lauren feels the heat while owen remembers how to smile

Vienna is Hot. Vienna is an attractive city, filled with buildings baroque and art nouveau. It has a historic city center lined with cobble-stoned streets and many, many churches. It was bombed some toward the end of the Second World War, but nothing like Berlin or Munich, so you can get a sense of what this place looked like 100 or 200 years ago. Our time here has been impacted some by the oppressive heatwave sitting on top of most of western and central Europe the past couple weeks. The good news is that, unlike in Prague, the air conditioning in our flat here is wunderbar, so much so that our nights here have felt like home, three of us sleeping in comfort while Keri goes in search of additional blankets.

Vienna proved on arrival to be the hardest city we have experienced in getting to our flat. Between not finding a single taxi at the train station (how is that possible?) to waiting 25 minutes for an Uber van to load our comically-large luggage, to rush hour traffic to our driver navigating the byzantine driving rules set up to reduce congestion in the city center, it took us more than an hour from arrival in town to get to our flat. The flat is great. Beyond the a/c, it's roominess, location -- steps away from St. Stephen's Cathedral -- and a kitchen counter backlight that changes color have all been big hits. Renting flats is always a gamble, but the advantages of a kitchen and common area when you are traveling with kids cannot be overstated. It's easy. All you need to do is marry Keri and let her do all the research and reservations. (Heat alert: Pictured here are Lauren and Owen in the Prague train station, with "Fanny," Lauren's omnipresent hand-held fan and self-proclaimed best friend.)

Sorry About That, Kids. Some months ago, we booked an all-day trip to Salzburg, an old university town in central Austria, best known as the location for The Sound of Music. Long story short, our tour was leaving at 730, so we put into action the school-day measures necessary to get the entire clan out the door by 715. Mission accomplished, with little complaining from the kids, likely resulting from the knowledge that they could sleep in the next two days. A nice quiet walk through town to the meeting spot -- as no one was up -- where we see a van already filled with people. We ask the driver the name of his tour company. It is the one we used. He begins to apologize and say he hopes they did not overbook the tour, as I take a closer look at the electronic ticket on my phone, clearly stating that the reservation was for Saturday. Which is fine, except it was Friday. This is why I cannot be trusted with anything important. I blame Keri, who really should know better. Whoops?

It is Free if You Don't Pay Anything. As we were already up, and knowing we had one day here with good weather, we signed up for a free walking tour. We ended up in a group of 20, and our guide started the tour on the grounds of the Hofburg, long-time residence of the Habsburg rulers and current residence and workplace of the Austrian president. The Hofburg dates back to the 13th Century, but most of the palace was built in the 19th Century. It contains a number of residences and apartments, the imperial library, and the training facilities for the world famous lipizzanner horses.

As we walked through the city center, our guide talked about the changing nature of this city. At it's peak, in the late 1800's, Vienna boasted a population of more than 2 million people, several hundred thousand more than it does today. It was the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire which, although in decline, was still a global power, and it had no rival for influence in music, having been the long-term residences for Mozart, Beethoven and Strauss, among others. Vienna's importance diminished significantly after the First World War, when the 53 million person empire was broken apart and it became the capital of a newly formed republic of just over 6 million.

Our tour was about as you would expect with that many people -- slow moving with lots of bad questions (yes, there is such a thing) and unsolicited comments. The guide took it all in stride, and we were happy to pay a handsome tip, in part noting some number of tour goers who thought that "free" meant free.

Schoenbrunn Palace. Trying to fit as much as we could into our narrow window, we signed up for a paid-tour of the Schoenbrunn Palace, the Habsburg's almost out-of-town summer residence. This palace is, for many reasons, compared to Versailles. It started as a hunting lodge and its main builders -- Maria Theresa and Franz II -- explicitly tried to make it look like Versailles. It was several miles outside the city when built. It is neither as large nor as opulent as Versailles, but it is certainly impressive in its own right, in particular the gardens, large parts of which have been open to the public for 250 years. Photos are not allowed inside the apartments, so we could only capture images of the gardens. As for the interior, it looks much as you would expect for 18th Century monarchs, public spaces designed to impress and show the outside world the power and influence of the Habsburgs, with the private apartments reflecting their personal tastes. Interestingly, Maria Theresa and her husband favored Asian motifs.

Let's Try This Once Again. After having Keri double check my math, it was agreed we should show up again Saturday morning and give the Salzburg tour another run. The best part about getting up before the city is that you pretty much have the run of the place. It is remarkable what a difference there is between a plaza-filled with sweaty and intermittently-bathed Europeans and one that is empty and eerily quiet. In Vienna, you can assure yourself the latter pretty much anytime before 7am. In addition, you can get some of that excellent morning light, that makes for great photos (St. Stephen's church pictured here.) The downside here is that you are hard-pressed to find a cup of coffee, as none of the coffee shops open before 8 (9 on weekends) and the reliable subway station take away bakery/coffee places close for the weekends. In my case, that led to a Yelp-aided walk down to the river where one bakery was open and there were a surprising number of young people up, milling about, up to no good. I have no idea what was going on, and was happy to get my coffee and get back to the flat in time to see that we made it to the tour.

Getting to Salzburg via the Scenic Route. Our Dutch driver/guide, Tom, took us to Salzburg by way of the Lake District, starting with Lake Attersee, the longest lake in the country, filled with glacial water, just below the foothills that run off the east end of the Alps. We are fortunate enough to have seen some great alpine lakes on our trips to Switzerland, and this lake compares with those. The grayish-blue water, filled with minerals and glacial sediment, reflecting the bright June sun, while the wind blows across it, serving as nature's air conditioner. There were a number of locals sun bathing and even a couple hearty souls swimming in what must have been really cold waters. It would have been a nice place to spend a day, but we had places to go -- several more lakes and the lakeside town of St. Gilgen, birthplace of Mozart's mother. The final lake before Salzburg, Lake Fuschl, is the international headquarters of Red Bull, a unique set of buildings that the Salzburg-native owner wanted to resemble two volcanoes with a set of bulls running out of one of them. They are certainly different. As has been said by wiser men than me, don't get high on your own supply, Red Bull guy.

Salzburg: Was is Das Sound of Music? Salzburg is known by the world as birth-place and long-time residence of Mozart, who often wrote of his bad feelings for the place and its inhabitants, calling it parochial and filled with small-minded people. In the English-speaking world, it is known as the location for the 1965 cinematic classic, The Sound of Music. As various Austrians explained to us, the locals, like most non-English speakers had little to no knowledge of the film, which is surprising, given the film is kind of a love letter to the place. Our local guide, Gabi, walked us around the town, pointing out various spots where iconic moments were filmed, including the gardens where much of Do-Re-Mi was filmed.

We then walked across the bridge and into old Salzburg, which was swarming with tourists and other visitors. We eventually made our way up to Hohensalzburg Fortress, a castle-fortress just behind the town on top of a large hill. The fortress was first built in the 11th Century, and has protected well whoever was inside it, as its walls have never been breached. It now houses a museum paying tribute to the famed Rainer Regiment as well as the fortress's own history. Many of the Tripadvisor reviews said view alone made it worthwhile. It even got a smile out of Owen. Maybe that's a sun-induced squint. Hard to tell.

On the long drive back to Vienna, Keri, Lauren and I each watched the movie. I had not seen it in its entirety in some time. It holds up, as Julie Andrews is really just perfect for her role, and her part is the one that carries the rest of them.

The Austrian Military Museum: No, We are Not Good at War. With the temperature approaching 100 on Sunday we knew two things: (1) we would be down a Lauren, and (2) we needed to find some place cool. The first was easy, as Lauren pulled herself from active duty before the day started. I thought I had solved the second, suggesting we go to the Heeresgeschichtliiches Museum (HGM), a well-regarded museum on Austria's military history that, according to at least a couple reviews I saw, was air cooled. Turned out, not so much with the a/c, but the building, housed in Vienna's Arsenal, is constructed in such a way to keep the heat somewhat in check.

The content in the museum is, at times, great. The historical artifacts -- weapons, armor, maps, written documents -- go back to the 14th Century, and they are extensive. There are also a lot of paintings, many contemporaneous, that add some flavor to the cold hard historical facts. The museum is at its best in the time periods between 1848 and 1914 and the First World War, as those exhibits include detailed, thoughtful, and refreshingly honest descriptions of the events, not to mention assessments of the shortcomings of the Austrian armed forces. Among other things, the museum quite plainly noted that the empire's army stuck with bad tactics and poor leadership in its many, many losses to Napoleon and later, the Prussians and Italians. The World War I section is similarly excellent, and kicks off with the actual car in which Archduke Ferdinand and his wife, Sohpie, were assassinated in Sarajevo in June 1914. This exhibit alone is worth a visit.

Owen Has Found a Reason to Smile. After our late return from Salzburg on Saturday, we ate at Le Burger, a questionably-named burger place a couple blocks from our flat. The on-line reviews were pretty favorable so, against my better judgment, we decided to give it a try. And good that we did. The burgers are decent. Not great by any kind of American standard, but better than any other piece of meat I have seen Europeans throw in a bun and try to call it a hamburger. Owen not only enjoyed his burger, he was excited to see on the menu some kind of brownie/ice cream thing. He was almost giddy after he ordered it. As is seen in this photo, he tried to eat as much as he could in one bite. He got about half down. We ended up going back again on Sunday, and Owen got a little over his skis, foregoing a burger for the nachos, only to get a bowl with tortilla chips with some strange seasoning on them, sitting on a bed of greens. He is now 0-2 in ordering nachos in Europe, so perhaps he will have learned. Perhaps.

Does Vienna Wait for You? Vienna, and Austria more broadly, are interesting places. Vienna was for hundreds of years the seat of power for one of the three great kingdoms of Europe. No nation's trajectory was changed more in 1919 than it's was, leading to an unholy alliance with Nazi Germany in 1938 that I don't think the Austrians have ever really grappled with, certainly not in the commendable way the Germans have. Beyond the important history, there is remarkable music, art and architecture to enjoy here -- not to mention cakes.

As I wrote on the beginning of this post, the weather impacted our time. It was simply too hot to see and experience as much of the city as we wanted to. It was crowded, as well. I suspect coming back in October or in May, and maybe without children, would help reveal Vienna's charms in a way that we did not fully experience in our brief visit.

prague: a city in air conditioning denial

A Walk Around Prague. Lauren was not feeling great the last couple days, as she seems to have contracted a zima, which is Czech for head cold, and not the 1990's citrus-alcohol drink abomination.  So, she stayed in the flat to rest up, watch some Friends on Netflix and do some important work on Photoshop. Down one teenager, the three of us set out on Tuesday. Our planned first stop was the Jerusalem Synagogue, built in the early 20th Century, well outside the Jewish Quarter. Its outside is Moorish in design and inside is Art Nouveau, and it is supposed to be worth a look see. So armed with oversized off-brand Czech apple juice, we made the long walk to that part of town. Only when we arrived, the front of the building looked like a construction zone and there were signs indicating the synagogue was closed until Monday, without further explanation. No notice on the website or in Google maps. Nada. I'm sure they'll be hearing from some angry Jews over the course of this week.

Astronomical Clock. As we were walking back toward the Jewish Quarter, I noticed it was getting close to noon. Someone close to Keri had regaled her with stories of the magical Astronomical Clock show, an unforgettable performance that included, among other things, someone playing a trumpet. So, we made sure we were assembled with several hundred other tourists as the clock struck noon. We saw no trumpeter; rather, we got about 20 seconds of a clock show that was as confusing as it was underwhelming. First, a word about the clock itself. Built in 1410 by a clockmaker and mathematician/astronomer, the clock is quite an achievement, not only telling accurate time, but marking daily sunrise and sunset times and employing a method of timekeeping that allows astronomers to know where to set their telescopes to find specific stars on any given night.

Back to the show. On the hour, twelve apostles appear and rotate through two gates above the clock face. In addition, there are eight characters, each representing an individual characteristic that was thought to be good -- or bad -- in the 15th Century. The good traits are manifested through the angel, philosopher, astronomer and chronicler, and those characters are visible at all times. On the hour, for the show, a skeleton representing impending death rings a bell, and three other unseemly characters appear, representing vanity, greed, and lust. It should be noted that, given the era the clock was built, greed was synonymous with usury, which itself meant Jews, and the character picked to embody lust is clearly Turkish. All this actually makes the clock sound pretty interesting if kind of racist, which it is. I learned pretty much all of this with a couple hours poking around the internet, and none of it during the 20 seconds when very little happens.

Owen did his best to make up for the lack of excitement by challenging to a fight a large panda on the Old Town Square. Pictured here is the moment before the panda got his licks in.

Maisel Synagogue. Another of Prague's old synagogues, the Maisel Synagogue, is a 16th Century building that now serves as a museum, focused on Jews in Bohemia between the 10th and 18th Centuries. Jewish history here is similar to other parts of Central Europe -- orders of protection interspersed with local expulsions and pogroms, employment limited to money lending, restrictions on where you could live, with full legal protections coming at the end of the 18th Century. After 1215, Jews were required in most places to have some item of clothing that would distinguish them as such -- a yellow hat or circle on clothing, or this 17th Century ruffled neckpiece. The yellow hat or circle, okay. But this ruffle thing is just adding insult to injury.

Prague Castle. Dating back to the Ninth Century, the Prague Castle is really more palace than castle now, and serves as the offices for the president of the Czech Republic. King Charles IV (1346-78) is credited with turning a rather middling hilltop castle into a formidable fortress and beginning construction on the impressive St. Vitus Cathedral, which took nearly 700 years to complete and whose tower stands well above the castle buildings. During his reign, the castle gained a reputation as an important fortress for the Habsburg rulers.

As time passed, so did the general utility of castles. This castle's defenses were overcome several times, including at the end of the Thirty Years' War (1648), when Swedish forces looted the joint. Sometime after that, the Habsburgs decided that the site would function much better as a royal palace, so away went the moat and series of defensive walls, in their place were put large courtyards and buildings done very much in the style Empress Maria Theresa used in Vienna. That is pretty much how it looks today.

The Czech Resistance is Alive and Well. We toured the Prague Castle and surrounding areas in a group of 20. Our guide, Tijo, is from a small town in the north of the Netherlands but has lived in Prague for ten years. Like several others we have been in contact with, he offered unsolicited his disdain for the prime minister, Andrej Babis and the person who appointed him, President Milos Zeman. Tijo did not hold back, describing the prime minister as a corrupt con man who would be indicted but for immunity protection while in office and the president as a faux populist who lost 80% of the vote in Prague but won re-election last year by, in his words, appealing to the Islamophobia of the voters in rural communities. Someone standing next to him must have said something about our president at that point, as Tijo made explicit that he was not saying anything about any other country or their leaders (I thought the whole thing might go off the rails for a moment), before doubling back to hammer Babis and Zeman one more time, and expressing his admiration for a local artist who, days before the 2018 presidential election, placed a not-so-subtle message to Zeman in the river below the Castle, and finish with his regret that his adopted country seemed wholly unable to communicate in matters political. See, we're not so special, after all!

Pra-Ha(t as Hell). Those of you following the news may have noticed a massive heat wave hitting western and central Europe this week. Today was 98 in Prague, a city where most residents not only don't have air conditioning, but seem to be morally opposed to it. It is bizarre, and given the increase in summer temperatures in Europe, downright dangerous.

With the heat descending, finding things to do that involved air conditioning became the highest priority. There are not a lot of resources that are helpful in this regard. My favorite are the on-line comments telling you there is no need for air conditioning in Prague because it never gets that hot here. Very helpful. After some due diligence, I came up with a couple places that fit the bill. Before getting to those, and while the thermometer was still in the high 80's, I thought it best to round out our tour of the Jewish Quarter by going to two buildings I knew would not be cooled -- the Klausen Synagogue and the Jewish Ceremonial Hall, both of which are museums, focused on explaining Jewish observances. Semi-educated Jews that we are, the substantive content of the museums was of limited value, but both had some nice artifacts and the synagogue some pretty internal architecture.

The City of Prague Museum. As the temperatures rose, we were off to the air-conditioned City of Prague Museum, which sits on the edge of New Town and Old Town in a three-story museum-looking neo-Renaissance building. I'll not bury the lead any more. The air conditioning was fantastic, as they had installed in each room units with enough juice to cool even this sweat-prone animal on a hot day. The exhibitions were not on par with what we have seen in other museums, with pretty thin treatments of thousands of years of archaeological history and 800 years of recorded history here. Much more interesting was a separate exhibition on poverty in Prague, in particular poverty resulting from the industrial revolution and public responses to it. The problems associated with poverty -- child welfare, education, housing, health care, criminal justice -- appear here just as they do everywhere else, and the city's evolving approach to solutions was interesting to see laid out in museum form. I also liked this statute, who is reported to be Hercules, but looks to me much more like Hunter Pence.

Lunch Success! As has been written on these pages before meal time is not always easy. Between Keri's food allergies, Lauren's gastroparesis and Owen's general objection to anything not hamburger or pasta with butter, we are not, in this way, well suited to efficient traveling. Today, however, we hit the jackpot. Lauren was still on the injured list, so there were only three people to satisfy. Somehow, we stumbled into the basement of a mall where next to each other was a taco place for Owen, a sushi place for me and a healthy make-your-salad-from scratch place for Keri. I doubt we will get that lucky again but I was glad the food gods were smiling upon us today.

Cold War Museum. Between 1945 and 1989, Czechoslovakia was behind the Iron Curtain, sharing a long border with the capitalist pigs of the west (aka the Austrians). As such, the Czechs and Soviets thought this place was on the front lines, and prepared for the possibility of war. Among other things, the Czechs built more than 2,600 bomb shelters, many designed to withstand a nuclear attack, and provide safe space for a couple weeks post-attack. One such shelter, built under the Hotel Jalta, now serves as the Cold War Museum.

A young woman dressed as a Communist-era Czechoslovakian solider met us and several others in the lobby of the hotel and escorted us down several flights of stairs into the shelter. She began by showing us the design of the air filtration system, followed by several rooms where the necessary filtration machinery still sits -- and functions. She then walked us through a number of other rooms, filled with gas masks, radio equipment, firearms, and the height of 1960's technology -- a telex machine. Perhaps most interesting was the "surgery room," which is as troubling as it sounds -- a room with a surgical table and dentist chair 30 feet below ground with 1950's state Czechoslovakian surgical equipment, just in case you are in need of surgical intervention after a nuclear attack. Keri was most taken with this set of illustrations on the wall, providing instruction for one person man how to help another person man become decontaminated after exposure to some radioactive material. Keri accurately attributes this as the inspiration for this classic Saturday Night Live sketch.

A great, very different kind of museum. Walking through those cramped rooms with the original equipment and most of the original set-up provides an important, and powerful perspective on the seriousness with which our Cold War foes took the entire enterprise.

Would it Surprise You if . . . ? I referred at the top to Lauren's important work over the last two days. Not one to waste her time, she decided to entertain the rest of us by Photoshopping a photo of Bear, our two-year old dog, when he was six weeks, into a series of situations, including making appearances at various places we have travelled this month. The inspiration for this comes from Owen's asking me: "Would it surprise you if Chubby Cuddles . . . . " Chubby Cuddles is how we refer to that version of Bear and Owen finishes the question with all manner of ridiculousness, such as "Would you be surprised if Chubby Cuddles was in that baby carriage?" or "Would you be surprised if Chubby Cuddles was driving this train?" See what you are missing. Here, Lauren depicts Chubby Cuddles in Paris, complete with beret, mustache and a sky filled with pigeons, his bird of choice.

Thumb's Up for Prague. We had a short visit here, one interrupted by miserably hot weather, but we very much enjoyed all that we saw and ate, and the people we met. I would like to come back here at some point, as I feel there is still more to experience.

keri has a new best friend, until she doesn't

Welcome to Prague, or Praha. Our Sunday arrival at the train station had trouble written all over it. I managed to get our four comically large suitcases off the train onto the platform, only to see there were no escalators to get to the main train station lobby, where our pre-arranged ride was waiting for us, in front of the Burger King holding a sign with our name on it. As we considered how we were going to get four bags down the stairs in one trip, a very kind Czech gentleman asked if we were the family that had arranged for a ride. (Note: he has no sign and there is not a BK in sight.) (Note from Keri: The man showed me his phone and in the message, which was written in Czech, the words Burger and King were all I could read. Our train was delayed and I assumed he came looking for us.) Keri said yes, and she had a new best friend. He grabbed two suitcases and bounded down the stairs, started an extemporaneous tour at the train station, offered us to stop by an ATM better than the train station ones (suckers!), and loaded our bags in his van. As we were revved up and ready to go, he got a call, from the family he was supposed to pick up. They were waiting for him. And so, our heads hung low, we helped unload our bags onto the street as Owen and I went back into the station, walked to the Burger King, where we found someone holding a sign that read: Keri Eckstein. Welcome to Prague!

What do you mean they don't take Euros here?  We realized on the ride here that they don't use Euros, but something called a Czech koruna. That caused me to look up how many countries are EU members but have their own currency. Apparently, there are nine such places, including Denmark and Sweden, the last two stops on our tour. I understand, for a place like the United Kingdom, where national pride can overtake reason to cause you to insist on keeping your own currency, in clear contradiction to the very point of the EU. When you are a nation of 66 million with the seventh largest economy in the world, we'll cut you a little slack. But, the Czech Republic? With a population of 10.5 million (about as many people as live in Georgia) and a GDP outside the top 50 in the world, just what are you trying to prove, Czech Republic? Do you think Georgia could get away with its own currency, Peachtree Pounds, or something goofy like that. Sheesh. Not cool.

I came up with one possible answer when I tried to get some money from an ATM near our flat and discovered that the smallest possible amount I could get was the equivalent of $750 dollars. That is, in a country where things are relatively inexpensive, you cannot withdraw anything short of what is probably a month's salary in the Czech countryside, which you then have to spend in three and a half days. They know good and well you will never be able to spend anywhere close to that, but figure putting that many koruna in someone's wallet will help the local economy? Or is the plan you will forget to exchange the koruna back when you leave? Or you'll get screwed twice on the exchange rate? I really don't know. I do know that the exchange rate .044 dollars per krona is going to be tough to keep straight in my head.

Good eating in Praha. Prague more than made up for its lack of down escalators and inexplicable currency choices by having, we decided on our first night, a truly beautiful city, and some outstanding food, as we enjoyed our dinner at Pepenero, the best Italian food we have eaten on this trip, followed by some damn good gelato at Puro Gelato.

Prague Walking Tour. We began Monday with a three-hour walking tour that started in Wenceslas Square, where we met our tour guide, Jack, who began with a brief history of the Czech people -- barbarians, fought of the Huns, mixed with some other Slavic groups, exposed to Christianity in the 10th Century. After that, they spent the next several hundred years fending off Germans in the north and south, falling under control of the Habsburg dynasty (Austro-Hungarian Empire) in 1526 and finally riding themselves of the Austrians in 1919. The Czechs then combined with their friendly neighbors, the Slovaks, to form Wisconsin Czechoslovakia, which lasted until 1993, when, after the fall of the Iron Curtain, they split into two countries.

Jack showed us a number of local landmarks, including a controversial statue of King Wenceslas hung upside down on a dead horse, the most popular Czech restaurant chain, and the Church of Our Lady of the Snows, which boasts the highest altar in Central or Eastern Europe. (both pictured above) (Note: DO NOT call Czechs eastern Europeans, as they want no association with the Russians.) The church was supposed to be the biggest in Prague, but the Carmelites ran out of money very early in the project and built less than half of what was planned. We saw the Powder Tower and Municipal House, where the modern country was born, and then walked into the Jewish Quarter, where Jack pointed out the several synagogues and Jewish cemetery and gave a very brief history of Jews in Prague. We finished by the Astronomical Clock, where Jack made several strong recommendations for local cuisine.

Czech Cuisine. Adventurous eaters that we are, we decided to give his one restaurant recommendation a shot. I was the one who went local with my order, opting for some sort of roast beef with dill sauce and roasted potatoes (the photo somehow makes it look better than it looked in real life). The meal was a good reminder why there is really no such thing as Czech restaurants or Czech cuisine, at least outside of this nation. Based on Jack's descriptions of local delicacies and the menu items I saw today, Czech cuisine includes a lot of boiled meats. Sure, they add spices to enhance the taste, but when boiled meat is the main building block, you have a culinary house of cards. Fortunately, as always, there was an excellent gelato place 0.2 km away. Pictured here is Keri, who has hit the mother lode with chocolate sorbet and a gluten-free waffle cone.

We walked to and over the Charles Bridge, a beautiful 14th Century bridge that is Prague's most iconic landmark. It is probably the most crowded, as well. Prague is always teeming with tourists, particularly in the summer. And it seemed like every EU nation was well represented in town today, as we navigated the mass of humanity to get safely across the Vitava River. We walked around a bit on the other side, where the kids found some gingerbread cookie shop and Keri two peeing statutes in front of the Kafka Museum. Prague: Something for Everyone!

Jewish Quarter. After a brief break at the flat, we ventured back out into the nearby Jewish Quarter, visiting the Old New Synagogue. Built in 1270 (!), it is Europe's oldest synagogue still in use. It is strange to see a synagogue built in the gothic style, as this one is, or one with a mechitza (separation between men and women for prayer) that has the women sitting on the other side of a solid wall outside the sanctuary, with holes cut in the wall to allow them to hear the prayers.

We next went to the Pinkas Synagogue, which was originally built in 1635. It is no longer used as a house of prayer, but instead as a memorial to the 78,000 Czech Jews (out of a total population of 90,000) who were murdered in the Holocaust. The synagogue has on its walls for each victim their name, place of residence, date of birth and death. The names cover every wall of the first room you enter. You then walk into a second larger room, only to find every space of wall there covered with names, in the same red and black ink. You walk upstairs to find a third room with several more walls of names. It is, like the Vietnam Memorial, extremely powerful by shedding light on each precious life that was taken, while at the same time helping translate to our limited brains what 78,000 lives might look like in scope.

The Pinkas Synagogue also has on the top floor a room filled with drawing and art projects done by Jewish children at the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Utterly heartbreaking to see the drawings and paintings done by children younger than our own now at this "model" concentration camp.

Just outside the synagogue sits the Old Jewish Cemetery of Prague. You have never seen anything like this. From 1450 or so until 1796, when the Jews were first allowed to leave the functional Jewish ghetto of Prague, every Jew who died in Prague was buried here. At some point, they ran out of horizontal space, so they started re-digging burial plots and placing second, and third and fourth bodies in the same plot. Fortunately, with only burial shrouds and time, the bodies decomposed rather quickly. Still . . . . The place is, at the same time ghoulish and beautiful. You really have to see it yourself.

Owen Has Always Liked Spicy Indian Food. Given Owen's new-found recollection that he "always liked Indian food," we once again wanted to give the man what he wants. After complaining that tonight's chicken tikka was too spicy (it wasn't), Keri and I offered him some of our Chicken Korma (it was). To his credit, he took a spoonful of spicy gravy and sat, staring at me for a good ten seconds before he was scrambling for water. After the pain subsided, he declared himself to be a life-long lover of spicy Indian. Fortunately, he'll get plenty more chances to prove that.

midnight snacks, head colds, and a righteous gentile

Berlin Flat. As we finish up our week in Germany's capital, I realize I have been remiss in providing any information about our flat. It is in the Sony Center, a set of 10+ story buildings around a central courtyard-atrium, with a fountain and seating for several local chain restaurants, and a Starbucks. The location is good, between Potsdamer Platz and Tiergarten. The view from inside our flat into the atrium allows for some people watching as we enjoy breakfast. Owen reports that there were a number of people eating dinner at 1 in the morning.

Mitternachtssnack. As for why he was up at that time, Owen was enjoying his Midnight Snack (TM), a nightly event, not always occurring precisely at midnight, where Owen finds his way to a refrigerator and gathers foodstuffs sufficient to keep him from starving to death overnight. At home, the snack usually consists of a variety of apple products. Last night, Owen ingested a large chocolate bear we got him two days ago. Of course, the only way we know what he ate is because he left the empty packaging in the refrigerator. He has a lot to learn about the destruction of evidence.

Schnupfen. I have been suffering from some type of head cold during our stay in Berlin. The title of this section, schnupfen, is the German word for head cold. I note the onomatopoeic quality of the word, but most German words sound like you are coughing up a lung such that I can't quite credit them on this one. In any event, as I am starting to feel better and the weather was cool on Saturday, I took the opportunity to get in a Tiergarten run. I got slightly lost and ended up going a bit longer than I had planned, but made it back in one piece, and did get to see this lonely figure sitting on a bench.

Otto Weidt. With most of the big ticket items on our list down, Keri said she wanted to go back to the Otto Weidt Museum, a small building in a Hackesher alleyway that we had walked by with Gabe. Weidt was a paperhanger, like his father. In his 50's, as he was losing his eyesight, Weidt started a broom and brush workshop that he moved to the Mitte district. With the Wehrmacht as one of his customers, Weidt was able to get classified in 1940 as integral to the war operations. Using that status, Weidt hired as employees and actively worked to hide as many as 30 blind and deaf Jews between 1940 and 1943. He found apartments and other safe houses for his employees, and hid some himself, including in his shop. Eventually, the Nazi's found and arrested nearly all of those people, as Weidt continued his efforts to help those he could track down at various concentration camps.

Weidt's facility now serves as museum, commemorating his courageous acts. The museum is only five or so rooms, and has some original items -- including some of the sewing machines used in the manufacturing process, letters to and from his employees -- as well as photographs and vignettes about those he saved, and those he tried to save. In 1971, Yad Vashem posthumously recognized Weidt as a righteous gentile. Lovely area and nice little museum.

Hackesher Hof. We had lunch at the Hackesher Hof. a restaurant that can trace it's roots back more than 100 years. After falling into disrepair and neglect through the war and East German years, the restaurant has been restored to its original art deco look. It's front faces a busy street and its back opens onto one of the artsy, tiled alleys in the Hackescher. The food was hit and miss. Keri and I both found the eggs to be a good choice. Owen did not, saying he never thought he would say this, but the eggs I make for him were better than the ones he got here. Lauren had no such complaints about her nutella crepe and ice milk drink.

German History Museum. As suggested in the last post, we ended up back in the history museum. This time, I was able to get from 1848 to 1919 in about 90 minutes. Knowing there were two kids waiting after 1994, I hurried through most of the 20th Century, catching their mother around 1945, as we cruised together through those heady DDR years. I will not bore you further with any of my thoughts on historical events over this time, but do want to share one photo, that of a massive globe that is reported to have belonged to Hitler, which was found by Soviet soldiers, one of whom literally shot Germany off the map. Hard to blame him, given the viciousness which with the war in the east was fought.

Final Thoughts on Berlin. We have had a great visit in Berlin. As I wrote a couple entries ago, no European city has been as important as this one in the 20th century. 30 years after the fall of the wall, Berlin is still a city in transition, and it seems to be headed in the right direction. It is for sure worth a visit. That said, I don't think a return here is in the offing for us, in part because there are so many other cities we want to see, in part because, despite Berlin's progress, there is still, for me, some degree of discomfort here, walking the streets in the place where the planning and oversight of the Holocaust took place. I suspect this is largely a reflection of my age, and my personal connection to people who directly experienced Nazi persecution. With every generation, as that personal connection falls away, the unease will, too. And that is probably a good thing, as long as future generations fulfill Owen's aspirations of taking to heart the lessons of our past.

a lot of history, a little bit of chocolate

Jewish Museum Berlin. The Jewish Museum here is, in a word, different. It is not a museum in the conventional sense; rather, it is an effort by its architect, Daniel Libeskind to tell the history of Germany's Jews over the last 75 years through space, structure and subjective experience, rather than objective facts, numbers or third-party narratives. After walking down a staircase, you are immediately disoriented, looking down a long hallway that is built at an angle. You walk down the hall a bit and see three different paths, each one representing a different aspect of the German-Jewish experience: the axes of Exile, Holocaust and Continuity.

As you continue down the long, slightly-askew hallway, there are a few notes explaining the difficulties and challenges for Germany's Jews who were forced to emigrate between 1933 and 1939, having been stripped of their legal rights, their social status and their personal wealth, as they went to all four corners of the globe. At the end of the hall is a door that leads to an outside space called the Garden of Exile, which Libeskind has filled with 49 concrete columns arranged in seven straight lines, but on a square that is at a slight slope, all to induce a slight sense of queasiness as you walk through it, reflecting the experience of being strangers in a strange land.

The Axis of the Holocaust has along one side of the hallway a number of personal items and descriptions, which are shown in windows with circles that are increasingly opaque as they extend outward, making it more difficult to read as you get further from the middle. At the end of this hallway is a door leading to the Holocaust Tower, one of a number of "voids" in the building, this one room with 24-meter high concrete tower lit only by a sliver of natural light coming through an opening in the wall.

Finally, the Axis of Continuity is an empty hall that leads to a stair case that takes you up to a separate exhibit, one not at all based in architecture, but a series of stations (each one representing a letter in the Hebrew alphabet) showing aspects of Jewish life in Germany today, from school children talking to their classmates about what it is to be Jewish to a rap about Jewish empowerment to the workings of a local Chabad to the security needs of Jewish organizations here, the exhibit leaves you with an appreciation for the vibrancy of Jewish life in Germany today, albeit one very different from that before 1933.

The museum is unlike any history-type museum you have seen before, and it is likely not everyone's cup of tea, but Keri and I found it informative and worth the time.

The Rausch Chocolate House. After lunch and another walk through Checkpoint Charlie, we made our way to the Rausch Schokoladenhaus, a three-floor chocolate palace in the Gendarmenmarkt. The ground floor is a massive chocolate shop, the second floor is focused on Rausch's chocolate operations in central and south America and the top floor is a chocolate cafe, including a bar with a conveyor belt of chocolate items similar to those used in some sushi restaurants. There are also a number of chocolate models of Berlin landmarks including the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag. After several laps around the main floor, we all had some difficult decisions to make, but, as Owen likes to say, we persevered and came out with just enough chocolate to see us through the rest of our time here.

Terror Museum. Lauren was feeling a bit ill late in the day, so Keri, Owen and I decided to stay close to the flat, returning to the Topographie des Terrors, housed on the former site of the joint SS and Gestapo headquarters. The main exhibition in this museum deals with those organizations, and what they did between 1933 and 1945. The museum explores a couple different themes -- the complicity of "regular" law enforcement, the ritual of public humiliation, broad public support for the Nazis and the challenges in holding accountable most of those who helped perpetrate the Holocaust.

Of course Germany had a state law enforcement system before 1933, so it is reasonable to ask what the police, prosecutors and judges in that system did after the Nazis came to power -- whether they stood up for the rule of law, or adapted their functions to reflect the priorities of the new regime. As you would imagine, it was mostly the latter. This photo of a regular police officer and an SS officer in the March 1933 Reichstag election captures well that trend. It is played out in far greater detail in the numerous descriptions of people who had spent careers working to protect the public in Weimar Germany, all to easily succumbing to new directives to arrest and imprison political enemies, to strip the civil rights and liberties of Jews, Gypsies and homosexuals, and to foster the public shaming of women -- often by shaving their heads in public squares and having them carry signs attesting to their misdeeds, e.g., romantic relationships with non-Germans.


All of this is a reminder how powerful are the social ties that bind communities, and how those ties can push people into doing things they do or should know to be immoral, and comfort them after they have done them. It is indeed difficult to stand up for what is right. It is all the more difficult when your friends, your family, your work colleagues, all support or at least maintain silence in the face of that which you know to be wrong. And it is damn near impossible when you are putting yourself at risk to do so. In light of that, these two photos really jumped out at me -- one of Klara Shabbel, a member of the Berlin resistance targeted by the SS. She coveys this sense of conviction through an "I don't give a shit" look that is inspiring.

And this second photo of a single man, in the sea of a large group of Hamburg shipyard workers, who are present for the 1936 launching of the German Navy training ship Horst Vessel. The photo is taken during the singing of the national anthem, with everyone gathered giving the Nazi salute. Everyone that is, save one man, thought to be August Landmesser, who stands with his arms folded and a disgusted look on his face. Who knows what he was truly thinking in the moment, but the symbolism of one person, refusing to go along with crowd, speaks volumes, and forces all of us to ask how we would act -- or do act -- when we are confronted by moral injustices.

Dinner and Gelato. Continuing our pattern of avoiding the local cuisine, Keri, Owen and I finished the day at Osteria Caruso, just off the Potsdamer Platz. The portions were generous, the staff kind, and the food -- gluten-free spaghetti for Keri, grilled calamari for me, spaghetti bolognese for Owen -- delicious. When discussing the Terror Museum between bites of spaghetti, Owen expressed hope that future generations would take to heart some of the lessons of the Holocaust, that knowing what people are capable of doing and what it took them to get there should serve to prevent us from going down the same road again. There's always hope. If not hope, there is at least gelato, so we made our third visit to Caffe e Gelato, a gelato shop in a mall across the street from our flat. We found it through TripAdvisor, and our guide confirmed it was one of the best in the city. Our taste buds concur. Highly, highly recommended if you are near Potsdmer Platz.



Berlin Wall Memorial. As the Friday weather was lovely, we started the day with a long walk to the Berlin Wall Memorial, the only site where there are two sections of wall still standing, along with the marked up sections in between, giving you a sense of the no-man's land that existed between East and West after the Communists set up a series of security measures in the late 1960's. Seeing the distance -- and the obstacles -- certainly explains why so few people attempted escapes in the last 20 years of the wall. Keri notes that the Germans really go out of their way to honor the martyrdom of the 140 people who died while attempting to escape. She's not wrong. There is something odd about it. In no way to diminish the impact of the wall, and the lives lost, but, in the shadow of the Holocaust, that five Germans died every year the wall stood because not enough of their fellow Germans would stand up to the Russian bear, well, it's hard to get too worked up over it.

New Synagogue. We then walked down to the Neue Synagogue on Oranienburger Street. The synagogue is a beautiful, massive structure built by Germany's largest Jewish community in 1866. It's Byzantine-like style stands out in Berlin, and it's large dome can be seen many blocks away. They don't allow visitors to see the inside of the synagogue, which fits over 3,000 people, but they have a museum that focuses on the history of the building, the congregation and Jewish life in Berlin. Lauren found the last part most useful, given the contrast to the non-fact based approach of the Jewish Museum, and she is right that this museum does a good job of helping you understand just how large the Jewish population was in Berlin -- 160,000 in 1925, or 4% of the city at that time -- and the degree to which Jews had integrated into German life.

The museum, of course, deals with the de-integration, as well, and has some powerful first-person video narratives of Jewish Berliners and their own stories of separation and survival. On the second floor there is also a series of books, the Gendenkbuch, that include an alphabetical list of German Jews who were killed by the Nazi regime between 1933 and 1945. Keri found several names of her great-grandfather's siblings.

German History Museum. After lunch, we walked down alongside Museum Island to the massive and extremely well-done Deutsches Historisches Museum. Like most museums here, all of the signs and placards are in German and English. We began with the temporary exhibits on Democracy 2019. We think we have political issues in the United States -- and we do -- but they really pale in comparison to what is happening in Europe. Germany, as the largest and most important country in the European Union, is entering uncharted waters domestically and within the EU, as right-wing parties have made significant gains in the last two years and threaten to tear apart the union. One floor of this exhibit explores some basic questions about Democracy -- i.e., is a democracy a government that follows the will of the majority or does it ensure the protection of civil rights and civil liberties for its people? The second floor of the exhibit provides an extensive history of the Weimar Republic, its unique challenges, its successes, and its ultimate and sudden collapse.

The permanent exhibits are an incredibly rich and detailed history of the German speaking peoples from the Middle Ages to the collapse of the wall. We got through only about half of it in two hours, and I felt like I was going pretty quickly. For this former history major, it was like being back in my freshman Western Civilization class. We may be back for a second day, as I kind of what to know what happens after 1871. No spoilers, please.

Pergamon Museum and Nefertiti. The reason we had to cut short our visit was to get over to Museum Island and see the splendors of the Pergamon Museum and the bust of Nefertiti, which is housed in the Neues Museum. Our guide, Gabe, told us the best way to avoid the lines at both places was to get there at the beginning or end of the day. Given our preference to let the kids sleep in, we knew just before closing time was our best shot. So, we hustled over to the Pergamon, made it quickly to the specific rooms Gabe had written down for us, and then we went next door to see the old Egyptian queen. The rushed nature of our walk through was reminiscent of Clark Griswold's tour of the Grand Canyon.

I don't know much about the history of any of these items, except that the Germans' taking and possession of Nefertiti (no photos allowed) was and is a matter of some disagreement with the Egyptians. In any event, I will include the photos of the rooms from the Pergamon where the Germans basically took apart and rebuilt entire city gates or edifices. The photos only give you a hint of how impressive they are in person. The large blue gate is the Babylonian Ishtar Gate, from the 6th Century BCE, or about 20 years after the Babylonians conquered the Kingdom of Judah and forced the Jews from the land of biblical Israel. The second photo is the Market Gate of Miletus, a second-century structure from a Greek city on Asia Minor. There are some other rooms worth seeing, but these were the two most awe-inspiring, both as a matter of scale and age. Well worth the time if you are in Berlin.

One day left in Berlin . . .