Day 28: Quiet

Saturday, June 9, 2012 

I brought my loom back to the Penzion with me last night. After I woke up this afternoon, I finished tapestry number 3, then spent the rest of the day (what little there was) drawing comics on my laptop. Another lazy Saturday. 

Prague - or the district we're in, at least - seems to shut down almost completely on Saturdays. Most of the stores are closed, and traffic is nearly nonexistent except on the main streets. 

When I got hungry, I walked a few blocks - the weather was gorgeous, the streets practically deserted - to get a few slices of pizza for lunch. (Giallo Rosso, the tiny hole-in-the-wall pizzeria near the Metro stop, lets you get pizza by the slice. The ham and spinach variety is my current favorite.) I ate them in the park while watching pigeons - it's amazing how different they all are if you look closely - and listening to children playing in the fountain on the other end. To paraphrase Terry Pratchett, it's a pleasant sound when you can't hear what they're actually saying. 

After pizza, I walked back across the street to the bakery next door to the pizza place and got a slice of chocolate cake, which I ate while looking out the front door at much the same view. Delicious. On the way back to the Penzion, I checked the hours of the Vietnamese place - it's one of the restaurants that's open on Saturdays - and stopped at the corner potraviny to get some shampoo to refill my nearly empty bottle. 

This is what I love about living in a city. Anything you need is within walking distance - usually several of what you need, and even more if you count places you can get to by the Metro. Lunch, dinner, a visit to the park, and a brief shopping trip today made for a total of maybe twenty minutes of walking, and I could have done it in less if I'd done less wandering around. 

Of course, the downside of living in a city is that everything is also within walking distance of several thousand other people, so it's hard to get any privacy. 

That's why I had dinner at Bong Sen again. It's one of the friendliest - and even more so, the quietest - restaurants I've ever visited. In a city full of noisy bars, crowded restaurants, and hotels full of college students (which can get noisy sometimes), it is an oasis of peace and good food. 

Of course, I've only been there after 9:30 pm, which might have something to do with it. For the sake of their business, I hope it's busier during the day. 

Tonight, I was one of only three customers in the restaurant; after I'd finished my rice and vegetables (69 crowns, or about $4 - it's also one of the only restaurants in the entire city where you can get dinner for less than 100), they let me stay and write until closing time (10:30). This one hour might end up being the source of five or six future Hamjamser posts. 

I might have found a place to go regularly. It's a shame I won't be able to do so after I return home. In the meantime, if you're ever in Prague, the address is Řipska 19, Vinohrady. Stop here for dinner at least once. 

Day 27: Solitaire

Friday, June 8, 2012 

Weaving all day! Finished tapestry number 2 and started number 3! Stripes and gradients and an attempt at a fringe! I might be addicted to weaving! Yay! 

The soundtrack for this project turned out to be the album Right Outta Nowhere, by Christine Kane. Good music for weaving. Good music for anything, really. 

The power cord for my laptop inexplicably broke in my backpack earlier this week, so I've been using my laptop sparingly to conserve power. Today, I managed to get in touch with the Institute's IT expert, who loaned me an old spare cord he had. I can type again! 

After all the walking yesterday, I didn't really feel like going anywhere today. (Besides, I had weaving to do.) I'm not sure if I left the Institute at all before the trip back to Vinohrady in the evening. This is something that happens to me fairly often: I'll start making something, look up a little while later, and wonder when it got so dark outside... 

There are actually signs up in the Metro forbidding passengers to put stickers on the walls and doors (at least, I'm pretty sure that's what the signs say). Despite this, someone had looked at the lines and dots of the station diagrams above the doors... 

...And had added a little PacMan and ghosts. 

I had dinner at Bong Sen, the Vietnamese restaurant around the corner from the Penzion. I got a large amount of meat and vegetables for a small amount of money, with a white pillow of rice on the side. Delicious. It was nearly closing time, so the restaurant was quiet, nearly deserted except for the wait staff and a small girl (related, I think) whom they were helping to practice counting in Czech. I think she was better at it than I am yet. 

I have found myself returning to the Penzion later and later each day. (Still never after 11 pm, I think.) Partly, this is because I have a tendency to work and forget to eat dinner until after the Institute closes. Partly, though, it's because the later I get back, the fewer people will try to talk to me on the way up to the room. 

They keep inviting me to clubs and bars and restaurants. This is very nice of them, and I appreciate the thought. I've passed by the doors of the occasional bar and club, though, and they seem to contain mostly alcohol, crowds, and noise. If I wanted that kind of fun, I could just beat my head against a wall for a few hours. 

Dinner might be nice, if it was a quiet restaurant; after about 9 pm, though, I'm rarely in a mood to spend time with people, or talk to people, or remember that people exist. That's what I do in the morning and afternoon. All I want after sundown is to shut myself in a quiet room and forget that there's a world outside my head and the book or screen in front of it. 

I am a nearly complete introvert - always have been - and I'm happy that way. But I hate to disappoint the extroverts who invite me to places. I like these people, I really am grateful for the offer, and I can only hope that they aren't offended that I have to keep refusing it. 

Day 26: Stitches and Stories

Thursday, June 7, 2012 

Having finished my first tapestry - a sampler of sorts - I started a second one today, a somewhat more ambitious design of stripes and concentric circles. I'm starting to figure this out. 

Our trip after class today was to a textile academy in Prague. Like most buildings in the city, it was tall and narrow, with a staircase looking out onto the roofs of the neighboring buildings. We started in the lace archive. This was a room full of wide, flat drawers full of lace patterns, embroidery, beading, and other fine work with thread. There was even a series of lace designs based on drawings by children, many of which were quite beautiful; the hedgehogs and the giraffe with little lace rosettes for spots were some of my favorites. (Photographs, unfortunately, were not allowed.) 

Some of the most exquisite work in the collection - and, I suspect, in the world - was by the legendary lacemaker Emilie Paličkova. Some of her work is so fine that it hardly looks like fibers anymore. It looks like it was etched on the air, painted by a brush with a single bristle, spun of cobwebs beaded with dew. 

At the academy, we also got to see weaving, printing, a couple of different drawing classes, sculpture, fashion design… They seem to do just about everything with any relation to textiles there. 

The rest of the afternoon was fairly uneventful. I'm trying to use up my remaining food before I buy more, so my lunch was bread, bread, tangerine and bread. After that, I wove some more. For dinner, I got a sausage at one of the booths in Wenceslas Square, with a Toblerone from a nearby potraviny for dessert. I had never tried these segmented, triangular chocolate bars before (do we have them in the US?), but after reading about them in Australian romance novels, I thought I'd give them a try. Quite good. 

The same student who found out about the blind tour and the Choco Cafe (she really does have a gift for finding things) had invited me and another friend along on a ghost tour this evening. We left at dusk and met in one of the busier under-building passages. 

The guide was a young man ("young" meaning perhaps a little older than us) dressed in a long black coat and top hat, with dark circles under his eyes (makeup?) and a vague, haunted expression. 

I'm not sure how much of his demeanor was an act, but it was perfect for the ghost tour. I could never quite place his accent - British? Czech? American? Italian? - and I forgot to ask him where he was from. Every sentence seemed to have an extra little half-syllable hooked onto the end, a bit like Jimmy Derante. ("From here you can see the palaceh… It's not haunted, I just stopped here because I like the vieweh.") 

The first half of the tour took place above ground. Coincidentally, it also took place entirely within my assigned section of the city, which meant that I was at least slightly familiar with all the places we visited. The guide had a substantial collection of the most grim and grisly gruesome legends from Prague - torture, witch burnings, executions, live entombments, a darker version of the clockmaker story... 

He told us a couple dozen of them in the course of the tour. This was only shortly after dark, so the city was still busy, and the touches of melodrama were - intentionally, I think - more funny than creepy. It was a fun way to hear some of the city's darker history and legends. 

The second and best part of the tour, worth the price of admission all by itself, was the tour of the old dungeons and torture chambers beneath the town hall. This is some of the most terrifyingly solid stonework I've seen here - not surprising, considering its function. There are places where you can still see the words scratched by prisoners on the walls. There are no lights down there - or, if there are, they were turned off - so we walked around by the light of lanterns and any flashlights we'd brought with us. (Conveniently, I carry a small one in my backpack all the time.) 

According to the guide, many of the underground rooms used to be the ground floor. Medieval Prague's waste disposal system was, in a word, nonexistent, so garbage and other things gradually built up around the buildings and actually raised the ground level of the city. Like many medieval cities, Prague is largely built on Prague. 

Day 25, Part 2: A Feast for the Tongue

Wednesday, June 6, 2012 (continued) 

After three and a half weeks in Prague, I decided today that I was going to actually eat in a restaurant for once. I hadn't until now. After wandering around the area near Betlemske Náměsti for a while, I finally found a restaurant that had everything I was looking for: Czech food, prices below 200 crowns, and the sound of people quietly enjoying themselves inside. (Several restaurants had passed requirements one and two but failed number three. I don't like eating in noisy places.) 

It was called the Restaurace Pražský most u Valšů. (Address: Betlemska 5.) The interior was decorated in an odd sort of modern Gothic style - chairs in odd geometric shapes made of rough wood and cast iron, dim wall lamps with skeletal figures in drippy metal on top, and so on. (Sadly, all my camera batteries were dead by then.) In contrast to the decoration, they seemed to be playing the Best of Michael Jackson all through dinner. I like Michael Jackson's music, so that was fine, although I would have preferred Czech music. 

(I have yet to hear much Czech music in Prague, with the exception of street musicians. Judging by what the hotels and clubs play, Czech pop music seems to be American pop music a few years behind.) 

There were more tables in the basement, wedged between the giant vats and barrels of brewing equipment, but I ended up at a small table in sight of the front door. I looked over the menu for a while and got dumplings and a pork whatchamacallit stuffed with cheese and mushrooms. 

It was quite possibly the best pork, of any kind, that I have ever eaten. 

After dinner, of course, it was time to find dessert. (This is one thing I've found out while I've been here: I can skip meals without much trouble, but not desserts.) I was already fairly sure where I was going.

The Choco Cafe is a small building on one of the little side streets off of Betlemske Náměsti. A fellow student - who seems to have a gift for finding the most interesting things in Prague - recommended it a few days ago. 

I'm glad she did. 

As this was my first visit, I looked over the menu of various flavor combinations, but chose the simplest (and cheapest) plain chocolate. It came in a teacup - larger than I'd expected - and it was complete bliss. It was like the world's best chocolate bar, melted so that you could drink it.

I ate it in the smallest spoonfuls I could to make it last. 

I also ordered the caramel sherbet, to balance out the chocolate. I wondered about the price of the sherbet at first. It cost more than the chocolate, and the chocolate was… well... the chocolate. It was hard to see how anything could be worth more. 

Until, that is, the sherbet actually arrived.

It was a glistening sculpture of dessert topped with whipped cream and airy slices of cookie. 

Together, chocolate and sherbet created the perfect counterpoint. The light, cold sweetness of the sherbet balanced the rich chocolate and kept it from becoming overwhelming. Then I started combining them in the same spoonful… 

I think I spent most of an hour sitting there with my eyes closed, taking spoon after tiny spoon full of chocolate and sherbet. The French ladies at the next table probably thought I was in some sort of trance. 

I'm not sure they would have been wrong. 

(Note: my camera batteries were still dead, in case you were wondering. These photos were taken on a later visit to the Cafe, as I had to go back again to properly document the experience. The trouble I go to for the sake of completeness...)

Day 25, Part 1: A Feast for the Eyes

Wednesday, June 6, 2012 

We learned tapestry weaving this morning from our Fibers teacher and a guest teacher. After the basic technique, we learned how to make patterns and shapes, then how to remove tapestries from the loom (we're using simple hand looms - just boards with nails in them) and how to attach a new set of warp threads. 

I've found that I enjoy weaving. There's something satisfying about it. It's like painting with yarn - but the warp and weft threads (I now know the difference) give it more built-in structure. Weaving, after all, is one of those mediums that were using pixels for thousands of years before the computer was invented. It also seems like it could be an almost infinitely flexible medium if you were familiar enough with it. 

My first tapestry, in progress. I finished it and promptly started coming up with ideas for a second one. I might end up doing a lot more of this… 

After class, we took the tram across the river to the National Gallery (Národní Galerie), Prague's major modern art museum, stopping on the way to look at more street repairs and a tiger moth on a lamp post.

The building itself is actually one of the least interesting ones I've seen in Prague...

It's really more of a backdrop to the giant sculptures in the front. 

Again, the museum was built around a main staircase. Here, though, there was an enormous central opening that cut through all the floors of the building, allowing you to look across and see art on the other side.

It was fun to look over, see something interesting on a lower floor, and then wander over there trying to find it. 

We started in a temporary exhibit - a series of paintings by Alfons Mucha, called the Slav Epic. They were monumental, gigantic, cinematic paintings. Each one was two stories high, most of them overflowing with crowds and festivals and saints and allegorical figures painted larger than life and in exquisite detail. We had a booklet that explained each painting - fortunately, since many of them were loaded with history and allegory five and six layers deep. They were painted with what must have been half an ocean of egg tempera. None of them used full black or full white; they were all in a series of subtle middle tones, ranked with the finest control I've ever seen in a painting to create a sense of depth with, in many cases, hardly any variation in value. They were like visions seen with half-lidded eyes, like the shining scenes of a dream, otherworldly and yet vivid enough that I felt I could have simply stepped into them. 

Photographs were forbidden in the gallery, which was just as well. No photograph could possibly have done the paintings justice. 

They were kept out of sight, apparently, during World War II; their sense of freedom and pride in the culture and history of the Slavic people was not something that those in charge wanted publicized at the time. (Mucha painted the last few paintings in the series fairly late in his life, to celebrate the independence that had taken so long to win. He died the year before the war broke out.) After the war, the paintings were split up for decades. This is the first time since then that the complete series has been exhibited together. 

Apparently, there is discussion of giving it a permanent space somewhere in Prague. I hope it gets one. 

After far too short a time, we moved on to the rest of the museum. I kept up with the group fairly well until we got to the galleries of early 20th century painting. There, there were more František Kupka paintings, a panoramic mural by Alfons Mucha that spanned nearly an entire wall (still small in comparison to the Epic), some beautiful work by Czech Impressionist painters… 

After a while, the teacher came back, found me wandering dreamily from painting to elegant painting, and brought me down a few floors to make sure I saw some of the more modern art as well before the group got too far ahead and lost me altogether. 

I'm not posting photographs of the paintings, since those never turn out well. I did make a list of the names of my favorite painters (aside from the ones listed above); however, I have misplaced it since. I'll add them to this post if I find them again. 

In addition to paintings and sculptures, the modern section of the museum had jewelry...

Tiles and metalwork...

Architectural models...

Glasswork ranging from the elegant to the spectacular...

A surprising amount of industrial design (particularly appliances shown in various World Expositions)...

And a lot of the quiet, subtly playful pieces that are some of my favorite things in modern art.

Fastener II, by Běla Kolářová: a button made of buttons.

One of a series of... I'm not sure what to call them. Texture paintings? They had no color variation to speak of - just elaborate, marbled, metallic surfaces. Beautiful work.

 Destroyed Music, by Milan Knížák.

I particularly liked the record that had had guitar strings nailed across it. Ruined for one type of music, altered for another...

A whole platform full of clocks, second hands only, almost - but not quite - ticking to the same beat. The sound of them all was incredible.

Ouch.

This is not a camera problem - the whole room, floor to ceiling, was painted in this screaming yellow. The most unsettling art in the museum was in here. I didn't photograph the other scuptures.

Table - Non-Table, also by Milan Knížák. 

I stayed in the Gallery, wandering from room to room, until nearly closing time. I could have stayed for a week. 

Day 24: Everywhere but Europe

Tuesday, June 5, 2012 

More museums!

First was the Naprstek Museum of Asian, African, and American Cultures. 

(My apologies for the quality of the photographs in this post. The lighting today played havoc with my camera, indoors and out.) 

The collection was apparently started by a renowned Czech traveler (for whom it's named) who liked to bring things back from non-European cultures. Like all the Prague museums so far, the Naprstek seemed taller than it was wide. It was centered around an open stairwell similar to those at the Young Art Museum. 

There were intricate mosaics in the many, many staircase landings. 

Some highlights, with photos where there was enough light: 

A map from a Pacific island area made of loose-woven reeds and shells. I assume it was somehow a map of the islands, but I couldn't tell whether the lines represented currents, winds, routes from one island to the next, or something else entirely. I wish I knew. 

A South American pitcher which, I realized, was the same basic shape as pitchers I've seen from Europe, Japan, China, North America, and practically every other part of the world that's ever invented pottery. It wasn't the generic pitcher shape either, but one of those ones with a wide bowl, narrow neck, and tall, arched handle. I thought it was interesting that so many cultures have independently arrived at the same shape. 

Some exquisite Aztec and Mayan metalwork, exhibited - to great and glittering effect - in a dark gallery with nowhere near enough light for photography. 


An actual piece of Mayan writing on a giant stone tablet. 

Some of the more interesting cultural hybrid objects from North America, such as the axe-like thing made of a European gun stock decorated with brass tacks. 

A pair of beautifully decorated human skulls from somewhere in the Pacific. 

An intricate model boat, also from the Pacific. 

The restroom signs were interesting as well. 

Many of my favorite things, as usual, were the wooden and ceramic animals from various cultures. 

After the Naprstek museum, we walked over to an architecture museum that was showing an exhibit on "Earthships" - a series of self-sufficient houses designed to be built out of trash and debris, which people have been building in areas devastated by natural disasters, such as Haiti. (There are pictures on their website.) The photographs are beautiful. Most of the houses use glass or plastic bottles, stacked and cemented together like bricks, and the sunlight shines through them like a multicolored stained glass window. 

On the way back, we passed through Betlemske Náměsti, where I stopped to get gelato at the little Vietnamese food stand again. 

There was sidewalk repair going on a little farther on. I've seen places where the cobblestones and sidewalk tiles have been ripped up, but this is the first time I've seen them being hammered back in. This explains the high-pitched tapping noises we've been hearing at dawn every day. 

Another student and I also saw some sort of long-necked animal - a weasel or one of their many relatives - peeking out from behind a drain pipe on the roof of a nearby building. It ducked into a hole beneath the eaves, flicking a long tail behind it, before we could get a picture of it. We waited for a while, but it never came out again.