this week in the odyssey
11.29.99 -- 12.6.99
prague, czech republic

More Culture Than a Pint of Yogurt

This is my recurring nightmare. I'm trapped in an elegant theater with hundreds upon hundreds of well-dressed, well-meaning people. I can't get out of my seat. I can't cough, I can't sneeze, and I definitely can't chant the words to popular rap songs in my 'gangstah' voice. Meanwhile, on stage, a giant jellyfish (much like the one pictured at right) systematically envelops and consumes ballerina after ballerina in its gaping maw of destruction, little bits of tutu clinging to its gelatinous lips. The wails are terrifying. The horror is genuine. The applause never stops. I wake up screaming, vowing never again to eat "Bi-Fi" meat snacks before bedtime.

Naturally enough, this tends to frighten Kristanne. So, in the interest of confronting my inner demons (well, the actual words she used were something more like, "I'd really like to get some damn sleep around here without you waking me up with your infernal caterwauling"), we decided that a little visit to the ballet was in order. If a ballet, a symphony, or an opera is what you want, Prague is definitely the place to be. First of all, there is an amazing variety of venues, each of them seemingly offering a different performance every night. By my calculations, if Prague's population is somewhere around 1.5 million then, by the transitive property, there must be 1.5 million theaters here. The transitive property is actually a surprisingly powerful property.

In addition to the proliferation of theaters, there is an equally impressive army of advertising lackeys marching around town, relentlessly assaulting you with a ceaseless barrage of fliers advertising today's special performances. To walk across Prague's Old Town Square is to invite these culture warriors to festoon your body with their multicolored advertisements. You come out the other side looking like a human billboard, bits of paper fluttering from your entire body, all despite the "Post No Bills" sticker I wear prominently affixed to my forehead. They are persistent, they are aggressive, and at least one of them is dressed up as Mozart. It's actually quite frightening. Last week, Kristanne and I made the rookie mistake of not immediately sprinting away from the Mozart guy when he approached. This was bad. Before I could even mention my emergency appendectomy appointment on the other side of the town, Amadeus had his binder full of endorsements and advertisements open and awaiting my perusal. Hands were clapped on my shoulder. Kristanne was told to (and I quote), "pay attention, lady." Fifteen minutes later, we emerged, slightly dazed but happy to have escaped with only a season subscription to the symphony in the year 2002. Mozart is a very convincing salesman.

Since our quest for culture could not possibly wait until 2002, we decided to hit a performance of Tchaikovsky's 'Swan Lake" taking place that very night at the Statni Opera House. The Statni Opera House (that's it pictured at left) is a magnificently ornate theater, all bedecked in baroque grandeur. Prague is quite literally chockablock with buildings like this -- glorious edifices that drop your jaw with wonder. Therein lies what I'm going to call the 'Prague Paradox' (mainly because it's my webpage and I really, really like alliteration) -- Prague actually has far more amazing buildings than it has amazing things to put in them. The end result of this is that you will sometimes find yourself going to the Museum of Used Chewing Gum Sculpture just so you can marvel at the opulent architecture of the building in which it is housed (and, well, I also have a definite fondness for chewing gum sculpture).

Fortunately, the ballet is definitely not part of the Prague Paradox. In fact, it's really more part of the 'Bounteous Bohemian Bonanza' of high cultural expression you get here in the Czech Republic (and, yes, I am stopping the alliteration thing this very instant). Still, going to the ballet in Prague is slightly different than my experiences in the rest of the world (which, granted, amount to exactly three performances of the 'Nutcracker' and a field trip in junior high that I only remember because this really pretty girl fell asleep next to me and her head leaned against my shoulder which, in my mind, pretty much meant that we were now engaged to be married). In the ballets I've attended, the dancers get on out there, do their thing, and some six hours later everybody applauds for a while and then goes back to their homes and their families. This is not the way they do things in Prague. My first clue that something was up should probably have come when I noticed the audience donning padded gloves before the performance began. Having missed that crucial bit of information, I definitely should have clued in when the dancers all came out and took a couple of curtain calls before the performance actually even began. Dancers were curtsying and bowing, the audience was throwing flowers and crying 'Bravo!', and meanwhile the orchestra hasn't even taken their instruments from their cases (and, boy, when they did, did they ever bring the house down with applause). After fifteen minutes of this nonsense, the conductor finally blows his nose (to still more cries of, 'bravo!'), takes his baton in hand, and starts the performance. "Great," I'm thinking, "we're finally going to see the renowned Prague Ballet!" Oh, if only it were that simple. Astonishingly, dancers were taking curtain calls after every micro-scene. I'm not talking about maybe a few bows after intermission, either. I'm talking for every pirouette, for every tour j'ete, and for every lordly leap, the show was stopped and the curtain closed so that the audience could express their appreciation for what they had just seen. I was sweating profusely and my palms were beginning to blister from all the clapping. Who knew you actually had to be in training to attend the ballet in Prague? Sometime the next afternoon, 'Swan Lake' was finally over, and that's when the real love started to flow from the crowd. After the dancers had all taken a couple of hours worth of bows, the conductor and the musicians came onstage, followed by the make-up artists, the masseuses, the accountants, and even our old buddy Mozart the Ticketseller. We left as they began pulling the night janitor onstage to loud huzzahs. For all we know, those people are still in the Statni Opera, clapping themselves giddy.

After sleeping the sleep of the physically exhausted, we woke up the next morning with a new mission. Regular readers (both of you) may remember that last week we stopped outside the Mucha Museum long enough to make fun of its name. This is typically the cultural depth to which I aspire -- cheap jokes about someone's name. Still, after one reader wrote in expressing the sentiment, "Hey, jerkweed, why don't you actually try going inside the museum for a change," we decided to check it out (thanks for the tip, Honored Father-In-Law!). "Mucha" as it turns out in this case, was not just a clever use of the Spanish word for "much" in this museum's title. Oh no. "Mucha" was actually Alfons Mucha's last name, and "Alfons Mucha" means just one thing to me -- Art Nouveau. Well, he does now anyway.

After a pleasant perusal of posters by Alfons Mucha (there's that dang alliteration again), we moved on to the Obecni Dum to check out the fixtures, stained glass, and frescoes he designed there. The Obecni Dum is Prague's old municipal house from the early twentieth century. In addition to that elegant cafe' you see my smarmy face obscuring at right, there are also a couple restaurants and a concert hall there (filled, no doubt, with perpetually applauding audiences).

Having sampled the high culture delights of Prague's ballet, we decided to see if we couldn't muster the energy to withstand a night in a jazz club. Perhaps inauspiciously, we chose to see a band called the "Old Timers Jazz Band," mainly because they happened to be playing in Club Zelezna, one of the older, more well known jazz clubs in the city. Jazz in Prague has a fairly rich history, having been allowed to flourish during socialist times. Apparently, party officials felt that jazz was the music of the black American working class. As such, they reasoned, it would also be good music for the Czech proletariat to hear. And that's, of course, why every single American jazz record recorded during the Cold War has anti-communist propaganda backward-masked onto them (kinda explains some of Ornette Coleman's work, doesn't it?). Kids, try this at home -- take your parents' Benny Goodman records and spin them backwards on the turntable, see if it doesn't make you feel like taking up arms against your oppressor (or at least going to McDonalds).

Club Zelezna was a great place -- a dimly-lit brick cavern well beneath the city streets. The "Old Timers" were quite good at what they did, too. Unfortunately, what they did was Dixieland jazz, a style of music that is approximately as flexible in form as a George W. Bush campaign speech ("I was twice elected Governor of Texas. I was twice elected Governor of Texas. I was twice elected..."). Now, don't get me wrong -- I actually like Dixieland every once in a while. Unfortunately, since as near as I can tell there is only a single Dixieland jazz song that has ever been written (you know, the one that has everybody playing different noodly riffs at the same time), it can get a little tiresome after a while. Still, the band had a lot of great jazzbo tricks to keep things exciting. For example, all the wind instrument players were chain smokers. It was quite entertaining to see them diving for their cigarettes once their solos were over and they turned it over to the next guy in line. The chain smoking made the clarinet player's trick of circular breathing a single note for almost ten minutes all the more amazing (eat your heart out Kenny G). I swear I even noticed cigarette smoke coming out of his clarinet towards the end of this little feat. When he finally broke off the note with a hacking cough, he reached into his shirt pocket with a flourish, extracted a pack of cigarettes, and proudly brandished them to the audience, to which Kristanne was loudly heard to remark, "what a nancy boy." Kristanne had some real issues with the clarinet player.

The next day dawned with a bee in our Extreme Telecommuting bonnet. We planned to get out there and take in some sights, do some damage in Prague while we still had the time. Before we could do that, though, we absolutely had to find the "Blue Guide" to Prague so that Kristanne could have her various and sundry art history facts straight. We struck out at the first couple bookstores, though, so we opted to hazard a Blue Guideless visit to the Museum of 19th Century Czech Art before trying other bookstores. Like all Czech museums, this particular bad boy is housed in an amazing building -- in this case, a lovingly restored 13th century convent (right next door to the Museum of Used Chewing Gum Sculpture, in fact). In addition to being in a gorgeous building, however, it was also closed. In fact, it had been closed since some time in September and offered no prognosis for when it might conceivably ever be open again. You might think we'd have noticed this earlier since we walk right in front of this museum nearly every time we leave our apartment. You might think that, but you'd be wrong, so we'd thank you not to be too darn smug about the whole thing.

Blue Guideless and without our daily dose of 19th Century Czech Art, our spirits were beginning to wane. Now, when your spirits are beginning to wane in the Czech Republic, nothing restores them faster than a quick game of Sidewalk Chicken. Every single culture we've experienced on this European Odyssey has its own tactics for dealing with Pedestrian Politics. Some cultures -- say, the Italians -- just don't care about other people on the street. If you're in their way, they take you out. Others -- like, say, the Scots -- love to see how close they can come to you without touching you. As for the Swiss, they don't actually walk; they just sort of magically transport themselves places.

Then, there's the Czechs. The Czechs love nothing more than a good mano a mano sidewalk battle. If a Czech is happily eating his dinner and he happens to peek out his third floor apartment window and see you walking down the sidewalk blissfully unobstructed, he will leap from the table, clatter his way down the stairs, and sprint across a four lane intersection just so he can try to walk into you. They're pretty cunning with the whole thing, too, full of feints and dodges designed to get you off balance so they can take you out with a minimum of effort. Never, ever, follow a Czech's first movement and try to get out of his way. He's just trying to set you up for the killer blow. You need to have the agility of a toreador just to make it to the market and back without eating asphalt. The old ladies are the worst, too. They make up for what they lack in speed with displays of brute strength. Check out that covey of babushkas in classic arms-linked "Flying Wedge" formation pictured there at right. If you think you're going to get through them without a battle, I've got a Steve Forbes candidacy for president I'd really like you to endorse.

Unfortunately, however, Kristanne and I just aren't very good at Sidewalk Chicken. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that I'm not very good at Sidewalk Chicken. Kristanne has mastered the Inviso-Gaze and is able to look through other people on the sidewalk as if they weren't even there. Something about this look seems to tell other people that they'd best be getting out of her way -- even the Czechs tend to yield to her.

Our next stop was the Prague City Museum, a museum which although housed in a really attractive building happened to have some rather remarkably mundane exhibits ("Umm, look -- here's a glass case full of assorted rubble"). Adding to the general mediocrity of this particular museum was the fact that the main exhibit we wanted to see (documenting the Renaissance in Prague) happened to be closed indefinitely. We were beginning to wonder if the entire city of Prague (minus the Mucha Museum) might not be closed. Could this have something to do with the fact that all the people who should be working at these museums have been stuck in the damn ballet for the last six months, mercilessly applauding when they should be at their jobs? One had to wonder.

Fortunately, however, a quick stroll down Wenceslas Square revealed a bookstore that did, in fact, have the Blue Guide to Prague for which Kristanne was positively lusting at this point. The Blue Guide turned out to be a real boon -- it enabled us to find a whole host of new sites in Prague that were closed indefinitely. We might never have known what we almost got to see were it not for the Blue Guide! That particular closed site at left is the 14th century Bethlehem Chapel where the Protestant-Before-His-Time Jan Hus angered many a Catholic by giving mass in Czech instead of in Latin. I'm sure you can imagine that this ticked off all the Latins in Europe plenty.

A malaise was creeping over the Office Odyssey Experience. Everything was closed. Everything was sucking. Not even a rousing game of Sidewalk Chicken could lift our spirits this time -- we needed something more powerful, something guaranteed to put a lift back in your step. Something that never fails to turn your corners up and get you back to grinning while you whistle your way down Happy Go Lucky Street. Something very much like deep-fried cheese sticks down at the local T.G.I. Friday's.

Ack. Did I really say that? Though I'm sure we're straining what little "Euro-Traveler" credibility we have left by copping to this, we did actually go to T.G.I. Friday's (a place I've never actually even been in the States) and partook of what they had to offer. Apparently, part of what T.G.I. Friday's always has to offer is Personality. Each and every employee is required to wear at least ten Pieces of Personality (buttons, badges, funny wigs, and bumper stickers that say things like "I'm Your Fajita Friend") on their T.G.I. Friday's uniform so that you, the customer, are assured of their Perpetual Perkiness. My vision was actually beginning to blur from a sort of Perky Personality overload, as I think you can tell from that double-visioned snap of our waiter shown at right.

After soiling ourselves in T.G.I. Friday's, we needed to reclaim our mantle, reaffirm our commitment to European culture. Fortunately, Mozart the Ticketseller can smell weakness at 500 yards. The instant we waddled out of the restaurant, he was on us like Puff Daddy on a cover song, his powdered wig swinging back and forth as he made his usual fervent approach. Somewhat saturated with deep-fried cheese sticks as we were, a sprinted escape was out of the question. So, this time we settled for season tickets to the Ring Cycle that the Prague Opera very much hopes to put on in the year 2004 and two tickets to a chamber music concert starting in another hour. Mozart is making a living off us, I tell you that much.

The chamber music, although wonderful, was very much a show expressly for tourists. To start with, it was short. No self-respecting Praguer would ever attend any cultural event that didn't last at least four hours. And, if through some bizarre extenuating circumstances, it looked like the event in question was going to run short, Praguers would definitely extend the proceedings to a more reasonable duration through sheer applause, sustained and adulating.

Our crowd, however, was an entirely different story. I personally observed at least four different men start to look at their watches about three minutes into the first piece (Vivaldi's 'Four Seasons,' by the way). Then, at the conclusion of each season (you've probably correctly guessed from the title that there are four in this particular piece), at least one person would get up out of their chair with a perfunctory clap of their hands, grab their coat and make for the exit, only to be tugged back into their chair by their wives as the musicians kicked in with the next season. The fellow sitting next to me (a fiftyish, well-dressed male), was slumped into his seat with an air of total boredom five minutes in to the show. After ten minutes, he was audibly sighing each time a pause that could possibly signal the end to his ordeal was broken with yet more music. Some guys were even beginning to give the musicians what can only be termed threatening looks, looks that basically said, "Listen, pal, cut the music if you know what's good for you."

In addition to the bored males, there was some other questionable behavior going on. For example, neither Kristanne nor I particularly appreciated the lady behind us loudly humming along with most of the first season (mainly because it was interfering with the naps we were well on our way to starting). After several incredulous stares from us, she finally got the message and contented herself with tapping her foot and intermittently making little "motorboat" sounds with her lips. Providing counterpoint to all this was the manic American fellow in the front row (there by himself) who was generally carrying on as if he had never seen something as great as this in his entire life. Several times, he tried to incite standing ovations, only to find himself clapping loudly and shouting "Bravo!" while the other surrounding men fixed him with their death glares. This was definitely not a standing ovation kinda crowd. When the concert finally ended, this little fellow made a huge show of going up to shake all the musicians' hands, all the while exclaiming things like, "I've never seen something so great in my entire life!" The music was good, but these folks were definitely still students -- there had been a couple noticeable clunkers during the performance. Yo Yo Ma was definitely not in the house, if you know what I'm saying (neither was My My Ma, but that's another story). Something was up with this guy, a suspicion that was only confirmed when we ran across him ten minutes later in the Old Town Square practically stalking the orchestra's female violin player, asking her out to coffee where they could discuss her music more. The violin player was having none of it though, sprinting off with a speed that made me think Mozart the Ticketseller must have been somewhere in the vicinity.

It was a strange week in Prague, full of excitement and good experiences but still, somehow...off. Museums were closed. People were clapping for a suspiciously long time. Weirdos were stalking violin players. We felt as if something was definitely going on that we didn't know about. This sensation was only heightened two days later when we picked up the International Herald Tribune and saw the story you see pictured there at right, indicating that Wenceslas Square had been the site of a huge anti-government rally the day before. Umm, it was? Apparently, Kristanne and I need to get out of the apartment a little more often. According to the article's timeframe, I had actually been in Wenceslas Square about an hour after the rally concluded (looking in the local record store for the new Beck album, natch), but somehow spaced the whole thing. Perhaps Kristanne's Inviso-Gaze is having an effect on me, too? Perhaps I'm losing my mind? At least I didn't find myself in the picture of the rally in the newspaper the next day...that would have really made me feel crazy.

We were beginning to wonder if there wasn't some sort of Czech Conspiracy against the Office Odyssey. Why else would they be closing the museums we wanted to go to, running us down on the sidewalks, and forgetting to tell us about the anti-government rallies? The next night only served to reinforce our suspicion. As I walked home across Old Town Square on Sunday night, I was surprised to see that it was thronged with people in costumes, throwing firecrackers at one another (what, they think they're Swiss now, or something?), dancing, and just generally behaving like it was some sort of big holiday. Which, not coincidentally, it was. Again, completely unbeknownst to us, the Czechs were going ahead and having their traditional big Christmas Festival in the Old Town Square without telling us. It's a good thing Kristanne and I weren't here during the Velvet Revolution -- we'd probably still think the place was socialist.

And so ends another week in Prague! Be sure to check back next week as we head into our final week here in the Czech Republic (unless the borders are closed and they forgot to tell us). See you next time on the Odyssey!

Last Week's Front Page Picture

As for that picture there at left, that's the Mighty Kristanne hanging out in Bethlehem Square, checking out her guide book and intimidating me with facts. For those of you who think that Kristanne might actually be smiling at me in that picture, allow me to remove the wool from your eyes -- that smile is actually Kristanne baring her teeth at me for not paying attention. This is the classic "Pre Michelin Guide Head Swat" pose that Kristanne adopts five to ten seconds before getting medieval on my person. For those of you out there wondering what to get Kristanne for Christmas, I beg of you, please refrain from purchasing her additional Michelin Guides. Non-proliferation is the key to detente!