Impressions of Prague
At short notice, Vee and I decided to visit special friends in Prague since we had the chance of free accommodation in the same apartment building as our friends We were only there four nights (returning Tuesday evening) but, as always, had a lot of fun in our favourite city. I’ve been there 20 times now and Vee has clocked up 15 visits, so we know all the cobbled streets and little squares and love to walk through the Old Town (Stare Mesto) and Lesser Quarter (Mala Strana) districts. A few notes on this latest visit:
>Prague Castle and the Charles Bridge
- Effectively the Czech Republic has not had a government for the past six months. An election in June resulted in the Right-wing parties winning 100 seats and the Left-wing parties winning the other 100 seats in what is a 200-seat chamber. So far, no combination of parties has been able to win a vote of confidence, so another election looks likely soon.
- In spite of the political impasse, the economy of the Czech Republic is doing well. Annual GDP growth is around 6% which is more than twice that of the UK.
- We have been in Prague for Christmas when it was -18C and it was really tough to be outside for long. However, this Christmas/New Year has been exceptionally mild and we enjoyed temperatures of around 9C.
- We were mainly in the city to see our dear friends the Horvath family whom we have known for over 20 years now, since we met Pavel in London some years before he became ill and died [see my tribute here]. In all, though, we were able to see 15 friends.
- We wandered round all the usual sights: the Charles Bridge, the Old Town Square, Wencelas Square and so on [see my notes on the city here]. However, we also made our usual pilgrimage to Vee’s favourite corner of the city: a group of narrow, cobbled streets centred on one called Nove Svet (New World) which is located between Prague Castle and the Loreta.
- Prague is a city of spires, churches, pubs and cafes. We went twice to our favourite cafe, the Ebel Coffee House, and twice to a new place for us, the Cafe Louvre, which originally opened in 1902 and in the 1920s was patronised by Franz Kafka, Karel Capek and Albert Einstein.
- We found time to visit four exhibitions: the photographs of the one-armed Josef Sudek, the photographs of the controversial Jan Saudek, the photographs of a Czech press competition, and the artwork and design of the Art Nouveau exemplar Alfons Mucha. Less serious culture came in the form of two movies: the original “Rocky” [my review here] and the newest sample of the franchise “Rocky Balboa” [my review here].
>The Novy svet area