Bohemia

The following entry is one that I had written about 3 months ago but then I began the hectic pace of travlling through Europe before heading to the states for Burning Man and hanging out in Northern California - know as NoCal - where it was great to get away from technology for a while. That is another story completely and hopefully on that I won't take too long to get on to. Any way here is entry one on the Czech Republic, absolutely one of my top favourite places in the world. 27.11.2005.

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Entry for sometime in May 2005.

So I bounced out of London after two weeks there. I just couldn't deal with the weather and the reality of a working life which was so similar to that in Australia so soon after leaving the laidback lifestyle of Thailand. And of course London is so damned expensive! I decided after consulting a friends "Europe On a Shoestring" guide book and talking to a few people that I would head to the Czech Republic.

In getting ready to head east, while the rest of the household I was staying with was heading south for the Cannes film festival, I was trying not to let the excitement of visiting a place that I had always wanted to go get the better of me. There is nothing like high expectations to ruin an experience entirely. With that thought in mind I tried to keep a sense of reality on the situation, telling myself that I only wanted to go there because of movies and what I had heard from others and that my experience might be nothing like that. But when the pilot tells you that it will be cold and raining when we are due to land only to find when you get there that it is only cool and beautifully sunny you can't help but feel a little welcome.

Ok so I catch the bus from the airport to the metro stop which will take me into the centre of Prague which seemed to me to be surprisingly quick journey - I guess it was the lack of Bangkok traffic.

Now Prague is full of tourists, that is a fact. And it is full of all kinds of tourists; from groups of guys down for a cheap-dirty-weekend-bucks-party, to Bus-about travellers on the slower version of a Contiki tour; to drifters just floating through in particular hurry or having no real direction. Prague is also a big city (although not in any ways comparable to London, Tokyo or Bangkok) so it is hectic. I must admit though, that in comparision to where I had just been, I found it quite manageable and tended to walk everywhere that I wanted to go, wasting the three day public transport pass that I had bought. For some reason it also reminded me of Melbourne in some ways, not just because of the trams, but something about the vibe of place that makes it feel a little bit like home, something that I can't quite articulate.

Prague is also one of the most beautiful cities that I have ever been to. I actually found myself still dealing with a type of sensory overload while walking through the city streets three days after I had arrived. The buildings all have intricate details set within the ornate archtecture. Walking around you might notice gaint frogs climbing up the sides of buildings or into windows; statues in unexpected locations and maze like designs set in the cobble stone paving.

Prague is a wonderful city to get lost in as it has the most bewitching labrynith of tiny cobbled stones streets, where around every corner you are greeted with some new vision of the city, her people and her art; both classic and contempory. All in all Prague is rich in art, with many galleries tucked away in the cobbled stoned streets, regular classical music concerts (which are targeted at tourists but hey this is the home of Dvorak after all), while jazz, and Czech folk music whisper from around corners and makes your senses drunk - or was that the beer, or maybe the Becherovka, Slivoitz, Fernet Citrus or absinthe - it doesn't really matter. There is a famous quote of which I was recently reminded of by my friend Juan from Mexico: the quote was from the French poet and critic Charles Baudelaire who said, 'Now is the time to get drunk! To stop being the martyred slaves of time, to get absolutely drunk - on wine, poetry, or on virtue, as you please.'

Jazz band on Kralov Most (Charles Bridge).

But what really makes a city? Bricks and steel and paint? The technology for its functioning? Its infrastructure? Transportation and irrigation systems? Its history maybe? There is certainly no absence of history in the Czech Republic and walking around Prague you are overcome by its premeating presence, as even if you don't know much of the histroy of the place you get a sense that it is steeped into the very soil that the city is built upon. Walking around the streets you can't help but to remember that these are the same streets Kafka traversed while composing and metomphising his musings into words - the same streets that Johannes Kepler was to become familiar with while listening to the music of the spheres, and the same streets too that John Dee visited once or twice and the same streets to which David Lynch is rumoured to frequent as place for what I can only imagine is get drunk on Prague. The Czechs have a saying To je stary jak Praha. which equates to the English "As old as the hills ", but translated directly from Czech to "As old as Prague".



But what about the people of Prague and the people of Czech Republic? What is a city if not a centre of culture and society and play of its people? Here I will speak of the people Czech Republic in a broader sense rather than base it purely on my experience in Prague. This is essentially due to the fact that I only spent a few days in Prague and having spent the majority of my time in a town called Cesky Krumlov. The story of how I got to Cesky Krumlow however does start in Prague and is tied intrinsically to my experience of the warmth, openess and solidness of the people here in Czech.

Ok so back to my arrival in Prague; I make my way from the Mustek metro stop to the Golden Sickle hostel. I find it with no real problem although I am walking down the street a little weary of my wallet as everyone has told me that pick-pocketing is rife in Prague. Apart from that however, I feel very comfortable walking down these streets, almost like walking down the streets of my home town. I find the hostel without any worries and while checking in I say that, "Yes I have booked through to Friday, but did not book through to Saturday as there was no availablity listed on the web." Kaca, the girl who is checking me in says that she can check the book for availablity but I say that that is ok as I am thinking of going to Cesky Krumlov on the weekend. "Oh you should go man! I was thinking of going - I might be driving up, if I am I can drive you up. Maybe we get a few other people to go along as well." With my head still dealing with the strange feelings of being at home, finding the hostel and dealing with cars driving on the wrong side of the road how you respond? Well, I say "Yeah sure that would be awesome." And with weekened travel plans now in the works, plus very happy and pleasant locals on the train who were happy to speak with us travellers despite the fact that we made the train so crowded with our back packs and luggage that they resembled some of the trains I watched go past me at Shibuya station in Japan, I checked in rested for short while before heading out to explore some of the sites that Kaca highlighted for me on the tourist map I was given when checking in. And here I was all nervous before leaving the UK, buying a pocket map of Prague and a phrasebook.

So I spent my time in Prague mainly just wondering the streets checking out old town, the astronomical clock, the castle and Charles bridge. At night I hung out with a few other travellers who were staying in the same dorm. I met some great folks from around the place, mmm and mmm fromt he states who were travelling Europe doing a bit of woofing along the way and we got to talking about organic living, travelling and ice hockey ...

Ok, I will pause here as the next chapter of my adventures in Cesky Krumlov, this awesome town in southern bohemia deserves its own entry. Also, this entry has been sitting in drafts box now for about 5 months and if I don't publish it I am not sure when I will.