March 18, 2008

Freezing Prague

Today at 17:10 in the busy metro station 'Muzeum' in Prague, there was a 1 minute moment of coordinated 'freezing' for which I took a 20 min break from work to see :)

I would have expected something similar to the NY Grand Central station freezing but this is what came out instead:


There were too many people who took part in the event so anyone could hardly move through the station but the interesting effect was, that through all the noise an agitation of an overly crowded metro hallway, all of a sudden, the majority of people made complete silence and stood still while a few confused 'outsiders' wondered what the hell was going on.

I'm somewhat proud of having overheard the following conversation (in Czech, of course) between two elderly women that had no idea what was going on:

woman1 (towards shop assistant): what's going on here?
shopAssistant: ... (totally into the experiment)
woman1 (puzzled, towards woman2): i just want to go to the metro, are you going to the metro as well ?(asked as if expecting an important confirmation that she still had a grip on reality)

woman2 : yes, sure, i'm going to the metro.
woman1: sigh of relief (i made this last one up)

It's amazing how so many people made their way to this apparently trivial and meaningless event and took it so seriously. If only other causes would have the same impact...

And to finish, the event coincided with a larger Prague and Czech Republic, actually, Central Europe, freezing. No, not the people(unless forgotten outside) but the weather. It snowed as if X-mas Sunday is coming, not Easter. And yes, now it's freezing: -1 Celsius.

Here's another video (first was made by me) that shows the whole atmosphere better:


And, as expected, it's also in the news.

2 comments:

Aibek D. said...

monotone poses by people, narrow and p poorly lit space...
could have organized better!
still pity that I missed it ;)

Alexandru Rugina said...

This is hilarious!!! I wonder what would happen if you slapped of one of those nice Czech girls asses while they were freezing. :)