Travel Diary 1: Prague

Trams, cobble-stones and a sense of place.

My business partner Nigel and I flew Emirates from Singapore, with a stopover in Dubai, to Prague as the starting place for a research trip to Central Europe. If you are flying from Australia to Europe, having a bit of a stopover, massage and sleep on the way is much less of a shock to the system. Dubai is roughly two-thirds of the way to Central Europe.

Dubai airport is one of the busiest international airports in the world. The mix of people at the airport was pretty similar to what I am used to in Western Melbourne, except fewer East Africans.

I do not travel much, but both Emirates and Dubai Airport has a culture of polite, efficient service that is relaxing to deal with. At Dubai Airport this extends to good restaurants. I had crisp calamari and miso salmon at Cho Gao restaurant, both of which was excellent. Nigel had Mongolian beef—which he also found to be excellent—and dumplings, which were alas a bit bland. A Swedish massage (hard) from a very professional young man of East Asian extraction helped to cope with the travel.

During the flights and stopovers from Melbourne to Prague, both Nigel and I picked up  particularly vicious colds. The cough, the achey sinuses, the sore joints, the tickle in the throat, sapped my energy in Prague. I have never caught Covid—just as I never get the flu—apparently because I am so prone to getting colds.

We had booked a taxi to pick us up from Prague airport, which took a bit to connect to. (Their text messages did not turn up on Nigel’s phone until the next day.)

We stayed in Prague at the Kongistein floating river-hotel—a Botel, as one of floating hotels calls itself—on the Vltava River. I can recommend the experience. It is quiet—the river bank is well below the roads, so there is little traffic noise. The serve-yourself breakfast (available 8am-10am) is rather better than that Nigel has had a 5-star hotels. Breakfast one morning included six very polite Hell’s Angels.

The Prague idea of coffee is bitter and lukewarm—if serving yourself, always go for the warm milk. Consider turning it into a mocha if there is also hot chocolate.

I have never been to Central Europe before, and I realised that my geography of the area is shakier than I had thought. For instance, I had not realised that Vltava (aka Moldau), the river that Prague is on, is a tributary of the Elbe. Czechia is less ringed-in by mountains to its north and west than I had thought. Nor had I realised how close Vienna and Bratislava are. But that was part of the point of picking Central Europe for our Medieval Research trip: to improve my knowledge of the region.

On the drive from the airport, I was struck by how much outer Prague looked like any developed city of your choice. I can see why Sci-Fi writer Poul Anderson called modern civilisation Technic civilisation. The possibilities of modern industrial (or even “post-industrial”) society leads to a convergence around common technological patterns, including familiar streetscapes.

Central Prague is a rather different matter. Prague was not deliberately bombed until late in the Second World War, as the Western Allies regarded the Czechs as Hitler’s victims. (There may have also been some guilt involved.) So, there are a lot of interwar and pre-WWI buildings.

Britain was seriously considering fighting to preserve Czech independence in 1938, but France would not go without Britain and Britain would not go without the Dominions—Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada and India—and the Dominions said they were not ready/willing. Hence the Munich Agreement and “peace in our time”.

Postwar Czechoslovakia solved the Sudeten Germans problem by expelling them. Part of a pattern of Central European countries expelling local Germans: the experience of an ethnically fractured demos having been unhappy ones. This was a major reason for the Velvet Divorce after the collapse of the Soviet bloc, where Czechia and Slovakia went their separate ways.

Across the West, the professional-managerial class is busy trying to create ethnically fractured societies, as an expansive moral project that fractures the demos in ways convenient for said professional-managerial class. Multiculturalism (now repackaged as Diversity) is a recurring imperial project for that reason. Hence the remarkably socially destructive—and unpopular—migration policies being imposed on the US, UK and Western Europe. An imperial program of national fracturing that countries of Central Europe—with their vivid memories of rule by other nationalities—have been conspicuously resisting and the Scandinavian countries are backing away from.

The various interwar and postwar population transfers have largely disappeared down the memory hole. Especially the Jewish exodus from Muslim lands. Partly because the Western professional-managerial elite does not want folk to think about why ethnic coherence might have certain advantages and partly because it makes Israel in general, and Palestinians in particular, hugely less exceptional. (Apart, that is, from Palestinians being the world’s only hereditary refugees.)

One of the conspicuous absences in Prague was any public signs of sympathy for the Palestinian cause. On the contrary, the only clear reference to the Gaza war we saw was a bank of posters of kidnapped Israelis.

Apparently, Jews have been moving to Czechia in recent years. The lack of a significant Muslim minority makes Czechia safer for Jews—neither synagogue we passed had security guards.

It is one of the deep ironies of our time that so-called “progressives” push policies that are very much against the interests of the local working class while political Parties that are increasingly able to mobilise working class votes are labelled “extreme Right”.

Which is a long-winded way of saying that Prague—despite being a much visited tourist destination—is mostly very European in who you see walking around the central squares and streets, apart from obvious tourists. Europe is the most genetically-homogeneous continent—its long-term pattern has been to move from more genetically distinct populations to much more genetically homogeneous populations. A result of the march of farmers from Anatolia and the flow of pastoralists from the Pontic steppes.

India has the same basic patterns—a flow farmers from Iran and pastoralists from the Pontic steppes— but a couple of millennia of the jati system has created an incredibly genetically heterogeneous society.

Source: Reich, 2019.

Prague, like Melbourne is a city of trams in its central areas. Unlike Melbourne, which is very much city of asphalt roads, with occasional concrete, Prague has quite a lot of cobble-stone roads in its central areas, including where the tram-tracks are. This creates a bumpy ride for buses when they use the same lanes.

Prague was a city well before railways and automobiles. One result is that it is much better at using its river than Melbourne is at using the Yarra and Maribyrnong. On pleasant summer evenings, lots of pedestrians walk along the riverside, or gather to chat and socialise.

Saturday night, we went on a Prague Boats (est. 1990) dinner cruise for three hours. The buffet meal was fine, and it was very relaxing way to see riverside Prague. While there are a range of cuisines on offer, Italian restaurants are easily the most common across the city.

There is a distinct lack of Soviet architecture in Prague. Not having been bombed (except once accidentally—some US bomber units missed Dresden and hit Prague instead—and once deliberately) meant not much need for postwar rebuilding.

I recommend keeping your eye out for various garden courtyards. On our first walk into the Lesser City at the base of Prague Castle, we found a charming courtyard cafe where the nice lady made a glass of mulled wine specially for me. She had previously warned me that I was sitting in the sun, which I said was fine. (On finding out that we were Australians, apparently my behaviour then made sense.)

Central Prague is overwhelmingly a C19th city. It is a cityscape rooted in a sense of heritage, rather than various versions of Le Corbusier’s dreadful idea that a house is “a machine for living”.

A home should be a place welcoming to the human psyche, not a “look what we can do!” assault on it. So much of the modern world has a domicidal tendency, something that modern progressivism amplifies, with its worship of the imagined future, a place no one can live in, its contempt for heritage and belittling of the problems of order.

Apart from some graffiti in various localities, Prague is a very clean and tidy city. There are a lot of cannabis shops, but a lack of public smoking of the same.

It is worth taking a day to do Prague Castle, though I strongly recommend taking the tram up the hill. Walking down the hill is fine. One of the appeals of Prague is how much you can see and get to by just walking.

Descriptions within the Castle can be hard to read, due to the interaction of low lighting, glass coverings and colour and font choices. One amusing mistake: referring to Funnel Breaker Culture rather than Funnel Beaker Culture. The Soviet period (1948-1989) tends to get treated briefly and elliptically in the descriptions.

Our last full day in Prague, we went to the Army Museum, which gets a separate post.

Apart from the boat cruise dinner, dinner was a matter of wandering around until we found somewhere that looked reasonable. This worked fine. The last night we had “melt in your mouth” veal at the Katr restaurant.

Thursday morning, we trained to Vienna. Prague railway station is not well-signposted for non Czechs, so I recommend getting there early and checking with the helpful information desk (at the end of the various ticket counters).

Despite being quite sick, I enjoyed Prague. The river boat hotel was a comfortable den to repair to each night and I found just enjoying the architecture restful.

References

David Reich, Who We Are and How We Got Here, Penguin Random House, 2019.

Tom Wolfe, From Bauhaus to Our House, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1981.