It is a most curious fact that a man can grow quite frozen in body and yet remain red-hot in temper, and nowhere is this more evident than in Prague during the month of January. I arrived bundled, muffled, swaddled, and altogether rendered into something not unlike a trussed turkey, though perhaps less festive. The frost had the manners of a vagrant—bold, uninvited, and thoroughly impolite. It crept into boots, bit the nose, and showed a particular fondness for one's ears.
Now, I have tramped through many corners of this earth—from the sweating jungles of Nicaragua to the dry-as-bone plains of Nevada—but never before did I find a place where beauty and misery so tightly embraced one another as they do in Prague under a heavy quilt of snow.
The city herself is a dream sculpted in stone, and a most fanciful dream at that. Her spires stretch heavenward like crooked fingers, each more ambitious than the last, as if the architects had some private wager on who could reach God first. And this, mind you, they have done while the Devil clearly busies himself beneath the cobbled streets—coaxing mischief through alleyways so narrow two sinners couldn't pass without brushing shoulders.
Ah, but the Charles Bridge! I daresay no bridge has earned the right to be admired more than that noble span of stone. There it arches across the Vltava River like a Roman emperor reclining in thought—its thirty saints standing sentry, coated in snow like the sugar-dipped saints of some holy confectioner. And the wind! That villain of the air blew with such might I half expected to be lifted off my boots and deposited in the Jewish Quarter, whether I desired it or not.
I wandered into the Old Town, where the Astronomical Clock keeps company with pigeons and poets alike. That clock is a contraption so elaborate and so utterly determined to confuse the viewer that it must have been designed by a watchmaker under the influence of absinthe and philosophy. At the stroke of the hour, a parade of apostles emerges, each nodding to the crowd like seasoned vaudevillians, while Death himself tolls the bell with a cheerfulness I found most inappropriate.
Inside the cafés, where the windows are clouded with the breath of the living and the dead (for there is more memory than man in Prague), I found shelter. The Czech people are a curious bunch—grave of face, generous of spirit, and capable of drinking beer that would render an American congressman blind for a fortnight. The coffee is served strong enough to raise the dead, and the pastries are crafted with a dedication bordering on religious fervor. I consumed a strudel so heavenly I was half-convinced it had been blessed by St. Wenceslas himself.
But winter in Prague is no ordinary season. It is a character—moody, brooding, poetic in its own right. It lays silence across the rooftops, hushes the Vltava till it flows like a whisper, and turns even the rowdiest tourist into a philosopher for the brief moment they step out into the snow. The statues, frozen in reverie, appear to be in council with the cold. The city breathes slower in winter, like an old man recalling youth from the depths of his armchair.
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| "Fame has its perks," says Twain |
I took a carriage one bitter evening up to the Prague Castle, a place so magnificent and sprawling it might be mistaken for a fairy tale stitched together with mortar and ghost stories. The guards stood motionless in the snow, as if chiseled from ice, and my driver, a man with a voice like gravel soaked in wine, spoke of kings, emperors, and the small revolutions of men.
From that high perch, I looked out upon the red-tiled roofs blanketed in white, and I could not help but feel that Prague had been cast from some ancient mold meant for dreamers and madmen alike. Below, the city flickered with lights like a hearth longing to be fed, and for a brief moment, I forgot my toes were frozen, my nose numb, and my mustache brittle with frost.
Prague in winter is not for the faint of heart. It is a place where poetry hangs in the air like chimney smoke and ghosts loiter at the street corners with nothing better to do. But if you can suffer the cold and endure the peculiar silence of snow-covered cathedrals, you will find that she reveals her soul to you, piece by piece, like a letter penned in ink and time.
And if you are very lucky, you might just catch sight of your own reflection in a frosted windowpane—older, wiser, a little melancholy—and swear that Prague had been expecting you all along.
