On Timetravelling

Look, we found a time-machine!

Indeed, in some ways, our trip to Prague resembled a trip to le fin de siecle, give or take one or two decades - not just because of the formidable little photo-studio we found hidden in a passage, though that is what prompted this post, obviously. (I just had to post this pic ;))

It was on our first day, and when my girls saw the huge assortement of dresses and requisites, we just couldn´t hold back.

I mean, we had been reading Clockwork Princess most of the week before, and taken it with us on our trip - a novel that plays around 1880. I don´t know whether it was just because of the book, but we seemed to stumble into a lot of places connected to that era.

I mean, just look at this stairway, lit by gaslamps and totally deserted, around midnight:

Oh, and though you can´t see it, it was freezing, and faint snow was drizzling down on us. Don´t you just feel like pulling your cape around you, to keep the cold out, and link arms with a nice gentleman? Ah, it was pretty!

And there´s so much art-deco - in the railings along the Moldavia, or in various buildings, like this Absinthe-shop:

I loved the fonts!!!

And we also went to a Mucha-museum:

Alfons Mucha was an Art-Deco painter, and I bet you´ve seen his paintings - I know I used to have posters of his artwork in my girls-room as a teenager, being fascinated by his linework, by his beautiful, slender ladies who always had long, soft hair. I used to spend a great deal of time trying to copy his work. I adored him, and so did my girls, when I introduced them to his work.

I never knew he was from Prague, though. In fact, I didn´t know anything about his biography, though it was always pretty obvious that he was, even at his time, more of a commercial painter, not one of those tragic, unrecognized geniuses like Van Gogh, but neither someone recognized for his art - he did covers for cookie boxes, posters for theatre productions, and later even stamps, so I guess he was quite commercial. Good for him!

So... that was my post on time-travelling, something I love to ponder about. I´m closing it with a) the other photo of our series:

(and really, I look like a person that slept in a bus that night and forgot to take a brush... which is exactly what happened...),
and b)
some music - contemporary, not fin de siecle, but non the less a very pretty instrumental, violin and piano: