The Doors and Madonna

The Doors and Madonna

Second day with no luggage. The Delta website tells us that our bags made it onto the ATL->JFK flight (our original itinerary), but for some reason are still sitting at JFK. As with the “who” of the lost luggage, nobody seems to know the “why” of its (hopefully temporary) encampment at JFK. “Adrift at Kennedy Airport” is a long short story by Richard Bach (author of Jonathon Livingston Seagull) in which he tells us that “Eighty percent of the people in Kennedy Airport this minute are lost.” Let’s hope Delta/AirFrance/AcmeAirlines doesn’t use his essay as an instruction manual.

We have a leisurely breakfast of eggs, toast, and very thin bacon, all of which we’d purchased at the little grocery a couple doors down from our apartment. Speaking of doors, there are lots of interesting ones around here; they go with the interesting architecture. Prague is one of the few European capital cities to have survived the World Wars relatively unscathed. Also, it’s been around a long, long time. The city is a showcase of all the styles of European architecture, from Romanesque (actual Roman buildings) to modern. I’ve skipped a lot and no doubt will write more on architecture (see this website for a good overview [though it skips Art Deco, inexplicably, since there's plenty of Art Nouveau AND Art Deco in Prague), but some of the doors we see on our walk to the grocery are examples of Baroque/Rococo and Art Nouveau and Art Deco;

Now THIS is a door! And the clock is right twice a day!

Art Deco double-door. Just a normal door on our street.

Not so much for the doorway, but follow up from the door. The wall art looks like something from Tolkien. Art Nouveau, I'd say.

This is our doorway. Not sure what the style is...Neo-Classic Chubby Baby?

Again, This is just on the way to the grocery, which is only a few doors down from our building.

After breakfast, we call Air France and the nice person there tells us that our bags actually made it onto Delta flight 411 and should be in Prague by noon and delivered to our doorstep shortly thereafter. We take this with a grain of salt, though, as we’d been told by another unfortunate while standing in the lost baggage line yesterday that he’d had the same promise made to him, yet here he was, back in line at the airport, three days later. We decide to tour very locally and keep the cell phone ringer set to “LOUD” so that we're handy if the luggage delivery guy calls.

As I mentioned, the monastery of St Agnes of Bohemia is close so it's an easy decision to visit it first. Here’s a photo of it from our apartment window:

It’s a large complex spanning that curved roof on the left to the spire on the right. It houses a medieval museum of some importance, and is highlighted in Rick Steves’ book:

Sadly, I must concur with Mr. Steves: “…many visitors might find the art itself to be, well, pretty boring…” It’s mainly Madonna-and-Childs, but I will say that the “S-curvy bodies and warm smiles of Bohemia’s 'Beautiful Style' " were interesting for the first two or three dozen (it seemed) statues:

Compare to a few centuries later, and we see Madonna was still rockin' the S-curvy body. She left the kid at home, though:

The convent grounds and some of its buildings were more interesting. Several pieces of modern art are strewn about, and much of the add-on architecture is also modern. By modern I mean from the 50s to the 70s: 

Now that just ain't right.

We lunched at Au Gourmand and discovered that the Czech really love their pork. I had a traditional Czech chicken skewer. It had as many chunks of pork as it did chicken. Claudia had a chicken Caesar salad, and by gosh, it had big strips of bacon (not bacon bits).  All good, though.

We later went to the Old Town Square and saw the Astronomical clock chime, walked up Parizska Street with all of it’s high-end stores (more about these later), then came on back to the apartment and waited for the luggage delivery, which finally came at 10:30 PM (!). Both suitcases were fine, everything in order, and only 28 hours after we'd arrived. No big deal.

To celebrate and slake our thirst, we went to Lokal, a sort-of brewpub that is the latest craze of the hipsters. It's one long room with three (!) service bars on one side and a single row of tables on the other:

The place was packed, but Claudia and I were able to squeeze in at that table just up from the window, right across from the tap. I must've looked especially worn out as the bartender himself brought me over a mug of beer without any signal from me (they had tons of waitstaff, but I guess I just looked that sorry!) He just nodded and smiled knowingly as a I thanked him. He knew what I needed. Claudia, as usual, looked much more presentable and so had to wait to order normally from a waitress. 

The Czechs are very proud of their beer. It’s said that few ever emigrate, even in the worst of times, because they’d miss their local brews too much. They are most famous for their pilsners. A pilsner is a type of lager, originally made in Pilsen which is in the south of the Czech state of Bohemia. Obviously we’ve only been here a short time, so I haven’t sampled a lot of beer yet, but the few I’ve had are changing my mind about pilsners. 

The king of beers here is not Budweiser (although they the original and true Budweiser is made here), but rather Pilsener Urquell. This is what they overwhelmingly sell at Lokal. Now, this is a pretty good pilsner, and I'm glad the bartender brought one right over without me even asking. BUT, we could not figure out what the attraction is for Lokal. As we're discovering with most Prague bars, only one or two brands of beer are sold on the premises. Urquell is decent. The food is very standard sausages, cabbage, and potatoes. Yet earlier in the day when we passed by, lines were out the door and a block long! And every single table was packed and people were standing cheek-by-jowl about the three service bars. Ah well, I guess it's a hipster thing. Regardless, I must say that as crowded as the place is, the service is great and the beer and foods fresh.

One last note about that: we've found that the Czech people at museums, shops, pubs, everywhere, are very friendly and easy-going. In fact, I forgot to mention that on our first night, with no luggage in sight and tired from the flight, we wandered across the street to Chez Marcel. 

This photo is taken looking the other direction from our apartment window. Sort of fitting: to the left is a monastery, to the right a pub!

The waiter and waitress were great here. They offered to act as the repository for our luggage so that we wouldn't have to wait around for it to be delivered. "We do it all the time! And we're here all the time! Most of our foreign customers fly through Paris, and so there's LOTS of lost luggage!" 

Of equal importance, the waitress sold me on Vinohradsky Pivovar, which is a GREAT pilsner, made by a small brewery just across town:

And that's a great place to end: Friendly people and good beer.