Europhile: C'est ma vie!: Praha, as everyone needs to see it.

Monday, December 12, 2005

Praha, as everyone needs to see it.

It was just after I set the last steaming plate on the Thanksgiving table that I saw it was snowing. It must have started while we were cooking, but, busy as we were, it was when we sat down to give thanks that we noticed the big white flakes streaming past the window. It wasn’t the first time it snowed, but this time it looked serious. The flakes were big and they were sticking. I was excited. Prague, I thought, was meant to be seen under a blanket of snow. And I was happy that it was snowing and we were going to go out and the turkey we ate wasn’t really turkey (hence, no L-triptofan!).

We knew the Christmas tree on old town square was to be lit at some point on Saturday. We guessed 8 o’clock, but it didn’t really matter because we had to eat our Thanksgiving dinner first (n.b. I bet you didn’t know that Thanksgiving falls on a Saturday here). When we arrived the town square was taken up by a multitude of little wooden houses – the Christmas market! – housing specialty foods, such as dough with cinnamon and sugar, and drinks, namely svařák (hot mulled wine). It was perfect. There was dancing and singing, and roasted chestnuts and lots of tourists, and the disney church all lit up and snow and horse-drawn carriages and a couple of Americans running around with cups of svařák in one hand and cameras in the other. And I thought, this was exactly what Prague was supposed to look like.