Melodic ambience

Whenever I mentioned to my friends that we intent to go onto a trip to Prague the reaction was almost the same - “Awww, Prague, what a beau-ti-ful city!”. The city is known as the “Paris of the East” and although I haven’t visited Paris I believe people who say this are probably right. No matter how you call it - after having been there finally I must say it is the most beautiful city I have seen so far. Here is a little report of the trip - chronologically.

Wednesday:

Our hotel is situated in Praha-Smichov. This city part consists of a lot of newer business buildings, hotels and a big shopping mall called Novy Smichov. After checking in into the hotel we decide to not use the nearby metro but to walk direction downtown. Over the Vltava we reach the Nove Mesto part of Prague. What we notice right away is the big traffic on almost all streets of this part. Many people still use old cars running on unfiltered Diesel. On the other, positive side it is not necessary to put away the digital camera since at almost every corner, interesting, nicely decorated houses and squares pop up. Highlights in this area of town are “Fred and Ginger”, the dancing house as well as the Charles Square.

We move on on our way to the Stare Mesto, the old city center. A gem is “Slovansky Ostrov” an island in the Vltava river with a nice castle-type of building called “Zofin”, a cultural center. Here we find some places to sit in the shade with a nice look onto the river. The Vltava is much different than the other rivers I saw before because due to some little built in water falls at most of its parts the only types of ships that use it here are little rowing or pedal boats and a few tourist ships.

A few blocks further we reach the shopping district of Prague consisting of a big pedestrian zone and Wencelas Square, a big rectangle area with a parklike zone in the middle part and shops to the sides ending up at a huge museum building. This street might be comparable to the Champs Elysees in Paris.

Reaching Stare Mesto the density of beautiful buildings rises more and more, almost every little street has something to offer, paintings at walls, ornaments and statues, you’ll find so many that you might as well plan to spend a lot of time here if you wanna see them all.

We take a little break at one of the few smokefree restaurants in Prague, the “Bohemian Bagel“. A place run by a Czech and an American which offers some delicious and authentic american food. After relaxing here we head on to the Charles Bridge. The tourist density rises and we find ourselves within large groups of people from all over the world walking over the bridge, taking photos of almost every statue along the way. The Mala Strana quarter begins right after the bridge with Hradcany, the Castle Hill throwning over the narrow paths and cute looking buildings in this area of town. We take the effort to climb around 180 - 200 stairs up to the castle and I am a little bit surprised that - although it is getting dark already - we are still able to enter the different courtyards of this huge building. The view from the hill onto Prague is magnificent and worth the sweating experience of reaching this place. Very delicious icecream from Cream & Dream refreshes us afterwards.

Back over the Charles Bridge. Suddenly, to many people’s surprise, a big fireworks starts from a boat and I wonder if this is done everyday for the tourist’s pleasure? Because I don’t know of any special occasion or celebration. After the fireworks we had our way back to the Wencelas Square noticing even bigger crowds of tourists on their search for a nice dinner or drink and walking by a lot of souvenir shops. Sadly we don’t have the budget to buy something from the beautiful but expensive Bohemian Glass being sold everywhere. The whole city is now illuminated in fascinating lights. Almost every building uses different colors. We take the metro back to the hotel. It needs to be mentioned that the platforms are much deeper down than in Berlin and the long escalators are going with so much speed that I wonder how disabled or older people are able to hop on and off of them.

Thursday:

After eating at a store of the Bio-Cafe chain “Bio Cafe” (organic food, smokefree) we go downtown to the Wencelaw Square in order to look at a Multimedia and a book store. Returning to Smichov we explore Novy Smichov, a big, nicely designed mall. I am not ashamed to say that we spend about 2h in Tesco, a giant supermarket since I am always interested in finding out, what other countries offer concerning grocery stuff. It appears to me, that the Czech people are obviously big fans of any kind of muesli bars as well as of non alcoholic beverages when looking at the big variety of these items in the shop. Getting around and communicating in the shops is easy by the way since almost everbody and especially the younger people are understanding and talking english.

The mall is directly connected via a bridge with a small park on a hill, the Sacre Coeur park from which you have a nice view of Prague. We decide to walk from Smichov to Mala Strana exploring Prague at this side of the river. The absolute highlight on our walk here is the Petrin Hill. This is a big park. You can either have it easy by going up there with a tram or you walk up the hill which is a sportive event since parts are very steep. Finally reaching the top we have another nice look of the castle hill and Prague as well as of the buildings up here, the Hunger Wall and the Petrin tower, a copy of the Eifeltower.

On our way down we see a lot of embassies and little cafes. We cross the Charles Bridge again, walking through Stare Mesto making sure we use streets we haven’t visited before. A nice meal ends this trip to Prague.

There are much more photos of our trip in the album.

For the american expat some beloved items are very hard to find in Berlin. US food products at Kadewe and other department stores are often overpriced and the american restaurants offer generally meals known to Germans. So, I was quite surprised to discover that a while ago viv (homepage in German), a German organic food store chain started offering organic american breakfast every saturday in their Lounge at Prenzlauer Berg. You’ll find all the long-missed goodies like Buttermilk pancakes, various sorts of scrambled eggs or french toast. This all can be even eaten at acceptable times since you can get american breakfast until 3 pm. At our first visit the place was pretty crowded. The food was made freshly after we ordered.

And for those who desperately seek for cupcakes, rice crispy treats, rootbeer floats etc. there is a place for you in Berlin-Friedrichshain called Cupcake (Krossener Straße 12, near the “restaurant-mile” Simon-Dach-Straße). This café is open from Wednesday and Sunday and offers english and american breakfast too. Vegans will find some adequate food as well.

It was late sunday night when I strolled down Danziger Straße in Prenzlauer Berg. Normally, this is the time when you don’t see many people out on the streets or in the restaurants. But not in this part of the town, almost every cafe or restaurant was crowded. Another special thing about Danziger Straße: In no other part of Berlin I have seen so many Late Night shops as in this street. When I walked between the crossing Prenzlauer Allee/Danziger Straße and the Kulturbrauerei, meaning I walked maybe around 10 - 15 mins. I noticed even 5 of these shops. And they all had customers coming in and out. Considering the high number of students, artists etc in this district I guess this is no wonder.

I guess it somehow was not very informative to just put some short comments under the non smoking restaurants in my list like “italian restaurant”. So, I enhanced some of the comments and I put links to a map for each of the entries which shows where the particular restaurant is.

I guess jays are not really typical birds in the big cities since they are more common in the forests and parks. So, it was quite a surprise to see this baby jay on the hood of my car. After one of his first flights he was obviously taking a pause.

The new main train station in Berlin has been quite a success. Although while admiring the architecture of the station leaving this building at the south exit there can’t be any bigger contrast to the visitor’s eye. While the architecture of the train station is very interesting and there is much to explore in this big many-leveled building around it it’s somehow nowhereland. Just a huge area of sand and stones. Now, there has been some plans to use this wide open space, either for constructing buildings or to simple make a real square for people to walk on. For construction purpose fences were already built around large parts. While this view - as mentioned before - is not very charming, the nicely warm weather caused a tiny spot to deliver a much more pleasing view.

What’s new in the trance music sector?

Well, first of all I noticed a lot of “average” new releases from the bigger trance labels. In between the many uninspired mediocre productions a few gems can be found though. First of all, Lange vs. Gareth Emery’s “Another you another me” must have hit almost every available trance dance floor around the world as one of the biggest anthems of recent times. Another german DJ production is huge at the moment too: Duderstadt’s “Smile” won the web vote at “Trance around the world” , Anjunabeat’s web radio show. An interesting aspect of this track: Not the original version but the Duende Dub Mix had the most success so far and the Duende Vocal Mix was released in the online stores after the dub mix was available.

Other than that there is an older production that I like to listen to: Algarve, a swedish DJ released a fantastic track last year called “The longest journey”.

Last but not least I want to mention Vascotia - Avalon. A track whose nice melody goes right into your ear.

It was about time to update my list of smokefree restaurants in Berlin. Besides changing the intro text adding the newest developments there are a lot of new entries, especially cafes and coffeehouse chains that changed to smokefree.But read for yourself.

Update: As mentioned earlier, Starbuck’s biggest concurrent in Berlin, Balzac Coffee announced to become smokefree starting today. A quick check at the store nearby: A big non-smoking sign at the door reports about the change. On every desk inside non-smoking signs are positioned in the middle. And in fact no one smokes when I enter the cafe.

The main competitor against Starbucks in Berlin is Balzac Coffee. Wherever there is a place where a lot of people come by, one of those cafes will be in the neighbourhood. Now, the world as we know it at the moment looks like this: People who care about a smokefree environment while enjoying their coffee and cake are going to Starbucks, the others, those that don’t care to sit in cancerous clouds - or actually produce them - go to Balzac Coffee. The few times I went to Balzac to take an admittingly delicous looking piece of cake with me it often stank like cigarettes. Now, this will all change on April 1st.. Balzac Coffee is announcing at the doors of their cafes, that they will be completely smokefree from then on. Considering, that other cafes became smokefree too in recent times (I just saw one Meyerbeer Coffee house being smokefree now) this is a good development here in Berlin and it delivers more variety.

There is a big media hype around “Second Life” at the moment. It seems that this simulation/roleplay/chat system is so interesting that almost every big magazine and tv station reports about it. Now, for ages, whenever I liked to chat with people I used IRC and I am quiet satisfied with what it offers. And I am not so much into those avatar thingies too so I didn’t really care about “Second Life” as much as I ignore Myspace and other new “toys” of the internet too. Since a big German magazine “Der Spiegel” had “Second Life” on its title page including a big report I thought I finally might try this program out too. So, I signed up, picked my avatar - some kind of reggae dude - and started the program. This is what it said:

- Outdated chip set

- Not supported graphic card

- Why on earth do you think that your stoneold computer can be used for this?

At least that is what the conclusion of it all was.

Then came a question like “Ok, we all know this won’t work but you might try and start the program anyways, expect a crash of your system or very slow moving around”. It turned out that I got a glimpse of the reggae dude standing there with the standard clothes that every person wears at the beginning and I even saw some other avatars standing around probably looking at mine saying “that guy won’t be able to move around anyways”. And they were right, that’s all I saw from “Second Life” because then the program froze.

So, that was my unique, short experience with this very new program.