Pondering the Politics of Revolution in Prague

My daughter, Kathy, and I frequently travel together to places that are politically interesting. So this year, on her spring break from college, we decided it was time to head for the site of one of the most fascinating political stories of our time--Eastern Europe--freed just months before from 45 years of Communist rule. There would be no better place to witness this change, we agreed, than Prague.

The capital of Czechoslovakia is in a festive mood these days. Pictures of Tomas Masaryk, who founded the Czech Republic in 1918, and of Vaclav Havel, the country’s new playwright president, decorate countless store windows. The good cheer and friendliness of the citizens make this glorious old city, with its medieval monuments and narrow, twisting streets, more attractive to tourists than it has been since before World War II.

The best place to catch the spirit of the revolution is in the center of the city in Wenceslas Square, where last November’s demonstrations prompted the fall of the hard-line regime. There, crowds of students and political activists still like to debate the country’s future with visitors who are inclined to join in.

At one end of the square, the base of the statue of St. Wenceslas, the country’s patron saint, is covered with all kinds of signs, ranging from congratulations from students abroad to exhortations by new political parties. Candles burn at an impromptu people’s memorial a few feet away, where the student Jan Palach immolated himself in protest against the 1968 crushing of the “Prague Spring” by Soviet troops.

In addition to Wenceslas Square, which also happens to be the most fashionable shopping area, Prague’s finest sightseeing place is exotic Hradcany Castle, sometimes called Prague Castle, where the kings of Bohemia once lived and Havel has his offices today. Unlike other Czech presidents, Havel doesn’t live at the castle but instead retains his modest apartment in the city.

Also fascinating are the Old Town Square, the 14th-Century Charles Bridge with its esoteric collection of 30 statues and the old Jewish ghetto with its remarkable cemetery. All are just across the Vltava River in the Stare Mesto or Old Town section and within walking distance of each other.

Central Prague is well served by the subway, with trains every two minutes, and an extensive network of streetcar lines making the city particularly accessible to walking and public transportation exploration.

Most of central Prague is off limits to ordinary passenger cars, so we parked our car at our hotel and relied on public transportation or walking.

We were not disappointed by our walks, even when they were uphill, as was the trek to Hradcany Castle.

On a hilltop high above the Vltava River, the 1,100-year-old castle is home to government offices, museums, palaces and the famous spires of St. Vitus Cathedral, where Czech kings were crowned and where a ceremony was held honoring Havel on his inauguration day, marking the end of Communist rule.

On Golden Lane, just inside the castle walls, a collection of 17th Century tradesmen’s cottages are notable for their architecture if not for their souvenir contents. Famed author Franz Kafka, who knew something about bureaucratic tyranny, once wrote in one of the cottages.

It is about a mile from the castle to the historic wonders of Old Town. But before you descend, gaze down for a wonderful view of the narrow streets and broad squares of both the Male Strana section below the castle and Old Town across the river. Beer halls, wine bars, coffee houses and, during the summer, sidewalk cafes offer pleasant places to take a break.

Separating the castle and Old Town is the Charles Bridge. Built by Charles IV, a Holy Roman Emperor who governed from Prague, the pedestrian walkway is lined with an odd assortment of statues of saints and national heroes.

Everyone will have his favorite sites in what is truly a beautiful city and one spared serious damage during World War II. Ours were the tiny house where Kafka wrote, and the Jewish cemetery a block from the Inter-Continental Hotel. Its gravestones, hundreds tumbling over one another, have been described as one of the 10 great historic sights of the world, a description that is not much of an exaggeration.

Next to the cemetery is a small museum and art gallery featuring paintings of doomed Jewish children imprisoned at Terezinstadt, a Nazi concentration camp on the highway from Prague to the German border.

Kathy and I visited Prague at the end of March and stayed in the warm and comfortable Esplanade Hotel just a block from Wenceslas Square.

Cedok, the Czech national tourist agency with offices in New York, sold us a room at the Esplanade Hotel for $172 a night that was payable, as are all hotels, in hard Western currency. This hard-currency rule is strictly enforced, and the system for retaining rooms causes lodging to be the only expensive part of a Prague stay.

Cedok wanted as much as $300 a night for the fancier Palace Hotel, more than $200 for the Inter-Continental and similar prices for other top hotels. But when we arrived at the Esplanade we were told that if we had walked in off the street its rooms would have been less than $25 a night.

One of Kathy’s classmates was in Prague at the same time, and his family managed to get such a low rate by paying the higher reserved rate for the first few nights and then looking around.

But this summer, with most hotels fully booked by Cedok or tourist agencies doing business with Cedok, such a tactic could be foolish. (Prague has only 6,000 hotel rooms, with 1,500 more under construction. With airlines flying into the city reportedly nearly filled to capacity, next fall is probably a better time for a visit.)

The Esplanade has a reasonably good restaurant, just as Prague has many such restaurants, usually easy to reserve for dinner and open at lunch. We found that once we went through the top three or four dishes offered, we had pretty much exhausted the country’s culinary repertoire, which is heavy on pork, beef and duck dishes, all with dumplings.

The prices are right, however. No dinner was more than $10, and excellent Pilsen and other Czechoslovak beer is 20 cents or less.

We had two meals at the Three Ostriches restaurant at the western end of the Charles Bridge. Regarded as the city’s best, it wasn’t all that elaborate but the food was good, the service very good and the prices stuck to the $10 per person standard. The luncheon menu is the same as dinner. The Three Ostriches also has a few hotel rooms and would be an excellent place to stay if space were available. It certainly is worth asking Cedok about.

Also a good buy is excellent Russian caviar, which can be bought on the street here for ridiculously low prices--$10 or $15 for two ounces--if the buyer is willing to pay in U.S. dollars.

Despite advance reports, we found few people in Prague who spoke English. German is more common.

Visas are necessary and were obtainable through the embassy in Washington, D.C., for $35 when we went. But as we were concerned about convenience and the safety of our passports in the mail, we chose to use a service that got us our visas within a few days. The service--Visas International, 3169 Barbara Court, Los Angeles 90069--uses Federal Express to speed passports to and from the Czechoslovak Embassy in Washington, D.C., and charged $95 for two. Visas were also available at the Czech border when we went through, and all tourist visas may soon be issued that way.

Western newspapers were available on a same-day basis in Prague, but apparently at only one central store on Jungmannova Street two blocks from Wenceslas Square. Expect long lines and about a 20-minute wait to get a newspaper.

But there is little time for reading on a visit to Prague. The walks are wonderful; the atmosphere, crossing the Charles Bridge, making our way up the steep streets a short distance to Hradcany Castle, as well as in many other places, was superb. Prague in its own way offers vistas nearly as impressive as those of Paris or Florence.

Outside the city there are many excursions of a day or half a day. Some of them, such as to Lidice, the village whose inhabitants were massacred by the Nazis as a reprisal for the assassination of a Gestapo chief, or Terezinstadt, are reminiscent of Czechoslovakia’s tragic history of the past half century.

Sadness lingers for the past, but in Prague today’s mood is upbeat, hopes are high, and we felt lucky to have been here at such a historically important time.