A 1 minute clip from the escalator at Hradcanska Metro station in Prague.
When you are standing on the escalator for a short while you experience the optical illusion that you are going straight and the people are leaning in weird ways.
Tag: Prague
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Karlv most – 650 years today
Today is the 650th birthday of Charles Bridge – the first bridge in Prague to cross the Vltava river.
The foundation stone was laid at 5:31am on July 9, 1357 with the help of king Charles IV. He consulted his astrologers and the date and time were chosen so that the odd numbers that ascend and descend on the scale of 1 – 9 would form the palindrome 135797531. – My Czech Republic
Charles bridge is probably the most photographed spot in Prague – there is something magical about this bridge. I ve already taken ten pictures of it and Flickr reports that it s users has tagged 24,914 pictures of the bridge.
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Colorful Prague
My parents went to Prague back in the 70s. They brought home a book of pictures from Prague. The pictures were of the beautiful castles and buildings in Prague but they were all gloomy and very dark grey – almost black. Prague is not grey and black any more – it is full of colors.
You can still see the grey buildings but in the city center nearly all houses are newly restored and in the suburbs a lot of construction and refurbishing is going on. This two-family house not to far from our place were one side has had a makeover you can really see what differences it makes to the impression.
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Prague – but why?
– When we told people that we were moving to Prague for six month – everyone without exception asked why? . The why? was usually accompanied with a frowning face and a look that said are you crazy? . Let me try and see if I can explain it
Our goal of starting our own company has been to enjoy life and gain experiences while making money building software that works. We started this company to let us try something we probably wouldn t experience if we were working for an employer.
After setting up the company and working in Copenhagen for about 8 months we realized that it is not crucial for us to be stationed in Denmark to work for Danish clients. We had Danish clients but also clients we d never met and who were sitting in US, UK and Germany. We were web workers and all we needed was (roughly) a chair and good Internet and we could do our work. When we truly realized this fact and our lease in Copenhagen was nearing an end, we started to look at a map – in the beginning just for fun – but quickly it became apparent that we had to try to move to a different country.
We settled on Prague for a number of reasons – cost of living is cheaper (since we are still paid by Danish rates), trains and flights are frequent and cheap to Denmark and the rest of Europe and finally Prague is a beautiful metropolis with a thriving night life.
Our plans for our Prague adventure is to stay here for six months as a work holiday where we can get more value for our buck while we focus on developing products for other companies and one of our own products. Arb Design the company is still based in Denmark in terms of tax, VAT – it s just the two owners that are sitting in Prague for a while.
– After explaining this some people said I guess it makes sense in a way or I wish it was me – and a few continued to shake there head.
We have now been in Prague for nearly three weeks and moved into our new apartment Sunday and it already feels like home. At times we have asked ourselves whether or not it was a good idea to make this move – now I know it is.
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Back to work
The weather has been quite hot down here the past week and we have returned to work on the projects we got going right now. As it were Friday we figured we d try and work from one of the many nice cafes around here and ended up at Cafe Savoy where the picture above is taken.
Since we arrived two weeks ago we have been living in a small one-bedroom apartment – but on Sunday we are finally moving into our own place – I can t wait
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Getting lost in Prague
With six months in Prague we got a luxury in that we don’t need to stomp around town and cover all the attraction in a weekend or a week. So we’ve purposely just jumped on the trams and metros and gotten ourselves ‘lost’.
The first day we ended up by – what we later learned was – the Strahov Stadium. It looked quite big but it wasn’t until I got home and looked at it on a satellite image that I understood the size of this place. It was build to host parades and huge gymnastic shows and the stands would allegedly hold 250,000 people.
Here you see it to the right of Stadion Evzena Rosickeho which is a ‘regular’ stadium that holds nearly 20,000.
.Another day we ended up by a walled park. When we looked through the gate we saw this boulevard through the forest.
It took forever to walk to the other end but when we finally got up there we were met by this star shaped building.
It is The Star Royal Summer Palace but it is closed for another few weeks so I’ll have to come back another time. Once again there were a lot more background and history to be found online. It is build with a great attention to symbolism and so it was build in 1555 as a hexagram.
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Making new friends
A month ago I got an email from Alena in Koice, Slovakia asking some questions about doing an internship in Ann Arbor. She hadd somehow come across my blog and seen that I had worked at Menlo. We wrote back and forth a couple of times and I asked her if she knew anybody in Prague. She had a friend – who had a friend – who lived in Prague and thats how I got to know Ilja.
Yesterday we met Ilja for some food and pivo and had an excellent evening. His friend Jana also joined us as we spend a couple of hours in a very small pub that used to be the watering hole of Emil Holub. Jana and Ilja made a good efford in teaching us the sounds and words of the Czech and Slovakian languages although most of it seems forgotten today.
Later on Ilja invited us along to a party at some friends place. Here is a picture were we get ready to indulge in some Slovakian slivovice:
All the Czechs (and Slovakians) Ive met so far has been very kind and helpful – Im really looking forward to living here for the next six months. Dkuji!
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Arrived in Prague
The flight was on schedule, the cab driver didnt cheat us, we found our apartment, internet is working, weather is great, beers are good – life is great!
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Moving on
So I ve been flat mate and business owner with Femi for 8 months. To tell the truth I wasn t sure we would make it for more than 6 months before we d run out of money. Luckily that has not been the case. We re still in business and doing well for the time being.
We have to leave the flat we are subletting in Copenhagen in about two weeks and we ve just signed the contract for our next place – in Prague.
I ended up in Copenhagen by chance, started a company as a crazy idea turned real and now I m moving to Prague because I can. I m loving it and I can t wait to get set up in Prague.
Copenhagen is a great city and even though I ve seen a lot of it over the past couple of months I will probably return.