Wandering around, with my handy homemade Google architecture map in hand, we walked by all of one building on my itinerary (The House of the Black Madonna, which houses a museum dedicated to Czech Cubism as I realized the day before we left…after it had closed for the evening). We poked our head into two souvenir shops, and collapsed on the fountain wall at the center of the Old Town Square where we attempted to get our bearings and vanquish our fatigue (it was now around 11 am). The square is a trip back to yesteryear, with a handful of monumental buildings from various eras – including the grand Baroque St Nicholas Church and the old City Hall, which is basically an enormous support for the famous 1410 astronomical clock. Other reminders of the distant past included the pre-automobile age, pedestrian-only atmosphere and numerous Iron Maiden T-shirts – harkening way back to the last millennium. I rubbed my eyes after the first two shirts walked by and, after three more passed, I darted over to the astronomical clock to verify exactly what century we were in. Obviously, we thought, the band must be in town which, less obviously, means that they still freaking exist. Very weird (Kafka’s town after all). Throughout the remainder of the day, we saw no less than 60 Eddie shirts and, for the first time in recent memory, I felt like whatever I was wearing might be at the forefront of fashion. Indeed the band is still hobbling and an Eddie-patch-bedecked Italian couple we befriended the following evening assured us that Bruce Dickenson sounded better than ever…despite the fact that they were both younger than any of my Maiden cassettes (refer to “No, Fleck U!”). Paranoid that the re-visitation of 1982 might make the wait for our 2008 hotel room unbearably long, we quickly headed back to, again, not check in.
Greetings from Balmy Praha! / Greetings from the Carter Administration!
