Praha ha ha ha
All photos taken with a Kodak instamatic in March 2002.
Chus and Leo are going to Tuscany for an art exhibition and I’m convincing them to stop by Prague. Not that they need much convincing.
My sister and I went in 2002 and we had a blast. Prague is beautiful, like a fairyland designed by dueling architects. We watched The Magic Flute performed by puppets, including a Mozart puppet who conducted the orchestra and periodically spat at the audience. A scalper on the street sold us cheap tickets to the opera and we saw La Boheme.
We booked ourselves at a pensione in the suburbs of Prague. Our attic suite with private bath cost 700 pesos a night, including breakfast (the exchange rate was almost P1 to Kc1). Breakfast was served by the owner of the house, who appeared each day in a different uniform and often warned us about pickpockets (we encountered none).
The only downside was that our pensione was an hour away from the city center by tram (our stop was the end of the line), and we had to hike uphill to the tram station in the cold. It was supposed to be spring, but it was freezing. I saw white flakes on Cookie’s coat and said, “Eww, you have dandruff!” It wasn’t dandruff, it was snow.
Cookie was in charge of the wallet. If you want your funds to last, you put my sister in charge—getting money out of her is like squeezing vodka out of a rock. (But only when we’re on a trip; at the mall she’s easy.) We were early for the the opera so I suggested we go to a bar for schnapps and she said, “No, we’re going to sit in the park until it’s time.” I had to convince her that my ears were about to snap off.
Everyone should go to Prague while they’re young because there are stairs everywhere. Recommended viewing: Milos Forman’s Amadeus and Philip Kaufman’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being (the movie where Daniel Day-Lewis tells all the women, “Take off your clothes”). And the animated movies of Jan Svankmajer.
It’s my sister’s birthday today.
Cookie with a cat that crossed her path. Prague, 2002.
Happy Birthday, Cookie!
September 18th, 2010 at 08:14
Happy birthday to your sister, Cookie. 2 day’s ago, it was my sister’s. Wow! Is that really a stray cat?? It looks better than the stray cats here. It’s beautiful.
September 18th, 2010 at 12:32
Kainggit. I wanna see those spires from above.
The Czech make good porn.
September 19th, 2010 at 14:16
Prague, eh? May as well Czech it out. Aha ha. Ha. Erm.