No, I'm not talking about someone middle aged whose dad never quite accepted that Stalin wasn't a man of the people. This article is about what's left of Prague under the Communist era. SPOILER: it's not very much. Some of the ideas are mine; some come from other people, especially Mark Baker. I give a verdict on each section as I finish it. As usual, I digress a little on my journey.
Anděl
As you might guess, Anděl metro station in Prague is named after an angel. Like The Angel, Islington (light blue, costs £100), it's named after a pub, in this case U Zlatého Anděla (literally "By The Golden Angel", but that's Czech pubs and restaurants - it's "The Golden Angel"). Photo by Jan Čech from 1972.
Here's a video of it being blown up to build the station.
You might think that they called the station Anděl after the pub. You'd be wrong. Also, if they had done, I wouldn't be talking about it as a possible relic. They called it Moskevská, after 'friendship with Moscow'. [Conscience: is that all?]
No, it's not all. Like many of Prague's stations, Moskevská/Anděl is double ended. If you use the end nearest the modern shopping centre, as most people do, there are a few artefacts to see which we discuss later. However, at the bus station end, you see a surprise.
So we have a station dedicated to the friendship between Moscow and Prague. As ever, Moscow comes first, and we have a station built in the style of the Moscow Metro (more later). However, there is a station in Moscow (still) named Prazhskaya and designed by Czech architects in the style of Metro C.
We do have a disclaimer which justifies the station to keep its original design, as below.
Google translated this for me:
Needless to say, after the fall of Communism, the station was renamed to Anděl. I'm pleased that the history of the station has been preserved, though.
Verdict as a relic: Pass.
Holes in the Wall
[Critic: Ian is talking about ATMs as relics? What?]
What indeed. Not that sort of holes in the wall.
Remember I said that Moskevská had been renamed to Anděl? You won't be surprised to hear that it wasn't the only station be rewarded with/burdened by that fate. In total, 13 stations had different names after the Velvet Revolution. In most places, the new names were shorter than the old ones. Here's Anděl, with its new letters for the station name:
And here's Chodov, previously Budovatelů (Builders, but meant as 'the builders of Communism').
Look closely at the wall in each case. Can you see holes? Put your glasses on. Use the zoom on your phone. Squint? Still can't see them? OK, I'll help.
You can see the holes for the old sign (Chodov) and letters (Anděl).
Verdict as a relic: Pass.
Moscow Stations
Obvious starter for ten: here's a picture of Anděl/Moskevská.
[Critic: OK, Ian, that's one station designed to look like a station in Moscow.]
OK, critic, here's another. This is Gants Hill on the London Underground.
It's known as a Moscow station because that's where its designer, Charles Holden, found his inspiration. What strikes me is that it's the only tube station in London where the concourse is between the platforms. Yes, there are (frankly, dangerous) island platforms at Clapham North and Clapham Common, but Gants Hill is the only station on the London Underground which has a functional central concourse.
What does this have to do with Prague? As with most of my digressions, there's a reason for going there, although I may have forgotten what it was when I've completed the digression. On this occasion though, thankfully not.
Nearly all of Prague's metro stations have island platforms. Is this an eastern bloc thing?
There's a relevant fact here. It's colder in Prague than it is in London, but the metro in Prague closes very rarely due to the weather. Why? Almost all of the Prague metro is underground. This makes it easier to build stations like Anděl. It's not so easy and probably more expensive when your station is above ground, and it doesn't happen at small Prague main line stations.
Here's a notable example in Prague, at Vyšehrad, with platforms either side of the track.
It might have been difficult to build an island platform here - the metro is in the bottom part of the Nusle Bridge.
Going back to the main point, do we see the predominance of island platforms only in the former eastern bloc? Let's go to Vienna. (Critic: you like Vienna, don't you?) Vienna is Central Europe, to the east of Prague geographically, but has always been part of the west politically. What do we see for the station designs?
Vienna is a mix of island platforms and non-island platforms.
Verdict as a relic: Fail. But you did see a picture of Gants Hill on the way, so all is good.
Letná
Letná is a park on the top of the hill overlooking the Vltava. You can see a lot of Prague from Letná, as below.
At the top of the hill, there is a plinth with a metronome.
Unsurprisingly given the inclusion in this article, this was not always the case in recent history.
HZ, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
One has to suspect that the placement was quite deliberate: look back at what I could see from the plinth where the monument to Stalin was placed. All the people on the ground could look up and see the ghost of Stalin presiding over them. Why 'the ghost'? Stalin was already dead when what became known as 'the meat queue' was completed in 1955.
A year later, the Soviet bloc began to distance itself from the 'man of steel', and the monument was demolished in 1962. As for the metronome, it was completed in 1991. Here's a picture of the metronome from below, for comparison:
Dennis G. Jarvis, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Verdict on the plinth and supporting walls as relics: Pass.
Žižkov Television Tower
Here's a picture of the Žižkov Television Tower taken recently:
Zoom in to see the babies climbing the tower. These are Babies by David Černý. They were first here in 2000, and are now a permanent part of the tower. They don't exist exclusively on the tower: here's a picture of one of the triplets at the Kampa Art Gallery:
Even with the babies (or perhaps because of them, depending on your opinion of the babies close up, the tower was reported as the second ugliest building in the world (see here: in Czech, but your browser should translate). However, the addition of the babies was generally believed by locals to make the tower less ugly.
My first thought when seeing the TV Tower as a suggestion for a relic was 'but there are telecommunication towers in lots of places'. I've been up two others - in Berlin and Toronto. My grandparents went up the GPO Tower in the early 1970s, but by the time I lived in London (the mid-1990s), the tower had been closed to tourists for over a decade. This is the same grandmother that I caused to swear for possibly the only time in her life by visiting Norway. I called her on the telephone.
Nan: "Where are you?"
Ian: "Oslo."
Nan: "I pronounce it 'Ounslow."
Ian: "No Nan. Oslo. In Norway."
Nan: "Oh bloody hell."
But I digress. Let's look at some cities, and when their telecommunication towers were opened.
Prague 1992? You mean after the fall of the Berlin Wall? [Conscience: calm down, Ian. It was planned during the Communist era.]
Seriously though. It's not a Communist thing, with earlier towers than Moscow opening in Stuttgart and London. In other words, if this is a Communist relic, then so is half of Western Europe. [With apologies to Ian Hislop.]
Verdict as a relic: Fail.
Cosmonauts at Háje
As Anděl emerged from Moskevská, Háje emerged from Kosmonautů. A lot of Praguers will have heard of Háje without ever having been there, as it's the south eastern terminus of the 'C' metro line. Why name a station after cosmonauts? An example of reminding the Central Europeans of Soviet superiority? While Stalin in Letná may well have been just that, this 1979 statue outside Háje station by Jan Bartoš represents Czech cosmonaut Vladimír Remek and Russian cosmonaut Alexey Gubarev, who went into space together on Soyuz 28 in March 1978. The station opened soon after the statue was unveiled.
What strikes me here is that there's nothing on the plinth describing what the statue is. You will not be surprised to know that was not ever thus, and the original text laid praise to the Soviet and Czechoslovak cosmonauts (in that order, as noted previously).
What's interesting though is that neither I, Google nor a number of AI engines could find a picture of the original text. That's not to say that one doesn't exist, simply that if it does, it's somewhat elusive.
So why not simply remove the statue? I refer the honourable ladies and gentlemen to a statement I made some lines ago - a lot of Praguers will have heard of Háje without ever having been there, as it's the south eastern terminus of the 'C' metro line. This is very different to being watched by Stalin from Letná, or by Lenin on the way to the airport.
Verdict as a relic: Pass.
Housing Estates
I spent all the time I was writing this article, which was far too long, resisting the inclusion of housing estates. It was only when I was passing this estate in Bratislava when I decided to have another look at it.
Here's a similar Prague estate.
The reason for my reticence in including housing estates was that Western countries had social housing too. Here's Trellick Tower, in West London.
Ethan Nunn, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.
You may know Trellick Tower better from its use by Channel 4, with the / and - of the 4 joining the lift shaft. Although I can't find an example. Did I dream it?
The difference is that the estates in Prague and Bratislava aren't social housing. It was where people lived, because the state said so. So today, these places aren't threatening, in the way something equivalent might feel to outsiders in the west. They're just a part of living here, and house a range of different types of people.
The only equivalent in terms of planning I can think of in the UK is Thamesmead. It's part of south-east London you can't get to by Tube or the DLR, and therein lie many of its issues. It was built as a community for everyone, but with the building quality being frankly awful, and the DLR being promised only now, 60 years too late, no wonder it didn't live up to what it was meant to be.
Never seen Thamesmead? I suspect you have. Here's a scene from 'A Clockwork Orange' filmed in Thamesmead.
Verdict as a relic: Pass.
Postscript: Prazhskaya
Prazhskaya station in Moscow retains its original name. This is what the station looks like:
Antares 610, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
It feels to me a bit like going to work - here's my picture of Chodov station on Metro C:
So we sell Prague by emulating a station in the suburbs a lot of Praguers would rarely visit? Strange. Here's two better choices from the city centre on Metro A:
But, strangely, Prazhskaya can be recognised as 1980s Prague, so qualifies as a relic, if not of Prague.
Conclusion
I could have taken you to the statue of Lenin in West Prague, but there's nothing there. Of the old metro station names, only the holes remain other than at Anděl. What's left of Communism in Prague? Not a lot. It disappeared quietly.
Many of you will remember how excited I was to arrive in Vienna in November 2024 after walking from Prague. This post continues the journey - I realised that I could walk to Bratislava quite easily. I thought that I could do it in two days, but a warm day on Sunday put paid to that idea. What it does mean is that I now have less than 20km of walking to reach Bratislava, so I can do the last part in just over four hours, and then visit a few places there. But that's a story for another day.
This story will start and end predictably, but the bit in the middle is anything but predictable. As many of you will know, I research my journey back to base (usually - a counterexample will follow) but I don't research what I expect to see on the way. It means that I miss things, but I'm like a little boy with a new toy car when I discover things. Some would say that I'm like a little boy with a new toy car most of the time, but never mind. The lack of research usually means that I don't have expectations about what I see, but this time I was totally astounded about what I saw, and I came back with more questions than answers. In the words of the song, the more that I find out, the less I know. So prepare for a geography lesson, with several silly anecdotes interspersed.
I said that the story would begin predictably. Here's the start of the walk, taken in the evening when I arrived:
This is the Danube Canal or Donaukanal. It leaves the main Danube in the north west of Vienna and rejoins in the north east, having passed close to the centre of the city. It's a canal to allow boats to access Central Vienna, or so I thought. More later.
When I showed this picture to friends, I had the response "I can almost hear the zither". So let's all hear the zither.
I'd walked along the Donaukanal on the way into Vienna in November 2024, but I was quite tired by then, so I missed things. I probably missed things this time, but there will be another day.
A Spotty Dog on the cycle path! What's more, it walked like a normal dog. It didn't walk with all four legs in the air at once, like 'the very biggest spotty dog you ever did see'. (For our younger listeners, Ian is talking about a children's programme he watched sixty years ago. Here's what he means.)
Art work, by the Donaukanal. The whole area is a space for public art. Das Werk say that they have been 'an established part of Vienna's nightlife and subcultural scene since 2006'.
Oh look, a council worker removing graffiti. Nah, this is Vienna. A graffiti artist preparing a blank canvas for later.
The new somewhat dwarfing the old, somewhere near where the Donaukanal meets the main Danube. Claude and ChatGPT have given me two different wrong answers as to what the buildings are, so I'll leave the reader to guess. Or to inform me.
After over an hour's walking, at last we meet the mighty Danube. Or, at least, half of it. On the left of the picture is Danube Island (Donauinsel), an island which runs the length of Vienna. Of which, more later.
Do not feed the ducks, geese and swans! Not that people took any notice.
A low level bridge to Donauinsel. The yellow bit in the middle can be raised to let small boats through.
The building on the left is what one of the LLMs thought my previous picture was. Erm, there's three of them. This is DC Towers, Vienna's equivalent of Canary Wharf. The building on the left, the imaginatively named DC Tower 1, is the tallest building in Austria at 220m.
A second low level bridge to Donauinsel. Not sure how this one opens. I could paddle a canoe through the gap on the left - that's assuming that I could paddle a canoe at all, that is. The last time I attempted such a thing, I went round in circles like a Cocker Spaniel.
We've now left the populated part of Vienna, we've left the river, and we're at a sewage works. The first sign is polite, describing it as a 'compost works'. The second picture is less so, describing it as 'bottom loading'. No need for that filth.
Leaving the sewage works, here's a bunker built into a small artificial hill. Maybe it's to protect walkers and cyclists from polluted water close to the sewage works?
The end of Donauinsel. This is where we see the Danube as a single river for the first time.
Having taken the previous picture, I climb back up the bank, and I realise that it's a flood defence. The landscape has changed completely since I left Vienna. But why? And why the sewage works on the river at the east of the city?
My immediate thought was of this building (By The wub - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=116697229 ). Why? It's a sewage works in East London named Abbey Mills. It lies at the east end of one of the Victorian sewers which run across London from west to east, causing the sewage running into buried rivers going from north to south not to empty into the Thames. The case for creating the sewers was strengthened by 'the Great Stink' of 1858 where hot weather transformed an unpleasant and smelly environment into an extremely unpleasant and smelly environment. And, of course, the Thames stank its way past the Houses of Parliament.
But surely the Donaukanal wasn't a sewer? It was a canal built to serve Vienna from the main Danube, surely? Actually, no. The clue is in the name. Kanal often means 'open sewer' in German. The Donaukanal was an old channel of the Danube, not a canal, and a sewer much the same way the Thames was. Vienna implemented a similar system to London with an intercepting sewer, and a sewage works beyond the city.
This doesn't explain the sudden transformation from a pleasant urban walk by a huge river to a walk on a bank above a huge flood plain, though. Let's look at a map.
Note how Donauinsel goes the length of Vienna and no further. Is it artificial? Absolutely. All part of a flood protection scheme from the 1970s and 1980s, it's 21km by 70m-210m. Not quite square then. How does putting an island into a river increase flood protection? Let's look at another map.
Note that the river is little wider, if at all, to the east of Donauinsel. The river to the south of the island is much wider than the river to the north, and there's a good reason for that - the one to the north is artificial too. Dig out an area wide enough so your city doesn't flood, use the spoil to build an island in the middle of the river, plant 1.8 million trees and shrubs on the island to take water from the river. What's more, Donauinsel is now the most popular recreational facility in Vienna. Brilliant. For more detail, see https://web.archive.org/web/20170729015609/https://www.wien.gv.at/umwelt/gewaesser/pdf/donau-hochwasserschutz-2017.pdf.
Moving on, we're now 6km beyond the sewage works at Lobau, but still no signpost to Vienna. Why? We're technically still in Vienna rather than Lower Austria, so signs are to places within the city. In Prague, the sign would say 'Centrum' as well as the local places. Common sense really.
Mistletoe, and lots of it. I saw it all the way from the Donaukanal. I even saw some in the centre of Dresden at Christmas. Conclusion: the Germanic tradition of having mistletoe in houses at Christmas is not as prevalent as it is in Britain.
Having (eventually) left Vienna, I saw a sign to Bratislava, and to Hainburg, my eventual day two destination. It's more than 12km from Hainburg to Bratislava, but never mind.
And, in the other direction, we now do see a sign to Central Vienna, but no distance. For those of you who didn't know, you now know that I grew up wanting to design road signs.
I ended up taking a taxi back to Vienna at the end of day one. My route on Google Maps was taking me over the river then back by train. See where it says Donaufähre on the sign above? That means Danube Ferry. And it runs 0900 to 1800 or some such. It was considerably later by this point, so no hope. Moral of the story: always have enough charge on your phone to get yourself out of trouble.
(photo credit: Christopher Althuber, https://www.meinbezirk.at/floridsdorf/c-freizeit/ein-blitzspektakel-ueber-der-alten-donau_a2796185)
As I said earlier, it was too hot to walk on Sunday. After the sunshine we had thunder and lightning, so, being in Vienna, Donau und Blitzen. I'll get my coat.
Having managed - eventually - to buy a bus ticket using the phone as I couldn't pay on the bus, I arrived back at journey's end for day one. I've never seen a sign like the one on the right on a cycle path before, and I've never seen cyclists disappear over the horizon before. Talking of the horizon, is that a change of scenery in the distance?
It's a nice touch that there's a bench about every kilometre on this stretch. For the nature lover, you can always see or hear something different, from trees to birds to snakes (I wasn't fast enough to photograph the snake), but for the cyclist, league after league of flat, straight path could be mind-numbing.
To show that I'm not just saying that I saw interesting things in nature, here's a native Black Poplar (which I actually recognised - go me) with the ubiquitous mistletoe to the right. There's a posh word, ubiquitous - well, not really for those of us of a certain age from Scunthorpe. 'Ubique' was the name on the side of a bus between Scunthorpe and Ashby run by a brother and sister (?) driver and conductor team. Next stop Sid!
At long last the 12km is up, and there's a bend. All these places on the sign, but not Bratislava, only 20km or so away. I do like the thought of a place named Marchegg, though.
And if I'd gone straight on - the rather wonderful 'geradeaus' in German - instead of turning right, I'd have gone through a village. These were the first houses I'd seen on the path since the sewage works.
I needed to cross a bridge to reach Hainburg, and what a bridge. 1872m long to cross the flood plain, it opened in 1973. Note the two paths - it's one way for cyclists and pedestrians as there isn't a lot of room. Before this bridge opened, there were no bridges over the Danube between Vienna and Bratislava.
What a difference in the scenery crossing the river! That's Hainburg that you see in the distance. The large hill to the left is what I noted as 'a change of scenery in the distance'.
Here's the tiny station in Hainburg which was journey's end for now. The line ends a little to the east, close to the Slovak border. There is a line from Bratislava to Vienna, but it goes inland via Marchegg, and takes 55 minutes for a two-and-a-bit day walk. Such are the legacies of the cold war, 35 years on.
I promised that the story would end predictably, and it will. All this talk of the Danube means that you've likely been humming this to yourselves.
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