Adventures with Julia

September 12, 2017

Kamila met us at 9am for a 4-hour walking tour.  We started near our hotel in the Old Quarter (Mala Strana) Square with St Nicholas Church, which was built during the 1700’s.  It is not a very attractive church from the outside, but the inside is a blast of High Baroque.  Unfortunately, scaffolding fills most of the church except the altar.  A close up of the main altar provides an idea of the opulence of the era.

From there we walked across the famous Charles IV Bridge, where I took a photo of a complicated sculpture from 1714, with Saints John de Matha, Felix de Valois and Blessed Ivan.  Don’t ask me anything about it.  Kamila seemed to know, but I only remember that the guy on the left was Turkish.  Near the middle of the bridge Mark and Kamila posed in front of the 1629 Crucifix, which for 200 years stood alone on the bridge.  The gilded sign above the cross saying “Holy, holy, holy Lord” was paid for by a Jew as punishment for blasphemy.

Then we passed under the bridge tower into the Old Town, “ Stera Mesto”.  Walking down a street, Kamila steered us into the Public Library to show us an art piece made of books and called the “Well of Knowledge”.  Looking down inside, a mirror makes it look like it will go forever.  Very appealing and off the beaten path.  The sort of experience that makes us glad to have a guide, who knows her stuff.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once in Old Town Square, where Mark and I had dinner the night before, Kamila told us about the wonders of the Clock Tower.  It needs to be seen striking the hour.  Will have to come back to catch it happening.

We learned that the population of the Czech Republic is 10 million.  Prague has 1.2 million with a Jewish population of about 4,500. Today, Jews seem to be accepted in, what Kamila considers, the country’s atheistic society.

50% of each person’s income goes to the government.  In return, citizens receive free education through university, medical care and prescription drugs and three years of maternity leave per child, while your job is held for you.  If someone else is solidly in your old job, another one is found for you.  What a deal that is.

We wandered around the Square awhile and then walked to the Jewish Cemetery, which was founded in 1478.  Kamila, we learned, is Jewish and speaks and reads Hebrew.  She read to us the descriptions on several stones, which give not only dates, but information about the person; what they did and what sort of person they were.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The oldest tomb stone was from 1439 for a Rabbi who was also a physician and a poet, with a poem dated 1389.  The only woman mentioned on a tombstone was for Rivka Tiktiner, who was a scholar and author of a book for women called Meneket Rivka (Rebecca’s Nurse), published in 1609.  Kamila says it is now in English and available, she thinks, on Amazon.  If you find it, let me know, so I can read it too.

 

This was the only Jewish Cemetery in Prague for 300 years and over 120,000 people are believed to be buried in the mound of earth, where bodies are stacked 12 high and over 12,000 grave stones are displayed close together.  The last burial here took place in 1787.

The shield of David is inlaid in the sidewalk next to the cemetery.  The symbol comes from India initially and appears for the first time in Prague in the 1500’s.

Around the corner was the Jewish Museum, where the name, birth date and date the person was sent to the concentration camp are painted on walls.  There had been 120,000 Jews living in Prague before Hitler came to power.  80,000 of them died in camps and are listed here.  Very powerful.

Upstairs, there are drawings made by Jewish children during the holocaust that got hidden away in trunks and forgotten until Communism fell in 1989.  Now they are a lovely and painful expression of children who never got the chance to grow up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Also nearby is the Old-New Synagogue, the oldest synagogue in Europe, built around 1270 and still the religious center for Prague’s Jews.  Inside the space feels dark, small and cramped.  The windows are small and few and stalls fill up the two naves. Light is provided by chandeliers.

 

The holiest place in the synagogue, The Ark, holds the sacred scrolls of the Torah and the Books of the Prophets.  If I understood Kamila correctly, the Jews enjoyed a relatively safe period during the late 1500’s after having been considered surfs or slaves of the King since the 900’s.  The benevolent Rudolph II encouraged wealthy Jewish leaders to help their own people and received privileges for doing so.

 

For a time, life was good.  In the 1600’s the bad times came back.  There was no more pleasant interaction with non-Jews, pogroms started happening.  Christians feared the Jews.  Between 1740 and 1780, Maria Teresa, the first Austrian, Hapsburg Empress, expelled Jews from Prague.  Kamila would say only that it was “horrid”.  Meanwhile, for Christians, she established institutions to help women and improve education.  Kamila recommended another book, “Savage Pages” by Otto Wolf.  It is a diary about 3-years of life in a forest hole.  Sorry, I did not get a date.

 

 

 

At that point our time with Kamila was up as she had to pick up her kids from school.  On the way back to the hotel we took in some city scenes, including a painted catering truck, a tourist boat on the river, a typical city street.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We walked back to the hotel, rested an hour and headed out again at 4:30 to see an Exhibition called Nervous Trees in the Gallerie Rudolfinum, have dinner at nearby La Finestra and get back to the Rudolfinum Concert Hall for an 8pm concert.

 

 

 

 

 

I couldn’t resist this image of a gondola backlit on the river.

 

 

Nervous Trees, an exhibit by Kristof Kintera, was very peculiar, curious and mildly interesting.  Mostly it was fanciful and fun.

Our two favorite exhibits included a tall pile of washing machines, some of which were turned on; and a group of metal trees that danced around the floor by themselves every few seconds.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From there we walked a couple blocks to La Finestra for a delicious meal of short ribs and cauliflower risotto.

With time to spare we walked back to the Rudolfinum Concert Hall to watch a wonderful performance by the Essener Philharmoniker Orchestra of Brahms, Dvorak, and Strauss and a joint performance of the orchestra and the Pavel Haas Quartet performing Martinu.  The audience was very respectful and clapped long and heartily, but did not give a standing ovation, which surprised me.    After several curtain calls, they played a piece by Wagner that satisfied everyone.

 

 

 

 

It was a lovely evening that made me feel like I was out for an evening at home rather than acting like a tourist in a foreign land.  The gentleman sitting next to me was an 87 year old widower from Dallas.  He travels back and forth to places in Europe to attend musical festivals.  I hope I feel as able to travel when I am his age.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We have had a long, full day and it is time to quit.