Saturation Point

We have reached a saturation point. It is day 30 tomorrow – the same day we went home from France last year. We are saturated with cathedrals and castles, parks and playgrounds, Jewish memorials, Nazi sights, and leftovers from a Communist past. But most of all, we are absolutely saturated with sweat. Today was 93 degrees and no one here uses air conditioning. There is nowhere to go for relief except the shade and even the shade offers no relief unless you are motionless. There is not a lot of sight seeing you can do while motionless in the shade.

Prague is as lovely as you may have ever read about. It did not suffer the bombs of the world wars or much communist concrete redevelopment. It is as it has been for centuries, and you can tell on every street. But you also see repair and construction almost everywhere. It is truly dizzying (and frustrating) to see the sheer number of projects underway in almost every place we have been so far. Will there every be a year when things are finished – when scaffolding is the exception and not the rule?

The guide books say Prague is still a relatively inexpensive city. I see no evidence of that. We ate $3 worth of eggs for breakfast and paid $60 for it. A $5 foot long at Subway costs $8. Every church has a small fee (while they are almost always free in the west). Climbing the tower in the main square cost us $21. In many other cities, a tower climb is just a token fee. And it has proven almost impossible to find a place to pee for free. I am strongly considering starting an internet campaign to get everyone visiting Europe to pee in public until they start making basic toilets available without the correct change (and currency!).

So anyway, pardon my rant. We are tired of being hot and tired of being tired.

Last night was our second night train ride in 4 nights, and we actually slept a little better this time, though not well (top photo). Those little cabins are amazingly cramped when the beds are down and that certainly doesn’t help with the heat. Since the train arrived at 6:55 AM we had a lot of time to kill in the city before our room was ready, so we dropped our bags in storage and saw a bit of the old town including the outside of the Tyn Church (middle photo). The church was closed when we got there which I found disappointing mostly because it would have offered the usual cave-man style air conditioning all big piles of stone do (again, the saturation point with sights like this). Then we climbed the tower for views and slumped back across the Charles Bridge (bottom).

One thing you really notice about cities like this on a hot day is the lack of green anywhere. Trees, and the shade they provide are almost nonexistent. Buildings and cobblestones, that’s all there is. It is charming on a comfortable day and downright oppressive on a hot one.

It is too early in our visit to offer fair comparisons, but Krakow was everything I hoped it would be – historic, charming, inexpensive, and with plenty of green space – and with people who are very happy you are there. So far, my impression of Prague is that it is historic and charming, and that’s it…