Oct. 9 - 12 - Budapest

Last days in Budapest

Since the last days were the most un-structured, but the most interesting (to me), I think it’s about time I captured it. After all, I’m home and memories get fuzzier when suddenly in a different location. They become ancient history very quickly.

Sunday, October 9

Our morning lecture was a wonderfully enthusiastic Hungarian named Sandor Stricker who teaches sociology at a local university.  He reminded me in looks and demeanor of Nick Alex. He was harder to understand than Zoltan had been, but equally knowledgeable.  He had an interesting theory on the two types of Hungarians: Nomads and Farmers. His distinction was if you were a nomad and owned sheep, these sheep in time might produce four lambs – a net addition to your flock which occurred without your taking anything from your fellow nomads; while if you were a farmer, and you gained four acres, it was likely that someone near you would have lost those four acres. This difference he felt explained the personalities that exist in Hungary today the optimist and the pessimist.

·         For Hungary the halcyon period was from 1880 to 1920. But the Treaty of Trianon after WW I changed everything:  75% of Hungary was taken away;  60% of the population disappeared;   and again, Jews became the scapegoats for this loss.  Like in the Czech Republic, there is a sense of having been victimized first by the Ottomans, then by the Hapsburgs, then by the Treaty of Trianon and most recently by the Communists.

·         The result of living under an oppressive regime is that since everything is insecure, one tends to live in the present:  you eat too much, drink too much, and live too  flamboyantly.  That mood still exists and is evidenced by people who tend to buy too fancy cars, too fancy foods and eat in too fancy restaurants. One lives for the day since you don’t know what will happen next.

·         In 1990 when the Communist regime left, they also left over 25 billion in debt. Western companies came in and bought up  firms right and left and those individuals who had been communists last year became capitalists overnight.

·         One of the sad things during the communist era was that salaries were strictly controlled. They rose at .02% per year – no matter what your profession,  which meant that simple laborers who started working at age 18 would always make more money than those in college who only started working at age 22.  It would take almost ten years for a college student to catch up to a simple worker of his own age. 

·         The theme was “We pretend to work, they pretend to pay”.

·         Currently in Hungary there are approx. 10 million people, of which only 3.8 million are working and adding new revenues, and of those .8 million are civil servants (whose salary is really just a drain from the other 3 million. The rest are either pensioners  over age 62, students and children under age 18 or the unemployed.

·         During the communist era the state had to run continual deficits to support the ‘free’ services which were part of their mantra – be it education, health, pensions or living quarters.  So to make ends meet the black market economy took hold in all professions. For example, to have a new baby, you ‘tipped’ the doctor 40,000 florints.

·         While the multi-national companies have come in since 1990, Sandor felt that their money left the country rather than staying in Hungary, and since they paid taxes outside of Hungary in their home country poor Hungary had to survive on property and salary taxes only.

·         Another reasons that there are no monies coming into the coffers is that of the 800,000 local Hungarian firms, over 700,000 are one-person companies.  This is a way for individual citizens not to pay taxes since these companies must only pay taxes on their ‘profits’. Magically, these small one-man firms make sure that they don’t make any profits – they lease their cars, they have lots of ‘business expenses’ and voila! No profit.  BUT, while they pay nothing into the system,  they still get to take advantage of free health care and free education. Until these problems can be sorted out, Hungary will be in severe financial straits.

·         [Great new quote: instead of saying ‘people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, the Hungarian phrase is ‘if you have butter on your head don’t go stand in the sunshine’].

Sandor left us with more questions than answers after his three hour talk, but it was time for lunch so his talk ended fairly abruptly.

During the afternoon there were tours of two different museums which I skipped since I find that guides show you what they want to discuss, which may not be what I’m interested in. Since I felt that I was in a data-overload state, I chose to stay at the hotel,  relax and read and do some blogging instead.

For Sunday evening, Katalin had arranged that we would be divided up  into small groups of four and have an opportunity to visit a local family in Budapest after dinner.  My quartet was picked up by our host, Christoph Koos, and we drove to the Buda side of the river, high in the hills to a lovely condominium complex. We were met by his wife Agnes and son Misha and sat down around a large coffee table to chat about anything that came to mind.  Well, each of us had lots of questions which we wanted to ask, so the rest of the evening was spent in lively conversation re-living the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, talking about the role of the media (which can never be trusted), and learning about each other’s lives, careers and aspirations.  Misha is in college and training to become a mechanical engineer which he hopes will result in a job since many in Hungary are currently unemployed. His English was by far the best, having spent a semester in the UK. He was a delightful young man, somewhat embarrassed that his parents’ English was not quite ‘up to snuff’. He had that wonderful youthful confidence which believes it knows how the world really works.  Christoph, whose family originally came from Transylvania  is a geo-physicist who has lived in Cuba, Latin America and Denver for his career.  He was passionate about the arts, Hungarian history,  and life under the communist regime. He was so impassioned at certain points that he had to launch into Latin (rather than English), or turn to Misha for quick translation of Hungarian words.  Agnes, his second wife, was retired as of three weeks but previously had been a head-hunter for those multi-national firms coming into  Hungary who need local workers. Her frustration was that since 1948 the primary languages of Hungary had become – in order: Hungarian, Russian and Latin. None of which helped firms, like Mercedes, to find the thousands of workers they needed who had to speak German. [ It was a common theme from a variety of people we met, that Russian while forced to be learned by all citizens, was absolutely useless since they rarely met any Russians, and Latin was even farther afield. But English or German were simply not allowed, or not encouraged.]

We could tell that the Koos family had fared well during the communist era based on their careers, the look of their apartment, and the many lap-tops which existed for the three of them.  We learned a lot about Hungarian poets and novelists, and were given a wonderful array of books to look into once we got home.

I have been concerned throughout our visit about the cynicism which is expressed by all the lecturers and guides we had met, Misha admitted that this was their way of coping with the idiocy which they saw around them, and he felt that this attitude would not disappear for a few more generations. After all the Hungarians have only been ‘independent’ for twenty years or so, and prior to that they had been treated poorly by the Germans, and before THAT by the Treaty of Trianon which took away major portions of Hungary.  Christoph is still upset about the fact that Croatia and Transylvania just disappeared and that Hungary was 1/4^th  of what it had been in the past. For him it was almost a personal affront, and yet it had happened almost a hundred years ago.

 I will be interested to see how Hungary develops over the next ten years. The economy is in serious trouble, the communist era left the country not only in debt, but with financial commitments that can’t be fulfilled – like pensions.  The average citizen must live on very small incomes (the average being about  $15,000/year), very high taxes, and very expensive goods and food. As a result, there is a second economy which is based on the ‘black’ or ‘gray’ market – not unlike what existed during the communist era.  We talked about this for a bit, but then got back to arts, literature and history. 

After a lovely desert accompanied by some ‘barack’ liqueur  (the word for apricot in Hungarian), we were driven back to our hotel.  While I had been skeptical about these visits, it was a delightful experience to be welcomed into someone’s home and to sit around chatting with people who were living their lives as best they could in a country going through difficult changes.

Monday, October 10^th

Our morning was spent on a “Jewish history walk”.  Budapest had the largest Jewish community in Central Europe, and our hotel was very close to this former district. We were told about how the Jews were all squashed into a very small area during WW II, but that luckily, the Germans were so busy transporting Jews from the countryside of Hungary, that those within the city Ghetto actually lived through the war. That is, all those who didn’t die of starvation, disease or other ailments which result from living in very tight quarters.  As a result there is still a fairly good sized population of Jews in Budapest.

We visited the Dohany Street Jewish Synagogue – the second largest in the world – after Temple Emmanuel in New York. Our guide for the synagogue was a very amusing Hungarian woman who could easily have been a New Yorker. She had biting humor, flaming orange hair, and knew everything there was to know about the synagogue. Attached to the synagogue complex was:  the Jewish Museum built on the site of the home of Theodor Hertzl; a memorial park dedicated to Raoul Wallenberg and other righteous among nations (those who were not Jewish, but who risked their lives to save other Jews); and  a cemetery for those who died in the ghetto.  The most moving piece, for me, was a construction which resembled a silver weeping willow tree, but where each leaf was the name of a person who had died during the holocaust.  

We walked back to the hotel for lunch and in the afternoon took the tram to the large three-storied indoor market. The lowest level was for ‘smelly things’ such as fish, cheese and other foods; the entry floor was for fruits, vegetables, paprika and other food stalls; and the top tier was filled with small cubby-hole stalls selling any sort of Hungarian tourist tchotchke.  

Gay and I wandered through the main and upper floors where one is immediately tempted to buy ‘stuff’. But we both knew, that once we got it home we’d say ‘what were we thinking? And so while we were tempted, we limited ourselves to buying  paprika and a few scarves. But it was a fabulous place to take photographs and to watch the locals buying food for themselves.

A little foot-weary, we returned to the hotel for a rest before the evening activities.  We had dinner at the Ferenc Jozsef restaurant (Franz Joseph) where we had chicken paprikash and cucumber salad. The dessert was chestnut puree, but we two agreed that it didn’t come close to the puree which mother used to make at the holidays.

The wonderful thing which Katalin did throughout our visit to Hungary was to make sure that at every meal we had a different Hungarian dish which is considered to be a typical food eaten by locals.  She told me that when she went to one restaurant and asked them to make stuffed peppers the chef was upset because this was a type of food eaten in the home, and he could do so much better – but she insisted, and so we had stuffed peppers. [Katalin was a true ‘force of nature’ and I’m sure she got her way in every place we visited.]

From the restaurant we walked to the home of a local pianist named Adam Fellegi. Talk about entrepreneurs! Mr. Fellegi who lives on the third floor of a very old building provides concerts (for a fee) to the public in his home.  His apartment consisted of three rooms: a teeny kitchen, a bathroom and a book-lined living room/bedroom. This good-sized room  contained at one end two beds covered or disguised under an array of wonderful rugs, and at the other end  a large Steinway piano. The floors were coated in layers of sad, old oriental rugs (to dull the noise, I’m sure) and he had set up rows of plastic garden chairs for his audience. We were told he does this twice a week for local Hungarians, but for us it was something special.

Since he understands that his audience may not be lovers of classical music, he provides a series of ‘multi-media’ experiences.  His first piece was a movement from the Moonlight Sonata, and for that he dimmed the room to dark, with only a candle on the piano. For the next piece he wanted to play a Beethoven trio – but he’s only one man, so he had a video made with the missing two musicians and conductor, and while the video played on a large screen (for his audience) and on a small screen which he could see at his piano, he played ‘live’ while his fellow musicians were ‘taped’. 

His next multi-media experience was to show a video of a gentleman who makes art pictures with sand while music is playing. For this piece, the artist created a continuous set of scenes from war while Mr. Fellegi played Moussorgski’s  At the Gates of Kiev from Pictures at an Exhibition. The last multi-media experience was a short clip from a Zefferelli movie while he played a piece by Mascagni.  The evening’s concert ended with a tribute to us Americans: Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin.

During the ‘intermission’ we were served miniscule paper cups of  Tokay wine with cookies, and of course, there were CD’s on sale. (If he does this twice a week, he must be racking in the florints).

The whole thing  was for me  a major kitsch experience, but I had to give him credit – he’s figured out how to make a buck while living in his own home, doing what he loves to do. While his neighbors must get tired of the noise, his audiences must be grateful.  Afterall, how many salons have we been to in America? (Other than those at Julie Lang’s home in Peacham).

Tuesday, October 11

Last full day in Budapest and on our tour.  Our morning classroom lecture was an interesting repartee between our two previous speakers: Zoltan and Sandor.  Zoltan the economist and cynical realist, Sandor the sociologist and romantic dreamer. All the questions we hadn’t had answered, we had a chance to ask as the two played off of each other.  Interesting tid-bit: for doctors in Hungary who make very low wages, it is not uncommon to fly to England for a week-end when the English doctors aren’t at work, and in one week-end they can make as much as a months’ Hungarian wages.

Zoltans dramatic predictions were: China is a bubble in the economy; the Euro will collapse; the US is on the verge of collapse; Japan has collapsed; there will be uprisings in all countries, and it will be like the fall of Rome.

And on that note we ended the educational part of our tour.

In the afternoon a group of us went to the Szechenyi  Bath Complex – a marvelous experience . (I thought of our Peacham Zoltan who loved the bathes both in Hungary and in Florida).   The complex which is easily two square blocks in size is a trulyl Hungarian experience, and not a tourist trap (as evidenced by the fact that almost no one spoke a word of English, and all signs were in Hungarian only).  After one entered an enormous baroque  entry hall where you chose your treatments (in my case entry to all bathes and a private massage), you were given an electronic bracelet and led down to the lady’s  or men’s locker room. Here were row upon row of lockers broken into small ‘rooms’, or if one was modest one could rent a ‘cabin’ where attendants had keys and watched your goods.  After we had donned our bathing suits, we went back upstairs and into the open-air bath area which was easily the length and width of two football fields. It consisted of three different thermal opportunities: a whirlpool like area; a lap swimming area; and a chest-high thermal wading area. We started here, enjoying the scene around us: men up to their chest in warm water  were playing chess in two areas ; the statuary was distinctly erotic; and all manner of shapes and sizes of people splashed around, chatted with  their friends, drank a beer, or sat under the spraying fountains.  We Americans got our share of stares in return – it was a place to see and be seen.

After an hour of this, feeling warm and buoyant, I headed to my personal massage which was an indoor  complex opposite from the one we had entered. Once inside, I walked past a series of indoor heated pool where there were physical therapy sessions being taught, past saunas, and whirling hot tubs. I  climbed a beautifully carved wooden staircase to the upper floor where there were a seemingly endless  series of rooms for private massages.  It cost a mere $45.00 for a full sixty-minute massage and while it lacked a bit in ambience ( the massage table resembled a hospital table with modest cushioning) , there was the obligatory background music (not new age flutes, but droning, repetitive Gregorian chants) and a young massage therapist who gave me  a fabulous  massage.

Thoroughly relaxed, I took the ‘underground’ back alone since my fellow bathers hadn’t chosen to have a massage.  A quick change to evening wear and our entire group gathered in the hotel  dining room for our farewell dinner. Ingrid had a little gift of chocolates for each of us, a gift was given to our guide Katalin and to end the evening we had a trio of folk artists playing a most interesting array of folk instruments.  The female who had an amazing voice sang songs in a minor key (not unlike Greek or Turkish songs) while playing a Hit Gardon.  I’d never seen such an instrument: it looks like a small, squat cello, is held in the lap, but instead of bowing the strings, it is used as a percussion instrument with three strings tuned to the same tone, and the fourth string used for plucking. The other instruments played by the two men included a Koboz that looks like a lyre; a Jew’s harp; a Tilinko which is a shepherd’s pipe; a single reed pipe and a violin. I loved every minute of this authentic music – unlike the evening we had of folk music in the Czech Republic.

And so to bed, to finish packing and head back to America.

This entire trip was a delight for me. I had gone with modest expectations, and a lot of curiosity and I came away wanting to return to both Prague and Budapest. I feel like I skimmed the history of the countries, and saw only a small sampling of the two cities. We had days that were packed, and I look forward to re-visiting at a more leisurely pace.  The many concerts we attended and the various folk music opportunities were great fun, and all our guides were knowledgeable and pleasant.  Unlike the tours we get from the various cruise ships we’ve been on, this was more in-depth information.

Our fellow Roads Scholars were a mixed lot,  but all of them were curious and understood this  was not designed as a shopping experience but a learning experience.  I made some new friends and there were others I don’t care if I ever see again. But this re-confirmed for me that these types of trips are far more ‘up my alley’ than cruise trips and while I felt that I was in data-overload most of the time, I feel that I really got to know quite  a bit about each country and it only leaves me wanting to learn more.

Only the next time Bob will be with me.

Oct. 7 & 8 - Budapest

October 7 – Friday

What a difference a day makes. Yesterday we were in short sleeves walking along the Danube, today we awoke to cold spitting rain and temperatures suddenly in the 50’s. All those outfits we had brought for cold weather suddenly appeared, and those who had been happily wearing shorts yesterday, appeared with the ‘layered look' which included sweaters and wind-breakers today.

Our morning lecture in one of the conference rooms of the hotel was given by a very amusing, cynical, informative speaker named Zoltan Pogatsa  (I won’t try and put all the Hungarian accents on all the words, nor will I reverse his name which is how it is done in Hungary: last name first, first name last).  Zoltan took us through 1100 years of Hungarian history from the tribes arriving in the Carpathian basin to the current time. So far he has been the one speaker since we arrived in this part of central Europe whose English has almost no accent. While he was a bit self-centered, and very bombastic , his flawless English allowed us to understand his every word and concept, and he was able to keep our attention for three hours, which in itself was a miracle. There was something in the’ lilt’ of the previous  Czech and Slovak speakers which could lull one to sleep after breakfast, but not this man.

[While I have known only one Zoltan until this week, I now learn that it’s quite a common name in Hungary and it derives from the word ‘Sultan’.  But I still think it belongs to only one truly important person – from Peacham Vermont.]

Some of the Highlights which I learned (and remembered) were:

·         The Hungarian language is closer to Korean than it is to the Germanic or Slavic languages.

·         The word ‘Hun’ does NOT come from Hungarian.

·         Young people still have bumper stickers that show the border of Hungary which existed until 1918, when it was a good deal larger country. And they think of that as the REAL Hungary.

·         The key historical person is St. Stephen to whom a huge cathedral is built. He founded the kingdom which survived for 1000 years and brought Christianity to a nomadic country.

·         The pinnacle of Hungarian History (according to our speaker) was the Arpad Dynasty in the Middle Ages (1000 – 1301).  Everything has been downhill since then with one defeat, mistake, and conquest after another:

o   Ottoman Empire – Turkish Occupation 1526-1699: What is amazing is that while the Ottoman Empire and Islam were here for over 150 years, the only remnants are the baths, and there were almost no converts to the religion. And even today Hungary does not despise Turkey, in fact they are one of the few modern countries to support the acceptance of Turkey into the EU.

o   Hapsburg Empire – German Occupation 1700-1914: From about 1867 to the end of WW I was the golden age of Hungary. Jews were accepted, art, poetry and science thrived, and there was relative peace.

o   Post WW I: Horthy’s Hungary  1918 – 1941: With the Treaty of Trianon (1918) Hungary shrunk with Transylvania going to Roumania; some parts to Czecheslovakia, and Germany/Austria getting other parts. And the leader, Milos Horthy (an admiral in a non-naval country) aligned himself with Germany resulting in the death of 200,000 Hungarian soldiers fighting for the Nazis and 500,000 Jews killed in camps or by starvation and disease.

o   Post WW II  - Communist Occupation 1946 – 1989:  During this time there was the well-known bloody revolution in 1956 which was crushed by the Russians, and after that the country was run first by Janos Kadar(a traitor) and then by Cardinal Mincenti (chosen by the USA and the CIA).

·         Obviously Zoltan had quite a cynical attitude about his country’s ability to manage itself and I will have to do a wee bit of history reading to see how many of his attitudes are corroborated, but he concluded his talk by saying that since all ‘unions’ which Hungary joins tend to collapse, he assumes the next to collapse will be the EU. 

The benefit of someone like he, is that we get a different ‘outlook’ on history.  But the risk is that since we hear from so few Hungarians, some of my fellow Road Scholars might take his word as the gospel and believe all he says.[ Hertha will have to give me her own ‘take’ on what I’ve learned.]

After lunch at the hotel, we hopped into our bus for a quick tour of both Buda and Pest with a wonderful guide who gave her Americanized named to be “Julie”. Unfortunately, we were seeing everything through the rain which never is the best. The city has a very Parisian/Viennese atmosphere (no high rises are allowed when erecting modern buildings)  with lots of small green parks and open squares with monuments.  During WW II the city was severely bombed, and all its bridges were destroyed by the retreating Germans, so much of what we were seeing were restored or re-constructed buildings.

Along the rainy Danube (which isn't blue) we saw the memorial of bronze shoes which commemorates the many people who were shot by the river and simply allowed to float away. We drove across the Chain Bridge (which looks very much like the Brooklyn Bridge)  to what is called the Castle quarter on the Buda side of the river. We climbed to the top where we got out of the bus to visit the Matthias Church which has been built and rebuilt, but retains its Gothic feel.  After an hour of walking and touring, we were thoroughly cold and soaked to the skin, so we stopped at the Fishermen’s Bastion (an actually quite new building) to get a superb view over to the Pest side of the river and to have a cup of thick, rich, hot cocoa.  (Love that Chocolate).

Under our umbrellas we walked back to the bus and drove back across the Liberty Bridge along with all the locals who were trying to get out of town for the week-end.  Julie was great, here we were stuck in one traffic jam after another as she regaled us with stories about the city while our poor bus driver inched along.  One of the interesting things going on in Budapest right now, is that the current mayor (who is not well loved) is re-naming streets and squares with mad abandon. At many corners there are two street signs: one with the new named and the other with a big red slash through it.  Julie felt that in these times when the economy of Hungary is in such dire straits that there was a better way to spend money.  While it may be fun to name streets, it means that a million businesses, tour companies, map makers and hotel owners must create brand new logo material, stationary and guides. [Maybe this is another way to stimulate the paper industry.]

With the traffic getting thicker, and we having a very specific time that we had to be at our restaurant for dinner, our local Road Scholar guide, Katalin, suggested we get out of the bus at Heroes Square and use the underground which was built 125 years ago.  The only word for it was ‘cute’.  The three-car trains were old fashioned, the station stops were beautiful and it is actually quite short (2.5 kilometers) running under Andrassy Avenue a lovely boulevard on which many important buildings are situated. The many New Yorkers in our group were amused by the underground in Budapest – from its tickets to its architecture it was like riding in a toy subway.  But it proved its worth since we whisked back to the end of the line within five minutes while above us the snarled traffic would have made us late for our dinner reservation at the lovely Dunacorso Restaurant located along the river. The restaurant had a wonderful outdoor dining space, but it was still spitting rain, so we happily sat indoors with starched tablecloths, crystal wine glasses and a trio playing hammer dulcimer, violin and base. The dinner was fabulous with the main course being catfish wrapped in bacon preceded by a starter of a light salad and ending with a multi-layer chocolate desert. YUM!  We almost forgot that we were soggy and tired. Fully stuffed, we walked back to our hotel and I fell into bed with data overload.

The problem with these trips is that each lecturer and each local guide wants to fill our heads with all the knowledge of the area, but there is only so much that a brain can absorb. For Hungarians all the history, the buildings, the monuments, the jokes are a natural part of them and they talk about it as we would discuss American history. But for us first-time visitors with little knowledge of Hungarian history, it is all new and while I want to remember it all, it’s impossible.  These Road Scholar adventures really are ‘survey’ trips which give us a taste of everything, and leave us to decide whether we need to come back again to deepen our knowledge and see all the things which are simply pointed out to us on a bus. Like Prague, Budapest is definitely worth a return visit.

There is a real difference between the two cities – Prague was not bombed (except for two stray bombs when the Americans were heading for Dresden), while Budapest was seriously bombed; the population of Prague is half that  of Budapest; Prague has spent a good deal of money re-gilding itself, Budapest hasn’t had a chance to re-gild, they have  had to rebuild.  In Prague I think most residents live in the ‘suburbs’ or outskirts, but here in Budapest one senses that the city is filled with locals, and is not just there for the tourists.

October 8 - Saturday

What a difference a day makes. We awoke to blue skies and crisp fall air, and it put us all into a good mood as we headed to our bus for an excursion that would take us out of Budapest for the day. Our local guide today was ‘Susie’ and she added to our data base of knowledge as we drove out of the city on empty roads.  As we passed many communist-era gray apartment buildings and drab gray plants, she remarked that the style is known disparagingly as “Stalinist Baroque”.

Our first stop was the town of Kecskemet, a small town of 10,000. (I love it when a 'small town' is almost 15 times larger than Peacham).  It is a thriving town which makes goose pate (in the old fashioned way of cramming grain down the throat of the goose); apricots and apricot liquor; electronics; and soon an automobile manufacturing plant.

This is also the home to the Kodaly Pedagogical Institute of Music located within an old monastery. This was our first stop. Kodaly is a revered composer who took a strong interest in training music teachers and ensuring that music was taught in elementary and high school.  Here we learned about his approach, his life and a bit about the town.

From here we went to the main town square, where each side held a major church: on two sides were catholic churches (Hungary is about 65% Catholic), on one side was a Calvinist church, and on the fourth side was a Jewish synagogue. There are no Jews left in this town so the synagogue, which was huge is now used as a conference center. We were given time to wander through town and do some shopping before re-gathering in the square at the stroke of noon when the church bells of the three churches peeled away. One of them even played a ‘tune’ of Kodaly.

We ate lunch in Kecskemet at the Hotel Gunar  (starting, of course, with pate and then moving on to potatoes and stuffed peppers with fresh fruit for dessert). 

Next we were off to the town of Ocsa. Katalin felt we should see a bit of rural Hungary so we drove not on highways, but on the two-lane back roads to our destination. Here’s what I’ll say: it’s flat!  It is called the Great Plain of which Hungarian poets have waxed eloquent.  I couldn’t quite see it. We saw fields of corn, small villages of fairly modern homes, but overall it was boring.

Ocsa has a few claims to fame: it is a protective area for some of the native flora and fauna of the country; it has a wonderful old church with perfect acoustics which dates back to the 10^th century; and it has taken its wonderful thatch-roofed homes and made a group of them into an outdoor museum.  The only difference between the homes currently in use, and those which were part of the  museum was the thatch roofs. The homes we were now able to poke around in were occupied until the 1920’s and it gave us a chance to see what rural life would have been like: the traditional clothing for daily life and weddings; the cooking utensils and furniture within the small two-room homes; small yards with their chopping blocks, herbal beds and the root cellar/‘wine cellar’ (a dug out  hole in the ground) and other objects of country life.

 It was interesting to think that until recently these very simple structures were people’s homes when it seemed that they should have existed more like 200 years ago.   We would go to Sturbridge Village to see such structures, but here it isn’t such old history at all.

As the sun began to set, we headed back to Budapest where after a quick dinner; a few of us went to a concert at Olasz Kulturintezet.  We heard the Erno Dohnanyi Symphony Orchestra of Budafok and the music was absolutely ‘spot on’. We heard Dvorak (Czech), Kodaly (Hungarian), Beethoven (German) and a brand new premiere of a trombone Concerto by a woman named Zsofia Taller. The music was grand, the location was lovely and it was all for the mere price of $12.00.  Our only problem was, they don’t give out ‘programs’ as we think of them, instead some gentleman got up at the beginning and after intermission and in perfect Hungarian explained each piece.  NOT very useful to us Americans but luckily Katelin had typed us the program in English before we went into the concert hall, so we knew what was coming when. 

We walked back to our hotel, exhausted (again), and fell into bed. Another full day of good food, interesting sights AND music.

Oct. 5 & 6 - Bratislava to Budapest

October  5 – Bratislava

Our hotel, the Mercure Centrum was our must ‘ritzy’ hotel. Very sleek and modern with all the newest technology in a modern ‘industrial style’ hotel.  We all luxuriated in our elegant rooms and commented on how sad it was that we would only be able to enjoy the luxury for two nights.

We began our one full day in this country with a lecture in one of the hotel conference rooms. The speaker was a historian who took us over the same historic dates we’re beginning to know and love, but he did this using a series of old maps which showed all the different ethnic groups that occupied the Slavic world (Germans, Hungarians, Polish, Czech, Slovaks and Austrians) and how the borders ebbed and flowed through time. When the Czech and Slovak were joined together to form a country after WW I, there were very  clear discrepancies between the two which would haunt them for the next eighty years: Slovak were primarily small villages with 90% rural, and very Catholic and the Czech more citified and atheistic.  With the onset of WW II, the two were separate and the Slovak Republic became an authoritarian/totalitarian state. While the head of this republic was a Catholic Priest, over 70,000 Jews were sent to Germany as cheap labor and ultimately to Auschwitz. Only 1600 lived.

At the end of the war the two countries were once more rejoined and each pretty much expelled all those who were not either Czech or Slovak. All Germans and Hungarians living in the new Czechoslovakia were defined as ‘treasonable’ (since both their countries had fought for Hitler) and were forced to move in a mass movement back to their original countries. (Even if they had little affinity to these ‘homelands’). Eleven million Germans were sent back to Germany and Austria in a manner not that different from the way the Nazis had expelled all non-Aryan people and the Hungarians were simply  swapped for Slovak people living in Hungary.  This mass movement which was called  the ‘wild removal’ set up tensions which exist to this day.

We learned about life under the communist regime, with stories and examples which didn’t sound all that different from that which we’d heard in the Czech Republic: forced shortages of goods; censorship; loss of entrepreneurial spirit. The result being a passive, immoral, corrupt society where files being kept on every citizen over the age of eighteen resulted in a subjugated population.

Finally in 1989 with the Velvet Revolution, communism was crushed, but the more advanced, economically richer Czech citizens were tired of subsidizing their Slovak ‘brothers’ and so in 1993 the two separated - again.  Unfortunately, the first Slovak leader, Meciar was as corrupt as some of the communist leaders had been beforehand ( giving plum positions to his cronies and manipulating goods and contracts to favor his friends). This left the Slovak ‘man on the street’ feeling very little trust in their government – a mood which exists to this day.

Two things are slowly helping to stabilize the country: a new generation of people, born since 1989 who are the first true Slovaks without a sentimental attachment to  the good ol’ days when they were part of Czechoslovakia; and an improvement in the economy caused by the growth of the automobile industry where the Slovak Republic has now  become the biggest producer of cars, per capita in all of Europe putting out 500,000 cars/year.

So we ended our lecture with a positive note. But to look at this country with its graffiti-filled walls, the cheap communist housing, and the visible signs of a decaying infrastructure makes one understand that this country has a steep climb ahead.

In the afternoon, I left our group to go down to the American Embassy where I had an appointment with the Ambassador. It turned out that Theodore Sedgewick, the newly Obama-appointed ambassador, was a fellow student with me during my Junior Year Abroad Program at College Year in Athens in 1967. I remembered Tod as a funny, irreverent, smart young man, and now a mere forty-two years later, having given Obama a good deal of money, he was an ambassador.

Getting into the embassy for our planned visit was no small feat as I forfeited first my passport, then my cell phone and camera, ran a gauntlet of heavy steel security doors and serious guards and policemen to finally reach the office.  I had brought copies of pictures of Tod in 1967 when he had a full head of hair and was distinctly younger and these very candid shots broke the ice for our meeting.

He and I chatted about the good ol’ days, about what it’s like to be an ambassador, what I had done with my life, and a bit about what he felt his role was in Slovakia. He is certainly not a career diplomat, and there are no manuals to learn the job, so it will be interesting to see how he does. It’s not like the Slovak Republic is one of the critical nations to our diplomatic strategy, but he could be a fabulous help to this small new nation if he does things right. Time will tell.

In a sense I was mimicking Daddy who on his trip around the world had letters of introduction which opened doors for him and allowed him to meet with various German envoys and ambassadors in strange new lands.

The nicest thing Tod did was to offer to make himself available to meet with future Road Scholar groups traveling to Bratislava. It will be interesting to see if this actually happens.

In the evening, I rejoined the group and we went out for a typical dinner at a wooden ‘chalet’- like building outside of the town where we had a fine dinner to celebrate the end of our very short visit to the Slovak Republic.

I think the only reason we came to Bratislava was to get on a boat to ride down the Danube to Budapest. But that was not to be because there has been very little rain over the last months, the Danube is very shallow in some parts and so instead we were promised that we’d have a small ride on the Danube for an hour but would then continue our journey to Budapest on a bus. The trip would turn out to be faster, if a little less romantic.

October 6 – Trip to Budapest

Another perfect Indian Summer day as we put our luggage into the bus, and hopped onto a river ferry which would take us for one hour down the Danube to the burrough of Devin, on the outskirts of Bratislava.  The boat ride was leisurely and boring, and we all were actually quite glad that we would only have a short boat ride since the thought of six hours staring at the wooded shoreline was just a wee bit dull. We arrived at Devin Castle built in the 8^th century and located at the strategic confluence of the Danube and Moravia rivers. One could stand on the shore-line and see across the river to Austria, a mere spitting distance away.  During the time of the communist regime, this was a highly guarded location since it was an easy swim to escape to the west. There was a monument erected near the water  which had listed the names of the 800+ people who lost their lives trying to make their escape from this location.  It seemed so incongruous,  as we stood there on this lovely fall day looking out at the river,  to think that not that long ago there would have been an ominous presence nearby of soldiers with guns and dogs prepared to shoot anyone trying to flee.

Having explored the remains of the castle, we went to lunch at a local restaurant before hopping on our bus for our three hour ride to Budapest. 

As we neared the capital of Hungary, there was a sense that this was truly a well to do city. There were familiar signs for Tesco and IKEA, manufacturing facilities on both sides of the road, toll booths that seemed more modern and a lack of the gray stolid communist-era architecture.  I know that Hungary was under the thumb of the communists at the same time as the Czech and Slovak nations, but one didn’t have that same oppressive feel.

Our hotel the Carat, is a new hotel created from an old apartment building.  It is not as swank as our Mercure in Bratislava, or as modern as our IBIS in Prague and we all felt a little let down, but the city itself on first glimpse looks exciting and vibrant and reminded me a little of Paris.

I’m looking forward to our next days here – not only for the new sites and new history to be learned, but for new foods as well. From our first glimpse of our dinner, it is obvious that this is a country that loves chocolate.  Our desert tonight was walnut filled pancakes drowning in chocolate sauce. Yumm.  

Oct. 3 & 4 - Last days in Prague

October 3-4 – Prague

Today was one of the best lectures, and it was from a Benedictine Brother who lives with eleven of his compatriots in the Brevnov monastery.  The Czech Republic is 80% atheist; the rest are either agnostic, catholic or protestant.  5% go to some form of church, and 1% follow the Catholic faith.  In contrast,  Hungary and the Slovak Republic, both very close countries, continue to be avid followers of the Catholic faith.  The Czech surrounded by beautiful churches and cathedrals are just plain non-religious people.

Father Alexis, a young man in his long black robes (under which one caught a peek of blue jeans and Birkenstocks) comes from a heritage in the south of the republic that dared to keep its faith.  During the communist period, if one was found to go to church or to espouse any religion, one’s job was in jeopardy. So his parents, both teachers, never went to mass, but quietly they kept their faith and passed it on to their son.

While he majored in economics at Charles University, he has now been in the monastery for eight years. We were given a three hour lecture on the history of the Czech people (from a religious perspective) and the best part was that it synched with the lecture we had had four days earlier. I’m almost able to spout the important dates:

·         9^th Century – Cyril and Methodius two Greek brothers brought the Cyrillic alphabet to the Slovak nation and translated the Bible using this ‘new’ alphabet.

·         962 – late 1800’s – the HRE Empire rules Europe

·         14^th Century – the halcyon golden age when Charles IV was not only king of the nation, but also head of the HRE.

·         15^th Century – the Hussite Movement briefly existed, named for Jan Huss, a protestant martyr burned at the stake

·         1610 – Thirty Year War which divided the Catholics from the Protestants and continues to be a point of contention to this day.

·         1526 – 1804 - the German Hapsburg Dynasty, resides primarily in Prague (not Vienna) and the German language is the primary language of the country

·         1918 – the end of WW I when Masaryk is named President of the Czechoslovak Republic

·         1938-45 – WW II - Czech and Slovak Republics are separated

·         1948 – the beginning of the Communist Regime when all monasteries and nunneries were closed. Czechoslovak Republic is re-joined

·         1968 – Prague Spring when Dubcek tried to put a 'human face' on socialism

·         1989 – The Velvet Revolution

·         1993 -  The separation of the country (again) into the Czech and Slovak Republics

No matter who the speaker – be it a religious, financial, or academic person – these dates are critical to the story of the Slovak people.  And yet, a mere month ago, you could have put a gun to my head and only a few of those dates would pop out of my data bank.  The wonders of travel is that not only do I learn these dates, but I can relate it to those things I see around me be it the physical borders, the monuments in town squares, or the buildings built to honor important people and events.

After our lecture, Brother Alexis showed us the highlights of the Monastery with its wonderful Baroque ceilings, grand rooms used to welcome guests, and the crypts where one could see the original walls of the first monastery built in 962AD.  Obviously over time that building was replaced and embellished, or torn apart and forgotten. It is now reviving and the eleven occupants are beginning a new venture - to open a brewery.

I kept wondering how eleven guys, living amidst all this history could figure out how to make a nickel to keep the place going. The state provides some funds since it’s now considered an historic site, they have a small ‘hotel’ associated with the monastery which also provides meals; and the brewery will provide additional funds.  But it is a hard row to how in an atheistic country.

After a lovely lunch, we departed and were given a free afternoon. Gay rested her feet, and I went off to the Moucha Museum. Moucha was an artist of the Art Nouveau period known for his large posters for Sarah Bernardt in Paris as well as many structures within his homeland. But he did posters for everything from beer to ink to cigarettes. The museum was quite small, but a gem.

For dinner, we were taken as a group to what was described as a folklore dinner, and which I described as pure hell. The meal consisted of a variety of potato dishes, some meat, plenty of cheap wine and even more plenteous ‘entertainment’. The musical instruments were a hammer dulcimer, a cello, a violin and a long wooden pipe/horn which reminded me of an Australian didgereedo. This was the accompaniment to folk dancers who not only danced lively steps in colorful costumes, but tried to get the audience engaged as well.  I just kept sitting there waiting for it to end….which after two hours it did.  By then people were drunk as skunks on cheap wine, declaring it to be a fine evening.  To be in a large cavernous beer hall with over 300 other tourists, listening to not very great music, is not something I’ll sign up for very often.

Unfortunately we then had to pack our bags to be ready to put them outside the door by 7:00am, as we depart Prague for Bratislava.

I will come back to Prague, there is too much I didn’t see, or saw too quickly. This was a great ‘survey course’ and it bears a repeat visit. It certainly helped that we had perfect weather the entire time, but there is a wonderful charm to this city and its small neighborhoods, not to mention a lot of history, beautiful parks and squares and very welcoming people.

October 4 – Trip to Bratislava

A five+ hour bus ride past farmland and low rolling hills, with a break for lunch, brought us to the capital of the Slovak Republic.  No sooner had we arrived and retrieved our luggage from the belly of the bus, than we were off for a quick survey tour of the city.  We drove up to the Slavin Memorial which gives one a quick panorama of the entire city which resides on both sides of the Danube River.  The Slavin Memorial honors those who died during WW II, and while built by the communist regime,  with plenty of stolid, gray statues, it has been allowed to remain since it honors a previous period.  Though once again, with derision in his voice, our guide described the monument and its robust communist figures.

We then drove down to the Bratislava Castle, a building which has existed since 900, but which has been burnt down, re-built, knocked down, re-built, ignored and finally is being brought back to its prior glory. Here too were wonderful views of the Danube river, its three main bridges, and a view to the Communist Era community built in the 1960’s. From here we could see the electro-wind-mills of Austria, and the fields in Hungary.  This is definitely a city on the border.

To balance the sublime castle with the more ridiculous, we drove through the communist built  community which is made of pre-fab cement block high rises, meant to house over  150,000 people (or  a third of the population of the city).  In the ‘good ol’ days’ of the communist regime, these apartments were given to the workers and maintained by the state. When one married you were given one of these flats as well as a ‘wedding present’ which allowed you to furnish these places.  Our guide, Mero, was almost wistful for those good days when the state provided you a home, along with health care, education and a job.

Once the regime had fallen, people were allowed to buy these residences, since the state could not afford to keep them up. For a mere three room apartment one pays 120,000 euro ($165,000). This doesn’t sound bad until you realize that the average annual salary is less than $10,000, and is heavily taxed to allow for pensions, health care and infrastructure. 

The buildings were built to last about 50 years, and are now beginning to  coming apart. They have little to no insulation, the windows all need replacing, the plasterboard allows one to listen in on one’s neighbors and the core which contained kitchen and bath is falling apart. But the state has a problem – they have to maintain these blocks because how else does one house the labor needed to boost this economy which until 1993 rode on the shoulders of the wealthier Czech Republic? I had hoped to see remnants of the communist era – and here they were. It reminded me of the New York complex built to house blacks which one sees driving from NYC to Connecticut. Lifeless, but functional.

We drove back to the hotel, had a quick dinner and retired knowing that tomorrow was our only day to explore this town.

Oct. 1st & 2nd - Prague

October 1 – Trip to Kutna Hora

On another absolutely perfect Indian Summer day, we were picked up by our trusty bus for a day’s adventure outside of Prague.

Our first stop was the Castle Sternberg, a castle owned by the Sternberg family since the 1700’s. From the end of WW II to the end of the Communist period (1945-1989), the castle was used by the communists as a garrison and the owner, the current Count Sternberg was allowed to act as a tour guide in his own home. It was considered a place of bourgeois values, and was not maintained by the regimes, but nor did they destroy it.

In 1992, all state-owned properties were returned to their original owners if you could prove your ownership, and so the castle returned to the Count who now lives there again with his wife. The state provides a certain amount of money to retain it as a piece of heritage, and for the rest the count appears to count on: entrance fees; book sales;  three other castles properties; vineyards and other assorted properties which allow him to maintain this building.  In one sense it was delightful to roam around someone’s home, seeing the dining room where he celebrates festive occasions, the men’s den where all the heads of animals he has shot are on display, the children’s playroom with its stuffed bear on a rocking base (who needs a hobby horse, when one can have a hobby-bear)  and the living room with fairly contemporary furniture which we assume he uses when hordes of tourists are not tromping around. We were told that periodically he appears to greet tourists, but we were not that lucky.

My favorite room was an intimate salon where the family tree had literally been painted onto the wall as a large tree with each of its branches displaying the name and a photograph of a member of the Sternberg family.

Trivia word for the day: Credenza.  It was a place where the food of the royalty was laid out and the official taster would  eat it to prove that the guests would not be poisoned. It comes from the word in Italian (or Latin) – Credo (or trust).

Having enjoyed the castle we piled back on the bus and continued to a World Heritage Site called Kutna Hora. In this small village which rivaled Prague as the most important city, there once were the major silver mines which provided a primary source of revenue to the Czech and Slovak public until the late 1700’s. At that time flooding, fire and the Thirty Years War put an end to mining. [We were told that at that time silver from the American colonies and other countries were available more cheaply and suddenly this thriving village went from boom to bust. ... but I think it was floods and war which were the real problem]. 

The village is now primarily a tourist highlight, and on this Sunday as we strolled the streets it was a  ghost town, with even the tourist shops mostly closed. We learned that unlike capitalistic America where stores would be open on week-ends to grab every available tourist dollar, here the citizens and shop keepers take off on the week-ends to be with their families.  What a concept!  

With our very local guide (speaking only a modicum of English which had been learned by rote), we learned how silver was extracted from the mines and minted, how the town kept a wonderful cathedral which competes with the biggest and best in Prague, and how the vineyards on the surrounding hills create great wines. After four hours  of walking on cobble stones under sunny skies, we piled back on the bus for our return trip to Prague.   It was a long day and we got back around 8:30 pm, had dinner and fell into bed.

October 2 -  Czech Economy and Jewish Ghetto

We started our morning at the Hotel Petr, owned by the travel group (Scantravel) that was responsible for our agenda and lecturers in the Czech and Slovak republics for this particular tour.
The lecturer was the owner of Scantravel, Tomas Brychta. He gave a most interesting lecture about life in the Czech Republic during the communist period and now.  He himself was born in 1960, so has lived through the change from state owned, government run society, to the free market economy that thrives today.  He is very proud of what he has accomplished and what he managed to live through, and gave us a very personal sense of what it was to live through this time.

From 1948-1989 the communist state owned 97% of all assets. This was accomplished by simply confiscating all property. The only thing that wasn’t confiscated was your own personal home (where you were asked to be 'downsized' to squeeze  in more people). From your home you were prohibited from running any sort of business. Everyone had to work for the communist state. There were no other choices. This didn’t mean you had to be a party member, but you did have to subscribe to their philosophies and rules.

He felt that the worst time was from 1968 –(when Dubcek tried to create a new kind of “socialism with a human face”, but which was crushed by Russian tanks) until 1989 when the Velvet Revolution occurred. Everything was so controlled during those years that women ( who had to work) were given two hour lunch breaks so they could stand in lines for food for their dinners. Absolutely everything was controlled by the state. And there were shortages of everything. He remembered when toilet paper disappeared for four months, and the editor of the local paper said that never had his business thrived so well, as during those four months.

He described the process of buying a car: one put one’s name on a list and paid for half the car, and after about five years, your name would come up and you went to a dealer and were given a car in the color that had rolled off the factory that month. So if green was the color when your name came up, you owned a green car.  Immediately, you put yourself on the waiting list for the next car because they were so poorly made they wouldn’t last more than five years.  To repair these disasters, you either went to the front door of the garage where you were told to come back in six weeks when they would have an opening for your car, or, if youreally  needed your car for work, you’d go around to the back door and pay in black-market currency to have your car repaired -  that week.

The black market economy was how things really got done.

In 1989 with the Velvet Revolution, the communist party lost and between 1989 – 1995 85% of all assets which had been confiscated, were returned or ‘restituted’ to their original owners. You were provided no financing to repair your property, but you did get back your ownership.  His own family had, at one point, owned the building in which the current hotel exists. It was a multi-family home with his grandparents on the lower floor, and his father, aunts and uncles on the upper floors. During the communist regime it had been broken up into many small apartments for workers. He ‘bought out’ his family members to begin the hotel.

He described the incredibly difficult time he had starting his business. Because there was no automation of banking, it took nine weeks for money to transfer from the Czech republic to any other nation (or vice versa).  So while he wanted to cater to groups traveling to the newly free Czech country, he had to find a way to do things more rapidly. So he discovered that just across the borders in the more modern countries of Austria and Germany he could set up  bank accounts and transfer money more rapidly….but that still meant traveling with tons of cash in his pocket as he crossed country borders. The same issues were associated with getting loans to re-build the structure.

Getting workers was equally hard. Under the communist period people were paid whether they did a good or bad job. The work ethic was non-existent and it took a while to train his maids, cooks and waiters in the dining rooms how to perform to the standards expected by foreign visitors.  As he built up the business, every step was a challenge since there was no infrastructure in place.  So one had to admire his entrepreneurial spirit which found solutions to each new problem where he could easily have felt defeated with every step of the process. 

He then went on to describe how, at the beginning of the new economy, there were plenty of thieves and black market experts who took advantage of the gullible. There were Ponzi schemes not unlike Madoff, there were more things done under the table than above. And things are still not perfect, but it has been a very short period.

He pointed to the primary industry which has thrived since 1989: the automobile industry where VW chose to invest in plants in Czechoslovakia rather than East Germany because the Czech people were prepared to work for lower wages, and were happy just to have a job, while East Germans were not prepared to accept these conditions.  The three main car manufacturers currently building cars in the country are Skoda, Toyota and KIA, but it is still a very expensive proposition to own a car – both to purchase it and to pay for the gasoline.

The steel industry, while in the past it had done well, can no longer compete, and beer breweries which did alright have been bought up by other countries. The newest industry -  tourism - has been a boon to the country  and as a result WI-FI is now offered everywhere, ATMs exist everywhere and they have large shopping malls – their newest pride and joy. In twenty short years they have come a long way....but still have a long way to go.

When asked about their participation in the EU, his feelings were that he wasn’t yet  sure of the benefits of being part of the EU. Suddenly there were a new layer of standards put on their  food production and restaurant quality which removed some of the traditional foods that Czech love. In addition their soldiers found themselves suddenly assigned to Kosovo and Kuwait which they didn’t really appreciate.  They have not yet converted to the Euro, and he's not sure they want to.

The remaining fear in all Czech citizens is fear of "the East", by which they mean Russia. They have seen the impact that communism had on their lives, they see the wealth of the new Russia coming in to buy industries and property, and they hope that by being part of the EU they will be protected in the future.

These were themes that we heard repeated over and over: the communists when they were in the country built shoddy products from buildings, to roads to clothing to cars, they sapped the energy out of the people, and they could come back at any time.  There is a real sense of insecurity and of being always put upon by others be it international treaties in which they, the Czech, were not able to negotiate, (Munich, Warsaw Pact etc) , tanks that rolled into their country (Germans, Russians), or simply government regulations that made life impossible. The current corruption in government is depressing, and the single citizen feels that there’s nothing they can do.  Victim-hood is strong in the Czech Republic along with cynicism.

After lunch we went to the Jewish Ghetto – where victim-hood was writ large.  Prague had, at one time,  the largest Jewish population in Europe, but with every changing monarch they were either put into ghettoes and persecuted or  were allowed to thrive and be part of all the professions of the city. Until WW II, that is,  when the population of Jews went from 750,000 to less than 7,000. Most were  either sent to camps and exterminated, or fled to other nations.

 The entire Ghetto area, which is surrounded by the old town, is called Josefov. Its architecture  reminded me of the elegant streets of Paris, and is huge. It contained at one time four synagogues and thousands of businesses. Now it is a shadow of itself and more a museum than a living community.   We went in to the Pinkas Synagogue which is no longer used. On all the walls of what would have been the main congregation, were written the names of  the 78,000 Jews who had been exterminated. It included their name, their dates of birth and death, their concentration camp number, and each was color coded to identify the area of the country from which they came. During the time of the communist regime, these names had been removed, and were painstakingly re-painted on to the walls after 1989.

In the Maisel Synagogue, now a museum,were pictures done by the children who were in Terezin, a holding-camp outside of Prague. They have over 15000 drawings done by children, of which only a small fraction were on display.  All the synagogues, along with the old Jewish Cemetery are now considered part of the Jewish Museum.  One couldn’t help but be moved by these simple buildings with their horrid messages. After three very depressing hours we walked back to our hotel.  Our group consists of 25 people, and about 1/3 are Jewish. I don’t know who was more affected: those of Jewish heritage, or the others in our group, some of whom seemed to only now grasp the horror of Shoah.

Our evening was a free one where we were allowed to do what we wanted and were given Czech Krone to cover our meal. Gay and I having had a little too much of our new 25 best friends, chose to go off alone to a small restaurant on the other side of the river. The restaurant was Tri Stoleti  (three centuries).  A lovely, elegant intimate restaurant. We had a fabulous meal where with every bite our tongues said thank you, and we washed it all down with what was considered to be fine Czech wine. We fell into bed at 11:00pm, mentally and physically exhausted, but very sated.