In my first post of 2011, in which I wrote about ‘Why I like living in Prague’, I explained that one reason was the amazing architecture and buildings to be seen whenever walking around the city centre or inner suburbs of the city. I also promised to write a future blogpost to illustrate my point, so what follows is in part, to keep me true to my word. This subject is also inevitably better illustrated than written about. So, as many people who leave comments or write private emails to me say how much they like my photographs, this post will be more pictures than words.
The photograph on the left is of artwork on the exterior of Obecní Dum / Prague’s Municipal House. The building is national cultural landmark and ranks as one of the most significant Art Nouveau buildings in Prague.
But it isn’t just on a few famous or significant buildings that such wonderful decoration can be seen. The two pictures below are of two buildings virtually next door to each other in the Prague suburb of Bubenec – well off the tourist trail.
The two hotels pictured below are located in a more well-known part of Prague. They are situated side-by-side on Václavské námestí / Wenceslas Square and were both built in the late nineteenth / early twentieth century. As with so many other amazing buildings in Prague, since the fall of communism in 1989, they have been returned to their rightful owners and restored to their former glory. They also still function as the ‘Grand Hotel Europa’ and the ‘Meran Hotel’. I particularly like the intricate metalwork on the balconies of both buildings.
The other very noticeable feature of Prague architecture, is how many balconies and bay windows are held up and supported by carved figures, predominantly female ones. The photograph on the left, illustrates what I mean. However, it must be said that this example is relatively unusual. Why you may ask? Because both figures are fully clothed!
As you will observe when you scroll down, other female figures leave relatively little, if anything, to the imagination!
There are two further examples below which have suffered somewhat from the attention of the local pigeon population. If you look closely at the second picture below, you will see two pigeons sitting on the figure on the left.
Sometimes the figures are purely to beautify the building such as these two examples in contrasting artistic styles. But wherever you walk in the centre of Prague, there is always something of interest and beauty to see.
One thing that I have increasingly realized living in Prague, is that most Czech people do not expect non-Czechs to necessarily be able to speak their language – many of them recognize what a difficult language it is to learn! But what Czech people do expect is that foreigners should understand, respect and follow their cultural manners and practices.
I have previously written a post entitled ‘Eating and drinking in a Czech Bar-Restaurant’, explaining what to expect in contrast to the UK and elsewhere. In this post, I’m going to expand and illustrate a practice I mentioned briefly in that previous post – something that is quite commonplace in many bar-restaurants throughout the Czech Republic.
When your first drinks order has been delivered to your table, the person doing so will produce a slip of paper, mark it accordingly, and leave it on your table. If you have only ordered normal 0.5 litre glasses of beer, then a simple mark will be placed at the bottom of the slip, one for each beer that has been ordered. If you order small 0.3 litre glasses of beer, then a cross for each one will be put there instead.
If after the drinks have arrived, you then also order food, then the cost of each dish is recorded on the top part of the slip. The slip in this first photo shows that we ordered one main dish for 137 Kc with a side dish for 35 Kc, together with a second main dish for 99 Kc with a side dish for 35 Kc. By the time I took this photo, I was on my second glass of beer. On this occasion, Sybille was drinking wine and was on her second glass, each of which cost 30 Kc.
At the end of the evening when you are ready to leave, saying “Zaplatim prosim” – “May I pay please”, will bring the waiter/waitress to the table to add up your tab. Below is ours from this occasion, duly totted up – the extra 45 Kc was a digestif slivovice. The total bill of 463 Kc translates to around £16.00, a reminder of how ridiculously cheap eating out can be here in the Prague suburbs. But don’t expect a printed receipt – this simple paper slip is all you’ll get!
This week, my blog is two years old. But having written two posts last month, about all the reasons why I like living here in Prague, balanced by one dealing with my small number of dislikes, my experience earlier this week has forced me to return to a subject that I thought I had overcome and dealt with.
Back in March 2009, I wrote a post entitled ‘Dealing with Czech bureaucracy’. In it, I described our battle to obtain residency permits from the Czech Foreign Police to prove where we live, together with what I referred to as a social security number – rodné císlo – family number, both of which are essential if you want to do anything more than eat and sleep in the Czech Republic.
In May 2009, I wrote about how we had finally managed to achieve this goal even though threatened with ‘A 21st Century defenestration of Prague’! In this second post, I did point out the absurdity of the wording on the stamp put into both our passports. We have been granted Povolení k prechodnému pobytu v CR – Temporary residence in the Czech Republic. But it is neomezený – unlimited or forever. Of course it has to be unlimited because we are both EU citizens and can stay here until we die, should we choose to do so.
As I wrote then, I took this granting of ‘unlimited temporary residence’ as being part of the ongoing Czech mentality that believes that no one would ever want to actually live here permanently. Earlier this week when eating in U Topolu, we shared a table with a young Czech couple because there was no where else where we could sit. Latterly, the young lady spoke and asked where we were from. I did the usual explanation saying that I’m English, my wife is German but that we live and work here in Prague. In return, I received an expression of shock and amazement as to why on earth we should ever want to do so!
Armed with this stamp in my passport, together with my little green folded paper Potvrzení o prechodném pobytu na území – Proof of temporary residence, inside of which is my full name, date and place of birth and, most importantly, my registered address, I have been able to register my car. Also, aided by Bishop Dušan of the Old Catholic Church in the Czech Republic, a notarized copy of these documents has enabled me to be registered with the Ministry of Culture, as the person who can officially sign on behalf of my congregation. Whenever there has been a request for ID, just producing my passport and residency permit has satisfied the enquirer. That was until Monday this week.
Sybille has been on for quite some time that she would like to once more have a dog. She grew up with dogs and always had her own until her last one died, just before she went to live in Spain in 1999. Over the past two years, we have regularly walked past the stray dog and re-homing centre run by the city police, located on the other side of the Vltava River from where we live.
Recently, Sybille has been researching the website of the re-homing centre, aided by Google translate, to discover what is involved in adopting an unclaimed stray dog and giving it a new home. One thing was quite clear; you must produce ID to prove who you are and where you live. So last Monday on my day off, armed with Sybille’s German passport and Czech Residency document, we went off to the shelter for an exploratory visit.
Upon arrival, we did are usual explanation of having very little Czech but of being able to speak English, German, Spanish or French. We managed to communicate what we wanted and, upon being asked for ID, produced Sybille’s passport and residency document. The reaction was immediate. No – you can’t adopt a dog from the shelter – you only have temporary residence. Despite pointing out that it was unlimited and that we were EU citizens, the lady and her colleagues remained totally adamant. We had to have permanent, not temporary residence.
Despite being illegal under European law, the whole situation is also utterly absurd. I know of several non-EU citizens in my congregation who have been granted ‘Permanent residency,’ but for a set number of years, which is also a contradiction in terms! And the Foreign Police are not even consistent in their dealing with EU citizens. A fellow British blogger and her husband, who have recently moved to Prague and work together for the same firm, have also been to the Foreign Police to register. The husband was granted ‘Permanent residence’ – the blogging wife has been granted like us, ‘Temporary unlimited residence’.
I and several others have described this whole situation as Kafka-esque. I’ve recently bought myself a copy of ‘The Trial’ by Franz Kafka, to read and see if I can get my head around this utterly absurd mentality that I am experiencing. And rest assured, I am not going to stop until I have asserted my rights to be treated in exactly the same way as a Czech citizen, even if I leave a few strangled Czech bureaucrats along the way. Watch this space!
At the end of my first post of 2011 entitled ‘Why I like living in Prague’, I did say that there were a small number of things that I don’t like about living here but referred to them as ‘minor irritants’. At least two commenters have since remarked that they would really like to know what these things are. So for Karen and Vance, together with everyone else who read that post and thought the same but didn’t leave a comment, here goes!
Mindless graffiti – The picture on the left, together with the two below, illustrate far more clearly what I mean than anything I can write. This is mindless, pointless graffiti. Please don’t let anybody try to tell me that it is art – it isn’t! And sadly, it is very widespread right across Prague.
I am well aware that it is a problem that is not unique to Prague – it occurs in very many urban areas around the world. When I lived in the Oxfordshire countryside before I moved to Prague, from time to time I used to travel into London by train. One of the things that always struck me as the train entered the London suburbs was the appearance of graffiti on walls and buildings alongside the railway tracks. In the villages of which I was Rector for over fifteen years, graffiti was virtually unknown.
Here in Prague, graffiti is more commonly seen on walls and buildings which are not in a very good state of repair. It is not often that you see it on newly renovated buildings. But it is rarely far away and it so detracts from nearby beautiful art and architecture. For example, the picture below shows a building in central Prague with a series of attractive mosaic squares on it. But the mindless graffiti underneath completely dissipates the beauty of the artwork.
As in the UK, once you leave the city and head out into the countryside, graffiti is rarely seen. Why this should be is a question to which I do not know the answer. Sybille rightly says to me that, rather than just complaining about it and suggesting that the police should do more to try and catch the culprits, one should rather ask what drives people to mindlessly spray or write things on buildings in the first place. Is it boredom, frustration or a feeling of helplessness and an expression of the social ills that there are here in Prague?
What ever the reasons – I do wish that graffiti wasn’t there defacing buildings.
Smoking – Unfortunately, the enlightened practice of banning smoking in bars and restaurants that has been introduced by law in many European countries in recent years, has yet to penetrate very far into the life of the Czech Republic. Since the middle of last year, bars and restaurants have been required to display a sign saying whether smoking is allowed everywhere within the premises; or that they have separated areas for smokers and non-smokers; or that smoking is not allowed anywhere within the premises.
In the vast majority of bar –restaurants, particularly small to medium sized ones, most proprietors allow smoking everywhere. Some larger premises do have separate rooms or areas where smoking is allowed and those where it is not allowed. Even in these places, the level of separation often leaves much to be desired. Very few bar-restaurants, with the exception of some of the more upmarket ones in touristy areas, have opted to ban smoking altogether.
Change will eventually come – but it will take some years. In the meantime I have to suffer my clothing smelling of stale tobacco smoke and the unseen but very real dangers of passive smoking.
And now to two things which really can be described as Prague peculiarities or minor irritants.
On the left is a picture of a digital clock and timer of a variety that you will see at the end of the platform of every Prague Metro station. At the top is a very accurate clock showing the exact time in hours, minutes and seconds. Underneath is a timer. But instead of counting down to the time when the next train will arrive, it counts upwards telling you instead, how long it is since the last train departed! How absurd. Unless you know the frequency of trains on that line, at that time of day and on that day of the week, the information is useless!
Just for once, the London Underground is better. There you have clear electronic signs saying how many minutes until the next train arrives and what its destination will be as different trains share the same lines in certain places. Would it take that much work to make these timers on the Prague Metro do the same?
The second minor irritant is rather difficult to illustrate with a photograph so I won’t try. Since the middle of 2006, it has been compulsory to have dipped headlights turned on when driving in the Czech Republic, whatever the time of the day or time of the year. Research has shown that driving with dipped headlights during the many dark days of winter does help reduce the occurrence of accidents. However, I fail to see why on earth you need to use them on a bright sunny day in the height of summer. I much prefer the law adopted recently in Croatia which requires you to always use dipped headlights once the clocks have gone back at the end of October each year, until they go forward again at the end of March.
However, the Czech approach to road safety does appear to be somewhat contradictory. Research shows that most road accidents happen at dusk because of the change between daylight and darkness. Yet street lights which help mitigate this problem, never come on just as it is getting dark. Instead, it can sometimes be nearly dark for half an hour before they do. Even on days like today when the sky was very clear, near darkness had descended before they came on. On cloudy days, the situation is inevitably far worse.
Clearly, rather than working off light sensors which would make most sense, streetlights in Prague are turned on by timers, regardless of the level of light. Why do I have to drive with dipped headlights on a bright sunny day in June when the city authorities in Prague cannot turn the streetlights on as soon as it begins to get dark in mid-winter?
A really pleasant sight here in the Czech Republic is to see children, some probably no more than seven years old, making their way from home to school and back again on their own! They do this on foot or combine it with the use of public transport. It is such a throwback to my own childhood when I too nearly always took myself to primary school either by walking there or travelling on the bus. Yet now in the UK, (and I gather also in the USA and many other western countries), hardly any parents allow this to happen because of fears regarding their children’s safety.
It isn’t just to school and back. Here in Prague, I often see children and young people in the late afternoon or early evening, making their own way back home from their sports club, dancing class or music lesson, also without a parent in sight. And the corollary of this – rarely do I ever see an obese child!
In the past twenty years or so in the UK, there has been a massive rise in concern for the safety of children, both with regard to the amount of traffic on the roads, together with a small number of highly publicised cases of child abduction, resulting in parents now driving their children everywhere. This inevitably compounds the amount of traffic on the roads together with many children getting very little physical exercise.
Another refreshing difference in attitude between the Czech Republic and the UK & USA was very clearly illustrated to us just over a year ago. The 6th December is Svaty Mikuláš/St. Nicholas Day. Each year on the evening of 5th December Svaty Mikuláš Eve, there is a Czech tradition of children dressing up as the Bishop/St. Nicholas, together with other children dressing up as angels and one as a devil. This website explains more.
On the evening of 5th December 2009, we walked around Staromestské námestí/Old Town Square where there were many children dressed up in the Svaty Mikuláš tradition. Most were accompanied by their parents, but what astounded both of us was that these parents were happily encouraging complete strangers to take photographs of their children dressed up in their outfits. In the UK, such is the paranoia about paedophilia that many schools do not even allow parents to take photographs of their own children in school drama productions, for fear of the photographs ending up in the hands of paedophiles.
I do not in any way want to belittle the incredible damage done to children who are abused by paedophiles. But research shows that nearly all child abuse is carried out by adults the children already know, be it their mother’s new boyfriend or a longstanding so-called friend of the family. Very rarely is a child abducted or abused by a complete stranger.
One further relaxed attitude we noticed last summer. On a couple of occasions on my day off when the weather was very hot and sunny, we drove south from Prague to the lake behind the Slapy Dam. Near the little village of Ždán, we visited a grassy ‘beach’ where it is possible to sunbathe and swim in the lake. Here we saw children, some up to seven or eight years old, happily paddling at the water’s edge, totally naked. Shock-horror as far as many Americans are concerned!
It was so nice to see children relaxed and being allowed to play au naturel, without being made to wear something. In particular, not to have little girls made to wear bikini tops to cover non-existent breasts, thus sexualising them before they have even reached puberty.
As far as I am concerned – long may these attitudes and practices continue. Yet sadly, I do see some children being driven to and from school by their mothers in a 4×4, SUV, or ‘Chelsea Tractor’. Mostly these are expat families with children who attend the various international schools here in Prague. But some are wealthy Czechs who, for whatever reason, are beginning to adopt the relatively recent practices of the UK and USA. Sybille has taken to calling such vehicles ‘Bubenec Tractors’, after the nearby suburb where many diplomatic and wealthy Czech families live!
I do hope that the practices and attitudes I have described in this blogpost, do continue and that increasing affluence and this recent extremely rare case of a child disappearing, do not bring about unwanted change. Because what I observe, are children who have a far greater degree of self-confidence than I see in many British children. And children who, almost without exception, are not overweight.
