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Heading East – Prague Train station
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I find often when i travel that the most innocuous of locations can reflect a place far better than the locations listed in a guide book, the most ancient of monuments and buildings can take on the character of a sterile museum piece, and it becomes very difficult to imagine them being a part of the culture of the place. I love the experience of finding an area, whether it be a street or a building or anything, that feels real.
On a first time visit to Prague earlier last summer i had a fantastic time, the city has a great atmosphere, quite cosy for a city brimming with tourists, but the tourists are still hard to forget about, sometimes it felt a bit like a themepark which can ruin the imagination so i was surprised to be so utterly charmed by the train station.
The old yellow crumbling Art Nouveau heap lies entangled by busy roads south of the old town and is an outpost of a very different part of Prague than the one the tourists see. Its an ignored aging beauty, too old to be functional and not old enough to be a tourist attraction. At any rate it wouldn’t compete with the blockbusters of Prague, it’s attraction lies in it’s balance. Stepping in through the huge stone doors to the vaulted dome of a once bustling ticket office thats been converted to a quiet cafe and bargain clothes shop is something of a dramatic event, like walking onto the set of a film, you can see the main characters smoking their cigarettes and drinking their coffees while just metres below is the modern renovated station, with it’s own door so far from the old building you may never see it if you take the correct path in. You can try and cross the screeching roads that edge up against the flagstones above, i’m glad we did.
Ok, so this is not the train station i was at when there, when catching a train to Krakow.. All i saw was muggings and drug addicts all over the gaff and i don’t lie… Toilets with Blue fluorescent lights to throw off the heroin addicts from shooting up, a middle aged Italian guy (same guy who got mugged earlier in from of us!!) punching some woman in the face whilst in the Q for the police assistance and a meter diameter of blood upstairs close to the platforms!!
These are cools shots, nevertheless..
Take care,
AlanLovely set, and with a central theme too.
They seem to flow together nicely with the shadows and reflections of
people.very interesting, hard to pick a winner though, for me #4.
Excellent work. They do indeed give back the feel of the place, brought back some memories for me.
Thanks for posting.
Very nice, 3 & 4 are particularly cool, I love the lines and colours in 3; and 4 is quite evocative of times past.
Nice set Desmond; I love the reflection of the clock. They are all interesting.
I went to prague about eight years ago…..I remember arriving v early in the morning on a bus from Stuttgart, and walking to the underground train station, at about 7.00am. What I thought was really cool was a young punk dude walking around with a ghetto blaster in the station playing, of all things, that Axel F tune from Beverly Hills cop. Welcome to eastern europe.
Very good Set, really like these and very different.
1 and 4 are my faves,I agree with you on the amount of tourists, the city has lost its charm. I first went around 10-12 years ago and had a superb time, I then visited three times in a row and I could see the place changing. Took the wife a few years back and the place was ruined. Drug dealers, pimps, tity bars on every corner. Great for stags and teenagers but not for family holidays.
Agree with Alan. Spent many years on the trains inter railing and see some crazy scenes in Prague station, esp the junkies lying outside it and in full view of the public.
Maybe its just becoming more ‘European-ized’, Frankfurt central station has always been a sh&t-hole and still is, surrounded by the various redlight/junkie/sex shop type characters…..the same to a lesser extent in Amsterdam, Cologne, Berlin, Madrid……I was a bit shocked last year in Oslo to see people shooting up in front of me on the street, no attempt to hide it, in the area around the train station (which is also in the docklands, so i guess they are double-whammied on the vice front!).
Worst I remember was Krakow, arriving in there at 6am on a cold February day and seeing all the homeless people, -15c on the thermometer……
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