Ah Prague, sweet Prague. It seems I will never get tired of the magical view from our living room window. The sound of the trolley bells makes me smile each and every time. A few days ago, I went exploring to find the fantastically Gothic church that perches on a hill very near our house. I ended up finding one of the most magical places I have seen in years. When Prague was first founded as a small settlement in the 6th Century, it was just five minutes from our current abode. You walk up a very steep hill and emerge into a totally separate world. It isn’t a very big settlement, and the only things left of the original Prague are the magnificent church and some sculptures. But my Goddess. What power! Vyserad absolutely thrums with history, it’s electrical presence gave me goosebumps the entire time I was up there. Pure magic.

You know how I am with magic. I always look for it and I don’t always find it. After going up to the Vyserad settlement, I see it everywhere around Prague now. The hidden gargoyles, the open basements that spew out cold air unrelentingly, the old doors that must open into alternate universes. Prague doesn’t seem to be the kind of place you can just visit for a few days and catch the magic. It seems to have a cumulative effect, and the longer you are here the more you feel it. This is probably why many people who come here never leave.

Sometimes the magic here is a bit scary, sort of threatening. Like there are Dementors around and I just can’t see them. This can get compounded by nighttime falling, and while it seems necessary to experience Prague at night, I can’t imagine that many good things are going on down those creepy twisty alleys and in the neighborhoods outside the policemen’s patrol routes. Indeed, there are vampires here. There are all manner of beast and fairy, I am sure. There is a sense of possibility, that anything could be hiding behind the old walls. Friend or foe. It’s a unique feeling, invigorating and exhausting at the same time. Alive. This is a living place, kinetic and quite mad.

There is a bar called Cross Club made totally out of used car parts and insane metalwork art. Everything with moving parts and everything from salvage yards. Thuds and clanks of engines suspended by metal rods, rotating wheel fountains that should spew oil instead of water, twisted metal into organic shapes of all sizes. The inside was like entering an intergalactic ferry, as our friend pointed out, on a long journey between two extremely odd planets. Fantastic in the true sense of the word.

Prague is the kind of place that makes me feel like hidden train platforms and houses within houses unseen by Muggle eyes could very easily exist. It is another world here, unlike anything I have seen or experienced. I am excited to be here for the long term; I can only imagine what magic will emerge from the wallpaper in the meantime.