Friday, April 17, 2009

Barrandov Terraces

This neighborhood is named after Joachim Barrande, a French paleontologist who lived in Prague in the mid 19th century. In the the valleys around this hilltop he found all sorts of trilobites that matched ones found in England. He proposed the idea of stratigraphy whereby he traced geological bench-marks or certain event horizons for purposes of mapping.

Interesting is that he was an anti-Darwinist and supported the Catastrophe theory.

I tend to agree with the catastrophe theory especially with regard to my existence.

My pal lives in Prokopsky valley and still finds Trilobites to this day when diggin' up his carrots.

This building as well as the Barrandov Studios was built by the Havel family. Unknown to most is that Vaclav Havel, the dissident who became the President came from a very rich Czech family that had its fingers in projects all over town. It made for him a much better profile and platform from which to sing!

This old fantastic bar, pool and terrace is falling to pieces unfortunately even though it must've been something back in the day. The film studios up the road aren't doing much better because of the economic downturn and because the corrupt Czech government doesn't offer any tax breaks for the film industry. All the business is going to Hungary and Romania.

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1 comment:

RAW said...

What a great day that was. I'm still buzzing off that place.