I crossed the Vltava river for the first time today--over to the hilly half of Prague where sits Hradcny castle and what's known as the Little Quarter. Originally, Prague was made up of five towns: Hradcny (Prague castle and environs), Mala Strana (the Little Quarter), Josefov (the Jewish Quarter), Stare Mesto (old Town) and Nove Mesto (New Town). These five eventually coalesced into the larger city of Prague that exists today. So far I've only been to the last three sections, so this was new territory.

I took a tram up the hill to the castle, thinking I would spend a day there, and tomorrow I would walk around the castle to get a sense for what the area where Brahe and Kepler lived was like. But I quickly realized this plan was going to have to change. Research time, it turns out, is nothing whatsoever like tourist time. No more can I just glance at something, assess whether it's attractive, and then walk away. Each object, every architectural detail, every nook, suddenly becomes important. What am I looking at? What time period does it come from? Which of my characters would have handled it, seen it, known about it? And most importantly, how do I imprint it on my memory and make sure that I remember it? So, scrawling notes, drawing sketches, taking photos, and buying tons of postcards, I made my way through only about a third of what was to be seen inside the castle walls--I'm going to have to go back a few more times before I'm through.

I also discovered the second way in which research time is nothing like tourist time: what I prefer to observe has nothing to do with what I need to observe. If I had my way, I'd sit for an hour in St. Vitus cathedral in front of the art nouveau stained glass window designed by Alfons Mucha in the early 1900s--I love art nouveau. But instead I must pore over mannerist paintings from the 1600s that aren't really my style.

But luckily, what I enjoy and what I must research often coincide. I ended the day, with weary feet, settled into a wooden pew at St. George's basilica--the first Romanesque church I have every loved. With its thick walls and slits for windows, Romanesque architecture always seems so dark and defensive to me, which I guess was the point. Every building, even churches, were essentially fortresses in the 10th century when St. George's was built. But this church has a joy in its modesty that transcends what one normally perceives in squat, Romanesque arches. Straight stone walls tower to five or six stories high, supporting a bare wooden roof, so the feeling is one of incredibly smooth height, unmarred by the curlicues of the Gothic St. Vitus I had just been in.

And the windows! Narrow and round they may have been, but in the late afternoon light each one was perfectly illuminated--not in a way that let lots of light into the church, but simply lit up as if the window was the art itself. Every religion seems to rely on light for its metaphors of the mystical and, sitting in my pew, I could understand how this bit of ethereal sunshine playing around those windows inspired the congregants for the last thousand years with an uncomplicated spirituality that a Mucha stained-glass window never could.