Tripped

Mom & Dad's Grand Tour

The global travelers in front of the Hofburg Palace, Vienna

My parents have dealt with the strangeness of their first trip to the Old World by pretending they haven't left the New. Take striking up a conversation with strangers: our first instinct is to try to avoid it whenever possible - after all, stranger is just "strange" with a dangling "r" - whereas Dad in particular seems to seek them out for conversation. This happens all the time when we're with them in Connecticut or California or Hawaii; now it's happening in the Czech Republic and Austria. The fact that so many people here speak excellent English only encourages that feeling of familiarity.

Do You Prefer the Strangling, the Garrotting, or the Defenestration?

In castle and palace histories, it's the kill count that counts. Or so we have to conclude after visiting both Edinburgh and Prague. In both cities the audioguide tours to the historic venues have taken a particular delight in highlighting the homicides; the more gruesome the better. In Edinburgh Castle it was the "Black Dinner," when Sir William Crichton used trumped-up charges to accuse the teenage Earls of Douglas of treason and had them summarily beheaded - in front of their ten-year-old cousin, King James. In Holyroodhouse it was Lord Darnley, husband of Mary Queen of Scots, dispatching his wife's secretary in her presence. Here in Prague, it's the mother of "Good King Wenceslaus" ordering two of her henchmen to strangle her mother-in-law Ludmila.

But my favorite is the "Second Defenestration" at Prague Castle, and not just because there have been multiple defenestrations here, forcing the historians to assign numbers to them. What? You say you haven't heard of it? For shame, for shame: where's your historical knowledge? Without the Second Defenestration there's no Thirty Years War! And we all know what that means. (We do, don't we?)

Another reason the Second Defenestration is my favorite: it only ended up being an attempted murder, since no one actually died in it. When the Protestant Hussites tossed two of the newly-elected Bohemian King's Catholic counselors out a window in one of the castle towers, they fell 50 feet, but landed in a manure pile and survived. Saved by dung, and yet they still went to war over the incident! Thus giving us, three decades on, the Treaty of Westphalia, the end of big religious warring on the Continent, the rise of the modern nation-state, etc., etc.

In Search of the Untacky

It's fashionable amongst the travel cognoscenti to say that Prague has been ruined, that it's Disneyfied, that it was better in the old days. And it's true that some of the most heavily touristed areas have been completely tackified by vendors dispensing the cheap and the plastic and the t-shirts. But you can say the same thing about Venice, and somehow the beauty of Venice manages to overwhelm all the junk shops in the end. The same is true here - the main squares and the Charles Bridge may be overwhelmed with crowds, but the guidebooks are right that the real Prague is still there and easily found, by wandering down a side street or an alley.

One thing that stands out here, in the jumble of architectural styles accumulated over the centuries, are the sculptural facades on many of the buildings, with putti in particular spilling out all over the baroque buildings, as well as the sculptures on the Charles Bridge.

The poor bridge, unfortunately, is not particularly attractive these days since its undergoing a major renovation - half the sculptures are covered by scaffolding and extensive sections of the cobblestones are torn up as they rebuild the underlying road bed. Guess we'll have to come back to see it in its full glory when they're all done.

Prague

Our first foray into Central Europe didn't start so elegantly when the cab driver hired by our apartment rental agency dropped us at the wrong building, and we had to walk several cobblestoned blocks, burdened down by our luggage, to get to the right address. But the apartment itself made up for that, with its elegance, high ceilings, and gorgeous rooftop view toward the castle. And we had a tasty dinner around the corner, sitting at a sidewalk table with a classic Old Town streetscape spread before us.

Only one night with this view, however! Today we move three floors down in the same building to a two-bedroom place and await the arrival of my parents, who are joining us tomorrow for two weeks in their first-ever European visit.