City of a Thousand Weddings... er, Spires

By the time I visited Prague, I had heard so many stories of how awesome it was, and seen so many photos, that I expected to be under-awed by it, if such a word exists. Spires, red tiled roofs, more spires, cobbled streets, narrow roads, more spires. Been there, seen that, what's the big deal? After all, I've been to Italy and it can't be grander than that, right? Wrong. Prague surprised me with its awe-inspiring grandeur, with its sheer magnificence. It's the kind of city that can bring a person to their knees. The streets are winding and twisted, and on either side stretch tall, ornate old buildings stacked together in columns of different hues, each one with its own characteristic design. Similar enough to match but different, each with its own identity. This was my first impression of Prague.

typical postcard image of Prague :)

 We were four people, travelling from Berlin to Prague by a cheap Orangeways bus, as the first leg of our 4-day, 4-cities journey around central Europe (the next stops would be Vienna, Bratislava and Budapest). We boarded the bus from Berlin ZOB at a minute past midnight and reached Prague Florenc terminus at 5 in the morning. The bus ride was comfortable, though not luxurious. But hey, for 21 Euro, you can't complain. Oh, they also take a Euro for each piece of luggage, but it's still cheap. The best thing about Orangeways is that you have plenty of legroom. And that it's cheap, but I already mentioned that.

Prague manifested itself tangibly to me first when I went to the awesome toilets in the Florenc terminus. There were these ticket machines into which you had to put 12 Czech Koruna. But the machine, like most of Prague, also accepted Euros, and you get your change in Koruna. I put a Euro in, and got 12 Koruna back. (1 Euro is around 24 Koruna) Things like this make travelling in Europe so much easier. What if you pay 50 cents or a Euro? You get to go to sparkling clean toilets and washrooms, with soap, tissue, electric hand dryers, etc. And I saw so many women travelling alone with huge backpacks. Oh, and another thing about the Florenc terminus was that they had counters to keep your luggage till midnight for 1.60 euro, which was a great help, since we could just dump our luggage there and roam around the city freely. My friend Aonnu kept a keen eye on the budget, so we breakfasted on bread, spread and fruit that we had brought over from Berlin. Later we would go on to royally feast in each city we visited, or as much as our budget allowed us; food was the only extravagance we allowed ourselves, and I'm glad I experienced such different food. Aonnu, who researches on food culture, was adamant that she wanted to taste the national dishes of each country we visited. More on food later.

As soon as the sky had lightened a bit, we each took a city map from the tourist info counter and started out in search of the old town. Our first landmark was the square called Namesti Republiky; we would soon learn that 'Namesti' is the Czech word for plaza or square, and this would aid us again in Slovakia. Once we found Republiky, we could also see the twin spires of the Tyn cathedral in the distance. Walking through the Powder Tower, the gateway to the old town, was a terrific experience. The Powder Tower is a gothic structure built in the late 15th century. Initially one of the entrances to the city of Prague, it became disused and in the 17th century was used to store gunpowder.

Okay, you can see a teeny-weeny portion of the Power Tower on the left. I'm not sure what the building in the foreground is.

Walking through the Powder Gate

And soon we were in the Old Town Square, or Staroměstské náměstí. What a fairytale language, I thought. The streets had names like Celetna, Karlova, Mostecka. The lesser town is called Mala Strana. (Here's a pretty decent map of Prague.) Here are some photos of the Old Town Square, though my friend Vivek seems to pop up in front of each of the monuments! Like I mentioned in another post, my camera was lost in Bologna, and I've used all the photos from a friend's camera.

The Jan Hus memorial in the Old Town, Prague. Jan Hus, a religious reformer who was burned at the stake in the 15th century, became a symbol of resistance to oppressive regimes with a significance extending outside the field of religion onto that of Czech political history. The Baroque St. Nicholas Church can be seen in the background.

The Town Hall Tower

One of the most famous landmarks in Prague Old Town, the Church of Our Lady before Tyn, built in the early Gothic style... well, you can't see much of it here, but you'll surely recognize those spires. You must have seen them in every postcard photo of Prague.

Random buildings in Old Town Square, with its currency exchange shop and souvenir shop declaring this place as tourist-ville! Notice the designs on each building, and the different shades in which they are painted.

The astronomical clock on the Town Hall tower. Apparently the four figures on the top, two on either side, represent Vanity, Greed, Death and a Pagan invader while the four figures at the bottom represent a Chronicler, an Angel, an Astronomer and a Philosopher. (All wisdom gleaned from Google)

From the Old Town Square, we walked up to Charles Bridge or Karluv Most spanning the Vltava river, through this street called, no surprises here, Karlova! Behold the awesome Bridge Tower, the entrance to Charles Bridge: 

Ok, this is me with Aonnu. The scarf is a gift from my friend Soumya, who has more awesome photos of Prague in her facebook album. Aonnu is wearing an "Itali" headband. Behind us, you can see the Vltava river and the red-roofed buildings of Mala Strana (Lesser Town), as well as the Prague Castle. On the left, you can also see the Charles Bridge. The entire bridge is flanked by these baroque-style statues which, according to Wikipedia, are all replicas, but I would have never guessed.

One of those famous statues depicts the crucifixion, with words in Hebrew written above and below, and on the sides. 

Charles Bridge is a veritable marketplace for handicraft vendors and portrait painters. There was a very postcard-perfect Asian couple in wedding outfits posing to be painted. Later, when we crossed over to Mala Strana, wherever you turned, there was a newly wed couple in tux and gown! I don't know whether they were all getting married there, or whether they'd come to the St Vitus cathedral for a pilgrimage. Seriously, wherever you turned, it was tux, white gown, limo, flowers, tux, white gown, limo, flowers. 

After crossing over to Mala Strana or the Lesser Town, there was another bridge tower, followed by this extremely touristy road. 

View of Charles Bridge from the Mala Strana side, close to the Franz Kafka museum

The peeing statues outside the Kafka museum. I don't know what they are called, but I overheard these guys talking about it, and the guide seemed to be telling the others that these guys are pissing into a pool shaped like the Czech republic!

More Kafka! This time, the birthplace...

Synagogues are a dime a dozen -- or a koruna a dozen -- in Josefov, the Jewish quarter of Prague, which we visited on our way back from the Lesser Town. This one (in the foreground) is the Old New Synagogue. Check out the weird building in the background! This one and the synagogue near the Old Jewish Cemetery, as well as the cemetery itself, were closed when we went there.The Old New Synagogue apparently houses the Golem of Prague in its attic!

The entrance to Prague Castle

The changing of the guards at the Prague Castle

St. Vitus Cathedral, inside the Prague Castle

We walked all around Prague, missing only the New Town, I guess (and the interior of every museum, palace, castle and cathedral where entry was paid for; ah well, one day when I'm a rich gangster...). Some day, I'd like to go back and see Wenceslas Square and the Dancing Buildings, Ginger and Fred! We spent quite a bit of money on food. We'd heard that the Czech beer was cheap and good, but we somehow ended up in places where it was at least as expensive as in Germany! My friends tried out the national dish, pork with bread dumplings and cabbage, while I tried to be smart and ordered potato dumplings. I thought I could taste a bit of their food, and order something cheap for myself. Was I surprised! The potato dumplings were... er, a memory I could avoid. Moral of the story, buy what your friends are buying. That way, if you get an unpleasant surprise, at least you have company. And the national dish they had, that was awesome! Poor things, they felt rather guilty seeing my woebegone dumplings and shared a lot of their food with me.

Weary indeed we were when we returned to Florenc by eleven thirty, since we had to take our luggage from the storage locker before 12 midnight. Dinner was chinese, cheap and reliable, and I tasted duck for the first time in my life. Yum yum. Always travel with a coupla boys with a voracious appetite; they will end up ordering more than they can eat, and be generous enough to share even otherwise. Prague glittered in the golden lights as we were borne away by our Student Agency bus to Vienna (departing 00.30, arriving 05.30), and I realized I'd forgotten to taste absinthe! Clear and green and bright, little bottles of absinthe mocked me from shop windows, along with elaborately crafted spoons. 70% alcohol, someone told me. How on earth was it possible? Another reason to come back to this magnificent city dripping gothic grandeur at every street corner.

Italian Holiday

When I realized I'm coming to Europe, and remembered I have friends in Italy, I was spooked. In a good way. I remembered that, ever since I read The Agony and the Ecstasy, I'd been dreaming of visiting Florence. Later, I dreamt of some day becoming rich and successful (successful as what, I was never quite clear; oh, well!) and taking my mother around Europe. Especially to Florence. 

My friend Aonnu who's studying in Bologna invited me to her place, and told me to fly Ryanair. Tickets from Berlin to Milan were as cheap as 20 Euro when I checked them. Then started the huge hassle of actually booking those flights. I tried from May to July. I don't have a credit card. Ryanair doesn't accept Maestro debit cards. Seriously, what's with Maestro anyway? Why does the Deutsche Bank give out Maestro cards when NOBODY in Europe (outside the UK) seems to accept it for online payment? I tried Easyjet as well, and they have a Maestro option... but ONLY for the UK. And don't even get me started on the direct debit possibility in Germany called ELV which, surprise, surprise, doesn't work. Long story short, no cheap Ryanair flights for the credit-card-less masses. With the help of one of my professors, I booked an Air Berlin  flight which cost me 116 Euro for a round trip. That was the cheapest I could get. And then, things started going right! 

It was 4 in the morning, the beginning of August, and I trudged sleepily to the bus stop to catch the night bus to the airport, flanked by my well-intentioned classmates Musa and Vivek, whose chivalry just wouldn't allow them to let me go alone. Did I say the night bus took me to the airport? It actually took me to the train station Nikolassee, from where I took an S-bahn to Charlottenburg, from where I got the bus to the airport. Ha! Once I reached the airport, though, life started getting easy. I had checked in online and Musa had printed out the boarding pass for me, so I could just waltz in right into the security check. The scary lady with the beeping rod wasn't very impressed. She kept poking the rod into my chest and back and stomach, taking a sadistic delight when it beeped every time it got near my bra hook or the button of my jeans. But there wasn't much she could do about it; I was flying into Italy and nobody was gonna stop me! 

Aonnu had given me excellent directions, so when I reached Milan, I took a bus to the Milano Centrale and asked for "andata e ritorno" at the ticket counter. Milano Centrale was a lovely, huge white building with marble lions gushing fountains from their snarls. I found the ticket vending machines and bought a ticket to Verona and another from Verona to Rovereto, where I was to meet up with my friends. The train journey was uneventful, except that I met a Mallu priest on the train, who was researching on liturgy at the Vatican! I changed trains from Verona, which was sweltering hot, and then reached Rovereto in the foothills of the Alps. Here's a view of Rovereto: 

My friend Alex came to pick me up at the station, and then we walked through narrow cobbled streets to the apartment where our friend Rakesh was staying. There I had my much-awaited reunion with Aonnu, Rakesh and a lot of food and wine! That day, I decided that I wanted to drink wine every day while I was in Italy, and I managed to keep it up! Rakesh was leaving for India the next day, and that night we attended a farewell party that his friends had thrown for him. There was wine and lovely snacks and pasta and fun conversation, and afterwards we went to a karaoke where I heard some Italian women singing soulfully. Then Aonnu, Alex and I walked through streets lit in golden lights, past a house where Mozart stayed, stopping to sip cool water in tiny stone fountains at every street corner, until we ended up near a little brook with a tiny waterfall. We lazed there and wished we could sleep there. I looked up at the stars and thought, I am in Italy. It had never seemed real before, and even then, it seemed like a fantasy. 

The next day, we took a train to Bologna, where Aonnu and Alex stayed. There was a lot to catch up on, bad movies to watch on the internet, more wine to drink, and pasta and pizza to eat. On the 4th, we went to Venice, the Alappuzha of the West (or is it the other way around?). As soon as we stepped out of the railway station, we saw the river right in front of us. It took us the better part of a day to walk a long, long way to the Rialto (remember The Merchant of Venice? The Rialto was and probably still is the stock market, the commercial centre of Venice) and then back to the station, but Venice is an easy place to navigate as I soon found out. As Aonnu explained, it was a winding mass of narrow streets which reached a bridge (over a canal where gondolas floated) and then a piazza, and then the entire sequence continued. Here is a view of Venice from the Rialto:  

We saw a cruise liner passing the port, and people lining the decks, staring in awe at Venice while Venice stared back at them in awe. 

And here is a view of the Rialto bridge or the Ponti di Rialto. You can see a few gondolas resting in the water below: 

I had also taken some really beautiful pictures of Venetian masks on display. However, tragedy struck the next day, the 5th, when we were ambling through Bologna which, for some reason, has never been mentioned as a touristy place though it's one of the most beautiful places I ever saw in Italy. The city centre of Bologna is entirely composed of old but excellently preserved buildings, some dating back to the 13th century. Aonnu showed us Copernicus's tower, and the twin medieval towers in the city centre, and the Fountain of Neptune. I clicked away like a mad tourist, which is what I probably was. And then fate intervened. Aonnu had told us about this place which sells enormous pizzas which 3 people could share. We bought one for around 5 Euro, took it outside and sat down on some steps to have it. After that, we started walking, and Aonnu took us to see Copernicus's tower. On the way, I realized that my camera was not hanging on my wrist. I ran back to the place where we'd sat down to eat the pizza, but it was already gone. The pizza place people hadn't seen it, and neither had the large group of Bangladeshi men lounging on the steps. That was that. And that's the story of how I owe almost all of these photos to Alex's cell phone camera. 

The next day, I went to Florence, camera-less. Aonnu had some work, so Alex and I took a train to Prato and another one from Prato to Firenze (Florence) Santa Maria Novella station. Here's the Santa Maria Novella church, close to the station. Notice the two obelisks? This piazza was used for holding chariot races, and the obelisks apparently marked the start and end points of the race: 

Lorenzo Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise at the Battistero di San Giovanni (Baptistery of St John) at Piazza della Duomo... Ghiberti won the chance to design these doors when he was 21, over other famous artists like Donatello and Brunelleschi, and it took him 21 years to complete the work on the doors! A closer look reveals that each panel has a clearly identifiable foreground, middle ground and background. Medieval 3D! (Of course this is a replica, like all of the awesome art in Italy. The originals are in some museum somewhere... like I said, not for the penniless -- or cent-less -- masses.) 

The Duomo or the Florence Cathedral. No photo can convey the feeling of suddenly turning a narrow street corner and being slapped on the face by its sheer magnificence. 

The Palazzo Vecchio (Old Palace) or the Florence town hall, at the Piazza della Signoria... the entrance is flanked on the left by a replica of Michelangelo's David (this is the exact spot where the original used to stand before it was, bingo! moved to a museum) and on the right by a marble sculpture of Hercules and Cacus by Baccio Bandinelli, hopefully the original! 

On the evening of the 7th, we went to Rome. For the first time, I travelled in a high-speed (above 250 km/h) Freccia train (the Argento, which is supposedly the fastest). We got down at Roma Termini, and took a metro to the Colosseum: 

That night, we stayed in a beautiful and artistic Italian house, with M and V, Aonnu's French friends. There was a garden table where we all sat around and drank red wine while munching bread and ricotta. And then it became a full-fledged Roman orgy which I even now cringe to think about. The high point was Aonnu singing, strumming V's guitar which had a broken string. Or so she said, because I wouldn't have guessed. That's the thing I remember the most about that night. After a long trudge through the city, beautiful music, sparkling company and a warmth inside from the food and the wine and just the happiness of experiencing a Roman Holiday! 

The next day was pretty busy. We woke up in the morning a little worse for wear, and were treated to special Italian coffee. I put sugar in mine, and found out that there were sticks of vanilla in the sugar bowl. It was so lovely, I had another cup. Hey, I'm a coffee person, and I hadn't had any coffee for the past 8 days. When I see Italian coffee, I'm entited to go overboard! 

And then we started our wanderings! First of all, we took the metro to the Vatican city. The entire area was so touristy, with people yelling at us and asking us to buy tickets to the Vatican museum and the Sistine Chapel from them. Yes, the Sistine Chapel... another place I couldn't go to because I didn't have 13 Euro, and 3 hours to spare. Apparently the b******s won't let us see it alone; we need to take a 3-hour tour of the Vatican museum to finally reach the Sistine Chapel. I'm sure the Vatican museum is lovely, but still... it's the principle of the thing! 

One of my most epiphanic moments was when I emerged through the narrow streets and the wide pillars into St. Peter's Square and was blinded for a moment by the sunshine. I blinked, and there stood St. Peter's Square: 

Yes, it was a loooooooooooong line into the Basilica. But hey, it was free! 

And what do we have here? Yes, I know it's unclear but it's the bloody original Pieta! It's hidden behind a glass cage inside St. Peter's Basilica (because someone took a shot at it previously), but it's the only original Michelangelo I saw, because I had no money for the museums and galleries :(

One of the several domes inside St Peter's. I was struck by the detail that had gone into every element in the Basilica, whether it was the sculpture of a deceased Pope or that of a tiny winged cherub. The Basilica almost struck us dumb. Its magnificence was an overload on our already frayed senses. We stood silently contemplating the role of art and architecture in building up the power of the Catholic Church. 

From the Vatican, we took another metro to The Trevi Fountain, the largest Baroque fountain in Rome, and here you can see its photo, taken with my bad mobile phone camera after Alex's camera's battery ran out. Aonnu and I threw coins and made our wishes. The sculpture of Oceanus taming the waters is by Pietro Bracci, and the entire structure was designed by Nicola Salvi, completed by Guiseppe Pannini, and bears touches by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. 

The Piazza Venezia and the Victor Emanuel II monument in central Rome... it was built to celebrate the unification of Italy in the 19th century (also taken with my bad mobile phone camera):

The Pantheon, an ancient Roman temple to all the gods built in the reign of the emperor Hadrian, was converted into a church, the basilica of St Mary and the Martyrs in the 7th century AD to avoid being torn down. I was amazed at how the roman gods at every niche forming a circle were replaced by christian martyrs and symbols!

There were a lot more places which I couldn't visit, and photos which never got taken... or were lost with the camera. One day, I will come back to Italy. I will become rich and successful (doing what? no clue, but hey, one can dream!) and I will bring my mother here, and we will walk around and see all these places again. We will walk in the sunshine, and sample the wine and the food, and wash our faces in the cool water from stone fountains. And life will be good, and life will be sweet, some day.