uttered in the same breath, somewhat reminiscent of Tennyson’s immortal poem. And presumably, the church bells around the city did ring out wildly, resonating across the November sky of 1990.
In 1948, people saw in horror the Soviet tanks growling their way into their adoring Prague; their children and grandchildren now witnessed the tanks rolling out of their country. And to boot, the Rolling Stones were coming. ‘Tanks rolling out. Stones rolling in.’ If that wasn’t poetic, what is?
From his hotel room, Mick Jagger was fascinated by the view of Prague Castle. And was equally dismayed to find the castle vanish in the night sky. The Stones were back in Prague in 1995. And this time, they presented President Václav Havel, a Rolling Stones fan, with a remote switch. Click, and the castle lighted up against the night sky. The Stones spent around $32,000 on their own. For Prague’s sake.
Unreal
The Old Town, quite frankly, is not real. And you have to pinch yourself to convince you aren’t dreaming. The feeling crept up as soon as I stepped onto Charles Bridge from the western side to go to Old Town across the river. The bridge could well be some clever set-up of medieval Europe in Las Vegas, complete with its street musicians — one of them playing the 1,500-year-old instrument didgeridoo, artists drawing portraits and cartoons, the gothic Bridge Tower waiting for me on the other side, imposing gothic and art-nouveau buildings flanking on either side of the Bridge Tower. I crossed the bridge anyway and thankfully the tram car cawing across assured me all these were for real. That’s when I spotted the Museum of Medieval Torture Instruments. Did I read it right? If at that point I had thought this was bizarre enough, I was to discover more.
I got sucked into the warren of lanes of Old Town where the old and the new licentiously rubbed on to each other. The lane I took widened and flowed into a plaza, a part of the expansive Old Town Square.
A group of tourists had gathered around, all staring up a church tower which has a kind of clock half way up. This is the Astronomical Clock, one of the landmarks of Prague. As a tourist attraction, it is quite a disappointment, honestly, the elaborate and animated striking of the hour notwithstanding. But like so many things in Prague, it has another side to it. The university teaches a whole course on the astronomical aspect of that clock. At one side of the square, amid grand structures around, stands a rather innocuous white building with a plaque proclaiming ‘Albert Einstein stayed there’, and Lukas, my local friend, added that Kafka used to come over from his home just behind the Hussite Church across the square. And the two, they played violin together.
The Hussite Church, a baroque structure, stands testimony to Prague’s pioneering impulse, always ahead of its time, pushing the boundary, bearing the brunt. Jan Hus (and the term ‘Hussite’ comes from him), whose statue adorns the square, reformed the catholic church a good 100 years before Martin Luther. He was burnt on the stake, but the Hussites survived the Hapsburgs, the communists, and though diminished in number, held on to their faith.
There are churches which oscillated between being Catholic and Hussite, like the swing of an erratic pendulum, depending on who won the day’s fight. If you look beneath the skin of the spectacle of Prague, you will still find the scars of those bloody conflicts, not laid bare screaming for sympathy, but not altogether hidden either. But that didn’t rob its citizens of their humour and sense of irreverence. Yes, irreverence is a recurring theme of this nonconforming city. As a case in point, after getting rid of the communists, they even decided to have a Museum of Communism.
It wasn’t easy for me to search it down, but I found it placed cheekily in an alley, stashed between a McDonald’s and a casino.
Bizarre is normal
Back in the maze of lanes of Old Town. It was past evening and the city was getting ready for its self-indulgent nightlife it is famous for. It wasn’t time yet to hit the nightclubs, some of the largest and sleaziest, I’m told, in Europe. But Prague being Prague, serendipity is a given companion in those tracks, eclectic and exhilarating, and you know you have wandered into the bull’s eye of the dartboard of Bohemia when suddenly you find yourself at the doorstep of the Sex Machines Museum. A mechanical device is tickling the most intimate part of a feminine mannequin placed strategically at the entrance, while a smartly dressed young lady urged me to sit on a special chair and get the measure of my sex drive, free!
To explore the more stimulating things inside, there’s a US$ 15 ticket.
I decided to settle down with Prague’s famous dumplings and crispy duck roast in a restaurant (frequented by locals) that Lukas recommended, and to wash them down with, as you’d know, my gentle reader, the famous brands of beer which many think as German, but are indeed Czech.