I saw Michael Stipe in town1.
Met Veronika for dinner. Vodka and tonic at Slavia2, where we learnt from her friend the barman, Havel had just been and gone. Then we traipsed around looking for a restaurant that wasn’t full. There was an awkwardness about our conversation. Perhaps we are at a stage in between asking eachother background questions and just getting on with What did you do today?
He is very famous but, from what young-Toby observes, largely unbothered in Praha. He’s spotted going into a cafe, not a very good one, at the bottom of Wenceslas Square. Young-Toby would have advised him to go somewhere else. From the balcony of the cafe, Stipe would have had roughly the same view as Josef Koudelka’s famous photograph, taken after the Soviet tanks arrived in August 1968.
Cafe Slavia. Their website has a wonderful, vintage chunk of Czenglish:
By the legendary table of Czech painter and poet Jiří Kolář, where it had been possible to see Hrabal with Škvorecký, Václav Havel with friends enjoyed to sit.
After the revolution, the cafe was closed again for public. Endless reconstruction is tiring especially for Václav Havel, who as the president and guest of Na Zábradlí Theater, agitated for its reopening. He sended a petition through the auditorium, reminding Slavia as one of the cultural centres and „a place of meeting Prague intellectuals, students and old people.” He was answered. Ceremonious reopening was symbolically 17th of November 1997.
Through the cafe’s windows, young-Toby can see the number 22 tram sparking as it turns toward the Castle.