Leaving consists of:

1. Unlock my inside door, step through, lock my inside door.
2. Unlock two locks on suite door, open door.
3. Unlock two locks on iron security gate, step through.
4. Close inner door, lock both locks.
5. Close security gate, lock both locks.
6. Walk down two flights of stairs (that part isn’t so bad, the place in Prague was a 6th floor walkup).
7. Scan fob and press release buzzer, step through gate.
8. Lock gate.
9. Walk through alleyway to street side security gate, unlock.
10. Step through, relock.
11. FREEDOM, and this view:

Not far away is the New York Cafe, old hang-out of the Austro-Hungarian Press in the 19th century, very cool and breakfast was great but this was the most expensive meal of the trip so far and I had pastries and coffee.

After breakfast I went to the Terror House, the building that was used first by the Nazi occupiers and then by the Hungarian arm of the KGB during 50 years as part of the USSR.

The museum was horrifying, I’m not even going to write anything about it, anything could write would sound absurd. honestly, ask me sometime and I will tell you.

SOMETHING HAPPIER AND PLEASANT

This woman was sitting across the Parkway from me for a while, we were both reading, it was an amazing morning really. After a while the gentleman in the picture slide in and LAID IT ON! I was pulling for him, he was going hard, she was smiling but head shaking the whole time, a couple cracks appeared here and there and I thought he might be charming her, she was still smiling but alas the fates of Valentino were not with out young suitor today and he left empty handed. After he left she caught my eye and gave an embarrassed but warm and bashful laugh, was superb.

“Kosonom, a kave kivalo volt!”

Either people here are really polite or hungarian is way easier than czech.

Petrin Tower tops Petrin Hill above the city, it’s a bit of a Prague Grind but my host Katy insisted that I do it. View from the top…

My thoughts after riding the subway here for the past 5 days are that it is an amazing system, the best I have ever used really. Maybe that isn’t fair when it isn’t a gigantic city like New York or London but the stations are clean the trains are clean, nearly silent and full sized, the signage is amazing, the fares are intelligent (smartphone app to buy tickets that are sent to you by sms) the whole thing was really pleasurable to use. The city has about the same population as Vancouver but 5x the daily ridership.

Take the sign below, these hang in each station above the platform. The sign is green because you are on the “A – Line Green”, the white on green shows all the stations in the line, the black on white is the station you are at, if you need to go to a station to the left of your current one then you know you need to take track 1 to the left, same thing to the right for track 1, you can see which stations meet up with the “B – Line Yellow” and “C – Line Orange” as well as which stations are wheelchair accessible and which stations meet up with other services such as airports or rail. The design is amazing, it’s often said that good design is hard to spot, it took me a while to notice how helpful this simple style of sign is. Each station also has a Countdown timer to the arrival of the next train, it’s the little things!

And that’s just the subway, the rest of the system is great too, the busses and the supercool trams, there are about 4 generations of trams running on the same 🚊 lines, from brand new futuristic gigantic ones that look like the droid army transports from The Phantom Menace right back to the first model the Russians brought in, which are really cool looking.

Hopefully, and according to the forecast, today will be the only ice cold, wet day. I’m wearing every bit of clothing I brought, may end up regretting not bringing a coat. In honour of the grey I made today Kafka Day, all Franz all the time.

Breakfast and coffee at the Savoy, where Kafka and his Bohemian intelligensia used to hang {including Einstein).

Walked around more after breakfast waiting for the Kafka House Museum to open, Every street and every building and every block and every intersection is a breathtakingly imposing and beautiful mixture of baroque and neoclassical and Gothic buildings and castles and schools and hotels, not sterile though, lived in, grimey, graffitid.

Kafka felt that he couldn’t get away from the shadow of the city, writing to a friend:

“This city doesn’t let go, the old crone has claws, one has to yield, or else”

The museum is small but really well done, focused as much on his personal and work life and their unhappinesses as it is on his writing. Kafka worked for years for the Worker’s Accident Insurance Institute, basically for Worker’s comp, filing papers, writing reports, checking insurance claims and writing guides for the correct general safe use guidelines regarding industrial rollers and brushes, the museum has depressing samples of these reports along with lots of general bureaucratic papers that Kafka kept as examples of his torment.

One floor consists of narrow corridors of walls made up of giant black faux filing cabinets, some of the cabinets have phones coming out of the front, if you pick up the phone you hear random German, Yiddish or Czech voices reading various government files in a monotone.

Photos are not allowed so I had to be quiet.

After the museum I spent a few hours just walking around some of his old places and reading The Trial on my kindle, corny? yup. pretentious? you bet!

Went to the modern art gallery, saw some not great art and got in an argument with the phalanx of seriously Soviet older lady art guards about whether or not the no-photo policy also meant that I could not take pictures of just the nameplates of pieces I liked to remember them for later, dare I say the experience was…. kafkaesque.

Overdid the walking a bit, nearly 30,000 steps, have to pace things better, tomorrow should be warmer though, happy about that, lots of stuff to see still, perhaps even get up the guts to chat more with my Airbnb host couple, they seem really nice, also really young.

Obligatory: