Prague…in the time of Corona

The capital of Czechia – or the Czech Republic – has a special place in my heart. And in my memories. I celebrated the end of my 4-year university course in this city. A group of us, against the advice of our Faculty in Rijeka and organising it ourselves, booked a five-day coach trip to Prague and enjoyed every moment of it.
Nearly three decades later, I am going back. My significant other has wanted to visit it for a long time and our Year 7 traveller can’t wait to add another name to her list of countries visited. On that previous trip, I spent my days in the museums and my nights in bars and clubs. We stayed in a cheap hotel that looked like a repurposed power station in the outskirts. This time around, I book us into a rather expensive hotel with breakfast and a swimming pool, and we decide to take it easy.
When we booked our flights in November, the news reports were optimistic, things were looking up. Then the Omicron variant emerges and the harsh rules of the pandemic regime take over again. We follow the updates on travelling rules; we get our boosters; we avoid crowds at all costs, but we still do not allow ourselves to get ecstatic. Until the very last moment. And even then, our bags packed and coats zipped, we let our excitement manifest only in sporadic outbursts: while driving up the M11 through torrential rain and thick pre-dawn darkness (yeah!), after checking in our suitcase and showing our Covid passes (yeah!) and finally taking off (yeah!).
The controls at Václav Havel Airport are rigorous and the queue is progressing frustratingly slowly. We have all papers in order and once we reach the front, we are through in seconds. My relief doesn’t last long as of course what’s a trip with no upsets? Both my cards are declined and I can’t withdraw any cash. Luckily, I am not travelling by myself! On the bus 191 towards the city, I glance at my mobile phone. There are numerous texts and voice messages from the Fraud Protection Department of my bank. I must phone them at once. Then I am asked details of my account, and reading those numbers on a bus does not seem the safest way to unblock the cards…
Orea Hotel Pyramida is a prime example of communist architecture at its very best; it’s a large building expanding in four directions in a pyramid shape. The beigey colour dominates both in the outside appearance and in the room décor. It reminds me of a luxurious hotel in Opatija. As soon as we check in – and show our Covid passes – we grab costumes and towels and head to the pool. When it comes to hotel swimming pools, this one is as good as it gets; it’s larger and deeper than any other we remember and it’s not crowded at all.


The evening is rainy and windy but not bitterly cold. There are hardly any eateries in the roads that surround the hotel, and we are relieved when we stumble across Globus, a small canteen with four dishes on the menu and half-litre beers costing 70 pence. Most patrons are local men with friendly smiles and large bellies and Czech pop music with eighties melodies is playing in the background. We get two Hungarian goulashes with dumplings and a grilled chicken fillet in a blue cheese sauce with chips. It all taste absolutely delicious: the meat melts in our mouth and the bread dumplings soak the thick sauce. Or maybe we are just so excited to finally be in a new city, and for an evening we can feel like there is no pandemic, no virus, no restrictions. And we can finally unleash the inner feeling of joy…


DAY 2 – The Castle, the bridge and Mucha

We wake up to a grey morning with fine persistent rain. The temperature is around five degrees Celsius but it’s projected to rise to ten, twelve degrees over the next couple of days. Very unusual of a city where typical winter temperatures reach well below freezing.
The first must-see item on our list is Prague Castle. This is the place where royal, religious and political powers have resided for centuries. The castle has been the home to various Kings of Bohemia and at some point, of a king of Hungary, Croatia and Bohemia. The complex is today one of the major attractions in Prague and one of the buildings also houses the official office of the President of the Czech Republic.



The cathedral of St. Vitus is a fascinating example of Gothic architecture with its typical pointed aches and captivating stained-glass windows. St. George’s basilica is older, bare of all unnecessary ornaments (Romanesque style), yet still equally impressive. After visiting various rooms of the Old Royal Palace, we head to the highlight of this place, The Golden Lane, a place that once you visit; it stays with you as a treasured postcard, both for visual enjoyment and its historical value.
The miniature dwellings with colourful façades were originally built to accommodate guards and other workers of the castle (seamstress, pharmacist…) and later were inhabited by regular people. In 1916, Franz Kafka, the most famous writer from Prague, rented number 22 as a writing studio. Another Czech writer, Jaroslav Seifert, lived in one of these places in 1929. At some point during the 1940’s, the communist regime nationalised the whole street.



From here we take a leisurely walk to the renowned Charles Bridge, another example of the Gothic style and undoubtedly the most famous monument of this city. The bridge is adorned with thirty baroque statues and even in the Covid times, the place is full of buskers, caricature artists and giggling tourists. We overhear Italian, French, German, even Croatian and Serbian. Despite the pandemic, the tourist movement is still alive and well on the old continent…



The Old Town Square is gleaming with Christmas decorations and smells of vanilla pastries and mulled wine. We take photos of the Astronomical Clock, stare at the impressive Church of our Lady before Týn, another example of Gothic architecture, that dominates the surrounding buildings like a dark monster. Then we make our way out of the loud crowds…
By the time we reach the Powder Tower – the medieval Gothic city gate that was used to store the gunpowder, hence the name – we are overwhelmed with the culture, history and architecture and overpowered by the feeling of hunger. In Pivnice v Celetné we order plates of roast pork with dumplings and sauerkraut and goulash soup served in a bun shaped like a small saucepan; a rather typical and satisfying mixture of Central European and Balkan tastes. For the pudding we head back to the crowded Old Square for a “trdelník”, a cone-shaped donut filled with chocolate and whipped cream. It tastes like pure heaven.



Next on our list is the Alphonse Mucha Museum. Mucha is probably the most famous Czech painter and graphic artist, whose work regularly features in the picture questions of the University Challenge quiz. The museum is rather small but very informative. Outside the Czech Republic, Mucha is mostly known for his decorative theatre posters featuring Sarah Bernhardt during the Art Nouveau period in Paris. In his home country, he is also renowned for the Slav Epic, a series of large canvases depicting famous Slavic people at crucial moments of history. Unfortunately, the epic is nowhere on display as it’s waiting for a new home.
We pass two famous cafes – Café Café and Savoy Café – but they are both too crowded and we decide to walk back to the hotel. And – in a weird combination of incorrect set up on mobile phone maps and wrong reading of the directions – we get completely lost. Just like thirty years earlier! On that occasion, we were drunk, it was late at night, and we ended up in the middle of a field mistaking a genuine power station for our hotel. This time the three of us climb uphill and end up by the Great Strahov Stadium. The high plateau in front of the gigantic construction offers impressive views of the city covered in bright evening lights, but our enjoyment is deflated by the fact that our mobile phones are dead, and we do not know how far our hotel is… Or where exactly…


DAY 3 – Zoo, Vltava & Café Café
M insists on visiting the Zoo. It takes us two trams and one bus to get there. The main entrance is opposite the rather flash Troja Château (Zámek Troja), a castle with French gardens that I visited all those years ago. To my big disappointment, this rather amazing piece of baroque architecture is closed in the winter months.
Prague Zoo is, according to the Forbes Magazine, the 7th best zoo in the world. Easy to understand why: it is located on a large uneven terrain with hilly, forestry and wetlands features and with the enclosures for exotic animal perfectly fitting into the rainy, continental environs. We see tigers, polar bears, elephants, giraffes, hyenas, all kind of antelopes and donkeys as well as animals that I never heard of before (aardvarks among others). Many indoor galleries are closed – because of Covid – and the weather treats us to sudden instances of fine yet rather chilly rain.




Back in the Old City, we stroll down the Parížská ulice – the Bond Street of Prague – mesmerised by the majestic façades. Walking through Prague is like visiting a 3-D encyclopaedia of history of European architecture. Every building and every decoration tells a story. An architecture aficionado can find in this city examples of Romanesque, Gothic, Baroque, Rococo, Art Nouveau, Cubism, Communist and just about every other style that ever existed on the continent. I can recognise the Gothic and the Communist structures; one because I see them as synonymous with this city, the other as it was also part of my own life behind the Iron curtain…



In pub/restaurant U Pivrnce we stop for a lunch of goulash with potato cakes and dumplings and breaded pork escalope. We drink extra-large amounts of Staropramen and M orders an equally large glass of raspberry lemonade. After all of that, we have just about energy to reach the Vltava river for a boat tour. The experience is disappointing as the “60 minutes tour” is a good ten minutes shorter and it hardly covers the distance between Karluv most (Charles Bridge) and the Štefánikuv most. The weather is gloomy, the rain is getting thicker and sharper, but the river remains calm and the ride is smooth.
I love a good café, more than a good restaurant or an expensive hotel. The café culture exposes the real state of a city. For the second day in the row, we head to the rather popular Café Café. Today there is only one person in front of us and we do not mind waiting a few minutes. This café is a rather upmarket place with prices on a par with those in the cafés of central London. The coffees are tasty (my double espresso gets an excellent mark for consistency and good for flavour, 4 out of 5 stars) and the harlequin cake is delicious. As soon as we finish the cake, the waiter collects the plate and checks on the amount of coffee left in our cups. The queue outside is getting longer and we can sense that we are not welcome any more…
Good ambiance, good coffees, delicious cake…but I prefer cafés where one can linger for a while…



Day 4 – Cubism, cakes and streets

In the morning of our last full day in Prague, we head to the Museum of Decorative Arts, another suggestion by M after her art teacher mentioned it in class. A few stops on the tram no 22, a leisurely walk across the Mánesuv most and around the building of the Ceská filharmonie and we are still twenty minutes too early. It’s warm and sunny and the temperature has already reached 10 degrees Celsius. The museum is a bit of a disappointment. Some galleries are closed off as the whole museum is waiting to be relocated. The building itself, with its majestic staircases, decorations and the stain-glass windows is fascinating but still… The exhibition PLEIAD OF GLASS dedicated to glass sculptures with useful and non-useful purpose mesmerises our Year 7 explorer who takes photos from all sides and angles. The other available exhibition is dedicated to indigo dying in Japanese fashion industry…
Of course, M, I know that fashion is decorative arts, but I’ve still expected to see some examples of ceramic objects and furniture in this museum!



I ask about it at the information desk and we are sent to the exhibition of the Czech Cubism in the House at the Black Madonna. Yes, this is exactly what I had in mind: sets of furniture in typical Cubist forms, with sharp edges and in geometrical shapes and display cabinets with exaggerated geometric outlines that no doubt served as inspiration for drawing the furniture of Disney heroines. The building itself – the House at the Black Madonna/ Dum U Cerné Matky Boží – is the first Cubist structure in Prague and was originally built as a department store. This house is also home to two cafés, and we sit in the one at street level. Fitting with the artistic concept of the building, the café is also an example of cubist architectures; the tables are black and octagonal and the lamps themselves are worthy of a place in the Museum of Decorative Arts. We order two cakes – the vaccine and the virus – and coffees. The place is crowded and busy and I am surprised that we are not asked for our Covid passes. Another café with London prices: two coffees, two cakes and a bottle of still water come to 15 pounds.



For food, we return to Pivnice v Celetné by the Powder Tower. The place serves fried cheese and fries, a Czech speciality that M must try. The two of us stick to the classic Czech goulash with dumplings. And large beers.
On the way towards the Dancing House, we take in the street vibe in the Czech capital on the last day in 2021. It’s relaxed, charming and not too crowded. We stop by the rotating metallic sculpture of Franz Kafka, located in a square close to the building where he worked as a clerk. We didn’t stay long enough to see the rotation, the metamorphosis of the sculpture, but it is still very impressive. The Dancing House, on the other hand, looks better on pictures than in real life…
Late afternoon we are back in the hotel; suitcases have to be packed and return forms to be filled. The UK passenger locator form is a real nightmare. It’s never straightforward. Over the last six months, we have had to do it three times and every time something went wrong. This time we must click “yes we are going to isolate for 10 days” in order to progress to the next screen. We are fully vaccinated, have ordered day two tests and we do not need to isolate… but we need to present completed forms before boarding….so yes, whatever, ten days isolation click, click, click, click, click… Done!
And now to the hotel bar for a beer, an Aperol Spritz and a hot chocolate with cream.

Goodbye 2021!

Day 5 – Heading back

We have a few hours spare between breakfast and heading to the airport and we decide to walk to the Strahov stadium where we ended stranded on the first night. This stadium is another example of the megalomaniac Communist architecture that does not age well. The complex is isolated, empty and eerie. One part of the area is used as the training grounds and offices of the Sparta football team. There are vans of various other sports by the building on the back, most probably the home of the National Union of Sports. The square in front, the viewpoint of the city, is littered with empty cardboard boxes of fireworks, cans of beers and bottles from last night’s celebrations.



To return to UK, we need a predeparture Covid test and – to be on the safe side – we reach the airport five hours before our flight. The testing centre is not too crowded. We fill in the online form, pay (around 65 euros for two adult tests), our swabs are taken, and the results arrive in record time. By now the queue has increased to at least hundred people and the worry and tension are palpable in the air. But we are “negativní” and are happily heading towards to the check-ins. Of course, those tests and forms have added extra costs and extra anxiety to our trip, but it was worth it.
Prague is a fascinating city even in the times of Covid…