WANDERING IN BOHEMIA 

Prague & Cesky Krumlov

Arriving in Prague was the first time since leaving Seattle that I'd set foot in a place where I'd been before. I was here 20 years ago, just after graduating college, when my friend Jessamyn and I visited the host family she stayed with during her study abroad.  She taught me a handful of useful words and phrases I somehow managed to recall, not the least of which was "I speak very little Czech," which I paired with "Is English ok?" and everyone here is worldly and well-informed and speaks at least functional amount of English, and so it's more than ok. 

I wandered around Prague for 3 days, trying to fit impossibly large architecture within my camera lens and trying to conjure some sense of familiarity with a place I'd been away from for so long. It sort of worked... I know I've walked across the Charles Bridge, and I have a photo, taken by Jessamyn--on actual film--of me doing a handstand next to a swan on a little sandy island in the Vltava. I walk by the river, I see the swans, but nothing is particularly clear. Most everything seems new to me. 

On my first morning I go to the sunny, plant-filled flat of a young woman who teaches visitors how to bake traditional Czech Kolaches. These are yeast pastries filled with fruit and jam, or sometimes seeds and nuts mixed with sugar and spices and made into a paste. The base layer is usually tvaroh, or quark, which is what Americans might get if you mixed 1/2 greek yogurt and 1/2 cream cheese together. It's sweetened with a little sugar and layered on to the pastry before the other filling. The dough is more elastic than it looks, and the group of us in the class spend a few minutes pressing our thumbs and fingers together to dimple the pastry and then make a little shape that looks like a life raft. It's perfect if you can hold the dough up to a window and see light pass through. I think we get a little carried away with the filling, as you can see below--some of them got a little volcanic. They're delicious all the same, though, and while our second tray is in the oven our hostess is so sweet and brings us coffee from a little shop her friend runs around the corner. Baking was cozy and familiar and the perfect thing to help ease the transition from a month of days spent sweating just sitting still in an extended South Asian summer to fall in Prague. I also found a knit hat worthy of the next ice age at the thrift shop across from my flat and felt much better prepared for 8 degrees C and a sky full of clouds. 

Prague is an old city and a new city. It's divided into neighborhoods numbered in a spiral out from the center of the Old City, or Prague 1. My flat is on the south edge of Prague 1, and knowing I'd be back to see the famous historic sites, I set out north on the train to the newer city in Prague 7. Vnitroblock is a warehouse with gorgeous factory windows and rail lines crossing the floor that's been cleared out and filled with plants, a great sound system, and a kitchen that serves coffee, pastries, and light, fresh meals throughout the day. It's akin to Chophouse Row in Seattle, but also has a dance studio upstairs where neighborhood kids take classes in street styles. I stayed for half a day editing photos, collecting new songs, and having some food. Not far away are my two other destinations: Cross Club, which is a hand-built artist studio/commune that's famous for it's collective scene and epic dance parties, and the Airship Gulliver at the modern art space DOX. Though radically different in origin and programme, both places are born of people's imagination and the desire to create and connect. Cross Club is built from bus engines and communist juice squeezers. There are some old subway benches used for seating in the restaurant and an Astronomical Clock nouveau built of aluminum tubing and maybe some wiring from the bus engines. Some people think it's too nice now, and miss it's counterculture edge. The female street artist who led the tour I took assured me that the art "studios" at Cross Club still have plenty of rough edges, and are often garage-like places where artists can store things that are sharp, broken, volatile, janky, and otherwise unwelcome in polished spaces. The Airship at DOX is named after Gulliver of Gulliver's Travels, and evokes freedom and discovery in a fantastic mode. You can go inside! And when it's time to dock the ship and let the dreams land on Earth there's an anchor to tether it all together.  The New City is also home to Bitcoin headquarters, where it takes a week to get approval to go inside, and one of the few building-sized street murals in Prague, depicting the contemporary fight against Communism. The last photo in the row is 1/2 of a mural of two people sitting in chairs, their heads connected like a conduit. Only half is pictured because a dumpster was blocking the shot, but you get the idea. 

I took the tourist route through Prague to the Old Square and across the Charles Bridge twice: Once by day in the thick of all the tourists with selfies sticks, and once early in the morning while the gas lamps were still lit and most people weren't out of bed yet. I took the photos here during the day, though it's nearly impossible to capture the immense, steep-hipped Gothic roof of the Prašná brána or all  the flèches of Our Lady Before Týn while also avoiding all of the other people also taking pictures of them. It kind of became a game of timing, some odd angles, and luck. In the morning, though, I just walked the cobblestones. I could hear my own footsteps. I felt the wind shift down the spoked intersections of a spider web of streets and felt the fading drizzle on my skin. For a moment I could imagine life here before cars, before tourists, before marionettes and chimney cakes and tickets to Vivaldi in the evening. I caught a glimpse of it, then turned the corner back to the Old Town square and there was an Asian couple in their wedding clothes being photographed under the Astronomical Clock. The guidebooks said this would happen. I laughed a little, happy to have had my moment with the quiet city, and made my way to breakfast.  

Český Krumlov is a medieval town, mostly untouched by conflict and development that impacted the history of many other places across the Czech Republic. It's 2.5 hours south of Prague by bus, and I'd visited there with Jessamyn 20 years ago, too. I remember an authentic medieval dinner by the river (simple food, no salt) ridiculously cheap dark beer, and that we paid about $30 for a room in a pension (pen-see-ohn; a guest house). Just like walking in Prague, I felt like a total newcomer to Český Krumlov this time around. Nothing seemed to familiar until I stopped to take a photo from the Cloak Bridge while exploring the castle above town. I framed the tower of the Protestant church in the middle of the small arched window and realized I'd taken this exact photo 20 years before. Also on film, printed on paper, sitting on a bookshelf in a box back home. Whatever artistic sensibility that is hadn't faded like much of my memory had. 

The castle here was built in phases starting in 1270 or so and was completed during the Renaissance. Many buildings in town date from the late 1500s and early 1600s and show much care, both in their construction and preservation. The Vltava makes a tight S-curve as it meanders slowly through town giving the feeling of being nearly surrounded by water almost anywhere you go. There are a million tourists during the day, but after the sun goes down most of them head back to Prague on the bus and the population dwindles to a few hundred. There were 3 couples and myself having dinner at Laibon, a vegetarian restaurant right on the river. We sat outside under little piles of blankets (and me in my hat) drinking cups of hot wine as the waiter, who also owns the restaurant, took care of us while also managing a bowl of soup for himself and the evening's playlist. A few of us got to talking and stayed until the food was done and the owner sat down and joined the conversation. We talked about everything from Gypsy music to who had visited Pittsburgh to markets for Australian coal exports until the chill in the air became stronger than the wine and we had to say goodnight. It was breathlessly quiet as I walked home and climbed the steps to my pension just under the tower. On my way out of town the next morning I stopped back at Laibon to thank the owner for such a nice evening. He walked with me along the river to the bus station in the fog where we met one of the couples from dinner and chatted some more until the bus came. It didn't take long to feel a sense of connection in this place, as though the little world we'd created here was being invaded by the next round of tourists as we were leaving. We bid one another farewell and safe journeys and thanks again. Prosim. You're welcome. Of course. See you again.