h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Here I am in lovely downtown Prague. Our touring chorus arrived here a little after 2:00 p.m. local time after a mostly uneventful flight that robbed us of six hours of sleep due to crossing 6 time zones from West to East.

I'd like to be able to say that there were lots of thrills and chills about the flight, but the truth is there were no gorillas on the wing of the plane, the pilot and copilot did not succumb to rare ttropical snakes that got in through the centillating system, and no guys with funny beards and headgear tried to hijack the plane and fly it into anything it should have been flown into.

No, it was just a rather cramped, though not out of the ordinary plane. The ride was pretty smooth. My ears didn't do much popping during ascents and descents. Heck, our first leg of the trip was completed ahead of time.

The only mishaps were: One chorus member forget to get his tuxedo out of the overhead bin, and the airline was not cooperative about helping him get it back; two chorus members were unable to find one bag each (neither containedhugely important items).

When we got to the hotel (Pyramid Hotel), it was decided that we should take a walking tour of downtown to help us get oriented to Prague. We saw a clock tower with an astronomical clock--instead of 12 hours on the face, there are 24. Some mechanical figures are supposed to emerge and do little dances or whatever at regular intervals, just like Imogene Coca and Sid Caesarin an old "Your Show of Shows" skit. Whatever.

Our first concert will be tomorrow at 2:00 p.m.

I'll be back with updates as I get the chance....

Hey Paul!

Prague's in the news in the UK at the moment, because three Brits were injured in the bomb attack yesterday. But you don't mention scary things like that at all Just lost bags and tuxes. Somehow I prefer your Prague

Keep in touch.... good luck tomorrow


Fb

Glad you had a good flight.

Stay safe, Paul!

We'll be waiting to hear updates.

Goodness! Sounds like our Paulie just missed the boom. Thank Bob.

I can't wait for your next installment Paulie!

Today, I started with a sumptuous breakfast of chocolate granola, cherries, sausages, hardboiled eggs, rye bread, an apple, and lots and lots of coffee--at 6:30 in the morning, because it was too hard to sleep because of all the racket from trams and trucks going by the hotel (and we couldn't close the window because there was no air conditioning, and it was hot and muggy .)

We hurried off to downtown Prague in a doubledecker bus, taking along our tuxes and music for the afternoon concert at St. Nicholas Church. We left the hotel at 8:45 a.m. (I had to go back to my room twice because I kept forgetitng stuff like my medication )

We had two local tour guides for our tour of the Jewish section of town. My tour guide was Petra. We saw several synagogues (including one that is the oldest synagogue in the world outside Jerusalem). There were rules against synagogues being higher than nearby churches, so the bottom floors of this synagogue were built underground.

We saw a memorial to the 80,000 Czech Jews who died in the Holocaust. Each onehad his/her name hand-written on the walls. A flood two years ago damaged the bottom part of the walls, so the names at the bottom had to be rewritten by hand.

We were given a tour of a Jewish Cemetary, some parts of which were higher than others, as new graves were laid on top of old ones, to a depth of as many as 12 layers.

After a quick bite to eat, we gathered at St. Nicholas Church to rehearse and then give our 2:00 p.m. concert. It's a gorgeous church. The floor area is rather small, but the vertical spaces are huge, and the murals on the ceilingsand huge chandelier (donated by Czar Nicholas) are gorgeous.

We sang the Dvorak Mass uo\p in the choir loft, then hurried down winding stairs to the front of the sanctuary for the rest of the pieces. The concert went quite well. We had a good audience, and more people arrived near the end. As an encorre, we sang "Prsi prsi,"
a Czech folksong about rain. We were well-applauded.

We then returned to the hotel so some of us could get ready for the opera tonight (Don Giovanni). I did not attend the opera, but instead swam fifty laps in the hotel pool (which is only ten meters long) and then retired to the Koppernik Restaurant for a leisurely mealof duck simmered in wine and apple and almond sauce, accompaniedwith good rye bread and garlic butter, blackcurrant tea, and mixed vegetables.

That's all for now. Tomorrow we do sightseeing in the morning, and a dinner cruise on the river in the evening.

From praguepost.com:

"A blast in a crowded tourist district of central Prague injured 18 people, many of them foreign visitors, Sunday, Aug. 1 after a grenade was thrown at a car outside a casino."

We're just glad *you're* ok!

Sounds like you're having a wonderful time - Good food, good song, mediocre sleep, hot, muggy weather...

Ok, so those last two aren't so great...

Sounds fabulous, Paul

I remember seeing those floods on the telly. They were really devastating - across huge swathes of central Europe

Don't eat too much now, will you?

Are you singing on the river cruise, or being entertained?


Fb

What a wonderful day Paulie! All except the sleep part.

When they stack the graves in the Jewish cemetary are they family graves or just stacked? Just curious..

Great travel reporting, Paul! You should do it more often

Not too late for a new career, is it?....

Day three of the tour finds me still in Prague (Tomorrow we head for Vienna).

In the morning, Petra (our local tour guide) showed us through the castle complex near the hotel. It's quite huge and sprawling. Much of the area was destroyed in 1541, when a great fire roared through it. Buildings were reconstructed then, some of them dating from the 8th or9th centuries.

The jewel of the complex is Saint Vitus Church, which started being constructed as a basilica in the 10th century, and was still in the process of completion 1,000 years later as it got added to and turned into a grand gothic cathedral with a Baroque tower (for which it was criticized, as Gothic and Baroque styles are not supposed to go together. Defenders point out that this makes the place unique ). It is huge and majestic and awe-inspiring. I'm a sucker for stained-glass windows, so I could spend a lot of time looking at them and be very happy.

The palace itself is quite sprawling, with no fewer than four courtyards. Despite beging next to a grand cathedral (St. Vitus), it has a chapel of its own, done in French Renaissance style to reflect the upbringing of Charles II, the 14th century Czech king who put the country on the map. Charles had been educated at the Sorbonne, so he knew quite a bit about French culture.

We also saw a grand hall where medieval tournaments were held. The walls and ceilings were Gothic, while the windows were boxlike Renaissance in style. Petra took us into a tiny side room from which some people were defenestrated (i.e. thrown out the window), but they escaped unharmed because they fell on deep piles of manure which softened their fall.

We also saw a monastery, got some great views, bought souvenirs at the gift shops, and walked up and down many many many stairs.

My feet will be sore tomorrow, but hopefully the long bus ride will let them recover for the day after.

People on your tour were thrown out the window?! And landed in manure to break their fall?!



Sorry, that's how you had it worded!


Sounds fascinating though Can't wait to hear about Vienna, now.

*grabs a nuked cup of International Coffee and a tin of little sausages*

I'm ready!

No, Lady Scott, the peasants with pitchforks nave not thrown any of us out the window....at least not yet.

Anyway....I am typing this in Vienna, which we spent most of the morning travelling toward, through empty countryside. This keyboard has the Y key in an unexpected place, and I cant even find the apostrophe and quotation marks.

Last night, we had dinner on a river boat in the Vltada River (a.k.a. Moldau River). The buildings on either side of the river look spectacular at night, lit up beautifully. We had an accordian player to entertain us, and we sang along with some old standards "Those were the days, my friend," "Beer barrel polka," etc.
One of our local tour guides sang some Czech folk songs, and we got back to the hotel in a pleasant mood.

We had to be up early so as to leave the Prague hotel by 8:30 a.m. for our long bus ride to Vienna.

We arrived at the Hotel Mercur in Vienna almost an hour late, and almost immediately launched into a tour of the city, starting with a ride on the subway system. We got off at Stephansplatz, where we had a light meal at Rosenberger restaurant, and then saw the exteriors of >Hoffbrun Palace and St Stephans Church.

Gotta run now. Supper is a at 7:00 p.m.

I am sitting here, speechless with jealousy.
You were in Prague - one of the most photogenic and fascinating cities going?
You were in Prague - the home of very small dogs, people reading everywhere, an odd service charge system, the tram, the very unrevolutionary (at least in appearance) Wenceslas Square, classical music ticket touts and tattooed buildings?
You were in Prague - the home of the scariest spirit known to man, namely Slivovice (looks like oven cleaner, smells like oven cleaner, and does much the same to your insides)?
Speff will retire to a corner to growl moodily...

Yes, that's where he said he *was*!

Although he neglected to mention all those little attractions... I wonder if it was the same Prague?



Now, he's in Vienna.


*waits to hear about the cookies*



You know... the Vienna Fingers.

*looks at her prefab and tiny sausages from a tin*

I knew I forgot something..

Here, you can have some of mine!

I´ll deal with those cookie things and Prague idiosyncracies after I get back home to my own computer. For now I have another report to make:

Friday, Aug. 6, 2004

We arrived in Vienna from >Prague yesterday afternoon, and were immediately led around on another guided tour.

We saw exteriors of St Stephan´s Church and Hofbrun Palace, plus an interesting statue commemorating a Plague in the 1600s. The reqard for all our tramping around was to be taken back to the hotel for a dinner of beef goulash and dumplings, and fruit-filled dumplings
for dessert.

After dinner, a few of us wandered the streets near the hotel, looking in store windows and marvelling at how many other tourists were around, doing the same thing.

Anyway, this morning I visited the Haydn Museum, which is on Haydngasse, which is 3 blocks from our hotel. Haydn spent the last 8 years of his life in the house. His harpsichord is on display in a room on the second floor. There are also a lot of pictures of Haydn and his associates, as well aas some original scores of his music. The house also has a wing devoted to Johannes Brahms.

My plan for this afternoon is to swim in the pool at Marienbad ("bad" means "bath" in German, so technically it is a place for public baths). After that, I shall see Schonbrunn Palace.

Tonight we will sing at Votivkirche in Vienna. The church was built in 1856 to commemorate a deranged tailor who tried to kill Emperor Franz Joseph in 1853.

That´s all for now.

Saturday Aug 7, 2004

YesterdaY afternoon didn´t work out quite as I had planned.

I took the subway to St. Stephan´s Church, hoping to wander around inside. When I got into the back of the church, I found that a service was in progress, so I could only see what was in the back. There was a section of votive candles, where people were praying. The ceiling is high and vaulted, as The stained glass windows are more muted, but still very lovely.

Coming out of the church, I decided to find a place for lunch. I wandered around, finally settling on a little cafe in the middle of the square. I ordered Asian tuna on a baguette, which turned out to be sashimi (raw tuna). I had never had raw fish before. It tasted all right, though very strange.

I got on the subway again and went to marienbad to swim, but the pool is closed till September, so I went to Schonnbrunn instead.

At Schonbrunn, I walked around a lot, and found a great pool.

At night, we sang at the >Votivkirche.The resonance is superb.

Afterward, I had a sachertorte in the hotel.