The claustrophobic world of a grim and grey Prague, mired in an endless succession of wet, drizzly days, is the Prague we usually think of in regards to Kafka. We certainly don't picture him sauntering through the lawns of a magnificent tree-lined park, the sun shining brightly from a beautiful blue sky, with a renaissance royal palace as a backdrop. And yet this was not only a possibility in Prague, but one Kafka took frequent advantage of. Kafka's various Old Town residences left him only a few minutes walk from Chotkovy sady (Chotek grounds) and the Belvedere palace, completed in 1568, both of which are shown here.

Prague has many such parks, and Kafka frequented some of these other parks as well. One of them was the large Stromovka park, north of the river. In a 2007 interview with the Czech daily paper MF Dnes, the 103-year-old concert pianist Alice Herz Sommer, whose family was friends with Kafka's family, recalls: "Franz Kafka was a calm man who spoke little and as if he wanted to apologize for the fact that he lived. He spoke perfect Czech, which was unusual among Jews. He loved nature. He took me and my sister on walks in Stromovka. He would have us on sit on a bench while he'd sit on the ground and tell us a fairy tale. I don't remember these stories anymore, but I remember well that while he was telling us them he would turn into a child, like he was one of us."