It is the nature of my job (which some people might say is not a job at all, but rather an occasional activity I get paid for, like baby sitting or mowing lawns) that there are many gaps in time, an hour here and there when there is not enough time to go home but if I go straight to my next class I’m an hour early.
The Slav Epic
Such was the case this morning. I dropped the kids off at school at 8 a.m. My first actual class at the school where I teach, 2nd graders (the only class I have scheduled on Wednesdays) was not until 11:50 but I had arranged to meet a private student at 9:30 at a cafe near the school (or so I thought).
That still left an hour and a half to kill so I decided to walk there. If it took longer than I thought, I could hop on a tram at any point. I love walking in Prague. There are so many interesting things to see, and most of the best stuff is within walking distance. It was a lovely morning for walking, too. Kind of foggy and misty but not actually raining, the temperature was above freezing and the air was still so actually, it wasn’t cold at all.
I walked from Jiřího z Poděbrad down Mánesová, along the park, and then through that tunnel just above Museum where there’s no other way to cross the street and I’ve never really liked that tunnel much. There are all the fast food stands down there, which is cool, and sometimes a busker taking advantage of the crowd that’s channeled right by them and the underground acoustics, which very often masks the fact that they aren’t very good, and I don’t mind that, but the wall across from the food stands was all covered with really ugly graffiti – but that’s changed now, and they’ve got a really cool piece of art – cartoonish, the kind of thing that would probably be favored by graffiti lovers, but obviously a commissioned piece. So, it was nice to see that. Classes the place up, quite a bit.
Wenceslas Square was not really crowded yet, some of the shops weren’t even open. I turned right at the bottom of the square on Na Příkopě and continued on down Revoluční, where I saw something interesting. A stoplight with a countdown feature. The light was red and the numbers were going 38, 37 and I thought well, this is kind of cool but maybe a bit superfluous, 24,23, but that’s what I originally thought about mobile phones, too, 11, 10, and I wondered if this would cut down on people just crossing the street whenever they felt like as they tend to do here, 5, 4, 3,2,1 and the light turned green and everybody crossed.
Crossed the bridge, river is rather high and the water was just gushing over the weirs, and then my student sent me a message and delayed until 10 o’clock, said she’d meet me in front of the art museum, I’d forgotten about that plan, so I found a cafe and had a coffee and did a Sudoku puzzle and they were playing great music, I’ll go back there.
At 10 o’clock I was at the museum and she texted again that she wouldn’t be there until 10:30, so I went in and saw the exhibit by myself: Alfonse Mucha’s Slav Epic, really an amazing work. 19 paintings, each one of them frigging huge.
It was a great morning. It’s all about filling in those gaps of time productively.
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