Lazily woke up. Had breakfast and nerded out on the wifi for an hour.
Settled on starting at the castle. As soon as I stepped out the door I realised I should have worn tights underneath my jeans. It’s really cold here. You need gloves and a beanie all day. I walked along the tram route trying to find a place that sells transport tickets. Everything was eerily closed. Either they are still hungover from christmas or they’re just closed for holidays. Finally found a train station with staff (so they can take notes), the friendly guy at the counter advised me 3 single day passes are cheaper than a three day pass for some reason. Jumped on the next tram to the castle. I was reminded how much I like trams. At least when it isn’t peak hour and I’m trying to get to work or something.
Got to the castle. It was beautiful. Huge cathedral thing. I took some photos of tourists taking photos. I’ll develop them when I get home. I didn’t look at too much stuff since I’d probably spend the day there if I bought an all access pass. Just wandered around. I did go into the toy museum and Lobkovicz Palace though.
The toy museum was great. Lot of youthful reminders. I was most attracted the the steam trains. Not that I had any, but I’d always wanted some. Real steam trains! They didn’t go or anything, just in display cases, but cool nonetheless. There was also some meccano like stuff. I wished the whole floor was maccano instead of one tiny cabinet. I started thinking.. Steam trains and mecanno? I was a geek early on. There was also a whole floor of barbie dolls. Very disturbing. There was celebrity themed dolls amongst them, Mc Hammer and Michael Jackson were the highlights.
Lobkovicz Palace displays the private collection of the Lobkovicz family. A very wealthy noble family that was in exiled in America during communism. At least they said they were in exhile and he had an American accent. The audio tour was really great, presented by one of the Lobkovicz’s. I think I actually passed the same guy in the foyer, he was talking with someone as if he was the owner of it all, and he sounded the same. It was a really good museum basically. Lots of fancy things. For example.. Lots of family portraits. They had a few original scores by Beethoven and Mozart, some commissioned by and dedicated to the family. Weird. I liked how there was some things scribbled out. They were all very thick and heavy looking. There was also an impressive armory room, which apparently only represents a small part of their collection. The rest is in castle north of Prague. It was slightly disturbing to be talked at by someone who was proud of all his “estates” though… A very different world.
After that I went walking, trying to find a toy shop in my guide book. I found take-away cinnemon crepes on the way, they were amazing. Many tourists were in the way of where I wanted to walk… The toy store had the same meccano like stuff and some tradition Czech toys. It was smaller then I’d hoped, but nice. My feet complained from all the walking (and still are). I didn’t buy anything.
Caught the tram to the Kafka museum. It was actually really good. I expected it to be a bit of a cash in (I walked past Kafka Cafe today). It had interesting art inspired by Kafka. Mostly though it’s purpose was to take you through Kafka’s life and stories relatively chronologically and remind you. They had some cool stuff, like extracts from letters amoungst a wall of filing cabinets labeled with Kafka’s characters and pseudonyms. It was an interesting contrast to the Lobkovicz museum, during Kafka’s time they would have been one of the families everyone in Prague was living in the shadow of.
The was a great room which was full of examples of the paper work Kafka did at his job as a lawer with the insurance/legal bureaucracy. On the lower level there is a series of sections related to each of his novels. There was a really cool room for The Castle with mirrors on each side narrowing towards a full walled projection of a movie inspired by it. Carefully chosen excepts came up every now and then. I went and stood in the projection and watched my reflections in the walls. No matter which one I watched I could always see a mirror image watching me watch myself. It was great.
Just outside the museum there’s a sculpture of two men pissing in a pool. The hips move left and right, and the penis’ move up and down. I liked it. I passed some giggling British tourists on the way out.
I stopped at the Museum cafe and had a coffee. There was a very cute girl working there. She custom made me a machiatto. She asked me if I meant a milk and a bit of coffee or a coffee with a bit of milk. I guess a lot of americans can confuse the issue. She made me a double expresso with a tiny bit of steamed milk. It was wonderful. The best coffee I’ve had in Prague so far. It was even better because she has a wonderful smile. There was free wifi too, but it was so slow I couldn’t load anything. I might have been on the neighbours wifi though.
Crossed the river and walked through the main square, there’s a giant christmas tree that looks like it was dripping lights. It’s surrounded by lots and lots of little stands selling food and bracelets. People packed in amongst it all.
Wandered some more. Bought some tickets for a classical chamber concert at the Rudolfinum. It was pretty great. They played lots of famous stuff. Every church seemed to have billboards for concerts at 6pm. There are more tomorrow. I like how in Prague they can just round up some tourists to fill things out at classical music performances. I guess it’s regarded as a thing to do in Prague.. get cultured. It wasn’t all tourists of course, a few locals.
Some girls here have a thing for tights with warm looking boots. I like it.
I wanted to visit the cubist museum, but it was closed when I got there. The cubist cafe was open though so I went there to get cake. Also know as Grand Cafe Orient. I ended up getting an Irish whiskey, goats cheese salad, bread with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, a beer (Corona), soup of the day and cheesecake. I spent way more then I’d meant to, but it was great.
Timezones confused me so I missed the last indie movie at the Kino. I’ll try again tomorrow. Hopefully they have English subtitles, I read somewhere they do that.
Caught the tram back to the hostel, showered, passed a cute girl near the elevator. We smiled. Came down for beers just in time to witness a goal… Discovered West Ham was winning on sky sports. Yay. They won 1-4. It must be a sign somehow.
Btw, I’ve discovered some weird problem with ssh, I can’t login to any ssh service from my laptop, it just stalls when it’s about to setup the interactive environment. This means I can’t login into work and run my map/reduce bootstrapping jobs. I guess this is good because it means I can’t be working while I’m holidays, but it would be handy to run these long jobs when I’m not in a hurry for them to finish. Bleh. I’m going to have to research how to fix this ssh problem. It’ll be a pain when I’m visiting Australia. I wont be able to work from cafes!
Oh, I bought The Castle. I haven’t read it before so it seemed appropriate.
