Havel and Reed Reunited in Prague

Posted on November 23, 2009 - Filed Under Travel

Relatively speaking, travel is rather easy in Prague, Czech Republic. Hotels are plentiful, and there are some sumptuous lodgings so you can travel in style and luxury. Many of the accommodations will meet the artistic sensibilities of the city, along with a great spirit of hospitality, which is warm and gracious here. There are very few bad things anyone can say about Prague, and whatever the negatives might be, no one can really remember a day later. It’s a pretty fantastic place, and has a spectacular reputation among the well-traveled globetrotters, impressed by the city’s lack of pretentiousness, and excess of exciting things to do.

It helps if you enjoy seeing great art, live music, and having intense conversations in cafes. After a few days here, you might decide that this would be a lovely place to live, as many people do, and start imagining yourself talking about the Velvet Underground with Vaclav Havel. There are generations of writers, poets, and artists, that have been drawn to the city because of its reputation for being a new bohemia, and there’s also a magnificently dark romantic edge that is very attractive. Local culture and world culture have always found intersections to come easy in this city, and Havel has always been a spectacularly attractive figure in bringing underground art into his own surround, and making it a local energy.

This came to a terrific fruition in 2005, when Lou Reed came to Prague to play for Havel. In interviews, both men speak of having been old friends, dating back to the Velvet Revolution, when the Velvet Underground was a musical icon for the disenfranchised in Prague. Their shady punk personalities that were against authority in all forms was peculiar to the times, but had a deeper resonance here, because of their sharp intellectual edges. The cynicism of the early days of punk were something the young people here also responded to, so when Reed played here, it was a way of bringing things to full circle, while also suggesting that the energy was still very much alive in Prague, among other places.

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