Prague

24/7

Our last bike ride up and down the same hill - one last look at the magnificent fortress on top of a granite outcrop.  And we don’t even know it’s name.  Our brief in Gorisch was simply to hang and NOT be tourists!

Back early enough to put on a final load of washing not knowing what to expect across the border in the less well off Czech Republic.

Wil pull on his clothes & does a dash to the wee local bakery bringing home a booty of fabulous seedy brot & a morning tea treat of German apple turnovers.

The squids play energetically in the pool with Hannah, Mika and a pack of boys giving us time to chat to Hannah’s parents, Harald & Monika.  Wil establishes a kindred spirit in Harald discussing the design features of his new sleek black A6 Audi TDI.  Guess what?!?  It drives itself around corners - cooool!

They are a super interesting and interested couple who work in real estate which they reckon is BOOMING as most Germans are scared of the future value of the Euro and are sinking their fortunes into bricks & land rather than money markets. We talk also about Germany’s reunification of what they grew up to know as two different countries with strongly differing mindsets but a shared language.

Once the blog’s uploaded, we make tracks into Czech.  The border crossing whilst unmanned is striking.  The road quality, state of repair of old buildings and large grey residential concrete blocks are the giveaways.  Decin is the first town with obvious old wealth & a once glorious historic square that has fallen into tremendous disrepair.  Loads of statues & monuments are dysmorphic stained wrangled & weathered bits of stone, their original form undecipherable.  Some plinths stand adorned with graffiti only their statue having been removed for someone’s wall somewhere.  We stop to do a grocery shop and some old chap leans from his adjoining balcony bellowing to us in broken English to “clear out, there is no parking here, the police will come and get you, there is no parking anywhere…” Mmmm.  Hello and thank you for the welcome to your country.

We follow along Tom’s route hugging the Elbe but soon are on unpassable tracks torn up with unfinished and unsigned roadworks.  Jeff reverses with dexterity and we re-route to the opposite river bank crossing a large rusty nothing-pretty-what-so-ever steel bridge. 

Thankfully soon we crawl out of the factory floor & chimney stacks into heavily farmed small towns set high up on fertile ridge tops with such a variety of crops including corn, hops, pumpkins, potatoes, leeks and wonderful sweeping green vistas.  Jeff follows his memory and brings us into the quirky, simple town of Hostka where the Aussie kids stayed for the 2010 world rowing championships.  He shows us the room he skyped us from, the place they ate and then took us along the cycle route he took daily to the man-made rowing lake at Steti.  It’s bleak, hot, un-treed with loads of concrete parking pads, high locked rusted fences, concrete buildings, more graffiti and a very ‘Russian’ look. 

Hungry for lunch (it being 1600 now!), we pull up with an (austere) lakeside view of groups of Czech folk relaxing on the concrete in the blazing sun.  Team Connberry all re-fueled, makes the decision to press on another hour, reading, listening to music and chatting to reach our destination of Prague a further 1 hour away.

Before we know it, we’re there driving a strip of housing who’ve converted their backyards into camping grounds jamming in as many people as possible for $24/night.  Grateful to find a spot at this hour in the height of tourist season & summer, we take a park jammed up next the loo block & driveway of a grungy home where a kind, oversized Czech woman gives us a rehearsed rundown in English stressing the need to put our money under our pillows when we sleep and to please observe the showers are cold.

We’ll spend 2 days seeing Prague and then head for the, hopefully, more picturesque, hills.  Option B is to head back west in Germany once we’ve seen Prague.  All this litter, grunge and eye-sore pulls down the spirit.

Our cheek-by-jowls neighbours are a young German (Nils & Katrin) pair traveling post school graduation in their parent’s motorhome.  We learn the easiest route by bike into town and learn that Katrin is coming to Australia in a few weeks for 10 months!  She likes to sail, surf and horse-ride, is VERY pretty and speaks great English - I think she’ll fit right in!   We share ideas/suggestions and promise hospitality and some contacts.

Hot and sticky and crammed in like sardines, we somehow find sleep to the tune of showers, toilet doors, card games, whining dogs…...z….zzz

25/7 A Day in Prague

Woke to an overcast morning, the camp quiet after their late night.  Had our normal breaky (couldn’t dream of departing from the cereal/yoghurt/coffee/chai staple), no exercise or school today.

A fiasco to buy a tram ticket to the centre, normally available at another campsite down the road but today they don’t have any and you can’t buy on the tram, so against local advice (bad drivers, bad cobbles, theft) we wheel out the bikes and head off in the direction suggested by our German friends, Katherine and Nils.

We cross 2 bridges, traverse an equestrian centre, then a nice foresty park with tracks for bikes, walkers, horses and inline skaters (seems to be big in Czech), then onto a road with tram through a busy commercial suburb to the high northern bank of the Vltava River where Jeff finds himself in familiar territory - just head  along here to the next bridge which points at the Metronome (the site of the missing dictator - 30m of white marble Stalin stood for a few years after his death before the statue was blown up after his crimes were revealed by Krushnev!)  Cross there and cobble our way along the river bank to the Charles Bridge - “Central Europe’s Architectural Jewel.”   Only about 700-800yrs old, built of stone, pedestrianised since WW2, we lock up the bikes and elbow our way into the tourist scrum (actually, the crowd is much thinner now than later when we recross, and we are told by our German friends that it is much less than sunnier yesterday!)  

on the Charles Bridge

the now blessed hand of Wil

But what a pleasure!  The views in all directions - to the north up the hill to the Castle and St Vitus Cathedral, downstream to the river with it’s busy tourist boats and sweeping high bank with it’s green space and Metronome, to the south to the old quarter and upstream the wide splendor of the Vltava with it’s locks, weirs, pleasure boats and many more bridges.

On the bridge the statues, mostly Christian relics of saints who have been “defenestrated” (chucked out of windows - a Czech specialty) or chucked into the river for their beliefs or values, all of dark mildewed sandstone, many with brass plaques that have been superstitiously rubbed by the locals in return for some divine platitude.

Among all the old stuff there are buskers playing traditional Czech music, a 1 man band who said he used to be a photo model for a condom manufacturer, loads of caricature artists, stalls selling photos/watercolours of Prague, cheap jewelry, but mostly there are just huge crowds of tourists reveling in the sheer beauty of it all, snapping pics whenever the people-sea opens wide enough, or just holding their camera above their heads and clicking away.  

On the northern side we extracted money from the wall, then dropped down off the start of the bridge to a square with live folk music, BBQ’ing pork, these sugary donutty things cooked on a skewer above flames that the kids loved (trdelnik), bad coffees the parents endured, and a blacksmith making a sword and suits of knights armour for groovy snaps.

Yum!! Trdelnik!

Sir Kibby

Walked back across the bridge, the crowd even denser now and thru the old quarter to the main square with the astronomical clock, more churches and fancy buildings.

Astronomical Clock

Decided to get a bit more passive about the experience so got onto a 2hr bus tour + commentary and let it come to us - there’s so much to this magnificent city!

The bus stopped at Prague Castle ‘village’ where the current prime minister lives and allowed us off for a 30min walk - wandered in and around the St Vitus Cathedral within the castle (some Gothic masterpiece, took 500 yrs to build!).  Bus took us back to the old square, walked around to the Bakehouse where we had almond bread + dips + coffee/hot choc -  a hearty (bloody expensive) meal in our vegetarian day.

Walked on thru the Jewish qtr and along to the “Globe” bookstore where we spent a leisurely hour browsing the English books, picked up the missing Harry Potter and a couple of books for the oldies by famous Czech authors, then out into the rain for the walk back to the bikes and the lazy cycle home to Ed.

A cup of tea, a chocolate, some nuts, dried fruit and cheese, shower, read, bed with the pleasant sounds of the teens next door chatting and a very good guitarist serenading the ladies.

26/7 ANOTHER DAY in Prague

Off for a run along the Vltava and back for brekkie - always an unbeatable start.  We hope we can keep some of this routine when home.

Today, we grind through school before giving up the rest of the day to wandering Pretty Prague and lingering in spots we’ve ear-marked from yesterday.

Serendipity sees us park the bikes near the Rudolfinum, seat of the Czech Phiharmonic Orchestra, where a blond bomb-shell chickie tries the concert ticket sell.  Instinct has me wave her off, only to backtrace my steps and look at the program.  Mozart, Vivaldi, Pachelbel, the local Dvorak, Brahms…..I take the flyer to consider later.

We make it in time to see the Astronomical Clock strike 12 midday - the crowds were more impressive than the sweet turning figures and bland bell ( compared to the several verses chimed in Holland’s churches)

 clock watchers

On foot we head along the old UNESCO listed streets to the magnificent entry and foyer of Municipal House - an art deco feast.  The Lonely Planet reckons you need smelling salts to stay upright amongst so much breathtaking beauty - spot on!

Municipal House

Inside Municipal House

The school excursion today takes in the Museum of Communism where Wil does research for his “Dream, Reality, Nightmare” project and Kel curiously looks at the school uniforms the kids had to wear & asks about some of the propaganda posters.  What a model of leadership!  It clearly really messed with people’s heads & plunged the country into a dark, impoverished age.  Initially elite sports people were viewed with suspicion and even put in jail until the Party realized the potential for opportunistic teaching about the value of the community vs individual pursuit. Thereafter relay & team sports received focused attention along with combat sports in order to be battle ready.  Footage of the Velvet Revolution in 1989 showed it to be not so velvety.  20 years on from the Prague Spring & from the self-sacrificial fatal burning of student Jan Palach things seemed to get a lot worse before the final fall of Communism.

Once again, overwhelmed by oppressive history, we walk speechless up Wenceslas Square, the site of all the violent protests we have just watched footage of, whose access streets were widened to allow Russian tanks quick access when demonstrations were held at the feet of the pious Saint.  We sit on a bench and make our own sandwiches.  Such a contrast, now so pretty, festive and peaceful.

Wenceslas Square

Mr Wenceslas

The day is hot & humid so we accelerate plans to sit in Cafe Slavia, Czech’s oldest fancy coffee house where waiters with white aprons and bow ties bring us very expensive water & over priced teeney weeney iced coffees.

Back into the heat wave, past some incredible young busking Slovakian talent and over the bridge to Kampa Island where we find David Czerny’s “Piss” statue (green men whose pelvi rotate peeing out the outline of the Czech Republic).

"Girl I'm gonna make you sweat....."

Wil’s faltering (energy wise) & so we break the rules and by a hideously priced ice-cream before we soldier on to see the St Nicolas cathedral which is closed for a concert.

Back across the Charles Bridge, exhausted, we plonk on the sumptuous lawns near the bikes over the road from the Rudolfinum.  Jeff sources life-giving elixir (water) and once hydrated and re-energized, we realize that the concert advertised earlier starts in 10 minutes!

With a now revived Team Connberry, we made a dash for ticket sales and scooped up 4 seats 5 rows from the front, dressed in our sweaty shorts, T-shirts and thongs….a fine hour of exquisite strings music whisked us up into a realm of incredible auditory magic.  The calibre of musicians beyond anything I’ve ever heard, enchanted Kel & Wil as much as us. 

With our heads full of sweet melodies, we weaved home each of us humming passages from Brahms, Dvorak & Mozart our way just illuminated by the purples & slate blues of dusk.  Sweet dreams!

Wil on Prague:

We drove into Prague on the 24^th of July, late afternoon, to a crowded campsite, Mum did the dish washing for me (score!) in the evening and we all read for a bit. We woke up the next day ready to go exploring! We rode our bikes into town and tied them up at the Charles Bridge, which is amazing. It is cobbled the whole way and lined with people selling caricatures and busking. Did you know in one of the big Prague floods there were cranes along its length ready to fish big bits of debris out of the river, so that the bridge wasn’t damaged? It is really old and really important (culturally).

We walked across and back, moving through the main square. We gazed around for a while and chose a tour, which was two hours long, informative and enjoyable. Kel and I giggled our heads off listening to the guides in Italian, Chinese, Japanese and Korean. The tour guide dropped us off at the castle on the hill and we walked around it for a bit. We looked at the huge gothic cathedral for a while, but as a family the Conns don’t do gothic. Too many spiky bits and pointy things - kinda ugly. 

We slowly rode home afterwards and settled down to a dinner of yoghurt and cereal (upside down, hey?)

The next day (yesterday) we rode back into town and just plodded around, had an ice-cream and, at the end of the day, listened to a classical string quintet concert comprising of Mozart, Vivaldi, Pachelbel, Bach, Dvorak, Bizet and Brahms. The last song was the best. It was called Pling Plang Ploong, and it was all played without a bow and holding the violin like a guitar. Quite amusing! :) 

We slowly rode back home, had a shower and flopped into bed.

Now, the next day, we are driving out of here and going to a little town called Trebon!