Upside down horse

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At breakfast this morning there were 5 young men obviously good friends eating together. They flew in last evening from Chicago and will stay all week to build a new floor in the reception area. Neither of us can imagine what that means. The reception area looks very complete to us now. So it will be interesting to see the change and what it accomplishes and how it adds to the area. They said it was partly for security purposes. So, we will watch with interest. They were all quite awake but their bodies were still on Chicago time. I heard one man say he awoke at 12 last night and couldn’t get back to sleep. Probably his stomach thought it was supper time. We know how that feels. They will come to church in a few minutes and then plan to go downtown and do some sightseeing this afternoon. I doubt if they will have much free time the rest of the week with all the carpentry work they will get involved with.

This afternoon Bill and Harold went downtown to the State Opera House to see if there are any tickets still available in the middle of March. Howard is here for several months on sabbatical leave working on a commentary on Colossians. Harold’s wife is coming for a visit in March. Anyone who visits Prague definitely needs to take advantage of the fact that this is the music capital of Europe (along with Vienna). Fortunately there were seats still available for the March 11th performance of La Traviata by Verdi. It should be a fun evening.

After buying the tickets we walked the length of Wencelas Square.
Harold said, “Let’s stop and have a cup of coffee. There is a coffee bar near here that I read about.” He took a small book containing maps out of his pocket. Flipping through them he found the one he was looking for, “Ah, here it is. Let’s see, it should be over there on a side street.”

We crossed the square and in a few minutes found the coffee shop. It is on the second floor of a small mall. The mall is in an older building. The older buildings have so much more character than new ones. A huge statue of a horse is hanging from the ceiling ... and he is hanging upside down. A full armored knight is riding the house, but riding on the horse’s belly. So the rider is upright while the horse is upside down. There has to be a story here somewhere. Harold said he believes it was done as a political satire, but he did not know or remember at whom the satire was pointed. Was there a Czech Don Quixote sometime in the past?

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Photos

Upside-down horse
I believe the statue is really a spoof on St. Wenceslas who is sitting upright on his horse at one end of Wenceslas Square.

Older mall
This picture was taken from the window in the coffee bar where we had a cup of Expresso.