Peter: Prague Journal 4

I am very far behind on journaling. Noha even beat me to the punch this time! She wrote at length about a lot of the stuff already so I’ll be brief. I just want to catch up my journal and then try to write them more regularly (but maybe still wait to post them grouped together).

29.09.2013: Dinner at Lokal and movie night at Globe.
30.09.2013 – 01.10.2013: Meeting with Lucas at Vyšehrad and a salsa bar/restaurant.
02.10.2013 – 04.10.2013: Socializing at Globe and with Couch Surfers.
05.10.2013 – 06.10.2013: Vinohrady, St. Nicholas, Petřín Hill, and movie night at Globe.
07.10.2013 – 08.10.2013: Quiet days.
09.10.2013: Day trip to Terezin.

Sunday 29.09.2013

Walking across the Vlatva River to dinner. The Charles Bridge as seen from another bridge.

We ate at Lokal. It’s a very long restaurant and very busy, unusual in our experience in Prague so far. We came before but couldn’t get a seat.

Noha eagerly awaiting dinner.

Dinner! The one furthest from me is beef goulash with bread dumplings; next to it, steamed cabbage; closest to me, fried cheese and potatoes. The food was a little disappointing for how hard it was to find a table!

Later we went to Globe Book Store (which has a bar/café in the back) to watch The Lives of Others, but we only stayed for about 30 min.

Monday 30.09.2013 – Tuesday 01.10.2013
Through Couch Surfing we met Lucas (actually I think it is spelled Lukaš and š is pronounced like sh). He showed us around some of Vyšehrad, then the following day we met him and his wife Patricia at a salsa bar. There we also briefly met Canadian missionaries, Kevin and Maria. Like Noha mentioned in her journal, Lukaš has travelled a lot and works as a tour guide in Prague. I like him and Patricia a lot. They’re quiet yet paradoxically are very willing to reach out and meet new people. At the bar, Maracas, a girl with whom Lukaš and Patricia were acquainted was celebrating her birthday. She (I think it was her) later even gave us some cake, which we greedily consumed, starting into it even without utensils. Not many pictures, just this one of the band playing music while people danced salsa:

Wednesday 02.10.2013
In the day we went to Café Montmartre for a while and I read (I think from The Good Soldier Švejk). We had gone to Montmartre before at night but it scared us off with its poor lighting and emptiness. This time we went in the day and it seemed much more lively and charming. At night as part of our continued efforts to make ourselves socialize, we went to Quiz Night at Globe. Globe appears quite popular as a hang-out for expats, who packed it for Quiz Night. Luckily I had had the foresight to make a table reservation *pats self on back*. We talked a little bit to a couple (well, I have no idea if they were together as a couple) at the next table when they asked us for an answer after the warm-up for the quiz (identify the TV show titles without the vowels; the one they didn’t get was DRMFJNN, I Dream of Jeannie). Daniel was American and Olivia was from New Zealand. Both had worked as English teachers, though I think Olivia had switched to office work. It surprised me to hear that teaching English is still a viable option for working in Prague and making a decent living. I had heard that this type of work was drying up in South Korea and elsewhere and that it’s becoming more difficult to get enough hours and have a sane schedule and get by. But I guess not here. The expats at Globe seemed surprisingly normal to me, hardly eccentric at all. I feel that you could find the same crowd in any American city. Mostly hip-looking white youth, some students, just interested in having a good time. But who knows, perhaps they are all terribly interesting and cultured and blah blah blah. I don’t really have any pictures, other than these two from Café Montmartre.

Thursday 03.10.2013
We had dinner at Café Coloré, recommended to us by Lukaš. A nice place, very busy, good food. Afterwards we went to a bar in Vinohrady for a weekly Couch Surfing meeting. We met Zdenek, a local; his friend Alfredo, from Mexico; Arcady, from Belarus; and Bob, origins unknown. The meeting was pretty nice I guess. It was loud with a lot of people talking in a small space. Basically a party but where most of the people don’t know each other beforehand. I’m glad we went but I find socializing pretty exhausting and am uncomfortable in parties.

Noha making a face at Café Coloré.

More of the café. You can see a weird painting on the wall.

On the way to the Couch Surfing event we passed by the Egyptian Embassy.

Friday 04.10.2013
We went to Nerudova street in Malá Strana, then to Petřín Hill. Later we met with Petra and her son Ruben; then his friend Andre and mother Karolina, and all of us went to the John Lennon wall.

Somewhere near the top of Nerudova.

A narrow alley in Malá Strana, after climbing Nerudova.

Pictures of Noha Taking Pictures. XXIX.

Climbing up Petřín.

A statue of a famous Romantic Czech poet in Petřín.

A view of St. Vitus.

An awkward picture. We tried to get St. Vitus in it. I had to use the flash or else our faces would be too dark, but it looks weird.

Ruben, in a brief moment of not running around.

Look at this crazy dog mixture!

A bunch of locks near one of the mills on Kampa.

The John Lennon wall.

Saturday 05.10.2013 – Sunday 06.10.2013
A break from self-imposed socializing duties for some more sightseeing.

A market near Old Town Square. Mostly tourist trinkets with a few stalls selling fruit and candies.

Noha Looking at Things.

Near the top of a park in Vinohrady.

A view from the park.

Noha was too chicken to climb down these steps.

Noha eating her favorite dessert at Grand Café Orient.

Noha Looking at Things.

The very baroque interior of St. Nicholas in Malá Strana.

More St. Nicholas.

Looking down from the upper floor.

More St. Nicholas.

A small statue in the side-part thing of the church.

The Monument to Victims of Communism at Petřín. Sometimes I saw people holding the hand of the statue in front (the man still intact) and having their pictures taken, which is sort of funny.

A garden at the top of Petřín.

A hollowed-out tree trunk in the garden.

Later we went back to Globe. I had intended to read while the movie (Melinda and Melinda) played but ended up watching the movie.

Monday 07.10.2013 – Tuesday 08.10.2013:
Nothing much to say or show. We had some errands to take care of on these days that made it inconvenient to do much sight-seeing or socializing.

Wednesday 09.10.2013:
We took a day-trip to Terezín (Theresienstadt in German), the only (?) former concentration camp in Czech Republic. It functioned mainly as a holding place/transit camp, rather than a forced labor or death camp like the other more famous ones in Poland and Germany. What makes the camp notable is that the Jews held there were allowed to have some semblance of normal life, albeit with horrible over-crowding and the attendant spread of disease, and in particular gave concerts, made art (but only showing certain subjects and in a positive light), and had a children’s theater. We saw some of the children’s art in Josefov in Prague at the Jewish Museum and more of it here, as well as art made by adults in Terezín.

The day was appropriately overcast, gloomy and chilly. We came at the same time as several other tour groups, mostly comprising idiot teenagers, but didn’t see them much except for at the Museum of the Ghetto. At the Small Fortress, we went with a tour guide along with an older American couple.