Prague is underneath the snow! Finally two days ago with more than a month delay Prague has covered itself in white and reveals its charm more than in any other season of the year…

Quite out of the blue suddenly I felt it again – the creative urge to take my camera and to go out and take pictures. So yesterday night I took my camera and went out - alone, just walked around downtown while sucking in the cleansing freezing night air and thinking about just how much I actually enjoy this and how much I love winter!

And thinking about it I decided to capture the moments I breathed in as well… So here it goes…. A small taste of what the atmosphere of nighttime Prague all covered in white feels like.

Hope you’ll enjoy!

It feels like the new wave of “modern art” has literally flooded Prague this summer… The so-called masterpieces are installed everywhere you look around right now – a whole regiment of plastic penguins lined up just several meters off the Charles Bridge lighting up the whole place in the shades of neon yellow, a red plastic alligator installed right on the main wall of Sovovy Mlyny Museum, a pair of kitschy red plastic poodles placed in front of it in the position of “just like standing around”, or the other couple of gigantic red colored rabbits sadly looking through the bars locked behind the tall iron gate in the courtyard of the museum…

What’s up with this? Why do people produce such disgusting pieces, dare to place them in the very middle of downtown to distract the visitor’s attention from the historic feel of Prague and yet call it art? I understand that modern art can serve as a very valuable instrument of communication when reflecting the new with the history, but the most important point taken into consideration should always be an original idea and ability of such piece to create a certain cohesion with the historical core of the city… Why don’t these pieces have any taste what-so-ever then?

On the contrary to the plastic art crafts, there are also certain pieces of art in Prague that have a bigger potential to address the audience with an original idea and are installed with a clear vision of the artist of how the new and the old should interact together. It’s a shame though that these pieces are usually hidden and it takes a certain amount of inquisitiveness and an adventurous mind to discover them. One of the places where it’s possible to find such pieces could be the view of Prague from the forrest in Prague 8 (where I happen to be living), where some creative soul not so long ago installed a couple of rusty camels made of old iron pipes, who actually happened to be perfectly fitting in the surrounding natural environment.

The interesting fact about this installation is that it looks absolutely natural – like an old couple of camels just stopped by to feed on grass and enjoy the amazing view of Prague that this place has to offer… Their rustiness gives it all a feel that they’ve been standing there since ever just looking at Prague which drags the visitors’ attention not at the camels themselves, but at the view they’ve been obviously enjoying for so long… It’s one of those pieces of art engaging an original thought and creativity and challenging a person’s mind. And that to me is art – the one that truly deserves attention!

The confusion arisen after coming back from the States after two months is slowly settling down… The last weekend was amazing and it brought me back to realizing how wonderful, relaxed and easy-going place Prague really is!

My friend and I took a ride on a swan paddle-boat around the river Vltava and immediately became the centre of attention for all the curious tourists and other paddle-boats fellows, who started taking pictures of the plastic swan plowing the waters alongside the National Theatre, Charles Bridge and the Prague Castle.

We were enjoying the ride so much! And of course, we couldn’t resist taking pictures as well! As the sun was setting down and it was generally very cloudy that day, the swan’s head on the dramatic sky created really nice images.

Reminiscent of the story that happened in one little town in Germany last year, where one of the local swans fell in love with its significant other plastic paddle boat and got very depressed and even lifeless over the winter when the boat season was over, we were also observing the interaction of the swans with our plastic one and found this observation to be quite funny actually…

If you’re thinking how could also you capture a gigantic swan sticking its noisy beak in the major historical sites of Prague, then rent this one and only paddle-boat at Zofin Island and try it out on the river Vltava yourself! It really is worth it as the atmosphere of this ride is truly unforgettable!

When I spoke about the unique atmosphere of a pure relax that Prague has to offer, I meant not only my “swan experience” from last Sunday but also the Jazz Week festival that is currently going on at the Old Town Square. Where else than Prague – and now honestly – can you sit down right on the cobble stone ground of one of the majorily crowded places in all of this country, drink a wonderful beer from a plastic cup on a public and listen to some high quality jazz by Jiri Stivin Quartet for free in a less than close distance to a bum sitting on his plastic bag from the local supermarket, happily stinking 10 meters around but being obviously passionate about jazz and clapping in the rhythm with the rest of the listeners? I don’t know of any such place that offers both locals and visitors as low-keyed atmosphere as Prague!

We all know that the customer service is not necessarily the #1 in Europe, it still has a LONG way to go, but the mindset of people living here is simply: easy! So PLEASE don’t try to apply such high requirements that you would expect from the city of your origin and try to take Prague for what it is because it undoubtedly has other (and better) things to offer! What can seem as a lapse on one hand is on the other hand enabling us to live the way we do… So simply try to go with the flow and acclimatize to our way of living and feeling things. You won’t regret, I promise! If you are opened enough, you will get into it very quickly.  Just don’t take things so deadly serious and take it easy, after all you’re in Prague, right?

Strange, Prague seems so distant all of a sudden… It feels like I came back in a totally different place than the one that I left for the US… Everything around me feels so grey, detached, unwilling and uninteresting…

It is so awkward coming back home and seeing the postcards on the table that I sent to the members of my family a couple weeks ago. “Who sent these?” is going through my head. It feels almost unreal that it’s only a week ago when I went for a trip to New York City on my own and came back to DC for the last day of internship and the graduation ceremony in Georgetown. Straight back to the reality of my life back home where every single day feels the same I am questioning myself “was it only a dream or was it real”? 

I miss DC, I miss the people from all around the world that I became close friends with, I miss even the hot humid DC weather which I would have never though I would, I miss the atmosphere of the program, I miss myself over there, but I know that coming back now it wouldn’t be the same… Why do the good things always have to end? It’s probably because we wouldn’t be able to realize how good they really were otherwise…

After realizing that for my own happiness in life I need to be independent, need to live internationally and experience things on my own, I feel like I’ve outgrown this place from the inside. I feel trapped in a transition place that I call home between coming back from the US and leaving for Cardiff, Wales in a bit more than a month.

In the meantime, I would like to post some of the impressions of Prague that I took through pictures earlier this week while walking around downtown again for the first time in last two months…