The buildings, the buildings!!!!

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UPDATED!!!!!

Wandering through Prague reminds me of the time I spent in Stockholm, just walking through all the streets looking at the buildings completely amazed that they could be so beautiful.

I got quite a lot done today:
- Stare Mesto (this is teh old part of town) with its huge square surrounded by some of the abovementioned beautiful buildings.
- 20th century art museum: small but confusing
- all sorts of little streets got looked at by me
- Tyn church - very impressive Gothic church with an unusually lightly painted ceiling and beautiful restored interior
- Charles Bridge the best thing about which was the views

After a very short, about 5 minute walk, thanks to the location of the ´Old Prague Hostel´ I found myself early in the morning in the Old Square which is a big plaza surounded by the all the important buildings and the requisite monument in the middle. After seeing the square again in the middle of the day when it was full of tourists as all of Prague seems to be I can honestly appreciate how nice and empty I found it. The big disappointment there was that the astronomical clock with moving figures seems to be under repair and therefore could not be seen. Next it was off to the Tyn Church whose two spires seem to be rising from one of the buildings on teh square even though it is behind it. The size of the church is hard to appreciate from the outside because it is built in a very small courtyard and you cannot get any distance away from it while continuing to keep it in sight. Inside the newly restored interior sparkles and shines with a lot of gold (paint, leaf, whatever) which makes it all a bit too baroque for my taste. The shinyness of the church was made up for with the cream painted expanse of the ceiling which does bring a certain lightness to the building. It is a bit of a surprise because the church is supposed to be Gothic and that to me means gray and dark and then you get... gold, light. Maybe gothic means something else to the Czechs?

Next stop was a small but interesting museum of 20th century art. Once again I felt like a know-nothing. Is there a secret to understanding modern art? There were some things that I liked but these painting were more or less normal, at least in what they were portraying. My favorite was a painting that only used 3 colors grey, green, and pink in many shades to paint a sailboat scene. I do find it interesting to think about what actually is art, a line of thinking that this museum definetely promotes.

After spending a long time gazing into the shop windows which sell very beautiful vases and all sorts of other glass objects I grabbed a quick lunch of a hot dog and walked around little streets encountering among other things a sex-machine museum, which I however did not visit, but it was enough just to know it existed. On and on through the cute little cobble stone streets I walked to the Charles Bridge which has great views over the river and all the other bridges of Prague. If one forgets about all the people it can be very poetic. Of course then you open your eyes and there are 20 japanese tourists taking a foto...

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Photos

Puppets
Supposedly Czech Republik is famous for its puppets which, however, were somewhat hard to find. Did come upon this though.

Charles Bridge
There were so many people!!! Now just imagine high tourist season

Manhole Cover
Even the manhole covers are beautiful in this city!