The Czech Republic

TO ALL

The second weekend in August, Mike and I both managed to get free of our work schedules for four consecutive days. We had planned to head for an area of England called the Cotswolds. We had Ryanair tickets to London, a car rented, and lodging reserved at Fairford RAF (a joint British and American Air Force Base). Our flight was supposed to take off at 6:25 AM on Friday morning. Rather than having to drag ourselves out of bed at 2:30AM, we decided to drive up to Hahn the night before, park in long-term parking and sleep in the back of the van. So far so good. Unfortunately, when we crawled out of the van the next morning about 4:30AM and drug ourselves into the airport we discovered that our flight had been canceled due to fog in London The best they could offer us was a flight that evening arriving in London at 11:10PM. Or . . . . a refund. In light of the late arrival time, recent flooding in the Cotswolds and more rain in the forecast, we opted for the refund. By 7:00AM we were back at home in Heidelberg. By 9:00 AM we were on the autobahn headed for the Czech Republic. By 4:00PM we were thoroughly engrossed in exploring a little town called Česky Krumlov and Mike had forgiven me for making him drive 6 hours.

According to Rick Steves, Česky Krumlov (pronounced CHESS-key KROOM-loff) is the Czech Republic’s answer to Rothenburg Germany. I agree. However, there are two big differences between Rothenburg and Česky Krumlov: (1) Česky Krumlov entered it’s time warp a century later than Rothenberg, making it slightly more “modern” and (2) instead of being surrounded by walls for defense, Česky Krumlov
is lassoed by a river. Česky Krumlov occupies both crooks of a nearly perfect (though backwards) “S” formed by the Vltava River (otherwise known as the Moldau, as in the orchestral work of that name by Bedrich Smetana).

The Castle is in one
crook of the river.

St. Vitus Church is in the other.

And both sit on hills, making the whole layout quite picturesque.

The Vltava River is the same river than flows through Prague, though Prague is downstream from Česky Krumlov and the river is significantly bigger by the time it gets to Prague. Prague is actually north of Česky Krumlov. (Rivers in Europe typically flow south to north, which I find hard to get used to.) In fact Česky Krumlov is in the southwest corner of the Czech Republic – just barely over the border from Germany. It is in that infamous part of the former Czechoslovakia that was called the Sudetenland during the build up to WWII. Somehow the Sudetenland ended up in Czechoslovakia after WWI even though the population was mostly German. Hilter used that as an excuse to take over Czechoslovakia and got away with it.

Enough of history and geography. Moving on to linguistics . . . and eventually to the sights themselves! I now have a linguistics student in my readership, so I realize I am trending on thin ice at this point, but . . . . here goes. Rick Steves is always encouraging his readers to acquire a little basic vocabulary when visiting a new country, i.e. learn words like hello, goodbye, please, thank-you, etc in the appropriate language. That’s a great idea, but I personally think that a higher priority is to figure out the rules of pronunciation for the appropriate language. It’s hard to have an intelligent discussion with one’s traveling partner about agendas and routes, etc if one has no idea how to pronounce anything and all the place names look like alphabet soup. The last time we were in the Czech Republic I tried to get a handle on Czech rules of pronunciation and was pretty much UNsuccessful. This time I had some marginal amount of success. Here are a couple of observations:

(1) The Czech language uses lots of diacritical markings (various kinds of accents) and they are really critical to correct pronunciation (sorry, bad pun). For example a “c” with a little “v” above it becomes a “ch” as in Česky Krumlov.

(2) Czechs aren’t into wasting vowels. And they like to put consonants together that don’t go together, like . . . .

“vlt”(as in Vltava – the river)
“dv” (as in Dvorak – a composer)
“hr” (as in hrad – the Czech word for castle)
“brn” (as in Brno – a Czech town)
“plz” (as in Plzen – another Czech town)

Apparently, one is supposed to just understand that when two consonants refuse to blend there must be a vowel in between.
Hence . . .

Dvorak comes out dah-VOR-zhahk
Vltava comes out VUL-tah-vah
hrad becomes huh-RAHD
Brno comes out BURR-noh
Plzen comes out PILL-zen (The Czech beer that is made in this town is spelled Pilzen)

So now you know.

Moving on to architecture. In Europe architecture is truly “art.” In the US it’s just functional. And, in Europe, just when you think you’ve seen every possible artistic variation in architecture you come across something you’ve never seen before. The “shape” of the buildings in Cesky Krumlov wasn’t terribly different than anything else in Europe, but the “finish” was unique. Here are several examples. This is just painted stucco, but exceptionally colorful.

The design here is created with texture. The light colored areas are smooth. The dark areas are rough.

This design is painted on and only appears to be three-dimensional.

On to cuisine. The food in the Czech Republic was wonderful and cheap: great meats and sauces, something called potato dumplings, salads with lots of cucumbers and tomatoes and some cinnamon roll type things similar to the kalacs we had in Budapest.

Enough generalities. Back to the chronology of the trip. We spent Friday afternoon and all day Saturday exploring Česky Krumlov. On Saturday night we discovered an unfortunate packing oversight. The memory cards for both of our cameras were full and as we prepared to transfer pictures to our laptop, I discovered that we had left the card reader at home. Simultaneously, I realized that the next day was Sunday and stores would be closed, hence the possibility of buying a card reader was zip to nil. Fortunately, as it turns out, I was wrong about the stores. They are not closed on Sunday in the Czech Republic as they are in much of the rest of Europe. We had planned to head for Prague on Sunday morning and we had no trouble finding a Walmart-type store along the way that sold card readers. Crisis averted.

We arrived in Prague about noon. Mike says that the difference between Česky Krumlov and Prague is that in Česky Krumlov you walk from one site to another and everything along the way is also a sight in and of itself. In Prague you walk from one sight to another thinking about how tired you are. Having said that, Prague IS a neat city. We spent 24 hours there a couple a years ago and have been looking for an opportunity to go back every since. Last time we did the Old Town, Wenceslas Square and the Charles Bridge. This time we did the Jewish Quarter and the Castle Quarter and the Charles Bridge again.

St. Vitus Cathedral from the Charles Bridge

The Charles Bridge from the Castle

The Jewish Quarter consists of seven sights all within a three block area and all covered by one admission ticket. They are all interesting – a couple of them particularly so. The Pinkas Synagogue is a memorial to the victims of the Nazi’s. The walls are covered with the handwritten names of 77,297 Czech Jews who died in the gas chambers of Auschwitz and at other concentration camps. Apparently the names were first written immediately after WWII but were then erased by the communists when they took over the country. After the communists left, they were rewritten again in exactly the same style. The names are arranged by hometown and following each name is the person’s birthdate and the last date they were known to be alive. The emotional impact of the whole building is similar to that of the Vietnam War Memorial in DC, except that this involves an entire building with multiple walls and significantly more names (77,297 as compared to 58,195).

Outside the Pinkas Synagogue is the Old Jewish Cemetery. It contains 12,000 tombstones in a relatively small area. Rick Steve’s calls this “a commotion of tombstones” . . . . . well . . . not quite. “Commotion” is (in my humble opinion) a “sound” word and graveyards are typically pretty quiet. Maybe “a riotous conglomeration of tombstones”? Apparently this was the only burial ground for Jews in Prague from 1439 to 1787. Tombs are piled on top of each other because of limited space and because Jews believe that the body should not be moved once it is buried. Jews often put pebbles on the tops of tombstones in remembrance of the old days when rocks were place on sand gravesites to keep the body covered. They also like to wedge scraps of paper under the pebbles with prayers written on them. All of that together is quite a sight. Rose, we couldn’t help thinking that if you had been with us you might have been able to read some of the Hebrew on the tombstones. Some were “faded” beyond recognition but some were still quite clear.

After our afternoon in the Jewish Quarter we headed for the Castle and St. Vitus Cathedral across the Vltava River. St. Vitus Cathedral was closed for the day, but it was fun exploring it (and the rest of the castle complex) from the outside and taking pictures. We found a place to eat supper with an incredible view of the city right from our table. Afterwards we drove back down to the river and wandered the Charles Bridge for an hour or so, taking in the view and listening to some guy play his didgeridoo.

Regardless of what one thinks of the sound of a didgeridoo, as a wind player, I have to admire the ability to sustain a sound for virtually unlimited amounts of time. To do this one has to be able to blow air out and take air in at the same time. When I was in high school we used to call this "continuous breathing." There were reportedly some musical giants out there who could do it, but no one I ever knew.

We almost waited too late to find a “campsite” in which to park our van and sleep the night. Fortunately, after about the third inquiry, we found a pension owner who had one camping spot left in her backyard. And it was just big enough for our van. Which brings me to a note about the European concept of “camping.” In the US we put up with less than adequate bathroom facilities in our campgrounds but we think it an outrage if there is another tent or vehicle within 20 feet of our tent or vehicle. In Europe, bathroom facilities are always modern and immaculate, but camp “sites” are rarely marked out in any formal way and, if you’re lucky, the next tent or camper might be 5 feet away. In this case the next vehicle was about 18 inches away.

On Monday morning we went back to the Charles Bridge and wandered some more and took more pictures and then headed for a castle in countryside called Karlštejn Hrad before heading home. Karlštejn Hrad was closed on Mondays (Rick Steves had warned us about this), but it was picturesque from a distance and the little town at its foot was fun to explore. We met an American couple on the trail going up to the castle who had been in Bulgaria for their son’s wedding and were doing some Eastern European sightseeing before returning home. They were quite enthusiastic about Bulgaria as a sightseeing destination. (See where I get all my crazy ideas about places to go?) Mike tells me that Bulgaria is becoming a new base of operations for the American military and that one year unaccompanied tours to Bulgaria are going to become common in the near future. Hummmm.

So that’s our trip to the Czech Republic. We are heading out again in the morning for another 4 day trip. We are going to make another attempt to see the Cotswolds.

Now for some family news. Alan is still working for Google in Zurich although, for the past month, he has been working out of their Washington State office. Google sent him back to Kirkland to become a subject matter expert on some issue related to the project he is working on in Zurich. We have yet to hear the scoop on how that went.

Deanna is back at Cedarville for her sophomore year. She had her wisdom teeth out a couple of weeks before leaving Tacoma and survived that whole experience sans parents. Congratulations, Deanna! Of course, she did have her own private RN taking care of her! Thank-you Mrs. Imhof!

Amy is enjoying her summer at Lassen Volcanic National Park. She has several weeks to go yet before returning to WWU. Last week her crew was sent to Crater Lake Oregon to pull weeds for 2 days. It gave her the opportunity to reminisce a little about a trip our family took to Crater Lake when she was 8 years old. This week she is back in Lassen doing pica surveys. Apparently picas thrive only within a very narrow range of temperatures. The idea is to establish some baseline info about where the pica population is presently located, so it can be determined if global warming is forcing them to higher elevations.

Mike’s new boss is “on the job” as well as the new chapel pastor he was covering for, so he is back to one job again. I wish I could say that he is working significantly fewer hours, but at least he’s a little more free on weekends. He really likes his new boss and that is no small thing to be thankful for.

I’m still cashiering at the PX. My weekends are pretty tied up. But they are pretty willing to honor my schedule requests as long as they are reasonable. And when my PWOC ladies come through my line I have ample opportunity to say “Yes, I’m still teaching, I’ll be off on Thursdays come September.” In my last travelogue I commented that Amy is “coming up in the world.” Amy has suggested that in contrast I seem to be going down in world: band director to contract chapel musician to cashier! Oh, well --- it suits the moment. What can I say? The pay stinks but the working environment is decent and I don’t mind the work. In honor of the two grammarians in my life – Alan and Russ Glessner – I wish to report that I am trying really hard to always say “May I see your ID, please?” rather than “Can I see your ID?”

That's it for now.

Nancy