Yes, Frague. Pragueurt just doesn't sound right.
Where's Frague, you ask? Why, it's where you are when you've landed in Prague after trudging through Frankfurt, so your fun's all fraught with frustration. Frankfurt was going to have been a pleasant stop on a long list of German cities to be visited, starting with Munich and ending in Berlin, but moving through the country revealed insurmountable social problems; the kind that make even a few days' stay untenable. That we stayed in Frankfurt at all was largely due to the need for some rest, as rejecting cities one after another can really take it out of you. For my part, the rest mostly consisted of surfing the metro system to hunt for nouns (you know, people, places, and things) and reorganizing logistics to focus on the Czech Republic instead of Germany.
Some notable scenes along the way: it was quickly established that the Konstablerwache metro station and surrounding area is the local hang-out-with-open-bottles-and-slum-it-up pseudoparty spot. Not that all of Frankfurt doesn't have some portion of this non-scene, but Konstablerwache is the epicenter; with hundreds of people with nothing better to do bumming about, a pair of Turkish hustlers were working it so damn hard they actually hit me twice, in reasonably distant locations, in the quarter hour I spent there before ducking back onto a train.
Driving around aimlessly for an afternoon's entertainment, we crossed paths with an enormous truck exuding an enormous smell. Through tiny, barred slats near the top of the container, I spotted eyes. Enormous eyes, full of sleep and something I can only interpret as sadness, though I really want to believe it was anything else. I don't know if it was an elephant, or a bear...all I know is that it was very big, and I remain very haunted by the image, moved to nod along to Williams' prayer "for the wild at heart kept in cages". If only there were something redeemable, worth being sacrificed for, in that morass of confusion and complexity outside the bars....
I've not much to add in the way of pictures for Frankfurt, especially as what there was to be photographed mostly debuted on Trilema. This meagre offering is the repose of a given evening, perusing a very nicely illustrated book on birds while drinking an over-syruped Hugo at the hotel bar.
The peace was soon disturbed by a group of very drunk conference-goers wearing lots of coats but not shoes and shuffling middleagedly to Depeche Mode.
Oh, right, and there was this thing. Fuck this thing. It's tiny, it has no driver, and its front looks exactly the same as its back. So it'll just stop, and suddenly go backwards, as though that's what it intended to do all along. I'm not riding these things like I'm not having dogs with two heads and no ass. Probefahrt? I don't think so!
On which note, let's ditch this place. Prague took a couple of tries to be hospitable also, but it managed, which is good 'cause it's very much worth seeing. There are more monuments and historic buildings than you're likely to cram into an even generous schedule, but the real charm's in seemingly innocuous beauties like this apartment building entryway:
Or in the embellishment of what'd probably be just another hrushceba in most European towns:
Or on a set of seemingly random doors doing more homage to the arts and sciences than a thousand US universities:
Or even in the institutional metro seat upholstery, lovingly embellished with the local castle and friends, and done in a pleasant purple1:
This is not at all to belittle Prague's deservedly famous landmarks. Even if they are a little shy amidst the confangled whatsitry of the modern age.
The past here knew something about construction, and the present knows something about caring for it.
Prague's also, blessedly, not very pretentious.
Possibly because it remembers harder times.
With so much to look at, and a great deal of people to talk to, the Mucha Museum was put off for a few days, even, despite its having been the focal point of this city, as far as I was concerned, on first getting in.
Most of Alphonse Mucha's glorious women are therein exhibited, sure --but they're a kind of screen print, which honestly leaves a lot to be desired in the way of examining the artist's hand. This seems obvious now, but I somehow wasn't quite expecting it, and I left feeling...unenlightened, though the visit was still very much enjoyable in a childlike sense. Unrelated to the museum, I picked up two very fine Muchasian artifacts so as to work on countering my rentally-enforced collection at home.
Before this, to keep things nicely out of order, The Juicy Bimbo and I went for a look at Charles University, founded in 1348 and rather hurting for students by now, judging from the ~empty halls. Maybe they're all busy being modern women architects?
Know this: some doors are closed.
But others remain open.
...And space invaders are just waiting for you to drop your guard.
Prague being exhausted for now, but hopefully not forever, we fluttered a handkercheif and prowled along back to Budapest, the central european buffer town, just in time for
Thus ends another chapter of another tour of the vacation-within-a-vacation (with vacation frosting). More to come once the vacation from the vacation is over and we can get back to vacationing. I don't know anymore.
- When's the last time you saw anything but primary colors and shades of gray in institutional fabrics? [↩]