Skalka

It's humid. The clouds are under my shirt. I'm dressed for two months from now on account of giving a talk at a conference. Usually, I deride the ubiquity of supermarkets but today I go inside to get an ice cream. I opt for one of those high end brands with the embarrassing soft porn advertising.

While queuing a young kid of eight or nine, goes to grab my ice cream. His brother apologizes and explains that his brother is 'pitomý' stupid. I tell him 'v pohodě' - which roughly means 'It's cool', though it isn't. V pohodě has become my stock reply to a number of situations like people stepping on my feet, knocking me with elbows or being late with my order.

It has just occurred to me that, at least symbolically, nine is something of a nothing age. When assuming the age of someone, I would base it on not only physical development but beahviour. I can't think of anything which is typically nine. Eight year olds (at least when I was eight) were just that more socially aware than younger kids. Ten ears old are starting to show signs of teenager hood. Nines are in a DMZ of maturity, but I digress.

Outside, I eat the ice cream far less glamourously than in the commercials, hunched over to stop the chocolate falling onto my shirt. I think there is a Ben Elton routine about this. Anyway, slightly hunched and munching on my ice cream I start to look around the block. There's a library here but no obvious entrance. A security guard who has become curious about my toing and froing and is studying me from the window. I'm all prepared to tell him about what I'm doing. I'm even considering producing my journalist card for an added layer of teflon legitimacy. Perhaps, it's too humid for him to bother because he disappears.

Coming to Skalka is something of a full circle for the blog. I first conceived of the idea when I used to teach here. Train stations are often inspiring. I've written a lot of poems and stories while sitting waiting for trains. Occasionally, missing them as a result. It was after one lesson I thought that visiting the stations would be a novel way to see Prague, and now that I've visited all but one of the stations I realize how much more of this city is left.

In the last year, my freelancing for one website has let me see more of the city, and though it was time consuming, the opportunity to have a good look beyond the obvious places was one of the rewards. As much as there is to still explore, the blog and my writing assignments have shown me much more of Prague than I thought I knew when I first arrived. In fact, when I first arrived I was a little disappointed. The reality didn't live up to the romance. My affection for Prague has grown as I've seen more of her grubby side. I prefer her as this confusing, at times dilapidated, at times meretricious, tightly wound burg rather than just a fairy tale backdrop. I love her for her musty second hand book stores with volumes I'll never read, her smoky old men pubs, her forgotten alleys, remnants of communism and for the fact that I don't live here and will always have her for a visit.

The blog hasn't made me an expert on the city. If anything it has made me see how transitory place is. You can stay, but the city keeps moving. It is the elephant and we're the blind.

Promise

I know it's been a wile, and I;m note sure how many of you are still bothering to read this. Anyway, I'm back. Expect the final two posts over the next fortnight. Thanks to those who have stuck along this far. I've never been one to keep faith in much. My bookshelf is testament to that.

Lužiny

I was here about five months ago, maybe six. In fact, this station derailed the whole project for a while. I couldn't get inspired. It was another crumbling shopping centre, more kiosks selling the same fast food drowned in oil. I sat at yet another pizzeria, ordered a coffee only so I had somewhere to sit and looked over the road to where I had been over a year ago when I came to Hůrka. The puzzle was locking in place, but I still felt as though I was forcing the piece.

I told myself I'd comeback when I was more in the mood. Then I had other things to write. 'Real' things, things that seemed much more professional than this blog. I had lost faith, interest, inspiration and it seemed better to leave, but at the back of my mind I couldn't. I knew I had to finish it off. There was no climax. Only closure. Even if the blog hadn't gone the way I wanted, I felt that I couldn't start anything else until this is done. This is the beginning of a start as much as an end.

The shops are still here, the same grease sodden food, the same sense of transience and torpor. The one difference is that the outskirts of Prague no longer recall the burbs of home. Perhaps, the comparison has been blunted by overuse. More so, these places have a distinct quiddity, which is in as much the architecture as the feeling. If you could erect a shrug it would look like this.

Yet there are things I didn't notice the first time - the statue of three birds, herons I think, with curving bodies and arrow heads, locked in a tumbling dance, twirling unnoticed above the people. Apples are growing along the footpaths. Back in April they had not yet fruited. Now there are several pink and green ones within reach. I grab the closest and take a bite. It's sour and hard, so I add it to the others which have been pilfered or simply fallen.

I also find splat berries. I don't know the real name and I'm not going to Google the info and pretend I do. The berries are white and about the size of a marble. I call the splat berries because people like to place them on the sidewalk and stomp on them to hear the satisfying pop as the berry bursts. Some people have done this and I do the same. It was a simple pleasure G. introduced me to when we started seeing one another.

There is also a second hand bookshop. I noticed it the first time I but didn't venture in. This time I feel more compelled to exhaust the station of its possibilities. From the faded popular hardcovers in the window I don't feel much confidence. It will probably be like the apple.

The inside is promising. Books are piled from the ground to waist height. More are stuffed into the bookshelves, sometimes two rows thick. The best find is a cabinet filled with these exquisitely small poetry volumes. Among them I found two collections from Nezval, one was a series of pastorals called Z domoviny (From the homeland). The other was a collections of shorter whimsical pieces featuring the suites Básně na pohlednice (Poems for postcards) and ABECEDA (ABCD) The latter were published much earlier during his more 'surreal' period. The former were more overtly socialist, which was not so uncommon amongst writers in the early days of the regime. Kundera wrote some utter bilge in praise of communism before he became well known for his 'scandalous' novels.

When I go to pay I have to find a break in the books behind which the seller has barricaded himself. He is a young anxious man, worn thin by his nerves. It is hard to follow if he is speaking to himself or me.

This trip to the bookstore has renewed my confidence in this blog and what this city has to offer. I had become too complacent. I had made the mistake of thinking that something was simply what it is and no tried to look closer. I had failed to live in the moment, which this blog is somewhat about. As far living in the moment, Nezval was able to put it more succinctly.

Každodenní básně
Gramofon pod okny hraje
toto jsou básně na pohlednice
zahřejí tě jak šálek čáje
když ti je smutno u srdce

Everyday Poems
The gramophone plays under the window
these are the poems for postcards
they warm you like a cup of tea
when you have sorrow in your heart

Letňany

[N.B. This was written on 23rd March but I didn't have time to post until now.]

As a break with standard practice, I'm going to start as we pass through Střížkov, which is two stops before Letňany. The newness of this station along with the next two makes me feel like I'm leaving the real world and entering a life-size model. It makes it hard to separate the stations from each other.

We pass through Prosek and two kids across the aisle from me are reciting a rhyme used to help children learn how to pronounce ř. The rhyme goes like this:

Tři sta třicet tři
stříbrných stříkaček
Stříká přes
Tři sta třicet tři
Stříbrných střech

And in English:

Three hundred and thirty three
Silver fire hoses
Spray across
Three hundred and thirty three
Silver roofs.

Amusing how a phonological constraint will produce. Equally amusing is that the kids reciting it are a little too old. Nostalgia isn't dead. They stop reciting the poem for the fourth time to comment on passengers they are sure are members of the mafia because of their appearance. Prejudice is alive and well too.

At Letňany only a bus stop can be reached without crossing a road. I know I've broken this self-imposed rule before but as with that nursery rhyme the challenge to creativity is what you can do within constraints. Besides, it's just a factory outlet.

Behind the bus station is a flat open field. I wonder if it is an air strip. This thought gets me wondering whether the name Letňany derives from this since 'let' means flight in Czech. When G. calls a few minutes later I ask her. She says she doesn't know. Winter is putting up a final bitter fight, so I tell G. I'll meet her at her grandmother's which is not far away in Kobylisy.

On the train back there are some kids playing a game, a different group of kids than before. The object of the game is to run as far as they can from the train then turn and try to make it back to the train before it leaves. I watch them noisily disrupt the crowds of commuters at every stop. When I get to Kobylisy, one of them clears a bench and just manages to squeeze between the doors before the train takes off.

Hloubětín

Though I've been curious about this station since I first saw it many years ago, I never succumbed enough to check it out over the years. The name has been the main reason. The names of most other stations are self-evident. This one is more impenetrable.

When I leave the station, I feel the icy wind on my face. A few days ago I was fooled into thinking spring would soon be here. The air was warm and fuzzy. A few buds had sprouted on the trees. I was feeling energetic. Now the air is steely.

The Czechs call this type of cold "kosa", which means scythe. Today, it's obvious to see why. The wind is slicing me to the bone. It's also going to trim today's post. I'm not sure how long I can stand to be outside.

On the first block I follow a street called Pod Turnovskou tratí. It's one of the features of Prague toponyms that they reflect some of the geographical or historical features of the area. Of course, the city is not short of streets named in honour of historical figures and famous places - or streets renamed when certain historical figures were no longer in vogue. In other instances, the street names simply describe the street. In this instance the street is under Turnovský's tracks.

Across from me is a basketball court with two large gates, one at each goal end. The gates resemble bared teeth for a post-apocalyptic play set. Moreover, they are completely useless, as the surrounding fence is quite low and would be easily crossed by your typical basketball player.

Through the second exit of the station I find the local branch of the municipal library. It seems a good way to avoid the scythe so I mount the caged stairwell. The library is in a seventies style cement shopping center with an optometrist and a supermarket. Kids' drawing are stuck to the window. Books are displayed invitingly. It's shut. The scythe's got me.

Muzeum Part 2

Now that the National Museum comprises of two buildings I thought it would be better to devote a second post and day to the new section which is housed in the former Federal Assembly. I also relished the chance to explore this building, which sits grim and remote at the top of Wenceslas Square.

When I first arrived in the Czech Republic the building was surrounded by concrete barriers and guarded by police because it was the headquarter of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Now, the headquarters have moved and the building has been acquired by the National Museum. There is a perverse symmetry because during the 1968 invasion, the Warsaw Pact troops allegedly thought the older National Museum was a radio station and fired on it. The bullet marks are still visible in the columns. Fittingly, the current exhibition, Za Svobodu, is on the struggle against the communist regime.

The exhibition is a survey of both repression and resistance from 1948 to 1989. The exhibition attempts to show life at different levels with examples of propaganda, dissident literature and even a replica of a typical living room in a panelák flat. This is one of those situations where I could reel off all the information I've gleaned form books, articles and conversations, yet it doesn't change the fact that I don't feel this exhibition as Czech people do. For me, these things are examples. For them, they are memories.

However, the disconnection perhaps invites other 'readings' about the place. The main one is how unreal some of this feels. I'm referring especially to the riot cop gear, which appears more like a the accessory to some ill-conceived live-sized action figure still in its blister pack of a display case. Compounding this feeling is the replica of the Berlin Wall toward the end of this exhibition, complete with a copy of the original graffiti. I wonder how many other examples of graffiti have been copied as though they were the work of an old master? Actually, given that it's been a few decades since Basquiat decorated New York with his work, there have probably been a few. There's probably also a forged Banksy around - probably done by Banksy himself.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the exhibition were the connections made with the the charter movement in the Baltic states and those here. I was surprised to read that one Latvian student Eliyahu Rips, attempted to set himself alight in protest against the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. This was only one example of other forms of protest to come from this region. It's a history I've heard little about since living here. Again, a visit to a museum resulted in me learning something.

Muzeum Part 1

Even if you've never been to Prague, you can probably guess that there is a museum located at this train station, the National Museum in fact, so I thought I would slip out of my tourist role and into that of a my tour guide.

The National Museum tends to get a bad rap as nothing more than a stuffy old building filled with bones and moth eaten stuffed animals. This description is partly true but it's also part of its appeal. Whereas many other museums try to go for interactivity, this museum recalls a time when knowledge was treated with some solemnity and a dash of amateurism. I realise there is little we can learn from an animal by skinning, mounting and placing it by another creature who's suffered the same fate, and I know that many collections are really glorified booty, but I enjoy the quiet, and these simple exhibitions can allow the mind to wander.

This was not exactly what I experienced at The Story of Planet Earth. (I've taken the liberty of removing the redundant article.) This current exhibition takes its cues from those more modern exhibitions with films and exhibits to make you better imagine an earthquake. As the name suggests, the exhibition tells the story of Earth from formation then splits into various sub-plots - geological, evolutionary and environmental. The perpetual ten year old in me, who was being glowered at by the perpetual fifty six year old in me (the perpetual eight nine year old had dozed off in the lobby) loved the dinosaur display best of all. Actually the regular thirty four year old enjoyed the dinosaurs and fossils too. One of my dream jobs would be a curator. I guess I can add it to the list.

Actually, I enjoyed the exhibition a lot more than I've led you to believe. I guess that fifty six year old has taken over. Even the hordes of kids didn't bother me. It was heartening to see them interested in something other than computer games. One little girl thought the dinosaur skeleton on display was for a dragon. Another kid was imploring his father to look at everything around him - I guess appealing to families isn't always so bad.

A lot of the fossils were from what is today the Czech Republic, thus creating a telescopic view of the regions history, at least in my imagination. Some surprising fossils included the head of an early species of shark.

Perhaps the most shocking display was of three photos of the Trift Glacier in Switzerland, showing its retreat. No less disturbing was this series of images showing the rate of deforestation in Borneo.



I forget that trips to the museum are also meant to be educational.