spring, people and the weather

Spring began here officially in March, and it's a classic spring for Prague. One day is warm, sunny and so full of promise that you feel like a teenager.

People are suddenly everywhere--the trams are packed with tourists and city dwellers, the streets resound with foreign languages, the fashionistas come out of their winter coats and show the world their bright, tight clothes.

The weather does its flirty, maddening best to catch you off-guard. A sunny morning turns into a chilly, rainy afternoon--and where's your umbrella? A cool, brisk morning gets you to bundle up, and the afternoon sun beating down makes you strip off your coat, hat, scarf, gloves, and so on.

Prague is an emotional city, as Slavs are emotionally volatile. As my Polish boss told me, "Polish people only feel happy on sunny, warm days. Otherwise they are gloomy, like the weather." So spring is a time of ups and downs, smiles and frowns, and sudden changes.

Spring and a few observations on public transportation in Prague

Transition time again. Today it's rather mild, a bit windy and the sky is white.

View from our flat

This seems to be our Spring pattern in Prague. It's not easy to know what to wear if you're going out for the day, as the morning might necessitate your winter coat, which may make you feel all sweaty and burdened by the afternoon. When you travel by foot and/or public transportation (for which you wait outdoors) rather than by nice, cocoon-like car, you really pay attention to the weather!

I've been traveling on the bus/tram Metro system quite a bit the past few weeks, and I've been impressed with a few repeated sights:

1. the blank public-transportation-stare-at-nothing. Entering a tram car, you see a bunch of people who apparently have been flash-frozen. Their faces reveal nothing. Eyes stare straight ahead, dull and opaque. Mouths are set in a grim line. They are like the three monkeys: see no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil. Young people usually are plugged into Ipods or reading a book. Old people sit slumped, looking hopeless and despairing. Or asleep.

I find myself putting on the blank face as well:

Yesterday there was a man on the bus drinking a beer. This is expressly forbidden--you can't eat or drink anything on public transportation in Prague, and people here obey rules! Yawohl! But this man was hiding a can of Staropramen, taking a quick sip when he felt unobserved. No one said anything to him or looked at him. I guess living in a police state for 70 years (Nazis and Communists) does that to people. Mind you own business, keep your nose clean and just keep walking when you see trouble.

2. The public transportation system's vast scope: when I take the bus, I see three or four different buses traveling the same routes. for example, from the Kacerov Metro station (the ugliest building I have ever seen), I can take at least 4 different buses to my tutoring students' home in Libus, in Prague 4.

Kacerov--just a slight bit of its concrete brutality, its unpleasant graffiti and its grimy greyness

You can take the Metro, a bus or a tram anywhere in Prague--in fact, my husband has a game he plays of never waiting for the correct tram but getting on whatever tram stops first and jumping from tram to tram to get where he wants to go. I think he developed this approach when he lived here, to avoid standing at a tram stop in bad weather. This game drives me crazy, but easy travel is one of my 5 top things I love about Prague!

3. the stares I get because I am different. After nearly 2 years of living here, I would think that either I'd start to fit in better or I'd get used to the stares. No. I still can feel people turning their blank stares in my direction whenever I am on a tram or bus (not the Metro, which is full of tourists and draws a more cosmopolitan crowd of Praguites). On the bus to Libus, I feel like the most fascinating thing on the bus. Is it my hair (neither henna-dyed reddish-purple, nor old-lady blue)? My clothes (the clothes I didn't buy in my local Vietnamese bargain store, but brought from the USA)? My smile (I'm working on getting rid of that--see photo above)? My Kindle (On the Metro yesterday, the man sitting next to me was also reading a Kindle. I was so shocked to see this that I almost forgot to get off at I. P. Pavlova, my stop)?

My English (like my friend Stephanie from Idaho, I don't talk on public transportation, as people's heads swivel when they hear English, but sometimes I answer my cell phone. I mumble into it in English, feeling like a spy whose cover has been blown).

anyway, I must say that I love to travel on public transportation here, even when the person behind me is coughing non-stop, the homeless person beside me REALLY needs a bath (no one bothers homeless or even crazy people on public transportation--see point one), the people around me look so sad that I want to cry, and the heat is turned way up, making my coat feel like a sauna. Hooray for the DPP (the abbreviation for the city of Prague division of public transportation, which is so scandal-ridden that the Mayor himself has taken over supervision of the system.)! Ah, Prague!

winter blahs

Here in Prague, the weather has moderated, and the sidewalks are dry. It's a bit sunny, but mostly what BBC news calls "white sky"--not a grey overcast, but a pearly white. Anyway, not blue.

The Czech Republic consists of a very large central basin, surrounded by the medium-sized mountains that define the Czech borders.

This topography helps explain why the Bohemian and Moravian kingdoms have had a continuous existence for well over a millenium. The mountains formed a natural castle defense system against incursions by belligerent neighbors.

It also helps to explain the weather, which is not what I'm accustomed to!

1. It's colder and snowier all around Prague, even to the south. Those surrounding mountains have snow when we have rain, or no precipitation. So any trip away from Prague has to be planned with this in mind. I have a tough time to remember that, counterintuitively, south is colder, not warmer.

2. Weather seems to get stuck in an endless loop. In the winter, there will be days, even weeks, of the same white or grey skies, with only occasional sun peeping through. In contrast, when I lived in Upstate NY by the St Lawrence River, winter was often a time of bright, deep blue skies, clear and cloudless, with enough sun to melt the top of the snowbanks every day.

3. It's usually not very cold here. The temperature hovers around zero celsius (32 fahrenheit) for weeks on end. This is maddening to me, as you can never know how to dress for the day. The morning may be just above zero, with no precipitation. Fine. But then, a light rain may come--okay as long as it stays above zero, but nasty if it falls below and turns into sleet. Often it seems to be slushing outside--the precipitation is coming down as ready-made slush. Not nice.

This winter we have not had any decent snow. The temperature was stuck in the hovering-around-zero mode for months; then it plummeted well below zero for a week or two, causing havoc among the many homeless people in Prague and making news all over Europe.

We're back to the zero-hover thing. Though I am grateful that the sub-zero cold is over (for the sake of people not prepared for such weather), I must say that this neither-here-not-there weather is not to my liking. It's blah.

cold weather in Prague

For people who live in Prague, the weather is an endless topic of conversation. In the U.S., you talk about the weather to old folks and strangers, but only for a minute and at the risk of being labeled a boring conversationalist.

But here, weather is as immediate and life-threatening as war. I think it's safe to generalize that Czechs are much more cautious and likely to scent danger than your average American. In a comical way, I see Czechs as little moles, poking their noses outside their burrows and sniffing the air before making a move.

Americans are, stereotypically, wolves walking on their hind feet, master of all they survey and unafraid of anyone. No self-respecting wolf would let a little thing like sub-zero temperatures and piles of snow firghten them. There's enough of the frontier left in the American character to scoff at danger and defy the elements.

With that introduction, may I say that the only topic of conversation in my home for the past 10 days is the weather. It's cold. Now, you may say, "Duh...it's February...so it's cold...so what?" But you'd be missing the point.

1. It is cold for this part of the world. We are setting records for days of subzero (celsius) weather. In othe parts of Europe, not so far away (Romania, Montenegro, Serbia), it's life-threateningly cold.

2. When it's cold, things break down. As I noted when we moved here in August 2010, things work here--just. There's not so much margin for error here as in the US, reflecting a basic thriftiness in the Czech character which contrasts with American generosity. So when conditions are unusual, the systems start to collapse. My Korean student went to take his TOEFL exam in downtown Prague on Saturday and was told they couldn't run the exam due to the weather. Huh?

3. Czechs love to examine and categorize things. They are fond of minutia here. Czechs collect stamps, butterflies, fossils, all kinds of things. Of course, Americans also collect things, but it's a bit strange for a 50-year-old American to be immersed in his collection of WWII bullet casings. Here, the collection would be admired.

4. Czechs love to talk a thing to death. Every question is asked three times; every reply must be repeated three times. Every comment is thoroughly covered before it's let go. You cannot short-circuit this ritual. I know. Example: my husband is making soup. Do I want some soup? No, thank you. Three minutes later, as he is stirring the soup--do I want some soup? No. Then as he serves himself the soup, again--do I want some soup? NO! Didn't you hear me the first time? Hurt feelings on both sides. So naturally, the cold is a topic of endless fascination--how cold is it now? How cold was it yesterday? How cold will it be tomorrow? How long will this cold spell last?  and on and on....till I collapse in utter exhaustion brought on by my attempts to be polite and not give in to my impulse to yell I DON'T CARE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So...now you know all you care to know about cold weather here.

The untouchable Czech weekend (and shopping)

For most middle-class Americans, shopping is a weekend activity. During the workweek, there's just not enough time to do more than pick up a few items on a quick foray through a store--a kind of "emergency run."

American weekends are catch-up times, with Saturday being the busy day of housecleaning, children's sports activities, serious food shopping and the precious few hours of "recreational" shopping for some new clothes or a book. What doesn't get done on Saturday spills over to Sunday, when everyone is at the mall, shopping or eating out, gathering strength for the week to come.

In contrast, shopping is not a weekend activity here. Shopping is traditionally done during the week, a hangover from communist days when people left work early during the afternoon to stand in long lines for scarce products.

It's still acceptable to leave work early or come in late for doctor's appointments and other personal errands; this is not acceptable in the US, where you are expected to take care of personal business when you're not at work.

In contrast to the US, the Czech weekend is untouchable. Prague empties out on Friday afternoon with people leaving to spend the weekend in their cabin (chata, chalupa) with family and close friends. Sunday night the tide reverses, with tired but happy Czechs returning to put in another week at work.

Our cabin in Mechenice

Czechs treasure their weekends at their cabin, and will go even if the weather is dreary and wet. Our neighborhood in Vinohrady bustles with activity all week, but is nearly deserted on the weekends. We have a weekend cabin, too, but rarely go there, as we like to meet with friends, go to museums or visit the parks and beautiful buildings in Prague, and go to church on Saturday and Sunday. We are not real Czechs!!!

Tourists need to factor in this weekend exodus. Almost all small Czech-owned shops in Prague (and in the entire CR, for that matter)  close on Saturday and Sunday. Only big stores like Tesco and Kotva are open on Saturday. The small food stores run by Vietnamese immigrants become a lifesaver--they are on every block, and are open on weekends and late at night.

woodpile promises cozy weekends!

I think that part of the reason it's hard to develop civic pride here is the weekend mentality. Most Czechs don't expect to enjoy their work, or to like living in the city. In many ways, they have retained a 19th-century mentality that prefers country over city, raising a garden over working in a factory or office, and getting out into nature over cultural pursuits. Their attitude can be summed up thus:

"keep your head down and get through the workweek, then get the hell out of Prague."

So on any given Saturday or Sunday, the center of Prague is full of tourists, expats and a few rural Czech families showing their children the cultural heritage of their country. All real Czechs are at their cabin, the place they love and put energy into, to beautify and protect.

Where is winter?

We are still having mild weather, rainy and overcast. But today there were strong winds and maybe, just maybe, the sunny skies we had today are the herald of a high pressure system that will bring winter! Otherwise, it's business as usual here--rushing people going to work and school, crowded trams, short tempers wherever you go. Regular city life.

Prague at the New Year!

Our friend Marion has visitors from the US, and she asked us to make some recommendations for places to visit in Prague besides the standard Staromestske namesti, Hradcany, and Karluv Most.

Jarda came up with a nice list:

Karlstejn Castle

1. Karlstejn Castle, just outside of Prague. High Gothic castle founded in 1348, which has a unique position among Czech castles. It was built by Czech King and Roman Emperor Charles IV as a place for safekeeping of the royal treasures, especially Charles's collection of holy relics and the coronation jewels of the Roman Empire.

Special exhibits can be accessed here:
Hradkarlstejn

Loreta

2. Loreta, near Hradcany. The previous generations built the Prague pilgrim place Loreta, a former church of the Lobkowitz family (the founders of the church). The following generations have been taking care of this heritage. The history of Loreta includes not only the best of baroque but it has also preserved the traces of spiritual life in our country. The carillon, a very precious musical instrument, extended the number of people delighted by Loreta. The visitors furthermore have access to the Loreta jewels with a unique collection of precious gifts of the Holy Virgin Loreta. We hope that the offered programme will enable you a deep spiritual and cultural experience. 

Here is their website: 
Loreta.

Knights of the Cross Square

3. Knights of the Cross Square in Prague: One of the most beautiful places in Prague is definitely the Knights of the Cross Square, situated in the Old Town near the Charles Bridge. There is a breathtaking view over the Vltava River on the panorama of Prague Lesser Town and the Prague Castle. Members of the order of the Knights of the Cross settled there in the 13 ^th century by the former Church of the Holy Ghost. They built the present Church of the knights of the Cross (St. Franciscus Seraphicus Church) above it later. Dominicans had originally a residence at the site of today's St Salvator Church since 1232. They were replaced by Jesuits, who built the church in the 16 ^th century and also a large building complex, Clementinum,  which became a Jesuit college and is now part of Charles University. The beautiful Old Town Bridge Tower was built by Petr Parler at the end of the 14 ^th century. There is a neo-Gothic statue of Charles IV in the square. The statue of the emperor holds a foundation charter of the Charles University in Prague, founded in 1348. Just to the right of the statue, and down a flight of steps, is an exhibit of the building of Charles Bridge and Christmas nativity scenes.

Strahov Kloster

4. Strahov Kloster, near Petrin: The Royal Canonry of Premonstratensians at Strahov is one of the oldest monasteries of the Premonstratensian Order in the world. It has been a working monastery practically ever since it was founded in 1143. Fire, the Hussite Wars, religious wars, and the Communists all failed to shut down this institution. Even when the members of the monastery were unable to live within its walls, they gathered wherever they could and nurtured the spirit of their House until they were able to return to the monastery complex.

Here is their website:
Strahovsky klaster

Imperial Stables

5. the Imperial stables: In the latter half of the 16th century, during the reign of the Emperor Rudolph II, both sides of the gate were lined with stables. In the 20th century these stables were converted into exhibition rooms. Prague Castle Picture Gallery was established in one part, while in 1993 the second wing of the Imperial Stables was adopted for an exposition of creative art.

Here is their website:
Imperial Stables, Hradcany

St Agnes of Bohemia art gallery

6. Convent of St Agnes and art gallery: The St Agnes Convent was founded by the Premyslid Princess Anežka (Agnes), sister of King Václav I in 1231 as the first convent of the Order of Poor Clares north of the Alps. It was the first Gothic building in Prague.

Here is their website:
convent-of-st-agnes-of-bohemia