A trip to Prague: day 3
The last day of a vacation is always an uneasy one. You are torn between the desire to visit another new place and the necessity of getting to the airport in time for your flight. And this while not wanting to rush things.
Torn between two choices
We wanted to visit the observation tower at the Petřín hill. By the time we checked out of our hotel, caught a tram and reached the hill, it was already noon. Bells tolled at the cathedral on the otherwise quiet hill and as we started walking towards the tower, their distant echo could be heard.
There were parks on the hill and benches under shady trees. We saw a local climb one of the pear trees there and throw pears on the grassy ground below for his partner to collect. The wife approached the couple, asked if she could pick some of them and returned with four juicy specimens of the fruit. By this time we had realized that we wouldn’t have time to make it all the way to the tower so we just grabbed one of the benches and munched on the pears.
Sometimes memories of things completely unrelated to the place that you are visiting linger the longest. One such memory that’s still with me is of an old man walking past us with a loud radio. The song on his radio was familiar — Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire - but in a language I didn’t understand (given where we were, it must be Czech).
On our walk from the hill to the nearest tram station we came across some fascinating buildings…
Layers of construction
A lovely façade
…street cafés…
Restaurant Leone & Anna
…and other interesting things.
Detailed manhole cover and cobbled stones
Random graffiti
We stood for a few minutes staring at this ornate gate of the German embassy:
The German consulate in Prague
The forbidding but beautifully intricate door of the German consulate at Prague
At the tram stop we turned around for one look back at the streets we had been walking through.
Two angles and a tram line
One last look at Prague
All along our stay in Prague, the light had either been too dull or too harsh. On the tram ride back to the hotel I saw Charles Bridge illuminated by the most perfect light that a photographer could ask for. Pity it wasn’t our first day here!
Charles Bridge from the tram
Fogged up
As October approached, the days here began to get shorter. The sun, which used to rise right in front of our window, began its south-easterly journey. Within a few days it had moved past the window’s frame. It was all very welcome. Dawns became a protracted, festive affair. At first you’d only sense the approach of dawn by the glowing contrails of airplanes that looked like tails of comets.
Comet or contrail?
And then the sun would rise with a lot of theatrics.
One of those glorious Oct sunrises
Sure, on cloudy days the sunrises would be a vapid affair — like a dimmer gradually being dialed up. But there was always a chance that the clouds would clear up in time for a glorious sunrise.
One of those glorious Oct sunrises
From the past few days, Amsterdam has been enveloped in a thick, impenetrable layer of fog. I am no stranger to fog. Having grown up in Delhi I am used to fog, smog and other flight-disrupting variants thereof. In fact there is a certain charm about a foggy morning. The old becomes a shade newer, the familiar becomes a touch mysterious.
One of those glorious Oct sunrises
One of those glorious Oct sunrises
And a city like Amsterdam with its numerous canals, bridges and old houses, becomes all too fairy-tale like.
But the fog of the last few days has been in a different league. It swallows everything in its wake. The view from our window in the morning is no longer a river but an opaque, white wall in which we only see our living room reflected. Despite this virtual doubling of the floor space, it feels a bit claustrophobic. Like being hemmed in by walls contracting inwards.
I stepped out yesterday to take a few pictures and it was like stepping into a post-apocalyptic world of a Philip K. Dick novel.
One of those glorious Oct sunrises
One of those glorious Oct sunrises
Thankfully for us, we invested in a big, bright lamp a few days ago. It’s going to be our private little sun in the coming days. That and Haydn’s Sunrise and Sun quartets will see us through.
The scent that lingered on…
All homes have a distinctive smell.
When we entered the house we now call our home in Amsterdam for the first time, a faint smell of Jasmine had lingered about in the air. I formed a strong association between that smell and this house. We don’t know for how long the house was on the market, but whatever the duration, it spent a lot of time staying completely shut. As we moved in, other smells begin to fight with the Jasmine frgrance sticks’ totalitarian rule. Aroma of Indian spices and curries mingled with smells of floor cleaner. The faint smells of our soaps hobnobbed with the equally understated smells of our deodorants. Within two months, that distinctive ‘Amsterdam home’ smell had been replaced with the smell of nothing and everything at once. The wife still found the Jasmine smell overwhelming and replaced the Jasmine-scented fragrence sticks with Rose. It didn’t change anything for me and Rose smell never quite took hold like Jasmine did.
From her recent trip to India, the wife brought along a small supply of Mysore Sandal soap. The scent of sandalwood oil in these soaps is mild and pleasant but it never leaves the bathroom.
We were in Rome for a short vacation and for the first time in over six months the house was locked for five days at a stretch. When we came back yesterday, it is that smell of sandal from the half-used soap that had taken over the house. I like it but I know that it doesn’t stand a chance against our cacophony of odours, aromas and smells…
PS The obligatory postcard from Rome:
Roma
A trip to Prague: day 2
Prague on a sunny day is so different from Prague on a rainy day that we should be forgiven for thinking that we had woken up in another city.
A building across our hotel in Prague
A few days after arriving in Amsterdam, the wife had taken a free New Europe walking tour and had quite enjoyed the experience. Since the organization offered a walking tour of Prague too, we thought we’d give it a try. The tour starts from the Old Town Square at 11:00 AM. That gave us a destination in the morning, but the route was of our own choosing.
Opening the shop and doing a waltz
Somewhere near the Old Town Square
The cherubs seemed to be saying “yo Jesus man”
Wandering in Prague
When we reached the town square, the tour hadn’t yet started. We used the time to sample “Tredlnik” - a traditional Slovak preparation of dough grilled on coal and topped with sugar.
Trdelnik
While we found it somewhat flat and underwhelming (being brought up on Indian sweets does that to you I guess), it did manage to attract big honeybees.
The walking tour is a great way to collect nuggets of myth, legend and history. It covers fair bit of ground in 2-3 hours and we mentally bookmarked places we wanted to return to later.
Somewhere in Prague
Wenceslas Square
History, Myth, Legend
Somewhere in Prague
Somewhere in Prague
Somewhere in Prague
Now there was something about Prague that I haven’t been able to put my finger on. Throughout the tour I kept feeling a sense of loss. Stories of self-immolation by students to protest against invasion by Soviet Union don’t lighten the air much either. The melancholia becomes almost oppressive when you are walking through the Jewish Quarters. Outside the Jewish Quarters, when our guide drew our attention to the distant installation of a metronome (which swayed gently in the air as if keeping time to a sad adagio) that stands where a statue of Stalin once stood, I felt as if I would never know happiness again.
Somewhere in Prague
[If you’ve read Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time, then you’d understand when I say that it felt like being in a kingdom ruled by one of the Forsaken]
The walking tour ended near Rudolfinum, which I kept referring to as Prague’s Concertgebouw
Prague’s Concertgebouw
Since we very close to Charles Bridge, we decided to go across and visit Prague Castle.
A view of the Prague Castle
Prague Castle is a surreal world of gardens, chapels and palaces. The long shadows of spires and gargoyles and the evening light add a touch of eeriness to everything.
A garden near Prague Castle
Somewhere in the Prague Castle
Somewhere in the Prague Castle
Somewhere in the Prague Castle
Gargoyle
The long shadows add a dash of eeriness
After walking for close to an hour, we were quite glad to emerge at the open terrace of the castle. The view of the city from here is absolutely breathtaking.
The view of the city from the terrace of Prague Castle
It was now time to retrace our steps and visit the places we had bookmarked during our tour. We reached the Old Town Square for another look at the Astronomical Clock. Every hour the two windows above the clock open and small figurines of apostles appear in them. The otherwise stationary figures that decorate the clock also start to move. Our guide had warned us in the morning that it’s all a bit overrated. Still, every hour the crowd begins to swell near the tower, and all the eyes are on the clockwork in anticipation of something magical. Random passersby asked me why everyone was here and after learning about the clockwork, joined the crowd. As the hour struck, the clockwork did its prescribed routine and it was all over by the time everyone had snapped a couple of decent pictures. But before the buzz could fizzle out, the latest addition to the clock - a human trumpeter atop the tower - played a delightful little tune on his trumpet by leaning out of the balcony once in each direction. The tune echoed in the square below. Everyone cheered loudly and broke into applause. It is this memory that will stay with me for a long time.
Old Town Square in a new light
Waiting in anticipation for those doors to open
The trumpeter does his thing at the Astronomical Clock tower
I regretted not having recorded the trumpeter, but as the wife kept saying, hundreds of others had recorded it and put it on YouTube:
We ended our day with a walk to the Museum through Wenceslas Square. It was mildly ironical to end the day surrounded by American Brand outlets that have sprouted in what was once the center of protests against Soviet oppression.
Ending the day at Wenceslas Square
Then and now
My college was quite close to our home in North Delhi. I rarely used buses for commuting. People coming from South Delhi had no choice. They’d commute for more than two hours each day in Delhi Transport Corporation’s (DTC) “U special” buses. The moment we’d finish our lab work, there’d be a mad rush to catch these buses home. I never quite understood what the fuss was all about.
Then I started working and the tables were turned. My office was in South Delhi and it my turn to face the grind of two-hour commutes. Worse, unlike the University, the office wouldn’t close down for a summer break. Traveling in peak Delhi summer in a combination of DTC and private buses took a heavy toll on my health.
The work on Delhi Metro started a few years into my work life. I suffered innumrable traffic jams in the hope that the Metro would eventually make my long commute shorter and more comfortable. By the time the first trains became functional, I had already moved to Bangalore.
[On a trip to Delhi in 2004, I took my first ride in the Delhi Metro.]
Scarred from traveling for long hours in Delhi, I made it a point to rent a place very close to the office. The weather in Bangalore being what it was, I could walk to work. On particularly lazy days, I could take a 10 minute auto ride.
The music you hear is radio blaring from two fat speakers right behind the passenger seat.
The St. Marks road of Nov 2003 in the video above, isn’t the St. Marks road I left in 2011. More trees had been chopped down and traffic had become more chaotic (if such a thing was even possible).
And then the work on Bangalore Metro started. I saw my favourite patch of bougainvillea on MG Road uprooted to make way for the Metro. I saw traffic descend into that familiar pattern of chaos which the construction of an elevated corridor in the middle of a busy road causes. I stoically tolerated the dust, the noise and the broken sidewalks on CMH Road. And when they flagged off the first train some 2 weeks ago, I had moved cities again.
It was a foggy morning in Amsterdam today. The fog can make even your daily morning commute feel like a fairy tale.
They are working on a new Metro line right outside our office. I wonder where I’ll be when it is ready.