Another Night at the Opera

Tuesday we went into town late and saw an interesting opera/ballet performance of Bizet's Carmen (Nietzsche's favorite opera), then wandered about the Josefov and the Stare Mesto at night (with thousands of other tourists).

The show was a kind of combination opera/

ballet, oratorio-style singing, ballet going

on meanwhile, even some old cinema of

Seville; interesting; it was at the Divadlo

Hybernia, across from the Municipal House

Bizet's music is glorious

Entrance to the Municipal House; we

visited it a few days later

Its adjoining tower

Tower of the Church of Our Lady of Tyn

(I think)

The Rathaus Tower

Prague's astronomical clock

Looking across the Moldau to Hradcany Castle

And St. Vitus'

Prague Sites 2

Prague has its share of castles, museums, cathedrals, etc., but what interested us most was the array of Art Nouveau buildings all over the five main districts of the old town; every block revealed new wonders; none of these are national nor religious shrines; just buildings, street after street, block after block, some commercial, most residential. Here's a nearly random assortment.

Outside the Mustek metro station in Stare Mesto

Just down the street; after a few hours in Prague, you begin

to get a neck-ache looking up at these things

Ditto

Gold, grill-work, ornamentation everywhere

Just an apartment house, probably

Stores, shops

Hotel entrance across from the Mucha Museum

Stunning stuff, some of it

Entrance to a shopping arcade in Stare Mesto

Many buildings adorned with paintings

On Neruda Street in Mala Strana, just residences mostly

Medusa

Locksmith

Swan House

Prague Sights 1

So tonight, August 26th, finds us in Budapest, or maybe just Pest, and I am two full cities behind in blogging. So here goes with Prague, where we spent six absolutely wonderful days.

It did not start well; a two-hour traffic jam getting to our

campground; whole expressways closed for construction,

exits closed; and all you can see from the outer ring-road

is a massive wall of high-rise apartments

But it got better as soon as we got into the old town; here

we are near the Charles Bridge, the Moldau and Hradcany

Castle in the background

One of the towers at either end of the bridge,

which is itself 700 years old

The Moldau, Hradcany Castle complex, and St. Vitus'

Cathedral

The other tower and Mala Strana skyline

Mustek St. in Mala Strana

Looking the other way

The gardens at Wallenstein Palace; where the Czech

Republic Senate meets

Boating on the Moldau

The "dancing" building, called by Prague residents

"Ginger and Fred"

More revealing view; one of very few new

buildings of interest

Looking into Wenceslas Square toward the

national museum; in the early 90s, a

hundred thousand protesters gathered

here nightly for two weeks, demanding the

communist government step down; it did,

and a democracy was re-born here

Prague, ad interim

We spent six days in Prague, saw much, and took thousands of pix. If nothing else, it is certainly the most picturesque European city we have seen, particularly if you like Art Nouveau (we do). So it will take me a few days to select a few dozen pix for the blog. Stay tuned....

Olomouc's Proletarian Clock

After one has seen numerous other astronomical clocks in other cities, all featuring saints and kings and jousting knights and dancing apprentices, the clock in Olomouc is a breath of fresh air. The Germans wrecked the 16th century Olomouc clock as they retreated from then-Czechslovakia, apparently thinking the Red Army hot on their heels would not be able to tell time and would get confused. Anyhow, the town rebuilt the clock in 1953, this time featuring workers and comrades and other aspects of Marxist ethos. As I said, after months of kings, saints, knights, et al., it was truly refreshing, and well worth the drive, to see normal people thus enshrined.

The astronomical clock at Olomouc, just

before high noon, Sunday

Such clocks would be termed "multi-functional" today;

they tell the time, of course; the date; the moon phase;

the zodiac sign; and of course, which saint to pray to on

each day of the year; the communists cleverly added,

in red, the birthdays of Marx, Lenin, Stalin, et al.

At the stroke of 12, it all comes to life

Mother and child, welder, baker, athlete, musicians,

teacher...

Mechanics, professors, farm workers...

Et al.

Oh well, back to the world of kings and saints and

emperors and generals; en route to Prague, the "monument"

at Austerlitz, from the Napoleonic wars

Olomouc

From Cracow we drove on, west and south, across much of industrial Silesia, and into Moravia, eastern Czech Republic, stopping for the night at the town of Hranice and its little campground.  The woman at the reception office said they had never had American visitors before. We noticed several campers taking pix of our license plates, which are decidedly not EU.

One of the many off-the-beaten-path places popularized by Rickie Stevie is the city of Olomouc, an hour's drive east of Hranice. It is a medium-sized city, largely untouched by WWII, and, indeed, despite Rickie Stevie's attentions, not very touristy. It has a beautiful old city, two large old churches, the tallest "plague" monument in the Hapsburg Empire, and what attracted us, its very unusual astronomical clock.

Beautiful old streets

And buildings

The St. Wenceslaus Church, foundation going

to the 12th century, "updated" to Gothic in the

1880s

 

Interior, altar; this indeed is off-the-beaten-path, the first

"working" church we have encountered in Europe, where

worshippers clearly out-numbered the tourists; mass is

over, they start turning off the lights and closing the doors...

The south (bell) tower is allegedly the Czech

Republic's tallest

More beautiful buildings

Ditto; except, through some architectual blunder, this one

was built on its side

Interior of the older St. Moritz church

Its beatiful organ

And, finally, the plague monument, now

known as the Holy Trinity Monument;

Empress Maria Therese came to worship

at it sopening ceremonies (all the way from

Vienna)