Mmmm...cake.

After watching rehearsal at Laterna Magika on Thursday, I set out to sample some of Prague's famous "cafe culture". My Lonely Planet book had recommended a few, so I ended up at Cafe Savoy, just across the river from the theatre. This is their Tort Savoy, the house specialty - chocolate cake with chocolate mousse, and a center layer of cherry and black currant, all wrapped in marzipan. The top thingy is... some kind of little berry. I had it with a cafe au lait. Mmmm. :)

Spring at Strahov Monastery

After the Loreto, I walked up to Strahov Monastery. The most impressive thing in this complex is the beautiful library, with two ornate halls full of thousands of old books and antiquities (again, no photos allowed), but the simple appearance of flowers on trees all over Prague was beautiful in and of itself.
Spring in Prague this year may not have had as much 15C weather as I would have liked, but there wasn't the throng of tourists yet that will arrive for later in the summer, and I got to see thousands of trees like this one start blooming all around the city. Not a bad trade, I suppose!

The Loreto

March 28th was a beautiful, sunny day, so I spent it adventuring around Prague - first stop the Loretto. This artistic and historic monument from the 17th century is still an important pilgrimage site, and due to it's religious nature no photography is allowed inside it's walls. From outside, however, I got this shot of one of many cherubic statues with the main facade in the background.
The inside of the complex is beautiful, which is centered around the Santa Casa - a copy of the house of the Virgin Mary (which, story has it, was flown from Nazareth to Italy by angels), which apparently contains two beams and a brick from the original.
More obscure points of interest include the Chapel of Our Lady of Sorrows - in honour of a devout Portugese princess who desperately wanted to get out of the marriage her father had arranged. She spent all night praying for the marriage to be cancelled, and when she awoke with a large beard, her prayers were answered (Her father had her crucified, however... I guess he didn't see it as such a blessing).
Also interesting are the skeletons of two saints behind the altar of the main chapel, which have been dressed in nobles' clothing and, luckily for the parishioners, had wax masks of their faces placed over the empty skulls. Cheery...but somehow the place was still pretty!

"Graffiti"

Flash ahead again to March 27 - one week after I first met with Petr and Laterna Magika.
I went that morning to the backstage door, where the receptionist who spoke no English thankfully had been informed that the girl who spoke no Czech would be arriving and should be shown upstairs.
The woman who was helping to show me around while I was there was actually French - now, I haven't taken French since grade nine, but I certainly understand it a lot better than I do Czech. I was actually surprised with how much I did understand of what she was saying to me! When it came time for me to communicate, however, I didn't do so well - but we managed!
Anyway, I spent the morning watching the company's ballet class and rehearsal for that evening's show - "Graffiti". Things finished there around 2:00, which is when I went off to explore the Easter market you've already seen, and I came back to the theatre again for 7:30 to watch the evening's performance.
"Graffiti" was very cool, and completely different from last week's "Rendez-vous" - this time, about human relationships of all shapes and forms. It was interesting to see the performance after having seen the rehearsals beforehand - they had been rehearsing with the music, of course, but without costumes or projections, so it was nice to see it all come together.

"Rendez-vous" with Laterna Magika

So, this posting is actually a little belated, but I thought I would fill you on what else I was doing besides touring and having fun now that my puppet man is completed!
We'll actually have to go back to March 20th, which is the first day I arrived at Laterna Magika, the other theatre I was working with while in Prague. This was actually the same day I first started work on my puppet guy with Martin - I had to make sure I left in enough time to go home, shower off the wood shavings, and head to the theatre.
I met with Petr Tosovsky, producer and artistic director of the theatre, in the lobby at 7:30. What a wonderful man - he was so friendly, welcoming and accommodating to me right from the very beginning! He took me around for a tour backstage and introduced me to various people (at least those who spoke a little English) before settling in to watch the show.
Before I continue, a bit about Laterna Magika: their shows are all non-verbal, combining dance, projected imagery, pantomime and black light. Their productions are done in repertory, meaning that there is a different show playing each week, with four of them currently in rotation. My timing actually worked out quite well, and I was able to see three of them while in Prague!
This photo I have posted here is a scene shot for "Rendez-vous" (not one I took - no cameras allowed), the show I saw that first evening. It was about the last 15 seconds of the life of a Spanish matador as he is killed by a bull, and includes flashbacks to his life as well as his journey into the afterlife. Some very cool imagery in this one, and they also had two guest-star acrobats - very exciting!

Here's Hoping...

Charles Bridge is lined on both sides with statues of important historical figures, but this one featuring St. John of Nepomuk is unique.
Here's the story: St. John was a priest under King Wenceslas IV (son of Charles IV) who received the confessions of the Queen. Unfortunately, the King was a very suspicious man, and when St. John wouldn't reveal the Queen's confessions, the King had him killed and thrown off the bridge into the Vltava River.
Now, all this bad luck for St. John is somehow supposed to be good luck for us - legend has it that if you rub the base of the statue, (some say it's supposed to be the image of the dog on the left, some say the image of the saint being dumped into the river on the right...I touched both just to be sure) it will bring you good luck and ensure that you one day return to Prague.
I figured it was worth a try - I'll keep you posted on how it goes!

Jazz on the Bridge

After the market, we strolled across the beautiful Charles Bridge ("Karluv Most" in Czech). It was a gorgeous, sunny day, and tourists were out in full force to shop the artisans' booths lining the bridge. Luckily "full force" in March is nothing compared to what it would be a couple months from now, so I was still able to get an unobscured shot of these buskers, playing live jazz in the sun.

Pretty...?

Here's one of the "cute" little fellows on sale in the market. This one was actually nicer than a lot of the ones I saw - he's well made, just a little frightening to hang in your child's room, perhaps!

A Pile of Puppets

There were many booths in the market selling little, souvenir "loutky" - Czech for "puppets" (see, there's one word I do know!). Most of the ones here featured simpler puppets, but in some of the permanent stores around the Old Town, you could find everything from simple to fantastically elaborate - and the prices reflected it!
The handmade puppets were naturally the highest quality. I found that with many of the cheaper ones, you more often than not got some creepy looking faces - check out the guy with red suspenders and googly eyes on the right side of the photo - yikes!
The parrot's pretty cute, though. :)

Trdelnik = Tasty

Trdelnik is not actually the Czech translation for tasty...at least as far as I know, in my extremely limited knowledge of the language! What I know the word to mean, however, is the name of these yummy dough spirals - also sometimes called Trdlo.

It's pretty interesting to see them made:
First, they roll a long bit of dough out like a Play-Dough snake, and then wrap it around and around the big metal cylinders that you can see in the background. They put two on each cylinder, which they then use as a big rolling pin to flatten them out.
Next, they're rolled in a sugar/vanilla/toffee/nut mixture, before being placed in that machine, which twirls them over an open flame until they are roasted a golden brown.
Then, out of the fire and back for one more dip in the sugar mix, then onto a napkin and steaming out to you!

I first encountered them a smaller market in the suburb where I was staying. Most of the people there were locals, not tourists, so I was interested to see what the line up was for - and this was my discovery! Goulash and dumplings are tasty too, but this was a delightfully sweet change of pace.

An Easter Tree!

See, Mom's not the only one who likes decorating trees for Easter! This one was in the center of the market, again with the Tyn Church in the background.

Easter Market in Old Town Square

Every spring, the Czechs set up rows and rows of market stalls in the weeks leading up to Easter. There are knick knacks, jewellery, food, artwork (mostly reproduced in these stalls), bottles of beer with souvenir glasses, Prague beer steins, little puppet shops, and of course the traditional, hand-painted Easter eggs, seen here hanging in a booth with the Church of Our Lady Before Tyn in the background - a prominent feature on the eastern side of the square.

Playing catch-up

Okay, so it's April 11th now, and I've actually been back in Canada since April 5th.
Where did the rest of my trip go?? Things got a little busy (and I didn't have free internet anymore!) towards the end of my trip, so there's a sizable gap that still needs to be filled in from my last week or so. I'll go back to that now, so if we can all just pretend that I'm still over there, I'll continue with the play-by-play!
I'll try to catch us all up...