Prague blog

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To begin, I hereby promise not to bore you with the mundane details of travel, including but not limited to traffic jams going to the airport, long waits at airport security, boring airline food or even more boring airline movies. Also not to be mentioned are service at the hotel, the quality of the beds and the enormous amounts of food available at breakfast each morning. Nor will I mention problems with the exchange of money, the constant chattering of the other members of the group while traveling on the bus or anything at all about our guides. What I want to convey are moments of excitement and danger, highlights of the entertainment/arts, gleanings of conversations with local people and some sense of the remains of the Jewish presence.

Prague was clearly as beautiful as promised. Looking up at the outline of an ancient church lit up against the night sky while standing in the middle of Prague’s central square - just about makes the entire trip worthwhile. Earlier that day, in that same square, ordering a simple omelet produced the most deliciously flavored egg dish along with fresh vegetable all presented in a manner so beautiful I had more than a twinge of guilt in eating it all. Later that evening we ventured into of all things, a marionette show, presenting their version of Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Do you think you could sit for two hours watching not only the strings on the puppets, but the hands of the puppeteers made perfectly obvious when they could have been hidden - and still suspend disbelief! It’s possible, especially when the puppet conductor comes out simply demanding your attention and applause (after all he is the conductor!). While the arias were most often omitted (too much standing around for our marionettes) the action was all there, beginning with Don Giovanni’s slaying of the Commandatore, right up to the final moments of that same Commandatore’s return from the grave sending Don Giovanni to Hell. But wait, what’s this? The puppeteer has abandoned his costume and pointed at his watch. Apparently the show is running late and he is ready to go home. So, he simply hangs up the puppets on hooks on the wall and is ready to leave - when those some puppets come back to life and finish the opera in spite of him! What action! A play within a play and all to our utter amazement and amusement.

Everyone is told that Prague is a very safe city (it is), but always watch out for pickpockets. Well, I always look out for pickpockets. Show me a crowd and my hands are either on top of my wallet or inside my pocket holding onto my wallet. Nobody could pick my pocket! So there we are standing on the Metro platform (great subways in Prague!) and a stranger approaches asking me a question. Of course, I understood nothing, since he was speaking Czech. When he saw I was not a native, but a stranger (make that a vulnerable stranger), he simply backed off and was waiting on the platform with us - really the only three people in sight. The train comes and I step into the doorway. Sally, being of an even more suspicious nature that I, sees our stranger approaching the doorway - and she literally shoves me through the door. As I stumbled forward, the stranger who was right behind me, but now unable to reach me, runs out of the train just as the doors are closing! After Sally apologized for pushing me, I gave her an appreciative hug, for I was totally with my guard down, never suspecting that I could be the victim of pick pocketing on a lonely train platform.

Please excuse me if I do not review the sad history of the Jews of Prague. All that history is available to you - if you want the awful details. I do want to mention one thing that happened during our walk through the Spanish synagogue in the Jewish section of Prague. It was a box, not an especially pretty box, but what filled that box was even less pretty. It was Tfillin, dozens and dozens of Tfillin that would never be used again, but were the property of the religious Jewish men of Prague, all of whom were killed as the Holocaust descended. Even though I knew what had happened and even though I thought I had dealt with the feelings about it many years ago, I was simply struck dumb at the sight. This was real, not some book I was reading or some movie I was watching. This was the very property of the men killed. Now I had something very special to remember as I said the prayer for Jewish martyrs during our next Pleasantville synagogue services.

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