Prague's narrowest street with its traffic light ensuring that pedestrians do not enter it from either end at the same time.
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Astronomical Clock
"The clock has been modified, destroyed, and repaired many times since its creation in 1380. It is perhaps the most well-known astronomical clock in the world, with four moving automatons (including a skeleton ringing his death knell for each hour), and rotating statues of the 12 apostles. It displays Babylonian time, Old Bohemian time, German time, and Sidereal time. It also shows the moon’s phases and the sun’s journey through the constellations of the zodiac. The calendar dial, just below the clock, shows the day of the month, the day of the week, feast days and allegorical pictures of the current month and sign of the zodiac."
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I spent six months working in a fish factory in Iceland in 1983/4. One of the people working in the factory was a Czechoslovakian count who had lost everything. I don't remember much about him except that he was tall and reserved, and was too ignorant to enquire more deeply into his history.
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Yesterday we tried trdelnik or chimney cake (thanks Janicy for the heads-up) filled with crushed nuts and pistachio ice-cream. It is a sweet pastry rolled onto a metal cylinder and baked over hot coals. We bought ours from the shop pictured in yesterday's post, but later took this pic…
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Eclectic odd sods seen in Prague…
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Franz Kafka - Rotating Head by David Cerny
The Franz Kafka rotating head sculpture operates on a schedule where the 42 stainless-steel panels move for 15 minutes at the top of every hour. The 42 mobile tiers of this eleven-metre-tall sculpture align to form the face of the famous Czech writer Franz Kafka. This 39—ton bust by artist David Černý dates from November 2014.
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Lennon Wall
Located in a small and secluded square across from the French Embassy, the wall had been decorated by love poems and short messages against the regime since 1960s. It received its first decoration connected to John Lennon—a symbol of freedom, western culture, and political struggle—following the 1980 assassination of John Lennon when an unknown artist painted a single image of the singer-songwriter and some lyrics.[1]
In 1988, the wall was a source of irritation for Gustáv Husák's communist regime. Following a short-lived era of democratization and political liberalization known as the Prague Spring, the newly-installed communist government dismantled the reforms, inspiring anger and resistance. Young Czechs wrote their grievances on the wall and, according to a report of the time, this led to a clash between hundreds of students and security police on the nearby Charles Bridge. The liberalization movement these students followed was described as Lennonism (not to be confused with Leninism), and Czech authorities described participants variously as alcoholic, mentally deranged, sociopathic, and agents of Western free market capitalism.
The wall continuously undergoes change, and the original portrait of Lennon is long lost under layers of new paint. Even when the wall was repainted by authorities, by the next day it was again full of poems and flowers. Today, the wall represents a symbol of global ideals such as love and peace.