Day 4: Prague 2011
Today was a great day. We started off waiting for Frank the driver, so Evan could pay rent for her apartment. Next it was off for street pastries and to pick up my negatives. After one pass through Heathrow, I am developing all my film before I travel, they wouldn't hand check anything. (The terrorists won.) Anyway, after that it was off to the Michael museum, which was short, but was worth the trip on its own. Seeing those 7 or 8 foot lithographs on cheap paper in person was amazing. I think if I ever was a billionaire, those are the originals I would try to collect. From there, we hit the communism museum, which is a capitalist monument to the history of communism. It does have a short movie depicting the revolution and the things the people went through to become free. I found much sadness in the desperation of the people in the video, and realized we Americans will never be motivated to revolt though we increasingly face the same injustices.
After the communism museum we found a little coffeeshop for lunch then continued on across the city. After lunch we were heading to the Lennon wall, which was a wall that was covered in graffiti paying memorial to John Lennon, and every day when it was whitewashed it would be recreated overnight. On the way to the wall, we started to see Zombies, and realized it was Zombie Walk Prague, though we thought we had missed it because of the disparate directions the zombies were going. The Lennon wall was a little unimpressive after having read about it, but right after it was the bridge where couples lock locks on thevrailings to seal their love. From there, we continued on to the Charles bridge, bought tickets (Evan haggled student rates for both of us) to a string and organ concert in a cathedral. As we had an hour to kill, we walked around, got a beer, then decided to head back to the cathedral. On the way back, we rounded a corner to see the beginnings of 2000 zombies marching down the street. I grabbed my 35mm, took a quick light reading, and set my hadst to that, and started to shoot from the hip. A couple of photographers stopped to gawk at my camera, but it was all in good humor and fun. I particularly enjoyed the irony of it being on the day of the predicted rapture.
After the zombies, we listened to a concert on an organ that Mozart played on. We watched the sun start to set over the Prague Castle, then rode the subway for about an hour, just exploring the different stops and watching the people. Dinner was a street kielbasa and a coke, after which we came home to rest. It was a long day, but it was pretty awesome.