medieval rivalry

On my last full day in the Czech Republic, I took a bus out to Kutná Hora to see one last set of UNESCO World Heritage sights. during the late Middle Ages, the wealth from silver mines in the area brought the town cultural and economic prestige to rival Prague, which is less than 40 miles away. it’s somewhat hard to imagine now — a town of just over 20,000 once standing toe to toe to a city of well over 1.25 million.

the proximity to Prague also made Kutná Hora a convenient base for launching attacks during the Hussite Wars. in 1420, Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund launched an unsuccessful attack on Tábor, center of the Hussite movement at the time. in response, the Hussites (led by Jan Žižka) temporarily took Kutná Hora in 1422 before imperial troops reclaimed and burned it to deter the Hussites from reclaiming the city. of course, with silver mines as large profitable as these, razing of the town didn’t deter Jan Žižka and the Hussites and thereafter followed a century of prosperity for the town.

the prosperity didn’t last, however; in 1526 the Hapsburg Empire took over the region and twenty years later the richest mine flooded. the plague ravaged the town repeatedly, as it did much of Europe, and the Thirty Years War further decimated the area. while some made attempts following the end of the war to re-open the mines, they did not succeed and by the end of the 18th century all of the mines were abandoned.

Melantrich Building

it never fails that I set out to write a quick post about some place of seemingly limited historical significance, only to learn it’s far more important than I understood at the time of my visit.

situated on the southwest side of Wenceslas Square, the Melantrich Building doesn’t stand out from other facades but is steeped in history. it was reconstructed in the early 1920s and renamed for the Czech-language publishing firm that occupied the building. until well into the twentieth century, German was the official language of the Czech lands and there is a long history of fighting or Czech language rights to support Czech autonomy.

the publishing firm was established in 1897 and lasted until 1999, surviving the many political ups and downs of the twentieth century. initially, it was associated with the Czech National Social Party (which formed after breaking with the Social Democratic Party) and began a “printing press for national socialist workers”. a printer from the firm (Jaroslav Šalda)began a successful daily in 1907, “The Czech Word”, and with it’s success the firm purchased the Hvězda building (or “The Star”) on Wenceslas Square and began reconstruction to suit its purposes. during this period of success, the firm adopted the name of Melantrich (after Jiří Melantrich from Aventino, a 16th century printer) and gave the building that name after completion of reconstruction in 1922.

in 1919, the publishing firm obtained an official permit to print newspapers and began to expand throughout the country and, in the 1930s, even got into film production. during the years prior to Nazi occupation, circulation on some of the newspapers and journals reached hundreds of thousands and, in a few cases, over a million.

during the Nazi occupation, the press was taken over by the Germans and Šalda was thrown into prison. the communists took over publication in 1948 but Šalda no longer wanted to participate in politics and was removed from his position by the communist party leaders.  the firm was split into three parts and, while technically owned by the state, the party ran publication. this odd arrangement resulted in protracted legal battles during the 1990s and, eventually the firm was sold off and, when the new owner bankrupted in 1998, what remained of the firm couldn’t compete.

and now the part I set out to tell you: in 1989, the balcony of the building was used as a platform for those addressing protesters gathered in Wenceslas Square during the Revolution. the success of the protests, moreover, was confirmed when Vaclav Havel (future president of the new democratic Czechoslovak Republic) announced the end of the communist state from the balcony.

the building is now luxury apartments and a Marks & Spencer.

coping with the lack of culture shock

in many, many ways, my culture shock/reverse culture shock associated with my trip to the Czech Republic were significantly less consuming or debilitating than what I experienced last year with Ireland.

I find this both fascinating and surprisingly unsurprising. my trip to the Czech Republic was wonderful and relaxing and everything I could have possibly hoped for from the trip and from traveling in general. I met some great people, saw some amazing sights, was generally amazed at how easy it was to get anywhere that I wanted to get (barring the one exception that didn’t turn out so bad in the end), had some spectacular experiences, and very easily could have fallen in love with the country.

but I didn’t. and I’m totally ok with that.

I met many, many people who fell in love with the country and decided to stay, or came back at the first opportunity and I can absolutely understand the attraction. if I were in a different place in my life I can see how I might end up in a similar position. but when it comes down to it, I didn’t have the same intense connection to the history of the places I visited that I did during my three weeks in Ireland. one might argue the tradition of hospitality in Ireland has something to do with my preference for it over the Czech Republic, but I’m not sure my experiences bear that observation out. I had perhaps more ambivalent/neutral hospitality experiences in Ireland than in the Czech Republic. could have been the places I stayed — less conducive to making random friends, or my own anxiety about venturing out on my own in a city that I didn’t know. but perhaps my own understanding of Irish history, as well as how it dovetailed with that of English history, made the historical perspective more intimate to me. as I’ve said before (and will probably say again), my knowledge of Czech history is still limited.

the more I developed a tactile relationship with Irish history, by visiting sites of historical significance, the harder it became for me to reconcile my affinity for English history and culture with the hardships the Empire imposed on it’s closest colony. (am I repeating myself?) it was very hard for me to reconcile these two profound affinities and, eventually, I gave up and tried to disassociate one from the other, to embrace each while ignoring the implications of the other. (there was a rough patch after my trip where I was struggling to reconcile and/or accept all of this). for good or for ill, the Czech Republic did not elicit such strong emotions. there weren’t courses on Czech history in my high school or college; it was only a peripheral mention in comparative politics classes that addressed the Cold War or U.S.S.R., if it came up at all.

and, consequently, there was less baggage available to tag along on my trip to the Czech Republic, fewer layers of complexity, fewer points for affection or contention. more opportunity to simply observe, appreciate, and let go of the unique places and cultural experiences I encountered in the Czech Republic. it was easier to disentangle my sense of self from the way I interacted with Czech culture. and, so, the culture shock was less dramatic in both directions.

I’m not sure yet whether or not I’m glad for those muted reactions.

Vladislav Hall

the most “castle”-like section of the Prague Castle that I visited was the Old Royal Palace, which occupies a chunk of the southern wing of the structure. the most striking feature of the wing is Vladislav Hall, which, Lonely Planet tells me, is famous for its beautiful, late-Gothic vaulted roof, rough wooden floors and vast, rustic spaces. of course for some reason photography was prohibited in the entirety of the Old Royal Palace, so you will have to imagine this impressive, high-vaulted space that was used for royal purposes like coronation festivities beginning in the 16th century. three original halls were combined into one space that became the “biggest vaulted interior space in Europe without inner supports”. despite the impressive ceiling and impressive spaciousness, the Hall still felt rather Medieval. stand at one end and you can see all the way into the chapel at the other end. to be honest, I’ve seen dining halls in stately homes more impressive. of course, those don’t have the weight of history. in the late 1990s, the Bohemian tradition of electing kings in the Hall was resurrected when members of parliament crowded into the space to elect the Czechoslovak/Czech president (the ceremony has since moved to a larger, more stately room in the palace).

the most unique aspect of Vladislav Hall, however, I have not seen replicated elsewhere. during rainy weather among many, many other things the Hall was used for jousting. I don’t know quite how mounted riders could get up to speed with such a relatively short start but that doesn’t seem to have mattered. the entrance to the Hall from the courtyard is sufficiently tall and wide to let a mounted soldier gallop up the stairs and into the space. I wager they cleared out the market stalls that occupied the space at other times (so that nobles needn’t mingle with the filth that roamed the streets of the city down the hill or across the river). although sealed up somewhat against the elements now, the Riders’ Staircase is wider and more stately than the castle entrance gate facing towards the city.

a history of tea

while I was in Český Krumlov, among many pleasant local establishments, the owner of the Krumlov House recommended a place called Dobrá čajovna for tea. it’s down a back alley near the entrance to the castle and, she advised, served its teas in the style of their place of origin. I checked it out and was not disappointed; in addition to living up to it’s name as a “good tea house”, it lacked all trace of that blight of gorgeous tourist towns — the o.a.p. tour group/herd. my visit to the Krumlov Dobrá čajovna fell into a euphoric phase of my travels and I spent an hour and a half waxing … euphoric about travel in my journal (at nine pages, unquestionably my longest entry of the trip). I enjoyed my tea, wrote, savored the Czech atmosphere, watched the kids of one of the employees explore the cafe, and headed out and on to dinner.

a week later, back in Prague, wandering around a packed Wenceslas Square, I spied the cafe’s distinctive sign pointing down another back alley. same decor, same menu, same good tea, but a more Prague than Czech atmosphere (i.e. expat and/or international — lots of English). enjoyed my tea, rested my feet after walking back from Vysehrad, wrote a shorter entry in my journal, read my book, and headed off to find dinner.
a week later, back in Madison, heading up Gilman St to exchange my movies at Four Star, I once again spied the cafe’s distinctive sign. and it clicked, why the sign and decor looked familiar when I was in Krumlov — I’d been inside a Dobrá čajovna before, though one called the Dobrá Cafe. I must confess to feeling somewhat dismayed that this great teahouse I’d found turned out to be a chain — do U.S. companies have to co-opt everything?
except it’s a Czech chain! the tea room in Wenceslas Square in Prague is the original. the Communist regime forbid the importation of tea, but a group of tea enthusiasts met anyway to sample various teas smuggled into the country. after the Velvet Revolution, they opened the location in Wenceslas Square and have since expanded to all over the Czech Republic, as well as to Budapest, Krakow, Bratlisalva, Burlington, VT, and Madison, WI! if you enjoy tea, and find yourself in any of these cities with some time to spend at a tea house, check this one out.

(incidentally, I figured out it was a Czech chain because the package of tea I bought for a friend last week was in English and Czech. why the hell else would the packaging be in Czech?! it is not a language one slaps on merchandise without reason.)

public transportation

I’ve had a draft post on public transportation waiting for me to expound on it for months — I use it whenever I travel and it has a sameness/ foreignness from place to place that begs comparison. the more I travel, the easier it become to adapt to different systems and, whether because of that or not, the public transportation systems of the Czech Republic were the easiest I have ever navigated. despite the occasional language barrier (most window clerks understood English), I always got to my destination — more or less leaving and arriving on time.

the systems are a public-private hybrid that offer a quite a variance in speed, comfort, and accessibility. the ones most heavily patronized by tourists were often much nicer (the train to Karlstejn versus the local I rode from Olomouc to Prague, as seen to the left, illustrates my point), which makes sense for an economy that relies as much on tourism as that of Czech. the one to Karlstejn reminded me of riding the Metra into Chicago from the nicer suburbs on a Saturday; on the ride from Olomouc I had the car to myself until a Czech woman with a fully-stocked traveller’s backpack joined me. (she chatted to people on the platform before the train departed, and then picked up a Czech romance novel once we got going.)

in the two larger towns I visited — Prague and Olomouc — there is a combination of buses, trams, and (in the case of Prague) metro. for the trams and subways, fares are collected on a kind of honor system. passengers are expected to purchase tickets from tabacs or yellow fare machines in stations for the correct fare, and then validate them upon boarding the tram or train. there aren’t any turnstyles in the metro stations, just validation machines, which struck me as rather odd after experiencing the lengths to which other cities go to prevent people from skipping turnstyles.

I say it’s regulated by a kind of honor system, though, because there are routine checks by transport police, who stop passengers and demand to see validated tickets. I encountered them twice while I was traveling, once on the Prague metro and once on the tram in Olomouc. the guys in Prague were standing in the exit tunnel in obvious police garb, trying to catch as many people as they could streaming up from the station platform. in Olomouc, a couple of (rather ratty-looking) plainclothes officers got on the tram before a long stretch between stops to check tickets, then got off. that pair even dutifully validated their tickets on boarding the tram, then tucked them away as they got off. (tickets are usually good for 60-75 minutes, to allow for transfers — I wonder if these transport cops validated new tickets every time they got onto a new bus or tram?)

from prague-tourism.com

apparently there have been problems (whether past or present) with non-police types taking it upon themselves to check passengers for tickets — and then collecting the fine of upwards of 500 crowns (around $30) for not having a validated ticket. to rectify that, legit officers carry silver-dollar sized, red shields that identify them as such. I had no idea what the guy who stopped me in Prague wanted, until I realized that he was half-heartedly holding up his transport badge, not just holding his arm at an awkward angle by his belt.
(the issue of transport police doesn’t arise on longer-distance buses, as you purchase your ticket from the driver, and then it’s on your honor to get off at the destination that you paid for.)

is the honor-system profitable? probably not as much as the tightly regulated systems of London or New York, but it does make for easier ingress and egress and an overall faster metro or tram ride.

Prague Castle

two castles have defended the city of Prague from the hills of the Vltava River. the more famous of the two overlooks the Karluv Most (Charles Bridge) and Stare Mesto (Old Town). it’s been a long time since I’ve been inside a legitimate castle (the closest I’ve come since Windsor in the fall of 2004 was the appointed Castle In the Clouds in New Hampshire where my friends got married in 2008) and I’m not sure what I expected. by some measurements, it’s the largest in the world — the Guinness Book of World Records lists it as the largest coherent castle complex in the world and, put in those terms, it certainly does seem like that. there are three grand courtyards, the most spectacular church in Prague (and maybe the country), and a quaint artist lane tucked into a corner of the castle grounds.

the complex grew and morphed over 1200 years and expand into the extensive structure that exists today. really, it was rather difficult for me to comprehend it as a “castle” at all, since all of the such-named sights that I have visited have afforded one with a contained single, heavily-toured unit. none of these vast sections that are closed to the public, or areas that are still used as artist quarters, or going in and out of buildings throughout the complex and having your ticket stamped or torn at each stop. (thinking back more closely on my potential castle visits…) Trim Castle that I visited last year was a well-preserved relic of a castle. nothing so substantial as an original (or even authentically restored) roof or period-appropriate furnishings. perhaps it is a byproduct of the expectations of tourists for each site — the castle in Trim is beyond Bru na Boinne, well beyond Dublin and not necessarily on the radar or day-trip plan of traditional tourists. Prague Castle, on the other hand, is a primary destination for those who choose to visit Prague. how could it not be, dominating the city skyline as it does?

the weight of history of the place is not insignificant. the first walled building on the site was a castle and the Church of Our Lady in the 9th century, followed shortly thereafter by two basilicas and the first convent in Bohemia. there were periods of Romanesque inspiration, of Gothic inspiration, of modern inspiration, and of no inspiration at all, where the castle stood empty for periods. with the establishment of the Czechoslovak Republic the castle became the seat of presidential elections and other formal state functions, though the building suffered acute ill-treatment under both Nazi and Communist rule. it’s now been restored spectacularly (no surprise), and I’ll have more on the various sites on my tour ticket as we move forward.

(and, hopefully, I won’t go quite as long between posts as I have of late …)

forget the map

I’m at something of a loss as to where to start with my Czech posts, to identify some theme that ties my experiences together, that might provide an underlying structure upon which I might build my posts. so I guess I’ll just dive into it as I dove into Prague; drop my bags at the door and head out to explore the city, see where my feet (or fingers) take me.

despite the interminably sluggish, dragging day of travel it took for me to get to Prague (arrived at ORD at 4:00 a.m., six hour lay-over at JFK, three hour delay on the tarmac waiting out a thunderstorm), the overnight flight had its benefits. for many years, I wasn’t able to sleep on planes, even ones traveling overnight to Europe. (on my first trip to France, I slept less than an hour over a 36 hour period and while I crashed hard around 9:00 p.m. after an afternoon of sightseeing and slept straight through to the morning, I’m sure I wasn’t much of a pleasant travel companion.) while not great, the four or five hours of sleep I got on the flight to Prague, however, was sufficient to keep me going through a full day of wandering the streets of the city — from Old Town to Wenceslas Square to Charles Square to the castle to New Town and back.

I set out without any particular destination in mind and, over the course of several days in Prague, came to understand that it’s much better to head off without the intention of getting anywhere in particular. streets curve in such perplexing ways that you won’t end up where you think you will end up, you won’t get to where you mean to get to, but you will still see some incredible things along the way. and after a full day of wandering around the city and staying out till well past dark, I slept through to the next morning with only the normal challenges associated with hostel dorm accommodation.


View First Day in Prague in a larger map

something sacchrine about what traveling *means* in my life

during the last week or so, as I gear up for my next solo trip, I have been thinking back on last year’s big trip. really, it seems rather disingenuous to confine my reflections to the last week — I’ve been thinking about events and people and places from that trip every day for the last year; if I’m not thinking about my personal experiences, then I am certainly more attuned to political or economic rumblings from Ireland. there are places and names I recognize now which catch my attention when browsing through news articles.

coming to enjoy Ireland as thoroughly as I do was something of a struggle. I had such a deeply ingrained anglophile streak (how many English Lit classes have I taken in my life? and did I not spend four amazing months in London during college that left me nearly-rabid for more?) that it was difficult to reconcile my enjoyment of (most) things English with the reality of how the Empire treated it’s island neighbor. visiting all these places that knew such brutal treatment, that endured such monumental hardships, that bear the signs of 19th century policy decisions well into the 21st century … I struggled with a gut reaction to reject everything English for a long time, both while I was there and when I came back. as I said in a (much) earlier post: the worst of the Troubles might be over, but that certainly doesn’t mean things are resolved, and I had to reconcile my knowledge and affections for the history and present of both nations to one another. farther removed from the experience, it’s certainly easier to let the past stay in the past and be more academic and circumspect about the present-day political relationship between the two, and for this I am thankful, but it took awhile to find that balance.

in addition to all of that, I’ve also been thinking about what the experience taught me about myself and about how I travel. my first truly solo trip (three weeks in Venezuela) was oftentimes more stressful than enjoyable and, in reality, not designed as travel. I spent a good share of my days going through microfilm at the Biblioteca Nacional and making photocopies, or struggling with new (and functionally unhelpful) forms of Spanish grammar. consequently, the experience left me uncertain as to how I would cope when truly traveling solo. my time in Ireland proved to me not only that I could spend nearly three weeks in a foreign land, most of the time by myself, but that I could relish the opportunity. now it is not so much a question of “when” but “how soon” can I come up with the money and time for another big adventure.

granted, there are still elements about this trip to the Czech Republic about which I am nervous — the language challenge foremost among them. the hardest aspect of my time in Venezuela was a combination of language factors: my Spanish is not very good (despite my sometimes-enthusiastic, sometimes-half-hearted efforts) and locals were not patient with my efforts. the Venezuelan economy is not reliant on external tourism by any stretch of the imagination and one could never accuse the random venezolano on the street of being warm and welcoming to outsiders. as such, I am (justifiably, I think) nervous about the fact that I only know a few random phrases of Czech. but this is an entirely new experience in a nation that does rely on tourists, for good or for ill, and I’m sticking in large part to areas known to tourists or with student populations or expats. I’ve got the basics of four languages under my belt and, if all else fails, there’s always charades and writing out what I want in consultation with my phrasebook. in the end, I know that I have the experience, presence of mind, and tug towards adventure that will make the coming weeks another truly remarkable adventure.