Tuesday, November 30, 2004.
I had received a notice in my mailbox about a package, so I went to the post office to pick it up. Expecting a similar experience as last time, I did not bring my passport. However, this time, the woman at the counter would not let me pick up the package without it, so I ended up going home and coming back, adding a wasted hour to my day. Naturally, when I returned the second time there was a line, but this time I was able to retrieve the package. No apology, no “sorry for the inconvenience,” just “sign here.” Everything is recorded, as before, in a ledger. I wonder what they do with all those paper records.
On my way home, I stopped at the Delvita near Dejvicka, to see if they had marshmallows, graham crackers, cilantro or salsa, things that John had said he couldn’t find. I did see some frozen turkeys (and frozen geese), but no marshmallows or cilantro. I may ask Vicki to bring some things from the US when she comes next week.
Rick has added another wonderfully funny language story to our collection. He had come down with a case of athlete’s feet, so he made a point of stopping at a pharmacy on his way home from the gym. He looked up what he thought would be the appropriate word in the dictionary, and he did his best to convey to the pharmacist that he needed something for a fungus. He was a bit frustrated by the puzzled look he received, until I told him that what he had said to the pharmacist, as he pointed to his feet, was, “I have mushrooms.”
Sunday, November 28, 2004.
Petr Vojtechovsky is spending a week with his family in Brno, so we took them to dinner this evening, just after he arrived at the Prague airport from Denver. Petr has mentioned his family to Rick on several occasions, so it was a pleasure to meet them. Petr’s father is an electrical engineer by training , so I was interested to hear about his experiences at Tesla Electronics plant (which made vacuum tubes and radios before 1945, and military electronics until 1989). Petr’s mother, who teaches software applications, is learning English in honor of the American daughter-in-law she acquired when Petr married Kari in Brno in June, but, despite the fact that her English is better than our Czech, it was hard for her to be included in the conversation without some translation work by Petr. Rick was eager to hear news from the Math Department—it’s always different to talk in person than via e-mail. In addition to news about Denver and DU, Petr brought a mountain of mail that our renters had collected for us, most of which was credit card and mortgage solicitations and other assorted junk. But there were a few important pieces, most of which should have been sent here (or to Matt) but ended up at our old address. Looking through some of the mail is amusing, for example the detailed statement from our bank that shows zero “reward points” and zero bonus points for zero debit-card transactions. My “account activity summary” shows a beginning point balance of 0.00 and an ending point balance of 0.00. I so love computers.
Saturday, November 27, 2004.
This evening we went to see the Israeli movie “Broken Wings” at the Jewish Education and Culture Center across the street from the Jewish Town Hall. It’s a powerful movie about an Israeli family struggling to cope with the death of their father/husband. “Nine months after her husband died, Dafna Ullman (renowned stage actress Orli Zilberschatz-Banai) has just gone back to work as a night shift hospital midwife. 16-year old Yair (Nitai Gvirtz), has dropped out of school, abandoned a potential basketball career and now hides inside a mouse costume, distributing flyers on the subway. 11-year-old Ido (Daniel Magon), deals with his building aggression by trying to break the world free jump record (and practices into an empty swimming pool), while 6-year-old Bahr (Eliana Magon) begins a lonely first day of school. So it's left to 17-year-old Maya, (lovely newcomer Maya Maron), a gifted budding singer/song writer, to act as a surrogate mother to her youngest siblings. Everyone tries to navigate their daily lives as best as they can—jobs, romantic involvements, a car that won't start—but when Maya forgets to pick up little Bahr from school, it’s an incident which causes a major upheaval in their lives...” which has the potential of bringing them together, as they share the bonds of love in healing.
“Told with sincerity, drama, and self-deprecating humor, director Nir Bergman’s feature debut has a remarkable freshness and a keen sense of observation of the contemporary family. Shot entirely on location in Haifa and Tel Aviv, Broken Wings reveals an Israel very different from the televised news images and violent world politics, and also portrays a truly universal experience…. The winner of nine prizes at the Israeli Academy Awards and a hit in its home country, the award-winning Broken Wings is the extraordinarily moving story of the life and loves of the Ullman family, an ordinary Israeli family coping with everyday life.”
http://mongrelmedia.com/films/BrokenWings.html
We, on the other hand, are coping with short days and rainy mornings as we engage ourselves in enjoyable activities and little meaningful work.
The movie ended early enough for us to stop at two bakeries on the way to dinner, so we loaded up on fresh strudel and bread. We had dinner at the Sokolovka restaurant near the Hradčanská bus stop again. This evening it was not so smoky as usual. The food is always good and, since the menu is only in Czech, more of a challenge than most other places. Czech restaurant behavior is noticeably different than what we’re used to in the U.S. It’s hard to get a waitress’s attention to get the bill, and almost as hard to prevent her from delivering another beer if your glass is empty. Plates are whisked away from the table as soon as it looks like you’ve finished eating, but you have to ask for dessert – no one will ask if you’d like something more to eat after you’ve ordered.
Friday, November 26, 2004.
Howard conducted the service at Bejt Praha this evening, so it had a slightly different flavor than usual. (Peter had gone to Košice to be with his family for the weekend.) The main service and songs were the same, but Howard asked some people to read some parts of the service in Czech and English, in addition to saying the prayers in Hebrew. He also gave a short explanation of this week’s parsha, or Torah reading, which is the story of Jacob’s struggle in his sleep as he prepared for his encounter with his brother Esau after two decades of estrangement. The rabbis always ask who Jacob fought with. Was it a strange man, an angel of God, or his own conscience? Petra and I (and Rick) thought that adding the parsha to the service was nice and that we should include this in the service more often.
The service at Bejt Praha is always pretty loose and short. Eunice had commented that it lacked structure and Torah, which is true. Rick and I go mainly for the people there. This evening we saw Ivo, an old friend from seven years ago, who gave us a photo he had taken of us with Matt (Matt was 11 at the time) blessing the challah in the Jewish Town Hall classroom where Bejt Praha met before the completion of the reconstruction of the Spanish Synagogue.
Rick and I are always looking for new restaurants to try—and Rick always appreciates American-style steak—so he suggested we try "Crazy Cow," the Texas-style steak house on Dlouha (Long) Street, not far from the synagogue. Apparently, the owners are from Texas and Brazil and the beef is from Argentina. We heard mostly English among the patrons, and were impressed with the waitstaff’s fluency in English. I miss steak on our grill, but this was close.
Thursday, November 25, 2004
Today is Thanksgiving in America. Many of our expat friends are visiting the U.S. to be with their families. Some are hosting Czech friends or out-of-town visitors. For those of us without families or large kitchens, Red, Hot, and Blues in Prague has hosted a traditional Thanksgiving dinner since it opened in 1993. When we were here seven years ago, we had Thanksgiving at RHB with our friend Mike Martin who was on sabbatical in England and Rick’s cousin Ronnie who was visiting from Israel. This year we invited my dear friend and colleague Eva and her friend Hanka to join us. Both have visited the U.S., but neither has been there at Thanksgiving, so this was a culinary adventure for them. The dinner was traditional turkey with gravy, mashed and sweet potatoes, creamed corn and beans, cranberry sauce and orange-cranberry relish. For dessert we had apple, mince, pumpkin, and pecan pie. The only thing missing this year was corn bread.
Earlier today I met with Jitka Kunstova, the manager of the Prague office of Rüesch International, a Washington-based financial services firm specializing in foreign exchange and precious metals. Until last month, Rüesch had been owned by its founder, Otto Rüesch, a Zurich-born former currency trader, who worked as an international banker before moving to the United States in 1965. Rüesch started the company with his American wife in 1980, focusing the business on providing international financial transaction services to a niche market of small- and medium-size companies dealing in international trade and currency. The Prague office opened in 1998 and Jitka has been its general manager since 1999. Jitka began her banking career in 1992, first with Komerční banka when it changed from total state control to a public limited company (it was fully privatized in 2001), moving to Citibank in 1996 to open a branch in Pardubice, so she has seen a lot of changes in the Czech financial services industry in the last 12 years.
I usually talk with entrepreneurs, so it was interesting to talk with someone who works for a large company. She runs the Prague branch, which has expanded from three to 18 people in five years, but she still has to answer to top management and stay in line with the corporation’s mission and objectives. Otto Rüesch was a hands-on manager and Jitka’s mentor, so she is bracing herself for changes under the new ownership of Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe, the large private equity firm that bought Qwest Communications’ yellow pages directories business in 2002.
Tuesday, November 23, 2004.
Thanks to an astute technician at Český Telecom, the gremlins in my ADSL modem have been exorcised, temporarily at least. I still don’t understand why the modem ate my username and password and had to be reinitialized, but, for now, we’re online again.
Most of my day was spent at a conference on the “Role of Equal Opportunities for Women and Men within the Company’s Prosperity.” Despite the title, there were perhaps six men in the audience of over 100 women. The conference was hosted by Gender Studies, an NGO, and sponsored by the Ministry of Industry and Trade, Zentiva Pharmaceuticals, and Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, a non-profit German political foundation committed to the advancement of public policy issues and social democracy. Panel presentations included “Impact of Foreign Investment on Equal Opportunities for Women and Men,” “Role of Non-Profit Organizations and Commercial Sector in Enforcement of Equal Opportunities in the Private Sector, and “Gender Perspectives within the Companies’ Corporate Social Responsibility.” Speakers were from the Czech Republic, Poland, Germany, and the Netherlands. The Gender Studies director started the day with a presentation of findings from a research project about equal opportunities (women’s promotability and working conditions) in multinational companies (foreign investment) in the Czech Republic, and concluded the conference with “Recommendations to the Entrepreneurial Environment and Non-Profit Organizations in the Area of Enforcement of Equal Opportunities for Women and Men.” After lunch, there was a presentation by the Minister of Industry and Business for the “Best Company with Equal Opportunities Contest in 2002” in three categories, small companies (<100 employees), large corporations, and a special category for “good startup.” The winners were R-Presse (Respekt Magazine), IBM, and AirProducts, respectively.
Tuesday evening, the American Embassy’s Woodrow Wilson Center hosted Harriet Ottenheimer and Maurice Martinez’s film, “The Quorum,” about their New Orleans coffee house in the mid-sixties during the civil rights turbulence. Rick and I invited Ales to join us. He had been in New Orleans in 1969 and had been impressed with the outward harmony of the city. Rick and I had not been in New Orleans, but we had been active in the civil rights movement in the Midwest, and the tension and violence of those times was stamped into our memories.
Monday, November 22, 2004.
Our broadband internet connection has been down all weekend. Needless to say, this is very frustrating. I spoke with the Český Telecom folks this morning. They said they’d call me in a day or two. Part of the problem is my inability to speak Czech, so I have to wait for an English-speaker who can run interference. None of the Czechs have pleasant things to say about Český Telecom, so there may be more than just a language problem. In any case, dialing up intermittently to check mail and not being able to use the web for research is quite inconvenient.
I was able to check my mail briefly at the Fulbright office this afternoon. I was asked to join the Fulbright staff to evaluate Czech applications for research grants to the US. This year’s applications were few and of low-quality, so it was difficult to decide how many grants to offer and to whom. One decision was easy, since the applicant had apparently died over the weekend. The others were difficult, but we decided to award two of the four applications. Student applications have increased, but academic research applications have gone down over the last few years, perhaps because of the high rejection rate in the past. Applicants from the US Fulbright awards have increased, despite the difficulty in doing research here without Czech language skills. (Teaching awards are easier, since there are many courses and programs taught in English.)
Sunday, November 21, 2004.
The master’s degree program at VŠE has five specializations, corresponding to the five departments at the school (all degrees are primarily in Economics): managerial psychology and sociology, finance and accounting, informatics (information systems) and statistics, economics and public administration, and international relations. Those who choose the concentration in managerial psychology and sociology usually (it’s not required) take a 20-student seminar class that includes a leadership weekend, similar to the leadership weekend that DU sets up for its MBA students. Eva had invited me to join her class on the last day of the two-day outing at the VŠE facility near Točna, south of Prague 4. The facility is a lovely building that at one time was used by the military. There are remnants of munitions stores not far from the building. There are 11 dorm rooms that sleep 2-4 people, a large lounge area, a seminar room and a kitchen and dining room that seats 20 people comfortably. Despite the cold, snowy weather, a few activities were outdoors, e.g. spider’s web and blind-walk through the woods, but most of the team-building activities were held in the dining room and lounge area.
There are some major logistical differences between DU’s program and VŠE’s: At VŠE each teacher takes his or her class separately and is responsible for planning the entire 2-day program. There is no professional facilitation or assistance, although instructors typically get some former students to help. (Eva had three students help organize and facilitate.) The only on site employee is the building custodian. Students bring their own breakfasts and lunches and cooperate in cooking dinner together and cleaning up. Beer, wine, bottled water and soft drinks are provided for a fee; there’s a checklist in the kitchen (everyone is on the honor system to record what they’ve taken) and everyone settles up at the end before they leave on Sunday. Students come on their own on Friday morning and leave on Sunday afternoon (we ended just before 4:00 p.m.). There is a bus about 10 minutes away that goes toward town every hour, and from the end of the bus line it’s a long tram ride to the center of town.
The instruction and discussions were in Czech, but the students speak enough English to understand and converse with me, and the student-helpers explained things to me so that I could follow what was going on. Unfortunately, I could not understand much of the debrief from individual students.
VŠE has about 12,000-15,000 students and students choose their own schedules (many work, few live in dorms), so few of these students know each other outside of class, even though they’ve attended the school for three or four years. Those who live in dorms are assigned roommates each year (no choice); many live with parents or on their own (often with non-student roommates). The master’s program is considered a 5-year program. Few people leave between the bachelor’s degree (after three years) and the master’s. A one-year leave, usually for study abroad, is not uncommon, but more than one year requires new exams and a tedious application process which does not guarantee readmission to the program.
Most classes are traditional lecture format (often with 200 students), but others are small seminars (20 students) that are intended for problem sessions, projects, or team-based experiential courses such as Eva’s “psychology and sociology of management” classes. The class is very popular, and students benefit from the weekend because they have few opportunities in their classes for team projects or activities. Setting aside a weekend is difficult, but most students opt to take the class even though it is not required. Needless to say, I had a great time and learned a lot about from the students, about their programs of study and about their attitudes and experiences.
Saturday, November 20, 2004.
Sněži! It is snowing today! A good day to stay home and try to get caught up. Despite my efforts at bearing down on research, I agreed to meet Veena and her friend Kate for lunch downtown. Veena and Kate are both from Cincinnati, and both have recently graduated from college, Veena from Brown and Kate from Wooster Polytecnic Institute in Boston. Veena is here on a Fulbright scholarship and Kate is on vacation from her engineering job with Johnson & Johnson in Cincinnati. Both women are actively engaged in women’s issues and are at the stage of their lives where they are exploring career options, so the conversation took interesting turns.
Rick and I had a quiet dinner at home, knowing that Matt planned to call around 9 p.m. It was wonderful to chat with him. He’s planning on going to Boston for Thanksgiving with some of his high school chums at other east-coast schools in the area. It will be strange for all of us to spend Thanksgiving away from our family in Denver.
Friday, November 19, 2004.
Rick and I headed to Prague 9 to see the KR Audio corporation, located in the former Tesla Electronics complex. After the last Nazis escaped and the Russians entered the Czech Republic in 1945, most of the formerly private enterprises were nationalized. Philips, which had developed tubes and circuits used in radios in its manufacturing plant in Prague, became the state-controlled Tesla radio plant. Nikola Tesla, the inventor of modern radio technology, was born in 1856 into a family of Serb peasants in one of the poorest regions in Croatia, which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Tesla studied at the Technical University in Prague, which was at that time one of the best technical schools in Europe. Tesla was heavily involved in the intellectual life of Central Europe before moving to New York City in 1844 to work with the Edison Company redesigning Edison’s DC (direct current) dynamos. Tesla resigned in 1886 and formed his own company, Tesla Electric Light & Manufacturing. In 1888, Tesla developed systems which would allow AC (alternating current) electricity to be transmitted over large distances. Tesla spent a year in Colorado Springs in 1899-1900 to study the effects of high-frequency currents at high altitude. There he improved his coreless transformer invention known as the Tesla Coil. Tesla died in 1944, too soon to see the effect of the Russian liberation of the Czech Republic from the Nazis. But people here will tell you that the Tesla plant was not named for Nikola Tesla. Officially, it is an abbreviation for
Technica
slaboproda, or “technique for weak current.”
The history of the KR Audio company is as interesting as the history of Tesla Electronics. Eunice had moved from New York to Italy to study veterinary medicine at Perugia and had met Riccardo Kron at a dinner party in 1977. Riccardo was an art collector, audiophile, tinkerer and engineer, living and working in Milan. In 1992, shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, they stumbled on a young Czech engineer selling vacuum tubes for old radios in a flea market. This young fellow had worked for the Tesla High Vacuum Technology facility in Prague and when the company folded, he and two Tesla colleagues started their own company, trying to replicate old tubes for radio collectors like himself, and selling old tubes in flea markets around Europe to support himself. Riccardo knew modern tube design, and had been working on innovations himself, so he entered into a partnership to develop new tube technology for modern audio (stereo) amplifiers. After several years of Riccardo traveling back and forth to Prague from Italy, he and Eunice moved to Prague in 1996, eventually taking total control and ownership of the now-KR Audio Electronics company. Riccardo was not only a creative engineer and audiophile, he was a brilliant networker and salesman. You can find KR tubes in the best high-end amplifiers, and will probably see the “Kronzilla” amplifier hooked up to the best systems. Riccardo died in 2002, and Eunice has been running the company with a competent team of loyal employees, who still make each tube by hand.
Rick, of course, was enthralled with the company, not only because of the meticulous care taken to the design and manufacture of the tubes and amplifiers, but also because of the incredible sound of the Kronzilla amplifier. Even hooked up to mediocre speakers, we’ve never heard sound so close to actual instruments. Rick sees a Kronzilla in our future.
After the Friday evening Shabbat service at Bejt Praha, Howard and Marketa invited us to dinner at their house again. We had already planned to go to dinner with Eunice, so Howard invited her to join us. Marketa had made huge pot of chicken-vegetable soup, which was more than a meal in itself, and, of course, had also bought pastries for dessert. Another delightful evening ensued, with more discussions about world affairs and interesting experiences. We feel rich in friendship here.
Thursday, November 18, 2004.
Ales had invited Rick to the annual wine-tasting party by the Enological Society at one of the homes owned by the Havel family. This is a group of friends whose company Rick had been introduced to one year ago on a research trip to Prague. Each time he attends a meeting, his level of wine expertise takes a big jump, his exposure to earnest technical discussions in Czech takes a smaller jump, and his physiognomy suffers from the accumulated assaults of many small sips of wine. Rick claims it was well worth it.
Instead of going drinking with the boys, I took the opportunity to meet Eunice downtown. We had hoped to go to the National Library at the Clementinum to see an exhibit of rare Hebrew manuscripts that the Nazis stole from the Jewish Theological Seminary in Poland’s Wroclaw (1938) that were discovered in the mid-1980s. Our evening was truncated when we were told that the exhibit had left the previous day.
We opted for an early dinner at a Chinese restaurant off Narodni, and spent about three hours eating and chatting (and avoiding the nasty, rainy weather outside.) Eunice is an American, but has spent the last 25 years in Europe, mostly in Italy, but the last 7 years in Prague where she and her late husband started an audio electronics company. Rick and I will take a tour tomorrow.
Wednesday, November 17, 2004.
Today is Den Boje Studentu, the Day of Protest, commemorating the November 1989 protests, which resulted in the resignation of Communist Party President and President of the Czechoslovakian Socialist (Communist) Republic Gustav Husak on national television on November 24th. Originally, this day commemorated the closure of the universities by the Nazis in 1938 after a rumor of the impending restoration of Czech independence, which, of course, never occurred. On Sept. 17, 1938 a period of Czechoslovak censorship began, aimed at first at domestic and foreign correspondence, especially at the correspondence sent from/to the occupied Sudetenland territory as well as Germany and Austria (Austria was at that time incorporated into Germany). Upon occupation of the former Czechoslovak territory by Germany on October 1, 1938, the postal connection between the rest of Czechoslovakia and the occupied territories was interrupted and the posted mail was returned to the senders (usually). Subsequently, the postal service was allowed, but all correspondence was censored by the Czechoslovak authorities, as it had been before the occupation. The university closures were blamed on the country’s student populations as a convenient excuse for halting education in the Czech lands and the deportation of most high school and university aged kids to slave labor factories making armaments for the Germans, or light bulbs and other trade goods for German and Swiss companies who made a fortune from the war.
Until 1989, November 17th had always marked student resistance against the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia. The 1989 protests actually began on November 16th with just a handful of university students, who gathered at a traditional meeting at Charles University’s Karolinum to commemorate the death of Jan Opletal, a student who fell victim to the Nazis fifty years earlier. The following day, November 17, a peaceful student march from Prague’s Vyšehrad cemetery to Wenceslas Square was violently cracked down by police half way, on Narodni Street. After the students were brutally beaten by police, the protestors grew tremendously in number until by the end of the week an estimated 300,000 people had gathered in Prague to demand the end of Soviet Communist rule, and the return of Democracy and free elections to the Czech people.
My friend Adellaide moved to Prague from London in 1985 when she was 10. She was at the Nov 17, 1989 rally with other high-school students, unaware of the university student protests and television cameras which led to the events of the week which were to follow. After the commemorative procession was violently terminated on Narodni Street by the Communist authorities, activist students and artists initiated a meeting in the Cinoherni klub (Dramatic Club) theatre where the Civic Forum (Občanske forum) was established, calling for fundamental political changes in Czechoslovakia. Vaclav Havel immediately became its leading representative. The Communist leaders were completely unprepared for the massive protests and, after six weeks protests and of attempts at political reform, Gustav Husak publicly resigned on December 10, 1989.
The effort culminated on December 29, 1989 when Vaclav Havel, candidate of the Civic Forum, was elected Czechoslovak President by the Federal Assembly. In his inaugural speech he promised to bring the country to free elections, which he fulfilled in the summer of 1990. He was elected president for the second time by the new Federal Assembly on July 5, 1990.
http://www.radio.cz/en/article/47444
This afternoon’s events marking the 15th anniversary started at 4 p.m. with a parade through Narodni Street up to Wenceslas Square. There were two photo exhibitions, one on Narodni at the 17 September 1989 plaque, today adorned with candles and flowers, and the other on Jana Palacha near the Philosophical Faculty building of Charles University, with photos from the 1989 demonstrations and the 1939 demonstration against the Nazis. Prague City Hall hosted a celebration on Narodni Street, which featured several Rock and Folk bands and speakers, with big-screen TVs transmitting (real-time) Czech Radio’s interview of Vaclav Havel at the Philosophical Faculty. The bands played both American and Czech tunes, all sung in Czech. The sound would have been deafening had we been indoors. As it was, the vibrations were felt throughout the body. At times the crowd was so dense you could hardly move – or hardly stand still if the crowd moved. Many people in the crowd sung along to the familiar tunes, some obviously nostalgic.
We went to the Louvre Café for drinks and then around the corner for dinner at U Medvídků (at the bear), a malt-house and beer hall that dates back to 1466. As a final sendoff for Robert and Cynthia’s last night in Prague, we had dessert at the Evropa Café. The Evropa Hotel is one of the jewels of Prague, built in 1889 as a masterwork of architect Bĕlský, and rebuilt in 1903 in art nouveau style, with statues on the front by sculptor Ladislav Šaloun. It is truly one of the most remarkable architectural sights on Wenceslas Square. We were entertained in the spacious café by a Czech folk quartet, who played American, Czech, and Italian arias and songs on violin, clarinet, string bass, and xylophone.
November 17, 2004 celebration on Narodni
November 17, 1989 memorial on Narodni
Memorial to Jan Palach and Jan Zajic on Wenceslas Square
Tuesday, November 16, 2004.
Eva had asked me to give a lecture to her class this morning. Her class has about 20 students, but she had invited another class, so the classroom was quite full. The students knew that I would lecture in English, and I was told that their command of the language was good, but one never knows in these situations, so I made sure to make the session as interactive as possible. Several students spoke out – some with superb command of the language and others in halting English – and all were lively participants when I broke them into dyads for a few illustrative activities. Eva teaches in a participative manner, so I knew that her students at least would not be unfamiliar with an interactive lecture. Most classes here are traditional lectures, with students taking notes and studying for exams. Eva’s students have presentations and experiential exercises. I was happy at the class’s response and Eva was pleased with the level of the presentation. Of course, I knew the students would be polite, but I hope that they truly felt that it was a worthwhile experience.
Monday, November 15, 2004.
Rick and I don’t typically go to the ballet – we can’t remember seeing a ballet in the last 20 years – but we wanted to take Robert and Cynthia to the National Theater, and the best option for this week was the Swan Lake ballet. Obviously, language is not a problem when watching a ballet, and most of us can sing – or at least hum – along with Tchaikovsky’s score. Performances at the National Theater are always superb – dancers, actors, singers, musicians – and the setting alone is so enthralling, we knew we were in for an enjoyable evening.
http://p.o2.cz/prague/national_theatre.html
I’m told that if you’ve seen Swan Lake, you’ve seen ballet. Not only is it the most popular ballet in the world, it’s also one of the most technically demanding, due in part to a remarkable Italian ballerina by the name of Pierina Legnani. When Legnani danced the central dual role of Odette/Odile, she brought to it the ability to perform 32 fouettes in a row. A fouette is fast whipping turn on one foot. The public was so impressed that from that production on, any ballerina who danced the role had to perform the 32 fouettes. Legnani's name is still cursed by ballerinas the world over. Swan Lake is still a favorite among dancers because it is one of the few classical ballets that is as consistently challenging technically as it is emotionally.
Surprisingly, upon its debut Swan Lake was hailed as a monumental flop. At its first performance, it was given a poor choreographic treatment, and the ballet was said to have no future. The version that survives today is the combined achievement of Russia's Petipa and his assistant, Lev Ivanov, the brilliant choreographer who fully developed the central dramatic idea of a woman trapped in the body of a bird through the movements of the dancer's arms, the articulations of her feet and positioning of her head and neck.
Swan Lake tells the story of young Prince Siegfried, who falls in love with the Swan Queen Odette, a woman transformed into a bird by an evil sorcerer. Odette explains that she is destined to remain a strange composite creature, until rescued by a man's undying love. Enthralled by her beauty, the Prince pledges his eternal love -- but later, at a party in honor of his 21st birthday, he is tricked by the sorcerer, von Rothbart, into declaring his love for Odile, an evil twin of Odette. Realizing his inadvertent betrayal, the Prince rushes back to the lake. There, he battles Von Rothbart, and destroys his power. In some productions, the lovers are then reunited. In the production we saw this evening, since the Prince has broken his promise, Odette returns to her bewitched state of being a swan and the Prince remains alone on the banks of the lake.
The National Theater is across the street from the Kavarna Slavia, the beautiful, large, art noveau café where dissidents, writers and philosophers, including Vaclav Havel used to congregate. The windows face the National Theater on one side and the Vltava River on another. At night Prague Castle is brilliantly lit, which adds to the unmatched ambience. With a clear sense of being among the luckiest people alive, we downed fancy drinks and desserts at the elegant Slavia before heading home on the tram.
Prague's National Theater
National Theater Gallery
National Theater Auditorium
Sunday, November 14, 2004.
After a leisurely breakfast, we headed to Vyšehrad, the site of the original castle and the twin-spired church of St. Peter and St. Paul. Next to the church is a cemetery where artists, scribes, musicians and politicians are buried, among them Dvořak, Smetana and Alpons Mucha. We walked through the now-barren gardens and around the old fortress walls, and stopped for coffee and sweets at a small café near the church.
We then headed back to Prague Castle to see the museum that we didn’t have time to see yesterday. It was well worth the time. The museum is “the thousand-year history of the place where Czech statehood unfolded,” a permanent exhibition of artifacts, garments, and tomb remains at the Old Royal Palace. It was interesting to learn the sequence of events that built and restored the present structures.
Finishing our self-guided tour, we were just in time to go to St. George’s Basilica for a string quintet concert. A typical Czech experience—Shubert’s Ave Maria and Vivaldi’s Four Seasons—in an unheated barebones stone church.
We headed home to relax over a few glasses of Becherovka before heading out for dinner at our favorite pizza restaurant on Na Piskach.
Saturday, November 13, 2004.
We went to Prague Castle this morning, the huge complex whose spires dominate the Prague skyline. The most imposing spires are from the St. Vitus Cathedral, the most recognized landmark in Prague. When Charles IV acquired the bones of St. Vitus, a popular fourth-century martyr, and brought them to Prague, the city became a center of the St. Vitus cult. After the Castle was built into a fortress around 1100 the princes of Bohemia moved into the Royal Palace. Romanesque and Gothic stories were built on the remains of the first, ninth-century structure. The most remarkable room in the Royal Palace is the majestic Vladislav Hall, which is currently undergoing restoration. It is considered one of the finest halls of the Middle Ages, with its great vaulting, which emanates from six pairs of buttresses into a curvilinear ribbing. Used for exhibitions, the hall is more than 16 meters wide and more than 14 meters high, with an entrance near the Imperial Stables for Rudolph II’s horses.
http://www.castles.org/castles/Europe/ Central_Europe/Czech_Republic/czech5.htm
We walked down the Golden Lane toward Malostrana and barely had time to go home and change before heading downtown for dinner and entertainment. Dinner was at the Albio, allegedly the first organic vegetarian restaurant in the Czech Republic. We had an assortment of salads and main courses, all very tasty, with unpasteurized Bernard beer and plum wine.
We then rushed out toward the Obecni Dům for a concert by the Jackson Singers, an American gospel troupe. The concert was in Smetana Hall, the main concert hall, with its original organ and high art-nouveau décor typically hosts classical concerts. The Jackson Singers, with their raucous Motown gospel, seemed almost out of place with the stately décor. We retired to the Obecni Dům café for an elegant dessert before heading home on the tram.
The spires of St. Vitus Cathedral at Prague Castle
Friday, November 12, 2004
Our first batch of out-of-town company flew into town today. Robert and Cynthia, who have been living in Abu Dabi for the last three years, took the Eid holiday to see us in Prague. We took them around town this afternoon, starting at Malostrana, walking across the Charles Bridge. The bridge seemed fairly crowded with tourists, even though it is the middle of November and the weather is dreary. But the street vendors and musicians are out, so it was easy to show them a good time. We walked around Staromĕstská to the Old Town Square and joined the crowd at the Orloj, Prague’s famous astronomical clock, which dates from 1490. Every hour on the hour, the twelve Apostles revolve through the open window, while the figures of Vanity and Greed (on the left) and Death and the Turk (on the right) move as well. The outer ring of Arabic numbers measures Old Bohemian time, in which the day was based on the sun. The Roman numerals depict our time. The blue represents the daylight hours of Babylonian time, and the circle with Astrological symbols records the movement of the sun and moon through the 12 signs of the Zodiac. We then walked to Můstek to have dinner at U Pinkasů. We got back to our flat before 9 p.m., but it felt late due to the 3-hour time difference combined with the weariness of travel (they had an overnight flight) and the early sunset this time of year here.
The "Orloj" astronomical clock at Old Town Square
Thursday, November 11, 2004.
Today is St. Martin’s Day, which apparently marks the maturing of the wine, but also the coming of winter. St. Martin brings the snow, and families gather at the Rotunda of St. Martin at Vysehrad (one of the oldest Roman churches in Prague (
http://www.experienceprague.com/vysehrad.htm) carrying paper lanterns. This afternoon the tiny church was packed – speakers broadcast the service to the large crowd outside – as three priests gave a prayer service and blessed the Martins and their families.
I spent the early afternoon with Monika, another dynamic Czech woman. Monika is the only woman on the 16-member Board of Directors of the Czech Bar Association. She started her own law firm three years ago; now there are four partners, two women and two men. Monika claims that women’s attitudes have changed dramatically since the 1989 revolution. Before 1989, men and women worked side by side, so there was not much competition, but also not much ambition. Women lawyers and doctors still outnumber men. But after 1989 men saw new opportunities in business and money became a driving force. Women who had subordinated their career to their children had less opportunity than those who were more skilled or had more experience. As men “flew away” for perceived opportunities, many women were left on their own. Now more women are focused on being self-sufficient, learning from the unhappy examples among their mothers or aunts.
The Business Leaders Forum hosted a “Big Bandu” concert at the Hotel Diplomat, not far from our flat. In typical Czech fashion, we were served plenty of wine, beer, and food. The music was more jazz than swing, with classic American 40s hits. Most of the attendees were Czech, but I ran into Annette, whom I had seen earlier this week, and also Tanya, another woman I had met briefly seven years ago. Prague is such a small town.
Wednesday, November 10, 2004
Yesterday’s skiff of snow was still on the ground west of Prague near Bila Hora this morning, but the day was sunny and relatively warm. John drove me to Kladno (about a half-hour from the outskirts of Prague) to meet Jitka Entlichova, who owns and operates EnFi, a textile company that sells and manufactures bedding, bath and table linens for upscale hotels and restaurants. She and her 24-year-old daughter Radka, who manages the company’s finances, spoke with us for nearly three hours before inviting us to a three-hour lunch where we continued the conversation, digressing to more casual topics. What started out as a 10:00 a.m. interview turned into a full-day delight. Most of the conversation was in Czech, with John acting as interpreter. I would probably learn Czech fairly rapidly if I lived in Kladno where few people speak English. John said he was exhausted after translating back and forth all day! Now I have to decipher my notes and see what I can write up.
Tuesday, November 09, 2004
Today is the 15th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. It is also the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the night the Nazis burned Jewish businesses and synagogues in 1938. The streets in Prague seem a bit quieter today, but only because of the weather. We woke up to rain followed by light snow, followed by rain. By the time I left the house in the late afternoon, the rain had turned to drizzle.
Michele Green had invited the WIB attendees to an “evening of Cocktails and networking” co-hosted by her company New Europe Promotions (which publishes the Czech Republic Business Guide), Ma Maison Residences (a subsidiary of ORCO property development group), and the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, held at the Pachtuv Palace, a former villa near the Charles Bridge on the Old Town side of the Vltava River. Pachtuv Palace is now a 50-room hotel offering full-service “unique and elegant apartments designed for short or extended stays –guests can opt to stay for one night or up to a full year.” The smallest studio apartment (45 sq. meters) rents for 3,300 Kc per day (about $135 at the current exchange rate) when rented for a month. The price is twice that for very brief stays. The reception was held in the main lobby/café, a space that probably accommodates 50 people comfortably. Over 100 people showed up. You can imagine the racks of coats and umbrellas in the make-shift coat-room, given the unpleasant weather. Unlike most receptions, only wine was served, although there were apparently some small appetizers on the first floor that were gone quickly.
This certainly was a good place to be for networking. I saw several women I had recently met at WIB the previous Monday evening – among them June and her husband Keith, Eunice and Bibi – and my old friends Karin and Charlotte. I also saw Annette and Jana, whom I haven’t seen for seven years. Annette and I recognized each other instantly and vowed to get together to catch up on old times. (I certainly hope so – Annette is one of the more interesting and talented people I know.) Jana was there with her husband Edward, both of whom emigrated to Canada in 1968. Edvard was a computer specialist and became the General of Informatics at Statistics Canada before moving back to the Czech Republic in 1993. Edvard Outrata is former Chairman of the Czech Statistical Office, President of the Czech National Council of European Movement, Vice-chairman of the Legal Committee of the Senate, and currently is a senator in the Czech Republic parliament. Jana Outratová runs the International Women’s Network, a non-profit organization of women managers and business owners, which still meets monthly at her house where I met her seven years ago. So many people to talk with, so little time!
Monday, November 08, 2004.
Just as I was planning to head out for groceries, it started to hail! This is not Denver-type hail – large hard-hitting stones – but rather gentle beads that tapped the windows for all of five minutes. About a half hour later, the sun was shining, but later it rained with slushy hail and then returned to a typical overcast haze. It’s getting cold here, near zero at night (although the temperature swings here are not wide). Snow is predicted for tomorrow.
I stopped by to see Sandra’s jewelry open-house, just off Revolucni. Sandra is from Columbia and sells Columbian jewelry, sharing a space with a clothing boutique, not far from Kotva (a large upscale department store on Republic Square). The open-house was co-sponsored by a Latin-American wine importer, so Argentinean wine was served to accompany the cheese platter. The jewelry is indigenous pre-Columbian design, mostly gold, some with hand-made beads.
At Charlotte’s suggestion, I made cauliflower soup, sort of. I was not about to make soup from scratch, but I bought a package of dry potato-soup mix (I couldn’t find cauliflower soup mix) and added chopped cauliflower, which turned out to be quite tasty.
Prague State Opera
Sunday, November 07, 2004
Rick and I went with Charlotte and Bruce to see the matinee performance of Lucia di Lammermoor at the State Opera. We were lucky that Charlotte was with us to translate, since there were Czech overtitles, but none in English. The
Prague Post’s review was right on: “…how can you not love Lucia di Lammermoor? – especially with Donizetti’s marvelous score, which epitomizes the appeal of the bel canto style. Director Anton Nekovar has also pulled off a neat trick in breathing new life into this war horse by striping it down to bare essentials…Nekovar has made the story timeless by putting his cast in muted costumes of indeterminate origin and sweeping te stage clean of so much as a single stick of furniture. This puts the emphasis squarely and solely on the performers, a smart move with an opera written essentially as a singer’s showcase, especially Lucia’s famous and flashy coloratura lines. The accents and highlights come from occasional splashes of color, like Lucia’s bloodstained nightgown, and a set of large mirrors that are used to great effect in creating psychological depth…This Lucia respects the original while invigorating it with a fresh approach and dedicated rendition of music that sounds as engaging now as it did when Donizetti composed it 169 years ago.” (October 13-19, 2004, B2). Not to mention the joy of sitting in a balcony box in the ornate State Opera hall.
After the performance we went to Zahrada v opeře (The Opera Garden) restaurant for a light dinner. This restaurant is tucked away behind the State Opera, accessible only through military barricades that surround the adjacent building that houses Radio Free Europe, imposed by the city officials after the World Trade Center attacks. The restaurant’s webpage now has “opera” crossed out and reads Zahrada v obležení (Garden under Siege)! The restaurant has been described as a “minimalist Zen space,” but in fact is a very pleasant modern, almost art-deco, interior. The food is exquisite, and tastefully presented, with relatively moderate prices. Braving the chilly evening weather, after dinner we strolled through town to the Cream & Dream for Italian ice cream. Fortunately, by that time it had stopped raining.
Saturday, November 6, 2004.
I went to the morning service at the Jubilee Synagogue (referred to locally as Jerusalemska, for the name of its street location), which is not in the Jewish Quarter of Prague. Built in the 1800’s in what was a fancy neighborhood of Prague, the synagogue had an organ and was officially considered Reform. Ironically, the synagogue is now strictly Orthodox, with a small close-knit group of locals. Led by Rabbi Samuel Abramson and Rabbi Ronald Hoffberg, the service had more of a conservative flavor than the orthodox service at the Altnai Shul. The conservative movement has only recently been officially recognized by the Jewish Community in Prague, largely through the efforts of Rabbi Hoffberg who came to Prague three years ago.
The morning service is held upstairs in the chapel, rather than in the main sanctuary. The women sit in a room separated from the men by a decorative screen so everyone is visible to everyone else – not like the Altnai Shul where men can’t see the women and the women peek out of slits in the deep stone walls to get a glimpse of the men’s service – and the feeling is quite inclusive. The service this morning was unusually well attended, since it was the yartzeit for one of the members. By the time the service ended around noon, there were 19 men (20 if you count the Torah!) and nearly as many women in the anteroom, filling the spaces to capacity. The service began very prayerfully, with a cantor chanting softly and everyone in silent prayer. There followed a more ordered (responsive) service interspersed with familiar prayers and melodies, followed by a Torah service and Haftorah reading. The service started at 9 a.m. and went until nearly noon, after which we retired to the hall for kiddush, with sweet wine and delicious pastries.
After the service, I spent two hours with Adellaide, a woman who I had met at the Tuesday evening lecture (part of a conversion class series) given by Rabbi Hoffberg at the Jewish Town Hall. Adellaide is Czech, but grew up in London until her family emigrated to Prague in 1985. She has only recently practiced Judaism (he mother is Jewish, but not her father), but has many stories to tell about the changes in Prague over the last two decades. She speaks native British English and Czech and passable Italian and is well-traveled and well-educated. We had a delightful chat over Italian espresso in a small café on Wenceslas Square.
Adellaide had told me about an Israeli film series across the street from the Jewish Town Hall, so Rick and I joined her and a group of about thirty others at 5:30 for a showing of several short film clips from last year’s Jerusalem Film Festival, moderated by Amy Kronish, curator of Israeli and Jewish film at the Film Archive of Israel. The main feature of the evening was the full-length film entitled “As If Nothing Happened,” by Ayelet Bargur, about a family’s trauma at the suspected loss of their soldier-son during a random bombing. Very sobering indeed.
Friday, November 5, 2004.
After my afternoon meeting with Eva at VŠE, I met Nicki, whom I haven’t seen since 1998 when we both left Prague. She’s been back here since 2001 and has worked at several of the English-language colleges here and is now the head of the Office of International Academic Program for Charles University’s CERGE program, developing and managing the international academic exchange programs. CERGE-EI is a joint program between Charles University (Prague’s oldest and most prestigious university) and the Academy of Sciences (ASCR), which was established in 1992 as the Czech successor of the former Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, a non-university basic research public institution. The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education of Charles University (CERGE) was founded in 1991 as an American-style Ph.D. program in Economics taught entirely in English. In 1992, the Economics Institute (EI) of the Academy of Sciences was created as an economics research institution, seeking to carry out topical research of the highest international standards. Currently, ASCR has three scientific divisions, namely the Division of Mathematics, Physics, and Earth Sciences, Division of Chemical and Life Sciences, and Division of Humanities and Social Sciences, in addition to a network of sixty research institutes and five supporting units staffed by a total of 6400 employees, of whom slightly over one half are university-trained researchers and PhD. scientists. The ASCR institutes are also involved in education by providing courses at the graduate level and supervising doctoral programs. The Head Office of the Academy and forty research institutes are located in Prague, the remaining institutes being situated throughout the country. The Academy is an independent institution which formulates its own policies, advises the state on major issues of its R&D policy, administers national as well as international research programs, and promotes cooperation with both applied research and industry to foster technology transfer and exploitation of scientific knowledge.
http://www.cas.cz/
Nicki first came to Prague in 1993. Prague is a small town, so she knows several people I know or know of, and is a good connection to some of the places that have changed personnel, none of whom I know currently. The expat community is not as large or cohesive as when we were here in 1997, so Nicki is one of few Americans I know from seven years ago. However, as much as the city has changed, talking with Nicki was as if we had seen each other last week.
The evening Kabalat Shabbat Service at Bejt Praha had an unusually large group, most of whom were students from a NFTY (North American Federation of Temple Youth, an affiliate of the Union for Reform Judaism) study tour from Israel. The 25 students came from more than 20 states, including a young man from Denver (again, Jewish geography at work). Rabbi Narrowe is back in Sweden, so Petr led the service. The voices of the young people singing filled the synagogue and we all schmoozed at length after the Kiddush.
Howard invited us to dinner at his house, a splendid refurbished flat in Old Town. He and Marketa were gracious hosts, serving us a lovely kosher meal with wine from a Spanish winery in which Howard had recently had partial ownership. Even more enjoyable than the meal was the conversation which began with reminiscences of our mutual days in Madison, Wisconsin, during the Viet Nam era. Howard had been in the Israeli army during the 1967 war and had also served in the US army. After living in Israel, he went back to Madison to finish school and then returned to Israel (aliya) where he was City Attorney under Ted Kollek, then Mayor of Jerusalem. The conversation veered to other subjects, mostly concerning US politics, but also Czech politics and culture, American culture and perceptions abroad.
Thursday, November 04, 2004
Among her other talents, Charlotte makes scones to die for. We had breakfast of scones and preserves and talked about lots of things, avoiding US politics for the most part. Since she’s lived here for many years and speaks the language fluently, she is a wealth of information. She explained my bank account charges and policies better than the tellers at the bank. She and Bruce are renovating an old building that will become 20 large apartments, so they are in the throes of financing and final permits. The plans look lovely. The building should be nearly finished before we leave next summer.
After years of e-mail correspondence, I finally met Mitchell Young, a past teacher and administrator at the Anglo American College in Prague. He and the former AAC President who was ousted earlier this year are setting up a new school, sponsored by the University of Northern Virginia, a small private school near Washington, D.C. The facilities are on the third floor of the YMCA building, a suite of several offices, some of which are being converted to classrooms. Unlike the AAC, UNV has money so there is nice furniture and a computer lab. Getting the university launched, however, was not so slick, since the Czech requirements for a business license require a bank account and the bank requires a business license in order to set up a commercial account, both of which are required for the building lease, and of course one needs an address in order to set up the bank account, and so on... Mitchell has been here since 1998, so he has lots of Kafkaesque stories to tell.
My day, on the other hand, went incredibly smoothly, with lots of little errands taken care of. First, I went to the shoe repair shop near the Powder Tower where I had brought my shoes to have the soles re-glued. The shoes were fine – they’ll now last several more months ($2 total). I brought Rick’s shoe that also had its sole coming apart, but the cobbler said that it could not be repaired because of the differences in the leather upper and the rubber sole that had separated. Undaunted, I went to the shoe repair stand near Tesco and asked there if the shoes could be repaired. The man there said that, for 80 CZK (about $3.50) he could fix it. I’ll find out tomorrow if his adhesive works.
On my normal way home, I stopped by the fruit market at Hradčanská and saw the most beautiful cauliflower, compelling me to buy it. One can always find cauliflower, onions, and potatoes. Today I also found some pears and oranges. Rick made omelets for dinner and we had strawberries (from yesterday’s outing) and ice cream for dessert. Not exactly roughing it. On the other hand, the
International Herald Tribune observed that the US Dollar is back on its downward course, which makes living here increasingly more expensive.
Prague's Dancing House
Wednesday, November 03, 2004
We didn’t lose any sleep over the election results, which were not final even in the morning here. But, as we had feared, Florida and Ohio did not embrace Kerry (nor did Colorado) and by 5 p.m. (11 a.m. EST) Kerry called Bush to concede and one of the most expensive and bitterly contested races on record was over. So, another four years of the Bush administration. Too bad. America will survive, but lots of innocents are being slaughtered because of Bush’s war in Iraq. There’s a book
What’s the Matter with Kansas that asks why, despite the fact that Bush’s policies have hurt them the most, the struggling ranchers and farmers in the Great Plains have overwhelming supported Bush. Jason Epstein, writing for
The New York Times Review of Books (October 7, 2004), attributes the Republican-right shift to the “strategy of culture war to maintain their power as previous tribal and religious orthodoxies have done throughout human history.” Quoting from Epstein’s review, author Thomas Frank claims that the Republicans are exploiting the “democratic tradition of pragmatic, nonideological idealism, denounced as secular humanism” and paints America as “a panorama of madness and delusion…of sturdy blue-collar patriots reciting the Pledge while they strangle their own life chances; of small farmers proudly voting themselves off the land; of devoted family men carefully seeing to it that their children will never be able to afford college or proper health care; of working-class guys … deliver[ing] up a landslide for a candidate whose policies will end their way of life [and] transform their region into a “rust-belt,” [and] strike people like them blows from which they will never recover.” As Epstein astutely acknowledges, “Money is the mother’s milk of American politics…political money is raised in exchanged for political favors, often against the public interest.”
Meanwhile, in the Czech Republic, the Communist party is gaining ground, as people fear that their pensions and healthcare will be compromised under an increasingly capitalistic, free-market system. "According to former dissident Petr Uhl, voters are no longer so responsive to anti-communist messages. “Many people are more interested in the CP's critique of the anti-social policies of the British Labour Party and German social democrats, which the Czech social democrats are trying to import and support for Bush during the war against Iraq. Many people, including non-Communists, look at the CP, with its programme and its internal functioning and consider it as a more left wing, more social and even more democratic alternative to the Social Democrats...The pensioners who vote Communist are not just motivated by nostalgia for the “grey certainties” of the previous regime, but by the daily humiliation of living on an inadequate pension. The Roma [gypsy] minority, facing 90% unemployment, residential segregation and virulent racism from the majority population, vote Communist not just because “in the old days, everybody had a job and an apartment” but because, quite simply, the CP is the parliamentary party with the strongest record of voting against privatisations and social security cuts, and in favour of spending on health, education and poverty-reduction."
http://www.3bh.org.uk/IV/Issues/2004/IV360/IV360%2005.htm In the June 2002 elections, the Communist party received 18.5% of the vote for the Czech Republic's Chamber of Deputies. This made them the third placed party with 41 deputies. In 2004, the communist party won 6 of 24 seats, placing second to the conservative Social Democrats (ODS).
Today was permeated with political discussions – not only among the Americans here. All the Czechs I know are also shaking their heads at the American electorate. As I was walking through the fruit market with Aaron Ritter, a friend of my nephew in San Diego, we ran into some young Americans from Los Angeles, and shared updates as we knew them and commiserated about the foregone eventuality. Aaron is a student at UC-Santa Barbara, studying in Spain this fall. He’s taking every opportunity he can to travel around Europe before he returns to the states in December. He had already taken the standard tours of the center and of the Jewish Quarter, so the two of us walked around town to some of the places he had not yet seen. I took him to the fruit market square, the National Theater, the Paris Hotel and the Municipal House, and also to Tančící dům, the “Dancing House,” (also called “Ginger and Fred”), Frank Gehry's tribute to Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire.
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3575/is_n1202_v201/ai_20757187
Tuesday, November 02, 2004
Today is a serious holiday for Czechs, similar to All Soul’s Day (the day after Halloween). On the second of November, families gather at cemeteries to pay respects to their ancestors and relatives. Summer flowers on the gravesites are replaced with winter shrubs and garlands, and candles are lit in the evening. Many families begin observances over the weekend, sometimes traveling to several towns to visit gravesites of various relatives.
This afternoon I met with my landlady, Milena Halova, at the bank where she works. Over the weekend, she had visited the cemeteries of her husband’s relatives and her relatives, in two towns both south of Prague. Today she will visit the place where her mother is buried, not far from our flat. This afternoon, over spiked coffee and cookies, we talked about families and politics. She is an educated woman, so our conversations are always interesting. Since she is Czech, she can tell me about Czech customs and about the changes that have occurred over the last decade. She is also well-traveled, so I enjoy her descriptions of other European countries.
Later in the day, I met with Eunice, one of the women I had met at the WIB dinner yesterday, for a light dinner and conversation. She related some interesting conflicts in the Jewish community over the last few years, some of which I had heard before. We went to a lecture by Rabbi Hoffberg, the rabbi (from Chicago) who had been hired – and then fired – by Bejt Praha in 2002 (which either started or escalated the conflict). According to some old newspaper articles on the web, around 10 former members of Bejt Praha left with him to form a new group. Rabbi Hoffberg is still in Prague, conducting services for Bejt Simcha, the liberal (reconstructionist) group, which has also had its own share of controversy and split allegiances. Rabbi Hoffberg is affiliated with Masorti Olami, the World Union of Masorti, and has formed an official Masorti, or Conservative, community in Prague. He also gives lectures and conducts a conservative conversion class. Only orthodox conversions were recognized in the past.
As the evening falls here, it is the morning of election day in the USA. There is a restaurant here that has scheduled an election-day party – big screen TV to broadcast results – beginning at 11 p.m. (5 p.m. in New York, 2 p.m. in California). We’ll wait until morning to read the headlines.
Monday, November 1, 2004.
November in Czech is Listopad, which literally means falling leaves. The smell of burning leaves is in the air; the leaves still on the trees are yellow and orange, with just a sprinkling of pale green.
Today is the first Monday of the month, so the Women in Business group met for their regular dinner at Mlýnec. I met several interesting women, whom I hope to write about later as I get to know them on a more personal level. I will meet with Eunice tomorrow. She and her late husband started a high-end stereo/electronics company here in Prague, so I am hoping to talk with her about her company also.
Most of the evening was spent talking with a woman who is working for the health ministry. The Czech health system is totally socialized in that all care is paid for by the state. There are private doctors, clinics, and hospitals, but the Czech system is free (for citizens). What this means, then, is that people will often consult a doctor just to get a few aspirin. It also means that people frequently bring their doctors gifts so as to assure – or hope for – better attention to their problems. Most doctors apparently do not talk with their patients. In fact, a lot of information, concerning prescription drugs, for example, is withheld, i.e., not available to patients at all. There is no choice of doctors either, including the doctor who may be available to deliver a baby, despite the fact that a woman may have seen someone else throughout her pregnancy.
