Prague Diaries: Below deck, below zero
Czech-ing out some very cold sights
Prague is absolutely beautiful in the winter. It’s full of festive cheer and joy for all to hear. The Christmas markets are still on. You can get hot chocolate by the gallon and mulled wine to wash it down. You can eat beef goulash every day for a week, and don’t forget those dumplings. It’s also absolutely bloody freezing.
And this isn’t English freezing I’m talking. It’s not 8 degrees c with a gentle breeze. It’s proper, holy-fucking-shit-it’s-cold cold. It averages minus three for the first two days we’re here, right in the arse-end of 2024. Arriving somewhere on the 28th of December is weird cold or not. They don’t seem ready for you. The tree’s still up even though Christmas has been and gone. Nobody’s had the time to clear up from all of the excess. They’re still sitting around in Christmas jumpers a little bit pissed. But you’re here, so come in, you might as well come in. Only we can’t afford to turn on the heating.
God, it’s cold. Getting ready to go out for dinner feels like preparing for an arctic expedition. There’s underwear, thermals, a shirt, a jumper, a scarf, some jeans, two pairs of socks, some shoes, a hat, and some gloves to put on, and I haven’t even put my coat on yet. Fully dressed I look like the Michelin Man on one of his larger days. Moving feels like swimming through treacle with, well, three layers of clothing on.
Not that this does much good against the fierce Czech winter. I didn’t know that the Czech winter was fierce but I do now. Like most Englishmen I assume that anytime I cross the English Channel to have a jaunt on the continent, the weather will be better than it is at home. I am in continental Europe, therefore things must be sunnier, nicer, a damn sight warmer. But no, Prague at the very end of 2024 is like Siberia. Okay, not quite Siberia - I just looked up the weather for Yakutsk and it’s highs of -32 today, but you get my snow-drift. It’s freezing.
So, what to do? There’s only so much strolling around the town you can do in this sort of weather. You have to fill your time, you’re a tourist in Prague. You might, say, take a boat tour. Prague does have a very romantic-looking river. It hasn’t got a very romantic name - the Vltava - which sounds like mucus, but it looks stunning. Perfect for a boat ride and many people are indeed going on a boat tour. You can’t move for boats on the Vltava, and they’re mostly tourist boats doing the rounds.
It’s clear on the day we choose to sail. Or at least it is when it’s daylight. Evening comes and with it a fog fit for a Nordic crime drama. We pootle around the city in Ubers whose headlights only seem to go ten metres before they are completely enveloped. This doesn’t stop the drivers driving like someone’s just set their balls on fire, but it’s still very, very foggy. This isn’t what you would call perfect conditions for a river sightseeing cruise. The sights are there…somewhere.
But we all pile on anyway. Most people try to grab a table indoors and downstairs in the warmth. This is considered the obvious option to such an extent that when our tickets are scanned we are so far back in the line we are told it’s possible that we won’t be indoors. But there’s still room outside and because of my aforementioned Michelin Man-chic we decide we can cope with this.
So, we sit and look out at the fog and lights that may or may not belong to some historic beautiful buildings. All the while the tannoy gamely explains in three languages what we would be able to see were it light and not the beginning of a murder mystery. We sit on seats that are, temperature-wise, indistinguishable from blocks of ice. We peer out and say what a lovely time we’re having. We sail on under the Charles Bridge and wave at some tourists who are standing on it. Some of them even wave back. Then we go back inside. It’s freezing!
Here we are greeted by a sea of people who don’t care that they’re on a boat cruise. They’re not listening to the tannoy, they’re not even looking out of the window. They care about the fact that they are somewhere warm and that they can say they are still out and about, they are exploring Prague. Because these people are on a city break, and city breaks are for seeing the sights, for getting out and about, for doing things. They are not for sitting around and getting drunk in the hotel bar.
Perhaps the city break may include getting drunk in the hotel bar but it should not be defined by it, and as we sit on this blind, freezing boat cruise, it is not yet the evening and so it’s not yet an acceptable time to be drunk. So these poor, freezing tourists, who booked to go to Prague because they thought it would be lovely and festive but perhaps a little bit warmer than London or Bristol or Manchester, sit on their phones in the bottom of a boat, surrounded by fog.
Because you have to fill the time. You’ve paid all this money and done an incredible thing - leave the house in the one week of the year that everyone else sits around in their pants eating four-day-old pork - so you must be seen to be doing Prague.
We watch the people and occasionally watch a bit of the city glide past the window. We can see some of it and so we look at that, but mainly we are glad to be warm. A boat tour is a lovely way to spend an hour, and an indoor boat cruise is an even lovelier way to spend an hour when the temperature is below zero.
Don’t think I’d go on a boat tour of Yakutsk, though.
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I laughed at your description of getting dressed to go outside. We lived in Vienna for two years and wore lots of layers from November to March because of the frigid cold.
I'm Canadian, so if I visit Europe in the winter, it's to escape the below-zero cold, not to pretend being frozen to the bone is romantic or festive. I promise you, it's not. There's a high of 17C in Chania, Crete tomorrow: there's a January travel plan I would endorse.