Public transport in Prague
We relied entirely on public transport to get around in Prague. We had acquired this 3-day pass at the airport that allowed us to use public transport within the city limits for a very reasonable price.
Public transport in Prague is a mix of buses, trams and the metro. Unlike Paris, where they’ll soon need to invent new colours for their Metro lines, Prague has just 3 lines and they are adequately served by primary colours (A - Red, B - Yellow, C - Green).
What Prague metro lacks in breadth, it more than makes up for in depth. Many stations are very deep underground.
Staromestska
The escalator rides seem to last an eternity and make your head spin. Such depths must take a toll on the escalators because we saw that about a third of them were out of order.
The never-ending escalator rides
The concerned authorities would hang this placard in front of them forbidding you from getting onto them. Each time a train would pass it would circulate a dank draught through the station and make the placard dance fitfully for a few seconds.
[The wife is of the view that they were merely reserved for use during peak hours]
The stations were utilitarian but a few of them had an avant-garde decor comprising of dimpled golden and red/blue/green (depending on the station) plates:
Staromestska
At one of the Prague metro stations
Malostranska
The station names kept reminding me of Koyaanisqatsi, Powaqqatsi and Naqoyqatsi. Had the metro stations played Philip Glass on their public address system, I would have been greatly spooked.
Which brings me to the aural aspect of the public transport. The announcements in the Trams in Amsterdam are in a voice that is pleasant, polite but firm:
It’s like an old friend of your father counseling you about your prospects after college.
The voices I heard in public transport in Prague were feeble and lacked any authority. It was the voice your mother’s sister suggesting a home remedy for your cold.
I think traveling around the world assigning personas to public transport voices will be an interesting thing to do.
The Times They Are a-Changin’
I use my cellphone as an alarm clock. When I set an alarm, it tells me how many hours are left for it to go off. When setting the alarm for 5:00 in the morning at 11:30 last night, I noticed something odd. The phone claimed I had 6 hours 30 minutes before the alarm would wake me up. It then occured to me that most of Western Europe was going to turn the clocks back by 1 hour at 3:00 in the morning to undo Central European Summer Time.
Under normal circumstances, I would have appreciated an extra hour in the bed on a Sunday morning. But since I had to go pick up my wife from the airport, I was beginning to get concerned. She was due to land at 6:00 AM. After the timezone change on Sunday morning, she would be landing at 5:00 AM. Which meant that I really should have been setting the alarm for 4:00 AM. A quick visit to NS.nl showed me that there was a 4:47 AM train which would get me to Schipol at 5:00 AM. I took a mental note of it and slept. Or rather I thought I would sleep.
I spent the night tossing between nightmares whose dominant theme was the failure of my cellphone’s alarm. At 3:56 AM, I woke up convinced that the alarm would work and slept peacefully for all of 4 minutes.
At 4:30 AM, I was at the North entrance of the Amsterdam Centraal Station. There are two layers of doors to get in. You pull the outer doors while the inner doors slide when they detect motion. I could open the outer doors but the inner doors were still locked. On the 2 feet concrete floor between the two doors, 3, maybe 4 gentlemen were lying half-asleep in their winter finery and the place smelt decidedly of pot. I ran for the main entrance.
At 4:40 AM, I was at the main entrance. None of the doors were open here either. A small crowd was beginning to form - all waiting to be let in. I finally found the sole entrance from where people were being allowed in.
Most of the people entering the station at this time were back from partying all night in Amsterdam. The ticket checkers were being extra careful with them. By 4:45 AM I was at platform 8b, just in time to catch the inter-city train to Rotterdam which would get me to Schiphol at 5:00 AM.
Haloween is the dominant theme of costume parties these days. Given the inordinate amount of drinking and pot smoking that goes on at these parties, most people looked like zombies even without help from their costumes. Others looked like they had just come back after having played meaty roles in various productions of Titus Andronicus. In short, nothing but the very dregs of humanity travel this early on a Sunday morning.
I reached the airport on time. When my wife called me at 5:10 AM, I spoke in my muddled, sleepy voice and pretended that I was still at home. Before she could explain the timezone changes of last night, I dropped the ruse and told her that I was waiting for her at our designated meeting point. To see her come running grinning made it all worthwhile.
p.s. The phone automatically adjusted the timezone and shows the correct time but the wrist watch needs my intervention and I want to stay in CEST.
The wrist watch is staying in CEST with me
Diwali in Amsterdam (is not Diwali at all)
Had it not been for friends in India on Twitter and Facebook, I wouldn’t even have realized that it was Diwali today. In Amsterdam, the day is as unremarkable as any other. It’ll blend into the rest of the week which itself feels like one long day sometimes. I do this: I open my living room’s window (ignoring the protest of the thermostat - for it’s a comfortable 22ºC inside and a chilly 7ºC outside), look towards Centraal Station and pretend that the lights are there for Diwali.
Happy Diwali!
Happy Diwali!
A trip to Prague: Day 1
When we boarded our flight to Prague in August, we were getting on a plane after 4 months. Thanks to getting around Europe in trains, We had completely forgotten what it is like to take a flight and had packed things that in the post 9/11 era are considered contraband onboard a flight.
We had also forgotten the mental gymnastic of converting between currencies. This was our fourth country in Europe since coming to Amsterdam but the first one where the Euro is not accepted. I looked at it as a welcome opportunity for adding a few new coins to my collection.
I had thought that after Paris I might not ever find a city more beautiful. That idea had begun to seem naive by the time we reached the old town square.
At the Old Town Square, Prague
At the Old Town Square, Prague
At the Old Town Square, Prague
At the Old Town Square, Prague
At the Old Town Square, Prague
We took a break at a small cafe at the square. Smoking in Europe seems a lot more pervasive than anywhere I’ve been to. Still, most cafes don’t allow smoking indoors. The rules in Prague or at least in this cafe were very different. Thick tobacco smoke lazily hung in air. May be it was the weather, may be it was the second-hand smoke but the place felt very surreal. It was as if we had walked into the set of a 90s hollywood spy-thriller involving Russia and the KGB. And I distinctly remember hearing Rober Miles’ Children here which reinforced that 90s feeling.
It was threatening to rain all afternoon and by the time we stepped out of the cafe, it was clear that in a few minutes it wouldn’t be a mere threat any longer. We made a dash to our hotel for picking the one umbrella we had brought with us and began our search for a shop where we could buy another. At last we found a small grocery shop run by a chinese man and his helper, which among other things, stocked umbrellas. I know neither Czech nor Chinese and English was not their strong point but an umbrella was somehow procured.
Our next stop was this bizarre TV tower. I had seen a picture of it on Wikipedia and wanted to see it for real.
Prague’s TV Tower
It reminded me of one of my earliest interaction with a PC playing Bouncing Babies:
Had they installed tiny tracks and moved the babies up and down the tower somehow, it would’ve taken this idea to the next logical level of its morbidity.
The rain had picked up to the point of rendering our umbrellas somewhat useless. We sat in a bar munching hot fries and waited the rain out.
Prague in the evening, especially after a spell of heavy rain, feels like a dream (and not necessarily a happy one). The wet cobblestones shine like giant opals and embers in the light from the shops and the street lamps. I could imagine how unreal it would all look once fog would start setting in during winters.
Prague after rains
Prague after rains
After our dinner, we decided to end the day with a walk on the Charles Bridge. The sky in the distance was clear and it looked like a black blanket of clouds was being pulled from its face.
Charles Bridge after a rainy evening
When the lights go out
When the lights go out
It’s been a grim 3 months. While M. A. K. Pataudi, Shammi Kapoor and Jagjit Singh were icons we shared with our parents, Steve Jobs and Dennis Ritchie were the icons of our age. Nothing makes you feel older than the passing away of your icons. I don’t want to be in a world that I don’t share with Tendulkar or Rahman. I’ve been having this bizarre vision of having been put inside a sealed, transparent glass casket and left to float in outer space. That would be nice.
Amsterdam Soundscape - A walk through Centraal Station
We completed six months in Amsterdam today. What better excuse than this to talk about the most interesting bit of my daily commute to office. Each paragraph in this post is synchronized with the audio. It’ll probably not work inside google reader, but should work on the site from any modern browser. Well, you’ll need to hit the play button, preferably with your headphones on (and excuse the poor sound quality):My walk begins along the river IJ and soon gets me to the north entrance of Centraal station just past the ferries. A saxophone player occasionally plays here. You can hear him from across the road over the din of the traffic.
The metronome is the sound of the pedastrian crossing. Crossing the road gets me closer to the saxophonist. I am always in a hurry (on a weekday morning, who isn’t). One day I’ll let things slow down and let the music wash over me.
I enter Centraal Station and the saxophone player fades into the background. As the days here get colder, I find the warmth and the bustle of the station even more inviting. I also find the rush, the beginnings and the endings of many journeys, very life affirming.
The trains here announce their arrivals and departures not just acoustically but also physically. The floor under your feet rattles as the trains enter or leave the platform.
The beeping in the background is the sound of people furiosly punching their choices on the ticket vending machines. I find it amusing that we used to be intimidated by them when we moved here. The UI is offered in Dutch and English, but we often go with the Dutch default now.
The train announcements are usually in Dutch. Trains to Schiphol airport get announcements in English. The international trains get additional announcements in the language of the destination country. Usually by the same person. The results are not always pleasant to the ear…
…especially when French is being butchered.
At this point I step out into the open again, in search of the tram to the office.