From: Nat Hager III
Date: Thursday, 1998 September 3 8.09
Subject: Prague Impressions
Hi Folks,
Headin' home, and keeping myself busy here in
the airport and (as long as the batteries last) on the plane. Had a lot
of impressions of Prague I thought I'd pass along, as well as some attached
images of Vienna. Xuan and I agree that Prague was our favorite,
because of its spectacular architecture, followed by Budapest, because of its
sense of adventure (American tourists just don't get that far).
Vienna is also nice, with splendid palaces and concert events, but after
Prague and Budapest it's also a bit predictable.
Hope the images of Prague I sent a few days ago
captured a sense of what it's like. Driving in it felt like some great
treasure from the past that's recently been uncovered, almost like the
Titanic. It has the gray appearance of 50 years of Soviet/Nazi
domination, but with all these spectacular cathedrals, spires, and palaces in
every direction you look. I remember some historian saying
"isn't it a shame at the end of WW II the Allies stopped where they did
and Prague fell into the Soviet sphere of influence, closing it off forever
from the west?" Well its all open now, becoming more European
by the day, soon to join NATO next year (and presumably later EU), and teaming
with American tourists.
Driving in we parked at an old Soviet-era
parking garage near the city center. The up/down ramps were very narrow
and close together, making it hard to navigate an Avis rental car in a garage
designed for Ladas and Trabants. The pedestrian elevator was small and
you had to jam in, manually closing the door behind you on that level.
At the center of town we walked down a wide
central avenue, with newly remodeled shops, hotels, and restaurants on both
sides, which felt a little one of the main avenues in Paris. The place
was crowded with locals and tourists, and I noticed some posters on the kiosks
commemorating the 30th anniversary of Prague Spring. At the far
end of the avenue was a series of narrow alleyways, all lined with pubs,
restaurants, and shops selling Bohemian crystal, which eventually led down the
Old Town Square.
The Old Town Square was familiar from newsreel
footage, particularly during the 1989 "Velvet Revolution", but was
stunning to see in person. I shot many pictures, both digital and 35mm,
but the pictures only partially capture the sense of what it's like. The
square is also a hub of activity, with sidewalk cafes and street vendors
everywhere selling little trinkets to make a few krona.
We walked across the Charles Bridge (as tourists
call it) where sidewalk artists and musicians practiced their craft. On
the other side was the hill leading up to the palace, with President Vasclav
Havel (who I hear is very ill right now) has his office. We toured the
palace and in addition, an entire upper town adjacent to the palace. The
picturesque street scenes and alleyways just never seemed to stop, they kept
going and going like the energizer bunny <grin>.
Coming down the hill Xuan remembered the jazz
club where Clinton played saxophone with Havel several years ago.
We swung by and sure enough there it was, with numerous pictures of Havel,
Clinton, and Madeline Albright in the front window. Across the
street I noticed a Cyber Cafe, and couldn't resist asking if I could get
a quick Net connection to do a mail exchange. The guy was ahead of
me though, and said I could if I had an Ethernet card, which unfortunately I
didn't.
Both nights we had dinner at sidewalk cafes on
the Old Town Square, enjoying the pleasures of heavy Bohemian cooking (lots of
dumplings, gravy, sauerkraut's, etc). The beer was great though, since
we must have been in the land of the Pilsner recipe. Found a hotel
3-4 km from city center, though we may have jumped a little soon since it
turned out to be a remodeled housing flat from the communist era, which we
appropriately named the Hotel Gulag. The rooms felt like an Intourist
hotel and the breakfast room a commissary, but with the big difference that
the TVs got CNN.
Couldn't leave Prague without some music so we
took in a first rate production of Don Giovanni. It was in a beautiful
old theater, with the best seats going for $50, so we economized a bit and
bought seats in the 5th floor balcony. A lot of other tourists had
the same idea, and there were so many American accents in the 5th floor
balcony we might as well have been at the Fulton in Lancaster.
One thing you have to be careful of are the
scam artists. I asked to use the office suite at the hotel in
Brno and got charged $35 for a 10 minute Net connection. Xuan said I
got "bounced by a Czech" on that one. Xuan hailed a cab in
Prague for a 3-4 km ride back to the hotel and we got hit for a $20 taxi
charge. We took the street tram from then on. Also the
"Mozart Brigades" are everywhere, both Prague and Vienna,
wearing appropriate costumes and wigs and selling off-name concert tickets
for exorbitant prices.
You feel like you're in two worlds at once that
were never meant to co-exist, i.e. the communist past and capitalist present.
You see old Soviet-era housing blocks with self-serve gas station/ convenience
stores next to them selling the usual sodas, fast foods, and magazines like in
the US. You stay in a hotel that feels like an old Intourist Hotel yet
gets CNN in the room and sells USA Today (along with Time, Newsweek, and
Playboy) in the lobby. You drive through areas you know you
wouldn't have been allowed 15 years ago now in an Avis rented car. You
see buildings that look like they haven't changed since the war with
newly-remodeled Bohemian crystal shops next door, that would pass in any
upscale mall in the US.
It certainly changes your perception of the
country and people. For may years I thought of Czechoslovakia as the
"bad guys", since after all it was an "Iron Curtain"
country, closed off from the West, where KGB lurked and the potential invasion
of NATO existed. But it's clear that isn't the way the Czech
people wanted it; they envisioned themselves as a small peaceful central
European democracy, with a full western economy on the level of Austria or
Switzerland. Communism was imposed on them externally and they must have
detested it, and now they're throwing it off as fast as they possibly
can.
Drove down from Prague to Austria on back roads
and through small villages. Fairly normal rolling hills with wooded
lakes and people out hiking and camping. Reached the Austrian border and
again, it was completely different from 15 years ago. No fence, no guard
towers, and trivial exit procedures, for both us and the Czech cars ahead of
us. On the Austrian side they were expanding the customs facilities to
handle the increased traffic. You see the woods not quite grown back
where the old barriers used to be, but that was it.
Since we had an extra day we drove to Salzburg
and stopped for the night. Salzburg is at the base of the western Alps,
and is a very pretty small-sized Austrian city. It's also Mozart's
birthplace, and we toured a meticulously-documented museum of his early
apartment. I very much liked Salzburg and wish we'd had more time
to spend there. At any rate we then headed east to Vienna, and got a
hotel Xuan's company had arranged for his business stay in Vienna.
I'm finishing this in Lancaster where I'm up at
5 in the morning, feeling likes it's late morning. I'd like to talk a
little about Vienna, but I'm sort of feeling deflated this morning over news
of the SwissAir flight (a sister airline of Austria Air at JFK, with a similar
partnership with Delta). Nevertheless we very much enjoyed walking
around the downtown and touring the Schonbrun Palace, which is on the
outskirts of town. We also tried to see the Vienna Philharmonic, of the
New Year's eve Strauss fame, but unfortunately weren't there on a night they
were performing.
At any rate I'll attach some .gif images, of
Salzburg, Vienna, and the Schonbrun Palace.
All for this year,
Nat
Thursday 3 September 05.30 EDT
Material Sensing & Instrumentation, Inc.
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