I fondly remember celebrating St. Nicholas’s Day as a child at church. One of the older men in the congregation would dress up in the traditional bishop’s robes of St. Nicholas and pass out gigantic, soft gingerbread cookies to us.
The Czechs also celebrate St. Nicholas’s Day, or Mikulas in Czech, but they do it with a sinister twist.
Around 5 o’clock this evening groups of three dressed like St. Nicholas, a devil and an angel set out into the night to judge the children of the Czech Republic and decide which ones have been naughty or nice. The ones who behave get candy while the bad ones get shoved into the devil’s sack to be “taken to hell”.
Most of this revelry was centered around the Old Town Square Christmas Market which was jam-packed with Czechs and tourists alike wearing glowing devil horns or angel wings.
While the children aren’t literally taken to hell, they do get literally put in a burlap sack and dragged around the square. Terrifying, right? Some Czechs defend this tradition by saying it “builds character”. I suppose this is true.
This was simultaneously one of the funniest and most terrifying things I have ever witnessed as parents stood back and had a good laugh as their children were mentally scarred.
It made me think of all of those Santa Clauses in malls across America having to deal with screaming, crying children. If American children are scared of a jolly man there to give them gifts, they probably would have peed their pants if they saw these devils gallivanting around Prague tonight who threw explosive rocks and yelled in children’s faces all in the name of a good laugh.
While I did see many crying children here, there were also quite a few who looked like they were enjoying it. They must have been the well-behaved ones who had nothing to fear.
I saw at least five of these trifectas wandering the square and several more on the metro on my way home. A majority of them were teens. I can imagine that they were just trying to retaliate for being tormented as a small child.
So there is a week and one day left in my program.
Woah, but mostly woe.
Instead of studying for finals I decided to take a walk today in between classes. After Molly and I left Bohemia Bagel we wandered through the Old Town Square Christmas Market which is quite possibly the best place in the world (petting zoo, large tree, rings of dough doused in cinnamon sugar, mulled wine, sausage, etc.).
Then I just kept walking and walking and walking.
I passed the Dancing Building near the river, crossed the bridge, walked up the other side of in Male Strana and then climbed to the top of Petrin Hill. Even though I’ve been there before the view still caught me off guard. All of Prague is visible from this point. Within one glance you can see the Namesti Miru church, the Zizkov TV Tower, Charles Bridge, the Old Town Square church, and Prague Castle to just name a few things. I took my time to absorb it all knowing that I probably wouldn’t be back there anytime soon.
It started to rain softly. Everything reminded me of this photo by Czech photographer Josef Sudek.
While I should have returned to class I just kept on exploring. I ended up at the top of Prague Castle hill at the Strahov Monastery and then meandered my way down to St. Vitus Cathedral and all the way back to Tesco and then NYU.
I guess this was my own sort of subconscious farewell to Prague.
To celebrate the beginning of the Christmas season Molly and I each baked about three to four different kinds of cookies and cake last Friday. We may have gone slightly overboard- there were cookies everywhere and we all felt a bit sick afterwards. It was pleasant though.
I made a pumpkin bundt cake, my nanna’s ginger cookies, and oatmeal raisin cookies while Molly made double chocolate chip cookies, oatmeal apple cookies, and brownies. To work off our food coma we watched Love, Actually that night.
My pumpkin cake turned out the best of what I baked. The ginger cookies I made, though, were nothing like how my mom makes my nanna’s recipe. The texture, taste, and color was all off. They tasted okay though. I think it was because I couldn’t find molasses in Prague. I ended up spending about $8 on dark corn syrup at the American food market at Red, Hot & Blues as a substitute but it didn’t quite work.
So this is very delayed, but it’s been a long week. Last weekend three friends and I went to Berlin for two days. Just like this post won’t do the city justice, neither did spending only two days in one of Europe’s coolest cities. I would love to get back as soon as possible. Berlin is on the verge of something very important whether it be its music scene, art, and/or architecture. In some ways it reminded me of Beijing with lots of construction and new shiny glass buildings popping up all over the place.
I would like to write much more later, but for now I’ll put two pictures up. One is from when we arrived very early on Saturday and watched the sun rise over the Brandenburg Gate all by ourselves. The other is from right before we caught our midnight bus back to Prague on Sunday. We wandered up to the top of the Reichstag dome which was deserted. Nothing like having major European monuments all to yourself. I guess this is the bonus of traveling in the off season.
The Brandenburg Gate at 6 am on a Saturday morning
The Reichstag at 10 pm on a Sunday night.
The second issue of the NYU student website I photo edit/write for just came out last Friday at Praguewanderer.com.
There are articles on gay male prostitutes, taxi cab corrruption, and the recent neo-nazi rally here in Prague.
I wrote an article on traditional Czech food and obesity here .
My favorite part of this issue is the photo essay I worked on with my co-editor on the night tram. View it here.
I took most of the photos to accompany the articles/columns in this issue as well. Hopefully you’ll take the time to check it all out.
Tomorrow, November 17, is the 18th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution here in Prague that led to the downfall of communism in the Czech Republic. Read more about those events here.
Tara also sent this article to me the other day. It is about the Plastic People of the Universe, the band who supposedly helped spark the Velvet Revolution. My Reporting the Arts professor here at NYU in Prague was a member of this group and still performs with them today.
I’m writing about it today because I’m leaving for Berlin late tonight (Even though after Budapest I vowed to never take a night bus again). I’m staying at a hostel themed after the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy which I find ever so amusing. I’ll be back Monday morning early. Like at 5 am. Damn you overnight transportation.
On most days people who walk down Queen Street in Glasgow will see the Duke of Wellington statue graced with various traffic cones. The day I was there the Duke’s head was crowned with a florescent orange cone while a neon yellow cone sat jauntily upon the head of his horse. These absurdly placed cones puzzled and baffled me.
At first glance I thought the cones were placed there as a prank, but since it was in front of Glasgow’s Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) I thought it was some sort of surreal installation that the museum had created. Yet I was wrong, because when I came back a few hours later the cones had been removed.
Before I visited Scotland, I had imagined it as a dark and austere country where people took their bagpipe-playing and haggis-eating entirely too seriously. However the tradition I discovered behind the coning of the Duke of Wellington statue proved to me that Scottish people have a sense of humor that I never could have imagined.
For the past 20 years or so the Duke of Wellington statue has been the focal point of late night pranksters who climb the 160-year-old statue to top it with a traffic cone according Andy Cumbo, a Glasgow native who works as a chef at a restaurant nearby the statue.
“Sometimes after a couple of drinks on my way home I put [the cone] back up!” Cumbo said.
Locals believe that the cone represents the city’s sense of humor and ability to not take authority too seriously. To them the cones on the statue are just as important as any of the other monuments and buildings in Glasgow.
“[It] used to be a weekend prank… then more people joined in and it became an all year round game,” Cumbo said.
Eventually artists began to print pictures and t-shirts of the coned statue and after that it became a very popular pastime.
“When the GOMA opened 10 years ago it focused the attention on Wellington and from then on the rest is history,” Cumbo said.
Although the cone tradition only began around 20 years ago, the statue was erected in 1844 and was created by the Italian sculptor Carlo Marochetti.
Arthur Wellesley was the first Duke of Wellington and played an important role in the British Army during the Napoleonic Wars. He was a famous military figure in the early nineteenth century who rose to the rank of field marshal and was also a popular politician. In addition to his fame for his statue he is also the namesake of the ubiquitous Wellington rain boot.
Even though the prank has become embedded into Glasgow’s culture the cones are often removed on the order of the city council and the police. On many mornings a high powered water jet is used to wash the cones off the statue.
While locals argue that the cone portrays the city’s sense of humor and has become an important part of Glasgow, the Duke of Wellington no longer wears spurs and is missing half of his sword due to people continuously climbing up the statue for so many years.
The police have issued many warnings over the years that declared that anyone caught climbing the statue could face criminal charges.
The Glasgow City Council has also repeatedly reminded the public that placing the cones upon the Duke is an act of vandalism and that a fall from the nearly 20 foot statue could be very harmful.
In an interview with BBC Scotland’s news website the spokesman for the city council said, “The message we would send to people thinking about climbing on the Duke of Wellington is ‘don’t do it – please’.”
According to the official law, “Any person found defacing the statue or climbing on it for the purpose of defacing it may face criminal charges.”
While the police have tried for years to get people to stop placing cones upon Wellington and his horse their efforts have been ignored. Eventually they gave up.
“The police turn a blind eye to anyone putting the cone back on,” Cumbo said.
Even though the authorities have tried to put a stop to the free spirits of Glasgow, this tradition seems as if it will never stop because there will always be a Scottish prankster, like Cumbo, to give the Duke back his bizarre crown.
I’ve been abroad for nearly 120 days and as of today only have 30 left.
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH, NO!
I would like to stay in Europe forever, but unfortunately I have a plane ticket booked already for December 14.
At least it won’t be 30 degrees in California and it will be Christmas time and my friends and family will be there. There’s is always plus and minuses about any situation and there are equal amounts of both for going home, but Prague has been too good to me and I cannot say goodbye in a month.
On another sidenote: It snowed last night. I’ve broken out the winter coat and hat and gloves and boots.
vs. 
My stopover in London at the end of my fall break was barely 12 hours long. Even though my time there was negligible I woke up early so I could cross the Millennium Bridge to see what was new at one of my favorite museums in the world- the Tate Modern.
The first time I went to the Tate was back with a school program in August 2003. All of the installations that they displayed back then blew my mind. The sheer size of some of them overwhelmed me and I still hold my memories of my first trip to the Tate very dearly. While the exterior of the large converted power plant remained the same as before the art inside was quite new to me.
My favorite new addition to the Tate was a series of songs written by musicians inspired by art in the museum. Several bands and songwriters were brought into the museum and were told to find the piece that spoke to them the most and then compose a piece about it. This marriage of modern art and music opened up so many more emotional connections to art for me because my ears were involved in the whole experience of the museum too.
The one that stood out the most to me was a painting called Hip, Hip, Hoorah! by the Dutch painter Karel Appel. As I wandered (and wondered) about the surrealism wing my eye was caught by a flurry of florescent colors. Shades of green, red, orange, blue and yellow popped brightly into my vision.
