When Grace and I were invited to the Czech Republic for our friends’ wedding, I said: “Gosh darnit. You mean we have to go to Europe in the summer? What an inconvenience!”, and promptly thereafter began furiously Googling flights.
Whilst the wedding was taking place in the country’s second city of Brno, it seemed only right and proper that we fly via Prague – somewhere that neither of us had been before. The plan was to travel to the capital, explore for a couple of days, get the train to Brno for the wedding, then come back for a final couple of nights. One week in total. For the first leg of the trip, we decided to stay in an area north of the centre of the city called Holešovice, that a bunch of blogs had described ‘Prague’s Coolest neighbourhood’. Obviously, this was the place for me. The deal was made even sweeter by the discovery that a boutique chain we’ve stayed in before and liked had a hotel there. See if you can guess what my favourite bit was.
As it turned out though, there ehh… didn’t seem to be much going on in Holešovice. It is of course entirely possible that we just couldn’t find the cool bits, or that it had been entirely displaced by the major construction work that had dug up most of the roads (ostensibly to install tram tracks), but with a few notable exceptions, we just felt quite out of the way.
Despite a marked absence of all the hip young things that we’d been promised, there was a rather pleasant park with some fantastic views over the city.
As well as some wonderfully creepy animal statues, which I tried to ride, and failed.
There was apparently a big beer garden just around from here, but on the day we happened to be in attendance, it absolutely pished it down with rain, which given our complete lack of waterproof clothing, was excellent.
At the end of the park lay Prague ‘castle’, which seemed to really be a collection of buildings including a cathedral and some other things. No matter which way I tried, there was no good angle to get a decent picture, particularly with the massive throngs of visitors. We did see this cool peacock though.
The pictures I did end up getting all had a horrible smear on the lens, thanks to the rain fogging it all up. However, we did see an armed soldier shout at a some idiotic tourist, which was deeply satisfying, and made up for the disappointment somewhat.
We discovered but did not enter the museum dedicated to Franz Kafka, who was apparently from Prague. Who knew? There was a fantastic statute in the courtyard with two people pissing into a pool shaped like the Czech Republic, but of course the smear on my lens obscured the best bits.
Interestingly enough, I did end up inspired enough to go and dig out a copy of ‘The Trial’ which I had lingering on my Kindle from my days of Legal Theory at University. Something I should probably have already read for my degree but never got around to. It ended up lighting up my brain like a Christmas tree, but that’s probably the subject for another blog at another time. I suspect that if I start going on about the refication of the ‘law’ on here then I might lose you.
Instead, allow me to present to you this tiny alleyway leading to a restaurant which is so small that a pedestrian system has been set up, complete with green/red lights to indicate the safe passage. This is the kind of shit I love.
Did I mention that it was still raining?
Around the corner lay the ‘Lennon Wall’, which had become a focal point for anti-establishment graffiti – particularly during the Soviet era. The connection to the Beatles seems tenuous to me, and probably gives that lot more credit than they deserve… but I am sure that won’t be a popular opinion. Interestingly enough, the wall is located across from the French embassy, on a wall that is owned by none other than the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. Once a symbol of hope and resistance… it is now a place that tourists come from all over the world for awkward portraits.
Whilst we’re on the subject of Communism, I wouldn’t recommend going to the ‘Museum of Communism’ should you find yourself in Prague. Despite the promising allure of a large statue of Marx at the entrance, it is effectively just a rather tedious maze of narrow corridors on which large blocks of text decrying the evils of the USSR are displayed. Whilst in of itself that might not seem like much of an issue, and the experience of Czech people over that period in time is 100% something that should be talked about, that was literally about the extent of what was included in its ‘collection’. If I had wanted something a similar experience then we could have saved money by simply purchasing a book. Or perhaps even watching Fox News for a bit.
Onwards we march to the Charles Bridge – a medieval stone structure which has provided an important transport route connecting the different sections of Prague since the 1300s (according to Wikipedia). The bridge is so beautiful, that it can apparently be difficult to traverse due to the number of people posing for pictures. Personally, I don’t quite understand why you would want to be on the bridge to get a picture of the bridge – but it proved an excellent place to people watch.
Prague is made up of incredibly beautiful buildings everywhere you look, which in all honesty was rather difficult for me – as somebody entirely unused to capturing architecture in any kind of meaningful or interesting way. I did make some effort though, even whipping out the old super-wide Voigtlander 15mm in an attempt to represent some of what was going on.
As one might expect, we spent a considerable amount of time just cutting about, taking pictures – particularly of the glaikit tourists that seemed relentless in their quest to get terribly backlit selfies in crowded places.
As charming as this was, at some point on the last day we both spoke about how we felt like we hadn’t really gotten a proper sense of Prague yet. Despite walking for hours, every place we went into or walked by felt geared towards foreign visitors, with prices to match. Long gone, clearly, are the days of 40p pints. In desperation, we decided to head for an area West of the train station called Žižkov, that the Internet described as ‘grimy’, ‘working class’, and even… ‘dangerous’.
Perfect.
Despite us almost passing out from heatstroke on the journey, this was more like the side of the city that we could feel comfortable in. There was much more graffiti, far fewer selfie sticks, and cafes with real people actually speaking in Czech.
The area is also home to the incredible Žižkov Television Tower, which is so much more impressive close up than it is from afar. Not least because of the strange babies that crawl all over it.
We sadly had limited time left by this point, and things seemed fairly tame given that it was a Tuesday evening – but even just spending a couple of hours walking around here gave me some hope that there was more going on. If I went back to Prague, this is a neighbourhood I would like to dedicate more time to.
I’ve always been interested in the Czech Republic, and I am glad that we finally had both the opportunity and the excuse to explore Prague. I suspect that this is probably a place that would be even better in the Autumn or Winter, when one could take full advantage of the various drinking establishments, without worrying about passing out under the summer sun.
Oh. I completely forgot about Brno, didn’t I? Yes. Well. Given that the majority of the time we spent there I was either hungover or at a wedding, I didn’t actually take many pictures. So I am just going to tack them on at the end of this post with little to zero commentary.
For the geeks: All of these pictures were shot on 35mm film – a heady mixture of very expired Kodacolor 200, Fuji Superia 1600, and some fresh Kodak Ultramax 400. The majority of them were shot with a Leica M6, though a handful were taken with a Leica M2. My ‘standard’ lens was a Voigtlander Nokton 35mm f1.4, and the wide pictures were taken – as mentioned – with a Voigtlander Heliar 15mm f4.5. All of these were developed and scanned by Gulabi in Glasgow – with further processing by me. No tourists were harmed in the production of this blog.
