yesterday, day 5, I figured it was time to culturally fortify myself, so I visited two museums in Prague—the Mucha Museum in Prague, where I finally learned what the term “art nouveau” might refer to (and my arty friends who aren’t reading this blog give a collective gasp of horror at yet another display of my relentless ignorance), and where I experienced a sudden, powerful desire to be able to see Sarah Bernhardt play Hamlet (sigh), and the Kafka Museum, which tried quite hard to create (and, I suppose, succeeded, to some degree) a crazy claustrophobic ambiance permeated with very cool primary documents and strange bird calls from some video of an isolated & presumably agonized cartoon man sitting at a desk (in an abstract sort of way). Actually, I rather enjoyed it, and I read all the English text in the exhibition, which was very do-able, since all the text was translated into about three languages, leaving not too much final wall space, in the end—so I felt very accomplished at the end of it without feeling completely fatigued or suicidal from spending too much time in a claustrophobic, moodily lit, narrow-corridor defined space, since it didn’t take all that long to go through. Also, I learned the etymology of Prague: Praj = threshold, apparently. Which had something to do with the very end of the exhibit, but I shan’t give it away. Anyway, the exhibit is a nice companion piece to R. Crumb’s Kafka, which I’d read earlier that morning.

Later that night, my friends and I stumbled through the snow and several crowded pubs with no room for us, until we finally settled on a giant pilsner house place that used to be a place where people were executed by hanging (I can’t think of the word for this). People there had giant hamhocks on their plates, to accompany their beer. I have a picture, but now I’m realizing I have to run to catch a show tonight at Volksbuhne in Berlin.

I got to Berlin late this morning. I love the public transportation here—it’s a bit dreamy, if you’re into good public transportation, as am I.

Here’s a picture, for your viewing pleasure:

ah forget it, not working, and no time to troubleshoot.

off to see Ozean.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 10th, 2010 at 9:13 am and is filed under Ye Olde European Journey. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.