Quote of the day: "Can you imagine Dorian Gray gingerly tossing himself onto the divan?"
Also, this.
... as I read through Wilde's plays and then some of his prose, I came to recognize a pattern: his characters were always flinging themselves onto sofas. That was the only word Wilde ever used for it, fling, and he used it inordinately, constantly; the more I looked for it the more it turned up. No one in Wilde's domain, it seemed, could get any thinking or moping done without first flinging oneself onto the nearest possible surface ... (source)
Oh, dear. This is hilarious.
This was the next day, and I was walking around the Staroměstské náměstí, or the Old Town Square. Prague is very colourful and pretty, but it was also hot as hell. It must have been about 32 degrees. Even the wind was hot air. Unfortunately, when it gets too hot, the experience of sightseeing takes a considerable blow, and I can't stress enough how much I dislike heat. I think I came to Europe to get away from the sweltering weather, not rediscover it. I actually had to put my hoodie on to shade myself from the vicious Bohemian sun, since my dark hair absorbs the infrared sun rays like nobody's business.
I always like taking pictures of manhole lids.
The square was teeming with people, of course, since this is Prague. Defiantly defying the scorching noonday sun and intent on taking pictures of a place that's already been photo'ed 8,930,559,032 times.
The Pražský orloj, which was installed in 1410 and is the oldest working astronomical clock today. Built by the architect Jan Růže, legend is that the city councillors, who did not want the architect recreating his magnum opus in another city, blinded him so that he would not be able to build another clock tower of the like. In retaliation he broke the clock and it remained in disrepair for the next century, and anyone who attempted to do so would go mad. I sincerely hope this is a legend because that's barbaric and I don't want to think about how they blinded him - a hot poker in the eyes, or a knife, or something even more dreadful? Urgh, doesn't bear thinking about.
(A/N: I just googled it and turns out that it WAS a hot poker.)
From a distance.
There's an hourly show of the clockwork figures in the tower which I unfortunately missed, named the Walk of the Apostles that feature the disciples of Jesus, as well as the four vices of Prague (if you will), namely Vanity, represented by a figure admiring himself in a handheld mirror, Greed, a miser clutching a bag of gold, Death, a skeleton that strikes the time on the hour, and Pleasure, represented by a Turk. (For the sake of political correctness, the latter is probably a bit racist. The miser looks like Shylock.) This is the stuff that I used to obsess over in my childhood. When I was little I was fascinated by the idea of representation and symbols, of vices and virtues, of ideas depicted in pictograms and ideals rather than literal explanations. I liked the ambiguity of such portrayals, that they could have infinite interpretations.. But I digress. There are plenty of legends surrounding the respective figurines in the Orloj, such as Death: the story goes that if the Orloj is untended to, evil will descend upon Czech, which will then be confirmed by the skeleton nodding his head. Yet others claim that the skeleton is a metaphor for Hope and represents not Death but Life. There's another story tied to this which I won't elaborate on (it should be google-able) but then I do like the whole concept of the clockwork tower and its rather sinister figurines. There are lots of similar things like this in this part of the world. Nuremburg has a clock tower of its own with figurines and all, which I also missed, but I'll get to that when its time comes.
Walking away from the Staroměstské náměstí..
..on the Karlův most with a nice panorama of the Vltava river. More to come.
(A/N: I can't believe I missed the Lennon Wall in Prague. Maybe I'll go there for Christmas, rather than Tokyo.)
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