Part 13: Good KingWenceslas

Monday, 11 August 2003

First a correction to Part 12. A sharp-eyed reader made me feel warm all over by proof that she actually does read these things! What I said was:
"It was Sunday, 10 December, and what beckoned was the 'Sächsische Schweiz',"

What I meant to say was: "It was Sunday, 10 August."

Of course it was 10 December when I started writing that, but it was not Sunday. Now it is 20 December, and I certainly hadn't anticipated that I would only be writing about Prague so close to Christmas that the subject line up there would be appropriate. My advance New Year's resolution: to get the last two installments done before 2004!

For Monday, 11 August, we had tickets for Prague (the German pass we were using was not good for the Czech Republic). I couldn't find definite info in the regional Dresden timetables about just where the international train for Prague stopped, so at breakfast I asked the waitress at the Bernardo Bellotto whether the train for Prague stopped at Schöna. Oh yes, she assured me.

Do not rely on waitresses, however bright and efficient they may be, to supply information about the finer points of train schedules. We arrived at the Pirna Bahnhof in ample time to get the train to Schöna (the last stop on the regional line, next to the Czech border) before the Prague train would arrive there. We arrived at Schöna. The station was nearly deserted, and I could find no sign indicating that a southbound train was expected any time soon -- or ever. I did finally find a dimly lit office occupied by a forlorn-looking, bored woman, and she brightened at the prospect of having someone to serve! I asked if the train to Prague stops here. Oh no, she said. Its last stop in Germany is at Bad Schandau -- several stations back toward Pirna. However, not to worry, she said. We could reboard our train for its return trip and be in Bad Schandau in time. And how long before the train leaves, I asked? Only a minute or two, she reassured me -- and she was right. We clambered on to our increasingly familiar regional train with its bright red cars and got to Bad Schandau in good time to cross to the southbound tracks.

And that looked more like it -- although this international train, bound for Budapest from Berlin, was nothing like the sleek intercity trains of the former Bundesrepublik. Nevertheless it was comfortable enough -- but still not air-conditioned. Now we were about to leave the European Union and re-experience the old way of travelling in Europe, where every day might mean a different country, different language, and above all different currency. I wasn't sure what to expect in terms of language – it was my impression that Czechs, like most peoples whose native tongue is spoken by relatively few people (the Dutch come to mind), were fluent in several languages that were likely to include English, and I rather hoped so, for not only was my brain exhausted from trying to get along in German (and my physical body beginning to protest as well), what little investigation I had done into Czech -- rules of pronunciation and the like -- was years ago, and I remembered nothing.

The German train crew came through and did its job -- in German, of course -- as did the German border-crossing staff, with passport control and customs. Their Czech counterparts barely glanced at our passports and said little, and then came the affable and youthful Czech conductor. Apparently seeing our passports from the entrance to the coach, he sweetly said, in charming English, "Tickets, please." It took me a second to translate that into "Fahrkarten, bitte," and back into "Tickets, please"! And then I rejoiced! Ah. At least as long as we were on the train, my tired brain could relax.

Several people had warned me before we left for this trip that the former East Germany was still a rather forlorn and dilapidated place, with a long way to go toward recovery from the Communist era. In fact, I found almost no difference at all between West and East -- the East German cities presented, in most cases, a more kempt and "respectable" face than the majority of U.S. cities, and, if slightly more downscale in terms of consumer goods than those west of the old border, were clean and tidy. I thought I could detect a higher degree of stress and tension in the retail work force that might be attributable to the high unemployment rate in the East, but the appearance of the landscape and cityscape, even in the blistering heat, was not at all the cheerless aspect I had been led to expect.

The Czech landscape, at least here in the lignite-mining countryside, was closer to that prediction. From the train the effects of the drought were more visible, the impression of polluted earth and air was present, and houses and shops and factories were more ramshackle. But when we arrived at the factory/railroad/coal town of Usti nad Labem, there was a bridge across the Labe -- Czech for Elbe -- that was every bit as spectacular and impressive as Boston's new, much-touted Zakim-Bunker Hill Bridge, with a marvelous soaring support for the network of cables radiating from it to uphold the roadway. I knew that there has long been such a bridge in Bratislava, now capital of Slovakia, so I think our boastful American engineers might show some due humility beside their Czech and Slovak counterparts!

(And now, behold, it is The Feast of Stephen, or 26 December, and I *still* haven't finished this!)

The train moved through the landscape of Bohemia, leaving the Labe/Elbe behind and finally encountering its tributary, the Vltava -- the Moldau! And strains of Smetana drifted through my head. What an amazing block of land is this Mitteleuropa for the music it has produced! Thuringia gave us the Bach family, and Mendelssohn, and made a home for the likes of Schumann and Liszt; here on the south side of the Erzgebirge ("Krusny Hory" in Czech, I just learned) we were given the graces of Dvorak and Smetana and Martinu and Janacek, not to mention that Mozart perhaps loved Prague most of all the cities that welcomed his music and exploited his gifts. Or the literature: Goethe and Kafka, Schiller and Neruda.

Enough. Prague, the Golden City, awaits. The largest metropolis we would encounter on this trip presented us with the usual miles of industry and housing and finally brought us to Holosevice station. I looked for those wonderful ATMs that now allow one to exchange money simply by putting in one's bank card -- and there were none. Instead, every other retail cubicle in the station housed a money-changer. At least there were plenty of those right there in the station, and it wasn't like the old days when we'd arrive in a new country and have to go off in search of a bank that was still open somewhere.

Next, I was desperately hungry. The only restaurant at the station was a McDonald's! I wasn't about to have my first meal in Prague at a McDonald's, so instead we found the subway, purchased a day-pass for each of us, and rode the C line to the Museum stop. There we got out to find ourselves in the bustling center of the city -- and the only restaurants conspicuously visible were McDonald's! We walked a block or two, and saw a different eatery: a KFC! Yikes. But finally we found a posh hotel with a sidewalk cafe -- and as we had often done before on this trip, we opted instead to go inside, away from the blazing sun. But the lunch offerings were a bit pricey, and I feared we'd be stuck with a long wait for complicated dishes, so we just ordered from the appetizers. Something with asparagus (the menu was conveniently provided with English glosses) sounded good, but what arrived was a plate barely occupied by two slender sprigs, a half-spoonful of some kind of cheesy sauce, and one or two slices of carrot or parsnip or some such thing. But we ate what was set before us, and had something to drink, I forget what, and moved out to the city.

I bought a guide book to Prague, having left the one I had in Boston because I didn't know whether we'd even get here, and at least now we had a map. I realize now that I was completely turned around from where I thought we were, and the broad boulevard we were on was actually none other than Wenceslas Square itself. And the statue in front of the museum, which was surrounded by construction, was none other than Good King Wenceslas himself. But we found our way through the construction, following signs to the Metro, and I managed to get us to the Male Strana station, at the foot of the hill that is crowned by Europe's most stupendous castle/cathedral complex. So far the world's most beautiful city was being a little stingy with its charms.

I looked at my inadequate map, trying to figure out which of the trams that passed before us would take us to the top of the hill, to Hradcany Castle, but Jay pointed to a sign that seemed to point to the castle, and I was too tired to protest, so we followed the sign and began walking up and up and up. This was our payback for the day before, I guess, when we had taken a taxi to the top of the Bastei and walked down and felt superior to all the poor jerks we were meeting who were going up.-- because here in Prague the whole world of tourists had apparently done the smart thing and taken the tram, and we were almost the only ones walking up. Great throngs were coming down, in the opposite direction.

But our weariness soon became inconsequential as the vista unfolded before us. Down the hill we could begin to see the panorama of the city and its broad river and rhythmic array of bridges; ahead of us the baroque architecture began to entice, and soon our cameras were so busy I almost forgot how tired and hungry and hot I was. Here again, words fail me, and I'll have to rely on that "some day" when I will get pictures up on a web site for your enjoyment. I only can say that I am ashamed of how little I knew of the history of this city that had once been the capital of the German Empire, under the likes of Bohemian King and German emperor Charles IV, and later of the Austrian empire until the Habsburg Mathias moved the seat of power to Vienna.

It is probably no profound or original insight, but over the years as I have visited places like Venice and Vienna, I have realized how fortunate we are that the great powers that built these cities diminished while the gorgeous monuments they had built on the blood and toil of their subjects were still standing, and that they were not replaced by even more ruthless powers who would tear down the monuments to their predecessors.I thought it was marvelous that Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna, built by the Habsburgs as their "summer cottage," now provides homes, in some of its annexes, to perfectly ordinary people who would have been shown the gate back when it was built.

I'm not sure to what good fortune we owe the fact that neither Adolf Hitler, nor the Allied armies, nor the Soviet hegemony either intentionally or accidentally destroyed this tremendous place (unlike the fate of Dresden, for instance). I don't know how much of the old glory might have had to be restored since V-E Day and the Prague Spring and the later collapse of The Wall, but I am grateful to have seen these sights. I was absolutely not prepared for the scale or the splendor of St. Vitus's Cathedral; for the brilliant mosaics of its "Golden Gate." We missed altogether going to the Golden Lane, where Kafka once lived in a tiny house within the precints of the castle, where guardians of the wall once lived, and we wandered about in a state of open-mouthed awe only partly explained by heat and exhaustion.

Finally we made a slow and reluctant farewell to the castle and its vast courtyards and churches and palaces, myself at least vowing to return some day and do it justice. We walked back down toward the Male Strana district, now in a mood to expect, and drink in, a new sight around every corner, and the place we headed for was the Charles Bridge. Again words fail me, except to point out that of all the wonderful stretches of great river in the world's beautiful cities -- I think of Florence's Arno, and Paris's Seine, and London's Thames -- surely it would be hard to come up with a majestic procession of bridges to surpass this one along the Vltava. The Charles Bridge was *thronged* with people -- my good friend Thomas, the Berliner, had warned me that Prague would be crowded at this time of year and I might better think of taking a side trip to relatively empty Berlin instead -- but there was something festive about it all, even in the heat.

I had one assignment from another friend, an architect, who when he heard we might go to Prague urged me to pay a visit to Fred and Ginger. It happened I had just seen a picture of this mad whimsy by today's trendiest architect Frank Gehry -- now famous for the new Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, where some people think Fred and Ginger would be more at home. Anyway, we got to the left-bank end of the Charles Bridge, and turned right to walk along the river, and found a shady island park parallel to the shore that allowed us to get out of the sun while we were walking, and we emerged at the foot of the "Dancing Building," as Czechs call it. I enjoyed the building; I thought it both an odd intrusion into the historic fabric of the city and a marvelous expression of whimsy that I think only Czechs, of inhabitants of formerly communist countries in otherwise sober Mittel Europa, might go for.

From Fred and Ginger we walked to yet another Metro station, and found our way back to Holosevice, where we waited for our train in gloomy discomfort, glad we had made the effort to get to Prague. When we did get on the train, to our first-class coach, it was a joy to be greeted by an attendant who took our order for food and drink to be fetched from the cafe car and brought right to our seats. It was not a joy for me to be in the throes of GRARS (if you missed it the first time, that stands for Garber's Recurrent Acute Respiratory Syndrome, something that chooses to strike me when I am thousands of miles from the nearest accessible Benzedrex inhaler) or for the descending sun, late on this August day in northern latitudes, to be right across from my eyes and shining through the window of a disgruntled passenger who actually wanted to see out it and did not have the sun in her eyes, so she looked cross when I got up and, too tired to try to think of what language to say what words in, simply pulled her curtain shut. She pulled her belongings together and flounced to another seat.

We arrived at the border, eager to get back to our hotel in Pirna, and the Czech staff went off duty and the German staff came on -- and the first thing that happened was that the train stopped -- we were not in a station -- and a German conductress came through to announce almost gleefully to us: "Die Lokomotiv ist kaput!" And she was unable to say how long this state of affairs would last. I did look out the window and note that a nice red German regional train seemed to have pulled up next to us, and the Czech staff after consultation with the German staff walked forward out of our coach and out of our lives, and something told me I should ask if we might be close enough to Schöna to get off and catch that regional train, but I lacked aggressive energy sufficient to pull that off in German -- and the nice English-speaking Czechs were gone.

It was an hour of increasing darkness, increasing heat (whatever ventilation there might have been was as kaput as the lokomotiv), before finally lights came on, and the train began to move. And sure enough, we had been just outside the station at Schöna. (It turns out that the voltage is different on the two sides of the border and when a train crosses it must switch to a different engine -- and sometimes the switch does not go well.) But the train did not officially stop until Bad Schandau, so that's where we got off, luckily before the last regional train of the night had left. We got to Pirna and took a taxi to our hotel. The driver was astonished that we had made a day trip all the way to Prague and back. We got to the hotel, I washed out some more dirty underwear and hung it from the bathroom window, and collapsed into bed – after depleting the in-room refrigerator of all its non-alcoholic beverages (the idea of adding alcohol to the mix of influences on my corpus did not seem prudent).

Already I was dreading the complications of the next day's travel -- we needed to go to Dresden Neustadt station to get the sleeper to Frankfurt, and I was beginning to worry about the fact that our tickets seemed to indicate Frankfurt Süd instead of Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof, and I knew there was no direct connection from that station to the Flughafen... Sleep was fitful.

[composed Date: Fri, 26 Dec 2003 21:38:20 -0500]