CHAPTER 20: PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC
Saturday, October 30

The drive from Wiesbaden to Prague was long but interesting. German signs on the autobahns leave a lot to be desired. Okay, so I said the same thing about the signs in Belgium, but it's equally bad in Germany. They don't believe in giving directions by "North" or "A50 East", like we do in the States. Instead, they indicate a town towards which the road may go. And they don't do it in any standardized form, either: the town may be a good-sized city somewhere down the pike (Munich, for example), or it may be just a little suburb of the city you're trying to get through, in which case it may or may not be on your map. Janis and I diligently followed the signs to get around Frankfurt and wound up smack dab in the city center. "This doesn't look like the bypass to me", I observed intelligently as we sat at an interminably long traffic light in downtown Frankfurt. We managed to recover somehow ... I'm not sure how ... and continued on our way.

Exits on the German autobahn are called "Ausfahrt", which literally means "out go". Janis and I have had quite a few childish giggles over all of our "Ausfahrts". The German government is spending a fortune on road construction right now: it seems like about one mile in three on the autobahn has some sort of roadwork going on: repaving, new roads, new bridges, and so forth.

We are now staying in a little "penzion" (like a bed & breakfast) on a high hill on the north side of Prague. Our room has no TV, radio, or telephone, and the bathroom is the size of a small (very small) closet. However, the bedroom is large and comfortable, and we have a balcony that has a stunning view over the city. The house is the family home of the current owner, Mrs. Louda. Back in the late 50's/early 60's, the communists decided that Mrs. Louda's uncle was an American spy, so they hung him, imprisoned her father, confiscated the house, and kicked the family out into the country. Mrs. Louda's family got the house back in '68 and she has been running it as a penzion ever since the commies were kicked out ten years ago.

The Czech Republic is a country on the upswing. After 40 years of communist rule, their economy and infrastructure are way behind the west. Much of it is still the pits, but they're working hard and fast to catch up. They've built a brand-new autobahn from Prague through Plzen to the German border (the German side is not yet built). Buildings and roads are being improved everywhere you look. Tourism is one of their big businesses: Prague alone gets about 1.2 million visitors a year. So Janis and I are hardly the first to discover this country, but hey, it's the first time for us, and we love it.

We've spent the past two days just wandering around the old sections of the city. It's awesome. Prague got very little, if any, damage in WWII, so all the plazas and buildings and narrow, winding cobblestone streets are intact. Many of the buildings are anywhere from 100 to 600 years old and most have been, or are being, restored. The old city is where the visible effects of the ongoing Czech renaissance are located.

Shops and restaurants are everywhere you look, and you can find about anything you want. Their specialties are garnet stones and jewelry (Janis found that out REAL quick), crystal, marionettes, and hand-made arts & crafts stuff. Eating out is unreal. We've eaten in a different place each of the last three nights and each dinner has been incredibly well done. Last night we found a really nice-looking restaurant and had two plates of the best pasta I've ever eaten, two drinks each (Czech beer for me and Coke for Janis), and the total bill was about $12.

The arts are in full swing here: music, fine arts, theater, and film. Prague is home to three symphony orchestras, two opera houses, and uncountable classical music ensembles, jazz groups, rock, reggae, hip-hop, and everything else. There are a large number of churches and concert halls, each of which have several classical music shows every day. Yesterday we heard a wind ensemble perform music by Mozart, Beethoven, and Bizet in an old church on the main square. Mozart's "Don Giovanni" was written and first performed here, and now it's performed every day by at least two different groups. Everywhere you go, people shove flyers in your face advertising concerts later that day. Many of the outdoor scenes in the movies “Amadeus” and “Yentl” were filmed here in Old Town. I've found a bunch of galleries with tons of contemporary artwork and none of the snootiness of many western galleries.

So Prague is beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. Also crowded, crowded, crowded. I was starting to get a case of road rage again yesterday from all the hordes of tourists. Who the hell invited them, anyway?

Last night we found a cyber cafe (with American keyboards, no less) and we're going to hit it first thing this morning. Right now it looks like another beautiful day. The city was covered by haze early this morning, but it has burned off now and there's not a cloud in the sky.

A side note from Janis: Experienced world travelers that we are, we set out yesterday with only a small amount of Czech money. Our plan was to hit an ATM that we had scoped out the previous day. We toured the cathedral and the palace and meandered around a bit, stopped and ate lunch, and meandered some more, and only then decided that we needed cash. We located the ATM, but then found that neither one of us had our ATM cards, neither one of us could remember our VISA pin numbers, and neither one of us had a checkbook to cash a check. We had just enough for one person to take the bus back to the room to get money or an ATM card. The Woman saved the day! I had brought my AMEX card and finally remembered the PIN number. We looked around and finally found an AMEX ATM (a regular ATM wouldn't work) and the crisis was averted. We laughed like hell when it was over, of course, but it wasn't so funny at the time.

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