Prague Journal

Friday, March 18, 2005.

Matt and I spent much of the afternoon at the National Museum, the largest and oldest Czech museum, established as the “Patriotic Museum in Bohemia” in 1818. Housed in a monumental neo-renaissance building dominating the top of Wenceslas Square, the National Museum contains a huge natural history collection of zoological and archeological exhibits (its collections contain 13.6 million items). Among the temporary exhibitions, there was a football (soccer) exhibit, which showed an interesting history of Czech or Czechoslovak football, not only as a sports theme but also as a powerful social and historical phenomenon. In 2004, Czech football celebrated the seventieth anniversary of the 1934World Football Championship final in Rome, where the Czechoslovak national team won the first of two World Championship medals. The exhibition is divided into three parts: “Hall of Fame” – the most important successes of Czech football, “Home league” – the domestic football scene and “Guests” – a retrospective of Czech football in international football and concurrent political and historical events.
We had lunch at Chez Ami’s, and I was pleased that I could introduce Matt to Ami. Ami served us sweet mint tea and chatted for awhile, sharing his views of Czech business and culture, and his current thoughts about opening up another restaurant in Plzen.
From there we made a short stop at the Louvre café, and then strolled through town to the Charles Bridge. We went up the 138 stairs to the top of the neo-gothic Old Town Bridge Tower for the birds-eye view of the city, walked across the Charles Bridge toward the Lesser Town side, and then walked around Kampa Island. Matt headed home for a short break, and Rick joined me at Bejt Praha for Shabbat services.
We were pleased to see Rabbi Narrowe at Bejt Praha this evening. We knew he was scheduled to come for Purim next week, but hadn’t heard that he had already arrived. The service was very nice – lots of tourists joining the growing cadre of regulars. We were able to introduce Matt to Ivo and Peter, who knew him as an 11-year old from 7 years ago, and to some of our new friends, including the Rabbi. We ended the evening at Husa (the goose) for dinner with Yehudes.

posted by JWinn @ 9:48 PM