Recently he has used some of the film clips for a desk diary for the year 2009. For us it is interesting that many of these clips show Prague in the octal year 1928. Thanks to them we can imagine clearly the everyday life of ordinary Prague inhabitants. Urban mythology of the Vltava River being frozen over every winter, until the construction of a dam, are still to be heard. Ice-skating used to take place especially in between the Railway Bridge and Palackého Bridge. Stalls with grilled sausages, tea, rum-tea and punch were built on the ice in order to provide refreshment for the sportsmen. The fittest ones were able to ice-skate as far as Podolí and back, in some cases, pulled by their friends on bicycles. However, ferrymen from Podskalí were the ones who profited most from the frozen river. In winter they transformed themselves into ice-cutters and used to cut one metre lengths of ice. They transported them to restaurants, hospitals and households and often to the halls in Braník, were the ice was supposed to last, preferably until another winter.
The diary shows beautiful photos of Prague tramways, of the memorable style of Prague’s horse drawn trams, also of the “new” cars that were so easy to jump out of on the run. Tram wagons circled round the statue of St. Wenceslas in Wenceslas square with heavy snowflakes falling from the sky… Well, what a picture of a genuine Christmas atmosphere. In 1928 new tracks were built to Spořilov, Kačerov and to Vokovice. Another shot shows a tram passing through the Powder Gate and continuing up Celetná Street towards Old Town Square and from there up Pařížská Street towards the Vltava River. The track was closed in these places as late as 1960.
What else was part of Christmas in 1928? Certainly the chestnut-man Štěrba, who hawked his hot goodies from his travelling wood and coal driven engine around many different places of Prague (a photograph shows him in Žofín). There were also street hawkers selling postcards (five postcards of Prague used to cost only one crown), or processions of promotional figures advertising Hašlerka bonbons, JOVO fruit yoghurt from Radlice, SANA margarine or PALABA batteries. Then there were the ice-hockey matches, which used to take place in the winter stadium in Štvanice, at that time it was still open to the elements, roofless.
Another snapshot captures the unveiling of the monument of Erns Denis, a French Slavicist and a big friend of our country. It was made by a sculptor Karel Dvořák and the event took place in Malostranské square on 27th of October 1928. Another shot shows an elegant car, a Laurin & Klement 110, in which men in top hats and women in elaborate multi coloured bonnets used to take a ride.
