In Vienna

We reached Vienna this afternoon with little difficulty.  The weather here is ok; it’s still somewhat warm and humid, but not as bad as Prague at its worst.

The pension is in the Neubau neighborhood, which is rather nice and filled with small shops, cafes, and bars.  It’s located only a block and a half from the Neubaugasse U-bahn stop.  The pension is small; it’s family owned and operated.   It has an “old Vienna” feel to it.

The grandmother who runs it checked us in.  There is Wifi in the pension, but it seems to work intermittently, cutting in and out.  After we checked in and dropped off the luggage, I took the students to the Naschmarkt for a very late lunch (I called it a “linner”). 

Then the group split in two:  one went shopping while I took the other to the Secession Building.

The main exhibition hall, unfortunately was closed as they set up a new installation, but we were able to spend some time with the Beethoven Frieze by Klimt.

Afterwards, we walked through the Naschmarkt. 

 

One of the students wanted to take a photo of a cheese display but was a little scared of the guy behind the counter.  I asked him if she could take a photo and he said it was ok.  I started to talking with him and I mentioned Hebrew among my languages.  At that point he said “ma nishma” (“how are you doing?).  As we chatted, he kept stabbing the table top with this cheese-covered big knife.  I asked where he was from and he said “Gaza.  Do you understand?” and he kept stabbing the table top.  I said I understood and quickly backed away.

We met up with the other students and headed down to the inner city to Stephansplatz.  We stopped for drinks at Café Weinwurm, where I had milchkaffee, and the students tried other fruit drinks.  The bells of Stephansdom were pealing when arrived and it started to very lightly drizzle.  It was rather humid.

After we finished our drinks I took them into the church, but they were having mass, so we couldn’t leave the back area to see anything of the interior.  By the time we came out the drizzle had stopped, so we took a leisurely walk through Graben, making our way to Judenplatz.

I showed them the memorial to Kristallnacht, and it looked as if someone had either put vegetables or flower stems in the door of the memorial. I can’t tell what they intended.

On our way to the U-Bahn station, we passed some kids playing in blue shirts with white lacing, which I recognized as those used by Zionist youth groups.  Turned out they were with Hashomer Hatzair, and were busy engaging in a protracted water fight.  The only surviving synagogue in Vienna is just around the corner.

After we got back to the pension, I left the students to go to the Westbahnhof and buy our tickets to Mauthausen.  I had no problem buying group tickets and to and from the city for tomorrow, but I can’t buy tickets for Budapest because the tracks are still closed due to recent flooding.  They suggested I try again on Monday and see if it’s possible to book the tickets.  Otherwise, we’ll be taking the bus.

I decided to grab a quick meal in the station and was pleasantly surprised to find that Trzesniewski has opened a branch there.  They make small, finger sandwiches with egg, lox, onions, herring, etc.

I got four different ones:  farmer's cheese and lox, pickle salad and egg, egg salad and tuna salad, egg salad and herring:

Lovely Prague

This is the fifth time I’ve been to Prague.  Most of the time, Prague has been quite lovely; the city the tourist guides all promise you.  But the first time, and this time, Prague has displayed a different face, an angry face, a face of fury and bile.  When Prague is cool and dry it’s a remarkable place, but when it’s hot and humid, the way it was our first two days here, it can be unbearable.  While the subways are air conditioned, almost nothing else is.  Sleeping, sitting, eating, these all become deeply uncomfortable activities.

Thankfully, the heat wave broke last night.  It stormed and rained (and I slept through all of it) and when I awoke (still too early) it was suddenly pleasant outside.

Today we went to Lidice, the town annihilated on Hitler’s orders to punish the Czechs for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich (who was also overseeing the Holocaust).  All the men in the town were shot, all the women sent to concentration camp, and most of the children were sent first to Lodz ghetto and then to the Chlemno death camp.

My graduate student again asked to lead a discussion of the town and I heartedly agreed.  As usual, she did a terrific job.

Inside, we toured the museum dedicated to the destruction of the town, though most of the emphasis were on the men and children who were killed, and less on the women who went through the camps and survived.

Afterwards, we walked through the peaceful surroundings that once made up the town.  Hitler had every home, business, and church dynamited and all the trees were cut down.  The area has now been transformed into a vast memorial.

Each murdered child is separately depicted in the statue, but the murdered men only receive a plaque.  The contrast between the quiet, idyllic beauty of the place, and the horrors perpetrated there could not be more dramatic.

We then returned to Prague and I took the students to one of my favorite cafes:  Cukrkavalimonada.  The have a very eclectic menu, and some of the students tried drinks like hot grog and Irish hot chocolate, while most of the rest of us had the home made elderberry lemonade.  Last time I had the pasta primavera, so this time I ordered the “salty pancake with spinach,” which turned out basically to be a crepe.  I rolled it up and it was delicious.

  

I knew I couldn’t pass up their desserts, so I ordered the raspberry pie.  It was very good and I think the students also like the place.

The John Lennon wall is just around the corner.  Begun as kind of a hippy expression of the 1980s under communism, the wall has taken on a life of its own.

The café and John Lennon wall are in the neighborhood of Malastranka, which is a nice quiet counterpart to the mayhem of the Stare Mesto old quarter.  I wanted them to get a chance to a see a different side to Prague.  Afterwards we walked to the Charles Bridge; we had already seen it the day we arrived, but the weather was so miserable that day, I think they more suffered than saw it.

After some souvenir shopping, we made it the Old Town Square to see the astronomical clock chime the hours (though I warned them that this is vastly overrated.  Like many celebrities, it’s more famous for being famous than for any intrinsic value. 

I really wanted to see the cubist museum again in the House of the Black Madonna, but the sign on the door indicated it closed last September.  Now I had an answer as to why I couldn’t find ticket prices posted online.  Instead, we went to the Museum of Communism, which I’ve always enjoyed.

From there we headed to the Municipal House Café, which is one of the most beautiful in the world.

I ordered the vanilla ice cream sundae with hot raspberries and it was delicious.

We met up with the rest of the students who had gone off shopping and then headed back to the hotel.  Some of us looked for a restaurant nearby, but what we found was pretty awful:

Over cooked duck, gritty red cabbage, and dry bread dumplings.  I won’t miss Czech food.

I won’t exactly miss the hotel, either.  I had read online that the elevator had problems, but I heard one student say “I’m scared of it.” 

 

It’s not just that it’s rather small, but that there’s no inner door and the machine jerks to a stop each time.  Many of them walk up 5 or 6 flights to their rooms rather than take it.

The students like the free WiFi, but because it's only in the lobby, they camp out here in their spare time.

While the hotel is convenient, just across the street from the metro, it’s rather noisy.  It’s on the corner of two major streets, so there isn’t just traffic noise, but also sirens, and loud pedestrians.

I also won't miss the food.  Last night, the menu had a particularly odd menu.  Check out the first entry.

The general category is "chicken meat."  According to Google translate, that first time reads:

"150 gr  "Uterus" pocket (ham, cheese, asparagus)."

Tomorrow we leave for Vienna, and not a moment too soon.

Trying to Stay Cool in Terezin

Today may have been the hottest day of the trip. All the Czech Republic is under a heat advisory, with high temperatures reaching into the upper 30s, but combined with high humidity that makes it feel like the low 40s.  I advised everyone to bring lots of water.

Breakfast in the hotel was fine.  Even better was the A/C on the bus to Terezin.  There was WiFi for the first half but then it cut out with no explanation after 30 minutes.  Thankfully, the main museum was air conditioned, so we were able to walk around in comfort.

This is a collage of the art created by children in the ghetto:

I'm sure that at least one of my students is going to remark on their evaluations that one of the valuable things they learned on this trip was how to secretly photograph items in museums when photographing isn't permitted.

These dolls were created by a girl in the ghetto:

Leo Haas, an artist imprisoned in the ghetto, worked for the ghetto administration while secretly creating art that depicted the actual conditions in the camp.  This is a set of images designed to teach children how to behave by describing prohibited acts:  eating with dirty hands, whistling on the street, and spitting in public.

I warned the students that the cafe in the museum would not be "sumptuous."  Here's the "buffet":

 After lunch we went to the Madgeburg Barracks where they have a recreation of how the living conditions in the camp were:

The guards were really observant to prevent anyone from photographing the art created in secret by artists in the camp.  I did manage one shot:

Given how hot it was, I decided to skip the long walk to the mortuary, cemetery, and crematorium.  Instead, we walked the kilometer to the small fortress.  As it happens, we dodged a bullet since it turns out that they were still flooded from last week.

They offer free guides at the small fortress and we had the same one as two years ago.  I compared photos and she's the same.

Whole sections of the small fortress remain flooded.  We could also see how far the water rose last week.  Just check out the water line in these cells built to hold Jewish prisoners:

After that, we decided to head back to town.  Getting off the air conditioned bus in the heat of Prague was painful. 

[The concierge at the hotel where I'm typing this just went off on a rant about the heat:  "it's awful.  It's like a dog just about to die.  We're not in Africa, we're in Europe!  Can you believe, just two weeks ago it was 20, 15; today it was over 40!  I like warm, but not like this!"]

I took my laundry to a laundromat, which turned out to be much more expensive than in Berlin.  Even more painful, though, was the heat from the dryers in an unairconditioned waiting area.  

They are predicting that tomorrow will be "much cooler." When I said that to the concierge she responded "if there is a rain it will cool off.  Otherwise, again like today."

Here's hoping for the best.

Heat Wave (now, with photos)

Photos from yesterday.  I've got some more, and I will add them and fix the formatting later.

We've had awful weather for the last 24 hours.

I warned the students it was going to be a hot day and it was. The train was slightly cooled (though other wagons turned out to be far worse).  Luckily, we all got our seats without difficulty. 

After we passed Dresden, we did have some very nice views from the train of the "Saxon Switzerland."

When I walked back to the dining car to get lunch, I found some elementary school groups camped out in the corridor.  Some thirty children sitting in the narrow walkway as the school didn't buy them seat assignment.  I just kept saying "pardon" as I tried not to walk on their 6 year-old legs.

In Prague, we had no problem finding the hotel, though the humidity was awful.  Dripping with sweat, I checked us in.  Turns out we didn't need to rush to our 3pm meeting with the head of the Jewish federation here in Prague as he had to go to parliament to deal with the government crisis (the government collapsed over the weekend).  I took the students for ice cream, though the ice cream floats turned out to be one scoop of vanilla ice cream in a large glass with cool soda water mixed with syrup and two small ice cubes.

Then we stopped for a snack:

We then toured the Jewish museum in Prague, while dripping with sweat. 

Finally we reached the Charles Bridge, but with clear skies, temperatures in the 90s (F), and the sun beating down on us, I'm not sure the students really enjoyed it. 

We took public transportation back to the hotel rather than walk.

From there I headed off to buy our tickets to Vienna (and scored a group discount), and found out about how to get to Terezin.  Then some of the students and I went to Old Town Square for dinner, where we had pretty good food while dripping with sweat.

Did I mention already that it's hot?  And humid?  Very hot and very humid?

By the way, here's the art at our stop, I. P. Pavlova:

I showered and fell asleep (I drank 0.8 liters of beer at dinner), but woke up at 1 am from the heat.  I decided to open a window and the air outside was cooler, so I slept, fitfully, until 6:45 am.

Today we're going to Terezin. There's a heat advisory today, with temperature expected to be close to 100.  I'm going to cut out the walk to the crematorium and cemetery to limit our exposure to heat.  I don't know if we'll go to the small fortress.

The heat wave may, repeat may break tonight.  I'm praying.

I'll post some photos if I can (internet is weak here).

Last Day in Berlin

For a while, I was tempted to call this post "God Damn Obama," but things finally worked out.

I try to not to cram too many text-intensive events, one after another.  This morning, we visited the Wannsee Conference House, but then I gave them several hours off before we met again to tour the information center under the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.

While the grounds of the villa are lovely, the museum is very text intense, with lots of charts, documents, and information.

I wasn't permitted to lecture, but I spoke individually with students, talking about specific exhibits.  As far as I could tell, all the students read the copy of the protocol, on display in the former dining room where the conference was held:

Afterwards, we walked around outside and enjoyed the views of the villa and the lake.

These stone lions show up in Lanzmann's Shoah:

Afterwards we returned to Wannsee, where yet again, I had a crappy lunch. This time it wasn't an inedible Turkish "pizza," but some very dry, oddly spiced meat balls.

The students were free to do what they liked on the break.  I told them to meet up at the fake Berlin Wall on Potsdamer Platz at 5 pm.  One headed off to Dietrich Bonhoeffer's house, where it sounds as if she had a fabulous and productive time.  Another headed up to check out the art museums near the Charlottenburg Palace, but got lost and never found them.  The rest went to the Pergamon Museum.  Originally, I was just going to help them get there, but when I found that as their professor, I could get them all in for free, I couldn't pass that up.

The students seemed suitably impressed with the size and grandeur of the exhibits.

We finished with plenty of time to run some errands and get to Potsdamer Platz by 5 pm.  Unfortunately, the area of Potsdamer Platz where we wanted to go wasn't open.

President Obama is staying at the Ritz Carlton, and so they've closed off the entire street in front of it, including the place we were supposed to meet.  Even worse by closing the road, they forced us to take a six block detour, in high heat, to get to the memorial.  The memorial will be closed tomorrow, but thankfully was still open today.

The students were quite moved by the somberness of the information center.

Afterwards, most of us went out to dinner at a small restaurant/cafe near the hostel.  The walls were decorated in stenciled zebras with arrows coming at them.  I asked the bar tender what they meant, but it turned out they borrowed the idea from a bar in Manhattan.

Two of the students and I decided to try the beers with syrup.  I had this one with "Waldmeister" syrup.

It was very sweet, green, and more like a soda than anything herbal.

This one had raspberry syrup, which looked even worse.

Tomorrow morning, we leave for Prague on what is supposed to be one of the hottest days of the year.  I hope the train is well air conditioned.