Tales of Prague: Art Underground

The bit about travel that I am not very much fond of is the 'getting there' and regardless of what they say about the journey being as important as the destination, I am still dreaming of the day I will be able to travel Harry-Potter-style using apparition or the floo powder. But as a muggle-born with no talent for magic I have to make do with public transport consoled by the fact that because we live in Europe, it is usually cheap, reliable and efficient.

Our Great Central European Adventure began in the Czech Republic capital of Prague where after breezing out of immigration we confronted the often anxiety-provoking business of getting to the city centre. There is no direct train link from the airport  and asking for directions was a bit tricky. In the end we decided to follow a group of tourists in the hope that they would lead us to the ticket office and to the right bus, which they did. 

When we boarded Bus 119, we made a fascinating discovery that the transport system in this capital (and indeed in some of the cities we have visited afterwards) is based on an honour system. There was no need for the driver to check the tickets which passengers validate themselves using scanners inside the public transport vehicles. Efficiency and honesty personified, what a refreshingly civilised society!

The bus ride took at least 25 minutes and looped through suburban Prague, driving around panel buildings that serve as homes of the local residents. It eventually came to a stop in Ebskovska, the longest street in the city and the last stop of Metro Line A. When we got off, I commented on how I have felt overwhelmed by the shadows of communism that still lurks on a country that is more celebrated for its many cultural attractions and very exciting history. It has the marks of the Beauty and the Beast. And perhaps nothing can embody that better than the Prague Metro, the capital’s underground public transportation network.

Travelling through a subway is usually a forgettable experience. There’s nothing exciting about walking through a maze of cold and dark underground passageways, its walls often pasted with advertisements languages that you usually don’t understand and occasionally sprayed with graffiti. But this was not the case with Prague.

Dejvicka station where we started our journey was previously called Leninova Station and once housed a giant bust of Lenin before the Velvet Revolution. There was nothing special about its entrances, the underground stations in Prague are seldom mentioned as amongst the most beautiful in the world. But as soon as we descended into the underground tunnel waiting for the old Russian train cars, I thought I was in another world, in Alice's Wonderland perhaps? 

It was a fascinating experience and certainly thought-provoking. It felt like we were in between two giant keyboards.The straight lines and the deeply-contrasting colours invoked strong feelings, like that which one feels when walking around a museum. Because the subway itself was a form of art expression displaying the truths of its time and place, a project completed during the Soviet-influenced era and its stamps are all over these tunnels. 

The next stations took on different and yet almost identical style: a repetition of convex and concave shapes, consistent in texture but differing in colour schemes making each station look distinct, rather stunning and with a feel of a science fiction movie set. This repetition of structures representing communist ideals of order and conformity was definitely not bland which is more than can be said for some modern structures being built today.

Our experience in the underground stations in Prague was the perfect prelude to the memorable three weeks that we are to spend in that part of Europe.

 

Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet: A Day Trip

Broke with no more paid holidays to escape from a non-existent summer in Britain, it is a testing time for two travel buffs like us. It has only been three months since our long weekend in Wales yet it felt like years ago already. So faced with a prospect of an otherwise cold long weekend indoors, we decided to explore closer to home. 

Inspired by the Opening Ceremonies of the recently-concluded Summer Olympics, we drove to one of the surviving reminders of Sheffield's industrial heritage: The Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet, south of the city centre. It was a fascinating experience and a massive insight into the lives of the ordinary citizens during the Victorian era. 

This was not Britain that Jane Austen painted in her romance novels made into Hollywood movies: the Great Britain of the rich and privileged filled with frilly costumes and debutante dances whose past times involved romantic walks in the rolling hills surrounding their stately manors. This was the Britain of the rest of the population who toiled to pay for the lifestyle of the aristocracy.  This was the real Britain, the Britain who once ruled the world because of their ingenuity and hard work.  

The former steel-working site is an industrial museum with works and buildings dating between 1714 and 1876. It has a tilt hammer and grinding machinery fuelled by the water wheels powered by the river. There are workshops and rusty tools where you can just about imagine labourers wiping their sweaty foreheads and getting on with the job. It was raw and it felt real.  

But perhaps the most hard-hitting was the comparison of the dwellings of the workers against the site manager's. The workers' homes are dim, cold and sparse in stark contrast to the elegantly-decorated living quarters of their superiors. I hoped then that when the few English people who loves dressing up imagine themselves in their ancestors' shoes, they also think of this much realistic lifestyle of the common men and women who made their country what it is today. 

A Worker's Accommodation

A Manager's Cottage

The trip had been very inspiring but like most people who have written their reviews online, it is a shame that the city has not endeavoured to raise as much awareness about this site. It has taken me two years to visit this museum and I'm pretty sure most of the locals or those who have adopted this city as their home have not been there too, which is rather sad because it was really worth the visit. 

Vintage in the Attic

My English mum's attic is a vintage treasure trove. 

I have only just recently taken on the vintage craze and I suspect it would only cover anything that relates to books, photography and travel. Our clean-up project of our Mum's attic has delivered all of that. 

The best find will be the Brownie Box No. 2, a Kodak film camera that was first introduced in 1902 but was discontinued in 1935. The camera has introduced the concept of snapshot, being accessible at an original cost of $2. They wouldn't sell much as antiques because they have been very popular when they came out but to have one in the family seemed rather romantic. 

I have also found hardbound books with colourful covers that were published more than a century ago; an old Atlas printed when half the world was still under the British empire and a King James Bible (which I found was rather inspiring to read because of the larger text) the sort that you will find in church altars. 

As family treasures, we couldn't take any of them of course. But I managed to bring home an old suitcase I will be filling with stickers of all the places we have been to!