Europe, Fall 2016: Praha

You will love Prague, friends enthusiastically assured me. It’s beautiful, it’s magical, it’s the kind of place you fall in love in. Or with.

My first impressions  did not live up to these glowing recommendations, although it’s not Prague’s fault we went in circles inside its rather discomfiting train station. Clearly, expectations had to be adjusted.

Eventually we managed to negotiate with a cab (‘negotiate’ is a misnomer of course, you’re simply agreeing to the terms of the highway robbery), and the city began to make up for its less than hospitable welcome by cloaking itself in a truly glorious sunset that transformed it into a fairy tale vision of a thousand spires on the banks of the Vltava.

Our home was to be a teal and white flat in a powder-blue rococo building, rather incongruously located right next to a tramline, with the famed bridges only blocks away.

Mom had signed us up for a nighttime walking tour, and as we happened to be the only persons in the group, it became less of a commercialized tourist activity and more of a relaxed stroll in single-digit temperatures with our chatty guide, a local named Kristian who was studying to be an actor.

Highlights included a dizzying history lesson on Old Town, New Town and Lesser Town (not sure if this was a lack of imagination on the part of the village elders or a preference for brevity), the Hunger Wall, the flood markings on the houses by the canals – always of interest to somebody from the flood-plagued Third World, the acoustic theatre steps, the cold shining brilliance of the St. Vitus Cathedral and the fortified grandeur of the empty presidential palace, and all the subversive art, sharp-witted rebukes that catch the casual perambulator by surprise.

I have to say though, that my two favorite bits of that chilly evening jaunt were the Kolonada sweets (gigantic vanilla-flavored Communion-type wafers that made the impious non-Catholic in me chortle), and the classical musician we happened upon on Charles Bridge, filling the air with the timeless harmonies of another age.

Prague would continue to show her lovely autumn faces over the next few days. We took endless scenic walks, discovered picturesque town squares, posed in front of the astronomical clock. We shared a lunch with pigeons and dined in a dungeon. We found the Sto. Nino church and discovered the charms of our neighborhood supermarket. We took a bus tour (not terribly exciting, but a boomer-generation requisite, I am finding out on this trip) and a boat tour – now that I was into, not least of all because there was a bevy of swans that floated in tranquil elegance on the rain-speckled surface of the river, and all the fascinating tidbits our guide shared, such as the fact that Prague’s lesser-known canals are often used as a cinematic stand-in for those of Venice.

We were offered Czech beer and coffee, and I, total tita, opted for the latter while my mom – who is not a regular mom but is, like, a cool mom – took the beer.

And we got well and truly lost in the new-ish part of town. Stopping locals for directions was no good until in desperation, we turned to Google Maps.

Holding my phone out, following digital directions through dark European streets late at night, reminded me of the time I’d gotten lost in Tbilisi, because it seems I have a penchant for these misadventures.

*****

We left the fairy tale city wrapped in somber gray one cold, rainy morning, and flew back to Amsterdam.