Ládví

The air is damp and heavy. All around it smells like yeast and the snow looks like mashed potato left to congeal overnight. At least it's warm enough for me to walk around.

First of all, I'm going to return my library book. On the way, I pass a poster for Karel Plíhal. I need to look into getting tickets.

The library is shut when I arrive. I've only got myself to blame. If I hadn't gone to the wrong platform at Staroměstská I wouldn't have headed in the wrong direction. I would've just made it. I guess even experience with the metro system doesn't prevent these bouts of confusion.

I'm a little disappointed because I wanted to write about the Ďáblice branch. I was there before Christmas and it reminded me of the suburban libraries from home. New thin legged shelves housing an eclectic mix of classics, airport fodder and rarities. I'm not even able to negotiate with the librarian to let me return the book. I'll have to come back next week.

So instead of the library, there are shops. Lots of shops, bakeries, newsagents, a clothes shop, supermarket and the Czech equivalent of a two-dollar store. There's also a cinema and the ubiquitous herna bars. I opt for the two-dollar store. Except here, they are 39Kč stores, which is a bit more than two US dollars and about $3.50 AUD, though the latter rate may change by the end of the week.

I set myself a task. I'm going to buy the coolest and simultaneously most useless item I can find for 39Kč. When I go in, I observe the custom of always taking a basket and start down the aisles. I'm not the only man here. However, I am the only man under sixty.

The first aisle is stocked with rag-in-waiting brightly coloured clothing, so I don't linger long. Fluorescent undies are useless, but not all that cool. The next aisle shows some potential. There are penguin shaped picture hooks, balls of yarn and novelty safety scissors to name a few. I inspecta packet of scissors in my hand then put it back. A shop keeper eyes me suspiciously.

The back of the store is full of knick knacks and toys. There are some serious contenders here. Sad-eyed statues of dogs, each with a concave back. I can't work out what's meant to fit there. Below them, I find tiny wooden houses with a nylon loop at the top. Christmas decorations? Bird feeders? They have a wind-up dinosaur and I do like toy dinosaurs. But it seems to soon to put it in the basket.

The third aisle is footwear. And not all of it is 39Kč. Not even the slippers. I need new house slippers (We follow the Czech custom of removing shoes at home.), but I did say it should be useless. And they are 59Kč. Stuff it. I've been meaning to buy them for a while and I'll probably forget. In they go.

There's nothing else here, so I head to the last section, which at first is just rows of shampoos and cleaning products. I'm mistaken, there are small Chinese dragon statues, and salt and pepper shakers, oil pots and then I see it. And as soon as I see it, I know it has to be mine. This is to be my purchase.



It's obviously cool and undeniably useless. A soft boiled egg requires three minutes to cook properly. This timer only goes up to a minute. What's more, the egg design is in keeping with my chicken shaped egg cup I got in Leipzig.

As I pay I succumb to my second non-39Kč purchase. They have hip flasks for half the price I've seen elsewhere. And these ones aren't emblazoned with the logo of some distillery, so I grab one too. Quite a successful trip all round.

Stodůlky

I'm a little apprehensive about coming here. Outlying suburbs make me nervous, having grown up in one. But the suburb also makes me feel a little optimistic. It's St Nicholas tonight and since this is a residential area, I should catch some of the local festivities.

When I arrive, I find a flat broad shopping centre crowned with corrugated iron. The brightest thing all around is the supermarket. Stacks of rosy meat glisten in the butcher's window. There's a herna bar at each end. Neither look enticing. There's litter and graffiti. It sort of reminds me of places near where I grew up, more than any other locality in Prague, though I don't feel any more comfortable.

People have already started to gather at the busted benches. It makes it feel a lot later than it really is. Perhaps, they've been here since the end of work and the night suddenly crept up on them. The only remarkable thing is that I'm travelling in a clockwise direction. Not that I have much choice. Had a followed my natural inclination I would've simply passed more benches.

I find an underpass but by now all my bravery has leaked out of me. I decide to cross the station to other side where, dimly lit half built apartment blocks glow like like cold giant lanterns. The project is called the British Quarter. It isn't for Prague's expats. The name is on Czech which means that the being 'British' is a selling point.

In fact one of the shops on the other side advertised that it had children's goods from England and I've often seen shops advertising that they have furniture or clothes from there. Not so long ago, the Union Jack was something of a fashion item. Maybe, it's the colonial and republican in me, but I find this a little strange, especially the perception of the Union Jack as trendy. For me, soccer louts and skin heads adorn themselves with crosses of St. Andrew, St. George and St. Patrick. Funnily enough, the northern suburbs of Perth are something of a British enclave, so this development only reinforces the similarities between my old stomping grounds and here.

The mounds of dirt and canon sized pipes also take me back to my childhood, the imagined part, when unguarded building material became a castle, a ship, a space ship or an enemy base we had to infiltrate. In the dark, they look like a horror film set. I continue briskly on. Some of the people coming the other way, give me strange looks. When I get to the end of the path I see why. There's no entrance to the station and they weren't commuters but people walking at the site. My hyperactive imagination is having field day here, and every thing it's coming up with is bloody and gruesome, so I head back to the shopping centre.

A hiking path leads from here to Řeporyje and then on to Černošice. G. and I almost hiked to Řeporyje. We were walking through a very nice valley on the outskirts of Prague and this town was where we should've taken a train from. Fortunately, we managed to catch a train from a much closer station. I had no idea the valley was in this part of the city. I have no idea where Černošice is or what I would find there.

Some teenagers in devil horns have gathered on the benches. A St. Nicolas comes out of one of the paneláks. As I pass the teenagers, one of them ask if I'm meant to be a spy on account of my long winter coat and cap. I don't answer. What am I meant to say? 'Nejsem špion'?

Privately I'm a little flattered. Of all my insecure male fantasy occupations, spy was the top. I think I destroyed a small rain forest doing the various activities from the Spy Craft book. And at least people are now interacting.

Rajská Zahrada => Černý Most

It’s no Garden of Eden, and there are no tomatoes – at least not as far as I can see. The station is nautically themed: a blue and white colour scheme, portholes, a ventilation shaft built to resemble the bridge on a ship and rust.

All around beyond the licorice assortment styled paneláks, the vegetation is a dry autumnal brown. The colour reminds me of summers back home.

A couple of years back I wrote a poem based on the station’s ambiguous name. It was influenced by the poetry of Karel Plíhal. Plíhal’s poems are concise and often based around witty homophonic pairings. My attempt doesn’t exactly employ this technique, but I took inspiration from his approach. Here it is, my first poem in Czech:

Rajská zahrada
Byl jsem na Rajské zahradě.
Eva nedala Adamovi rajče.

In English it doesn’t work so well:

The Garden of Eden
I was in the Garden of Eden.
Eve didn’t give Adam a tomato.

The ambiguity arises from the fact that the word ‘rajský’ can be the adjective for both ‘paradise / Eden’ or ‘tomato’. ‘Rajksá zahrada’ is ‘Garden of Eden’ and ‘rajská polevka’ is ‘tomato soup’. Another amusingly ambiguous adjective is ‘masový’. It can mean ‘meat’ as in ‘masová koule’ (meat ball) or ‘mass’ as in ‘masový vrah‘ (mass murderer).

I circle the tiny block where the station is locate. I had a sleepless night last night. Maybe this is influencing my perceptions but I find little of interest. There is nowhere to sit and few people to watch. The train tunnel snakes from the station. On the top is a footpath. I decide to follow it to Černý Most to at least keep awake.

The path takes me high above the traffic. It is wide and devoid of people. I wish I had a skateboard. I wish I knew how to ride one. About halfway along and I am almost level with the large shop signs. I found them unsettling when travelling this way at night – great luminous words suspended in the dark. It was as if the bus had entered some flat textual world.

I know Černý Most as well as Florenc. It was the other station I came to on my weekly trips from Mladá Boleslav. I reach the station only passing two young women and their children and two police officers telling some teenage girls to get down from the railing.

The station has remained faithfully lodged in my memory. There is no unsettling sense of the familiar and the new that I have experienced when returning home. I wonder if I’ll see anyone I know. Unlikely. All the teachers I worked with are gone and the students would be leaving for the weekend - so set are the routines of people there.

Despite these comments, I’m looking forward to going back to Mladá Boleslav tonight. Partly it’s to catch up with an old friend. Also I’m curious to see how a place I called home for four years may have changed.


Many fond moments happened there: nights at the film club when the the gawky bespectacled president would give lenghty introductory speeches about the movies, sometimes on any topic he pleased; the camaraderie of playing badminton; the post-hike beers; dinners and music nights.

From the footbridge I can see the sun melting away through the haze. It resembles a vast peach – something Dahl would conjure up – and it’s making the smog blush.