A Quiet Street in Prague, Lit Gold and Empty

The train from Vienna put me into Prague a little after one, and by the time I found my hostel and got turned back out onto the street it was already sliding toward that low gold hour European winters do so well. The street outside was empty and half snowed over, parked cars buried under it, the whole block going quiet and orange at the far end where the sky met a row of apartment roofs. Nobody else was out. It felt less like arriving somewhere and more like being let into a room after everyone else had gone home.

That did not last. A few hours of rest and I was hungry enough to go looking for the city rather than wait for it to come find me. By evening I was standing under the Old Town Hall's clock tower, lit gold against a sky gone completely black, two round clock faces stacked above me doing whatever an astronomical clock does at night when there is no crowd left to perform for and no hourly show to put on. I kept walking and ended up at Wenceslas Square, where a market called Vaclavske Vanoce had taken over the ground in front of the National Museum, a Christmas tree strung with lights standing in front of a building lit up like it had somewhere to be, the statue of Wenceslas himself on his horse keeping watch over the whole thing from a pedestal at the base of the steps, unbothered, the way statues of men on horses generally are.

Two nights ahead of me in this city, and this first one had already told me most of what I needed to know: Prague was going to be one of the quiet ones.