Any Port in a Storm - Prague around 1990

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Jun 20, 2013, 11:27am

Any Port in a Storm :: Compass Points :: Europe :: Prague around 1990

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Topic: Prague around 1990 (Read 621 times)

kerouac2
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Prague around 1990
« Thread Started on Oct 21, 2011, 9:38pm »

Just after the "velvet revolution," I felt an imperious need to go and see Prague, about which people were already talking as the "undiscovered jewel" of Europe.

So I rented a car when I had a few days of holiday planned and started driving in that direction. Strangely enough, it was only about 20 years later that I learned that it was totally forbidden to drive a rental car into Eastern Europe without prior authorization.

It is not the closest city to Paris. In fact, it is 1034 kilometers from Paris by road. So I decided that I would spend a night in Germany near the Czech border. Even after looking at numerous maps, I have no idea in which cities I tried to find a hotel, but for some reason, each and every hotel was full. When I was able to converse with the people in either French or English, they had no idea why all of the hotels were full either. There was no regional event or festival in progress, but everything was full. So I continued in the direction of the border with only a few small towns left. It was already about 9 p.m.

In some village, I finally saw a small hotel and I stopped. I clearly remember the abbreviated conversation I had with the woman there. I more or less said "Zimmer?" to which she replied "Schlafen?" making a pillow gesture with her hands. "Ja!"

She showed me to a wonderful traditional German ("clean & kitsch") room where I was very happy to sleep in spite of my empty stomach. The next morning I was served a fabulous breakfast in the little breakfast room. I seemed to be the only customer in the whole place, but in any case it only had perhaps 6 or 8 rooms. I remember that I was shocked by the price I paid -- "almost nothing."

I think I reached the Czech border in less than 30 minutes, and Prague is not very far after that. I took that Praha exit on the autobahn and was immediately stopped along with almost every other car by the police, because the exit speed limit was something like 40 km/h whereas it was impossible to exit at anything less than 80 km/h. (This reminded me of an unfortunate East German incident a year or two earlier. Speed traps seemed to be a part of Eastern European culture.) The policeman was very nice and seemed to be thrilled to see a French drivers licence instead of the usual German or Austrian ones, but then he announced the fine. It was not huge but it was in Czech koruna. We were sort of speaking English, and I told him that I didn't have any -- I had French francs and German marks but no Czech koruna, not until I arrived in Prague. So he let me go without a fine.

I've always been pretty lucky with the police.

I quickly arrived in Prague and went straight to the Cedok, the Czech tourist office, since I had no hotel reservation. They said that there were no rooms available in Prague (and that has hardly ever changed in 30 years), but they booked me in a place somewhere in the suburbs.

With a car, that wasn't too much of a problem, although it was not easy to find the first time. Yes, it was in the middle of nowhere. I'm not exactly sure what it was -- perhaps a recently converted workers' foyer. It was sort of like being admitted to a prison but without the anal probe. The warden was in a grilled box and buzzed doors open and shut.

Actually, the room was austere but not all that bad. There were prison cell aspects to it but also lovely lace curtains, embroidered towels and other strange little frills in this odd concrete tower.

Since I was not exactly a prisoner, I proceeded to discover Prague. Unfortunately, it was so long ago that I can't really name the things I saw anymore, except for the famous Charles Bridge.

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Soviet memorabilia was still a hot commodity.

[image]

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kerouac2
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Re: Prague around 1990
« Reply #1 on Oct 21, 2011, 9:46pm »

The baroque frills of Prague are lovely.

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shadows of the other stuff!

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« Last Edit: Oct 21, 2011, 9:47pm by kerouac2 »

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kerouac2
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Re: Prague around 1990
« Reply #2 on Oct 21, 2011, 9:51pm »

The streets were not empty.

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kerouac2
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Re: Prague around 1990
« Reply #3 on Oct 21, 2011, 9:58pm »

I need to go back there one of these days.

« Last Edit: Oct 21, 2011, 10:02pm by kerouac2 »

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mich64
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Re: Prague around 1990
« Reply #4 on Oct 22, 2011, 11:22pm »

Keuroac, what are all the tiny placards that are hung together? I enjoyed your photos of Prague, I have never been but after seeing these am quite interested.
Cheers!
Mich

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nycgirl7664
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Re: Prague around 1990
« Reply #5 on Oct 26, 2011, 8:46pm »

Very nice photos of lovely architecture. I'd love to visit Prague. Wish I could have discovered it when it was an "undiscovered jewel" too, but I bet it's still a good time.

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kerouac2
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Re: Prague around 1990
« Reply #6 on Oct 26, 2011, 8:52pm »

Oct 22, 2011, 11:22pm, mich64 wrote:

Keuroac, what are all the tiny placards that are hung together? I enjoyed your photos of Prague, I have never been but after seeing these am quite interested.
Cheers!
Mich

I understand about as much as you probably do, Mich -- some spice names (Kurkuma, Koriander, Oregano...). So we might have to imagine that this might be a spice merchant, although I first thought it might be a list of ice cream flavours.

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mich64
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Re: Prague around 1990
« Reply #7 on Oct 26, 2011, 11:02pm »

Actually that is what I thought they looked like but now that you direct me to some of the specific names, I think you are correct!
Cheers!
Mich

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hwinpp
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Re: Prague around 1990
« Reply #8 on Nov 4, 2011, 1:08am »

I must have been there the first time maybe a couple of months after you.

Right after the wall fell, amid all the feelings of re- unification, I had a girlfriend from the former East Germany.

We enjoyed taking each other to our 'backyards', France and the Czech Republic. We also stayed in the suburbs in Prague, in some B& B.

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kerouac2
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Re: Prague around 1990
« Reply #9 on Nov 7, 2012, 6:58pm »

I am totally perplexed why Prague is used so often as a stand-in for Paris for period movies. Of course, sometimes they use Budapest, equally mystifying. I mean obviously I know that it is much cheaper to film in either of those cities, but I can see in less than two seconds when they are faking it all, from the colouring of the buildings to the windowsills, shutters, doors, paving stones... Yes, it all looks "European," but it doesn't at all look like Paris. Hollywood seems to take everyone for total cultural imbeciles.

It must be admitted that tons of French movies also film scenes in Hungary and Czechy, as well as Romania. But they only use villages, forests or countrysides -- and all of the cheap extras -- because they know that they would be unmasked in a flash trying to pass off any of the cities as a French city. I imagine that the film industries of the other European countries are the same.

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