Serendipity saves the day

I have a theory about Prague. There’s something in the air in this city that seems to spark bizarre serendipitous moments, synchronicities and connections. I rarely experienced such situations when I lived in the UK; now I keep a diary of them because they are so frequent here. An incident forming the basis for the latest entry occurred about half an hour before I started writing this post. And in true coincidence style, it has also helped save me from writer’s block and get my revived blog off to a decent start.

For ages, I’ve been meaning to beef it up with new writing. So, full of good intentions, I started writing the first of – what I planned to be – a series of frequent posts. It was about London, inspired by a recent trip there, and was to be worthy and serious. After about five attempts, I gave up and consigned it to the electronic waste basket. All that was left was a blank space and the file itself, should I decide to have another attempt.

But a classic "Prague Synchronicity" provided the perfect replacement material. I had just got back from a walk around the neighbourhood to clear my head and escape from my computer screen for a few minutes. While tramping round leafy streets of ornate tenements and equally sumptuous villas in Prague’s Vinohrady district, I came across a warning notice in slightly wonky English. I collect such signs and don’t have to look hard to find them. One of these days, I keep telling myself, I’ll set up a website devoted to them.

I was pondering this item when I spotted yet another unintentionally amusing sign. The English was not wrong, but the name of the company “Nopal”, seemed rather unfortunate for an estate agency, given the unpopularity of this profession. And by strange (but not strange by Prague standards) coincidence, another inappropriately named estate agency, called “Sting”, is located only a few blocks away.

Such coincidences often happen in pairs. For example, a few years ago I bumped into a fellow Scot I’d heard about but had never actually met. Unsurprisingly enough, it turned out that Stewart is a friend of a former work colleague in Scotland. And he subscribes to my Prague coincidence/synchronicity theory. The conversation inevitably got round to synchronicities, and another occurred as we chatted. Sadly, I can’t remember what it was.

No doubt more weird incidents will occur before the day is out, and words like “Kafkaesque” and “surreal” will be bandied about. Fittingly appropriate, given that the man who gave his name to this adjective lies buried a few minutes’ walk away from where I’m writing this.

Nuremberg and Kłodzko

Over the last three years, for various reasons, I've not done as much travelling as I would have liked. But this month I went a little way to catching up by "popping over the border" to Germany and Poland, on the first and second weekend of May respectively.


I really appreciate that 1 and 8 of May are both public holidays in the Czech Republic, so if they fall on Thursdays, you can take of the 2 and 9 May and create two long weekends or a week-long holiday. So I used this opportunity to visit Nuremberg, after numerous postponements, and Kłodzko, in the Lower Silesian region of Poland and very close to the Czech border

The towns are quite disparate. Kłodzko is a small historic settlement in a part of rural Poland that digs deep into Czech territory, although it was once part of Bohemia. The shabby but likeable town is a fairly sleepy place, close to impressive, pine-clad mountain ridges. Nuremberg is much larger, with a bustling, big city atmosphere. It's located in Franconia, a part of Germany I must confess I knew little about, which prompted me to find out more about it and its history.

Comparing and contrasting these two visits was an enjoyable exercise because I'm fascinated by connections between regions of Europe. I've finally got round to reading Europe by the historian Norman Davies, and as I leafed through it, I was struck by the links between parts of Central Europe across the centuries. And in Nuremberg I came across an outstanding example of the craftmanship of medieval sculptor Veit Stoss. Perhaps his most outstanding work can be found in St Mary's church in Kraków, not too far from Kłodzko.  A good reminder, in this era of intense globalisation, that connections and links between places, people and ideas are nothing new.

Thoughts on Ukraine

Ukraine has been much in my mind recently. When I started this post, several weeks ago, anarchic scenes from Kyiv were flashing on our TV or PC screens almost daily, and the level of violence compared to that of the Orange Revolution of 2004 was striking and alarming. Things have developed rapidly in a very short period, Crimea has been annexed, and as I write this Russian and American foreign ministers are due to meet to discuss the Ukrainian crisis.

I’m finding it hard to process the contrast of the images of the last few weeks and the Ukraine I visited back in 2007. I started in the western city of Lviv and then travelled east to Kyiv, on an overnight train that was ridiculously cheap for a Westerner, and surprisingly comfortable too.

Lviv was a thoroughly Central European city and wants to be so again. Tellingly, many of those who were killed in the recent violence were from the Lviv region. The elegant and slightly melancholy heart of Lviv is utterly beguiling, and uncannily similar to the Old Town of Kraków, another of my favourite European cities. And of course Lviv was part of Poland; Poles know it as Lwów. I spotted Polish street signed carved into facades, and on several occasions Polish tourists approached me, asking for directions. I wondered if they were the sons and daughters of that great post-war migration of Lvovians westwards to what is now Wrocław. Until 1945 the city was German and called Bresslau; then its German population was expelled from the new Poland.

Although I had some knowledge of Ukraine before visiting, my trip up-ended many of my – embarrassingly clichéd – images of the country. Lviv felt so instantly familiar, as if I had never left Central Europe; it was hard to believe that it was part of the Soviet Union for 40 years, and seeing Cyrillic everywhere seemed disorientating. Kyiv on the other hand conformed much more readily to my image of an “Eastern” city: the profusion of golden onion-domed churches rising up like a thicket of mushrooms, the great chunks of Social Realist architecture so absent from Lviv, or at least its historic centre, and the mix of Ukrainian and Russian languages. I had to keep reminding myself that Western Ukrainians, most of whom are firmly pro-EU and look West, regard a city like Lviv, rather than the Russian-speaking regions of the East, as quintessentially Ukrainian.

Such tensions of identity, and the wider issue of ordinary freedoms, ordinary people versus oligarchs, corruption, and Ukraine’s role in the world are being played out right now, across the country. It was strange, sad and disturbing to see Hrushevskoho street, which I strolled up and down, on balmy summer days, now the scene of violence and pent-up frustration.

Ukraine fascinated me then and is beckoning me back. Ironically, just when the violence escalated in the centre of Kyiv, I had been thinking about another visit, and I want to go back very much. I can only hope that when I do, Ukraine will have turned the corner.

So why did you come to the Czech Republic?

The title of this post one of is the first questions you're asked as foreigner in the Czech Republic. It is, to use a cliche, a long story, and I've recited all the ins and outs of it so often, that I tell people - only half jokingly - that I'll write a book about it.

Well, here it is, or rather a super-condensed version.

For me, Prague is a city where bizarre connections and strange synchronicities seem to occur with astonishing frequency, so it’s fitting that the story of how I came here involves a coincidence.
It started in an era when, unlike now, the only Czechs coming to Britain were those fleeing Communism. Very unusually, one of my fellow pupils at primary school was half-Czech; his father had escaped Czechoslovakia and settled in Britain. Jan changed school after a few years, but our class had learned a bit about Czechoslovakia while he was with us. Perhaps that’s why I was intrigued by a neighbour’s beige Škoda “Estelle”, as it was absurdly styled in Britain. It’s probably also why I recall floundering attempts to spell “Czechoslovakia” – presumably after Jan had left – in an essay.
Later, I studied the former Eastern Bloc in one of my high school classes and became very curious about the part of Europe run by a cabal of doddery dictators. Shortly after, the 1989 revolutions broke out, which dispatched the dictators to history but brought me a step closer to Prague. A few years on, at university, my classmates and I had to “choose” between the Ruhr coalfield in Germany or Prague as a field trip destination. I think you can guess which….

That week was one of the best of my life. Prague mesmerized me, partly because then the Czech Republic seemed so different and the spiky-looking Czech language was so unfamiliar. Consequently, even the more mundane aspects of the trip, such as metro journeys, were lifted out of banality. As we were billeted with families in Háje, we had plenty of opportunities to travel by metro and marvel at the profusion of technicolour concave panels and other station idiosyncrasies. We found the metro announcements quirky too, and they had a sort of hypnotic effect on us, eliciting maniacal group chants of “Ukončete výstup a nástup!” at the slightest excuse.

When I returned, I just couldn’t get Prague out my system, and after completing a post-graduate course in building conservation in 1995, I started to think about combining my conservation and Central European interests. I finally came to Prague in 2000, to follow up on potential job offers, but progress was extremely slow. I was determined to stay in Prague and make things happen, so I decided to investigate other opportunities.

I’ve always enjoyed writing, and gradually moved into editing, and later journalism. I has a passion for languages too, and moved into translating from Czech to English. I particularly enjoy writing about travel and anything that helps newcomers to Prague Czech Republic.

Let's hear it for Czech public spaces!

I'm sitting in one of my favourite cafes in Prague. I've parked myself by a large window overlooking a very visually satisfying square, making my spot ideal for people watching. And despite being a cold, sun-bereft day, people are sitting on the square. No doubt this is partly because the space is extremely welcoming. It was redesigned a few years ago and features some excellent public art - a trio of small, sturdy bronze horses, unobtrusive seating, a cluster of neatly pruned trees, and a pond traversed by little bridges. What's more, even though it's in a fairly prominent position, there's almost no vandalism, and the square looks just as fresh as it did when the work was completed.
I studied building conservation at post-graduate level and therefore such spaces greatly interest me. Indeed, I still filter them through my conservationist perspective. One of the things I find most striking about Czech towns and cities is the quality of their public spaces. And even in an era when penny-pinching and the "cost of everything, value of nothing" are the basis for every decision, granite sets - which don't come cheap - are frequently used, including in resurfacing. What's more, compared to my native UK, there's much less of an effort to make streets that already have plenty of aesthetic worth better by introducing "olde-worlde" street furniture, such as the dreaded "heritage bollards" as we used to call them on the course. But most of all, too often British historic streets are ruined by garish, ugly red paving stones, and a lamentable lack of natural materials.
Even though I've lived in the Czech Republic for a while, I still find myself making mental comparisons between it in the UK. In my opinion, public spaces generally much better in my adopted home country. But must admit that I still find this perplexing. Why is the quality of public spaces in the UK so hit and miss?

The accommodation scene in Prague has got better over the years, but finding somewhere good to stay in the centre without demolishing your bank balance is still not easy. But here's a little tip. Why not consider self-catering (or vacation rentals)? This option can work out a lot cheaper than a hotel, and offers you a bit more flexibility too. Bohemia Apartments offers a range of self-catering properties all located right in the centre of Prague. So if you're booking a holiday in Prague and want to be in the centre but at a reasonable price, why not consider this company. wwww.bohemia-apartments.com

My first Czech election

Yesterday I voted for the first time in a Czech election. I learned a few weeks ago that as I have permanent residence in the Czech Republic and am an EU citizen, I'm entitled to voted in the local and European elections here, but not parliamentary elections. So I decided to exercise my democratic duty and vote, prompted by the novelty of the situation and feelings of guilt at not voting in elections in Britain.

For weeks we voters have been bombarded with all the usual promises and policies, as well as pictures of all the candidates looking improbably youthful. We've been bribed with concerts and food, and we've had to put up with unrelentingly trite slogans about how the world would be an infinitely better place if candidate X from party Y were elected. I consider myself a political junkie, but the last few weeks have been utterly tedious billboardwise, even for me.

Yet somehow I felt excited as I approached the local polling station, in the pavilion adjoining the local football ground. But as I entered the drab polling room, and saw the election staff lined up like judges in a talent show in a village hall, it all felt very familiar, even though there was no potato wedged in the ceiling, as was the case at the last polling station where I voted in Britain.

Minor consternation ensued when one of the officials realised that I wasn't on the list, and I was relayed to his kindly supervisor, who confirmed that I could vote as I my name had been added to a supplementary list. I did the democratic deed and put my ballot paper, which was almost as big as the football pitch outside, in its envelope. I scanned the room for the ballot box and saw two people putting their envelopes in what was, without any shadow of a doubt, a bin. Yes, a bin. I looked round for the ballot box but couldn't see anything apart from a table and the grey plastic bin. It dawned on me that the people entrusting their votes to a receptacle for refuse didn't seem to be confused or making angry protests, but simply voting. I doubled checked by opening the bin furtively, It contained a substantial pile of envelopes, which in turn contained - I assume - ballot papers. So I popped my ballot paper in it, thereby joining the democratic throng. As I left, I pondered the bizarre ritual I had just participated in and wondered whether I had imagined it all. Was it a huge mistake, or I had voted correctly in a not very fraudproof system? Whatever way you looked at it, a bin as a ballot box is a very telling comment on democracy. And the all too obvious thought occurred to me - was it all symbolic?