Funky space for the Prague Biennale

Prague Biennale

The Prague Biennale is hosted in a funky industrial space. Just outside is a poster with an indication as to what Czechs think of super Obama.

Charles Bridge and Zizkov Church

A statue honouring King Charles IV sits at one end of the Charles Bridge.

At a church in Zizkov, the motifs don't get any more Christian than the story of Adam and Eve engraved over a fabulous metal door.

Pelicans and coat of arms

According to legend, in a time of famine a mother pelican would draw blood from her own chest and give the blood to her chicks. Thus the pelican symbol in Christianity symbolizes the sacrifice of Christ on the cross (because he gave his blood for others) as well as the Eucharist (because it represents Christ's blood and provides spiritual nourishment).

All manhole covers throughout the city as well as many street lamp bases are emblazoned with the Prague coat of arms.

Church of Our Lady Before Tyn

This gorgeous gothic church towers over one side of the Old Town Square and its two spires dominate the Prague cityscape. interesting to note that the spires are asymmetrical. This is characteristic of the gothic architecture of the time and is a representation of both the masculine and feminine sides of the world.

And what a treat those magnificent doors were inside! Imagine walking through them. Perhaps a knight lies in wait on the other side? Examine the latch and fixtures. That's some kind of craftsmanship.

A little stroll about town

My Saturday stroll took me across Charles Bridge and over into the Zizkov area where I found a crumbling if elegant tenement with a gorgeous detail. Somehow the graffiti and the wood reinforcing the frame only seems to enhance the effect.

Charles Bridge was named for King Charles IV who had it built in the mid-15th C but it wasn't completed until many decades later. It wasn't until 1841 that alternate means of crossing the Vltava River were conceived so the bridge was a critical route connecting the Old Town, Prague Castle and adjacent areas. The bridge is decorated by some 30 early 18th C statues, most of them baroque.

Hellion the Hobbit

My bedroom...shades of the 7 1/2 floor in "Being John Malkovich"!

Old Prague New Cars

How about a d8?

Mirror mirror on the wall

Julia

Julia

Julia

Julia

Julia

David Cerny's Guns

Julia and I messing around with guns

David Cerny's "Shark" installation

Hark, is that Saddam staring at me from his watery grave??

Hmmmm, didn't mean for my head 2 b positioned quite sooooo...

Of puffing and poo

Conceding that the relationship may not extend beyond the narrow confines of my connect-the-dots mind, the Praguarazzi (what DO u call the people of Prague??!) certainly seem to love smoking and sidewalk dog poo.

OK, so maybe the latter is a wee (sorry...) bit more pooch-specific but the curling brown mounds are endemic in this town. Paris cleaned up its act, maybe someday Prague will too. And smoking...fully a third of the population smokes with no signs of kicking the habit. Vive la difference?

Don't be such a boar!

In what honour, I cannot say but the Old Town Square was rocking today with a huge festival complete with stage band, beer stands and plenty of yummy local fare. Imagine if Toronto began selling roasted wild boar meat off a spit as part of their street food revolution. There would surely be an insurrection!

Ummm...just want to draw attention to the fact that I opted for the "tasteful" shot. Sadly, I was unable to get an angle from the other side that would've shown a butcher knife radiating out of the boar's ear!! We'll have to settle for the fork sticking out of his neck. Dedicated to all you vegetarians out there. Sick, twisted, love it...

Powder Tower

In central Náměstí Republiky on a major trade route entry into the city lies Powder Tower, a storage place for gunpowder which was meant to protect that area of the Old Town. Also shown is yet another lovely architectural detail above a Prague doorway.

Olsany Cemetary

Olsany is the largest cemetary in the city. Owing to Prague's rainy nature, the cemetary has grown lush,verdant and verrry fragrant.

David Cerny Redux

In 2000, sculptures by Czech artist and prankster David Černý of crawling babies were temporarily attached to Žižkov telecommunications tower's pillars. The sculptures were admired by many and were returned in 2001 as a permanent installation. The babies are cool yet borderline creepy.

Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol lives on in Prague!

Monument to Jan Žižka

Prague Opera House and the Jan Zizka memorial. At the top of Vitka hill is a 9-meter high and 16.5-ton bronze statue honouring 14th C Czech general Jan Žižka. The monument is enormous and can be seen from most vantage points throughout Prague.

Radio Free Europe

An innocusous looking office building? Maybe so, but it is home to Radio Free Europe which played a critical role in Cold War era Eastern Europe. Broadcasts were often banned in Eastern Europe and Communist authorities used sophisticated jamming techniques in an attempt to prevent citizens from listening to them. Polish Solidarity leader Lech Walesa and Russian reformer Grigory Yavlinsky would later recall secretly listening to the broadcasts despite the heavy jamming.

Radio Free Europe was developed out of a belief that the Cold War would eventually be fought by political rather than military means. RFE was created through the efforts of the National Committee for a Free Europe (NCFE), an organization that was formed in New York City in 1949 as a response to the growing number of refugees, many of them intellectuals, fleeing Soviet-occupied Eastern Europe. The committee was composed of powerful US citizens including a former ambassador, then CIA director Allen Dulles, Reader's Digest owner Dewitt Wallace and a prominent New York investment banker. Its mission was to support refugees and provide them with a useful outlet for their opinions and creativity whereupon Radio Free Europe (RFE) became the NCFE's greatest legacy.

Today, RFE is an independent international broadcast organization that provides news, information, and analysis to countries where non-state media are often limited or banned. RFE reaches 25 million listeners and readers in 20 countries including Russia, Iran, Afghanistan, Belarus, and Iraq.

Typical alchemical poultice

Typical of the products cooked in the alchemy kitchens of rudolf's labs was the following: 2 ounces of toads dried in the air and sun and reduced to powder, "the menstruum" of young girls, crystals of white arsenic, an ounce and a half of red arsenic, three drams of root of dittany, one dram of unpierced pearls, one dram of coral, one dram each of Eastern sapphire and Eastern emerald, two scruples of Eastern saffron. Several grains of musk could be added to provide a pleasant odour. Everything then had to be reduced to a fine powder, mixed together and added to rose water to make a paste. Then when the Sun and moon were in Scorpio or when the Moon was new, the paste had to be fashioned around an amulet and worn around the neck or close to the heart. This would not only preserve one from the plague but would make the body less susceptible to venereal or astral diseases. Rudolf was known to wear many such amulets and poison-drawing poultices. Freaky!

Prague gulls

Prague's funky black headed gulls

Change management

Change: the movement from one state to the next. It always comes at a price. As for the fall of the Communist regime and the transition toward a more middle ground social welfare state, it was clear who stood in the winning camp. However, there was a hidden price to pay and the people pay it still.

These are the sons and daughters of the Velvet Revolution who were either retired or were preparing to do so. Imagine having served the last few decades as a labourer, farmer, worker, all earning a preset wage, all equal in the eyes of the regime. No need to save - nor was there much opportunity to do so unless you were one of the privileged few, yet another oxymoron of the regime - for the state would provide through one's golden years.

Then along came 1989. The Berlin Wall fell and through all of east Europe, the shock waves were being felt of a Soviet rule under siege. The Velvet Revolution hit the Czechs that same year and before they knew it, Communism was a thing of the past and they were embracing a more Capitalistic way of living. The shadow side of that ray of hope was the seniors caught in the crossfire. Twenty years later, seniors still cannot eek out an existence from their pension cheques. Definitely a case of a generation falling through the cracks.

Intrigue in medieval Prague

Prague is a city obsessed with time and more specifically with instruments by which to measure the its passage. This passion dates back to the days of Rudolf II who inherited his interest from his father Maximillian II. Rudolf even tried his hand at watchmaking but proved a mediocre amateur at best.

Rudolf's interest tied in naturally with his passion for alchemy as astrology was a big part of the mix. Astrology was then defined as the observation of celestial bodies' effects on the Earth and its inhabitants. (Back then astrology and astronomy were pretty well inseparable.) Of course, a planet's comparative location was critical to an accurate representation of a person's moods and that planet's location was measured over time. Hence the importance of the astrological clock in the Old Town during the reign of King Charles.

The astrological clock's significance cannot fully be realized until one understands that it was designed according to the Roman Catholic Church's view that the planets travelled in circles as a sign of harmony of the cosmos and God's divine order. Copernicus' assertion that the Earth revolved around the sun brought cries of heresy from all corners of Catholicism. Astrologers (read budding scientists) were brought up on charges of blasphemy, heresy and witchcraft before the Roman Inquisition in the latter half of the 16th C and were burned at the stake if they failed to recant.

Phewwww, not only is geography destiny, but so is timing. Glad I live in these modern times...But I digress.

There has been some argument that the German astronomer Johannes Kepler may have stolen the priceless observation journals of his Danish mentor Tycho Brahe (immortalized here on the detail of a building in the Old Town) - Prague's most celebrated astronomer and adopted son - and poisoned him to buy his silence. Whatever Kepler did - or didn't do - Brahe and Kepler's heretical and ground-breaking theory that the Earth moved around the sun in an elliptical orbit laid the foundations for Newton's law of gravity 80 years later. Heady stuff...

The Old Jewish Cemetary

Visited a destination which is a pilgrimage for many Jews: the Old Jewish Cemetary where Chief Rabbi Judah Loew lays in rest. Loew drew the attention of Rudolf II after earning a reputation as a Zaddick, a man of special owers and wisdom. Many legends grew around him in the Jewish Prague Ghetto over the centuries. One story claims he stopped the Emperor's carriage on Charles Bridge using some kind of kinetic energy. In another story, he is said to be the creator of a "Golem" (Hebrew for "Unformed or imperfect matter") from the mud of the Vltava river. Loew was said to have breathed life into a clay body by tracing the letters "EMETH" (truth) on its forehead. It became a servant and protector of the Jewish community but of course was not allowed to work on the Sabbath. One day, the Rabbi accidentally wiped off the first letter from the Golam's forehead, leaving the word "METH" (death). The Golem went on a killing spree. Only when all the letters were erased did it collapse and return to the mud whence it had come. And here I thought Golam sprang from Lord of the Rings! Apparently, the first mention of the creation of a Golem - the Jewish prototype of Frankenstein's monster - predates its appearance in Prague by many centuries. Typical though of the magical atmosphere in Rudolf's court that they should claim it as their own.

EU Presidency

Just a few minutes away from my pad is the Prague Planetarium, the zoo, Troja and a really cool man-made white water course where a world-wide kayaking slalom competition was held. Also, while I was away in Vienna this w/e, a ceremony celebrating the passing of the EU presidency from the Czechs to the Swedes was held on the Vltava river. The Czechs decided since they are well known for the quality of their beer, they would hand over a ceremonial keg to the new EU president. However, they wanted to do it on a boat...a boat that was too small for the keg...a boat that came perilously close to capsizing! What the EU must think, particularly in the wake of David Cerny's Entropa scandal...

Rudolf II again

More intriguing facts about Renaissance Habsburg ruler and Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II. Remember, this was the late 16th C when the lines between alchemy and science were but a mere blur. Rudolf was empassioned by the belief that man-made instruments could extend the limits of the human senses and artificially manipulate nature. Galileo's telescope was a good contemporary example. Alchemy was a sacred art, blending mystical religion and philosophy with medicine and chemistry. As the Holy Grail of alchemy, the pursuit of the Philosopher's Stone was a search for the Creator through his/her created works.

Rudolf boasted not only of the best art collection of his day, but also of the greatest alchemy lab in which armies of alchemists gathered from the far corners of Europe mixing potions bubbling away in alembics stoked by enormous furnaces and recreating centuries-old spells chanelling down the energy of the planets for the sake of protecting Rudolf from his enemies and to cure his bouts of melancholy (let's call a spade a spade: the dude was a manic depressive).

St. Stephen's Cathedral

The famous Stephensplatz and its cathedral. St. Stephens Cathedral (after which my brother was named) stands on the ruins of two earlier churches, the first being a parish church consecrated in 1147. And here is a detail from some other building. I guess it was fashionable way back then to wear a "balcony hat"!

Great pedestrian walkway

Vienna features yet another terrific European pedestrian walkway. Next to St. Stephen's Cathedral is Haas Haus reflecting the cathedral and other great architecture.

More on doors

Doors for days. Notice the carriage stop on either side of the doors (mostly on the other doors pix). They are everywhere in Prague and Barcelona as well. They were designed to prevent any damage to gates, doors and walls in the event that carriage drivers might cut their corners a little too tightly. And here is a lamp post detail.

Vienna Stadt Opera

The Vienna State Opera seems eager to embrace change. After falling victim to hard times and taking a few hit from WWII bombs, the people of Vienna rebuilt. As part of my casual stroll today, I happened upon a performance of Faust being projected onto a jumbotron screen before the building while a refreshments waited at the ready and a respectable crowd of fans made themselves comfortable on folding chairs and squares of carpet generously laid down by the Opera administration.