d3a / stanislav fiala

during our last architecture lecture at the beginning of may, eva wanted to show us a film but the sound was not working, so she gave us the option of going home or asking her about anything else we might be interested in.  the day before i was reading about stanislav fiala and the architecture partnership d3a, and i asked if their buildings are worth seeing up close.  eva made a strange face and said, "yes...i, i can tell you where to find them..." and wrote down some addresses for me.  i thought, "ok, so she isn't a big fan of their work."  then she said, "well, actually,  stanislav fiala is my husband."  and in fact she and the other lecturer are working on a book together about d3a, and she had the pages on file with her, so it turned into a very interesting impromptu slide lecture!

d3a is responsible for a lot of the modern architecture and urban planning in prague.  yesterday i went in search of the muzo center (above) all the way in the hostivař district of prague 10, but i could not find it at the address i had written down.  after walking around the area i finally gave up, and got on a tram home.  about three stops later, i saw a corner of something that looked like something that might be the muzo center.  i got off on the next stop, walked toward where i thought i saw something, and sure enough, there it was, in the strašnice district.  that's two stories of pure chance! 

czech navy, my sailor mate

celetná ulice is one of the oldest and allegedly most haunted streets in prague. it is also the most crowded with tourists, and therefore the last place on earth where one might run into a magical sweater czech. yet it is exactly where and exactly after whom i was running at full speed through foreigners, vendors, dogs, and children. i managed to compose almost all of me (except for knees) and hah! he offered me half of his sandwich at least three times, and told me that his plan for the summer is to build his own yacht. i don't know how he always manages to tell me these random things in so little time and with our tragically limited vocabularies, but he does. 

he had some errand in karlovo náměstí (involving paper?) and asked if i would come along, and dear god if only he knew how much i wanted to, but s. and i. were waiting for me, and friends are more important than half-mirage boys, magical or not.  we made something like plans, but plans were made a month ago, and two weeks ago, and where are they now?  yes, magical czechs are outside of time, and monday is so far away, and so uncertain!

"у маленькой любви - коротенькие руки"

here is a spread from my newly aquired book; it's called "princ a malá princezna" ("the prince and the little princess").  i just looked at the back page, and noticed that the graphic design is done by milan grygar, whose name i remember from history of czech graphic design.  he did some film posters for the czech releases of "blow up" and "cool hand luke" in the 1960s.  double cool, then.

kolbenova

this morning we went to kolbenova flea market, where people with fanny packs and golden teeth sell all manner of junk: guitars without strings, one-eyed dolls,  forgotten soviet toys.  although after j. made a joke about the toys being from chernobyl, i got a little paranoid.  there was one small red elephant that i liked, but his ear was threadbare and disintegrating.  the vanishing elephant.  however, i did get very very lucky because i found a book illustrated by květa pacovská, about whom i wrote one of my first entries.  since i came to prague, i have not been able to find anything, anything with her illustrations, and here were two books!  i had to leave one behind, but the one i bought is lovely and i only paid 50 crowns ($2.50) for it.

dresden: one

it is simultaneously fascinating and strange to be able to take a day trip to another country, without needing a passport.  yesterday we took a train to dresden, which is only two hours away.  two hours, and everyone around speaks german and all prices are in euros.  dresden is very small, with disproportionately grandiose buildings scattered every which way around the old town.  my favorite thing that i found was on the back of the ständehaus on auguststraße: two very insecure-looking atlantises.  one looks like he is looking for any sign of hair on his chest; the other, like he had an accident.  also, when we were in schloßplatz, i wondered whether napoleon had ever been here, only to find out now that this is somewhere in the vicinity.  looks like i might have to go back to investigate, maybe in june.

bílá sobota (white saturday)

because today is white saturday in the czech easter tradition, i woke up thinking that on this day i would like to find the color white.  this thought left my mind by the afternoon, and then n. and i went hiking in divoká šárka, a large natural reserve in prague 6.  we spotted a six-pointed building in the distance and decided to walk towards it.  after crossing a field and climbing a steep and slippery hill, we walked to the star-shaped renaissance summer palace (built 1555-56) called hvězda ("star").  

the palace is white and inside, the walls and ceiling are pure white, with ornamental carvings.  and the place where the palace stands is called bílá hora ("white mountain"), where the battle of the same name took place in 1620, during the thirty years' war.  and all around, tiny white flowers cover the forest floor like a carpet.  then i remembered my morning idea and found it touching that the color white found me first and drew me to itself.

slon du jour

"by what latitude could we,  abandoned thus to the fury of symbols,

be occasionally a prey to the demon of analogy,

seeing ourselves the object of extreme overtures, of singular, special attentions?"  i don't know, but i feel it all of the time.  i went farther into stromovka today, because i think that spring is here, and found another train tracks beyond the park.  a very cute blue and orange train came out from the left.  it was called "city elephant."  and on the way back i noticed that all of the trees in this park have eyes.

pavel piekar

dr. saul myers invited me to dinner with pavel piekar, who is an artist and technician at the national gallery in prague.  we had dinner at his private studio.  he is quietly eccentric, which is slightly intimidating, but with time (and moravian wine) he shared his views on modern art and showed me his work, which consists of very complicated, multiple-color linocuts. he had several recent prints hanging up, one of which i immediately recognized as a portrait of the russian poet marina tsvetayeva. just the day before i was searching though her poetry, wondering if she had ever been to prague.  i found out from pavel that she had lived in prague for several years, and the city's influence can be found in some of her work.  this was like a little birthday present, and also the strangest birthday i have ever had. 

strange thing number three

i tore this page out of a november 2007 issue of travel + leisure about a year ago, and scanned it just before coming to prague.  there was an interesting brief article about the czech republic today and a few photographs by matthew monteith from his book czech eden.  today i walked into the bookbinding studio and while i was talking to the head of the workshop, some blond woman turned around and looked directly at me, and it was THIS. WOMAN. 

sunday

my new roommate moved in today.  n. is from ukraine but has lived in prague for two years, speaks czech, and sometimes works as a guide, so she knows a lot about the history of the city.  this is very lucky for me.  even more serendipitously, we first met at a bar a few nights ago:  i was told that i will have a ukrainian girl named n. moving in on sunday, and when i saw her i got the feeling that she is that girl, and when she came to talk to me, she said she somehow knew that i was her future roommate, too.  so strange how these things are happening.

saint vitus' dance

today was the first part of our architectural tour around prague, which included going inside katedrála svatého víta (saint vitus cathedral), and as further proof that my life is ruled by kismet, i ran into dr. saul myers, my kafka professor from MICA.  back in baltimore, we joked that maybe we will accidentally meet at café kafka, but that it should actually happen in such a big city, and not in any place but literally in "the castle" is a very, very interesting coincidence.