Prague Blog - Day 5 - Vyšehrad Selfie

September 4

In the morning we rode the Metro to Vyšehrad to do Rick Steves' self-guided walk in this large park. That's my kind of selfie.

View of Prague from the Metro station

The Soviet-era Congress Center. According to Rick, this is the ugliest building in town (but I vote for the Nová Scéna, the New National Theater, photo at the end of this post).

Defensive gate into the park. Note how thick the walls are. This was a fortress in the 17th century, before it was a park, but the site goes back to the 10th century, perhaps earlier.

Formal gate inside the defensive gate

Rotunda of St. Martin, 11th century

Vltava River, looking south (upstream)

Looking north

Okay. Now I want to say something about selfies. At this point in our walk we began to encounter groups of Asian tourists, and I began to notice cultural differences. I have noticed some of this previously, but at this time, my ideas on this subject have jelled. Please don't take this as racist. This is my anthropologist self speaking. I am not judging, just noticing some interesting cultural differences.

First, Asians are in love with selfie sticks. In our culture there is a somewhat negative nuance to selfie sticks. Even the name suggests inappropriate self-absorption. Selfie sticks are often the subject of scorn in Western society. I must assume that such social inhibition does not exist in Asian cultures.

Second, non-Asians tend to take pictures of places and things, preferably without other people in the photos, as you can see from most of mine. Asians tend to take pictures of each other. It does not seem to matter whether there is anything in the photo that suggests where it was taken. For example, I saw a person take a photo of his companions while they were sitting on a very generic park bench. The only thing in the background was a clump of bushes. Maybe a botanist would immediately know that this is the Czech Republic, but I doubt it.

It is easy enough to get good photos of a place on the internet, so I don't really know why Ken and I feel compelled to take so many photos, making sure there are no strangers in the picture. If you are taking photos for artistic purposes, that's one thing. Or if you want to control the resolution or other photographic parameters. So perhaps we should be re-examining why we are taking pictures and what is going to matter in 30 years.

Third, many of the Asian women like to pose in slightly suggestive pin-up poses, even though the context doesn't seem right to Western eyes as far as time or place. They do keep their clothing more modest than this young lady:

I didn't want to take pictures of the Asian tourists taking pictures, so you will have to take my word for it.

After a while we arrived at the Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul. I have tried to understand the difference between a basilica and a cathedral and a church, but I still don't understand. Basilica can refer to either the architectural style or the canonical status. I think a basilica is more important than a cathedral. However, if a bishop is the head of his diocese, then his cathedral outranks any basilica in his diocese. See?

The Basilica spires, with a small vineyard in the foreground

The National Cemetery lies on one side of the Basilica. It is quite beautiful. All the Czech big shots are buried here. But you won't find Kafka - he was Jewish.

Modern Art - as far as I can tell, Hanzal was a local politician

Smetana's tomb

Dvořák's tomb - the alcove includes an Art Nouveau sculpture

Mucha's tomb - Note the interesting way the dates are written

As you leave the park you pass through another impressive gate.

There are casemates (not "casements") built into this gate. A casemate is a fortified chamber through which guns are fired through small openings called embrasures. An embrasure is wider on the inside than on the outside, to allow the gun to be aimed. 

You can't see any embrasures in the photo above. Apparently the casemate is 1k long on each side of the gate, so maybe the embrasures are farther away.

A fisherman's pub in the neighborhood right outside the gate

Goat cheese salad with pear and lavender honey

This was a delightful walk which showed us another face of Prague. As if that wasn't enough for one day, we went back to the Café Imperial, where we ate a very civilized lunch.

Chicken with spaetzle

Then we headed for the airport. After we flew to Heathrow we had a 2-hour drive to Southampton. By the time we arrived at our hotel it was late and we decided to skip dinner, so we had no further adventures on this day.

Nová Scéna (photo from fototuristika.cz)

Ollll