When the weather changes and outdoor dining is no longer an option for tourists who seek only the sights and wonders of the city, the countless passages become something else. They whisper cunning intimacies to anyone with ears enough to listen. They reveal themselves in ways scarcely imaginable. The tourist misses these sights, these sounds, and the feelings that wash over you like waters in the strangest possible sea. The arched promenade fronting the 4 story buildings in front of Our Lady Before Tyn is one such secret place. It hides in plain sight. Seen by millions, it is scarcely seen. Go there now, and find yourself marked as a tourist and you'll receive the inevitable offers of "pot-marijuana-hashish?" (A question half-whispered as a single, complex word,) but if you're marked as something other than a tourist with money to burn, the drug hawkers ignore you. Some avoid you assiduously, perhaps thinking you a walking hex, conjured by what spirits may claim the heart of Prague. They won't call you a threshold-ghost; that name is my own invention, but it isn't unlikely that they'd see you as such a thing, an arcane function of the city, and thus, beyond stupors and euphorias that they offer in little plastic baggies for 350 Crowns. Walk through the passage and guess at its history. There were houses where restaurants now stand. There were festivals--as there still are--but in the promenade itself, you may hear the echoes of long vanished students, as schools stood nearby. You may find the faintest possible etchings of graffiti, worn by the passage of centuries. But walk there on old nights, on nights when tourists are unwilling to consume Italian cuisine while marveling at the Astronomical Clock, like an up-thrust of rock, piercing an ocean of fellow tourists. On such days (usually in summer) it would take the likes of Moses to part that sea, and always, the opening swells shut amid the "ooohs and aahs" of tourists, taking pictures of themselves and claiming conquest of a city that shows only its more gaudy wonders. Prague, after all, is a demure woman who hides her more secret treasures and reveals them only to those who love her. This passage is such a treasure, when you--alone--walk its length and hear snips and snatches of conversations in Czech, and come face to face with what was once a salon where Einstein played the violin, drank wine, and actually hung out with Max Brod and Franz Kafka. Prague is that kind of a city, after all, but you have to look with set of good eyes in order to see it. Good eyes, magical beer and warm, rakish friends: those are Prague's intimate gifts to anyone wishing to embrace them. That's the thing about Prague, you don't claim anything, you simply embrace it. *** As always, thank youf or reading, viewing, and commenting. Hopefully you've enjoyed this image as much as I enjoyed making it--and the ones that accompany it.