Always Cloudy, Never Grim: Prague

Ahhh, Prague!

That seems to be the prevailing sentiment of everyone who had been there, when we mentioned we were planning a visit. And who looked at my early Facebook photos. And who heard me mention the word.

We are touring bits of Central Europe for the next three weeks–I think of it as Eastern Europe–but Google says otherwise. We start in the Czech Republic, move to Hungary, then up the rivers through Germany to Amsterdam. I should think 3 or 4 blogs ought to cover it, but let’s see. There are lots of tours scheduled, so not sure when I’ll write. But a lady at dinner last night had just done the tour the other direction, and she said, “There a lot of locks.” Stay tuned for pictures of locks.

If you have visited, I hope this is nostalgic. If you want a straightforward history,  Wikipedia will do nicely for you as I may meander a bit. These are my impressions and experiences of the city, the food, the people.

Cheerful Resignation

A day in, I’ve been trying to put my finger on what Prague is about. For tourists, that’s easy. It’s walkable, relatively inexpensive, pretty clean, and full of things to see and learn about. Compared to crammed Venice or Florence, chaotic Rome, expensive and huge London–Prague feels more doable. It’s also simultaneously modern and medieval, with stone gateway arches and Gothic fairy spires butted up against the functional Communist architecture from the 1950s next to Internet cafes and customized Coke bottles with Czech names.

What’s it like for the Czechs? Of course, I’m only seeing what tourists see, but these are people who seem happy and resigned, who enjoy showing off their beloved city. It’s not from the weather, for sure, as it was gray and seemed about to rain or raining most of the time of our visit. The weather data says they get only 60 days of sunshine a year, but it doesn’t seem to depress them.

Trams everywhere–good mass transit. Aggressive trams, so always look before crossing the street. Not everyone speaks English, but they quickly hand you cards that answer your questions. Lots of signs just in Czech, and unlike Italian or Spanish, it’s not a Romance language, so not so many cognates. A lot more pointing and gesturing is required, but that works. Nice little butter cookies with chocolate in the convenience stores. Lively music, good for dancing and clapping. We were treated to a little show with dancing and trio of violin, contrabass, and cimbalom, the Czech version of a xylophone or dulcimer. Mikhal went to town on his solo.

Some things are universal. At the airport pick-up, as the driver loaded our bags into the van, a couple of Polizei came over and commenced barking and gesturing. Our driver started pulling one piece of ID after another out of his wallet, and another from above the rear-view mirror. The officers were covered, bullet-proof vests, walkie-talkies, whole nine yards. There were no other cars parked, and he was in a legal, marked parking space. It’s peace time, no heightened alert. What were they hassling him for? When they let him go, after calling in his ID (but they handed him no paper ticket, so ???), he seemed to imply that they didn’t like where his car ID was displayed. He called the home office, and they were also incredulous. Such is the petty tyranny of Parking Control. Same as it ever was.

Tidal Forces

George, our tour guide for a long walk about the city, told us a number of stories of groups that washed over the area: Bohemia, Moravia, and Slovakia (which is no longer Czech Republic but is a brother country and language). They seemed to flow back and forth over this whole area, consolidating, fracturing, taking charge, then ceding ground. An endless flow of Premyslids, Hapsburgs, Austrio-Hungarian Empire, Nazis, Russians, capitalists.

George grew up under what he cheerfully derided as the “Commies,” so he was full of ironic, war-themed stories. The fellow who thought he destroyed his house by flushing the toilet just when Prague was subjected to a bombing during WWII. The gun that jammed during an assassination attempt on the for Czechoslovakia “Butcher of Death,” Reinhard Heydrich. The many defenestrations that began in the 17th century and lasted through Stalinism. Prague seemed to be constantly under siege, but the Czechs seemed to be cheerful rather than downtrodden about it.

The Premslyid dynasty officially united or conquered or consolidated–whatever word you like for people declaring themselves in charge while everyone else farms–Bohemia in the 900s. Early on, Wenceslas I was assassinated by his brother, Boreslaus the Cruel, which does seem pretty cruel. That Wenceslaus became more of a figure of legend than the historical duke, much like Arthur.

In the early 1200s, Ottokar I, brother to another Wenceslaus I, kept shopping his daughter Agnes around to every other dynastic ruler around. She became quickly annoyed and took holy orders rather than continue as a marriage pawn. The Premslyids built her a sizable convent, which also doubled as a graveyard for much of the royal family.

By the time of  Charles IV of Bohemia, the ruling group had strengthened enough so that Charles (Karol) was not only head of the Luxembourg dynasty, but was also elected Holy Roman Emperor. It’s fascinating to consider that this position was one that implied both spiritual and physical power, a position conceeptually considered “King of the Romans,” given to a king from Bohemia by a French pope in Italy. Charles was anointed when the previous HRE was excommunicated, which would take another seven paragraphs to explain, so never mind. It was 1346, near the time when there were three popes, so the entire area was swinging back and forth according to whoever had the best small army and made the best alliances. Marriages helped with that, but sometimes daughters were stubborn…

Anyway, Charles had enough pull to help build and expand the beautiful Prague Castle, multiple bridges, and numerous towers, clocks, and adornments.

The Seven

Charles’ legacy remained, although the Hapsburgs wiped out the Luxembourg dynasty, and they in turn were taken over by somebody else. But after World War I, when the biggest European powers (Prussians, Austria-Hungarians) were torn apart, the people were able to create a democratic republic at the beginning of the 20th century. It was the strongest in Europe, until 1938, when the Munich Agreement between Hitler and the Allied powers was signed, which didn’t mention the Czechs. So Hitler rolled in a bit later and that was that for the Czechs. They were “liberated” by the Russians, which tour guide George said was exchanging one set of terrors for another.

Still, the man put in charge of Nazi Occupation was happy to execute as many Czechs as possible, so they, in turn, set about getting rid of him while they still could. The assassination of Heydrich, which was called Operation Anthropoid and prompted a slew of movies, is one of the prouder moments of the Republic. In brief, seven Czech paratroopers were supported by Britain in an operation where they came into the country, arranged to shoot Heydrich while he was in his car. While the gun jammed, they did throw a bomb–it only blew up one of the wheels and some cushions. However, a bit of the shrapnel got stuck in Heydrich, and the horsehair in the cushions caused septic, so he did die.

The search for the seven men was intense, and they hid out in the crypt underneath the Eastern Orthodox Church. But the Nazis started randomly executing people daily, and after some time, one of the men gave them away. Some thought he was a traitor, but others thought of it as a sacrificial act, to save everybody else.

One small footnote was the intersection with sport. The Sokol movement was a Czech-fueled concept built around sport done by the community, together. It included gymnastics, but in the sense of team exercises, done with dozens, hundreds, or thousands at a time. They grew in tandem with the rise of the workers in the late 19th century. The Sokols were one of the biggest resistance groups in Czechoslovakia during the Nazi Occupation, and they helped hide the Seven men. So they were also severely punished but continued their resistance while the Germans were in town.

Build Another One

While in Prague, we also took a tour of several synagogues in the Jewish Quarter. At one point, during the late Hapsburg Era, Jews were slightly less oppressed, and they flourished. They built multiple places of worship as well as places of business and a thriving community. Some one-third of the population of Prague was Jewish.

Naturally, that community was hit particularly hard when the Nazis came in, and their buildings destroyed, people deported, and then shipped to camps. But after the war, the synagogues that had been destroyed were rebuilt, even the one in the Spanish style, a tribute to how the Jews had thrived when in Southern Spain (which also persecuted the Jews when the Catholics took the country back). 

Yet none of the constant waves of oppression or war seemed to permanently scratch at their optimism. When it’s cloudy all the time, you get accustomed to it, perhaps? Maybe even face yet another day of gray with a resigned smile at your lot in life. Doesn’t stop you from performing heroic deeds or building astonishingly beautiful buildings.

On to Budapest and Vienna!