Day 4, Part 1: The Explore

Wednesday, May 16, 2012 

One of the strangest things here is not recognizing any of the birds. (Except the pigeons.) I'm used to recognizing practically every bird I see, and here, they're all unfamiliar. (Except the pigeons.) 

Some new birds: 

Western Jackdaw, Corvus monedula 

Eurasian Jay, Garrulus glandarius

Eurasian Magpie, Pica pica 

(No photograph; they are quick and elusive birds.) 

The Eurasian Jay is especially magnificent - a big, golden-brown bird with a black mustache and a bar of bright blue along each wing. There was one sitting on a building near the Institute. According to Wikipedia, they live across all of Europe and Asia, eat practically everything, and normally live in forests, but have been moving into cities recently. 

The Jackdaw is an elegant bird - black shading gently into a high, ash-gray collar around its neck. They or the magpies, depending on where you go, seem to take the place of crows in America. 

For the first Fibers class assignment, we split up into teams of two and went out into the city to sketch and photograph whatever interested us. Each team had an assigned section of the Old Town (Staré Město) to explore. 

Ours included the massive Gothic archway at one end; 

a corner of the Old Town Square at the other;

and a mix of tourist avenues and twisty little side-street mazes in between. 

We spent most of our time with only the vaguest idea of where we were. Thank goodness for maps and street signs. 

Even the sidewalks in Prague are beautiful. They're made of thick stone tiles in various shades of red, gray, and white, arranged in different patterns on different streets. (If there's any system to the patterns, I haven't been paying attention enough to figure it out.) Some of the patterns are fairly complex. 

Then there's the metalwork, the statuary, the elaborate and multi-layered graffiti, the architecture in every style from Gothic to Renaissance to modern to flagrantly Rococo…

I took 200 photographs in two hours, and I would have taken more if I hadn't had to spend so much time navigating. Prague is as lovely as it is confusing.