Esztergom

[Esztergom, as seen from Slovakia

Today was another beautiful day in Hungary.

The sky looked a little chancy this morning, but although it remained breezy and windy all day, it was also sunny. The only downside: I feel a slight cold coming on. Too bad there isn't any "Emergen-C" here for me to take. Instead, I just downed a small bottle of orange juice.

To get to Esztergom, I took the train from Nyugati Station. The name sounds like the villain from some 1930s/40s intrigue thriller. "Those were Nyugati's men: ruthless and devious!"

The train went through the hills and towns north and east of Budapest, before coming into Esztergom. This city was the original capital of Hungary a thousand years ago, and it's where the first castle was located and where the kings of Hungary converted to Catholicism. Destroyed first by fire and then by the Turks, a huge cathedral was built on the site in the 19th century, and the original castle was excavated in this one.

I started, as I always do, by figuring out how I was to get home. I decided to take the high-speed hydrofoil back since the slower boat took four hours and wouldn't get here until 8:30 pm. Then I had dinner at a restaurant across the street from the ferry landing that my guide book recommended. I ordered the cold cherry soup and the "spicy carp." The soup was fine, but unexciting; I've been spoiled by the better one served at Bagolyvár. The spice in the spicy carp turned out to be garlic. I had forgotten how long it takes to eat fish when you have to remove the bones one by one. It was ok.

[Which reminds me, I checked my credit card receipt and the restaurant I ate in last night has changed its name. It is no longer "Vörös és Feher," and is called "Klassze" instead. I don't think they changed the menu or service, however, as both were excellent. Located at Andrassy ut. 41, just a block or so south of Oktogon station.

After lunch I walked up the path to the cathedral. There were stunning views of the whole city and the Danube, with Slovakia on the other side. The cathedral was built in the 19th century and is the largest in Hungary.


(Esztergom Cathedral)

I toured the "treasury" -- mostly reliquaries -- and then headed over to the castle. This traced the history of human settlement on the overlook since the arrival of the Celts to the present.

After that, I headed down into the town again, where I made sure to visit the former synagogue in Esztergom. Turned into a technical school by the communists after the war, there is a plaque in front indicating that the Jews of Esztergom were deported on June 5 and 6, 1944. The plaque was put up in 1995, along with a small memorial statue in front.


(The former Esztergom synagogue)

After that I sat for a while in the town square. The place was very quiet. As I walked towards the boat landing, I saw that most young people were on the island area separated from the town by the small canal. They're having a three-day music concert in the town stadium (people are camped out in tents). The ferry landing was just a block away, so I went and sat under the trees along the Danube until it was time to get on board.

The journey back was uneventful. The hydrofoil was much more cramped than the ship I took last year back from Szentendre. A young couple sat next to me. At first I couldn't figure out the odd aftershave the guy had on until I finally realized I was smelling beer. They had two 12 ouncers in the short ride back to Budapest.

Tonight I'll have one last dinner at Bagolyvár. Tomorrow I check out, but don't actually leave for Poland until 6:30. Hopefully, I'll be able to make one last post before my train leaves.

Szechenyi Gyorgyfurdo (and other Hungarian tonguetwisters)

[The Szechenyi Baths]

So today was a day I set aside just to have fun.

I started out by heading out to the appropriately named "Moszkva ter" (it looks as if it hasn't changed at all since the days of communism) to catch a tram to the start of a journey into the Buda hills.

My first stop was the Budapest Cogwheel train. Built nearly 100 years ago, this carries passengers up to the top of the hills overlooking Budapest. But this beautiful ride up through the Buda suburbs was merely the first step towards my main goal: Gyermekvasút -- the Budapest Children's Railway.

This was railway is run by boys and girls scouts interested in a career in the railway system. While the locomotive's are still run by adults, everything else is done by the children. This includes signaling, selling and punching tickets, bringing the train into the station, etc. Here's an old photo (they don't use this type of locomotive anymore):


[Scout wellcoming a train into the station]

The train runs once an hour, which meant I had about 45 minutes to wait, so I decided to get an early lunch. I remembered there was a "Buffet" five minutes away at the top of the cogwheel railroad, so I walked back. The menu was full of things like liver, brains, and tripe, and I eventually settled on stuffed cabbage, though I was sort of worried what it might be stuffed with. As it turns out, I needn't have worried: they were out of it. I made a new choice: Hungarian stewed beef with "flour pellets." Come on, wouldn't you be curious too?

What came was a fair-sized portion of beef with sliced dumplings in paprika sauce with a dollop of sour cream on top. Not nearly as bad as it could have been. The sauce was mild and even tasty (though I could have done without the sour cream) and I didn't feel heavy or stuffed afterwards (or naseous for that matter, and really, is that all one can truly ask of a rural "buffet" diner?).

I headed back in plenty of time to see the train come in and watch the little kids take the tickets and motion people on board. I have lots of photos, but you'll have to wait til I'm home to see them.

I got off the train half way through its course through the hills in order to walk to the Erzsebet lookout tower, the highest point in the region. It was a streep fifteen-minute walk to the top, but the gorgeous views were worth it.


[Erzsebet Lookout Tower -- recently renovated and restored]

Instead of hiking down or walking back to the train and waiting half an hour for the next one, I read about a different option: the chair lift. There's a chair lift running from the base of the hill to the top. It takes about 15 minutes to travel in each direction. To get on, you stand in front of it, as the chair comes you sit down and pull the restraining bar down from over your head. And that's it. It's amazingly quiet. You can hear birds and animals in the forest as you ride down the hill.


[The Budapest Tourist Agency's picture of the chairlift]

After that, I just caught a bus back to Moszkva ter and my circuit was complete. All in about three and a half hours.

I headed back to my hotel to get my swimsuit and a towel and then it was up to the Szechenyi Gyogyfurdo, or the Szechenyi Public Spa. I came here last year and really enjoyed it; I wanted to make sure I spent more time there this year. After changing into my bright orange and yellow flame-striped bathing trunks (which always gets funny reactions from people in Eastern Europe), I headed out to the main pool (see picture at top). The hot pool with the fountain is for waders, while the big swimming pool in the middle requires a bathing cap.

After about 15 minutes of being burnt by the sun (very bright today, no sign of yesterday's storm), I headed inside to the thermal pools. I spent the next two hours moving from pool to pool, just soaking. After about two hours I headed back to the outside pools, and found a place where I could float in the shade.

I was getting ready to head inside when I realized I had never checked out what was on the other side of the main swimming pool. It turned out to be another wading pool, but this one was a little different. The water was a little bit cooler, and there were two concentric tiled rings in the middle. The outer ring seemed plain, but the inner circle was a jacuzzi, so I found a place inside when someone got up to leave. It was like a cool jacuzzi, with all the bubbles but none of the heat. After about five minutes, though, it stopped, and everyone sighed and got up to leave.

I was about to head inside to change, however, when I noticed something odd about the outer ring: it had been transformed into a whirlpool. I got back in and let the current whip me around. Water was jetting into the circle to create a strong current. It was a blast. After that, I went inside and changed and went home to change for dinner.

A good friend who knows a great deal about wine recommended the restaurant Voros es Feher on Andrassy utca as a good place for a meal and wine. I found it, although I think they have recently changed their name to Classe, and just had an absolutely wonderful meal.

I ordered the duckbreast (medium) over chantarelle risotto with grilled vegetables. To drink, I got a Weninger (red wine) and a bottle of mineral water. The duck was excellent, not fatty at all, and very tasty. In the future, though, I think I may order it medium rare. The risotto was wonderful as were the veggies. The wine paired nicely with the duck (though less so with the risotto).

I decided to order a dessert and thought the cottage cheese pudding with lemon mousse sounded light and interesting. It was. The lemon mousse had the consistency and appearance of light whipped cream, but a nice lemon taste. The pudding, which I really had no idea what to expect, was creamy and there were little specks of real vanilla bean in it. The combination with the lemon worked very well. The whole thing came to 4000 Hungarian Ft. (a little more than $20); not bad at all. Well worth visiting if you're in Budapest.

Tomorrow morning, I'm going to catch the train to Esztergom (assuming the weather holds).

Summer Storms

Well, this blog entry is a little later than I expected it to be. It turns out that unlike, say, Vienna, where internet cafés stay open til midnight, in Budapest, the ones in Belváros close at 7pm, living me unable to post anything until today.

Yesterday morning began very warm and just got hotter. I took care of business first: getting my sleeper cabin to Kraków for Sunday night and my three-day metro pass. Then it was off to the Dohány Synagogue. I decided to skip the synagoge tour since I had done that last year, opting instead for the neighborhood tour. In the meantime, I walked though the synagogue and museum on my own.


[Dohány Synagogue -- the largest synagogue in Europe]

I met up with the tour guide and the family he was showing around and we headed on our way. The tour guide, Janos, is the son of Holocaust suvivors. He told me later that he only leads these groups a few times a week because he finds the subject emotionally difficult. When he found out that I teach the Holocaust he asked me about how we know how many people were killed, particularly in the Soviet Union. I explained the problems historians have in getting accurate statistics and why, particulary for the Soviet Union, it's such guesswork.

We walked through the old ghetto as he pointed out various landmarks such as the Bet Midrash, the mikveh, the Orthodox and Status Quo synagogues (the latter being somewhat comparable to Conservative). I chatted with the family on tour with me. They were Jews from Palo Alto, and the father is the son of a survivor from Czestochowa. They were on their way to Prague and then to Kraków for the Jewish Festival, so I'm sure to see them again in about a week. The wife asked about places to eat in Prague, so I recommended my favorite restaurant and the ice cream parlor in the Lucerne Passaze (though I'm not sure my directions to the latter -- make a left at the statue of King Wenceslas sitting on an upside down dead horse hanging from the ceiling -- inspired much confidence).

My part of the tour ended at the Rumbach synagogue, and headed up to Klauzal ter, which was the central square in the ghetto, for lunch at a restaurant that was supposed to have good Jewish-style food. I walked in and immediately recognized it as a place I had eaten at last year (they have bottles of seltzer on the table). I ordered the boiled beef with potatoes and sour cherry sauce. The food came quickly and was pretty good. I also managed to have two glasses of seltzer (though the first time I splashed it all over the wall behind me by mistake).

On the way to the tram I ran into the tour guide again. He told me he teaches business at the university and he has an anti-Semitic student. How do you know he's anti-Semitic, I asked. Because he's always bringing up outside comments on things, such as, the Jewish conspiracy is behind such and such economic problem. He told me that when he was at the dentist's office two days ago, he heard a young man proudly proclaim to his girlfriend that he was a fascist. The second time he said it even louder and a man to his right went up and punched the young fascist.

At the same time, he thought that the Jewish community in Budapest painted with too broad a brush when they warned of imminent fascism in Hungary. Part of the issue, it appears, is that some far-right groups want to bring back the old pre-war flag, one that is associated with the anti-Semitic Horthy government. At that point, unfortunately, he had to get on his tram, so I missed hearing more about that.

From that point is was on to the Holocaust Memorial museum that I visited last year. I wanted to time my way through it and pick up any materials they might have that I can use in my research project on post-communist Holocaust memorialization. They had a book with the text of the major displays, so I made sure to buy that, and I mailed it back home this morning, along with a book on Hundertwasser and a guide to the Jewish Quarter of Budapest.

[A little pricey at the post office, by the way, and I had a bit of a scare. I didn't have a lot of Hungarian forint on me (about 3300), but I thought that would be enough for one package. I asked the clerk how much it would be and she slapped a stamp on and said 3900. Crap. I didn't have enough. I asked if she would take a credit card, and she pointed to the ATM. Crap. Crap. Crap. I had a lot of troubles last year in Budapest with my ATM card. Well, here goes nothing I though, but low and behold, it worked.]

By the time I got through the museum, my feet were tired and sore, so I thought now would be a good time to visit one of the spas in Budapest. I went back to the hotel, grabbed a bathing suit, and headed to the Buda side. My first thought was the Király, but, it turns out, they are closed til September. I caught a tram and headed to the Rudas, at the base of the Buda hills.

As always, it's a little confusing, as each spa does it a little differently. There's no single price. You pay based on what time you arrive, and then that price is adjusted when you leave; if you leave early you get a refund, if late, then you pay a little more.

I found a changing booth and put my clothes inside, but I couldn't lock it. Finally someone explained that I had to take the plastic credit card I was handed when I arrived into a slot on the door, which in turn will allow me to remove the key, locking in my stuff.


[The main pool at the Rudas Spa -- note Turkish ceiling]

The Rudas has recently been renovated and cleaned up. It was very popular (perhaps because two of the other spas on this side -- the Király and the Rac -- are closed for renovations). There are steam rooms and saunas off to the side, but the temperature inside was scalding, so I pretty much kept to the main pool. After an hour and a half, I felt relaxed (and a little bit hungry), so I left to get some dinner.

It was close to 7pm, so I headed up to Bagolyvár. It was still quite warm, so I was seated in the back garden area. I decided to order alá carte, as I wanted to try the salmon and the cold sour cherry soup. While this doubled the cost of my meal (from 3000 forint to 6000 ft) it was worth it to try. The soup was excellent and the fish was good (and it was nice to have some well-prepared green vegetables (brocolli and brussel sprouts). I was just getting ready to order dinner when suddenly I noticed it was getting dark.

It's only 8 pm, I thought, it shouldn't get dark for another hour yet. I looked up at the sky and noticed it was suddenly full of thick clouds. As the wind picked up, I noticed other guests looking worridly at the sky. The staff unfurled the awning over the diners, so I relaxed, and shifted my chair to make sure I was fully under the awning. Nonetheless, diners started moving inside to the main dining room. As the wind picked up, some people told me that because the wind was so strong, they couldn't keep the awning up, and were about to furl it. I headed inside too.

Less than a minute later, the storm broke, with lightening, wind, and heavy rain (though very little thunder). It took them a while to get their bearings again, and eventually I ordered my dessert: what they called in English "Viennese Crumbs," or what I know better as Kaiserschmarren. These are basically scrambled pancakes, but they made them somewhat different, topping them with apricot jam. They were fine.

I wanted to pay my bill with my credit card, but the machine wouldn't work, so I paid in cash instead (hence my lack of funds this morning). The temperature had dropped dramatically by the time I left, and while the rain had stopped, lightening was flashing through the clouds as I reached Hero's Square and the Metro. I headed to downtown Pest to use the internet cafés, but you all know that story already.

The weather has put some uncertainty in my plans. It is partly sunny today, though much cooler. If the good weather persists, I'm going to take the cogwheel train up into the Buda Hills and take a ride on the children's railway. More later (if I can).

Budapest on the Last Day of Spring

[Gerbeaud Cafe in Budapest]

So I ended up skipping the Kleines Cafe last night as they didn't have any room and went around the corner to Gigerl instead. They have a nice outdoor cafe, with plenty of wine. I had a nice piece of schnitzel and some good Gruener Veltliner (a white austrian wine).

This morning I headed off to the Jewish museum after checking out. Got there a little before 10 when they opened, but got in anyway. I saw discounts for students and teachers, and so asked about professors of history. Got it! The main historical exhibit is on the second floor and is unusual in that it is entirely holographic: 21 separate displays on various aspects of Vienna Jewish history. With the audio guide, it took close to an hour to go through all the displays. By that point I had little time for the actual artifacts display on the 3rd floor (which are mostly about introducing aspects of Judaism and Jewish culture for a non-Jewish audience). Then I headed out for the guided tour of the only Vienna synagogue to survive Kristallnacht.

Of course, there is the complicated security check to get into the building. How I'm going to do with this with 15-20 students, I'll have to figure out in the future. The synagogue was constructed in 1825 when the law forbade all non-catholic houses of worship from being free-standing buildings; instead they had to be camouflaged from the street. Ironically, this saved the synagogue because the Nazis couldn't burn it without taking out the whole city block of apartments. Here's a view of what the inside looks like:


[Stadttempel, Vienna (designed by an architect who made theaters -- really)]

The tour (mostly a historical lecture in the sanctuary) took about half an hour. That left me a little less than an hour to eat lunch and take care of all monetary issues before I left Vienna.

I headed to the Buffet Trzesniewski for lunch. This is a tiny hole-in-the-wall that serves open-faced sandwiches. Each is about 1" wide and 2 and a half" long. You can get tiny 1/8 Liter beers, but I had a diet coke instead. Here's what the food looks like:


[Buffet Trześniewski]

I had the "egg and egg" (hard boiled egg slice on top of egg salad), "smoked lachs" (lox on something similar to cream cheese), and "matjes and onion" (chopped herring with onion). Actually it was light and filling.

After that I decided to splurge a little with one last visit to Aida Cafe. There I had one last melange and a slice of kokostorte. This has a base of dry chocolate cake with a thick layer of coconut filling, topped with a thin icing of chocolate. It looks like this:


[Kokostorte at Aida Cafe]

After that it was back to the hotel to pick up my luggage and then to the Westbahnhoff to catch my train. Even if today is the last day of spring, it sure feels like summer already. Temperatures in both Vienna and Budapest are around 33 (low 90s F). The train was mostly empty so there was plenty of room to stretch out, but not much A/C.

Got to Budapest and checked in to the hotel. I turned up the A/C in the room so that it's nice and cool when I get back tonight. Then it was off for an early dinner. It didn't make much sense to buy a day-long metro pass until tomorrow, but I nearly made an expensive mistake. Because I was buying just single tickets, I didn't realize you needed them for each leg of the trip. I didn't find that out until I had transferred. Thankfully I wasn't stopped.

I got to Bagolyvar a little after 6pm, and the restaurant was mostly empty (people have dinner a little later). I was seated on the outside patio and ordered the daily menu special. This was a starter of a beef broth soup with carrots and thin noodles. That was followed by pork stew over a type of pasta made by grating the dough over boiling water. It was light and not at all fatty. The dessert was a sort of palaschinka: a crepe-like pancake filling with chopped walnuts and raisins soaked in rum, topped with chocolate sauce and powdered sugar. It was all very good (and I was sure to pick up plenty of restaurant cards for a friend of mine in Long Beach who requested them).

After that I went to the Opera to find out what is showing this week, but unfortunately, it's dark until Sunday night when I leave. The Operetta, however, is showing something called "Rudolf." I looked it up just now and it's an original piece getting its first production. As it's likely in Hungarian without subtitles, however, I think I may skip it.

I then walked all the way to Vorosmarty ter to walk off dinner. I had a diet coke and Eszterhazy torta in Gerbeaud. I wanted to see if they make it differently than I do. My mother always complains that the buttercream is too rich, and theirs is defintely lighter. I may have to tone down mine. Oddly enough, there was an open-air concert of Mexican folk music opposite the cafe.

Anyway, I haven't decided yet what I'm going to do tomorrow. At some point, I'm taking the "Children's Railway" through the hills of Buda, and I'm definitely going to do a side trip to Esztergom. I also have to find a way of visiting the spas every day.

Boring Bratislava

[Australian Aboriginal art]

This is not an entry that's going to win me any accolades from the Slovakian tourism ministry (assuming there is such a thing).

I headed off for Slovakia this morning, sharing the train car with a Malaysian Catholic priest taking a break from his masters studies in family therapy at the university of Dublin, to visit friends in Bratislava. Oddly, the border guards on both sides didn't stamp our passports, but only just inspected them, as we crossed from Austria into Slovakia (same thing on my return, too).

Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, is not exactly welcoming to tourists. Only as I was waiting for my return train to Vienna did I find the tourist information booth (in a small room off a corridor branching to the left from the first hall you come to as you come up from the platform). I knew the Jewish Cultural History Museum was a fifteen-minute walk from the station, but in which direction? I decided to take a bus towards the center.

I managed to buy a bus ticket and got off in the main square opposite the presidential palace. On the map I looked at last night, the museum looked like it was just off the Danube river, so I made my way down towards it.

The city isn't as bad as you might think: many of the buildings in inner Bratislava are fin-de-siecle beaux arts style constructions. I found my way to St. Michael's Gate, which is the entrance to the Stara Mesto (the old town).


[Michelska Brana]

From there, I headed down to the Old Town Square, but at no point did I find the street I was looking for: Zidovska ulice (Jews' Street), where appropriately enough, the Museum of Jewish Cultural History is located. I asked for directions, knowing that I would understand none of the answers: I just went off in the direction they pointed, and whenever I came to a fork in the road, I asked someone else. I finally found the museum, not where it was listed on the map, but instead at the bottom of Bratislava Castle.


[Bratislava Castle]

I went in and paid the 200 Sk for a ticket (about $9). For that, I could see five small rooms. Actually, the museum is quite pathetic, but it's of significant value for my research and well worth the money in that regard.

The first room was the most important for me. Besides the 5 or 6 cabinets of Jewish ritual objects, there was a display on Slovakian Jewish history. It begins with some speculation that since the Romans came here in the 2nd Century, there might have been some Jews who came at the same time. Eventually we leave the realm of myth and make our way towards the present. Finally we come to the Holocaust, and the brevity of the display was breathtaking. I jotted down some notes on the text for use in my article:

Anti-Semitism in Slovakia in the 1930s was the result of "national tension between the Czechs and Slovaks."

"The Slovak State emerged under the tutelage of Berlin," in 1939, and this led to the destruction of Jewish life in Slovakia.

After the war, the majority of Slovakian Jews, who were survivors, left the country by 1949.

Entirely absent from these brief statements are the following facts:

That Slovakia was ruled by Monsignor Josef Tiso and leader of the Slovak People's Party. Under his leadership, Slovakia closely aligned itself with Nazi anti-Semitic policies, and Slovakia was the first Axis partner to agree to the deportation of Jews in March 1942. In 1942, there were some 88,951 Jews in Slovakia. Over the next several months Slovakian police deported some 57,000 of them to Slovakian-run labor and concentration camps. From there, they were sent to the newly constructed extermination camps in Poland. Over the course of the war, some 70,000 Slovakian Jews were deported to Nazi camps, with over 60,000 of them murdered.

Just a tiny omission.

To be fair, the Slovakian government has established a memorial museum to the fate of Slovakian Jews in the Holocaust. You can find it in the restored synagogue in Nitra. Go ahead, try to find Nitra on a map. Try to find the train schedule to Nitra. When I got back to Vienna, I looked it up on Deutsches Bahn. It only takes 2 hours and 15 minutes, with one change of trains. Nitra is a tiny, out-of-the-way town, 99% of tourists who come to Slovakia will miss it.

The next four rooms in the museum are on Jewish customs, publishing, and a small memorial to Slovakian rabbis who died in the Holocaust. In fact, the museum was so small, I thought I missed something, so I checked with the cashier who said, no, that was all of it.

After that, I had lunch and headed back to the train station. On the train, I met some American college students who had spent two full days in Bratislava. I asked them what they did all that time. "People watch," was their answer. There really wasn't that much to do in the city.

Back in Vienna, I went to the Albertina to see their wonderful exhibit on "Die Brücke." Over 280 works by these artists, larger I think that the exhibits at the museum of the same name in Berlin. Just a terrific collection. Here's one of my favorites, by Karl Schmidt-Rottluff:


[Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, "Du und Ich," a wedding present to his wife]

I also checked out their special exhibit on Australian Aboriginal art, a new artistic movement that has emerged since the 1980s. You can see an example of what this art looks like at the top of this entry.

Then I headed to the Aida Cafe in Stephansplatz to have some kaffee und kuchen. The kaffee was a melange, the kuchen was a slice of Cardinalschnitte Schokolade. This has a layer of lady fingers on the bottom, then a thin layer of raspberry jam, then a one-inch thick layer of light chocolate mousse, followed by another layer of raspberry jam, and topped off with lady fingers and dusted with powdered sugar. Just delicious. I had a nice time, eating my cake, sipping my coffee, and reading Hannah Arendt on totalitarianism (I think I may propose a special topics graduate class on totalitarianism in modern European history).


[Cardinalschnitte Schokolade, as shown at the Aida Cafe website]

Now it's back to the hotel and then to dinner. I'm going to try to have something light at the Kleines Cafe. Tomorrow afternoon, it's off to Budapest.

Hundertwasser

[A painting by Friedensreich Hundertwasser]

After a nice breakfast, I left this morning for my train to upper Austria. The ride was beautiful: we would pass through small, rural valley to forest-covered hills. For a while it looked like it would rain, but it eventually cleared.

After I arrived at the small train station, I passed up the chance to take a taxi, perferring the exercise of the 5 km walk. The footpath led through the small town and down to the Danube for about 3 kms. There were lots of cyclists, as this is one of the major cycling routes in the region. Eventually, the path wound through the rural outlying parts of the town and up into the hills. The path was shaded by trees, and there was the sound of songbirds happily chirping. Every now and then I would pass some chickens or sheep. Eventually I reached the top of the hill were I could get a clearer picture.


[View of upper Austria] (As you can see, I was finally able to upload a few pictures from my camera)

And when I turn in the other direction:


[View of Mauthausen Concentration Camp]

Just as it was in Poland, it is hard to reconcile such places of monstrous evil, cruelty and suffering in areas of such great peace and beauty. I suppose it´s a variation on the pathetic fallacy: we assume the natural world will reflect human actions and emotions. Instead, it is just juxtaposed against them.

This camp was opened after the Anschluß in 1938, and was intended as a punishment camp for political prisoners the Nazis wished to "exterminate through labor." Towards that end, prisoners were to be worked to death in the quarry. Once they died from exhaustion or some other punishment, their bodies were burned in the camp crematoria:


[one of the crematoria at Mauthausen]

The camp itself is quite small. Many of the barracks have disappeared, and the rest are undergoing restoration to save them. The museum is entirely in German, though there is a good audio guide to the camp. Surpringly, there is almost nothing vegetarian in the snack shop at the entrance. Those wishing to avoid unkosher meat (including in the pizza) should bring their own food.

After about an hour I headed back to the trainstation and to Vienna. I needed a break from the regimentation and destruction of the Nazi period, so I went to KunstHausWien to see their Friedensreich Hundertwasser collection.

There´s so much I would like to say about him, but I´m running short on time. Let me just say that whereas most post-war art sees itself as a critique of the evils of western society that led to the Holocaust and WWII, Hundertwasser wants to create art that imagines a future that moves beyond the totalitarianness of reason.

In his paintings, his architecture, and his writing, he embraces a holistic vision of humans moving away from the straight line and embracing the uneven, the curved, the green. Instead of bauhaus, he wants baumhaus; he has trees growing out of his buildings at each floor. He calls them "tree tenants," who pay their rent in providing shade, oxygen, and purification.

I think his art particularly appeals to children in that he very much in touch with his inner child. There is an immense playfulness to his work. This was very much what I needed after witnessing at Mauthausen what happens when adult rationality is taken to its horrific limits.

Here are some examples of his amazing creativity (downloaded off the internet,since no photos are permitted in the gallery):





After a very happy hour wandering through the gallery I had a quick bite to eat in their cafe. It has some very good reviews, but I guess I went their too late in the day. I enjoyed the cream of aspargus soup, but all their vegetarian specials were gone, so I ended up with some rather pedestrian pasta bolognese.

For dessert, I went to Cafe Hawelka near Stephansdom. This is a small, literary cafe, and by 10pm, they were only serving drinks. "No nachspeise?" I asked. "Buchteln," he answered. These are the specialty of the cafe. I ordered some and a melange.

The Buchteln are usually described as doughnuts, but they are more like large pieces of monkey bread. The filling tasted a little too sweet and a little too tart to be either chocolate or poppyseed, so I'm guessing prune. They were very good, as was the coffee. With the extra energy, I've been able to finish this post and do some research on Bratislava.

I'm also going to try to visit the Stadttemple on Wednesday, before my train to Budapest. There are guided tours at 11:30 am, and my train wouldn't leave until 1:52 pm, so it's doable, if I can find the place to get tickets.

Sunny Vienna

[Frantisek Kupka, "Form of Yellow (Notre Dame)," (1911)]

Well, it's back to relearning the German and Austrian keyboard, with their 'y's and 'z's in the opposite position. Please be patient with any of my misspellings.

I got to Vienna with no problems. Though, I would have been happier if I didn't have to share my seat with two Americans hacking up phlegm for 4.5 hours, and a Czech man sitting opposite me who kept trying to push my feet back so he could have not only his space but half of mine too (I did not back down, and although he repeatedly tested to make sure I was still vigilant, he eventually ceded the territory to me).

Vienna is much sunnier and warmer than when I was here last year. Then it was cloudy, cool, and drizzly. I reached my hotel with no difficulty and checked into my room, which is on the first floor, overlooking a quiet side street.

I had a little time to do some museum visiting so I headed over to MuMoK (the Museum of Modern Art). I had come here last year, but much of the floors were closed while they set up a new installation. And wouldn't you know it, the same is true this year! Still, they had a few floors open, so I headed up to 8 to see excerpts from their permanent collection, covering the period between WWI and WWII. It was terrific!

They had some great pieces, including a beautiful Kupka painting called "Stärke Essay," but of course, no postcards available (I've posted a picture done by him that is vaguely similar at the top -- though the one in the museum looked more like a roiling stream of lava eruption hitting the ocean and erupting in steam). There were also some great examples of Soviet avante garde works from the 1920s, and two beautiful and moving collages by Friedl Dicker-Brandeis. Here's one of them:


[Friedl Dicker-Brandeis, "Anti-Capitalist Poster" (1931)]

She was an important artist of the 1920s and 30s, who was imprisoned by the Nazis in the Theresienstadt Ghetto. There she taught children art as a way of helping them cope with the stresses of ghettoization. While she perished with her husband in Auschwitz, much of the work of her young students is now on display in museums in Prague and Terezin.

The post-war materials was stuff I had seen last year and really doesn't interest me that much, so I decided to try to find an ATM that would take my card and just enjoy the ambiance of Vienna. I walked down ultimately to the Stephansdom, where I found an ATM that works (I can only use ATMs attached to banks, apparently).

After that I headed for dinner at Cafe Sperl. This is one of the older cafe houses in Vienna, founded in 1880 (I sat inside on one of the original upholstered window benches, I think). The cafe was mostly empty inside, with most sitting outside on the patio, but I wanted to experience this old classic cafe.


[Cafe Sperl. I sat up towards the front and on the right]

Service was not so much slow as gentle. I ordered the schnitzel and a glass of wine. The schnitzel was excellent, with the veal breaded with sesame, sunflower, and pumpkin seeds, and accompanied with a red current side (the way we in America might put a small dollop of cranberry sauce). There was also a salad of greens with small sliced and cooked potatoes in a kind of mustard sauce. All very good. For dessert I ordered a melange (basically the Viennese equivalent of cafe au lait) and some topfen (cheese) strudel. All of it was very good. Including tip, the whole thing came to about 20 euros, or about what I paid for dinner last night in Prague. I didn't get as much here, but then, Vienna is a more expensive city.

Tomorrow I head out early for Mauthausen. As much as I wish I didn't have to go and could stay here and museum hop (why do I alway book one day less in Vienna than I should?), this is an essential part of this trip. If I hope to take students there next year, I need to go there first myself. Unfortunately, while next year I will take a charter bus, this time I have to spend 2.5 hours on the train and then walk the 5km to the camp (and back). If I hope to have any time tomorrow evening visiting the KunstHausWien (open til 7pm, and half price on Mondays!) I need to leave here by 8:36.

To make this quicker tomorrow, I went to the train station tonight and bought my tickets for tomorrow. I also timed it so I know what time I have to leave the hotel tomorrow morning to make the train (I'm leaving directly from breakfast).

Well, that's all for now. Hope you all have a happy father's day!

A Perfect Prague Postscript

Ok. For this time, no history, no theories, no intellectualizing. Just one of my food and travel meditations.

By now, I no longer need my guide book to navigate through Prague, so I mailed it and another book back to the U.S. this evening. Then I headed to my favorite restaurant in Malastranka for dinner.

Although it threatened rain and started to drizzle, it never really came down (I suppose that's because I had brought my umbrella). When I got to the Grill U Seminaristy, all the tables were full (since the four exposed tables weren't being used due to the drizzle). They said it would be a short wait, and I said no problem.

I decided that since I had spent all that money (really only $26, but in Prague that's 520 Kc) for so little, tonight I should spend at least as much for something good. I ordered the most expensive of the prix fixe menus: a starter of cheese and Czech salami, the beefsteak flambeed in cognac, and the apple strudel with ice cream for dessert. Oh, and a half liter of beer.

The complimentary aperitif tonight was something call Fernet, which is somewhat like Becherovka, but darker. The steak was excellent as always, with a nice crust and still somewhat pinkish red in the middle. I could choose whatever side dish I liked, so instead of the various forms of potato they suggested, I picked the steamed veggies.

When they flambe the steak, they have a little kitschy skit: the wheel out the flambe table, put on fire helmets, heat the cognac up, turn on the flashing light, and then ignite it. It's cute. A group of Italian guys, one of whom ordered it as well, actually participated in the skit (as all his buddies filmed it on their cell phones).

The strudel was good and the ice cream delicious. They asked if I wanted coffee but I was too full to eat any more. I paid (550 Kc with tip, or $27 U.S.).

There's nothing like a great meal (and plenty of alcohol) to make everything in the world seem perfectly lovely. I needed to walk off some of the food and beer, so I headed for the Charles Bridge. The clouds were gone and the sky was clear and blue, as the sun slowly made its descent over the Castle Hill.

At the far end some musicians in period costume were seranading the tourists lined up for the boat cruise. Last year, with the crowds, heat, and humidity, that would have annoyed me, but tonight I was just amused. I wasn't even bothered by the ubiquitous bands of drinking brits (and spaniards, and italians). I think I understand now why they have to be so loud and aggressive (there was one band of cockneys all dressed as superheroes). With so many more men than women in Prague, the guys need to do something to catch the girls' attention. I suppose all the alcohol is somewhat of a blessing for those unlucky in love.

Well, now it's time to pack and get ready for Vienna. I think I now understand why so many people love this city. Just don't come here in July.


[The Charles Bridge at sunset -- tonight the sky was much clearer than in this photo]

Nazis and Neo-Nazis

I had debated whether I should revisit Terezin (Theresienstadt) since I had gone there last year and seen most of it, but in the end, I figured I had to go, if only to time how long each segment would be with students. Having just gotten back, however, I'm now quite glad I did.

It was a short one-hour bus trip to Terezin. I got to the bus five minutes before departure and groaned when I saw how long the line was to board, and that all the seats were already taken. Luckily, I still got on, but spent the hour swaying back and forth while standing.

The museum and the exhibits have not noticeably changed from last year. I found myself paying more attention this time to the efforts of the children to create their own newspaper in the ghetto (called "Vedem"). The boys who founded it lived in the building that currently houses the main museum. The museum was much less crowded this time, and I was able to see the main exhibits in about an hour. I decided to skip the film (which I've already seen) and walk over the Madgeburg Barracks after a quick lunch.

The Magdeburg Barracks are devoted mostly to the artistic and literary productions of the prisoners in the ghetto. They have recreated one of the living sections to give visitors a sense of what it was like when crammed, literally, to the rafters, but the camera police were in full force, so no photos. In their absence, I've downloaded this poorer image off the internet:


[recreation of women's quarters in Madgeburg Barracks]

Down the hall is a room on composers who were imprisoned in the ghetto, including a display on Brundibar, the children's opera performed in the ghetto. Here's a copy of one of the posters that hung in the ghetto:


["Brundibar" -- composed by Hans Krasa]

If you want to hear the music, by the way, you need to ask one of the "wardens" whose job is to prevent people from taking pictures. They just flip a switch and you can hear excerpts from music composed in the ghetto.

Then there are several rooms of art done by prisoners in the ghetto. Many of these works were prepared in secret to document the real conditions in the "model" "old age home." Here's an example to give you a sense of what this art looks like:


[Leo Haas: "The Arrival of the Children from Bialystok" (1943)]

Several of these artists tried to smuggle their sketches to the visiting team from the International Red Cross in 1944, but the Red Cross guests were wholly taken in by the Germans, and the artists were arrested and charged with distributing "propaganda of horror." Most were either murdered in the Small Fortress or died later in Auschwitz. Haas was one of the few who survived.

I did manage to get one snap shot of a stage set in a room devoted to theater productions in the ghetto (the wardens were off at the time, though one came rushing up 20 seconds later -- I guess she heard the camera shutter, I just acted like nothing had happened). I wanted to buy the video of a performance of "Brundibar," but all the DVDs were in PAL format, which doesn't work in America.

After about a half an hour, I headed towards the Small Fortress, which I had only partially visited the last time. On the way there, I checked out the cemetery to see if there had been any changes to the way the memorial was constructed. The plinths on which writing had originally been affixed are still bare, but I noticed this time that the sign "National Cemetery," still is on the front.


[The Star of David, which was added since the 1989. When the cemetery was constructed, between 1945 and 1954, it was marked only with a large wooden cross, which still stands in the middle of what is almost entirely a Jewish cemetery]

I skipped the museum exhibit on the history of the Small Fortress and the Theresienstadt construction, as I'd seen that the last time. Instead, I took the walking tour of what is essentially a nineteenth-century prison facility. At one point, the path goes through a half kilometer-long "connecting corridor," which traces the original fortifications of the structure. That's about a quarter mile of a narrow, low-roofed tunnel, lit either by bulbs or by small, very narrow windows. Every time I thought I'd reached the end, the exit was barred by a locked gate, and I had to continue further into the tunnel. Finally, I reached the point where the light at the end of the tunnel actually led to an open door and I could finally exit.

This was at the site of the execution grounds within the Small Fort. Again, the place was marked by the concrete outlines of three crosses on the ground, in a place where 90% of the people killed were Jewish. After that the path led back into the Fort, where I had the opportunity to watch a short video form 1965, mostly based on the propaganda films shot by the Germans. It ended, however, with the "El Malei Rachamim" prayer for victims of the Holocaust, and in that time and place, it brought me suddenly to tears.

I was getting ready to head back and only had one last area to visit, when I suddenly noticed a group of about half a dozen Czech men, all but two with shaved heads, who were wearing combat-style fatigue pants, coming into the exhibit room. At least two had t-shirts with the word "hate" printed on them (as part of phrases I couldn't quite make out), while a third had on a black t-shirt which had two guns in red on the front and something about before the last war written on it. Although I can't be sure, as I don't speak Czech, I think they were neo-Nazis or Czech skinheads. I didn't want to get too close (one had what looked like a shiv attached to his belt), but they were clustered around a display on Nazi officers who had served at a Nazi forced labor facility a few miles away.

I was surprised to see Czechs embracing a group that had occupied and enslaved their own country, but I suppose that just as a small number of victims of abuse come to identify with their abusers and become perpetrators themselves, perhaps it could also be true of peoples.

I left and headed back to the main ghetto, stopping off to see the memorial to where the ashes of those who had died in the ghetto and had then been cremated were dumped in the Ohre River. This is another one of those communist-era monuments where there is nothing Jewish-specific at the site.

It got me thinking about the research paper I'm working on concerning post-communist holocaust memorializations. I think of it now as a series of layers building on top of one another. At the bottom, the first layer, are the memorials created by the communists prior to 1989 (though even within this group, there are subtle differences). In most cases, the Jewish specificity of the victims are elided in favor of a more generic "victims of Nazi persecution."

The next layer are those modifications or additions added or made by the state since 1989. In some cases this meant taking away problematic texts or amending them. In other cases, as with the Small Fortress cemetery, it meant adding Jewish symbols to an existing memorial.

The third layer are new memorials created by the state in places where there were none previously, posing the problem of how local collaboration with the Nazis should or should not be depicted.

Finally, there is the top most layer, which are memorials or symbols created by Jews and/or Jewish organizations.

I saw several of these at the Columbarium. To the right of the entrance is the old communist-era memorial, with its generic reference to "25,000 persons" who died in the ghetto (in Czech, Russian, German, English, and French). Then inside is the new text which is much more Jewish specific. Finally, the walls are lined with plaques added by German and Austrian cities, from whence Jews had been sent, as well as smaller plaques put up by individual Jewish families.

After that I was ready to head back. There was only one last bus, which came at 3:43 pm. A group of 20 German students were waiting, along with a dozen others, and almost every seat on the bus was taken before it arrived. I managed to get on, and get the last seat. Since it was the last bus of the day, the driver kept stopping and trying to find ways of shoving in more passengers. I thought the bus would plotz before we ever reached Prague. Proof, if I ever needed any, that if I take student here, I will need to rent a bus.

Anyway, there are to hotel guests waiting to use the computer, so I will sign off for now. Tonight it's back to my favorite restaurant in Malastranka and then tomorrow I head for Vienna.

Splurging

After I woke up from my nap yesterday, I headed out to Malastranka to have dinner in a restaurant I very much enjoyed last year. Called Grill U Seminaristy (according to their card their address is U. Luzickeho seminaire 13 -- but its easier to remember that they are in the shadow of the Charles Bridge), this place does a great trade catering to tourists, particularly Americans.

First of all, they offer you a nice chilled shot of becherovka right when you come in, and who doesn't like to receive free alcohol? The menus are very reasonably priced and the food is delicious. Best of all, the food is not Czech (more on that below).

I ordered the beefsteak, which I asked for medium rare (the waiter said "medium"? -- I guess many Americans order it that way -- and I said no, medium rare and then I added "a point," as the French say). The starter was gravlox with bread and butter. The steak was accompanied by french fries cooked just right: hot and crispy. Dessert was assorted ice cream. I ordered a beer to accompany it and of course, that meant the standard half liter size. While they accept credit cards, they would prefer cash (to avoid the charges), and the whole meal came to 350 krona (to which I added 40 as a tip). All in all, less than $20 for an excellent meal.

I'm really unsure on whether and how much to tip here. My guidebook is particularly useless on this question as it says that service is included, but that Czechs often round up (to what?), but foriegners are expected to tip 10%.

After such a big meal, I walked back across the Charles Bridge. Even though this is the second most touristed place in Prague (after the Old Town Square), it was relatively empty -- at least compared to last year. It had rained briefly earlier, so the sky was clean and clear, with the Castle Hill dramatically silhoutted against the clouds. It was a beautiful evening.

This morning, I got up early to head out to Karlovy Vary. I wasn't sure whether I should go again this year; I would hate for this trip to become too repetitive. But I decided that I should try new stuff there. I headed further up the stream into the heart of the town. I had a nice, light lunch in an open-air cafe near the river, with the beautiful nineteenth-century buildings rising up the hills above me on either side. I went light, so ordered the schnitzel menu, which came with a small bowl of cabbage soup (flavored with what my great-grandmother would have called soup wurstchens), and with a small salad. The dessert (listed only as frische obstkuchen -- fresh fruit cake) turned out to be a torte with peach slices topped with powdered sugar and chocolate sauce -- an unusual combination.

Then it was time to go to the spa. Last year I went to Lazne III -- the old, proletarian public spa; this year I wanted to splurge. I tried the Grand Hotel Pupp -- one of the fanciest hotels in town -- but they told me their spa was for guests only. Going online, I had seen references to the Castle Spa, but I couldn't find it. I had resigned myself to going back to Lazne III, when I finally happened upon it.


[Entrance to the spa -- it looks a little different in person]

I best combination available to me was the "Classic" three-hour spa treatment. For only 42 euros, I could choose one "major" treatment and two "minor" treatments. I chose the "pearl bath" (literally "bubble" bath in czech), the "electroaerosol inhalation," and the "Kneipp hydrotherapy."

I got into my bathing suit and then wrapped myself in the bathrobe and headed to the pool. They started me off right away with the "electroaerosol inhalation." That's where they put you in a small stone-lined room with these hissing aerosol jets, which are pumping the mineral water into the atmosphere. It feels slightly humid, but isn't damp like a steam room. You're supposed to breathe it in so that it improves your sinuses and lungs.

After that I went swimming in their pool, and then it was time for my "pearl bath." I wasn't sure what to expect (see photo below)


[the "pearl bath" in their brochure]

I basically got into this large, plastic tub, naked, and then the attendent turned on the bubbles. It is a fifteen minute cycle as the bubbles basically stimulate circulation in your outer and inner legs, then your bottom, and finally your back and chest. It all felt a little silly at first, but I was sorry when the fifteen minutes were up. I didn't think it really did anything until I tried to get out of the tub and suddenly felt very, very heavy. I wasn't sure if I was exhausted or just very relaxed, and as I wondered what the difference was, I figured it was the latter, since when I'm exhausted I can't concentrate, but I didn't have any problems doing that then.

After that, I had a nice cup of fruit herbal tea. Around 3pm, they dimmed the lights and did a music and light show over the pool, so I got back in to watch.


[Here's what the pool looks like during the sound and light show]

The final therapy -- the Kneipp bath -- is walking between two very shallow pools, one extremely hot, the other cold. I could've done without that.

After that it was dodging the sudden thunderstorm back to the bus station and the 2 and a half hour bus ride home.

I wanted to have a nice moroccan dinner tonight, but couldn't find the restaurant. My second choice, the Kafka cafe, told me the kitchen was closed, so I ended up at an open-air cafe in the Old Town Square. I ordered the lamb, but it was so overcooked and covered with brown sauce and these tasteless slices of czech dumplings, they could've been serving me horsemeat. I decided to head back to the Municipal House Kaverna for some coffee and cake.


[Inside the Municipal House Kavarna]

I asked for some strudel and a cafe au lait, but the waiter wasn't sure if they had any strudel. After he left, another waiter brought the dessert tray around, so I ordered the black forest cake instead. Bad mistake. Not only was the cake horrible, but a few minutes later my waiter showed up with the strudel. Turns out they have two different dessert services, which are not coordinated. I ate the strudel and left over the cake.

I wanted to read my Hannah Arendt essays in the cafe so I could feel very middle European intellectual, but it was so hot from the overhead lights, I just paid my bill and left.

Prague Spring

I'm enjoying my trip to Prague much more this year than last's. First, it isn't nearly as crowded now in the middle of June as it was last year towards the middle of July. I've only seen two bands of british stag partiers (though perhaps with the weekend approaching, they may increase). The weather, while still somewhat warm, is not the hot, muggy nightmare of last summer. Finally, the air is perfumed, not with the stench, sweat, and (too often) the vomit of drunken college students on holiday, but with flowering trees. I'm not sure what it's called, but it smells faintly of night-blooming jasmine, only not as strong.

I spent the morning taking pictures of some of the great art nouveau and cubist buildings in Prague. I hoped to upload them, but I couldn't get the computer to read my pictures, but if I find one later that does, I'll upload them then.

On the way to the Cubist museum yesterday I passed by a strange storage container like structure, draped in black fabric, and with a long line of people waiting to get in. It took me a few moments, but I finally figured out it was a "cafe in the dark." I vaguely remembered reading about this fad a few months ago. The idea, as far as I can tell, is you pay a fee for the opportunity to eat and drink in pitch blackness. I'm guessing the waiters have night vision goggles to see the customers. I toyed with the idea of going in (for about 2 seconds) and decided to pass on it. I came back today to take a picture, but they were already disassembling it (it was a one-week special event).

I checked out the Cathedral of Our Lady Before Tyn, but they were having a mass inside. They barely had enough people for a minyan, and the Italian tourists photographing them ("no pictures, no pictures" pleaded the watchman in vain) outnumbered them five to one.

Then I headed down to the Jewish Museum to take a tour of the synagogues. I did this partly to time how long it would take with students, and partly to refresh my recollection of the place. For some reason, they start the tour path with the Pinkas synagogue, which, since it contains the memorial to the Holocaust, should rightfully come towards the end.

Pinkas is a good name for it since it contains the names of all the Czech Jews who died at the hands of the Nazis. I was surprised to notice that in the upper nave there are damaged names from the original installation of 1959. The design of this memorial was set out in the 1950s, but was closed after the "Prague Spring" was crushed in 1968. Only after the fall of communism in 1989 was the original museum restored. In this way, the exhibit parallels the fate of several holocaust monuments in Poland, which also were closed, damaged, or destroyed after 1967. The catalyst there, however, was partly the Six Day War, but also the purge of Jews from Poland.

What they have in common is that both campaigns were the result of new hardline positions within the respective communist parties. In Czechoslovakia, it was a product of the Soviet occupation and the neo-Stalinist government put in place in 1968. In Poland, it was an internal struggle between those who wanted a more liberal approach, and a group known as the Partisans, who combined an ethnic Polish nationalism with rigid communist ideology. But in both cases, the effect was the same regarding the Jews: suspicion and persecution.

Upstairs was the moving collection of children's drawings from Theresienstadt. It is impossible not to be moved to tears by these sketches, which are both childlike in their execution yet so adult in their subjects. The valiant artist-teachers who inspired these drawings did so to help the children cope with the horrors of life in what was a rather elaborate concentration camp. Most heartbreaking to me were the depictions of what the children most hoped for: a return to their homes or a new life in Palestine. The contrast between the dreamlike image of a parade of happy children with banners flying, marching back to Prague, or playing under the blue sky and hills of Erets Yisrael, and the nightmare fate that waited for almost all of them at the end of the deportion train to Auschwitz is unbearable.

From there I walked through the old Jewish cemetery to the house of the burial society. One of the most amazing things in this house is a cycle of paintings, excuted in the late 18th century, depicting the role of the burial society members, from visiting the sick to washing the dead, accompanying them to the grave, and then comforting the mourners. It is a wonderful way of teaching one of the greatest values in Judaism: about caring for the sick, honoring the dead, and consoling the living. Not for the first time, I wished there was some way to purchase a book containing the complete set of paintings (I know exactly who I'd give it to, too), but I can't find it anywhere for sale.

I did, however, find a couple of them on line, so I'm going to post them below.


[Praying with the dying]


[Washing the dead body]


[Consoling the bereaved]

From there I headed out to the other synagogues on the itinerary. At the Alt-Neue Schul, I finally heard the real reason for the odd name. When it was built in 1270, it was the "new synagogue." Over time, though, other new synagogues were built, and it became the old "new synagogue," hence its current name. I had davened here last time and never got to the women's gallery (for obvious reasons), but today I was told, you can only visit it during prayers, so I guess I'll never see it. The barrier between the main sanctuary and the women's gallery looks to be two feet of rock, and I was curious what the women could see from their section.

By the time I got to the Spanish synagogue, I was beginning to fade, and as I walked to the Meisl synagogue I knew I was beat. I had been going from synagogue to synagogue for two and a half hours and I had reached my limit. I've got to find out how logistically I can take students through all this. How do I get all their tickets in advance? Do I need to hire a guide? Oy.

I decided to have lunch at the cafe next to the very art nouveau Municipal Theater. It took a while for them to take my order and I began to get nervous. Only later did I realize that I had sat down by myself at a table for four, rather than at one of the smaller tables for one or two. The cafe was only a quarter full when I arrived, but soon filled up, and I felt bad about hogging a whole large table to myself.

I ordered the grilled chicken and some mineral water (which I downed in two gulps). The chicken was pretty good but I'm pretty sure it was cooked in fat back. The potato was boiled, cut in two, topped with sour cream, and cheese in to which was mixed some bacon, all of which was then browned in a broiler. I ordered a second water and then paid and left.

Although the meal plus tip came to $19, I figured I saved nearly that much today by passing off my faculty card as a student ID to get the discounts on museum entries.

From there I headed to the Mucha Museum, which is a lot of art nouveau. Pronounced "Mukha" (with a gutteral "h"), he was the premiere stylist of art nouveau in Paris and Prague. Tons and tons of ornate, curving posters. During the film of his life, though, I started to fade again. I decided I was museumed out for the day, and walked to a nearby cafe for an ice tea and ice cream sundae (I figured I was good at lunch with ordering relatively low fat entrees -- there was even a salad! -- so I could treat myself to a few calories). I read some of the new International Herald Tribune that I bought (more depressing news out of Iraq) and now I've come back to the hotel to take a nap before dinner.

The Wonderful World of Communism

On Wednesday afternoon I headed off to check out two small museums close by each other: the House of the Black Madonna and the Museum of Communism.

I had tried to visit the first last year, but it was closed because of a its A/C had shut down. It's one of the first Cubist buildings in the world.



[The House of the Black Madonna]

I'm still not sure the A/C was back on, but the building is marvelous. The museum is on three small floors and has sketches, paintings, sculptures, and even furniture all influenced by Cubism. There were photos of other Cubist-inspired buildings and they had a "Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" feel to them. I picked up a book on Cubist architecture and I'm mailing it to myself tomorrow, along with the catalog of the Otto Dix exhibit in Dresden, and Paulo Coehlo's "The Alchemist," which I read on the plane (a very light read and the punch line of the story comes right out of Eastern European Jewish fiction -- really!).

Then it was on to the Museum of Communism. I visited it last year and found it engaging and at the same time moving. What it lacks in nuance it makes up for in dry humor. I didn't take my camera today (sometimes it feels like a ball and chain), but I've downloaded some photos to give you a feel for what it is like.


[The sign for the museum]


[Typical museum exhibit]


[Recreation of the head of the Czech Secret Police's office]

There isn't a museum catalog per se (it's a private for-profit group), but they did have a cheaply printed text, which I bought to use in my research on post-communist holocaust memorials. While there's nothing about the holocaust in this museum, it fits into the larger question of dealing with the communist past.

I decided to try a vegetarian restaurant near the hotel for dinner. I had the mushroom/green bean "meat" balls in a white wine cream sauce over mashed potatoes, along with a bottle of czech beer. Not exactly low in starches. Instead of a second beer, I had a virgin mojito, which was pretty good (as was the main course, but too large a portion -- not that I had to finish it but, of course, I did).

Afterwards, I took a long walk down to the bottom of Wenceslas Square to enjoy the cool (if slightly humid) evening.

For Future Reference

[This picture was taken during commencment when we graduated our first major (it was just e-mailed to me).]


[This is an amazing piece in the Gruenes Gewoelbe (the Green Vault) that recreates the birthday of the moghul emperor.]


I was pretty tired yesterday afternoon, so I went to a brew-pub restaurant (I think it was called Watzke) in the Neustadt area, not too far from my hotel. I ordered the sauerbraten and a small beer. Too late, I remembered that I wanted to lose weight on this trip and drinking beer is no way to do that. On the other hand, I'm remembering that in Central Europe, beer is always the most affordable thing on the menu.

The sauerbraten was OK (my mom's is better), the potato dumpling mostly inedible, the red cabbage tasty, and the beer was pretty good. The weather started to look threatening (it had rained earlier in the afternooon) so I paid my bill and started to walk back. I was two and a half blocks away when it started to rain. I thought the weather had cleared up so I had left my umbrella in the room. No real damage done, thankfully, and it gave me a chance to work off some of my dinner by running out of the rain.

I stayed at the ANA Hotel because the hotel I stayed in last year had no availability. This one was a little cheaper and felt it. The bed was pretty saggy and I ended up sleeping on the edge against the wall, since no one normally slept there and the bed still had some support there. That being said, I slept about 9 hours last night, so it couldn't have been that bad.

Breakfast at the hotel was passable, nothing too exciting, and after checking out, I headed to the Gruenes Gewoelbe. The museum didn't open until 10am, but I was told to be there by 9 if I wanted to get tickets to the Historic section. There was already a long line, but I stood, and stood, and stood. The only excitement was the older German gentleman who arrived about 30 seconds after me and kept trying to nudge ahead of me in queue. I've shopped too many times at Eilat Market, however, to be caught off guard by a beginner, and I slowly maneuvered my body so as to force him to step back and recognize my priority.

After about an hour and a half of waiting I finally got in, only to find the that all the morning tickets had been sold and that they only had afternoon times still available. At that point, I had no choice but to go to only the New section. Even if I hurried through, I would barely make the later (2:46 pm) train to Prague. Besides, after standing for an hour and a half, I just couldn't face waiting all that extra time, so I limited myself to the New section.

Not that it felt like a compromise. The stuff they have there is stunning. It includes the world's largest green diamond, a mechanical clock of gilded silver and precious stones, which marks the seconds by descending ball of rock crystal, an ornate (and never used) coffee service of silver, gold, and crystal, and an incredibly detailed scale reproduction of the birthday celebration of the moghul emperor, complete with elephants and camels, all made out of gold, silver, and precious stones (it took eight years to complete).

Then I went back to the hotel (having done something I didn't do last year -- which was to master the Dresden tram system) and to the station where I took the train to Prague.

Last time I was in high summer; now it is late spring. The fields which were then brown are still green and the city, though slightly humid, is still comfortable. I had no trouble finding my hotel and I even remembered exactly how to turn out of the metro station. I noticed yesterday that this feels more like an extension of my last trip than a different one, and it's hard to imagine a whole year has passed since I was here last time.

Well, I'm off to the Cubist museum and then the Museum of Communism.

Safe and Sound in Dresden

This is the second time I've written this. I completed the entire entry, tried to attach a photo, and crashed the whole thing. I've tried to now add to the start of this entry.

Despite lots of delays (we nearly ran out of fuel after being in a holding pattern for an hour over Newark -- followed by two hours waiting on the tarmac in the second plane) I was finally on my way to Germany. I took an Ambien after dinner and managed to sleep over four hours -- an all-time record for me.

As a result, I didn't get to Dresden til about 3 pm on Tuesday. After checking into my hotel (about two blocks from the 18th century dairy I visited last year, I went in to the Altstadt. The Grünes Gewölbe (what my mother calls the world's biggest and most expensive tchochke collection) is closed on Tuesday, so I went to the Zwinger instead.

I really wanted to check out their small modern collection temporarily housed in the Old Masters Gallery. Until the work on the New Masters Gallery is finished, they have temporary excerpts in it. Right now, they are featuring work by Otto Dix, an important post-WWI German artist. Banned by the Nazis as "degenerate," his most powerful piece was the triptych titled "The War," which I've tried to show at the top of this post.

This just blew me away. It is by no means a pretty or comfortable piece to look at it, but in its raw power, in my opinion, it far exceeds that of Picasso's Guernica, composed 7 or 8 years later. It also anticipate, in its middle panel, the work of Francis Bacon. Worth the price of admission alone.

Well, time to get some dinner. Some of you have posted comments on this blog, which is fine, but I've set up a system where I moderate them. That means they don't get posted until I approve them. That way, I don't find out two months ago that you had something to say about what I wrote. That also means your comments won't appear until I approve them -- something I can only do about once a day or so. So don't panic or repost them several times wondering why you can't see them up yet.

I'm Leaving, On a Jet Plane

All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go. Well, almost.

I finally finished choosing my clothing. I try to remind myself that I have to live with my choices of shirts for the next thirty days. If I change my mind, my only option is to buy something new.

The last thing was deciding what books I want to read on my trip. I picked up Paul Coehlo's The Alchemist, mostly because I heard him interviewed on NPR yesterday morning. NPR is a pretty good arbiter of middle-brow tastes, and my tastes are about as middle-brow as they come. I happened upon a whole display of his books at Border's and I noticed that all of them had the blurb "by the internationally best-selling author of The Alchemist," so I figured it was his best work (or at least the most popular).

I wanted to balance something serious off against that, so I decided to bite the bullet and finally read Hannah Arendt. Most people assume I've read her work, but I focused much more on nineteenth-century thinkers and never quite got to her. I'm rather embarrassed by this, actually, and just nod when people mention her name, hoping I won't be called on to say anything substantive about her.

Anyway, this trip seemed like a good way to catch up, so I picked up The Portable Hannah Arendt; I'm hoping it lives up to its name.

I've got some crossword puzzles and the new Harper's on how to deal with the multiple failures of the Bush administration to keep me occupied on the flight. Then an Ambien to sleep on the overnight leg so I arrive in Germany fresh and alert.

So that's it. Monday morning my plane leaves for Newark bright and early at 8 am, God-willing with me on it. Next stop, Berlin.

Hasidic Trance

Last semester I taught Eastern European Jewish History and in our last class we looked at the afterlife of this culture. We focused on two aspects of this question: the resurgence of interest in Jewish culture in an Eastern Europe almost devoid of Jews, and the attempts to preserve or adapt this culture outside of Eastern Europe.

One of the oddest aspects of the latter is the adoption by a breakaway group of Breslov hasidim of a Moldovan trance song put out by a boy band called O-Zone. Popularly known as the "Numa Numa song," these hasidim have changed the lyrics to "Rebbe Nachman, Nachman may-Uman, Nachman may-Uman, Rebbe Nachman may-Uman" [Rebbe Nachman from Uman].

Now there is a longstanding hasidic tradition of taking secular or profane melodies and elevating and sanctifying them by giving them a religious meaning. In the old days, it was Ukrainian folk tones, now it's Moldovan electronica. What's even odder is that many of these Breslov hasidim aren't Eastern European at all, but mizrachi (Eastern) Jews who have embraced this offshoot.

So basically, we've got here Moroccan Jews dancing to Moldovan electronica in celebration of Ukrainian hasidic rebbe. I can't think of a better example of the dynamism of culture.

I'm posting below three clips of dancing Breslov hasidim.

The first is in Kikar Tziyon (Zion Square) in Jerusalem:



The second is on an Israeli highway after a minor traffic accident:



The third is at the annual Breslov pilgrimage to Rebbe Nachman's grave in Uman for Rosh Hashanah last year (note the mizrachi music and hip hop hasidic kid). It's a modern-day hasidic Woodstock:

Testing, testing

I'm getting ready for my trip this summer and I would like to experiment a bit with posting some photos. So here's a recent one of me at this year's commencement, all dressed up in my medieval robes.

Nearly Home (July 25)

Well, it's the end of a very long day.

Up at 4:40 am this morning to catch my flight, then two security checks at Frankfurt airport (passengers flying to England get an extra second, more intense round of metal detectors), then passport control and another security check in England, followed by customs and yet another security check in New York. At least this time, I was selected for the special chemical analysis check at each stop as I was on my outbound flight.

I'm staying with friends in West Los Angeles, before heading down to San Diego tomorrow to pick up my car. Then I'll head home to check out how my dorm room is doing in the summer heat and make sure my portable air conditioning unit is working after a two month rest.

That being said, the air felt cooler and dryer in LA than in Europe, so I think as a baseline, it's going to be better here.

The Beginning of the End (July 24)

Well, I've begun my trip home.

I managed to achieve my goals this morning, visiting the grave of Leopold Zunz and then making some last-minute purchases at KaDeWe.

No problems at Berlin Hauptbahnhoff getting my ticket, but I had someone help me through all the multiple screens of the automated system. This has to be one of the most complicated ticket-purchasing systems on the planet. After you finally figure out the first machine, you have to take the print out to the second where you actually pay for and receive the ticket.

My hotel in Frankfurt is only one u-bahn station from the hauptbahnhoff. I'm at the airport right now trying to pre-check in for my flight. That way, I'll only have to be at the airport by 6:00 am to go through the two security checks, as opposed to 5:30.

Unfortunately, they won't let me do early check in until after 7pm, so it looks like I'm going to have dinner here while I wait. As long as it isn't McDonald's; so far I've avoided all American chain restaurants during my entire trip to Europe.

Wannsee (July 23)

Well, out of the frying pan into the fire. We have exchanged high heat for high humidity. It's hard to know precisely which is worst

Still, I slept in til 8 am and after breakfast headed out to Wannsee. This is often described as a suburb of Berlin, but it really is where wealthy Berliners built summer homes at the turn of the century, in order to enjoy the forests and lakes. My goal today was the house where the Wannsee conference was held.

In films, such as "Conspiracy" or even in Lanzmann's "Shoah," I had gotten the impression of a large, isolated mansion. In fact, it is located on a side street of similar summer homes and, while set back from the street, is not any further back than the houses of its neighbors, nor is it significantly larger. The house is in no way remarkable, other than the fact that the implementation of Nazi genocide was planned there.

Not the decision to commit genocide; that was made some (maybe 2-3) months before by Hitler and Himmler. This was where Himmler's assistant, Richard Heydrich, gathered the leading bureaucrats together to agree to his leadership of this project. When he was assisinated a few months later by Czech partisans, the named the major death camps in his honor.

Even though the house has recently undergone extensive renovations, no one bothered to add air conditioning, so we all had the soft drip drip of sweat from the humidity, accentuated by the heat from the display lighting. The display on the origins of racism, the rise of antisemitism, the rise of the Nazis and the increasing persecution of the Jews is all handled quite well, as is the material covering the early years of the war. The exhibit nicely distinguishes between the murderous policies of the Nazis during the first two years of the war and the growing extermination campaign that began with the invasion of the Soviet Union.

At that point, we move into the conference room itself, where the surviving copy of the protocols (and an English translation) is on display in the center of the room, so that one can read for oneself the complete text (it's not very long). On the walls, there are biographies of the participants, with each ending with the individual's fate after the war. Those who didn't die in the fighting, rarely received more than a few year's imprisonment for their actions. It was Stalin who said that the death of one person is a tragedy, the death of a million is a statistic.

I decided not to have lunch next door, but instead walked 10 minutes down the road to Max Liebermann's villa. I had noticed it from the bus, and I thought it would be much more pleasant place to eat. Liebermann was one of the leaders of the Impressionist movement in Germany, and by the 1920s had become the head of the Prussian Arts Academy. At the turn of the century, he built this summer house in Wannsee, and put particular emphasis on the garden, which he incorporated in many of his paintings. The house and gardens have recently been restored, and it was a nice respite from my earlier tour of the Wannsee Conference house.

Not that one can ever really escape awareness of the Holocause anywhere in Europe. Liebermann was Jewish and forced to resign his post by the Nazis in May 1933. At his 87th birthday party in 1935, the Nazis tried to discourage non-Jews from attending. Liebermann died later that year and his daughter and granddaughter escaped to America in 1938, but his widow was forced to give up the house in 1940 when it was "aryanized," and she committed suicide in 1943, when faced with deportation to the Theresienstadt ghetto.

After touring the house and gardens, which are lovely (but not airconditioned), I made my way to my last museum for this trip: the Brücke Museum in Dahlem. This was rather complicated, as I had to first take a bus, then the u-bahn, and then a second bus, but it wasn't that bad. The museum is small, but quite enjoyable. The current exhibition strongly emphasizes the work of Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, with several works showing the strong emphasis of Seurault, Van Gogh, and other French Impressionists and particularly Post-Impressionists on the work of these German artists at the forefront of German Expressionism. A truly delightful museum and well worth the small effort to find it.

My only trouble was not buying the set of 3 large exhibition catalogues on sale for an absurdly low price. I just kept reminding myself that even if I threw out all my clothes so that it would fit, it would still weigh too much to lift repeatedly, as I will have to the next few days.

So now all that's left is to find some souvenirs as gifts for my niece and nephews, and have dinner. Today is really the last full day of being a tourist. Tomorrow morning I'll make a quick stop at the Schönhauser Allee Cemetery, where the man who founded my profession, Dr. Leopold Zunz is buried. Then one quick visit to KaDeWe again before taking the express train to Frankfurt. After that, I'll really be more in transit than on vacation. I have to get up ungodly early on Tuesday for my flight back to the States.