Cobble, Cobble

I became aware of them as a first experience on arriving at the Namesti Republiky (Republic Square) in Prague. Not through the sense of sight, which is probably the most heightened sense when arriving at a new place; nor through the tactile senses as my feet hit the ground from the airport shuttle van- their unevenness requires subtle adjustments of the leg muscles to stay upright.

No, it was the sound, that jarring aural battery of plastic on stone as soon as the driver pulled my suitcase (Lil’ Red, short for Little Red Sarcophagus) out of the van and down to the pavement. As I wheeled Lil’ Red away with deliberate speed to cross the square, clattering applause rose up from the pavement. Embarrassed that all eyes were turned to me (which of course they were not), I paused. I looked downwards to see the conbblestones. Thousands of them in all directions. Pragmatically, I wanted to see how I could move along with making a minimal amount of racket. Instead I just paused to admire the lowly cobble. The patterns and sizes on the route ahead were as varied as the facades that lined the square.

As I moved along I listened to the music of wheels on stone. The smaller, tight fitting cobbles, seemingly more like mosaics, produced a short staccato rat-a-tat at a key high enough to affect my fillings. Long, linear cobbles with their meniscus edges mouthed deep guttural moans capped with a resonating ‘thok’ The typical fan array of square cobbles produced crescendos and decrescendos of clatter depending on the angle of attack. Given time and considerable amount of ridicule from bystanders, I think I could have found enough varied textural soundscapes to bang out a Smetana or Dvorak right their in that square!

But I wanted to get to the hotel.

Prague and the Jews

The Old New Synagogue (14th Century)

The expectation that the intersection of Prague and the Jews would end badly is not disappointed as you learn more about a rich culture that once flourished just outside of the Old Town Square for centuries. What remains as monuments to thousands who are no longer here are a handful of ancient synagogues, museums treasuring fragments of a wealthy community and an extraordinary cemetery.
At one time, Jews considered Prague as a safe haven in Europe. Although they were relegated as elsewhere to a specific walled enclave within the main city, they enjoyed protection under a succession of Bohemian kings. Mostly the Jews benefited from Christian usury laws and quickly took up financing nobles and merchants. They prospered and created a ‘Ghetto’ of great prosperity.
When the Austrians came in, they really began feeling persecutions and were even more restricted. They were force to learn German and take German surnames. Eventually the ghetto was dismantled and the Jews spread out to the general populace. The area began a slow decay.
As Czech nationalism rose, the Jews began to be resented along with the German speakers. As in other places, the Jews could not feel as they belonged anywhere. Czechoslovak independence in the 1910s saw some easing, but it all came to an end in 1939, when the Nazis invaded. Czech Jews, some 140,000 of them were shipped north to the fortress at Terezin, and half were eventually sent to the camps at Auschwitz and Treblinka. Only 17,000 made it through and only some 3,000 Jews remain in this area.
One of the synagogues has been converted to a Holocaust memorial. The space is empty except for the walls which are covered with the names and dates of birth and dates they were last accounted for. An upstairs gallery contained children’s drawings that were produced at the Terezin concentration camp. It was a little too much to take in.

The Jewish Cemetery

Show me some Krumlov

Dobry Den from Cesky Krumlov!

We have driven south of Prague through the rolling, verdant Czech landscape. Row crops are just being set out as the danger of frost has only recently passed. Dots of villages with the ubiquitous voluptuous, baroque church steeples pepper the countryside.

Occasionally we have passed ugly little industrial towns, some stark reminders of the Soviet era, and larger towns such as Ceske Budjevoce (where the original Budweiser brewery is located) and Benesov. The highway system is not as developed as in Western Europe, so we are forced to drive right through these towns and deal with traffic and mostly reckless Czech drivers.
South of Ceske Budjevoce, the terrain becomes more undulating. We are in spitting distance of the Austrian border when the turn-off for Cesky Krumlov comes into view.

Almost surrealistically cute, this Southern Bohemian enclave could be easily construed as a contrived Disney-ish fantasy replete with a looming castle, creaking water mills and tight narrow streets where the houses seem to overhang, their pointy rooftop tips just ever-so-slightly touching. But it is not contrived- it is a functioning millennium-old town that has avoided scarring wars and has benefited from benevolent rule from high in the castle.

The town consists of two parts: the Latran district which includes the rambling, lofty castle and a bit of town sandwiched between the castle and the river, and the main town which fits snugly in a 300 degree arc in the river. The town is mostly a car-free zone with parking provided in comfortably distant remote lots. Most visitors to C.Krumlov are day trippers from Prague, when the tourists leave around 5:00 the town is wonderfully quiet and slow.

Sebastian, Sabrina and I are staying overnight to enjoy an evening and a morning of this more ambling pace of town life. We walked around most of the village in a couple of hours, even at an unhurried pace; take in the views and have a beer (Pilsner Urquell, of course) at an outdoor café along the main drag in Latran.

We find a Pension in a fifteenth century building with original wood floors, antique furnishings and scary hand-colored photos of long dead (presumably) Slavic people. It is all quite amusing as it fits with the character of the town.

Right below our room is a small restaurant, expectedly rustic with heavy timber tables and chairs with equally rustic Czech food, heavy and plentiful to help combat the local Egger stein beers and shots of Bereshekova we consume.

From the Sublime to the Ridiculous

Today I decided it was time to visit a few museums.

The Mucha Museum
Alphonse Mucha was an artist, draftsman and illustrator who achieved his greatest world renown in the 1890s and 1900s as a leader in the Art Nouveau style. His commercial work was mainly posters showing beautiful young women intertwined with nature and graphic flourishes. His later work focused on paintings dedicated to the glory and history of the Czech and, more broadly, the Slavic people. He was a champion of Czech independence from the Austro-Hungarian empire and, following that reality, was the artist chosen to design the first Czechoslovak currency and stamps.

The small museum was excellent in showing his drafting and graphic abilities with which I share a modicum of kindred spirit. His mastery of the human form and all its nuances was breathtaking. His later, nationalistic allegorical work was a little heavy in ‘message’ to my taste, bordering on melodrama, but his use of intense colors was wondrous. One of his last works was a large stained glass window in St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague Castle. It tells the story of St. Cyril (he gave the Slavs their alphabet) and St. Methodius, who both brought Christianity to Eastern Europe. Mucha’s amazing use of colors here is at full reckoning with north light punching up the impact. He used blues and greens to represent the past and the yellows and oranges to portend the future.

Mucha died soon after the Nazi invasion of Czechaslovakia. He had fallen ill during a Gestapo interrogation and never recovered. He probably died brokenhearted after seeing his beloved nation overtaken yet again.

The Museum of Communism
This is a privately run museum (irony #1), set up, in the city’s main downtown shopping district (irony #2), sharing a building with a casino and a McDonalds (#3 and 4). It was surprisingly informative, going beyond the predictable discarded busts of Lenin, Marx and other communist heroes.. It explained the history and circumstance of the rise and inevitable victory of Soviet-backed Czech communism before WW2 and immediately after.

Striking exhibits included a classroom for the indoctrination of children; a typical shop that only sold two different products and a chilling recreation of a secret police interrogation office. The last exhibit room had a TV playing the events of the Velvet Revolution of 1989 when the madness finally came to an end. Very sobering and a fitting tribute to the resilience of the Czech people.

Redrum

Seven a.m. on the dot. Alone, I am the first one at breakfast. The buffet is set out and I can hear distant clanging in the kitchen where the breakfast attendant must be preparing. The dining room is located in the basement, but it is a high volume space with tall, luminous panels to give the impression of bright windows. The décor has a faded opulence of the 1920s and I am inclined to believe it is authentic. Art nouveau brass fixtures and railings, a grand staircase sweeping down in a gentle, confident curve, heroic wall frescoes. Piped-in music plays vintage twenties tunes in Czech or German, replete with that tinny mono sound that imagines capturing some lost reflected radio wave. Al Jolson comes to mind- he always comes to mind because that’s about the extent of my musical knowledge of that era.

Alone with the room, sounds and buttered toast, I am flashing on a scene from The Shining, where Jack Nicholson is talking to the ghostly bartender in the Overlook Hotel.

Creepy. I am so out of here.

On the Instance of a Presidential Visit with Nuclear Overtures Intersecting with my Little Trip to Middle Europe

It’s not often the sitting President comes to your town. I am taking some liberties as this week I am a resident of Prague, CZ and Obama's only public address during his first European trip is here in Prague.

Thousands were converging towards the summit of Castle Hill on the west side of the Vltava River that bisects Old Town Prague. I set out at about 7:30 from the hotel, not really understanding how I would reach the location of the speech, the great forecourt to the huge Prague Castle. Heavy security had shut off a lot of the access points to the rambling castle complex on the hill so I wasn’t sure what to do, so I went with the flow. Luckily I had jumped on Tram No. 22 (nicknamed the Pickpocket Express, because of all the tourists that take it) which was the only public transport allowed in the Security area. People were streaming up toward the castle like insects up an anthill. It took an hour to be screened through security. We stood shoulder to shoulder crammed in the narrow lanes outside the castle- but there was more joviality than anger: there was a sense of revelry and anticipation. Finally the space opened up to the long, broad square where I joined about 25,000 new friends in waiting for the President to show up.

Of course there were lot of Americans there, maybe other tourists, expatriates, but mostly college students with many wearing campaign shirts and hats from last November. I was most aware of the presence of Czech youth and young adults. They really charged the crowd with their energy and excitement. They flashed peace signs and cheered loudest.

View towards the castle and the stage.

I was a few hundred meters distant from the podium, but the authorities had placed big screens around the square with a rather potent sound system. We were in a rock concert venue. No calming classical music was pumped into the crowd as one might expect from this country with its rich culture; no it was Beyonce, Shania Twain, Billie Holiday and Jay-Z! Given the rich Renaissance palace buildings and the looming spires of St. Vitus cathedral, it touched on the surreal.

When the President and First Lady showed up (about 20 minutes late on stage), they were given a rock star welcome. Small US and Czech flags fluttered in all directions. Cheers flooded the square and necks craned to catch a glimpse. Children were hoisted on shoulders and people scrambled up lightposts, statues, trash bins to grab a view. Amid my constriction within these ranks of people nattering away in some foreign tongue (my prejuidice), I thought, "Hey that's my president!" I was puzzled by my sense of pride and patriotism, particularly since I am not outwardly patriotic.

I think Obama’s words connected with the Czech people. He struck a populist note with his mention of the Prague Spring of 1968, when the Czechoslovak people tried to reform their communist nation before being put down by the Soviets and the Velvet Revolution of 1989, when the people finally overthrew the Communists without firing a single shot. He noted that 25 years ago the notion of an American President being asked to deliver a public speech behind the Iron Curtain was unthinkable. And this is where he connected to his theme of Change. The end of the Cold War has changed the role of nuclear armaments in the world. He then outlined proposed global nuclear weapon reduction and verification. I think he chose Prague to trot out his proposal, because these are people tired of being the historical doormat of Europe, from medieval wars of religion to Nazi occupation to the front line of the old Warsaw Pact. Peace sounds pretty good.

As we began flowing down Castle Hill, the good mood continued. We blended with the other tourists in the Mala Strana on the banks of the river in search of lunch, or in my case, a beer in a small pub off the main drag.

Na zdravi! A toast to Nuclear Disarmament and a pretty cool experience with the president.

Protestors on the Charles Bridge after the speech. They don't want an American defense radar system placed in the Czech Republic.

Culture on the Cheap

I feel like I am inside an inverted wedding cake. Gilded white icing drips from the ceiling. Crimson velvet enrobes the seats and gilt mirrors and red damask cover the walls. Chandeliers like frozen explosions of gold and crystal hover below puzzling allegories of operatic themes realized in darkened pigments.. The State Opera house is not as splendid as what I remember of the Vienna Stadtoper or Paris’ Opera Garnier- it is definitely not a large venue. But man it is cheap. Front row, first balcony for thirty bucks! Plus supertitles in Czech and English, so I could actually understand what was happening!

Mozart’s The Magic Flute done in period dress with modern minimalist sets seemed a bit incongruous. The protagonist tenor was a bit weak, the Queen had nice little vocal runs; overall a good production. My jet lag kicked in late in the performance; I was bobbing and weaving and I was lucky my head didn’t end up resting comfy-like in my neighbor’s lap. A quick beer at a pub near the hotel and then to bed, with the Birdcatcher’s song from the opera with that maddening little flute trill in it.

Prague Images

Early morning, Church of Our Lady before Tyn.

The Tyn Church as seen from the Old Town Hall tower.

Sitting in Old Town Square.

Marquee near Old Town Square.

Jan Hus monument, Old Town Square.

On the Charles Bridge, looking towards Old Town.

On the Charles Bridge.

My first beer in Prague.