Okay, so opening with a bad joke and a double parentheses doesn't bode well for this particular post but I promise it's worth it because the glories of Praha, where I went on reading week with my visiting famiglia, are multitudinous. To wit:
THE HAT got taken out in all its leopard-print, furry glory, beause if you can't wear a leopard-print furry head covering in the cold winter of Eastern Europe, when can you? I was emboldened by the many and various beautiful fur hats/ensembles of the local stylish Czech ladies; I have seen the utmost in glamour and function, and it is a full-length fur cape.
THE HAT was really in its element in the Czech Republic, where fur hats were one of the things sold at Prague Souvenir shops, alongside "czech me out" t-shirts, marionettes (?), and those stackable dolls. Nothing says "my beautiful Eastern European vacation" like a set of stacking dolls with the cast of Twilight inexplicably pictured on it.
Also, our tour guide did NOT delineate when she was telling us historical facts and when she was telling us folkloric Czech myths. "This is where the statue of Stalin was until it was joyfully torn down after the fall of the Communism" was exactly the same as "This is the statue of the frog spirits who can marry women of the town, and once the woman is marriage to them, she can breathe also underwater." (That is a real informational tidbit she told us. The Czechs are a complex and storied people.)
... And then we went with my Dad to a black light theatre show with some minor barely-legal nudity and a great deal of lesbian sensuality.
"Aspects of Alice" was a theatre experience for the ages. Apparently based on Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, it opened with an author in a billowy blouse writing at a desk. Then he was crucified.
It was really all upwards from there, some highlights being Alice's menorah-lighting trip to a Jewish cemetery (?) and having her suspended in the air, slightly tilted to the side (??). Alice had a lot of aspects, each more meaningful and thought-provoking than the next. She did a bunch of flying around on a bicycle with some illustrated friends. Another aspect involved a fat elderly clown and a creepy show where he came into her bedroom with a girl clown friend and they did fun tricks, mainly just the girl clown suspended in the air, slightly tilted to the side.
A main source of hilarity and fun in the show was pretending you were going to give someone something and then NOT GIVING IT TO THEM. This hilarious and always-surprising gag was then followed by lots of anime-type laughter. It was like a sensual massage for the eyes. It was literally like a sensual massage for two of the actors; in Act Two, Alice (who we should all recall has been playing a child for the duration of the show) and the Lewis Carroll/Jesus hybrid (who we should all recall was in real life a pedophile... Lewis Carroll. Not Jesus. As far as I know.) have a tender moment in the nude, which ended when he wrapped her in gauze and made some flowers and a baby out of the extra fabric. There was a mirroring activity and some multimedia. FIN.
This video synopsis was made by the theatre company and includes some key aspects.
We also had a night on the town, where we went to Club Lavska, which more or less translates to "The Love Club", and which surprisingly was not a secret prostitution ring. I am more skeptical about the building we passed on the way called "The Erotic Supermarket". (Like I said, complex and storied.) That night did not end well. Beer is cheaper than bottled water in this town, so it was kind of doomed from the start. Now some pictures!
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| London siblings |
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| Old clocks are a huge thing in Prague. They love them. |
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| In 2002, Prague was completely flooded and the water was over the arches of the bridge. I know this because any time you look at anything in Prague, people explain to you what portion of it was covered by water in the 2002 flood. |
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| We went to see The Magic Flute in this beautiful old opera house. The Magic Flute's actual libretto is cracked out and way more racist and misogynist than the children's version we used to listen to on family car trips (NERD CAR GUYS. There were also Oscar Wilde books on tape. This should help explain how I got this way.) |
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| There is a John Lennon memorial graffiti wall in Prague. Because why not. |
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