Do you know Prague 11’s bowling field ?

The deputy mayor presents us the project with great enthusiasm, but in a Czech that we actually don’t understand.

We are listening politely, our nose hidden deep in our scarf, feet in the mud with the workers laughing at us while they are doing the excavations

The photo is done: the French group in front of the bowling green. It will be published in the local newsletter.

There are more than 80 000 people living in Prague 11.

The flats were built around 1972, during the building wave of council tower blocks in the suburbs, so that the town slowly absorbed its peripheries. 75% of Czechs are supposed to live in this kind of district. Today, the town of Prague 11 is trying to reinvent itself as a city and to create new public services (social and medical centres, schools and….. cultural centres). It also hosts of new shopping centre.


From the highest point of Prague 11, at the top of the grand hotel, Mister Barton (local teacher and historian) shows us the different strata of the district:

    - In the wood next to the impoundment, rests of a Celt or Germanic settlement were discovered.

    - Near by the national archives (where Kafka’s written works are preserved), there is a medieval circular stronghold house, that has been under renovation for many years but which is already working now as a cultural centre and restaurant.


    - Small traditional houses, a small chapel and a big farm are witness of the 3 villages where the district was built on.

    - The sixty wells, the waste land and ugly buildings of the urban heating station, the skeleton of a space rocket reconverted in airing system for the metro, colours (yellow, red blue and green), the graphic signs identifying each part of Prague 11, hundred of concrete blocks, the tower of the grand hotel and it’s astronomical clock and finally schools under renovation are all landmarks.

It seems that the surrounding hills, made of the earth taken away during the construction of the district have a special ecosystem: when people drop their house plants there, they seem to flourish marvellously.

- A climbing wall (wooden spaceships stranded on the roof of a heating station block) and small dilapidated shops,

- The gymnasium, the  Mother Teresa Church, KC Zahrada, Lidl, the huge shopping mall of Chodov next to the metro, the blue nursing home and the Koliba restaurant for families. It’s difficult to meet with Vietnamese. Markéta got in touch with one of the responsible of the community unfortunately without any results.

The market where they had a lot of small shops has lately caught fire and there were hundreds of dead: Hundred of e-mails, phone calls and an advert that went round schools and clubs without forgetting the word of mouth.

Some singers, musicians, puppeteer, professionals and amateurs have arrived for the audition: Alžběta, 28, singer; Dominik, 27, accordion; Dagmar, 21, singer Jindřich, 29, clarinet; Tereza, 20, singer and the comedians : Ivana, 23, Pavel, 26; Dora Bouzková, 30; Anna, 28; Jitka, 24 ; Filip, 23; Zbyněk, 31; Marcela, 29. The beat-boxers are also here, a lovely little band, like a “Scoubidou” gang: Michal (12), the tubby gypsy chief and Mikuláš (9) his pale henchman, Helena (17) the tall lanky girl, the brothers Mikuláš (11) and Darek (9) with their hairstyle of the 80's.

They perform a little but they are mainly here to show us they musical talent, without microphone.

Pierre Brini

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