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

Hi RM - nice to see you popping back into the building, however briefly... You said you were interested in Kafkaesque places, and I reckon the thing that fits the bill most is in a small square (Jungmannovo Namesti) behind the Bata store on Wenceslas Square. It's the world's only known Cubist lamp-post, designed by Emil Kralicek and Matej Blecha in 1912. It looks a little shabby and could do with a spot of restoration, but it's a very interesting curio. Go there around dusk for the full-on Kafkaesque experience.

Have you been to Prague before? A couple of friends of mine live over there, and when I went a couple of winters ago, I loved it. You've probably already checked it out, but Gnomon and myself did quite a lot of work on A190018, and it's one of the better city-based entries around. I also managed to get A1111249 into the Edited Guide, plus a couple that I didn't get around to finishing (A1050472 and A1050463)

Anyway, have a great time

Thanks for the welcome back

I do call in at h2g2 fairly regularly, but just tend to read the articles that are on the front page rather than post. Hopefully when I finish my A level exams on friday I'll find more to time to post and contribute.

I haven't been to Prague before, and am really looking forward to going. I'm going with 11 friends as a kind of 'end of school, going to university' holiday, and while the majority of my friends are looking forward to the ludicrously cheap alcohol, I'm hoping to see a few of the sites as well as enjoy myself.

I'm definitely going to visit the place that you recommended, as it doesn't seem that far from where we're staying (in the centre, basically). When I was in Barcelona at Easter I saw some very nice Gaudi-esque lamp posts, so Prague's Cubist one is of natural interest to me

I'm also hoping to visit the church of St Cyril and Methodius while I'm there. The Czech resistant fighters who assassinated Reinhard Heydrich during WW2 hid from the Nazis there, and were eventually betrayed and surrounded. In the end they committed suicide rather than fall into Nazi hands. My parents visited last year, and said it was very sad but well worth visiting.

I'll have a read of those entries, they look useful. Did you visit Kafka's grave while in Prague?

I have to say, I didn't. Although I did see the graves of a few famous people when I made the trip up to the Vysehrad, which is well worth doing, which is well worth doing 'cos you've got the Art Nouveau church at the top and the Cubist houses at the bottom. And you pass quite a good pub at the bottom of the hill, if you're walking up from the river.

Come to think of it, that's quite a useful thing to mention, good pubs.

There's another one which is much more central behind the National Theatre (Narodni Divalo) on the corner of Pstrossova and v Jircharich, and on the other side of the river by the Charles Bridge (Karluv Most) there's a good one at the south end of Na Kampe.

None of these are particularly outstanding, but they're all good cheap proper Czech pubs that do reasonably good proper Czech food. Or they did last time I was there, at any rate...

Hello again Number Six

I'm jetting off tomorrow, and am very excited. Hopefully it will please you to know that I've annoted my map of Prague with the names and my expected locations of the places you've mention in this thread. I also printed out a copy of your entry on the TV tower.

In 24 hours I'm going to be there