Prague is the city of dreams, you see pictures of it but it is not until you are really there that you get the majesty of the place.

I still get a complete and utter buzz with new places, it never ceases to amaze me that you can get somewhere completely different after only a short flight.  I suppose it is part of coming from a land locked isolated city. As soon as I arrive I immediately wantto get out,  find my bearings, see a few markers and get a sense of where I am. Hearing a new language, getting to grips with a new metro system, dealing with a new currency seem like exciting pieces of a puzzle that will allow you to unlock the experience.

I had booked an AirBNB room, as I was alone I decided to get a room in someone’s place, with the hope that I woudl be able to pick the brains of my hosts, I was not disappointed.

Jakub, my host met me at the bus stop and escorted me around the corner to his apartment.  On the fifth floor of a soviet style block. Hundreds of them all the same, one bedroom, one living room, tiny kitchen with the bathroom and toilet in the centre.  How cool to get to see inside one of these places.  Jakub was meeting friends in the city later that night, which meant he had a couple of hours free, so off we went into the city.

He walked me through the vineyards up to Prague castle, pointing out things that he liked and points of interest.  It was late, so the place was deserted of tourists.  He took me through some of the streets and around into the parklands, which were in fact Olive groves and Orchards, the scent of blossom still in the air. We walked for an hour and he took me to his favorite look out close to the replica mini size version of the Eiffel tower.  We then went down into the city, grabbed a few beers and sat beside the river, got out a map and he proceeded to point out his favorite places for coffee, beer, Czech food, mueseums and galleries.  He then bid me farewell and I made my way to a pub he had recommended for dinner.

Inside it was clearly just locals, he had recommended the smoked duck, bacon dumplings and red cabbage.  It was really good and cost about $NZ8, I had a few beers which slid down nicely and I just soaked it in.  I then walked accross the Charles Bridge and wandered around a bit, had one more beer and caught the last metro back to his place about midnight.

My days planned I did not have to rush, so I just took things in my stride, wandered around, tried to avoid the hordes of tourists, lingered outside a few museums and galleries and decided whether or not I would go in once I was there.

Prague is all about the architecture, some over 1500 years old.  It seemed so familiar I had seen so much of it before in pictures that it hardly felt real.  Clearly Prague was not subject to the same war damage ( I think) that many other European cities were subjected to, so their archirtectural history is intact.  It’s also cheap, so is a magnet for young hordes of bachelor and hen parties, roaming around loud and obnoxious, doing things they probably would never do in their home cities,  a very strange contrast to the majesty of the Prague itself.

In my time there I saw all the sites I wanted to get to, including of course the main sqaure, the astronomical clock,  the armoury the castle itself, a few museums and also one of the modern art museums.  I had no idea there was also a whole period  and style of Czech cubism art.  I love angular and geometric design, so it was great to see some of that.  With my trip coming to an end I was also a little more open to buying things that I would be able to carry the last leg.  What else is good in Prague?  Glass, so I bought a modern glass bowl ( which weighs about 5kg) and then just as I was leaving I fell in love with an antique art deco vase made in 1937), that’s one way to add 40% to the weight of your bags.

David had been in Prague two years ago, and he loved it, I now know why, if you ever get  the chance take it…you wont be disappointed.

My next stop was getting the train from Prague up to Hannover where a friend was meeting me. We had been workmates in a hotel in Switzerland in my twenties and have stayed in touch ever since.  It’s been about 17 years since we last saw each other.  The first surprise was her taking me to her Porsche, and discovering they have ridiculously small boots for my now ( much heavier) bags.  So with bag propped up behind me we headed up to Oldenburg where she now lives with her family.  So here I am in this flash car, on the Autobahn and we are not only talking at a thousand miles an hour it feels like we are driving at that speed too.  I start to get a little anxious and find myself unconciously planting my foot on the floor as though I am am driving.  I peek over and we are now going at 200km an hour.  The car is so low i feel like I am sitting on the road, and feels ridiculously fast.  Still she speeds up and she is still asking me questions and chatting away.  I am now gripping the seat so tightly I can feel my shoulders andback tensing up.  At 245 I have to ask her to slow down, it was just too much for me.  Apparently they have reached speeds of just under 320km at times.  Shitting. My. Self.  

My friend is still in hospitality and her and her husband now own a hotel and restaurants, cafes in Oldenburg.  I was treated like complete royalty.  Shown to my suite, it was named after an actor who has ties to the city Deborah Kara Unger, who coincidentally was the female lead in the Emilio Estevez movie “The Way”, the movie about the Camino, that Kel and I both watched before we went on the Camino.  It also happened to be a year since we had finished the Camino.  The room was fantastic and completely unexpected, they then plied me with wine at their restuarant and fed me the local specialties.  In between all this we talked and talked and talked, again the years between visits seemed to have disappeared.  Oldenburg was also fortunate to have not been bombed during the war so is still intact, a pretty mid sized city, big enough to be interesting but not so small that it is claustrophobic.

Final stop in this whistle stop month long tour was in Cologne (Koln) to see my NZ Cousin who married a German woman.  Despite having been hear 17 years ago, this was my first time seeing them here.  Cologne is not really a pretty city, it sits on the Rhein which is one of its best features.  It was completely destroyed in World War 2, with only the spiers of the Cathedral “the Dom” still standing above the destroyed city.  Reconstruction was in parts fast and haphazard so it feels like a jumble of a city.  In the cathedral today you can still see that some o f the windows have not yet been restored or have temporary fittings in them.  I suppose it took almost a thousand years to complete in the first place, so its evolution will continue to carry on for many more.  Some of the ruins have been icorporated into more modern buildings, in ways that are very innovative.  It’s hard to imagine what it must have been like to emerge from the cellars after the bombing and firestorms that killed thousands to find your city destroyed.  To have the fortitude to rebuild and to reconstruct makes me think that we could do the same with our canterbury cathedral, even if it takes 50 years to raise the money, lets rebuild it….

I also was lucky enough to talk to one of my hosts about her own family history and it just makes you wonder how horrible the war would have been.  The conversation also turned to other things German and I got the chhance to ask a question I had been meaning to ask for a while.

I had heard that it has been a ritual for decades in German households to watch a TV vesrion of an English play that was filmed in 1962 callled Dinner for One.  The story line is simple, the Lady of the house is having her 90th birthday and has invited 4 guests, all of whom it woudl appear are deceased.  So the Butler has to play the role of all the other dinner guests.

It is played at 6:00pm on New Years eve on every TV station in German and everyoe stops to watch it.  

I could not understand how this woudl reach such meteoric popularity, first, it’s in English, while it is amusing it is not particularly funny, and while its amusing I don’t think I would like to see it every year for 40 years ( like my host had)….so why I asked??

Well, turns out this was filmed in Hamburg and represented a moment when the English were once again prepared to perform in Germany again.  That was a really big deal!  You don’t really have to understand he language to know what is going on, and some of the lines appeal to a German sensinility.  ” Same procedure as every year James” being the classic.  If you have a spare ten minutes it is worth watching, it fascinates me that this is now an indelible part of German culture..

http://youtu.be/6lzQxjGL9S0
Train back to Paris and then flight to Hong Kong, looking  forward to seeing my boys….