The weather in Prague is playing tricks on us and this past weekend it was almost autumn-ish with high winds and degrees around 12. But today it finally turned for the better and hit a nice 24C as I grabbed my bike and headed out for a ride.
Tag: Prague
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Obama in Prague
Sunday morning at 5.45am my alarm went off. Obama was in town and I wanted to go see him so that’s what I had to do. I went through the city as the sun was getting up – not something I do a lot. Here is the sun rising over St. Vitus Cathedral in the middle of Prague castle.
I got closer and ended up in this street where I could not see the beginning of the line. But for some reason there was a sign that said Walk Through and Food and I wanted to do both so I did – and avoided the line 🙂
In the area I met up with Christoph and Sue and we stood around waited from about 7.30 till Obama went on stage sometime around 10.30. It can be tiring waiting for so long.
I ran into Karen from the Empty Nest Expat blog which I seem to do quite often. It was fun catching up with her and someone at BBC had read her Open Letter to Obama and wanted to interview if it could be organized. I haven’t heard if they managed to interview her, but keep an eye on her blog. She also wrote a very nice piece on the Czech Democracy.
Obama finally showed up and the crowd was roaring. We stood on the grass quite far back and could not see Obama very well but there was a screen in front of us so we saw most of the action on that. Not as fun as seeing the real thing but still very cool.
Obama talked about US leading the world into getting rid of nuclear weapons as well as the historic significance of Prague, the Czech people and the peculiar situation of him, a black American president standing in a city that was under a communist regime just a few decades ago.
Glee with the help of a friend got into the VIP area so she ended up within good sight of Obama and the rest of the shananingans. She kindly let me borrow the shot above so you can see the guy who it was all about.
Pavel and Helge has collected a number of resources and news reports about the event, from before, during and after.
I’m sitting in Germany as I’m writing this as tomorrow morning I’m off for two weeks to Malta with Ann 😀
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Beer garden season has started in Prague
Yesterday the temperature snuck up around 17 degrees which was enough to drive most of the Prague population outside after work.
I went to my local beer garden on the hill of Parukarka (or is the hill called St. Cross, I’m confused?) 5 minutes from our place. There was a long line for the beer but eventually I got one just before they ran out of glasses.
You buy the beer at either a small booth or inside a tiny pavilion pub and then you can take the the beer with you into the green field and hang around while watching the sun set over Prague. Here is a 360 shot taken outside the beer booth.
Just before the sun set the pub ran out of beer. But that didn’t matter I still had my beer and went further up the hill to see the sun set behind the Strahov hill just to the left of the big castle on the other side of Prague.
Did we just skip spring and went straight to summer?
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Living as a Dane in Czech Republic
This blog post is part of World Blog Surf Day – where 24 bloggers not living in their native country around the world writes about the experience of living in a different country. At the end of my post you will find a link to the next blog in the circle.
I have been living in Prague since the summer of 2007 when Femi and I decided to move here for a period while growing our company. The initial plan of staying for 6 months has so far turned out to last for 22 months.Â
Prague has a big (huge?) expat community of people from all over the world but Europe and US in particular. Whatever brought these people here in the first place most start out from scratch with building a social circle so it’s been easy for me to make new friends.
As a Dane I’m use to communicating in English whenever I’m not dealing with Danes because Danish is a terrible language to learn and we’re a small nation. When I came here in the first place I had little intention of learning the Czech language because of my short stay and because it sounded as complex as Danish to grasp. As I realized that my stay would last more than 6 months I started thinking and talking about taking Czech lessons – but it stayed that way. There was too little incentive, too many other interesting things to do and I was too lazy.
The Czechs are usually not that good at English unless they have a degree or have been abroad. Â So with almost all my friends being foreigners and no language to communicate with regular Czech’s it feels to me like I live in this parallel society of Prague. In this parallel are we that work in companies where the language is English, our friends are English and the media we follow are English.
I have realized that whenever I return to Prague from being abroad (usually from counties where I speak the language) the first think that strikes me that I am back in my parallel world of not speaking the local language.
But apart from my inability to speak the lingo I am having a very good time in Prague, there are still plenty of reasons why this is a great place to live and why we’ve stayed here for this long.ÂThe city itself has a great atmosphere, I can still spend a whole day looking up at the marvelous buildings that are everywhere in Prague. Danes sometimes ask me about how dangerous it is in Prague and I must say that it is very safe – there are not the knives/guns problems of Copenhagen or the drunken crowds of London.ÂThe prices for food and beer are very reasonable compared to most places in Europe, it still puts a smile on my face when I can go to for a meal in a restaurant and have a beer or two and a meal for less than 6 Euros.I’ve got lots of good friends who I have the time and opportunity to see several times a week and plenty of place to go to do stuff be it sports or other activities or clubs, pubs or concerts.Â
One of the topics that has come up quite often in conversations over the last couple of months is that a lot of my friends in Prague are starting to move elsewhere.ÂFor many people like me Prague is a place of transit, a place to enjoy life and the good times before moving on.ÂI doubt that many of the people I hang out with today will be in Prague in a year. In a way it’s sad to think about but on the other hand it’s a nice reminder to enjoy the people and the place every day – it’s not going to last forever.
Some people go to Prague for a couple of months, some for a couple of years. The next blogger in the World Blog Surf Day moved to Prague from USA to be with her Czech husband and start a new life in The Old World. I wish Sher the very best of luck in her adventure and hope you, the reader, will read Sher’s Living as an American in the Czech Republic and the others stories.Have a nice Saturday! -
Sunday Walk In Prague II
About a year ago I made a blog post about a random walk in Prague from our apartment then. Yesterday I did the same from our place in Zizkov.
Click on the images for more explanations of what and where they are taken.
Thanks for the inspiration for a coffee to Karen, a dark beer to Evan Rail and light beer to Ronald Pattinson.
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Zizkov celebrations
We live 100 meters from the city hall in Zizkov (Prague 3) and Tuesday was Masopust in Czech which means goodbye meat – they last day before lent.
In Zizkov this is celebrated with people dressing up and walking in parade from Jiho z Podebrad to Zizkov city hall where the city provides free food and beer. So we had to check it out.
As in other Christian celebrations, Masopust has elements of much older traditions involving fertility rites and celebrating the coming of spring. In Masopust these elements take form in the masks and costumes traditionally worn by revelers, representing various mythical characters and creatures. Like the guys in this video with wipes and strange face paint and costumes:
Later on the parade made it down to the town hall and the party got an extra lift from the free beers and food that plenty of teenagers and hobos also seemed to enjoy. Here is a cheeky Czech guy who offers Femi a drink of vodka and then later asks him for money:
Because of the cold weather (sigh!) we only stayed for one beer and by then we had seen a lot of the gimmicks. A funny thing was the odd mix of people with old women, students, young school children, expats and tourists – everyone with a big smile on their face.
Wednesday offered more entertainment in our neighborhood as Helge, a Danish friend, had invited us out to Akropolis. An Nigerian artist calledTony Allen was playing afrobeat with his band.
It turned out to be a fantastic concert and Akropolis has great atmosphere much in the same way as Vega in Copenhagen. After the concert we all went to a bar to celebrate Helges birthday, more people joined and the good times continued. We were about 8 or 10 Danish speaking people so it almost felt like being home.
In 10 hours Im on the plane to Stansted. Ann and I are spending a weekend together in CambridgeÂ
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Helping friends move
Last weekend I decided to shoot some video while helping my friends Michael and Sarah move to Freiberg in Germany. This is that weekend condensed into 6 minutes;
BTW where is spring? Exactly a year ago this is what Prague looked like.
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How to spend 4 days in Prague
Daniel was one of my house mates from Joint House in Ann Arbor. We had not really been in touch since I left Michigan but last week he contacted me through Facebook and said that he would come to Prague.
It s been a while since friends has stopped by Prague *hint*hint* so it was a great surprise to hear Daniel was coming. I had a great time hanging out with him for a couple of days talking about old days of Joint House and the cool parties we had as well as what we had been up to the last couple of years. I realized that Daniel and another house mate of ours live in Berlin now, so I should try and see if I can make a proper trip up there.
Daniel did 4 days of Prague right after my head, plenty of culture and plenty of beer. We started out Sunday night at Akropolis with reggae. Monday he did the the city center with Old Town Square and Charles Bridge etc. At night he went with another friend to see some underground stuff at the skate ramp on one of the islands and ended up clubbing at Roxy. Tuesday he did the Museum of Modern Art and the Prague Castle. In the evening I went with him to Laterna Magika (Magic Latern) to see a play and later on we continued to a basement bar with dressed up people in Malostranska for the rest of the night. Wednesday he saw Museum of Communism and the beautiful cubist museum. At night he rocked to two live bands at the very unique and wicked Cross Club with another friend. Thursday we went for breakfast together before he headed back home.
If I were here for a few days I d do something like that
One thing I hadn t done before and hadn t thought of before Daniel mentioned it was to check out some Black Light Theatre. Czech Republic and Prague became famous for their pantomimes using mixed media in the sixties. They even built a special stage for these plays at the national theatre in this building called Laterna Magika that looks like it s wrapped in bubble-wrap.
The show we went to see was Wonderful Circus which turned out to be hilarious, partly intentional, partly because the show is some 30 years old. I can t really explain it but this is the start of the show;
Two clowns are hatched out of two eggs washed ashore by the waves. Before they know where they are, they are confronted by the Tempter, the symbol of the snares and deceptions of life, and by Venus, the vision of mysterious beauty, which leads them to set out on a pilgrimage.
The show uses pantomime and black light theater on a background of three projection screens. Parts of the storyline is going on in the film clips projected and parts on the stage. The characters would jump from one media to another in a quite imaginary manner.
I think the price is a bit steep at 730czk for regular tickets but I must say it was good entertainment. Here are the two clowns trying to catch the fleeing Venus:
Two weeks ago I was also in the theatre to see an English play. I didn t get around to blog about it but Karen did.
To hint some more at those people that could be tempted by a trip to Prague I might add that Daniel found a hotel room for 15eur(!) per night on HRS.de. It was quite basic but it was 5 min from my place, clean and included breakfast. For a better alternative try and get in touch with Laus for some Prague Apartments.
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INXS videos from Prague – Never Tear Us Apart
I just came across this 20 year old INXS music video from Prague. Its shot in and around the streets of Stare Mesto and on Charles Bridge. It was shot the year before the Velvet Revolution and shows Prague on a gloomy, yet romantic, winter day before the masses arrived in Prague. I dont think I have seen this few people on the bridge apart from if you cross it at 4am.
INXS – Never Tear Us Apart Uploaded by INXSTwo other videos of INXS was shot in Prague during the same visit. New Sensation filmed at the art nouveau Municipal House and Guns in The Sky filmed in a hallway – somewhere in Prague? All three music videos are directed by Richard Lowenstein.
Last year i made a Prague Christmas video where I also make my way across Charles Bridge and into Old Town Square.
Update: Terri in the comments below asked for the where in Prague the video was shot so I looked trough the scenes and plotted them on the map here;
View Never Tear Us Apart locations in Prague in a larger map -
Trip to the Vietnamese market
Saturday we were a group of about 20 people from MeetInPrague who went to Sapa a Vietnamese village/market on the outskirts of Prague. The week before a huge fire had ravished one of the buildings in Sapa but still there was a lot of other places to see out there. The highlight was the lunch at a local restaurant.
Dominic who organized the event had with the help of his Vietnamese friend Mickey found this delicious drink. It is snakes and some other unidentifiable animals soaked in vodka – yummy! Some of the others tried it out. I was a chicken but tried a sip of one of the others when they didnt colapse after trying it.
One of the new faces at the trip was Karen the blogger from Empty Nest Expat. It was really cool to meet her as I have been following her blog over the last six months. She had never been to Prague until 10 days ago but since she saw pictures from the Velvet Revolution 19 years ago she knew she wanted to go here. So she waited until her daughters went to college, sold her house and all her stuff and moved here to become a language teacher. Way to go!
