Days 2 (Thursday) & 3 (Friday), Prague - God of the Trams

Going out through the last checkpoints to Czech Republic and Prague, my feet bleeding and shoulders sore, I felt pretty much like back from weeks of trekking in a jungle. Inès was there and I found her almost exactly as I left her, and this felt good. Not that she hadn't changed, not that I did not, at all and very visibly in my case, but there is still this distant cordiality, this reserve running on the deepest and stark entente on the open realms. Meeting again my oldest and solid friend showed up how sensibly it moved inside, I did change; also the contrast between my weary and vagabond appearance and my plenty of bags on one hand and hers, town-looking and elegant, was amusing to my exhausted eyes. We travelled by bus from the Ruzyně airport to the city centre, under the low ceiling of light clouds the plane had dived into minutes ago, seemingly hours. Along the ways the suburbs were of a grey tentatively masked under more lively colours; she would explain me later that the lack of money prevented the buildings from being destroyed - they were simply painted, for the most visible; some others kept their huge walls of bleak concrete. The harm of decades of totalitarianism is much of a remote notion, the abstract idea of grey walls, entangled with tenable, theoretical again, principles and good ideas - think of Ostalgia - as taught on the West side, which might well be itself the remote one in this case; the truth is that I felt almost hurt by how utilitarian and massive architecture crept and sneaked everywhere, always sinister in the shadow of the delicate pre-communism architecture. The feeling was slightly sweltering in the vast landscapes I did my best to admire.
We stepped off the bus in the city centre and connected by metro to my friend's place. "The layout of the underground stations in the very centre are all the same" I was explained; "Only the colours change." The scarcity of people so few around at that time of the day smoothed over the strong feeling I would get later, that of greyness, again, and disregard. Náměstí Míru, near which Inès lives, is the deepest metro station in Prague; after a few seconds emerging from the tunnel on the slow escalator, the dizziness reached sensible levels and I asked my friend whether I or she was the one standing vertically - we had 20° of difference. Seventy percent of the informations arriving to the brain is visual. Blinding top and bottom of the mechanical stairs amounted to live seventy percent to a different angle. Despite of the ten months spent lifted up and down in the stairs, I was strangely the first to notice the strange phenomenon:

            
The moving walkway near the exit of the Ministry of Silly Walks.

The district in which we finally emerged in a much brighter daylight than during the way by bus was an older one, and seemingly renovated. Brighter colours - and a stunning sight, the street going up to the one my friend lives in, bare branches casting from a tree to the other side, vaulting over the road, their black intricacy violently contrasting with the vibrant colours of the freshly painted façades. I left the pictures for later, never, should I realize soon. Perhaps is it preferable to keep the idea of those trees in the early morning light, or in a nocturnal mist, than the rows of cars parked under.
I passed by the trees, had a look at their trunks tightly enclosed in concrete and deeply regretted it.

Inès was telling me about the flat she was sharing with two French students of the same field and another English one while we walked along the upper street, bordered with trees on the other side; those ones greener and from which invisible birds were singing. The staircase in the building was immense, so was the impression when entering the said flat, elevated ceilings, white walls, furniture of the latest fashion and technology, immense volumes. My own flat, in remote Finland, could entirely fit in the kitchen and living room. It was much of a shock. I wondered how much of an elite exiled Westerners were there.
The bath, in no less than a jacuzzi, was another deliverance; I thought about the huge flat, and my friend's words. They rent the apartment for a pittance, regarding the obvious luxury of the place, in that uptown district; an agency made the transaction for a relatively exorbitant fee... I stepped on the heated tiling and glanced back tired at the mirror, between two rows of bright make-up bulbs.

Inès' apartment was located quite close to heart of the city, with the three metro lines crossing each other; we walked though the main esplanade, surrounded by tourists, while she was showing buildings and monuments. The tendency of Czech people to immolate themselves turned out to be almost amusing facing the plenty of memorials to such acts, as the metallic cross as melted in the ground in memory of Jan Palach, and another very close building commemorating a similar tragedy. Funnily most of the stories related to the buildings around were dealing with brutal and massive deaths - and meanwhile, we were struggling to make our way through the already dense crowd or tourists toward the historical main square. As well as ignored and rarely visited places keep their spirit, the soul of the historical city centre of Prague withered and suffered from an overload of tourists as much as the historical centre of Paris did. The glimpse I had from the famous central square, rather nice considering the trees, the birds and the idea to sit under and simply enjoy the mild air and sum beams, turned out to be a masquerade of grotesque figures posing under the astronomical clock. We did not even watched the sculptures moving on the dot, and I absently listened to another tragic story, that of the creator of the Orloj, thrown into jail, blinded, and dying at the very moment he would have destroyed his work, after a very dubious escape from his cell. I was anyway a zombie, I was distractedly walking after my friend, near to the small Jewish cemetery, still somehow caught in the journey. We would later get to the Charles Bridge, with the very same mixed feeling, the smell of freshly cut grass, the sweet sun of the late afternoon, all overlaid by flows of loud tourists. She would take me to an island under the next bridge, quiet and almost desert. A place they used to gather in the first weeks of their stay under the tall trees, peaceful and loaded with sweet memories, not enough, yet, to put my own mind at rest. Afterwards, we would get to a restaurant for some excellent goulash, still for very modest prices - and I would realize strikingly how ascetic is and was my way of life in the North. Not so much of a regret - a mere notice of the facts. all that was unfolding somewhere besides me and out of my mind; for then my friend just left me in her immense flat and her immense empty room for some lecture she had to attend, and I fell into the deepest sleep in her too new and too large bed.

[...will do so for now]