Something foggy, something fishy

Laptop update:

The local computer repair guys are unable to deal with my laptop—the power connector is atypical, so they don’t carry them. The connection is loose, so…

They gave me the name of specialists who could possibly handle the job—take apart my machine, etc. But I’m only here through Tuesday, so I’m just going to keep limping along with amazon hotel wi-fi but questionable power. (It appears to deign to recognize the AC connection once the battery drains down to 13%.) Pray to the gods of technology.

Okay, Berlin today. It’s overcast/foggy, so lousy photo-taking conditions. Still, I did get a couple of interesting shots of the TV tower last evening:

Interestingly, the Prater above the soon-to-open Alexanderplatz Weinachtsmarkt was all lit up and operational Thursday night:

But not last night. However, I’m seeing signs that this weekend (or at least Monday) may mark the opening of Official Weinachts. (All Christkindlemärkte should be open on Monday.) Stay tuned.

And the aquarium in the hotel atrium is an actual thing: people can take a glass elevator up into the center of the fish tank:

This morning I caught the cleaning crew at work:

(Sorry about the video showing sideways. I'm too tired to mess with it.)

As Gomer Pyle would say, well gaw-lee!

On the cusp of disaster

Welp—looks like I’m going to get a flavor of local life today: my laptop has stopped detecting the AC connection, which means it thinks it’s only got battery juice. Meaning, it’s not going to last long.

So, first thing (meaning, when it opens at 1000), I’m off to a local PC repair shop in hopes they can sort it. Thoughts and prayers, people. Thoughts and prayers.

And yes, John, you told me not to bring my laptop with me.

Day train to Berlin

The train ride to Berlin from Prague yesterday was interesting. It’s the first time I’ve taken a train in 20 years, when I rode from Dresden to Nürnberg, when my UK travel agents had booked me into a “non-smoking seat” in a car that, about three rows back, had a smoking section. It was separated from “non-smoking” by a partition with an automatic door. Every time a smoker went to and from the designated area, smoke gushed into the non-smoking part.

That was pre-EU, of course. The entire car was non-smoking this time, which was certainly an improvement; the journey lasted more than four hours, so…

The train was also equipped with very good wi-fi, which (as you know) was a sore spot for me at the hotel. (The buses to/from Terezín also had wi-fi, and USB power ports. They were quite comfortable, very sleek; what I found fascinating was that, with all their mod cons, they were manual transmissions. Huh.) I noticed that some people spent the entire journey with their noses in their devices. Chacun à son goût, I guess.

Mon goût was to look out the window for most of the trip, and wonder if this approximated the route for the Germans in 1938 and 1939, when they commenced their lebensraum initiative.

An interesting thing was that—while we were in the Czech Republic, the automated station announcements were in Czech, then German, then English. When we crossed into Germany, a human made the announcements in German and English. Czech was ditched. Also—the German announcements before we hit the larger stations included information on platforms for onward connections. The English ones just had, “The next station is [whatever]. Implied was, “You’re on your own figuring out where you need to go to catch your next train.”

Wilkommen in Deutschland, eh?

(Also interesting was that the very useful in-car monitors showing you what was coming up next, and next after that and after that again. In Czechia, the “Current” field, next to “Scheduled” showed the revised ETA for the next stop. Since we started out ten minutes late, that field displayed accordingly. In red. Once we moved into Germany, the first—human, not automated—announcement sniffed that we were behind schedule—obviously due to Czech laggardness. But they just skipped the whole “Current” thing altogether. From that point on, it was just blank.)

It was a dull, overcast day, but even so, the scenery was enchanting. We followed a river for much of the way, and you could see how little towns and villages grew along it—it would have been a means of transportation in the days before mechanized vehicles.

And sights like these made me think of the youthful journey of traveler, war hero, writer and bon vivant Patrick Leigh Fermor.

Dresden Hauptbahnhof was a spectacular sight, but I was glad I wasn’t getting off there. That was the scene of a friend being run into with someone’s wheely-bag, getting a blood clot and spending about a week in a decidedly unscenic hospital. Forewarned is fore-armed.

Also, I’ve been to Dresden; I like it fine, but I’m for Berlin on this trip.

Well, when I arrived in Berlin, at a train station the size of Bakersfield, I somehow managed to make my way to the S-Bahn (which was a modern wonder in itself; they’re signed, but that station is a freaking forest of signage), and determine which line I needed, and which direction. I got onto the right train, with my really heavy bag—those Germans, bless them, align the platform perfectly with the floor of the car, and there’s no more of a gap between them than you’d find in the groove of a tram line). In two stops, I was out into the big city.

Confession—I did not pay for that ride. I’ll get the concierge at my hotel to tell me how to get the tickets, and I’ll just buy an extra one and not use it. A girl has to know her limitations, and I was hitting mine at that hauptbahnhof.

Google Maps is not always your friend, I have found, but eventually I made it to the hotel (which was where my friends Dick and Carolyn stayed on that fateful journey). I have to laugh—the Radisson Blu is on Karl Liebknecht-Straße. A business-focused corporate hospitality superpower is on the street named for a Spartacist revolutionary who was murdered, along with Rosa Luxembourg, by the Freikorps in 1919.

I have an “Aquarium View” room. Which is interior facing, but filling a big chunk of the atrium is indeed a big-ass multi-story aquarium. Viz:

I rather think the novelty of looking out on the fish is going to wear off pretty soon, and I wish I’d chosen a street-facing room, so I could look out at the city, but c’est la vie. They turn off the lights at night, so the fish can get whatever shuteye they get. I wonder what they feed them, though?

Since I’d spent much of the day on my butt, I got some pointers from the concierge (who actually seems to know his concierge onions). Apparently maps are outré; everyone has smartphones. I told him my smartphone hadn’t been exceptionally smart getting me here. Besides, I’m a girl who likes redundant systems.

Anyhow, I took a stroll down Unter den Linden to the Brandenberger Tor, past the Adlon Hotel, which is where all the correspondents used to hang out back in the pre-war days.

I was rather taken by this equestrian statue; I guessed it was probably Friedrich II, and indeed it was.

And then back here for a spot of supper and a good soak in another great Euro tub. Now to figure out A Plan for this city.

Thanksgiving 2018

It’s Thanksgiving Day back in America. I’ll be spending a good chunk of the day in transit, on a train from Prague to Berlin. I haven’t been on a train in 18 years, so this will be quite the adventure.

As I wrote the draft for this post, I’d just finished my last dinner in Prague. (Yes, it was heaps better than the one the night before. If I ever return to the city, I’ll definitely want to try the place again.) And I thought about what things must be like across my homeland. That mad, hysterical dash to get all the food for the feast, start the cooking, iron the linens, clear out the medicine cabinet in the guest bathroom so your nosy relatives don’t go snooping…that anxiety-laden dash that starts to fade around maybe 1800-1900, when the stores close.

Once those doors shut, you’re stuck with what you have on hand, unless 7-Eleven can make up the delta. Just do the best you can, pour an extra slurp of the chardonnay in everyone’s glasses and enjoy what’s there before you.

It occurred to me that I’ve not heard at what time today Black Friday will start today. In recent years, it’s been all over the news which stores are beating the competition to open earlier and earlier on Thanksgiving Thursday in hopes of scooping up everyone’s holiday-shopping dollars before the competition gets to your wallets.

Interestingly, Black Friday has made it over to the Continent. It’s been in the UK for a while, but I saw adverts for a local department store (a holdover from the good old days of Communism), viz:

And here’s one of their store windows:

I’m guessing that Kotva’s not the only store in the country pumping up the punters to buy. I wonder what I’ll find in Berlin?

Well, anyhow, it’s Thanksgiving. I’m grateful I’ve been able to spend six days in a country I’ve never been to before. I’ll be visiting a city I’ve never seen before, and returning to one I love.

I have a job; 23 of my colleagues—including my former boss—came to work on 1 November and were told they did not, out of the blue. I have a house, and a friend is feeding my birdies in my absence. (I didn’t want them to go hungry while I’m away.)

I have no plans any time soon to eat romaine lettuce (although I’m a little worried about the bunch of it I chopped up and tossed out for the critters when I was cleaning out my refrigerator before I left. I hope they’re all okay).

I have this blog, which gives me the platform to process things in the world. It’s held me together through very challenging times.

In the wider sphere, I'm grateful for those who have committed themselves to service. The lower-court judges who have time and again struck down cruel and illegal attempts by the regime to implement authoritarian rule. The men and women of our armed services. First responders and ER/hospital staff who never have holidays from cleaning up the various messes we manage to get ourselves into. 

The journalists who tirelessly report events globally to bring us the facts, whether or not anyone in power is pleased by the truth. As we all know, they sometimes do so at risk of their lives. 

The firefighters still battling the wildfires in California and the workers supporting them; also without holiday. Additionally, all the relief staff who've organized shelters, meals, clothing and comfort for the thousands who've lost everything in those fires. And the veterinarians who are tending to injured and traumatized animals who've lost their humans in all the confusion. God bless all you kind, generous souls.

(And the Finns, who have magnificently shown up the Kleptocrat for the moronic buffoon he is—in the way most guaranteed to make it smart: by laughing at him.) 

In short: every person who chooses kindness over indifference, integrity over power, generosity over greed, law over ruthlessness, truth over expediency, compassion over cruelty. They give hope and inspiration that we can all do better, and for this I am deeply grateful.

May you have at least as many things to be thankful for in your life, too.

A couple of meals

Mixed day yesterday. Was going okay until I went to the restaurant recommended by one of the less-than-stellar concierges at the hotel. (Although, tbh, it’s not clear to me that these people are anything other than reception clerks. When you dial “Concierge” on the room phone, they pick it up saying “Reception”, and they’re at the desk where you check in and out, so I’m thinking they’re glorified front deskers with ideas above their station.)

I didn’t like the looks of it—not only is it in the thick of the tourist area, but they seated me at a table so far out I think it wasn’t in Prague any more. Where it was, however, was smack next to the toilets, in front of a doorway that let cold damp air gush in every time smokers went out/in, and across from (and I am not making this up) this:

So, because I was hungry, I ordered “Moravian Sparrows” (pork with cabbage and some kind of doughy things that I think were dumplings), a bottle of sparkling water and a glass of Moravian red. Tbf, the food was fine. But what completely soured me on the experience was when the host brought the bill—for about 400 CZK “and the service is not included” and made change for the 1000 CZK note I gave him. Instead of the loose coins, a 100 CZK and a 500 CZK bills, he haltingly counted out the coins, two 50 CZK coins and three 200s. As I tucked the bills into my wallet, he scooped up all the coins and gabbled “thisisforthetipthankyou”.

Dude—I did not intend to leave you a $5 tip on a $20 tab.

From his adeptness at this, I’m guessing he’s very well practiced.

Well, I suppose you have to get suckered at least once on a trip. But it pisses me off.

So let me show you something to balance that.

On my trip to Terezín, as I was walking back from the outer parts of the town, I noticed that someone had dumped a basketful of apples by a little stream. They hadn’t been there when I’d headed out, so it had happened within about an hour. I noticed the apples and wondered…and then I saw the reason(s):

Since the clan (I counted seven, but there could well have been more) came out of the water, my guess is beaver, but I’m not sure. I couldn't see any tails; you see any tails?

Here’s some rather shaky video (it was very, very cold).

Bon appétit, little dudes. You’re having a better meal than I did.

Capital life

Okay, I have a lot to process from Sunday and yesterday, so let me share today a few things in Prague I found…interesting.

When I got off the Metro yesterday afternoon at Václavské náměstí, I came across this:

A street performer was using some industrial-strength bubble blowing device to fill the sky with bubbles. A very nice change from the frozen human statues you so often see. This was just down the pedestrian street from Hamleys, so the guy knows his market.

And on Sunday I saw this, ah, preferred (?) parking spot:

Seriously—how do you park in this spot? And—keeping in mind that driver’s seat is on the left—how do you get out of the car once you’ve parked?

But here’s another parking solution I saw yesterday:

Gratitude Monday: Terezín

It’s Gratitude Monday, and Thanksgiving week. I’ve just got back from a few hours at Terezín, the (Austrian) imperial garrison town that the Nazis turned into a “model” Jewish ghetto and transit camp. Model ghetto, because Terezín was what was trotted out for inspectors from the International Red Cross to demonstrate how good life was for the residents. Transit camp because most of the 150,000 inmates who arrived there between 1941 and 1944 eventually were transported “to the East”. And death.

I’ll write about it when I can process the experience. But today, which started out with snow, I’m grateful that my trip to and from Terezín was via heated motor coach, with comfortable seats. And that I started out after an excellent breakfast, which saw me through the day. And I was free to come and go as I pleased.

I returned to my hotel, which (regardless of the wi-fi and the Vikings) is comfortable and elegant. I’ve got a kettle and tea in my room, and a marble-lined bathroom.

I went to Terezín because it was one of the two reasons for me coming to Prague, and I was able to make this trip, regardless of any anxieties I might have about my life or my job. Regardless of the limitations in my life, I have extraordinary possibilities, which I frequently lose sight of.

Today I see them, and I’m grateful.

Touring Josefov

Not that I have any intention of doing any shopping on this trip, but I was mildly curious about whether stores would be open yesterday, it being Sunday and all.

(This was because I was so utterly gobsmacked during my time in the UK, which only grudgingly had supermarkets open on Sundays. And I recall a time in the Old Dominion when by law only grocery stores and tourist-focused stores—think souvenirs and gift shops—could be open on Sundays. The lege changed that law while I was in grad school, and people like to lost their minds whining that if stores opened on the Sabbath, they’d have to work overtime! It did not occur to them that the boss would just hire more people, maybe even cut back their hours to save on paying benefits.)

Anyhow—I needn’t have concerned myself in the least. Not only did they open yesterday, but they appeared to open at the same time as on other days. None of this two-three hours later than weekday stuff like in the Confederacy.

Because as I turned the corner on my way to the Jewish quarter, I came across this crowd waiting for Hamleys toy store to open. (Hamleys is London’s answer to FAO Schwartz.)

 

But when 1000 rolled around and the doors opened, no one swarmed in. Because there was a ritual of store employees in the doorways chanting something and engaging the crowd in a call-and-response thing.

Cool.

Well, I carried on over to Josefov, the Jewish district (named after Josef II, the Holy Roman Emperor who emancipated Jews within his empire). Much of my day was spent walking to and through the several synagogues that make up the Jewish museum experience. I don’t think right now I’ll go into the pall that hangs over Jewish history in Eastern Europe. I’m still processing it. Anti-Semitism has always been a feature of life in these parts—as, indeed, it is right home in the US.

As recent events in Pittsburgh and elsewhere have so acutely reminded us.

Anyhow—I have Thoughts on this topic, but I’ll hold off on sharing them.

Instead I’ll concentrate on some of the design elements, which I always find interesting. The first lot is from the Spanish Synagogue (so called because it was built in a Spanish architectural style).

(I just really like repeating patterns.)

As you often see in churches, the windows were dedicated to patrons and/or their families:

The Pinkas Synagogue led to the Old Jewish Cemetery, which received the dead for about three centuries. It ceased operations in 1787, when our pal Josef II banned burials inside city walls for reasons of hygiene. Until then, graves were often layered, with older headstones being raised alongside the newer ones. Ergo the veritable forest of stones:

To me, the tumbled-down appearance sometimes looked as though the stones were comforting one another:

I overheard one of the ubiquitous tour guides telling her charges that the elaborate markers denote the rich or important (meaning: scholars), and that the very large stone flanked by these lions was someone very rich indeed:

The Jewish Community, which manages the elements of the Jewish Museum experience encourage men to wear a kippeh while in the synagogues. I give this guy credit for trying, but it's more rakish than your Orthodox or Conservative congregations would like. Maybe okay for Reform, though.

Once I finished with the Josefov, I ticked another Prague box: I rode on the trams. I truly love public transportation; as a native of Los Angeles, I find any efficient form of transit a wonder, and Prague’s trams are extra primo good. Clean, with clearly audible automated stop announcements and electronic signage telling you what stops are coming up. They’re everything Metro wishes it could be.

At some point, I’ll have to take Prague’s Metro system, but I opted for surface transportation just because.