You know you're in trouble when.....

You know you’re in trouble you go into the tourist office where they have all the maps and the internet maps and all the search engines and they are the experts and you ask them how to get out of Prague and onto the highway to go to another town and after fiddling with all of the above for 10 minutes they announce: “hmmm…..this can be very complicated.” Uh, yeah…that’s an understatement…if it’s difficult for you, what do you think it’s like for us…after a while she said: “Well, you need at least one hour to get out of the city…..but more on that later. Twenty-seven years ago we visited Prague on one of the Student trips that we led. To no surprise, it was lovely but seemed a dour place with few tourists, and those few that were here didn’t seem much different from the locals. No surprise since they were from other Soviet/Communist countries. No joy in the streets, just a very working class city with everybody going about their business. Now, it is just the opposite, a bustling, lively, vibrant city with tourists clogging the main street and tongues from many lands can be heard…mostly Japanese. For whatever reason, we’ve been told several times that this is a favorite time for them to visit…The place is alive with a vibrancy…Music can be heard almost in any area of the city as duets, trios, quartets, and quintets play classical, jazz, Dixieland and traditional Czech…they are hawking CD’s and we bought one for ourselves – a roma (gypsy) group that really rocked…there are concerts every night…choral, organ, orchestral, chamber and full, opera performances are all there for the locals and visitors. We arrived in Prague at 1:00 in the afternoon and actually made it to our hotel around 3:00. A combination of misdirected google map directions, Czech street signs, confusing highway signs, locals who were helpful but unknowing of our destination (“Follow the tram tracks,” they would say, but the tram tracks went in several directions and split off as well) and our lack of language skills all contributed to our confusion and delay. No matter, eventually we got there. We had chosen a hotel in an obscure area because our “granddaughter, Shah, had an apartment there and it made for easy connections. After settling in, we immediately headed downtown by Metro to find her place of work and emerged from the bowels of the Prague metro to a cacophony of music and marching demonstrators. Czech flags waved in the air in one area of Wenceslaus Square while a converging group of banner carriers came from down the street shouting slogans. I searched for young people in the crowd who looked like they might be English speakers: “Do you speak English?” I asked as I wove through the crowd….After a while, I was able to learn that there were counter demonstrations on the refugee situation…one group totally opposed to accepting them while an equally large group felt that there was a duty to help these people from war-torn Syria. Asking several times about the issue, I came to a consensus, in that there is no consensus..the people seemed to feel that the two sides were pretty much divided in overall support from the Czech people.

One problem is that there is such a well organized industry in forged documents…people from several nations who want to get to Europe pay large amounts of money so that they can have “Syrian” passports and documents. This problem is further complicated by the fact that many of the legitimate Syrians had to flee without their valid documents but are then viewed as suspicious. This was our first up close view of the problem which dominates Europe at the moment. It appears that public opinion is as complicated as the wretched condition of the refugees…there is now a growing backlash throughout Europe and there is no end in sight as the wave of people keeps washing onto the European mainland. Away from the square, life seemed pretty much business as usual, and business was booming. 25 years ago the only thing being sold was Czech crystal and that in the official government shop. Now, every other shop has “authentic Bohemian crystal” glistening in the windows at prices that match the glitter of the glass. The mood away from the square was festive with pedestrian streets brimming with what amounted to a huge fall craft fair….actual blacksmith forges worked banging, literally, out bells and door knockers. Carol collects bells from where ever we visit so this a welcome sight for her…beer, beer, and more beer was vended along with an array of different sausages, and full pigs were roasted in foil on a rotating spit over a bed of coals. “Chimney” cakes were spun on rotating spits. These doughy confections were a coil of pastry wrapped on a round rolling pin device then baked over open coals then dipped in sugar and cinnamon…yummy sweets for a snack indeed. We took Shax on a mini road trip to visit Ceske Krumlov, the second most visited city in the republic.

The place was filled with tourists, as Prague is, and we kept saying: “If it’s like this in mid October, what’s it like at the height of the tourist season. The city is a step back in architectural design…buildings dating from the Renaissance are the norm, not the exception. Situated on a bend of the Vlatava river (the Moldau, of Smetana fame) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOxIbhqZsKc It was easily defended with its natural moat…a huge castle dominates the high ground giving even more protection to the marauding bands of would-be conquerors. It was lovely and carried us back to a simpler time. Our musical interlude in Prague was an evening at the Mozart Café. I wanted to do something special for our last night in Prague and with Shax…it could have been a little hokey what with the 4 piece chamber group in period costumes and white wigs, but the music was excellent and the food was even better. I was surprised that it wasn’t better attended but the maite d’ told us there were 30 concerts that night in Prague…talk about a music city. We had a great evening, left totally stuffed and with Mozart and other composer’s music ringing in our ears….on to Poland.