Day five (September 17, Prague, 0 km)

Today was a rest day, not too much to report therefore.

Pražský hrad

We visited the castle

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and saw a Chinese couple taking wedding pictures in front of the dome

Kafka (a distracted student of law)

We went into the Franz-Kafka Museum. The most interesting news for me there was Kafka’s course certificate for his first year of law studies with some roman law and legal history classes, but many more that were not at all ‘useful’ or even necessary for a lawyer: history of arts, philosophy of arts, history of litterature, aesthetics of music etc.

Today, he would probably fail due to lack of focus and unwillingness to learn the “Gutachtenstil”.

One of the things I didn’t like so much was the fact that in the exhibition there is a letter shown (if I remember correctly) in which Kafka asks a friend to intervene at the editor of “The Metamorhosis” that under no circumstances any picture of any insect should be on the book’s frontpage - which is however not at all an obstacle for the museum to sell postcards and other gadgets precisely with different versions of bugs on them.

I, however,, was really happy to finally make it to the museum, as Kafka has been an icon and a lighthouse for many years (one example here:)

We visited the John Lennon wall thanks to a suggestion of my son; I hadn’t known anything about it. The wall was a perfect reason to read lots about the velvet revolution and current Czech politics in a cafe nearby. I, once again, had to learn how embarassingly little I know about history and politics of this (and any other) neighbour country. I was, for example, ignorant until today that the current minister of foreign affairs, Jan Lipavský, is a member of the Czech Pirate Party.

The River

We did a boat trip in the evening

(Felix is OK with him being on the picture here)

so that we finally saw Charles bridge from below

and the sunset on the river

and had another nice evening walk

befor dinner (Svíčková, again).

And that was Prague.

Tomorrow, we will go north again.

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