2010

This trip is becoming a bit of a legend with my friends, even though it wasn't anything special. Basically, I chose not to stay over in Brno because I had to work the next day and I needed to get back to Prague reasonably quickly, so I figured I'd take the famous EuroNight sleeper train the "Metropol," which runs from Budapest to Berlin. This train isn't always on time, though, and in this case it was spectacularly late. In fact, it was probably the latest train I had ever had to wait for other than in the United States or Britain. The trainboard says that as of the time I took the photo it was 120 minutes late, but by the time it departed I think it was even later. Long before that, the Czechs on the platform were swearing in English. If you think about it, who wants to spend over two hours standing on a station platform in the middle of the night? What if it had been winter?

This train, which was also late, actually arrived before the Metropol, and it was also headed to Prague. I ran over to Platform 1 (I think that's the station side one in Brno), and boarded it with another person who wanted to experiment....

....then the Metropol pulled in, and we didn't pull out. In the end, we opted for the Metropol since we figured it would get priority. In the end, we were right.

By the time we got to Prague the next morning, long after the sun had come up, the trainboard said we were 130 minutes late (it's actually hard to read in this crappy cameraphone shot), but again we were later. This was several weeks ago, but as I said my friends are still talking about it now. One of them was also late on the same train this morning.

I just spotted this Maserati randomly in traffic in Prague. I had never seen one like this before, so before I posted the photo I did some Wikipedia research. Judging from the photos, it looks like this is a Ghibli, but I'm not 100% certain since I couldn't find a comprehensive list of models and photos.

When I did my second walking tour of Stara Linka 011, I decided to go as far as hikers are currently allowed (the line isn't fully converted yet, I found out). I took some photos, and did a video (I can't decide whether to post it yet), but some of my most interesting shots were of buildings. I shot this one because of the old Redua Cokolada (Chocolate) ad. I've never seen Redua in stores, so I'm assuming the company is out of business. In addition, because the Communists placed substantial restrictions on advertising (with many exceptions like Skoda, Bata, and so on), I was wondering if the company predated 1948.

These were blocks of flats on the final curve as Stara Linka 011 heads into Hlavni Nadrazi. The yellowish coloring is from the setting sunlight.

Prague is divided into a number of districts which include within them many neighborhoods with their own names, but the districts generally go by numbers. The districts can be so large that they have their own city, or maybe it would be better to say town, halls, and this one is for Praha 4, the largest of all Prague districts which includes the boroughs of Nusle, Michle, Podoli, Zabehlice, Krc, Branik, Lhotka, Hodkovicky, and Kunratice. Some residents of other districts also legally have Praha 4 addresses for reasons that I'm not clear on. In any case, although I've been to this radnice (town hall) before, I was surprised especially by the fact that I had never photographed it before, as it's quite an ornate building. So much so, in fact, that I'm assuming it's a 19th, instead of 17th, Century building, although I could be wrong. I'm still trying to get information about it.

I'm someone who knows virtually nothing about flowers, but when I noticed Namesti General Kutlvasra next to the radnice for Praha 4, I walked over to experiment doing closeups of the flowers, bees, and butterflies. I've edited this shot for higher contrast and saturation, although not too aggressively.

I spent a lot of time photographing this group of flowers (does anybody know what they are?), because they were the easiest to get shots of bees and butterflies on. They move around a lot, so they can be a challenge, but I caught this butterfly in mid-flight. I don't know the species, but maybe someone more expert does.

This was the same butterfly a few seconds later.

This butterfly stood out for its black color, but the black color also hid detail. I didn't have a proper telephoto lens anyway, so I'm not sure how much it mattered. If you look carefully, you can see another butterfly off to the lower right, and an airborne bee below the black butterfly.

This was after the black butterfly turned. Note that the other butterfly and the bee are still there.

This was another butterfly.

And this was another butterfly with the same colors as in Picture 11 in flight. I don't know if it's the same one as I don't remember.

Trying to finish my roll of film with something decent, and realising that I had never photographed Frantiskanska Zahrada before, I walked back into the garden during a break and took some photos. The garden is behind St. Mary of the Snows Church, seen here. This was once a monastery (as far as I know it isn't anymore), although it went by several different names through the centuries. The church dates to 1372.

Here are a couple of the flowerbeds in Frantiskanska Zahrada. The small yellow building behind them is now a clothes shop, but I'm assuming it was once associated with the monastery.

Here's another shot of the flowerbeds and clothes shop from farther out.