Prague: Day Three, Part One - The Market, the Woods and a New Friend

View over Prague from Powder Tower

The buffet breakfast at the hotel is a feast.  When you cater to a clientele of different nationalities, you pander to their culinary foibles.  At breakfast time, that means croissants and other morning pastries for the French, cheeses for the Dutch and Germans, eggs, bacon and broiled tomatoes for the Brits, and cereals for the Americans.  As well as a few Czech cold meats that don’t look familiar.  If you can’t find something you like here, you’re hopeless.

After breakfast, it’s off to the farmer’s market, something I always like to see in a place I don’t know.  It tells you a lot about what makes a country different, and what it shares with the rest of the world, in fruit-and-vegetables if not in politics.  The best-known farmer’s market is on Havelska Street, where it’s been since the Middle Ages.  Lucky for me, it’s nearby and on the way to the museum.
       On the walk over, I happen upon workers redoing a pavement.  I’ve seen work like this in France, Cuba and now the Czech Republic, and, like a market, it’s something that’s done the same anywhere.  It always amazes me how fast they work, their hands flying, perfectly lining up each one of those granite squares at the same height as the ones next to it. 

   At the market, the vegetables of choice seem to be sweet peppers
and tomatoes, along with small pumpkins and carrots long enough to use as truncheons.  The fruits are more varied and many come from far away, where the climate and seasons are different than Prague’s:  bananas, peaches, plums, raspberries, strawberries, blackberries, huge blueberries...  There are also artisans at the market.  Several offer a choice of marionettes, which seem to be a form of entertainment Czechs love.  I choose a Pinocchio and a peg-leg pirate for my two grandsons, not realizing that I will have to carry these fragile things from Prague to Paris... and across the Atlantic.

      Then it’s on to the Champs-Elysées, the Fifth Avenue, of Prague:  Wenceslas Square. More of an elongated, round-ended esplanade than a square, it runs from Stare Mesto - Old Town - into Nove Mesto - New Town - ending at the National Museum.  I’m hoping to find where they hide the Impressionist collection, but no one seems to know at the hotel.
       It was here that Jan Palach, a Czech student at Charles University, set himself on fire in January of 1969.  Taking a page out of the books of the Buddhist monks in Vietnam, he did it to protest the Soviet Union’s invasion of Czechoslovakia, troops sent to put down the Prague Spring uprising and quash the liberal reforms of Alexander Dubcek.  I was very aware of Palach and the Uprising because it mirrored the French student riots of May 1968, and I had arrived in Paris shortly after that revolt ended, to attend university.  Palach’s sacrifice was the leading subject among us students, as it echoed what they had just gone through... although no Frenchman immolated himself.

       Down the middle of the esplanade are café terraces, not yet full.  On either side of the avenue are majestic buildings from Prague’s prime.  Some have known better times, such as the Art Nouveau-style Hotel Europa, built in the very opening years of the Twentieth Century.  Now closed, I’m told it’s soon to be renovated and reopened by the new owner, an international hotel chain.  Another striking building is the Neo-Renaissance Wiehl House, named after its architect, who adorned the entire facade with loggias and colorful sgraffito.  There’s also the Assicurazioni Generali Building where Franz Kafka once worked as a clerk.  In front of one café is a wooden bench, and seated on it a bronze gentleman in a fedora hat and bare feet.
       When I reach the far end of Wenceslas Square, I take the underground passage to the Museum, Prague traffic being unpredictable, as are Prague drivers.  It gives me a look at the Métro system - at least the business part of it if not the actual train part, which is sub- to this subway level.  But when I come out at the other end of this underground mall, the scaffolding on the front of the Museum is blocking the entrance, and I can’t read any eventual signs there may be that would indicate how to get in.  So after a superficial hunt-about, I give up and head back toward the hotel, because my Facebook friend and author Christopher Cook is about to become a face-to-face friend.  He’ll be meeting me at my hotel at noon.

Municipal Hall

       After investigating various streets, some quiet, others busy with tramways, and after buying a ticket for a concert at the Mucha-decorated Municipal Hall tomorrow night, I reach the hotel.  I’ve bought a few roses in a little shop on the way to thank the lady behind the front desk for all her kindnesses.  Especially when I called before arriving to say I might have to cancel because I hadn’t heard from my son for six days after Hurricane Maria.  She was very understanding... and asked after his health when I did arrive.  Good memory.
       Then I just have time to nip around the corner and climb the 186 steps of the Powder Tower, the last of which, again, are ladder-like.  Although less high than the steeple of St. Vitus Cathedral, there’s still a lovely view, and one that affords a closer look at some of the buildings of central Prague.  Especially the vert-de-gris cupola of a nearby building that looks remarkably like the Printemps and Galeries Lafayette department stores in Paris.
       On the way back down, I ask the ticket-taker how many people can fit up there on that narrow walkway.  The ticket-taker says thirty because that’s all the “statics” of the building can handle.  Translation:  it might collapse.  I mention that some of them up there seem to think they’re all alone, blocking the passage and view for others.  He smiles and replies, “There are people, and then there are tourists.”  Down another flight, the handsome ticket guy is being teased by his friends - maybe about his period costume - so I tell him “They’re just jealous”, wink and leave.