the madness of Czech New Years

Prague during New Years was utter madness.

I’ve been to my fair share of mad New Year celebrations.

There was one in the small Georgian town of Bolnisi. Georgians are a bit on the insane side with fireworks, in that kids’ favorite hobby there through the month of December is to shoot people with Roman candles and lob around M80s like they're dubloons at Mardi Gras.

The view from Vitkov

Besides that, the town had organized a concert, with a grand fireworks display afterwards. The only problem was that during the display, one of the rocket tubes fell over and started firing the fireworks into the crowd. I imagine probably one of those danged kids did It, but I’ve no evidence.

Tbilisi itself is equally crazy. I spent one New Years on a rooftop, with basically a three-hundred and sixty degree viewing of fireworks for about thirty minutes, enough explosions to make you question if the Russians had decided to invade that night or not.

I tell you, when it comes to fireworks, Americans are nothing but pansies. We can blow up any country in the world, but when it comes to shooting off a little powder into the sky for a nice view, we’re completely incapable and terrified of it. Europeans and others completely lack that fear, and they don’t have all the nanny laws that Americans have built in, since they don’t care as much about frivolous litigation. Americans love that crap. Just look at who we voted in?

Prague

Prague though definitely ranked up there.

It’s tempting of course to book something expensive to party through some night that’s supposed to be memorable because a 16th century Pope told us it was.

But we decided to take the cheap option.

We started the night at Brix Bar and Hostel in Zizkov. Brix had all the appearances of a cool hipster hostel, if you had no sense of olfactory. As soon as you open the door, you’re hit with a wall of smoke. Even if people weren’t smoking, the place would still wreak of stale, chemical laced tobacco, not the good loose leaf your granddaddy used to smoke on the patio.

The bar though was a good thrill. Lots of people, lots of friends and locals, not what you’d expect from a hostel bar on such a holiday. The beers were nicely priced and the staff friendly enough, filling up to-go cups so that we could walk up Vitkov Hill well-stocked. Another difference with most cities in America--you can drink beer on the streets.

Vitkov Hill

For those of you who’ve been to Old Town Prague, you might have spotted Vitkov. It’s the one past the rail station and the highways, with the giant equestrian statue on it. That monument belongs to the great Czech hero, Jan Zizka, for whom the neighborhood is named, who defeated King Sigismund during the Hussite Wars. I think it says something about Czechs that there are more rebels on their list of national heroes than there are kings.

The Hussites had taken Prague and Sigismund had sent down an army to quell the rebellion. They set up camp and fortress in the king’s vineyards on the hill, but were quickly attacked by the Hussite general, who led his armies to victory, and sparked an eventual consolidation of Prague’s fortresses. The battle was immortalized by the painter Alfons Mucha in his “After the Battle of Vitkov Hill”, featured in his grand opus, The Slavic Epic.

After the Battle of Vitkov Hill, by Alfons Mucha

War returns to Vitkov

For anyone spending New Years up on Vitkov, it would have seemed that the war had returned. Rockets began their red glares even before the countdown to midnight began. Across Prague Roman candles and smaller peonies and horsetails started their bursting above the tiled rooftops. And then when that countdown finally hit midnight, the real fun began.

On cue, the entire city seemed to explode. Chrysanthemums, kamuros, spiders—fireworks of all kind erupted. The main city staging grounds from what I could tell were over the Old Town Square, Letna, and Vitkov.

You read that right. Vitkov.

Where we were standing.

Suddenly from directly above us, explosion after explosion pulsed through the air, the thick mass of people immediately swung their heads up as bits of paper and chunks of petrified powder made their way down.

The smoke was nearly impenetrable.

Fireworks launching off Vitkov

It’s hard to gauge when the official display ended, as people put down their own sets of rockets and lit them up. We left about an hour after, fatigued by the constant explosions, quite satisfied though with everything, a stranger’s bottle of champagne in my hand quickly being drained.

This would never have gone down in the US, I tell you what. Anyone remaining in America during Trump’s reign should do themselves a favor and visit a European country at New Years.

5 best Christmas markets in Europe

the best tour of Prague isn't actually a tour

The hordes of Chinese sweep past, followed by the Russians, the Americans, the British. Gobs of single-ethnicity armies positioning themselves for better sights, better shots, each led by some embittered Czech, or expat perhaps, holding an umbrella high in the air, waving it around in circles, marshalling them onward, onward, onward! And they follow, mindlessly, thoughtlessly, carelessly, those lagging behind scoped out by the derelicts and ne’er-do-wells, hiding in the corners and near the beer stands of Vaclav Square. Up Na Prikope, past, around, down Myslbek, or any other nameless alleyway, towering sentinels of Baroque and neo-Romanesque and gargoyles and angels leering down at the masses. In a group one can never be truly in the city, bound by the authorities of the tour leader. You can’t linger long, you can’t skip through what’s interesting, you're bound. 

There, behind the trdelnik stand, lurks a ne'er do well

You're bound by the umbrella. The Segway. The bicycle. There are naturally benefits to any tour, but the real adventurer, those like myself, mock such contrivances. I will not be hedged in. I will not be defeated in my conquering of the city. But I do hours of reading; reading tour guides, history books, Wikipedia, whatever I can do to discover the city in advance, though I still manage to miss a lot.

There is another way though.

A couple of months ago, someone sent me an email from the contact page on my main site. They were working for a new startup.

Old Town Square in Prague. Don't buy beer in a café here, but in the street.

Just in the same way a museum has an audioguide, they were working on developing audioguides for cities. What are cities but great big outdoor museums anyway?

And wouldn’t I like to write and record an audio tour for Prague?

Why not? 

One that let's people follow along at their own pace, stopping when they want to stop, lingering when they want to linger? And even they can stop and wander off midway through and pick it up the next day?

One of the best views in Prague, 360 degrees around.

The route I chose wasn’t anything edgy. Just the route that I would want, first coming in to Prague. The King’s Road. The old coronation trail that the Bohemian Kings followed down, from one end of old town, through the old main road, across the medieval bridge, and up to the Castle. And the Castle is not necessarily something easy to find. So, I spent some time researching the more notable things and then set to work.

The process initially took a long time. I had to first mark the places on a map to coordinate the GPS triggers, and then write about each place. Their editor would then add a few notes, or question for clarity. Then back to me and then finally, after another approval, it would be ready for my sweet and sultry voice to vibe it out on the ribbon of the mic.

And there you have it, the final product.

Charles' Bridge

Now you too can have a super cheap audio tour from yours truly, guiding you through the Prague old town, telling you where not to get beers, where you can buy the best trdelnik, and find one of the best views of the city. And it’s like I’m right here with you.

It’s a brilliant concept really, and after trying it myself, I’d have to admit that my tour is awesome and highly recommended by the most trustworthy of judges of my work. And you'll lose 30 pounds and get a million dollars in a month. I promise.

Now, when I have guests, instead of giving them a personal tour for the thirtieth time (for me, not them), I can just have them download this excellent piece of bohemian Bohemian guiding.

And it’s all available just below. Along with some other off-the-beaten track routes in Prague, and other tours in cities across the globe. Bonus points are that you don’t even have to be there to do the tour. Instead you can just listen to the whole thing from the comfort of your home like a true armchair adventurer. There's no shame in that.

Here it is:

And welcome to Prague. Or not. Maybe even welcome to your armchair. But either way, you should grab a beer and send a "na zdraviye" my way. 

A time to weep and a time for Birds!

There’s a man sleeping on the couch. A woman at the table writing, reading her narrative so the audience can understand what she’s thinking. She’s a bit mad, but then anyone in her situation would be--what, with the birds and all. The man sleeping suddenly wakes up, runs across the room and attempts to open the door.

But there are the sounds of birds outside. The sounds themselves aren’t menacing, but the reactions of the people make them terrifying. For the rest of the two hours, every caw and tweet becomes a cause to shiver.

“The Birds” was put on by Blood, Love, and Rhetoric last weekend at the underground Divadlo D21 in Vinohrady. As per usual, they haven’t failed to entertain. In their usual style of off-center tragedies, it’s one part melodrama and one part serious and the night we were there, Friday, it was properly pulled off.

The play centers around the same source material as the much more famous horror, “The Birds” by Alfred Hitchcock, which is a short story by Daphne du Maurier, set in a post-Blitz countryside. The birds have decided the Brits haven’t had enough of hell from the skies and have replaced the Luftwaffe as the cleansing chambermaids of the Isles.

Playwright Conor McPherson seems to have set the story somewhat after the one in Hitchcock’s movie. The time of raging violence has passed. Now people are held hostages in whatever shelter they can find. The birds come in at high tide and disappear at low tide, leaving some time to scavenge around and loot neighboring houses before their return. It seems a bit like life during war time.

Three strangers end up in an abandoned house, which gives it a bit of an Agatha Christie feel to it. A writer, Diane, is played by Angela Jane Kemp, who really fills the role with her almost natural creepiness. She’s able to pull off a weird Oedipus vibe that’s part motherly and part sexual, dominating over the ever-so-slightly mentally off Nat, played by Logan Hillier. Logan masterfully plays the alcoholic recovering from a nervous breakdown. The most surprising act though was the role of Julia, played by Victoria Hogan. Her weird and peppy, Bible-obsessed possibly-nymphomaniac—what Bible obsessed girls aren’t?—character makes her the perfectly insane balance to the much darker Diane, and the two have a bizarre tug-of-war over Logan’s character.

Strangely, the perhaps most normal character of the bunch is the lonely, drug-peddling farmer who lives next door, Tierney, played by Curt Matthew to the utter delight of the audience. When things have generally settled between the trio, Tierney comes in to add a bit of game-theory dementia to the plot. He promises Diane all the drugs, booze, and food she can handle if she’d just come and keep him company and riddles her with doubts of the other two.

The only problem I had with the presentation of the material I had was the set. Whereas at first, with the white walls and windows surrounding the audience, it seemed to draw you into the room with the actors like a black box might, the presence of too many bird decorations inside the rooms however detracted from the horror of the avian blood mongers. I feel as though it would have been better with no birds at all, rather than too many, allowing the sound to play the false antagonist of the plot. This is a small gripe to an otherwise good job.

Blood, Love, and Rhetoric ever manages a good show. They always choose a quirky play and have a good deal of silliness with a great deal of solemnity in their execution, nearly every time leaving you with a “huh?” factor, a feeling I always cherish. “The Birds”, directed by John Malafronte, was no exception. Check out their weekly Thursday night improv show at the Trick Bar in Malostranska Beseda, or check back at their website or facebook to see what they have next.

signal, a festival of light

St. Ludmila's

There are many ways to waste electricity. You can keep the lights on all night, you can keep the television on while you cook, you can run the heaters all day and night long. Or you can spray billions of watts into the air to make a cathedral pulse and glimmer or a Baroque building shatter as a snake comes bursting out. In Europe, it's clear there's no lack of the the enigmatic electron. In some countries around the Continent, they’re running so well on alternative energies that some months, they might even pay you to use energy. So the extra watt or thousand really isn't a big worry anymore. Maybe it was from this notion, this celebration of man's pioneering galvanism, that the Signal Festival was created, a truly modern blend of art and technology, on display to everyone.

The Signal Festival is one of Prague’s biggest festivals—and for a city of a thousand festivals, that says a lot. It goes on for four nights every October, sending blinding beams of light across buildings and up into the air. The first year we went, I remember there being a huge mat across a riverside park, and everywhere you’d step, it would light up in different patterns, and another one where you’d walk in front of a projector and, using some sort of quantum formula, it’d scatter your particles across the white screen beyond. These such exhibits are displayed all across the city, with each neighborhood seemingly at a contest to outdo the other.

Signal Festival began three years ago and has been such a success, with the streets literally overflowing with crowds all through the night, that I imagine it will be a mainstay in the festivities programming for centuries to come.

The hanging man of shooter's island

The usual hotspot of the festival is at Namesti Miru, where they do a complete video mapping of the 18th century, neo-Gothic St. Liudmila’s Church. The projection is played to some pulsing, heart-shaking, deep bass-blasting electronic music, and makes it appear that the church is at once breaking into pieces, spinning into some vortex, or launching off into outer-space. There’s usually a similar projection at the Old Town Square.

The projection though that really stole the show this year was Tigre’s mapping of a building near Kampa Park. 3D glasses were for purchase for a couple of euro, and the show included science fiction/fantasy creatures that literally jumped out of the windows and broke down the walls. It was a pretty awesome work of art and something that would be truly hard to find an imitation of anywhere. 

windmill

In other squares and neighborhoods, there were smaller species of displays, many seemingly without aim or purpose. But then, that's art for you, ars gratis artis. One was something like a reverse white tesseract, with random letters from random alphabets floating upwards. Another few were large balloon man. One had his neck snapped, as though he were hanging from a gallows, and the other was lying on the ground, possibly after the deceased were removed from the said gallows. Another was a tattered old windmill with patterns spinning to a deep electronic soundtrack. The musical theme was definitely something glitch with a touch of horror.

So if you’re planning on a trip to Prague, I’d recommend overlapping it with the Signal Festival. It’s an event that really takes this historic city into the next century.

And some videos:

pineapples, umbrellas, and all

Prague a cappella festival

Life could be an empty hollow mess if the word “yes” were never uttered. The other night I was thinking that to myself as though it were a mantra, when my wife told me about an a capella festival that was going on here in Prague. I’ve loved music since my birth, but I’ll be honest here and say that I’ve always been a bit tense when it comes to white folk scatting and doing the jazz hands. That’s the image that is somehow burnt into my mind after one traumatic incident of watching Cats when I was a child. Though to think of it, every time I’ve seen Cats, it’s been a traumatic incident. I could never watch Thundercats again after Cats ruined Cat People for me. I could never put that fire out with gasoline, I'll tell you what.

But I knew this would be a little different. I’m in Europe now, where cultures are allowed to mix and borrow from each other. America’s got so sensitive that we’ve even changed the language, now appreciation and imitation have new words—we call them “cultural appropriation”. But if we don’t appreciate each other’s cultures, if we don’t take the little bits of sweetness that we like—and here it doesn’t even matter if you like the whole culture, but just that part—then we’ll never get on the train of understanding each other and making it to that final destination. If you stop mixing cultures, then you get a lot of the same old thing, as most of what is new and innovative is just an interesting concoction of things done before. Straight shots are for some, but others would prefer their fru fru drinks, pineapples, umbrellas, and all.

Hardly church time

A capella literally means “in the manner of the chapel”, and was a reference to the vocal style of church music before the introduction of electric guitars, jumbo trons, and evangelical rock concerts for the Lord. It brings us to a simpler time before electricity, when armies of monks would chant across foggy creeks and four guys would sit at the barber shop and doo-wop it out in epic battles of intrinsic laryngeal control.

A long time has gone since those days, but hipsters of late have been trying to revive the barber shop and their quartets. Indeed, the first group we saw, the local group Hlasoplet, was a definite nod to this, and a reminder to me that a capella is perhaps some of the most complex music there is.

Hlasoplet

As Hlasoplet was playing, I gathered from the way the audience kept laughing that they seemed to blend a lot of humor into their act. In all, they caught the attitude pretty well and it was a nice warm up to the genre. They had a great presence on the stage as well, all with suits, well barbered facial hair, active facial expressions and no jazz hands.

Check out this video from Hlasoplet:

Sextensially quintessent

The group we came to see though—and apparently, as the announcer described, the headliner—was the Georgian group the Quintessence. I was a bit surprised when I saw six people on the stage, since the name would have made you think it was a quintuple and not a sextuple, but the shining white suits and dresses, and their shy youthful smiles made me quickly forget about this mathematical debacle. The name is likely a Quincy Jones shout out, but that's the best of my guess. They opened with a slightly jazzed up version of a Georgian folk song which was quite terrific. If there’s any people that have an edge on a capella music because of their folk styles, it’s certainly the Georgians.

There’s one thing I often complained about when I was living in Georgia regarding their music. Many Georgians seem to have a hard core belief in the purity of form. That either something is folk or its rock, and there is very little if not any fusion in the styles. It really leads to a disappointing modern live music culture, since it’s basically just the repetition of European and American styles, if not just straight up cover bands of Oasis and Pink Floyd. It’s the fusion that makes things interesting, and it’s what modern Georgian musical culture has really lacked, and it’s a pity since they have such a deep well of amazing musical tradition.

The Quintessence

The Quintessence—and indeed, whoever their instructor is—are certainly on the borders in an attempt to fix this. The way they handled the Georgian folk songs, the jazz standards, and the outright fusion of the two was phenomenal, and I truly had never seen anything like it. It was no wonder that the entire audience roared with applause after every song like it was the last, and then a true standing barrage of bravos when it actually was their last song. It seemed true that nobody in the audience had ever seen such a fusion either, and the effect was something quite lasting and memorable.

This is unfortunately the best video I could find on YouTube. But still, a good example of how they arranged the jazz standard, Senor Blues, with a touch of the Caucasus:

Just for that, I was glad I tempted fate and the jazz hands to make it to the a capella festival.

But as we were leaving, there was a filler group singing on the smaller stage in the bar room. As they finished their own fusion of genres—a song mixed from “All about the bass” and “Don’t worry be happy”, they did the jazz hands. It was a good time for us to leave, as the Jellicle cats were coming out that night.

The Prague A Cappella festival wraps up tonight, Friday the 30th, at La Fabrika in Holesovice.

we are cocktail legion

An anonymous drink

Anonymous is many things. He’s a writer. He's possibly Shakespeare. He’s an artist. He’s that public masturbator that lives down the street. He’s an internet activist group. He is that guy who got arrested for revealing the identities of a ring of rapists.

Anonymous is also a coffee shop in Prague.

And a bar.

The coffee shop, near IP Pavlova, is one of the more uncomfortable places to sit with a computer, since all the seats are made of wood pallets and are about as comfortable as an introvert doing an unprepared stand-up comedy routine. Thus kind of defeating the theme of borrowing from an internet hacktivist group when you can't comfortably sit around on the computer. They do serve some pretty great brew though. The bar and the coffee shop are owned by the same people, and it shows in the standards and service of the staff.

But I’m not writing about the coffee shop. I’m writing about the bar.

We decided randomly with a friend to go for cocktails. I’ve been having trouble lately finding “classy” places to hang out that are still somewhat edgy, since mostly I just choose dive bar locations with questionable toilets. Toilets that either aren’t there, or that when the door opens, there’s not much else but for the entire bar to cheer you on. When I was prompted last year by a friend to go to a lounge, because he was there with his girlfriend, I couldn’t think of an appropriate place. “Nope, this one smells of beer, this one of vomit, this one of vinegar.” It’s a hard knock life, my friends.

Anonymous Bar at Michalska 12 then made the list of possible places to take out-of-towners who aren’t in for a rough night of drinking cheap beer. Cheap beer in Prague, mind you, is still better than expensive beer in 99% of the countries of the world. And ironically, that expensive beer is usually cheap Czech beer. Anonymous fit the higher class standard of being a cocktail bar and my standard of being a slight bit unusual.

The place is certainly classy, and weirdly extreme on good customer service. I almost felt offended, as I’ve been living in Prague for so long that I’ve come to see bad customer service as polite. All of these “hellos” and “good evenings” while passing the service staff almost seemed excessive, as though they were mocking us. But fine. They are legion. What am I to do?

Hideout of the Legion

The interior is a bit of a cross between what I imagine Kanye West’s house to look like and the set of the Nine Inch Nail’s Perfect Drug video. In fact, I think this was their primary motivation in design. The furniture were huge red lush old fashion arm chairs and couches, the ambiance dark with some soft electronic music going and on the wall a large sort of graffiti art interpretation of the Guy Fawkes mask. The music was nothing aggressive, just on the background, drifting along so you don’t have to raise your voice for conversation. The menu was full of weirdly named cocktails, the fun stuff of any cocktail bar. I got the 100% leather, which was a basic Manhattan with a shot of absinthe. My wife got a drink served in a syringe, and people at other tables had drinks served with toy guns, kaleidoscopes, and any assortment of novelties.    

The staff, as I said, is exceedingly friendly and quite knowledgeable on cocktails. My friend was bent on trying to stump the waiter, shooting out names like Witches Left Tit and the Vespa from the James Bond book, not the movie one, and the waiter was on top of the game. The drinks were expertly crafted and presented, with the waiter donning a Guy Fawkes mask as he serves the drink to carry on the namesake of the bar.

Getting our drinks

The place isn’t cheap by Prague standards though. The cheapest legit drink on the list is 175 crowns, or roughly 7 USD. Which, in the US that’s really cheap for an amazingly mixed drink. In Prague, well, that’s about 7 great beers. It’s a sacrifice to heavy drinkers like myself, but a worthy sacrifice. Now if only I could convince them to host an accordionist singer-songwriter like myself and pay him in free cocktails...   

In winter, it's highly advised to book seats. Call at +420 608 069. 

another Prague beer spa

Bathing in beer is something I imagine the gods taking time to do up there on Mount Olympus, next to drinking ambrosia and playing fatal games with mortals. So when at first I heard this could be done in Prague, I jumped on it and went with my wife to Spa Beer Land on Zitna. It was a good experience, but one thing let me down, I wouldn’t be bathing in actual beer. It was tepid water with some malt, barley, and hops added. Not quite the real thing. But with unlimited pours of beer and my beautiful wife, a good time was had anyway.

When my parents came to visit, it was a reason to celebrate. Another beer spa would be had, as a proper treat for any foreigner to this great land of Czechia. The two remaining beer spas to try in Prague were Spa Pramen—featuring a microbrew owned by Staropramen—and Prague Beer Spa Bernard. To tell you the truth, drinking Staropramen or Bernard didn’t really excite me. Neither did going downtown to Spa Bernard. But Spa Pramen was at the less trafficked area of Hradcanska—an easy ride on the green line metro—and was serving the aforementioned microbrew, from a small brewery out near Karlovy Vary. That would be the choice then.

At the front desk, we were greeted and brought down to our beer spa room. It was similar to the Spa Beer Land room—cozy, fireplace, two big wood tubs for two, and a large straw bed. The main difference here was that at Spa Beer Land, you got your own bathroom, whereas here at Pramen, you had to share the restroom. Since we were there with my parents, that wasn’t an overly big deal, but for anyone planning a romantic night, that might be an issue.

The biggest difference though was in the tub. They actually put several liters of dark beer in the tub, then water, and then a mix of malts, barley, and hops. While we were expecting some jets a bit sooner and they only finally turned them on after asking them again, they did apologize profusely and added another 15 minutes of time for soaking and drinking. Then we went upstairs where we had another beer and decompressed.

All-in-all, Spa Pramen got my recommendation when I was telling some Prague newcomers where to go.

The treasure of the Clementinum

View of the Castle from the Clementinum

There was a heavy knock at the door. Pavel was kicked out of bed by his wife, who whispered loudly to answer the door and it better not be Vasek coming home from the hospudka again! Pavel muttered something about his wife as he stumbled through the kitchen and opened the door. There in the hallway were two men in heavy monks’ robes, the hoods up so their faces were only deep shadows. Pavel was somewhat surprised and rubbed his eyes a bit before making out a groggy “Hello?”

“Pavel Krumlov?” one of the men asked.

“Yes? Can I help you?”

The other man was holding a small, cloth pouch, made from the same material as the heavy robes. He held it out for him to take. Pavel took it—it was heavy and clinked. Gold. At least as much that he needed to pay back that lender he owed.

“What’s this?” he asked, narrowing his eyes.

“We have more.”

“Do you?”

“We have a job for you.”

Pavel naturally accepted the job, as his masonry business had gone somewhat downhill. The men refused to say where the job was, but rather took his wrist and led him into the hall, down the stairs, and into the street. “You’ll have to wear this,” said one of the men, holding a blindfold to him. After a short sigh, he put on the blindfold and they led him around the streets of Prague, over the river, in circles around buildings, back over the river, in circles, around this building, that building, up a hill, down a hill. He was completely lost by the time that he heard a door open and he was led down some steps into a cellar. From the cellar, there was a dark passage that led to chest after chest after chest. Jewels and glittering things were on the ground, the light from their torch picked up and scattered, making the floor itself almost look like a precious object.

“What is this?” asked Pavel.

“You will make a wall here, and it will appear as if the wall was always here. Do you understand?” one monk said. “The materials are all here. There are bricks, mortar, spades. If you need anything, you tell one of us and we will get it for you. When you're done, we'll take you back a different way.”

Pavel understood. This treasure was to be hidden. One monk remained behind to watch Pavel as he worked through the night. He slept on a cot through the day. When he woke, there was a different monk and he kept working and working until his wall was perfected.

When he came home, with several more sacks of gold, he told his wife what had happened. “Do you think you can find the place?” his wife asked. They searched again and were never able to realize that his commission was from the Jesuits of the Clementinum. 

A bit of history

In 1773, the Empress Maria Theresa told the Jesuits to pack their bags and go—thinking this was only a temporary departure, as they had a perfectly functional relationship with Charles’ University, they had allegedly decided to store many of their treasures in a secret room somewhere on the campus. Maria Theresa had designs for her own functions though and the property was never returned to the religious order. Which means there’s still a room full of gold somewhere in the Clementinum. 

Inside the Observatory tower with bookshelf/ladder

The building standing in the heart of the Prague Old Town was built by the Dominicans in 1556 and reconstructed and developed into a full-scale university by the Jesuits in 1653. The complex spans over 2 hectares, making it one of the largest building complexes in Europe. It was used by several famous astronomers, notably Tyco Brahe and Johannes Kepler. Brahe was key in keeping most of the scientific community of the time—meaning the Jesuits—against the heliocentric theory, while Kepler would advance the early Copernican ideas and correct them, adjusting the planetary orbits into off-center ellipses, which was the main failure of Copernicus. Then he also wrote several books expounding how Christianity and the Bible allowed for a heliocentric theory, and he never made the famous Galilean mistake of calling the pope an idiot in any of his tomes. Pope Urban VIII at the time interestingly supported the heliocentric theory, but didn’t support being called an idiot. And so the Inquisition goes its way.

The King's Road

The Clementinum now stands alongside the “King’s Road”, the path of coronation for the old Bohemian Kings, and is thus on the direct route to the Charles’ Bridge from Old Town Square. It works still as part of Charles’ University, containing an immense library, and it also functions as a museum—preserving the library wing where Kepler and Brahe once worked, in the form that they had left it. You can tour the library and observatory tower and you can sign up for the tours in the inner courtyard. Don’t worry, it’s okay to walk around the courtyards, even though guards might be eyeing you while you do so. 

View from the Clementinum

The tour lasts for about 30 minutes, is sold out quickly, and doesn’t really take reservations, which means you need to show up about 30 minutes before the tour and buy your tickets then. The price is a whopping 220 crowns, but the view from the top and the fact that you are looking into the library where Kepler was working certainly makes it worth it, especially if you’re only in Prague once.

a dessert of dreams

The trdelnik "chimney"

There was a great disturbance in the Internets when the monster of pastries in the picture was released the other day. Cyberspace exploded and the shockwaves passed through the comments section of many silly tourists thinking they know the true history of the thing. “Oh, that’s so common in Budapest and can only be found there!” said one. “You can only get those at Christmas in Vienna!” said another. Well, I’m here to set the record straight. Living here in Prague, I can tell you all about those amazing little spirals of sugar and thinly sliced walnut covered dough.

A modified trdelnik cooker

Here in Prague, the treat is interchangeably called trdelnik and trdlo, which are both equally impossible to pronounce. It has its modern roots in the Slovak town of Skalica, where in the 18th century the Hungarian general, Jozsef Gvadanyi, decided to retire. A poet and philosopher, he had a clear sweet tooth, which was reflected when he hired a Romanian chef from Transylvania who brought the dish with him. In Skalica, the locals refined the treat and gave it its name. The name comes from the tool which is used to cook it – a metal chimney that the dough is wound around. It’s then placed and rotated over a coal pit until the dough is golden brown, after which they remove the pastry and dip it in sugar and sliced walnut mix. The treat is available year around in Prague and many other locales – especially in the Czech Republic and Slovakia – though in other places like Vienna it might be an only seasonal dish. It costs anywhere from 1 euro to 2 depending on what part of town you’re in. The two best trdelnik stands that I’ve found are on Na Porici, near the Mustek metro station, and at Malastranska Square in front of the tram stop. In most places they also cover it in Nutella for a few crowns more.

Good Food and the line

Recently though, a place has been serving a new variation of trdlo (pictured above). Seeing the sudden immense popularity of it, and that the trdlo is one of my and my wife’s favorite winter treats, we decided to go and investigate this Bavarian bounty of dulcitude. As we approached Charles Bridge walking down Karlova street, we saw many people with all sorts of delicious variations of it. Our excitement was growing. When we found the place that was serving it, Good Food Coffee & Bakery, at Karlova 160/8, we found a line that seemed to go on for some one hundred meters. We jumped in and got lucky, many people gave up and wandered off.

We found that Good Food had modified the design of the trdelnik to make it into a cone so that various things can be put inside. They have the standard “chimney” option, which is filled with ice cream, and they also have a strudel option, with apples, walnuts, and raisins, as well as one with strawberries and cream. Most of the options are from 80 to 120 crowns.

To be honest though, after tasting it, I couldn’t figure out what the fervor was all about. The pastry itself was not the best I’ve had – which can be found at the above places – and the soft serve ice cream was pretty substandard. The popularity seemed to be based off the pure novelty of the product rather than the actual thing itself, and the fact that all these tourists probably didn’t realize that there were trdelniks everywhere for much cheaper and with far better flavor.

a Prague beer spa

Beer time!

 There are few better ways to spend a Valentine’s Day than soaking in an oak tub of tepid barley malt, drinking bottomless beers from a private tap, and staring in the face and other places of your dearest loved one. Then, after the bath, a literal romp in the hay – there’s a hay bed in the opposite corner. The smell is great, recounting one of simpler days of farms, pitchforks, and 12 babies needed to beat the high infant mortality rates and constant pillaging by the folks of the neighboring barony. It’s a growing fad in Prague, the beer spas not pillaging that is – completely alien to most Czechs as soaking in a tub of a beer-like mixture doesn’t happen to be one of the parts of their ancient hop boiling culture. However, it’s certainly something that should catch on. 

There are three or four different beer spas in Prague. When I first learned of a beer spa, I imagined it as though you would soak in a tub of near boiling beer, in a position where you could nearly and actually drink your own bathwater, while also downing the cold stuff out of a tap. So when we arrived at the Spa Beerland on Zitna street, this was the impression that I had had. I was also under the impression that the price of the spa might also include that blond in the picture with the huge tracts of land, but – unfortunately for all you English blokes reading this blog and trying to figure out ideas for your next stag party – it doesn’t.

The entry has a huge wall of souvenirs and a self service tap in the middle of the room. If you’re a bit early for your appointment, or they need a few minutes to prep your room, then you are free to grab a glass and start your guzzling. Then the lady will show you down the stairs into the dungeon of some hotel, where they have two rooms situated for the most ingenious of all spa visits. Room one, which we took, had the hay bed and two tubs for two people each, with each tub having its own tap. The slightly more expensive room 2 had three tubs, a sauna, and a hay bed. Certainly on my next visit, that might have to be the choice.

Now, I was a bit surprised when the lady picked up different baskets of powders – barley, malt, and hops powder. “Smell this,” she said on each one, explaining what they were. Then she put them into the tubs that were filled with steaming water and stirred. What? We weren’t going to be soaking in beer?! And then she went on about how all this stuff softens your skin or some other not interesting BS that’s dished out for the ladies. It’s really a great marketing technique – men don’t really have to be convinced to go to a beer spa, but they might have to convince their ladies. “It has magical properties that soften your skin!” 

Pouring some to-go glasses

She left. We had our own private bathroom, so using the restroom after disrobing wasn’t a problem. Also they left some “beer bread”, which was probably just made from the same stuff normal bread is made from, barley and wheat. It was good bread, especially after drinking twenty or so liters of beer. Then we got in the tub and soaked it all in, having this all-you-can-drink contest for the next one hour. The place cost about 1,150 crowns a person and I’m pretty sure I cleared at least half of that in my consumption. Then we had a romp in the hay and a bite of beer bread. When our time was up, we had seven minutes to get dressed and get out, which allowed us time to fill up another glass. And since when we got back to the lobby, we hadn't time to empty our glasses, we sat down to finish them. Naturally, I finished them faster than the old lady, so I refilled my glass again without a problem.

It was almost the perfect Valentine’s Day, and there will be definitely a repeat visit the next time we have special guests in town.

We returned home and remembered we were entertaining guests from out of town - a whole family of them. Time to pretend not to be drunk! But at least we had soft skin.

the castle has never been the same

I don't see no castle!

 I didn’t stay long in the Czech Republic the first time I visited. I stayed for about two weeks – part of it was a quiet and the other part was a riot. I was traveling all across Europe, a rucksack on my back and pulling along an accordion in a hard case tied down to a luggage dolly. It was rough. Over the cobblestone streets of Prague and the rest of the old towns of Europe, that accordion was bouncing and booming and wreaking havoc. Back then, a man could play just about anywhere on the street. Street music was a thing of celebration and experimentation. When I came back a year ago, I found that the scene of freedom and chaos had died down about. Everything was becoming more and more organized and sullen, a real slap in the face from my three-year life in Tbilisi, Georgia. But perhaps a little quieter is what I need these days – 

But back then was about freedom and chaos. And with an accordion, you’d be surprised about how much easier couchsurfing is. When you’re just a bloke, couchsurfing can be terribly hard. Most women prefer women guests because couchsurfing men are usually on it for sexsurfing, whereas most men just wanted women, because – bet you can’t complete that sentence. But when you’re not a normal bloke, but you’re a bloke with an accordion, things change entirely. Suddenly a new world opens up to you. Both men and women become intrigued, they thing, “Who the hell is this American traveling around with an accordion?! I swear, the CIA or the FSB or whatever spy agency would do a lot of good by investing in some accordions. They can get you anywhere and keep you going for however long. Especially in those days.

It started with couchsurfing. My first request was the golden request. There was Jitka, a student at Charles University, shortish with glasses. Real sweet and living in a flat with six other girls and a guy who slept in the kitchen. An accordion could do worse. Though it meant I ended up sleeping on a small mattress on the floor of one of their rooms, where two of the girls were living. Then once the kitchen man went away for the weekend, I took his spot. The group were environmentalists, vegans, and bicyclists and they complained about all facets of Czech life. There are no vegan restaurants! No bicycle lanes! No nothing. But since I’ve been back, they seem to have been hard at work. There are now lots of vegan restaurants – Plevel and Loving Hut to name a few. As for bicycle lanes – Prague remains to be a not so bicycle friendly town. There are one or two lanes, but the real problem is that the city is so hilly and that the roads are narrow enough as they are and there tend to be a million tourists on any given road. Anyway, trams are cheap, so what’s the point of bicycle? 

A view of Vysehrad, Prague's real castle

While I was staying with the girls, they had a party on the theme of making cities more progressive and we watched a video on the public transit success of Bogota with lots of interviews with the then mayor. After the video, I took my accordion and we went for a midnight jaunt down the main street, Legerova, and across Nuselsky Most (Nusle Bridge) to Vysehrad. What’s weird is that I haven’t been back to Vysrehrad since – not for the entire year and a half that I’ve been living here. The place was beautiful and pristine on that cold, December night. Lamps were lit all up and down the walkways on the ramparts. You see, Vysehrad long ago was the first castle of Prague – according to locals, not according to history – built sometime before the 900s and where the first ideas of building “The Castle” were hashed out. Though the real thing is, is that Prague Castle – “the Castle” – hardly even looks like a castle. Vysehrad, for all you castle mongers out there, looks like a real castle. It’s got all the steep rock walls, the ramparts, ruins, and old stuff. The oldest building in all of Prague is in Vysehrad, the 11th century Rotunda of St. Martin. Someone took off their rucksack and handed out the beers and I started cranking up the squeeze box, singing my small collection of tunes that I knew back then. Let’s leave that to say that walking back was a lot more difficult than walking there.

The mirror maze on Petrin

I was convinced now to see a castle. The Castle. If Vysehrad was that awesome, then the Castle must really be something, especially with how Jitka and the other Czech girls were going on about it. So the next day I set off on my own, finding my way to a bridge and looking out. They had pointed in this direction, hadn’t they? Where was it! I saw a big Gothic church on the hill, lots of spires, lines of beautiful buildings. But no castle! But maybe up on that huge hill, with the wall going down it, maybe there was a castle there? So I walked up the hill, Petrin Hill, and found myself in a weird grove with a very unique, three spired Orthodox Church – the Carpathian Ruthenian Church of Saint Michael the Archangel. The small wooden church was completely out of place to Prague, and historically, it is. It was originally located in Carpathian Ruthenia, in today’s Ukraine, and was brought over in 1929 to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the Czechoslovak annexation of that territory. Also on the top of the hill is a weird mirror maze – which isn’t so much a mirror maze, but a mirror tunnel with a painting and cannon in it.

Oh! That castle!

From there, I found an amazing overlook over the city – you could see the entire expanse of the old town, from the Castle to Charles Bridge, to Our Lady on the Tyn. Wait. Rewind. Castle? On the hill I asked someone where the Castle was and they pointed to the hilltop with the giant church. “That’s the Castle?” Being an American, and having lived in Georgia – the country not the state – for such a long time, I was used to big stone fortress structures, this was more of a sprawling palatial complex. To be fair, there are parts of it that look more like the traditional castle, especially the side closest to the river and facing the Belvedere Garden. But when walking through it, the place is just so massive that it doesn’t really feel like a castle so much. Originally, it was the stereotypical fortress style, a bit over 200 years ago, except Marie Teresa had decided to redesign the place in the high Baroque style, and ever since then, the castle has never been the same.

the mastery of silence

The Rudolfinum

The other evening, the wife and I had the pleasure of watching Khatia Buniatishvili, who is perhaps currently one of the top virtuoso piano players making the classical circuits these days. The stage at the Rudolfinum was bare but for the black, shining grand, with the elegant neoclassical backdrop that looks somewhat like an ancient Roman temple towering behind. It was a treat to finally see the Rudolfinum in its purpose as a temple to fine music. It was built some 150 years ago in 1884 and has bounced back and forth in its purpose. Though built by a Czech bank, much of the Rudolfinum’s architecture centered around Classical and German art, with the statues being of musicians who had never even stepped foot in Prague. This brought a lot of notoriety among the Czech locals, but it didn’t stop the Philharmonic from making its home there, along with the Kusntverein fur Bohmen (the Fine Arts Society). Because of that though, finally a Czech artist would be brought to light in the theatre, as this became Dvorak’s home theatre and the stage adopted his name. After the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the birth of the short-lived First Republic, the theatre was repurposed into the chamber of parliament, where the building was somewhat ruined from its original stature – politics indeed usually has such an effect. It was finally the Nazis who liberated it from the dull life of politics and returned it to its original German-inspired purpose and it became again a hall of the arts. They repurposed it back to a concert hall, along with a renovation improving the acoustics, and they added another smaller concert hall to the structure. See the Czech book Mendelssohn is on the Roof by Jiri Weil for a nice adventure story on all that. The Communists generally left it the same, though they added a big red star outside in the garden and renamed the square, "Army Square" or something equally as intriguing. When the Czech Republic became a democracy again, they did a final restoration of the building, bringing it back into full glory.

Truly though, the night wasn’t defined by the building, but rather by the contents. Khatia Buniatishvili is a remarkable player, both for her ability and her beauty. And frankly, I think it must be a challenge to be respected for your skill when you’ve got the T&A to keep everyone distracted. The people in the audience were absolutely raucous after the performance, and I can’t but sadly reflect it was more for her looks than for what it should have been for – her tremendous skill. She was born into it, starting the piano at the age of 3 and performing her first concerts in Tbilisi at 6 years old, something of a wunderkind really. Now she prefers to play Liszt and his like, perhaps because of that style’s vehement, whirlwind carriage, of the flashy salutes to style and the overindulgence to emotion over refinement. Liszt was known for his flourishes and his improvisation, adding all sorts of character to what had already become thought of as stodgy and uptight music, Beethoven and Bach, by his era. And as Liszt was known for flaunting his emotion physically, for falling all over the piano, throwing about his wigged hair, so is Khatia known for an over sexuality as she embraces the piano keys as she would a lover, as though the piano were her only actual true love, despite what she might think of any person. One even wonders if someone of her skill level is even capable of loving anything else but the product of their ability, as that product is so beyond what most might even dream.

It’s that passion though that puts Georgia as a future powerhouse of the arts as it continues towards a path of globalization – at least it was on that path, recent events show that the current administration seems particularly pressed to get off of that path. Many people comment on the brilliance of skill that many East Asians have in piano, though lamenting the lack of emotion as their culture tends to prefer discipline. And indeed, with enough discipline, anything is just about manageable, even playing Rachmaninoff’s Second – I personally got the honor to watch one such Asian, Yuja Wang, play it. Could I tell if it felt emotional or not? I think on many songs, like the “Rach II”, the playing is so technical and intense that only the most trained ears can tell. The common listener only sweats at what seems like a tornado of sound and skill. But perhaps too much discipline does cover up the emotion of a piece, and this is one thing that makes Georgians on the next level of music, since they’re so willing to let their passion and inspiration override any sort of discipline. This works both to their advantage and disadvantage in life, but especially to their advantage in music.

Liszt rocking it

The night’s program was generally an ode to Liszt – a perfect ode for a Georgian pianist, being the temperamental well of emotion that the man was. Liszt – a man whose name I could never figure out how to pronounce until recently, it’s “lisht” by the way – was a 19th century Hungarian composer who spent a lot of time in Vienna and Paris and was kind of a dullard at piano starting off until he saw a charity concert by Paganini in Paris, when he said, “I want to play piano like that guy plays violin.” Now we’re not talking about sitting at the tavern playing some Irish jigs violin, Paganini liked to play violin ala The Red Violin in that scene where the guy is playing while he’s making love to his mistress. It’s not the type of music you’d want to listen to at the bar, as it takes your full concentration to understand and analyze the music, while at the same time you’re left stunned by the giant of talent that sits before you. Indeed, if someone played that sort of music in a bar, most people would probably be left confused and mildly depressed. So after Liszt was victimized by this villain with a violin, he started a real and furious study of piano, really getting down all the scales that he would later put into his songs. Scale after scale after scale. He was probably the first composer to really consider scales and practice exercises as musical pieces, as many of his pieces just sound like stellar practices, with the clouds of the crazy loud technical practice breaking away into a kind of heavenly melody, serving as the eye of a continued storm of technique.

Khatia Buniatishvili in the Rudolfinum

Khatia didn’t start with Liszt though, she started with one of Liszt’s biggest fans, Ravel, who had a big man-crush on the Franciscan tertiary pianist and who I never really cared for but apparently the French love. She wrapped it up with Stravinsky’s Petrushka excerpts, who I think is much more worthy of praise than that Gaullic composer aforementioned. Stravinsky combines the insane technical work of Liszt and his heavenly melodies, but instead of having them at different parts of a piece, mashes them altogether in a giant meat grinder of stress and trauma. Nothing is safe with Stravinsky, as he quite willingly tears down every border in his genre of music, in a lineage that is a logical progression of Liszt’s work. Stravinsky, along with the other Russian piano whizz, Rachmaninoff, were probably the last of the real Romantics, the last of the great composers to make music “really live” in Rachmaninoff’s words, before classical music gave way to modernism and became less of a masturbation of talent and more of a repetition of a single note and the mastery of silence.