A Bohemian Magpie Rides From Coney Island To Celetna

You know you've just been to Prague when...

you can look at the lights on the Parachute Jump and think "garnets!"

Surely, that structure won't be mistaken for anything Bohemian kings ever wore, any more than any of my helmets would.  And none of the streets I pedaled to Coney Island will never be confused with Celetna, the route of the coronation processions.

And no one I saw today will be confused with Mikhail, who guided my first ride in Prague:

A bit of a Bohemian prince, wouldn't you say?


Guys remember the pretty girls.  Me, I remember the pretty stuff.  Or the eye-catching, stuff, anyway.

I took that photo inside St. Nicholas Church on the Old Town Square in Prague.  Maybe I am, deep down, a magpie if I like to photograph things like that...or this:

Why Can't We Have Thai Massage And Bowling In Queens?

So...Back in the good ol' USA, my Internet connection has been out for three out of five days.  It's nice to be back in the technological leader of the world, isn't it?

OK, I'll end the gratuitous sarcasm.  I guess I'm suffering from a kind of post-partum depression about my trip.  I really want to be back in Prague--with at least one of my bikes, of course.


The weather has been a bit warmer than what I experienced in Prague, and it's been raining on and off, it seems, all of this week.  Astoria's not a bad place to be, but when the skies are gray, I want a Gothic skyline. At least, that's how I feel now that I've seen Prague.

I must confess:  I haven't been on my bike since I got back.  I'm doing now what I did after each bike tour I took abroad, I guess.  After cycling among scenery you wouldn't see in Brooklyn or Queens, and ending each ride with food they don't have here, it's kind of difficult to get used to the mundane--or, at least, what's mundane in your own life--again. I guess, though, once I start riding again, I'll appreciate seeing street signs I can read, not to mention asphalt instead of cobblestones and tram tracks.


Now, here's something you won't find in Queens:

Rainbows And A Full Moon

This has nothing to do with cycling.  Well, I guess it does, because it's about Prague and I did ride in Prague.  


All right, you're not convinced that there's a connection.  Do you care?  You really are looking at this post to see this:

I mean, how can you beat a trip to Prague that includes two rainbows and a full moon on the final night?  No wonder I enjoyed cycling there so much, even if I was riding a bike nothing like any I own over cobblestones and tram tracks, up and down hills.


After all of that, how could I not want to go back?  

Primary Post-Prague

I'm baaack!


Oh, wait:  That was an Austrian accent. Well, it's the country next door, anyway.  Just like an American talking with a Canadian accent, eh? ;-)


All right...Now that I've offended Americans, Canadians, Czechs and Austrians, what's next?  I guess I'll indulge in a cliche and say that I can't believe I'm back already.  I felt like I was just starting to get the hang of cycling on cobblestoned streets on which half of the width was taken by tram tracks.  And I was just starting to feel right on the bike I rode.  It's really not a bad bike, for its intended ridership, anyway.  

I haven't gotten on a bike since getting home last night in a veritable deluge.  Today it's been raining on and off, and there's no place in particular to which I must, or want to, go.   Riding in my usual settings will be a bit of a comedown--sort of like the sensation I felt after eating a really bad takeout meal the day after arriving home from a bike tour from France into Spain and back.


Yes, I miss cycling in Prague, even though it seems like less of a cyclist's city than New York now feels.  But there is definitely a cycling scene developing; it's more or less where New York's cycling community was about twenty years ago.  That is to say, for one thing, that most of the cyclists--at least the ones I saw--are young, though not children.  And, like most Big Apple cyclists of yore (i.e., my youth), those Prague cyclists are riding either mountain bikes or road bikes that have been adapted in one way or another to city commuting.  Back in the day, messengers and a few other "fringe" riders pedaled the sorts of bikes we now call "hipster fixies" (although we didn't have V-shaped rims available in colors to match our team kit!); I saw the same sorts of bikes in Prague.  


Actually, those bikes are strangely appropriate for a city and country that are  still in the process of creating and re-creating themselves from the detritus of its past and things that could scarcely have been imagined during that past.  In other words, they're exactly the sort of bike one would, and should, ride to a music club adorned with psychedelic posters inside a Soviet-era nuclear bunker.  (Yes, I saw such a place!).  And, of course, said bike would be parked in a place like this:

Girl On Bike Rides To Rainbow In Prague

Summer...In the US, it's a time when frazzled parents with squalling kids go to amusement parks, professional couples go and fry themselves on beaches that, they believe, only they know about.  And guys go to the movies to see pikshas of girls with guns.  Said girls, of course, are usually not wearing much more than their ammo belts.


So, for all of you guys, I'm going to offer the next best thing--a girl in Prague, on a bike:

OK, so I'm not wearing a bikini and my accessories don't run to bandoliers.  And maybe I'm more of a babushka than a girl.  (All of the tacky souvenir shops are full of row after row of Russian dolls.  I thought Vaclav Havel and Alexander Dubcek ended such things!)  So, just for having to endure the indignity of seeing an overweight middle-aged American woman on a rented bike, I'll offer you this:

Really, I didn't intentionally make her blurrier.  I mean, just because she's younger and more attractive than I'll ever be, and is wearing an outfit I can only hope to pull of in my next life,  it doesn't mean I sub- (or not-so-sub-) consciously took a bad photo.  My real purpose...ahem...was to show the wonderful shop from which I rented the bike I rode. It's the same one from which I took a guided tour the other day:  City Bike, on Namesti Republiky (Republic Square).  It's a tiny place, entered thorough one of those wonderful covered passageways one often sees between public buildings in this city.  

City Bike is literally steps from this architectural marvel.  Municipal Hall out-Art Nouveaus any Art Nouveau building you've ever seen.  

Just how you envisioned your next renovation, right?  Just go down to your local Home Depot and pick up all of those materials.

The building and City Bike are also within two kilometers of many of this city's attractions:  the Old Town Square (with the Astronomical Clock), among other things, the Old Jewish Quarter (where I went into the Starenovo, a.k.a. Old-New, Synagogue, the supposed home of the Golem), Wenceslas Square, the Charles Bridge and, of course, the Castle.

Today, on my first solo ride, I went by all of those places.  Then, from the Castle, I took a left (I'm not talking about my politics) and went straight (No comment on that.) through some parts of the city I hadn't seen.  

This building, in the Smichov shopping center, seems to be an inverse mirror reflection of Frank Gehry's "Dancing Building" on the other side of the Vlata River.  (You can't see one building from the other, so I don't think this symmetry was intentional.)  Smichov has been described as Prague's most "schizophrenic" neighborhood: the area around the shopping center and Andel station contain some of the city's swankiest villas.  Yet, less than two kilometers down the road I cycled, near the Schmikovske Nadrazi rail station, is one of the most impoverished areas of the city.  From that station, I found myself riding through an old industrial area, some of which seemed to be abandoned, until I came to an old residential area and, finally, a trestle that was just wide enough for the trams that passed over it.

Although I seemed to be cycling in even tighter spaces than I do in New York or have in Paris, riding these streets didn't seem quite as frentic.  To be sure, I didn't have to be any place in particular at any given time.   But, even when I rode down ancient cobblestoned streets not much wider than my (I'll let you choose the part of my body.  Ha, ha.) and drivers approached from behind, they didn't honk their horns or pull as close as they could to my rear wheel.  Admittedly, those streets aren't very long, so they didn't have to spend very much time waiting.  But I could not imagine a New York or Parisian driver being so patient.


After I got back to my hotel and walked in search of a meal, this sight greeted me:

That, after this:

That was one of two rainbows I've seen since I've been here. A sign, perhaps?  I hope!

First Ride In Prague

All right, I admit it.  I didn't end up with a guy named Vaclav. Instead, I spent  part of yesterday afternoon with a cute Czech cyclist named Michael:

He's a law student at Charles University in this town.  He speaks beautiful English and, surprisingly, pretty good Spanish.  And, as you may have guessed by now, yesterday he guided me on my very first bike ride in Prague.  


So, here's the answer to a question you may (or may not) have asked:

Yes, it's the bike I rode.  The alternatives were a single-speed cruiser and a mountain bike of a brand I didn't recognize.  I didn't mind the lack of a name brand nearly as much as the poor fit the mountain bike was for me.  


I don't know who made the bike I rode.  I doubt it was made in the Czech Republic; I'm not sure that any bicycles are still being made here.  For the kind of bike it is, it felt pretty good.  

The traffic didn't scare me too much. But the trolley tracks did.  It's so easy to get a tire, even a wide one, caught in the grooves or to scrape the sides of the knobs against the tracks, and to tumble over.  

Nothing like that happened on our ride through the central part of the city.   At least I know now about the tracks, and other hazards.  But more important, I started to see this beautiful city from one of the best possible angles.