Thursday, March 31, 2005

Thursday, March 31, 2005.

The Easter markets are still in full swing, perhaps because of the Marathon this Saturday. There are still singers on the stage, mostly children or young adults in costumes, some with instruments, some dancers, mostly singers. The outdoor cafes have expanded, with chairs and tables encroaching on the square.
Eva and I went to see the modern art exhibit at the City Gallery at the “House of the Golden Ring” near the former medieval commercial area “Ungelt,” near the Tyn Cathedral. The gallery is on three levels, with many rooms, in an early gothic building that was built in the 13th century and reconstructed 1609. The entrance portal now has turret steps and beamed ceilings, and there are Renaissance motives on the second floor. Since 1998, this building has held the permanent exhibition of Czech visual art of the 20th century. We didn’t arrive until nearly 5pm, but we were the only ones in the gallery until it closed at 6pm.
We then went to the Book Palace on Wenceslas Square for Mr. Novy’s book signing. I met his editor, the woman who is also editing Martin’s book, for which I am a co-author. The book that I helped write an article for seven gears ago is now in its 3rd edition! It has turned out to be a very good seller.

Tuesday, March 29, 2005

Tuesday, March 29, 2005.

I decided not to go to the Czech class at VŠE, since the main item on the schedule today is a mid-term exam. I have not been a good student – too busy with other things to study Czech and my Czech, bad as it ever was, is deteriorating from lack of use and study.
I went to the Guttman Gallery where Cynthia was giving her last talk about her art installation to some people from the American Embassy. On the way there, I met Peter Gyori on his way to his office. He has asked me to do some more editing for him, which I am glad to do. It’s cold outside and rather dreary, so my time is probably best spent at the computer. At least that way I’m productive.
This is Cynthia’s last day in Prague, so Rick and I both met with her for dessert after a chamber-music concert at Suk in the Rudolfinum. We walked to Republic Square to the Municipal House café, always a delightful and elegant place. There are chairs and tables set up outside now, a clear sign of spring. There is still no sun for the last several days. The evenings here are warmer than the mornings, unlike Denver.

Monday, March 28, 2005

Monday, March 28, 2005.

This is the day that women in the Czech Republic dread, because many people insist in engaging in an old pagan tradition of “Easter birching,” a vestige of an old fertility rite that dates back to the Middle Ages. As the tradition goes, on the morning of Easter Monday, men and boys whip women of all ages, around the legs with a special whip (pomlázka) made out of twisted willow or “osier” twigs. The women reward the men for this with a painted Easter egg. The symbolism is pretty clear: the whipping, say Czechs, ensures the woman stays fertile and beautiful. No woman escapes: women of all ages get a whipping, from children to grandmothers. In fact, it’s considered rude to leave one of the women in a gathering out, even if she’s 70 years old. The whipping is supposed to be symbolic, more a gentle tap. We witnessed young boys chasing young girls when we drove around Bohemia seven years ago. There is less obnoxious behaviors in the city, where boys can’t easily go door-to-door and gang up on the village girls. However, there were some teenagers at our door this morning, offering to beat the woman of the house! I also saw several folks carrying pomlázky as they strolled through town this morning. Veena reported that she was gently whipped as she got off the tram.
Apparently, children finish school on “Ugly Wednesday” and start the Easter preparations. The following day, “Green Thursday,” boys from the village equip themselves with specially made wooden rattles, the “rehtacka.” They then walk through the village together, shaking their rattles vigorously so that the noise can be heard from afar. This rattling chases away Judas. The same procedure repeats on Good Friday and then on “White Saturday,” when boys also stop at every house and rattle until they are given money! Easter Sunday is a day of preparation for Easter Monday. Girls paint, color, and decorate eggs and boys prepare their Easter whips.
Traditionally, women get their revenge for the whipping by chucking cold water over the men. This is supposed to ensure good health. But sometimes the women end up getting the cold shower as well as the whipping. Perhaps this is the Czech version of Sadie Hawkins day. Young women wait for the special man, the one they like to come and whip them, and play hard-to-get and feign physical pain. Obviously, feminists have a lot of trouble with this holiday, since domestic violence is a serious problem in the Czech Republic. Under Czech law, beating your marital partner is not a crime unless she (or he) is so badly injured that she cannot work for at least seven days – and parliament has repeatedly rejected proposals to change the law. It is all part of the difficulty Czech women face in tackling feminism – so much so that there is a serious debate over what Western-style feminism can offer Czech women. In some ways, Czech society was ahead of its time on women's rights. More than 90 per cent of Czech women are in full-time employment: a legacy of communism, under which women were forced to work by law. And since the First World War more than half of university degrees go to women every year. On the other hand, women are generally paid less than men, especially in the public sector. Even women's names are a source of controversy. Women are not obligated to take their husband’s names when they marry, but if they do, they are required to add to their surnames the suffix -ova. This has resulted in Czech women who marry foreign men sporting such names as Smithova and Jonesova.
I met with Eunice for coffee – her company is closed today so she had time to meet early in the day – and then spent most of the afternoon at home working on the information she gave me to finish her case study. Rick went to his Czech class this evening, so we had an early dinner at home.

Sunday, March 27, 2005

Sunday, March 27, 2005.

Most of the Czechs I know are taking advantage of the long Easter weekend for outings in the country. There is still enough snow in the mountains for cross-country skiing, and many people are at their country-homes, planting and sprucing up the cottages that have been neglected over the winter. I had expected more stores to be closed today, but most stores in the center of town are on a regular Sunday schedule, which means that the big chains and tourist places are open and the small local shops are closed.
Charlotte and Bruce had invited Christine and Rudy and Michele and John and Rick and me for dinner, which mean that Bruce fired up the grill and we had very tasty American-style steaks. Charlotte fixed mushrooms and onions and potatoes and made a huge salad, and also palacinky (crepes) with fresh strawberries and whipped cream. You would have thought we hadn’t eaten for days! Of course the best part of the day was the conversation with such interesting people.
We had an early dinner so I was able to go to the concert at the Jubilee Synagogue at 8pm. The concert was low-key; the performers were from the EuroJews tourgroup, some of whom are professional performers (musicians and chazzans). I hadn’t been in the main sanctuary of the Jubilee Synagogue for 7 years and I had forgotten how ornate it is. Like other Czech synagogues built at the turn of the 20th century, the Jubilee synagogue is built with Moorish, Byzantine, and Art Nouveau influences and has a large organ in the upper gallery. It was originally a reform synagogue, and was built outside the Jewish Quarter to replace three synagogues that had been destroyed when the Jewish ghetto was abolished in 1852. The decision to build the synagogue in the newer neighborhood where most of the population lived was made in 1898, at the time of the 50th anniversary of the accession of Franz Joseph I to the Austrian Throne. The synagogue was named the Jubilee Synagogue in his honor, and was dedicated on Simchat Torah on September 16, 1906.
Apparently there are several Moorish synagogues in the US. Perhaps the best known is B'nai Jeshurun synagogue in Cincinnati, built in 1866. It was designed for Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise (Weiss), who was born in Bohemia in 1819 and moved to the US in 1846. After only four years, Wise was dismissed from his position in New York, and in 1954 moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he remained for the rest of his life. There he created a common prayer book for followers of Reformed Judaism, and in 1873, Wise formed the Union of American Hebrew Congregations. This organization initially united thirty-four Reform Jewish congregations together under a national body. In 1875, Wise established the Hebrew Union College, the first seminary in the United States for Reform rabbis, which still uses the temple for ordinations.
Interestingly, another Moorish synagogue, constructed in 1888, is in Oregon. It was destroyed by a fire in 1923, but rebuilt between 1926 and 1928. We remember attending the Ahavath Beth Israel synagogue in Boise, Idaho, the oldest continuously used synagogue west of the Mississippi. Modeled after a synagogue in Toledo, Spain, this Moorish-styled structure features a Romanesque interior, keyhole-shaped arches and pastel stained-glass windows. The building was completed in 1896, one year after Moses Alexander, the nation's first elected Jewish governor, and 24 other members of Boise's Jewish community formed the congregation. We found out from Yehudes, who is from Boise, that the synagogue was moved three miles across town last October (2003). The central location was nice, but the synagogue had outgrown its facilities and wanted to provide classrooms (and, undoubtedly easier parking) for the expanding congregation. After a Havdalah ceremony marking the end of the Sabbath on Saturday, the building’s move started at 11 p.m., accompanied by a community-wide walking procession featuring a klezmer band and a ritual carrying of the Torah. Visiting clergy and Jewish scholars gave readings and prayers along the route, which stopped at Alexander’s graveside and concluded with an 8 a.m. service at the new site.

Saturday, March 26, 2005

Saturday, March 26, 2005.

I had originally planned to go to Bejt Simcha’s Shabbat services this morning, but got engaged in finishing up two manuscripts and working on my presentation for Martin’s class next week. The sky is overcast today, so I was not tempted to go out. Rick went for a walk – he’s been feeling cooped up, since he’s spent most of the last three days in bed – and said that the weather was pleasant. I didn’t venture outside until this evening.
Bejt Simcha hosted several programs this weekend, partly in conjunction with Purim, but also because of the visit from a group of more than 60 progressive, loosely-affiliated European Jews from 13 European countries. Their organization is called EuroJews, meaning Young European Progressive Jews. Their mission is, in part, to recognize that European Jews have aspects of common identity that go beyond linguistic and cultural differences, and that Jewish people, as defined by the individual, are bound loosely by Reform and Liberal Halachah (laws). They first met in Amsterdam in 1998, followed by a larger meeting in Paris in 1999, followed by Dublin, Milan, Barcelona, and last year’s Purim trip to Budapest. The EuroJews contingent came to the Spanish Synagogue last night for Bejt Praha’s Kabalat Shabbat service, and participated in Bejt Simcha’s Shabbat service this morning.
Tonight’s festivities consisted of a Havdalah (ending of the Sabbath) ceremony followed by a Purim Ball at the Manes Restaurant right on the river. Such a spectacular view! The proprietors of the restaurant are used to Czech time, so they were concerned when no one showed up at 7pm. The party-goers (not many locals, mostly the EuroJews tourgroup) were on Jewish time, so people trickled in and the Havdalah started around 8pm! The dancing went on until quite late.

Friday, March 25, 2005

Friday, March 25, 2005.

Cynthia and I had lunch together and she showed me her exhibit at the Guttmann Gallery. Her “installation” is called “Layered Histories,” an apt name since it not only reflects the differing layers of the visions of its authors (music and images), but also the layers of the manuscript and images of Toledo, Marseilles, and Safed, the three places where the Marseilles Bible is know to have existed. Apparently, the history of this manuscript is only partially known. It was created in Toledo, Spain around 1260, and contains influences of Jewish, Christian and Islamic culture. After the 1492 Expulsion of Jews from Spain by Ferdinand of Arragon and Isabella of Castillia, it was brought out of Spain by the Jewish refugees. It traveled to the Ottoman town of Safed in Northern Galilee, where it was among religious mystics seeking the means to repair the ills of the world (Tikkun ha-Olam). It subsequently disappeared until around 1894, when, mysteriously, three volumes of the Bible were discovered in the collection of the Bibliotheque Municipale of Marseilles, where they reside today. Cynthia has morphed images reflecting place and cross-cultural contact, in a non-linear “narrative” projected on a screen and controlled by an electronic pen on a digitized surface covered with a replica of one of the patterned pages from the Bible. The images are morphed together to create fluid moving clips, and the sounds cross-fade from one to the next, making a very interesting and interactive piece of work.
After a nice lunch at an outdoor café – the weather today is absolutely balmy – we walked around Old Town a bit and then took the metro to Vyšehrad. I wanted to show Cynthia the view, and also to show her the remains of the old castle, the twin towers of St. Peter and Paul, the gothic church of St. Martin, and the cemetery with the graves of Dvořak, Smetana and Mucha.
Services this evening at Bejt Praha were special, not only because Naomie Turetsky and her sons Justin and Jonathan were there, but because of the reason for their presence. The service was a combined Kabalat Shabbat and memorial service for Arnold Turetsky, the rabbi who was instrumental in starting and shaping the culture of Bejt Praha in 1995. Several people from the Jewish community gave testimonials to Rabbi Turetsky, including Rabbi Narrowe who led the service. Howard had known Rabbi Turetsky longer than anyone else in attendance, because he had attended the synagogue in White Plains, New York, where Rabbi Turetsky worked before he retired and started to visit Prague and Budapest. (Naomie and her sons will go to Budapest next week for another memorial service.) The service was bitter sweet. Sweet because of the reflections about a man who touched so many lives, including our own seven years ago. Bitter, of course, because of our loss.

Thursday, March 24, 2005

Thursday, March 24, 2005.

I met with Eva and Martin this morning to get closure on most of our projects for Martin’s book and for the case conference in July. Both families are taking advantage of the long holiday weekend for outings in the country with their families.
This evening is Purim and there are no fewer than five separate megilat readings sponsored by different Jewish groups in the community. Rabbis Samuel Abramson, Ron Hoffberg, and Ben Rosenstein led a service in Czech, English, and Hebrew (respectively) at the Jubilee synagogue, followed by a raucous party on Dlouha street afterward. Bejt Simcha had a Megilat Esther reading for a group of “EuroJews,” followed by a party at the Manes Restaurant. Rabbi Narrowe read the Megilat for a large crowd at the Spanish Synagogue, followed by wine and hamentashen at the synagogue. Rabbi Karel Sidon, who had formerly been the chief rabbi of the Orthodox community, led a service in the High Synagogue at the Town hall. Rabbi Manis Barash, who recently rose to the helm of the Orthodox community (he had formerly been the head of the Chabad center in Prague), led the service at the Altneu Synagogue. At the same time, a performance of the Megilat story by costumed youths took place on the stage of the dining hall in the Community Center, followed by a few musical performances.
Several of us went to a jazz concert on the second floor of the community center after the services, where we were entertained by a piano, saxophone, bass, guitar, and vocal ensemble. Cynthia Rubin was there, with Miša Hajkova, the exhibition curator for the Guttmann gallery, and her partner Howard Sidenberg, a former New Yorker who has been in Prague since 1991 and now runs the Twisted Spoon Press. We bid goodnight when the music stopped shortly after 10 pm, but then became engaged in conversation on our way to the tram until after 11. Even at that late hour there were costumed party-goers, many of whom were quite drunk, wandering the streets around the Jewish quarter.

Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Wednesday, March 23, 2005.

Charles and Claudia left on a mid-morning train to Bratislava, where they’ll stay a few days before flying back to the US via Vienna (which is quite convenient from Bratislava).
Rabbi Narrowe, who is in town for Purim, gave a lecture on “the real story of Purim” at the Jewish Education Center this evening. Rick is feeling under the weather – he thinks he may have the flu – so I went alone. Rabbi Narrowe had invited both of us to dinner and was disappointed that Rick was not able to come. There were three of us at dinner, however, since he had also invited Cynthia Rubin, who is in Prague for two weeks to show off her interactive art exhibit at the Guttmann Gallery, adjacent to the Spanish Synagogue.
Cynthia is a visual artist, a teacher at the Rhode Island School of Design, who has been working in the field of digital media and computer graphics since the 1980s. Her presentation is a part of the exhibition series “Places of Memory,” which explores the potential of public spaces as loci for remembrance and the interpretation of history, and part of the “Jewish Presence in Contemporary Visual Arts,” which is now in its third year at the Robert Guttmann Gallery. Cynthia’s exhibit, “Layered Histories,” is the imaginary story of a 13th century illuminated Hebrew manuscript, today known as the “Marseilles Bible,” done in collaboration with electronic-music composer Bob Gluck. (Rick and I had gone to Bob Gluck’s presentation last month, but had not been able to go to Cynthia's presentation last week.) After our dinner together, she and I had tea and chatted late into the evening. Now, having met her, I am more interested in seeing her exhibit before it leaves this weekend.

Tuesday, March 22, 2005

Tuesday, March 22, 2005.

I had expected to set out on our tour of various museums and sights early in the morning, but Rick and Charles became engaged in math-talk, so we did not leave our flat until nearly noon. Most museums in Prague are open every day except Monday, except for the Jewish museums which are open every day except Saturday. You can imagine our surprise and disappointment when we discovered that the Museum of Music is open every day except Tuesday!
Undaunted, we headed toward Wenceslas Square, where we left Charles and Claudia to their own devices (and a carefully discussed map of interesting places), at the entrance to the Museum of Communism. They spent the rest of the afternoon walking around various parts of the city. Today is rather sunny and not too cold, so it was a perfect day to be outdoors.
Our rendezvous point was U Pinkasů, one of our favorite “authentic” Czech restaurants just off Wenceslas Square. We arranged a table upstairs in a non-smoking room, so the dinner was quite pleasant, except for the piped-in American 60’s rock’n’roll music! Nonetheless, we had a lovely evening – good food, good beer, good conversation, good friends.

Monday, March 21, 2005

Monday, March 21, 2005.

Today is the official International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, marked by the Orange Band anti-racism campaign in five Czech towns: Prague, Brno, south Moravia, Usti nad Labem, north Bohemia, Liberec, north Bohemia, and Olomouc, north Moravia. The International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination was declared by the United Nations General Assembly in 1966 to mark a massacre of a peaceful anti-racist demonstration in Sharpeville, South Africa on March 21, 1960, during which 69 people were shot dead by the police. In the Czech Republic, volunteers distribute orange bands and leaflets among passers-by and discuss their views on racism with them. Non-profit organizations also mark this day in information stalls where projects of civic associations designed to contribute to building a tolerant society will be presented as well as publications on racism. We didn’t see any demonstrators or arm-band distributors, but we saw lots of police strolling around town.
Charles and Claudia arrived on an afternoon train and we spent a few hours before dinner wandering the streets of Old Town and walking across the Charles Bridge. They are only here for two days, having spent only a short time here two years ago, so I hope we can show them some of Prague’s more interesting sights.
Dinner was at Pivovarsky Dům, the brewpub we had discovered last Friday, with Jitka and Ales. Unfortunately, Jitka is under the weather, so there were only five of us. But we had enough enthusiastic beer drinkers to warrant ordering the žiraf (giraffe), which is a 4-liter glass tube set in a shiny brass foot with a tap. Dinner conversation was lively, continuing on the way home, long into the evening.

Sunday, March 20, 2005

Sunday, March 20, 2005.

Officially, today is the first day of spring. And, actually, it looks like spring: the sun is out and crocuses are starting to poke their leaves out of the ground. It’s still fairly cold, but warmer temperatures are predicted over the next few days.
We went with Matt to the airport at 11:00, which we thought was plenty of time to get to the gate for his 12:35 flight to New York. But there were two Czech airlines flights to New York scheduled to leave five minutes apart, one to Newark and the other to JFK, and only three check-in windows, so the line was over an hour long. By the time Matt checked in it was after noon. He raced to the gate, through passport control, to another long line at security. Fortunately, the flight was delayed 15 minutes, so he and his bags did board the plane. He arrived in Newark at 3:01 pm, but it took another two hours to get to Wesleyan, first by train to Grand Central Station, then by bus to New Haven, and then by taxi to Middletown.
In the meantime, some 300 people set out on a peace march to protest against the U.S. policies in Iraq from Prague’s Wenceslas Square to the U.S. embassy, where they handed a petition to the embassy personnel, addressed to U.S. President George Bush and the U.S. administration. The petition, signed by about 200 people and read in Czech, English and Arabic, appealed to the U.S. authorities to stop murdering, humiliating and arresting unarmed civilians. They chanted slogans like “Who is George Bush? He is a terrorist,” “Long Live Iraq,” “Viva Palestina,” “No More War,” and “Not a Soul for Bush.” Outside the embassy compound were tens of police in bullet-proof vests and the traffic in Prague’s center was closed for the march.
Our day was not so intense. Rick and I went shopping, did laundry and a bit of house-cleaning, and spent some time getting caught up on projects that had been neglected over the last two weeks.

Saturday, March 19, 2005

Saturday, March 19, 2005.

As predicted, it is rainy today. Last week’s snow is totally gone, but today is cold and dreary. Our first stop was the Museum of Communism, a panorama of daily life, politics, history, sport, economics, education, “socialist realism” art, media propaganda, the People’s Militias, the army, the police and the secret police apparatus, censorship, judiciary and coercive institutions, and political labor camps. Authentic artifacts are presented along themes of “Communism: the dream,” “…the reality,” and “…the nightmare.” Pictures, paintings, music, statues, and film footage bring back the era of communism in all its dreariness, puffed-up glory, and gruesome oppression in three rooms of very effective and informative displays.
Matt wanted to ride the “B” line to see the ends of the metro (subway) line that had not yet been built when we were here seven years ago. Both ends now have large shopping malls and lots of new or renovated buildings and spiffy stations. Most shopping malls have virtually identical stores (nothing local, only international chains).
Instead of returning to the center of town, we took a tram to Žižkov and went to the top of the transmission tower’s observation deck. Reminiscent of an old Apollo-Saturn 5 rocket gantry, the Žižkov Tower, affectionately known as the “Prague prick” by locals, transmits TV, communication and meteorological signals across the city. Completed in 1992, but planned during the Communist era, the structure stands at a height of 216m, with a public observation area 93 meters above ground, much like Toronto's CN Tower, Moscow’s Ostankino, or Auckland’s Sky Tower.
The tower is built on the site of the former Mahler Park, which included the Old Olsany Cemetery until 1960. Only the northern-most (the oldest) part of the cemetery, with the most valuable tombstones and the adjacent building of the former field hospital, remains. When the Žižkov tower construction started in 1985, a large number of tombstones were dumped during excavations. The people who at that time led the Prague Jewish community served under the dominion of the ruling body of the communist party. They did in fact send a protest letter, but against the rubric of the “public interest” one could not do much. When Mahler Park was created, the gravestones were buried with rites in pits on the cemetery grounds. Later during the building of the tower they were excavated and destroyed.
The Olsany cemetery dates back to the plague of 1679. On January 16, 1680, Prague’s municipal authorities gave the Jewish community permission to bury its dead on a lot situated one mile away from town—about midway between the New Town fortifications and the simultaneously founded Catholic plague burial ground near the village of Olsany. Along with the cemetery, the Jewish community also founded a field hospital to which some Jewish inhabitants infected with the disease were transported from the ghetto. During the epidemic, some 3,000 dead were buried in mass graves at the cemetery. It was re-used temporarily during the plague of 1713 (another 3,388 buried corpses) and during the expulsion of the Jewish population from Prague 1744-1748.
When the internment was prohibited in town centers under Emperor Joseph II, this plague burial ground replaced the officially closed Old Cemetery in the Jewish Town to become Prague’s main Jewish cemetery on June 1, 1787. Since some 250-400 graves were added every year, it was necessary to buy land in the vicinity to expand the cemetery. In two hundred years from 1680, the cemetery grew nearly five times its original size. In the second half of the 19th century, however, the cemetery was approached on two sides by new houses built in the fast-growing towns of Žižkov and Vinohrady which resulted in the prohibition of burials in 1891 for sanitary reasons.
During the Nazi Protectorate when it was prohibited for Jews to enter public parks, Jewish mothers with baby carriages would go there for a walk and children would play there. During the May revolution, on the contrary, the cemetery became the last refuge for Nazis—they hid in tombs, shooting from behind the gravestones. In the end, the cemetery was conquered by armed young Jews, most of whom were members of a Zionist sports club. Several Nazis killed at the cemetery were also buried there. But the very last and somewhat unusual burial took place on February 19, 1948; 180 damaged Torah scrolls that had been taken to Czechoslovakia by the Nazis from the Netherlands were buried there with full honors, and with the assistance of two rabbis. Among the 37,800 deceased buried in the Old Olsany Cemetery are many respectable figures such as rabbis and scholars, physicians, artists, public officials and even noblemen. Some of the most significant are Prague's Chief Rabbi Ezechiel ben Jehuda Landau (1713-1793) whose Classicist tomb is still frequently visited by many foreign visitors; Head of the Rabbinical Collegium Eleazar ben David Fleckeles (1754-1826), Moravia's Landesrabbiner Nehemias ben Selig Trebitsch (1779-1842), historian and teacher Peter Beer (1755-1838), Chief Rabbi Solomon Judah Loeb Rapoport (1790-1867) and mathematician Jacob Koref (1790-1852). Also founders of the first industrial factories are buried at the cemetery such as Leopold Jerusalem (1789-1842), Aaron Beer Pribram (1781-1852), Salomon Pribram (1808-1865), and Leopold Porges von Portheim (1781-1870).
Since this is Matt’s last day in Prague, we let him decide where and how to spend the time. But the cold weather influenced our decision to go to dinner close to home and then spend the evening together—just the three of us—at our flat.

Friday, March 18, 2005

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.

Thursday, March 17, 2005

Thursday, March 17, 2005.

Thursday, March 17, 2005.
Today is St. Patrick’s Day. As I write this, Matt and Rick are at O’Che’s Cuban Bar drinking beer. They passed up Cafferty’s green beer on Old Town Square, since O’Che’s had a big-screen TV tuned into a soccer game. The bartender spoke Czech, but he looked Irish and spoke English with an Irish accent. Rick wouldn’t tell me how much he paid for the beer, but they said they had a good time.
Bohemia is considered to be the place from which the Celts migrated across Europe nearly two millennia ago, so Czechs celebrate their Celtic roots every March with a Prague Irish Music Festival, which has become quite a big event in the city. The festival brings some top Irish musicians over to play at various Irish hostelries around Prague, and it gives both Irish and Czech residents of the city an excuse to mingle and enjoy a beer or two. Both the Czechs and the Irish share a love of drink and music, and use pubs as meeting places for social gatherings.
Earlier, Matt and I had gone downtown and stopped in a few boutiques and galleries, among them the Gallery of the Austrian Cultural Forum’s “Passionate Perpetrators of Conviction,” an exhibit of Prague photos, mostly of demonstrations, from the 1980s. We also went in the Church of Our Lady of the Snows next door, which Matt had not remembered.
Brad met us for coffee at Kava Kava Kava, an internet café near Andĕl, after which Matt and I met Rick at the Staropramen brewery where we had scheduled a tour. Keeping with the beer theme, we went to the microbrewery at Pivovarsky Dům (house of beer) for dinner. Staropramen only makes lager beer, but the brewery at Pivovarsky had six, not counting their regular lagers. We tasted banana, nettle, cherry, coffee, wheat, and "blackthorn" beer! None compared with Staropramen or Pilsner Urquel or Gambrinas, but the atmosphere was great. We plan on taking Pultrs and Hollands there next week.
We took the metro to Vyšehrad, not to see the old castle wall, the rotunda of St. Martin’s church, the spires of the Church of St. Peter and Paul, or the cemetery where Dvořak, Smetana, and Alpons Mucha are buried, but because Matt wanted to ride the new cars on the “C” line and to see the view from the Nusle bridge. The Nusle bridge, which spans the Nusle valley and intersects the city of Prague, first opened in 1973, is about 130 feet (40 meters) high. The bridge itself is rather drab, made of grey reinforced concrete, but the height and expanse of the bridge are impressive. A few years ago some of the support girders began to crack under the strain of the metro running through the bridge’s inside. The original design had planned for far lighter trains, but Communist politicians pushed through a tender for far heavier Soviet-built trains instead. The track was reinforced and some of the girders entirely replaced, but there is skepticism as to how long the bridge will last. Between 200 - 300 suicide jumpers have leapt from the bridge to their deaths since it was first built, hence the local moniker “suicide bridge.” There was an aborted plan to secure netting underneath the bridge; there is now a higher rail and fencing intended to keep jumpers back.

Wednesday, March 16, 2005

Wednesday, March 16, 2005.

It is actually balmy today. I think this is the first time this (calendar) year that I’ve gone without long underwear or gloves! The city is bustling with lots of tourists and shoppers – and also pickpockets.
Matt and I joined the study-abroad group from West Virginia University (co-sponsored by VŠE) for a lecture about the Czech Republic’s accession to the EU by Pavel Mach, from the Center for Economics and Politics, a conservative think-tank founded and chaired by Vaclav Klaus (former prime minister and now President of the Czech Republic). The second speaker was Petr Porak, from the Ministry of Industry and Trade, who talked about EU subsidies (structural funds) for economic development. Matt skated off to meet Veena to take in a movie while I stayed with the student group for lunch and a visit to the American Chamber of Commerce.
Tomáš Říčka, who was the primary organizer of the course, asked me to speak about my research, so I gave a short presentation about entrepreneurship and new venture development here, with some US cultural and structural comparisons. I was pleased at the many compliments – and questions – that I received after the presentation.
I was invited to dinner, but declined so that I could spend the evening with Matt. He had originally planned to go to a concert, but instead we had dinner at home together.

Tuesday, March 15, 2005

Tuesday, March 15, 2005.

Yesterday was warmer than Sunday and today is warmer than yesterday. There are now patches of green on the lawns and few icy spots on the sidewalks. Perhaps spring will come in time for Easter!
Matt stayed with Veena last night and didn’t return to the flat until after 9am, so I went to VŠE, first to the Czech class and then to chat briefly with Martin and Eva. By the time I returned home, Matt had had lunch and was more chipper than I had expected. Most college kids bring dirty laundry with them when they visit their parents. Matt had clean clothes, but needed a haircut. He has a lot of hair, so it took nearly an hour to cut (unlike Rick’s which takes 5-10 minutes). By the time we left for our jaunt downtown, it was nearly 3pm.
We mainly walked around New Town, to the Municipal house and the Paris Hotel, down Na Přikope and Narodni, and then to Old Town. The Easter performances have begun and most of the Easter markets are open, so the square was crowded. Spring is in the air.
Aditya returns to Denver tomorrow, so we invited him to join us for dinner at the New Town Brewery. He’s been here for 10 weeks, the entire winter quarter. He'll go back to Denver with only a few days to spare before the spring quarter begins. School schedules, kids and travels mark the time – and it is passing very quickly


a better "do"

Monday, March 14, 2005

Monday, March 14, 2005.

Well, my attempt at red hair is not exactly a disaster, but not what anyone would call a success either. The box says “extreme intensive red” (in Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, Polish and Romanian, but not English), and the model on the cover looks quite different than what I ended up with. Only in Prague is this color inconspicuous. My hair will grow out; I hope the stains on the towels will also fade. I’m afraid that I may get red dye on my pillowcases, even though I rinsed my hair three or four times. Stay tuned.
The Easter markets are starting to open, despite the fact that there’s snow and ice on the ground. It is sunny today, however, and a bit warmer. By late afternoon most of the snow on the streets had melted. After dinner, we escorted Matt to the Globe Bookstore for a rendezvous with Richard and Veena, two Fulbright students, who took him to out (mostly to various bars and hangouts) for the evening, which lasted well into the wee hours of the morning.


Prague Red

Sunday, March 13, 2005

Sunday, March 13, 2005.

The typical pace at Červena is to have a large breakfast, followed by a leisurely morning, lunch around 12:30, and an afternoon walk. I was eager to spend the day seeing some small Bohemian towns, so we had an early lunch, said goodbye to Ales and Jitka around 1:30, and headed east to Tábor.
Tábor was founded as a fortress town by the Hussites, radical followers of religious reformer Jan Hus, in 1420 and was named after the biblical Mount Tabor. Tábor’s winding streets and underground passages make for an interesting, if small, historical section. There is also a 15th century Gothic church and large town square with a very ornate obelisk.
We headed further east to Jindrichuv Hradec, situated on the banks of the river Nezarka, which boasts the oldest hand-written newspaper in the Czech language, dating from 1495. The main feature of the town is the Renaissance chateau of the Rozmberks, its large pink rotunda dominating the skyline. The first reference to Jindrichuv Hradec is from 1220, naming the castle “Novum Castrum” as seat of Jindrich Vitkovec. Jindrichuv Vitkovec was one of the Vitkovec brothers who later became better known as the Rozmberk Family, each of the 5 brothers with a different color 5-petaled rose, which still can be seen throughout south Bohemia. Jindrichuv is considered the founder of the house of Lords of Hradec. Three feudal families have owned Jindrichuv Hradec throughout most of its history: the Lords of Hradec until 1604, the house of Slavata until 1693, and finally the house of Czernin.
Hradec has always been an important regional center. Although today only housing 20,000 inhabitants, at one time it was second only to Prague in size and importance. This importance can still be seen in the rich material cultural heritage present in the city, protected as a Municipal Reserve of Historical Monuments. As for Jindrichuv Hradec Castle, it is the third largest in the Czech Republic.
Jindrichuv Hradec also has a synagogue, which has been used as a Hussite church since 1952. Apparently, a small prayer room already existed in the 16th century. In the second half of the 18th century, a separate schul or synagogue existed in Hradec, which was rebuilt after the fire of 1801. In 1867, the synagogue was enlarged, reflecting the growth and importance of the local Jewish community. The house next to the synagogue was used as Jewish School. Behind these building was a small Jewish quarter from the mid-18th century. Unfortunately, the original furnishing of the buildings has not been preserved.
A document from the year 1249 states that King Wenceslav II granted Ulrich, Lord of Hradec, the right to take 8 Jewish families within his city walls, evidence that Jewish people were living in Hradec already before the end of the 13th century. Presumably, the Jews profited from the prosperous development of Hradec as well. However, in the 16th century the number of Jewish families officially allowed was lowered to 4, a limitation which the lords of Hradec more often ignored than observed. The Thirty-Year War (1618-1648) caused severe problems for all people. Despite the restriction on numbers, there were 6 Jewish families, together 31 people, in Hradec at the beginning of 1682. That year all Jewish families were turned out of the city, in response to the strong position Jewish families held as merchants. These restrictions were of short duration, and after a few years the number of Jews started to increase again, in part because the tobacco trade for that region was in Jewish hands. As result, 11 Jewish families (76 persons) were living in Hradec in 1795. The most prosperous families from that time were the Bobele, Kahn (or Kohn), and Wiener families. The catastrophic fire of May 19, 1801 also had a devastating impact on the Jewish community. The synagogue, houses and storage buildings were destroyed, a blow which took the Jewish community a long time to recover from. With the revolution of 1848 and the subsequent abolition of serfdom and feudal privileges, the restrictions on the Jews were abolished as well. The number of Jews grew steadily and the Jewish families played an important role in bringing trade and industry in the city. Thanks to this and the personal efforts of some of the Jewish residents, the relation between the Christian and Jewish populations in Hradec was relatively good. The pro-Austrian attitude of some of the Jews during the First World War (1914-18), however, disturbed this relationship, despite the fact that others were supportive of the Czech sentiments and supported the wish for an independent Czech state. An organized anti-Semitic attack in 1919 resulted in the destruction and plunder of most of the Jewish shops in the city. Several of the perpetuators were caught and received heavy sentences, but the real organizers were never apprehended.
Between the two world wars, the Jews played a prominent role in Hradec, in particular by bringing new industry to this industry-poor town. Jewish factories employed well over 1200 people in enterprises such as clothing fabrics, spirits, steel works and machinery. In the early 1930’s, the Jewish population numbered approximately 230. The German occupation and the Holocaust put an end to the once flourishing Jewish community of Jindrichuv Hradec. Some managed to escape in time, but most perished in the concentration camps; the transport lists nameed 126 of them. Today, three Holocaust survivors still live in Jindrichuv Hradec. A fourth still living in Hradec was scheduled for transport to Terezin in April 1945, but was spared the ordeal because the war ended. http://www.rozmberk.org/English/Jewish/hradec.html
By the time we got back to the car, it was 5:30, snowing and getting dark, so we headed directly for Prague, arriving at our flat by 8pm. Matt and Rick were hungry, so we had a light dinner at Pizzeria Siesta, our close-by friendly restaurant.


Jindrikuv Hradec chateau

Saturday, March 12, 2005

Saturday, March 12, 2005.

Jitka had arranged for Radka, the daughter of the architect who helped design their house addition, to give us a private tour of Orlik castle, so we had an early lunch and were on our way by 2pm. Orlik was founded in the 13th century by Vaclav II, and was rebuilt by Emperor Karel IV in the 14th century. The castle became the property of Christopher of Svambert (Schwarzenberg) after the battle of Bila hora (White Mountain) in 1620, and except for a few short periods, (most notably the nationalization by the communist party from 1948-1989), remains the property of the Schwarzenberg family. It was remodeled in 1849 - 1860 in the new gothic style. The castle is enormous, with grand rooms with period furniture and long halls displaying trophy antlers and firearms.


Orlik Castle hallway

Friday, March 11, 2005

Friday, March 11, 2005

We picked up a rental car at 9am and headed to southern Bohemia for a weekend in Červena with Ales and Jitka. On the way, we stopped at Zvikov, to show Matt the castle. All castles are closed until the first of April, but the structures and grounds are interesting enough to warrant the trip, especially since it is not a substantial detour from the main road to Červena.
Zvikov is one of the most important early gothic castles in the Czech Republic. Founded in the 13th century, it was originally the seat of the kings of the Přemislid Dynasty. The castle structure is distinctive for its towers: the cylindrical Hláska tower, the Hlíza Tower, the Red Tower and the Iron Tower. The defensive Hláska tower, at the entrance to the castle grounds, dates from the first half of the 15th century. In the 16th century, the chateau was reconstructed in renaissance style. At the beginning of the 30-year war the chateaux was besieged and plundered. Since the 17th century this castle served to accommodate an army and a granary, but was devastated by a fire in 1751. In the first half of the 19th century Zvikov was devastated again, and gradually reconstructed by the Schwarzenberks beginning in 1840. Reconstruction was completed in 1978, and the castle is now open for visitors, but only from April through September.
Zvikov is not so far out of our way that our detour delayed lunch in Červena, even though we took the scenic route through the forest preserve to see the family of boars who were dutifully waiting for us. (They materialized just as Rick teased Ales about his inability to produce them.) Jitka greeted us when we arrived at Červena, first with dessert (!), then beer, and then a luscious lunch. Matt, Rick, and Ales went for a short walk around Červena (Jetĕtice), which is covered with a deep blanket of snow.
The afternoon was spent lazily, alternatively talking, reading, and resting, except for Jitka who was busy in the kitchen most of the time. I had forgotten about Shabbat, but Jitka, bless her heart, had not. She had candles ready for us before dinner, which was another lavish meal, followed by another dessert. After dinner, we all sat down in front of the VCR and watched two Agatha Christie stories, The Cornish Mystery and The Disappearance of Mr. Davenheim, about Hercule Poirot, “the eccentric and extremely intelligent detective,” and his trusty sidekick Captain Hastings.

Thursday, March 10, 2005

Thursday, March 10, 2005.

Sarah, one of our favorite Fulbright students, offered to give us a tour of the Jewish museums. With her sister and brother who are visiting Prague on their spring break, she had an entourage of five to guide through the six main sites. These buildings were returned to the Jewish Community in Prague in 1994, but the Jewish Museum was founded in 1906 by historian Dr. Hugo Lieben and the head of the Prague Jewish Community, Dr. Augustin Stein. The original aim was to preserve valuable artifacts from Prague synagogues that were liquidated during the reconstruction of the Jewish Town at the beginning of the 20th century. The Museum was closed to the public in 1939 after the Nazi occupation of Bohemia and Moravia, but the Nazis brought artifacts from all the liquidated Jewish communities and synagogues to this site in 1942. The widespread conjecture is that the Nazis were building a museum to what they expected would be an extinct people.
We started our tour at the Pinkas Synagogue, Sarah’s favorite, which originally opened in 1960, but closed from 1968 until 1990. This is the synagogue that has the names of nearly 80,000 Czech Jews who perished in the holocaust inscribed on the walls, including that of Madeline Albright’s family, the Korbels. The upper section of the synagogue is a gallery with an exhibition of children’s drawings from Terezin in 1942-1944. Of the over 10,000 children who passed through Terezin, 242 survived. The Jewish cemetery is adjacent to the Pinkas synagogue. Here lie the remains of Rabbi Lowe, who is associated with the legend of the Golem, as well as of Mordechai Maisel, the major of the Jewish Town, who died in 1601. The cemetery contains almost 12,000 tombstones, although the number of people buried there is much greater, with several burial layers superimposed one on top of the other. The small Klausen Synagogue (which literally means “small building”) was the largest synagogue in the ghetto at one time, and served as Prague’s Burial Society. It now houses a permanent exhibition of pictures and artifacts showing customs connected with birth, circumcision, b’nai mitzvah, wedding, divorce, and the Jewish household.
The Altneu Shul, or “Old-New” Synagogue, was built in the middle of the 13th century. It was originally called the “New” or “Large” synagogue to distinguish it from the older shul, on the site of which now stands the Spanish Synagogue where we attend services on Friday evenings. When other synagogues were built in the 16th century, it became known as the “Old-New” (or provisional, depending on what writings you believe) synagogue. It was designed by a Christian architect, since Jews were not allowed to pursue architecture as a profession at that time. The main hall is the only existing medieval type hall of its kind, represented originally by the Romanesque synagogue in Worms (12th century) and the early Gothic synagogue in Regensburg. The hall is vaulted by six five-part vault compartments supported by two octagonal pillars. At this, the oldest continually-functioning synagogues in central Europe, orthodox services are held every morning and on Shabbat evenings.
We went into the Spanish Synagogue, which Matt had not seen before, since the reconstruction was not finished when we were here in 1997-1998. It opened the year we left, on the 130th anniversary of its founding. This synagogue is on the site of the oldest Prague Jewish house of prayer, the “Old School.” and is known for its Moorish style, which attracted Jews from all over Europe when it was built. We went upstairs to the exhibit area, near the organ pipes, which houses religious artifacts and an exhibition of the “History of the Jews in Bohemia and Moravia from Emancipation to the Present.”
Our last stop was the Maisal Synagogue, which was built in 1590-1592 by Mayor Mordechai Maisal as his private house of prayer. Now it houses an exhibition of the “History of the Jews in Bohemia and Moravia from the establishment of Jewish settlements up the period of emancipation,” a cross-sectional survey of the history of the Jews in the Czech Lands from the 10th century to the end of the 18th century.
After our 4-hour tour, Rick and Matt decided that they needed some down time, so we went home for a break before meeting Charlotte and Bruce at Palac Flora for a movie and dinner. We saw “Ray,” the biographical film about Ray Charles, which was every bit as good as its billing. Dinner was at the Orange Moon, a Thai restaurant in the glitzy new Palac Flora mall.

Wednesday, March 09, 2005

Wednesday, March 9, 2005.

More snow today – and sleet. It’s pretty dreary, and spring is nowhere in sight. Rick went to the dentist this morning. He was glad to find someone who could reattach the crown that had come adrift Monday evening. It only needs to last until we return to Denver. Matt and I took the tram to Barrandov just to see the city, and then rode back to the Lesser Town square, Malostranske námĕstí. We went in St. Nicholas Church – Matt had forgotten quite how magnificent it is – and were able to go to the top balcony (two flights up) to see a set of 10 paintings by Karel Škreta. The paintings represent the Passion Cycle, and were created during 1673-74.
We then headed across the bridge toward Old Town, and went into the gallery at the Rudolfinum, where we stayed for quite awhile at an Alen Diviš exhibit. Diviš had left Prague for Paris in 1924, at that time the capital of modern art. He was accused of spying and spent several months incarcerated in solitary confinement at La Sante prison. After passing through concentration camps in France, Morocco, and Martinique, he found refuge in New York. He returned to Czechoslovakia in 1947, but found himself destitute and marginalized when the Iron Curtain fell in 1948, and died in 1956. His work was influenced by Cubism and Expressionism, and was primarily based on a powerful preoccupation with existential themes. The paintings done after his imprisonment are particularly moving, as are some of the illustration he did for Edgar Alan Poe and Karel Jaromir Erben.
We had dinner with Eva, Hunsa, Suza and Hunsek at U Pĕtniku, after which the three teenagers went off to a music gig and the four adults retired to the Jarosovi house for dessert and tea. Matt enjoyed spending time with the kids. While he wasn’t enthralled with the amateur musicians (among them, Hunsek’s friends), he enjoyed the “underground” ambience of the venue and the camaraderie of the kids. By the time we headed home, the weather had gotten sufficiently cold to allow falling snow to accumulate.


Matt with Suza and Hunsek

Tuesday, March 08, 2005

Tuesday, March 8, 2005.

I took the morning to run leftover errands from yesterday (rent payment deposit, car rental reservations, etc), attend the Tuesday morning Czech class at VŠE, and chat briefly with Eva and Martin. In the afternoon, Matt and I went to the International School of Prague (ISP), where he attended sixth grade seven years ago. The only teacher of his who is still there is Tony Ackerman, the music teacher, who has been there for 20 years! The school is celebrating its 55th year this year, having started in one small room in the American Embassy in 1948, moving to its new facility in 1997. When Matt attended, there were about 450 students. This year it’s close to 680. Next year they will be at capacity with over 700 students. They now have an IB (International Baccalaureate) program, due to the increasing student/parent demand and to the competitiveness of college admissions. Perhaps the biggest change we witnessed was the increased security. We had to get “visitor” badges and be escorted past security. In other words, we couldn’t have just gone to look around, we needed to have a specific reason/person to be there. In all other respects, the school looks the same. Once past the guard at the front desk, everyone is very friendly and the students and many teachers linger at the school long after the last class ends.
This evening we took Matt to dinner at the Opera Garden restaurant before seeing Dvořák’s “Dimitrij” at the State Opera. The opera is in Czech, of course, but there were English “overtitles” so we could follow the lyrics. The story is based “on the turbulent times in Russia around 1600, about a self-proclaimed sovereign, a simple man of the people who managed to elevate himself to the tsarist throne and was resolved to lead the Russian people out of horrible chaos and misery through his courage and his wisdom as a statesman… a continuation of the story of Pushkin’s and Mussorgsky’s Boris Godenov … based on historical reality.” The set and costumes were splendid, with lots of pageantry and a revolving stage that made the evil plotting particularly sinister.

Monday, March 07, 2005

Monday, March 7, 2005

Today is Howard’s birthday, so I picked up a chocolate cake for him, which I ended up carrying around most of the day. My morning was spent trying to get tickets to tomorrow’s performance of the Nagano opera (which was sold out), picking up a package at the post office (which I also carried around all day), going to the bank (which had closed for lunch when I arrived).
Matt and I spend the afternoon at the castle while Rick and Ales met for math talks at Ales’s office. Even though I’ve to the castle several times since we arrived last fall, it’s always breathtaking to see St. Vitus Cathedral and to walk around and inside the old castle. It’s still cold outside, so the guards were wearing fur collars and hats. This was the first time I’ve been to the castle when it wasn’t crowded, probably because it’s a weekday, not because of the weather (the fact that none of the castle buildings are heated does not deter tourists). Matt and I reminisced about his time here and the things he liked to do when he was eleven, among them a stroll down Golden Lane and a stop at the house where Franz Kafka lived.
We left the castle shortly after 4pm, so I took the opportunity to go to a lecture at the Sociology Institute at Charles University while Matt wandered around town by himself. We then rendezvoused at 6pm so that we could meet Rick and Howard at 7pm for dinner. Marketa is on a ski trip with her father, so there were only the four of us for dinner and birthday cake. I’m glad Matt got to meet Howard (and vice versa). We had some interesting conversations, especially about history, politics and economics. All in all, a pleasant and very full day for all of us.

Sunday, March 06, 2005

Sunday, March 6, 2005

Matt arrived (from NYC) in Prague shortly after 8am, so Rick and I were on the 7am bus to the airport to greet him when he arrived. After many hugs, we brought him to our flat, fed him breakfast, and talked for quite awhile before we ventured out into the bitter cold, snowy weather toward town.
Our first stop was Malostranska námĕstí, the Lesser Town square, so that we could stroll across the (very crowded) Charles Bridge toward Old Town. We stopped to join the clockwatchers to see the clock strike 2:00pm before stopping for tea at the Prince Hotel. We then walked to Můstek, where we jumped on the metro (subway) and headed for the Sazka Arena to see HC Slavia Praha play the Liberec White Tigers in the second (of four) “extra-league” quarterfinal playoff (ice hockey) game. I only knew that the stadium was near the Českomoravská metro stop, but once we were on the train, we needed only to follow the hoards of others headed toward the stadium, which was almost adjacent to the metro station.
The multipurpose Sazka Arena was completed last April (2004) for the world ice hockey championship in Prague. According to the Sazka Arena website, it is the most modern multipurpose venue for sports, culture, entertainment, exhibits, fairs, and other events in Europe, featuring the most advanced technology, universal usage, sophisticated marketing, comfort and all-embracing services for spectators and visitors. The arena has seating for 18,000 spectators, 2,460 Club and Luxury seats, 66 Skyboxes, 4 Party Boxes, and 2,900 places in bars, restaurants and cafés. The jumbotron screen and American music did not disguise the fact that we were watching Czech hockey. The fans were appropriately enthusiastic, including large sections of fans (Slavia fans in red and Liberec fans in blue) cheering, clapping and chanting “Slavia do toho” (which, loosely translated, means Go Slavia, or Hit it, Slavia), with several bass drums and horns as accompaniment. It was an exciting game, and fun to watch. Slavia won 5-2, which put the home crowd in high spirits.
After the game we headed home for a modest meal (salad and soup), intending to retire early, but of course we stayed up until midnight talking.


Matt arrives in Prague!

Friday, March 04, 2005

Friday, March 4, 2005.

The Berlin conference is officially over, but we took the opportunity to go to two more museums before heading home on an afternoon train. First we went to the Topography of Terror, which is near Checkpoint Charlie. The Topography of Terror is an outdoor exhibit, along a preserved section of the Berlin Wall, which shows the secret rooms below the former Prince Albrecht’s Palace. The palace was built in 1739, and redesigned 1830. In the Nazi period it housed the headquarters of the Gestapo, SS and Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Central Office for the Security of the Reich). The grounds of the Topography of Terror were named after the Prussian prince and heir to the Elector, Albrecht, who had purchased the palace on Anhalter Strasse in 1830. Between 1933 and 1945 the central institutions responsible for the crimes committed in Germany and Europe were located here. It was here, in close proximity to the traditional government district, that the Gestapo, the SS leadership, and the Reich Security Main Office set up their administrative offices. With the concentration of these institutions at one site, this area in effect became the government district of the National Socialist SS and Police State. This is where Himmler, Heydrich, Kaltenbrunner and their assistants had their desks. Here important decisions were made concerning the persecution of political opponents, the “Germanization” of occupied territories in Poland and the genocide of the European Jews. This is where the notorious Special Police Units (Einsatzgruppen) were assembled and where the “Wannsee Conference” was prepared. There is no other site where terror and murder were planned on the same scale. The building on the grounds, which in the final phase of the war had either been destroyed or severely damaged, were torn down by the mid-1950s. With the division of the city, the terrain, which in the early 1960s was cleared of all rubble and foundations. It was then located on the periphery of West Berlin, just beyond the Berlin Wall built in 1961.
With only two more hours to spend in the city, we went to the Pergamon museum, which houses spectacular works of architectural antiquities, including collections of Greek, Assyrian, Islamic and Far Eastern art. Many objects are of a magnitude rarely found indoors, such as the Pergamon Altar, with a 120 metre (394ft) frieze, the Market Gate of Miletus and the Ishtar Gate from Babylon.
We got back to the hotel to retrieve our luggage shortly after 3pm, then took the S-bahn to the East Station to catch the 3:42 train back to Prague, which arrived at Hološovice station at 8:23 and we were home by 9:30.

Thursday, March 03, 2005

Thursday, March 3, 2005.

This morning’s presentations were at the Rotes Rathaus, the Berlin City Hall. The first was a lecture on “Development and Change in German Higher Education,” by the secretary general for German Education; followed by a discussion on “Berlin Today,” that was supposed to have been given by Klaus Wowereit, the current mayor of Berlin, but was instead given by his deputy, Andreas Schmidt. Schmidt gave very brief introductory remarks about Berlin’s economy before opening the floor to diverse and pointed questions. The reception that followed consisted of pastries and pizzas and soft drinks, juice, and wine.
The second session of research presentations was scheduled at 2:00-4:30pm. This was an interesting collage of activities ranging from history and culture to environment and immigration to engineering education and hospice care. The first session, which I did not attend on Monday, had topics ranging from political science and postwar reconstruction, to technology and science, to literature and philosophy. It was interesting to hear about some of the grantees’ projects, despite the fact that only five minutes were allotted per person, and that only 32 scholars had chosen to give presentations.
I rushed to the hotel lobby to join Nick’s fans for his afternoon tour of “Red Berlin.” Twenty people had tickets to this tour, but despite the weather, there were over thirty of us in the group, to the organizers’ dismay. This tour took us to the main Communist buildings and through a history of the Cold War’s birth and death. Berlin was the headquarters of 80 different spy organizations, and acted as the Cold War’s “Schaufenster,” the city in which communism and Western capitalism showed themselves off for the world to see. We went to the Stasi museum, which showed only a few of the surveillance instruments and documents of the MfS, the “shield and sword of the party,” who enforced the communist dictatorship in East Germany. The 91,000 full-time Stasi employees and 180,000 unofficial collaborators ensured the blanket surveillance of the population, roughly one Stasi spy for every 6 citizens! Thousands of people offering resistance were banished to one of the 17 MfS remand prisons, which were overseen from the headquarter in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen.
Dinner at the hotel was at 7pm so we could board our last chartered bus for our last official event, the Farewell Party at the Alte Kantine in the Kulturbrauerei, a 19th century brewery compound that has been redeveloped as a cultural center, which has become a hub of nightlife for the hipsters of Prenzlauer Berg. A cobblestone pedestrian way courses through the center of the complex, whose 25,000 square meters is filled with bars, restaurants, clubs, galleries and a cinema. The only thing you won’t find is freshly brewed beer; Schultheiss shut down production in 1967. Alte Kantine hosts anything from readings to theater to live bands. We had a DJ, not live music, but the music was loud, which made conversation difficult. We drank and danced a bit, but didn’t stick around too long. Instead went with Myron and Nancy for a walk around the Prenzlauer Berg toward the hotel.
Broad sidewalk cafes, Berlin’s oldest beer garden, and the boutiques between restaurants and bars make the former working class district of Prenzlauer Berg one of the most desirable places to live among artsy singles and young couples. Since German reunification, half of the façades have been restored and brightly painted – the rare few by landlords who have reclaimed the properties their families lost when fleeing Nazi Germany, but the punks have been pushed out by rent hikes. Drawn by factory work, Prenzlauer Berg residents multiplied to 350,000 by the 1920s, making the area one of the most cramped in Europe. In 1927, less than half of the households had electricity. The post-1990 gentrification of Prenzlauer Berg began around Kollwitzplatz,which is named after the artist and sculptor Käthe Kollwitz (1867-1945). She lived on Knaackstr. from 1891 to 1943, and in 1919 was the first woman inducted into the Prussian Art Academy. Her most prominent sculpture is the one in the Neue Wache on Unter den Linden, Germany’s national war memorial. Her artwork mostly depicts the hunger, poverty, and hoped-for revolution of the people who had become the waste of the Industrial Revolution and war. There is a Käthe-Kollwitz-Museum in Charlottenburg, but Kollwitz’s plain but solid likeness is represented by a sculpture in the square across from her former home. We passed the Rykestraße Synagogue and the 100-foot-tall, round redbrick Wasserturm (water tower) built in 1877. Lace curtains in its windows prove that there is a market for pie-shaped apartments. The synagogue was built in 1904 and is hardly noticeable in the back courtyard. This position in a residential area probably saved it from being burned during Kristallnacht on November 9, 1938. We stopped at a small café for tea before heading back to the hotel, shortly after midnight.

Wednesday, March 02, 2005

Wednesday, March 2, 2005.

There were no tours or research presentations scheduled for this morning, so Rick stayed in the hotel room to work on math and I went to a session about “The challenges and opportunities of teaching,” which was really a discussion session with the German teaching assistants. Fulbright Teaching Assistants are not teachers, but they are assigned to German middle- and high-schools to help in classrooms, usually as native-English speakers in English classes. The discussions were supposed to encompass cultural issues, teaching techniques, and administrative matters. Instead, most of the time was spent talking about the poor administrative structure and lack of understanding about what they were supposed to do, as well as the low pay, given the high cost of living in most areas now. Nonetheless, some of the discussion was interesting to me, if nothing else than to give me a glimpse into this program and to give me a taste of German culture and education.
I was scheduled to be part of a panel on “European Dimensions,” to take place at 2pm at the Fulbright Commission building, a few blocks away from the hotel. I was surprised that over 40 people showed up, despite having to brave the very cold, snowy weather. There were seven of us on the panel, each representing a different country experience: a journalist in Bulgaria, a teacher in Stockholm, a researcher in Poland, a professor in Slovakia, a doctoral student in Spain, and a light-skinned blond catholic woman professor in Turkey (!), and me (representing the Czech Republic). I have no idea why any of us was chosen, nor why Hungary was excluded from the panel, since there were several good candidates from Hungary at the conference. Our presentations were very diverse; two were formal power-point presentations, and two talked mostly about adjustment and culture-clash issues. I spoke mostly about education and entrepreneurial activity and attitudes in the Czech Republic, comparing and contrasting some of the others’ experiences, including Dr. Mei-Pochtler’s portrayal of German culture and economic development from her presentation on Monday.
The panel discussion ended promptly at 4pm, and we quickly walked back to the hotel for an early dinner at 5pm, so that we could board a bus at 6:15 that would take us to the University of Kunste concert hall for a Music Gala at 7pm. The three-hour program consisted of Fulbright students and faculty performances: Bach and Debussy piano pieces; a Dvorak aria; a violin, cello, and piano ensemble (the composer, a Berlin professor, was in the audience to hear this World Premiere of his composition); a Schumann cello and piano fantasie, and a Verdi aria from La Traviata. After the intermission, a baroque cello solo of Bach’s suite for unaccompanied cello; two tenor arias, Schubert and a Negro Spiritual; Rodrigo and Villa-Lobos guitar solos; Bernstein and Victor Herbert soprano arias; and a piano rendition of Ravel’s Tombeau de Couperin (by a young Vietnamese-American student) that brought down the house. Needless to say, the program was quite eclectic and the performances were stellar.

Tuesday, March 01, 2005

Tuesday, March 1, 2005.

We had a moderately early breakfast before congregating in the lobby for a tour of “Berlin’s Best,” with Nick Rutter, a recent Brown University graduate, as our guide. Little did we know that Nick would be the best tour guide we could possibly have! Nick taught history in New York before starting his Fulbright in Berlin this fall, and will start his graduate studies at Yale next fall. The tour was scheduled to be a 3-4 hour tour, after which we intended to go to a workshop on Migration at 2pm at the hotel. Instead, we walked through the streets of east Berlin, enthralled with Nick’s descriptions and explanations, for over five hours. We learned about Berlin (and German) history, the city’s political, social and architectural legacy, from Potsdamer Platz, to Museum Island, the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag, the Holocaust Memorial, and along part of the Berlin Wall to Checkpoint Charlie. After the tour, we went back to the Reichstag, the seat of the German Parliament and one of Berlin’s most historical landmarks, and walked up into the new glass dome. After the unification and the decision to move the Bundestag from Bonn back to Berlin, a new dome was commissioned to replace the central dome of the building that had destroyed during the war and partially restored during 1958 and 1972. This latest reconstruction, completed in 1999, is a glass dome over the plenary hall, designed by Sir Norman Foster, which is now one of the primary tourist attractions of Berlin. A glass panel in the dome allows visitors to view down into the parliamentary chamber beneath. Two spiraling ramps allows visitors to walk to the top for great views of the city. http://germany.archiseek.com/brandenburg/berlin/reichstag.html
We got back to the hotel in time for our next scheduled tour at 4pm, but decided to stay inside, since it was very cold and had been snowing most of the day. Instead, we spent most of the time getting warm and relaxing before dinner.