Thank you for posting these images. They include many beautiful photographs, and I have bookmarked the page> You look just about the way I have imagined you, but I find Frantisek much younger than I would have expected. In any case, it's great to see you both in person, but more imprtantly, it's a pleasure to see so may great photos. thanks for sharing.
Paul
On Oct 17, 2004, at 7:31 PM, Gianfranco Irlanda wrote:
Hi everybody!
For those who don't want to read, see: http://www.photo.net/photodb/folder.tcl?folder_id=439491
For the others, a little tale...
After a couple of years of attempts, I was able to go to Prague to meet our fellow Frantisek Vlcek, thanks to a period of vacation of a friend of mine Dario Arenare who, quite stubbornly, decided to go Prague with almost no advance. I thought this was probably the right time, so I started to help him looking for flights and hotel. We were able to find several flights (and packages with hotels) from Naples, just to see them become unavailable in few hours, so at the end we found a possibility with the Student Tourist Centre but we had to fly from Rome early in the morning, Dario three days before me and our Roman friend Eleonora, who joined us after several days of indecision. Too bad Veronica, my girlfriend, couldn't take any day off from work during that week. :-( The first day was quite long, I was coming by train from Naples and had to reach Eleonora's flat, where I arrived at around 8 p.m. Eleonora had to scan and send many documents to a notary for an inheritance problem so she didn't sleep at all. I did, but the alarm was set at 5 a.m. anyway - we had to take the underground and then a train to the Fiumicino airport, and the flight time was 8:50. At our arrival in Prague, we had an unpleasant experience, sadly familiar for a Neapolitan guy... A Italian man we met at the airport with his wife had been almost victim of pickpocketing while entering the underground train at the Dejvicka station. Unpleasant, and quite scaring for them. I'm not saying that in Naples you see something like that every day, but it's something I would expect. After this first contact with the city, we reached Dario at the Oya Hotel and went immediately to the city centre (the pictures from the Museum till the boat cruise are from the first day).
The day after we went to Mala Strana, spending at least a hour on the Karluv Most (Charles Bridge) watching the crowd and the 30 statues... We arrived at the Castle a bit too late to see everything, but luckily the ticket was valid for two days. In the Cathedral (inside the castle), while I was taking the picture of the nave, a girl asked me something in Czech. I should have watched her as she was from another galaxy, then tried to communicate in English. She didn't speak English quite well, but I did understand that she was asking me how was that I was taking pictures even if it was forbidden (it was in fact mandatory to buy a permit to take pictures - without flash - in the castle). I explained her the permit thing, and she said she didn't have enough money. I should have watched her as she was coming from a galaxy farther away... Then I said, ok, I'll buy you the permit, it's not much money for me (what the heck, it is 30kc, less than $1...). Since she had a K-mount camera (a Braun branded Cosina) I showed her how to exchange the lens (she did try my Tamron 28-75 for a couple of shots). Unfortunately no picture recorded this encounter. The other, main encounter, with Frantisek, took place at the Stare Mesto end of the Karluv Most at around 6 p.m. of the second day. I hadn't seen even a single picture of Frantisek before, but I immediately recognized him. Is there a sort of a PDML look or something? :-) Frantisek did suggest a nice cafe in a narrow and quiet street (still in Stare Mesto, I think) where we had a pleasant and relaxing time. We then headed for a place to have dinner, but after a couple of failed attempts we ended in a bar with a very narrow choice of food (not bad at all, though). Frantisek invited us to his place for dinner on the following day, but the plans got modified in progress when, the day after, we found that we were quite late on our (theorical) schedule - think that we had lunch at 5 p.m.... We even missed the chance to visit the Synagogue and the Old Jewish Cemetery for it was day of cult... (especially Dario was extremely angry, he had three days available to visit everything but he waited for us to enter there, and the morning after we had to return home). Our second meeting with Frantisek was in this huge photo shop in Vodickova, not far from Vaclavske Namesti. Here I was enabled again, and bought an AF360FGZ - a minute before being thrown away from the shop as they were closing. Never seen a shop with a similarly wide selection of used gear (of any brand, they had a lot of 645 and 67 gear too, also tempting - worth another visit to Prague...) Our last dinner together was at La Trappola (the trap), an Italian restaurant in front of our hotel (really good food, if only you avoid the typical Italian things...).
Now, the pictures: after a bit of effort, I reduced the 950 digital shots to an acceptable amount (44...) for public display. There were four rolls of slides and a couple of BW, but I had no time to scan any of them. Frantisek, I apologise for the imprecision in writing the names of the places and streets, but I don't have the proper font available. Hope you'll enjoy the series.
Ciao,
Gianfranco
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