Dejvická (Prague Metro)

Panels on the wall of Dejvická Metro Station

Kingstown was the imperial way of claiming Ireland, with its hints at King’s Own. Anyone coming into or out of Ireland was left in no doubt about the occupying nation. It stood on the east coast of the island like a royal standard, embossed and distinctive. First day in Prague means taking the bus from Ruzyně International Airport, past the green meadows and outlying homes of orange and white, the shady trees sleepy in the warm air. Children talk vividly, teenagers slump and drawl, adults watch with one eye on the time. At the train stop the locals stay put while the plane travellers clamber out for the connection at the metro station known as Dejvická. It is the terminus of Line A, something we find by turning our unfolded maps in circles until the orientation is right. The entrance goes down below the boulevard known as Evropská Třída. How to pronounce all of these words with their quiffs and moustaches and monocles! Spaniards, a mother and her daughter, can see I have no idea which station to travel to, so while we wait on a seat for the next train they turn unfolded maps in clockwise directions and engage in comic Anglo-Hispanic, until the girl points excitedly at Invalidovna. The platform is temporarily populated with representatives of five continents, their languages back to basics as they confront the mysteries of Czech. But it wasn’t always the case. The station was opened ten years after normalisation was introduced, on the 12^th of August 1978. It was called Leninova. No busts of the Bolshevik greet the tourist these days at the top of the escalator, or down in the vaults, or through the closed circuit. Vladimir no longer signs off on the passports. The houses all around look spruce in the lazy day, not scratched and uncleaned when they were part of being normal. The grimaces of wealthy Czechs in Dejvice must have been permanent before the wind changed, taking the metro to work in town. But still it is a wonder how the tunnels were blasted into place by the Russians and Czechs, a subterranean memory of Moscow. The rulers who flew in from that place would have been driven to The Castle in flash cars. But the embossment stayed in place, tribute to the gaunt man with the hatred of what kings owned, until the Velvet Revolution. He was always going to be a problem father-figure, staring balefully and jutting his pointy beard. Leninova was renamed Dejvická in 1990, after the ancient district in which the station is located in Prague 6. Dejvice, site of Roman camps and one of the oldest monasteries in Bohemia became the new home of the Velvet Underground. The Spanish ladies stepped onto the train. We kept on with our Spanglish, wondering the while what sights we were missing many many metres above our heads. 

 

Dejvická Metro under construction in the 1970s