I love the Prague trams. My favourite tram has always been the #26 that (still) cuts right across the city from the northwest through the centre, all the way to the southeast corner.
It used to take me just over an hour, from the wild and legend-filled Divoká Šárka to the giant panelaky complex at Hostivař. Past the charming bourgeois architecture of Dejvická, through the urban grit of hlavní nádraží and Žižkov, the creepy romance of(cemetary) and tidy suburb of Strašnice, the #26 reveals Prague’s many faces. Wide tram windows, at perfect eye-level when you’re sitting down, provide a panoramic view; if you tilt and smudge your forehead against the glass, you can see all the way up the highest buildings with their baroque façades and Art Nouveau gargoyles.
In The Last Bohemians, Sam and researcher/translator Katka take a tram up to the landfill at Ďáblice:
"The tram rumbled around the corner of Na Poříčí and Revoluční, down the stretch to the Vltava. Though it was a chilly, blustery day outside, a bright spring sun poured through the wide windows, warming my cold hands as they gripped the stand-up passenger bar; at Dlouhá třída, a middle-aged couple sitting in front of us got off. We slid quickly into their seats, and I experienced one of the small luxuries of the freezing Prague winter: heated tram seats.
‘Ah-h-h-h,’ I sighed with pleasure and squirmed around to get the full sensation. The heat travelled down my thighs to my knees and up the small of my back. Katka pursed her lips in annoyance – only one in every three seats was heated, so she was sitting on cold ordinary plastic. It felt snug in the warm tram with the bright but cold day outside; small columns of mist rose up from the river as I looked, as I always did, at the white-water careening down the rocks of the dam on one side; on the other, fog caressed the spires of St Vitus Cathedral and the castle towering up on the hill.”
Back in the 90s, most trams were that soot-‐stained rusty red-and-white that you still see today; by the end of the decade, however, the Prague Dopravní podnik (transport company) had begun to sell advertising so occasionally we were surprised by brightly painted submarine-‐shaped cars gliding past:
In 2010, the city of Prague introduced the new, hyper-modern trams that wouldn’t look out of place in a Ridley Scott or George Lucas film. These sleek machines, designed and built by Czech automaker Škoda, have even wider windows with central heat and comfy, colourful padded seats.
Instead of the jerky stop-starts and ear-piercing squeals around corners, these new trams are smooth and almost silent—they, as much as anything else, may be harbingers of Prague’s progress into the 21st century.
The old trams are still around, sturdy as Tonka toys and charming as ever. In addition to being a testimony to Czech workmanship, they also foster my nostalgia—and that, perhaps, of others, who knew them well back in the 90s.
The old trams are still around, sturdy as Tonka toys and charming as ever. In addition to being a testimony to Czech workmanship, they also foster my nostalgia—and that, perhaps, of others, who knew them well back in the 90s.
