To walk in the city of Prague at night, with the mist lying wet on cobble-stoned alleys, is to walk in the footsteps of Mozart, Kafka and maybe Good King Wenceslas himself.
The cold dead eyes of statues look down upon you, lending an animated spookiness to the night scene. It's nearly midnight, yet tourists stroll casually through the colossal medieval squares of this once-walled fairy land.
Cafes are booming. On the Old Town Square, people are ambling, doing nighttime sightseeing. In the Segafredo Restaurant, talk is lively, in Czech, Italian, German, French, English, and American. About twenty thousand of the latter have moved to Prague since 1989, living there as ex-patriots after the barbed wire of Communism was cut and trampled for the final time.
It is Dark Nights in the City of Kafka that most travelers come to see, as did a recent group who signed on with a trip that Vantage Deluxe Travel organizes to Eastern Europe, with stops in Budapest and Vienna.
The scene of the past was set by Czech guide Jana Martinkova, recalling August 20th, 1968, when the Russian tanks rolled noisily into Wenceslas Square. "It was a shock. First, they took over the airport (and other transportation centers). Then the tanks came in. People couldn't believe they were here. Everybody said they wouldn't stay, but they did." Until November 17th, 1989, when people took to the streets and forced the Central Council of the Communist Party to resign.
What changes came about since the so-called Velvet Revolution can be measured in quantum leaps. Visitors see boutiques, groceries and department stores, including K-Mart, full of goods, some cheap, some expensive. Though the Czechs say it could be better, the very looks of things speak prosperity - in the suburbs there are some backyards with swimming pools.
Kentucky Fried Chicken and Pizza Hut are actually old stories in what is now the Czech Republic. The Japanese are investing $150 million in a textile plant and there are plans for a $66 million Panasonic TV plant. Chase Manhattan and Citibank are well entrenched, as are Rank Xerox, Procter & Gamble, Marriott and Hilton.
The overpowering magnetism of Prague is not what's new, but what is still very old and intact.
One can walk several miles and never leave the 17th Century. Huge paved squares, for pedestrians only, are lined with Baroque buildings, most gussied up with carvings and red tile roofs, out of which poke spires, turrets, domes and belfries. On the facades of buildings are handsomely designed Italian Renaissance graffiti. Architecturally, Prague may be one of the most soothing, beautifully kept cities in the world and a reason why the ex-patriots liken it to Paris.
One can spend a week on the heights of Hradcany and Prague Castle, overlooking the rest of the city and the multi-bridged Vlatava River. In the shadow of St. Vitus Cathedral, a Gothic treasure, Martinkova explained defenestration, a habit unique to Prague when political opposition leaders were hurled from windows to their deaths below. Such literal overthrows took place in 1419 and 1618.
There are statues to St. John Nepomuk, the archbishop, who in 1393 was drowned by (Bad King?) Wenceslas IV for refusing to reveal the queen's confession. The king suspected her of running around.
Today in Old Town Square, tourists walk and pigeons flock near the place where twenty-seven defenestrators were executed, their heads impaled on pikes on the nearby Charles Bridge. Prague abounds in those kinds of tales, intrigues and murders, mythical and true, commemorated with statues and markers that are reminders of fairyland stories full of romance and secret plottings.
Franz Kafka once called his native city a "little mother with claws," referring, perhaps, to a city protecting its citizens with unrivaled malice.
Did you know that "Good King Wenceslas" himself was done in by his own brother, Boleslav the Cruel, in 929? It is this Prague that attracts young ex-patriots like Mark Rutherford, thirty seven, who shucked a career in marketing in California to move here in 1996. "These old alleys with mist, these old gas lamps, you are here in 1797," he said while sipping a drink in a back alley cafe named Ceska Vinotheka. "This building has been here since 1778!"
Rutherford said he plans to live in Prague "for a year or two. This is the coolest place. I can go to a museum here for one dollar. In the States, it would cost me ten dollars."
His companion, Christine Hernandez, thirty, a United Airlines Flight Attendant, likes Prague best for the upbeat mood of the young people. "They are very happy about Communism going." Older residents she has met, though, "are more worried about losing their pensions. At least back then (under Communism), they knew someone would take care of them. Now, they're not sure. It's scary."
It's a reflection adequately summed up by Martinkova, who witnessed first-hand the transition from authoritarian control to capitalism. "We have free country, free market, free prices," she said, laughing.
True, the rate of inflation stymies stability, but prices of goods and services are comparatively cheap. There is terrific tasting fresh trout in the Three Ostriches Restaurant for about ten dollars, including a sample of caviar. A room at the new five-star Hilton Atrium Hotel rents for ninety-one dollars - for two.
Entertainments, particularly music, cost about one-third American prices. One particular week, there were concerts performing Schubert, Mozart, Dvorak (another local talent), Vivaldi, Bach. There are local museums dedicated to Dvorak and Mozart, who spent many happy summers in Prague. Amadeus was filmed in Prague. So was the Tom Cruise movie, Mission Impossible, and more recently, Vin Diesel's XXX.
Like its modern subway system, history is literally layered underground in the Old Town. A rush of angst sweeps over tourists the moment they step into the Old Jewish Cemetery. Snaggletoothed rows of darkened stones crowd the area. Founded in the 15th Century, the graveyard contains about twelve thousand stones, but far more people are buried there - in twelve layers.
The guidebook, Fodor's Exploring Prague, reports that today only 1,250 Jews live in Prague, half of them over the age of seventy. On the walls of the Pinkas Synagogue, thousands of names are listed with dates of birth and dates of transportation of those removed to Nazi concentration camps, with estimates of from 71,000 to 80,000 murdered at Auschwitz alone.
Most of the Jews are gone from Prague and so are the jack boots and tanks, the tombstones attesting to the greater presence, taking their place with the statuary of Christian kings, clergy and martyrs. On the Charles Bridge, there are seventy-five different statues, all telling their remarkable stories. With motor traffic banned, it's a park-like setting, where tourists mingle with office workers on their lunch break, settling into a new prosperity, surrounded by a well-deserved peace.
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