Dear citizens of Prague,

I was lucky enough recently to find myself spending a week exploring your beautiful city. The weather was wintry and crisp, the Christmas markets were in full swing, and every Prague native I encountered was happy, polite, and genuinely eager to help. I loved Prague Castle and the Jewish Quarter, the beer halls and the cobbled alley ways, the stained-glass cathedrals and the incredible architecture. Even in the tourist hub of the Old Square the prices of food, drink and souvenirs were reasonable, and the service was impeccable. I simply cannot find anything negative to say about Prague and, I suspect, the Czech Republic as a whole.

I’m writing instead to apologize, on behalf of the rest of the world, for the way the large majority of the tourists I encountered treated you and your city. I’m deeply sorry that on a daily basis you have to put up with the deplorable behaviour of the (predominantly English) British tourists who click their fingers at you for service and who demand a coffee, a highchair for their screaming two year old, or some suitably English food and then complain loudly when it takes longer than thirty seconds for their demands to materialize. I cannot tell you how embarrassed I am that you have Americans crawling all over your most treasured historical landmarks remarking at how dirty the statues are and how ‘quaint’ and ‘darling’ your proud civic buildings appear. I cannot even begin to understand how frustrating it must be when groups of German tourists argue with you every time you bring them their bill, and who ask whether they are being charged for the milk in their coffee, the sugar in their tea, and the bread on their table. And for the two Japanese tourists who requested two glasses of warm milk for their powdered dietary supplements because the Czech food was too fattening… I have no words.

I know that many of you earn your living working in the hospitality or tourism industries that are supported by visitors to Prague, and I’m sure that many of you have had pleasant encounters with the majority of the tourists you’ve come into contact with. Perhaps I visited your city at the wrong time of year, when cheap flights brought uncultured philistines to Prague who otherwise may not have been able to afford the trip. I hope this is the case. But if it isn’t, and if you do spend every day of the year being polite to rude, inconsiderate, and unappreciative tourists, I hope one day you take a leaf out of the Parisians’ book and start being rude back. Your city is too proud, too beautiful, and too intelligent to be subjected to the ignorami currently traipsing its streets. Now is as good a time as any to take Prague back from the idiotic foreigners.

Yours sincerely,

Amy.

We’re back from Prague, and I can happily say it was amazing… if you ignored all the other tourists. I’ll leave that particular complaint for a separate post I began composing in my head while we were in Prague, entitled ‘An Open Letter of Apology to the People of Prague’.

Prague itself was beautiful - the weather was good for 90% of the time we were there, and even when it wasn’t there were plenty of shops and alley-ways to duck into to shelter from the drizzle. The Old Town Square was filled with stalls for the Christmas Market, and everywhere you could smell roasting nuts, cinnamon, mulled wine, and slowly roasting meat. The architecture was incredible as well - some of the church interiors were so lovely that you had to take a seat to take it all in. The area around Prague Castle was great as well - St. Vitus Cathedral had the most breath-taking stained-glass windows I’ve ever seen. At one point we got sick of the main tourist traps and went on (a very long) walk from where we were staying to see the Bohemians football team play. Although they are near the bottom of the Czech league, they seemed to be a strong team, and the supporters were out in force even though it wasn’t a big game. Their mascot, oddly enough, is a kangaroo - the team went on a tour of Australia in the 1930s and were gifted with a pair of kangaroos, and they decided it was a good idea to keep the symbol as their team emblem.

The odd Australian connections continued when we were having dinner in a beer hall and were accosted by an Oompa band who demanded to know which countries we came from. When Rob answered ‘Australia and Wales’, the tuba player got excited and gestured to some koala souvenirs he was wearing which he had obviously been given by some fanatical Aussie tourists. The band then proceeded to play ‘Skippy the Bush Kangaroo’ for me. If I hadn’t been so mortified, it may have made me home sick.

Yesterday we went to the TATE Gallery in Liverpool to check out the 2007 Turner Prize entrants. I’ll be honest - I’m not as keen on modern art as I am on anything from the nineteenth century and earlier, but I can appreciate artistic enterprise. Pablo Picasso was a genius. Andy Warhol was a genius. The Turner Prize entrants, however, are in no danger of being grouped with these heroes of twentieth century art. There was a video of a man dressed as a bear, wondering aimlessly around the foyer of a Berlin building at night. There was a room filled with walled-enclosures with peep holes that revealed mirrored lights. There was a collection of photography of empty rooms. There was a collection of lightbulbs on scaffolding that spelt ‘There Are No Miracles Here’.

It all left me wondering, has art come so far that it’s actually gone full circle, and has undone all the progress that men like Da Vinci, Monet, Turner, Picasso, and Warhol have made? The entrants were so avant garde and ‘cutting edge’ that they resembled the sort of things highschool film students come up with for their end-of-year assessment; the artists were trying so hard to be riske and ‘thought-provoking’ that they had lost sight of what art should actually be - skillful, emotional, and meaningful. Of course, there were the helpful explanations that went along with each entry that attempted to explain why a man dressed as a bear was worthy of winning £25,000 and the glory of being a Turner Prize Winner, but to be honest they all sounded the same: ‘The artist has composed this piece to highlight the solitude / bleakness / reality / depressing nature of everyday life. The artist’s theme was derived from animals unable to mate in a zoo / nature / poverty / history and is a telling / revealing / thought-provoking / realistic portrayal of the modern world.’

Absolute and utter tripe.

Luckily, we had seen some other incredible art that saved the day from being a complete waste. Antony Gormley’s ‘Another Place’ IS ‘thought provoking’, and I thoroughly recommend you make the journey to Crosby Beach to have a look. ‘Another Place’ is a collection of cast-iron models of men spread along the Crosby Beach. When the tide is low, all (or most) of the men are revealed, some half buried in sand, others appearing to stand on the beach like men. When the tide is high, some are hidden by the waves, others have their heads poking out from the sea. Your first reaction when seeing them is to laugh, to reach out and touch them, to stand next to them and have your photo taken. As you walk up the beach, you feel sorry for these men, all staring out to sea, all corroding slowly in the sea air. This is art that is useable, touchable, educational, and both funny and sad.