Once, I saw giant, fiberglass mushrooms in Prague’s Old Town Square. I saw ballerinas dancing atop beach balls and the Birth of Venus inside of a giant, high-heeled shoe. I saw a statue of Franz Kafka, only it was the statue of an invisible man, a full suite of men’s old-style clothing, with no man inside. I saw doors emblazoned with countless disembodied heads, and most intriguingly I saw…hmmm…well…I saw something best described as Art. What is there to say of a pig on a diving board? Prague is nothing if not quirky. Art sprouts like some strange fungus in open squares and hidden niches. Riots of graffiti mark the walls, but such tags are strangely existentialist in nature, strangely poetic and contemplative. As you wander through the more remote streets of the city (in Prague-3, perhaps) you’ll find grungy buildings of Communist design: the city’s infamous “Panelek” or “Panel Apartments.” They resemble American housing projects of a sort now largely torn down. They’re built from prefabricated parts and put together like some giant child’s erector set. They’re sturdy. They’re grim. They’re a part of local history, local color, and the local mindset, and perhaps it is the dominance of such structures along the fringes of Prague that inspire fiberglass pigs to jump from diving boards near the city center. There may be a lot to say about this picture. There may be nothing. I remember the night that I captured this image. I wandered, as was my custom in Prague, when the nights were too sultry for sleep. With the aftertaste of beer on my breath, I aimed my camera at whatever drew my eye. I cannot think of how this could possibly fail to draw anyone’s eye. The diving board and pig are both life-sized. Pedestrian traffic must break around the strange navigational hazard. But on one night, when I had the pig on a diving board all to myself, I simply walked around it, taking pictures, and wondered what went through the mind of the artist who’d created it. This is one of the photos I'd sent to friends, and it's also the picture that caused many of those same friends to declare that Prague must be one of the strangest cities on Earth. Admittedly, Prague is strange. Babies on TV towers and pigs on diving boards are as commonplace the art of Alfons Mucha and the writing of Franz Kafka. It is this strangeness that makes it so compelling, so intriguing, and so much the home that you miss when you leave it. *** As always, thank you for viewing, and reading, and commenting, and I hope you're on the verge of a great weekend.