garrison beau scott

Once we passed the Industrial Palace and left the Exhibition Grounds behind, and entered Stromovka Park it felt as if were transported into another world. Being late November, it seemed as if we were the only ones in the entire park and had the long meandering paths and trees to ourselves.

As I mentioned in my last post, when the park was created in 1268, it’s original design was as the Royal Hunting Park, a use that continued through the reign of Rudolph II (1576 - 1611). It was during his stewardship that the park grew in size and these were built.

Being a man of the renaissance and a Habsburg, Rudolph II and a few creative ideas under his silken and billowing sleeve. He wanted to make a grand entrance for his guests, so he had underground tunnels built from Letna, where one would get on a small boat and float on the man-made river to a series of openings built into the hillside of Stromovka. They would then disembark and enter the park through one of these gates. And then go shoot some deer.

Hidden Entry, Praha, 2001

Just about at the point where we thought about turning around, as we had gotten lost in all senses of the word, and not just exploring lost, we turned the corner and saw a sign for Troja. I had remembered the name from the section in our guide book that listed places to go visit “further afield.” So we decided to keep walking and rolled up on the Industrial Palace which serves as the entrance to the Exhibition Ground and Stromovka Park.

The Industrial Palace dates to 1891, Stromovka Park has a history that goes a bit farther back. In 1268, Czech king Premsyl Otakar II founded Stromovka (place of trees) as a royal hunting park. But first, the Industrial Palace, as shown here with some of the temporary scaffolding used for an event we either just missed, or were too early for.

I know photographers who, when out shooting, will find the name of a place, or a building, or whatever it is they are shooting. They will record f/stop, shutter, focal length and sometimes wind direction and what they had for lunch. Okay, those last two I made up and I’m not in any way making fun of those who pay attention to those kinds of details. I’m just not one of them.

For better or worse, when I go out shooting, I click away ignorantly and then move on without any idea of what, where and how I am shooting. Obviously there are times when even I know what it is in front of my camera. Empire State Building, the Grand Canyon, Pacific Ocean…but for today’s shot, well, it would have been nice to know the name of this church, if only to be able to share it with you. Alas.

What I do know about this shot is that after the rain stopped, we crossed the Vltava, heading west into a part of Prague that wasn’t included in the maps showing the Malá Strana or Hradcany. New territory indeed, and the thing to do with new territory is to continue to forge ahead. This part of Prague was definitely less historical, much more suburbia, complete with gas stations and other lesser romantic scenes. That is until we got to the intersection of a street I failed to write down, because you know, I don’t write down those things.

We were standing there waiting for the light to change when I looked down the street to my right and saw the church. The street we were waiting to cross dead-ended right into the front steps of it and when the light turned to let us cross, I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. When I got to the other side, I framed it up, but it just didn’t look right. I needed it to be straight on. So, I set my focus, waited until the light turned again, ran out into the middle of the intersection, framed it up and again, failed to write anything down.

We started that day with an incredible breakfast. And we needed it. Hard-boiled eggs, meats, muesli, yogurt, some fruit, bread, coffee. A real breakfast. And then, as we had done on all the previous days we’d been in Prague, it was out the door and a coin flip to see if we’d go right or left. We went right.

And as with all the other days, we had a guide book but it never left the bottom of the napsack, as we were determined to continue to explore this world so new to our senses. It was our second to last day in Prague before we were to board a midnight train to Budapest, so we had pretty much discovered most every corner in the city proper, and today we felt like walking, really walking. And we still had no idea where.

We were soon away from the familiar streets, seeing things for the first time. Prague is easily covered on foot if you have the time, and desire, and proper breakfast. Did I mention that breakfast? Nutella in the coffee? And we had all of those things so it felt good to always be on the verge of something new even though we had developed a glorious sense of familiarity with the city we were already in love with.

Traveling north, and getting out of the Malá Strana (Little Quarter), and the Staré Mésto (Old Town), with Josefov (Jewish Quarter) the last of the known neighborhoods behind us, our sole source of navigation became the Vltava, and so we followed it until it began to rain and we had to take refuge under a bridge.

The rain was short lived, fortunately, and I nearly lost my camera into the river…but we managed to push on, but not before I got this.

Built between 1624 and 1630, Wallenstein Palace was the first large secular building of the Baroque era in Prague. Created as a tribute to himself, Imperial Military Commander Albrecht von Wallenstein intended for his palace to overshadow the Prague Castle.

It was his triumphs over the Protestants during the 30 Years’ War that made Wallenstein an important figure in Prague and vital to the Emperor, Ferdinand II. Maybe it was the fact that Wallenstein portrayed himself as Mars, the God of War, in a ceiling fresco, or maybe it was his designs on obtaining the Crown of Bohemia and plotting with the enemy that ultimately lead to his death by mercenaries on the Emperor’s orders.

Today, this remarkable palace, built by the architect Andrea Spezza, is home to the Czech Senate, but open for those wishing to walk among what has to be one of mankind’s ultimate vanity projects.

All that being said, I’ll show you what a wall from the outside looks like. Those jagged things at the top are actually where the name grotesquery comes from. For some reason, one of the interior walls of the palace’s courtyard is an imitation of a limestone cave covered in stalactites. Go figure.