Wednesday morning at midnight some of my friends and kitchenmates in my program came to my kitchen to eat glutton-free (I'm in the celiacs/auto-immune disease kitchen) brownies, glutton-full carrot cake, and drink some margaritas in celebration of my 21st birthday. It was great, low-key, and we just sat around for an hour and a half or so giggling and telling stories. Compared to some of my past birthdays, this was quite a good start. Wednesday, when I got up for the day, I mailed in a midterm paper and took off for Gatwick airport to hop a plane to visit Caitlin (another Puget Sound student studying abroad) in Vienna. I finally got in around 8 at night and it took me until 9:30 to get to her apartment from the airport. Awaiting me was a Viennese chocolate bunt cake for my birthday! It was so great to see an old friend and take a break from the structure and routine of IES London.
Thursday morning we got up early to get into the center of the city for Caitlin's morning class. The IES center in Vienna is by the major cathedral in Vienna, Stephansdom, and near the opera house on a major shopping street. I got some coffee and went to see Stephansdom while Caitlin went to class. It was freezing cold, however, 0 degrees celsius, which is a temperature I am no longer used to after temperate and rainy conditions in London. It didn't take long for me to seek warmth inside a coffee shop until Caitlin's class was over. After that I tried to tap into the Jewish heritage and history in Vienna. First I went to try and take a tour of a synagogue. But they stopped me at the door and told me the synagogue was under construction and the only way to get inside was to come to Shabbat services the next evening. Then we tried to find the Jewish museum. Also a failure due to construction. In fact, we walked past the museum almost three times trying to find it because it was behind construction netting and gates. We gave up on Jewish heritage and I went to the Albertina Graphic Art Museum and Caitlin went to a meeting for school. There was a huge Lichtenstein exhibit at the Albertina and so I walked three rooms full of American pop art. I'm not a huge pop art fan but it was interesting to see it on display in Europe and to think about the global responses to the pop art movement. Their permanent collection had pieces from Durer to Schiele. There was a huge exhibit on the Blue Ritter artists but most of the pieces kind of showed process and development of a movement as a historical period. After the Albertina, which I enjoyed, I met back up with Caitlin and her apartmentmates and we went to Naschmarket for lunch. This is a historical market lined with stands for olives, dried fruits, sausages, cheeses, scarves, soccer/football team spirit clothing items, breads, falafel and restaurants. We went to one of the sit-down restaurants for lunch. The menu was a challenge because it was all in German and I have to be careful about what I ordered, being a vegetarian and all. I ended up ordering a grilled cheese with some vegetables which I thought would be cheese between bread. Nope, it was a hunk of SALTY SALTY cheese. Lesson learned. After the Naschmarket Caitlin and I went to the Belvedere. This was super exciting, even if the employees called us stupid when we asked questions about the collection, and really showed us just how obsessed with and proud of Klimt Vienna is. "The Kiss" is in this museum, this converted palace, as well as many other Klimt pieces (especially unfinished ones!). I fell in love with his version of Judith and Holofernes. Look. It. Up. I could have stared at some of the Klimt pieces for hours, I swear. The collection also includes art by other members of the Vienna Secession and other European impressionists and avant-garde artists. We walked through the collection of neoclassicism and romanticism paintings but that was way obviously less interesting. We were there for a couple hours and by the time we left it was cold, cold outside and we somehow made our way back to the train then the streetcar to get back to Caitlin's apartment for dinner and what as left of birthday cake.
On Friday I met Caitlin after her class, catching up on a little bit of sleep, and I bought a huge sweater for 7 euro because I definitely had not packed appropriately for the freezing cold and windy weather. Then we went to the Secession Contemporary art gallery. I didn't like the contemporary art they had on display. I didn't find it particularly effective or interesting even with the lamentation cards available explain the ideology behind the installations. But in the basement was a Klimt fresco (noticing the theme) which was really cool. It was inspired by one of Beethoven's symphonies and there was a pamphlet explaining the symbolism and ideas in it which definitely helped me appreciate it even more. So getting to see that was probably worth the entrance fee. Also, the building is super strange. It has this weird golden weaved-looking sphere on top and the building kind of looks like white blocks put together. After this we went back to Naschmarket to get some falafel and wien pickels. Then I went to the Sigmund Freud House/Museum and Caitlin went back to take a nap (poor thing is still recovering from mono). This was a rather disappointing because it was basically a collection of his writings and his certificates and his archeological collections and busts of himself and photographs just on display. There was no information about his theories or about the debates and social anxieties about him. I was really hoping to learn about that. But it was cool to see where he practiced and lived when in Vienna with his family. After this I went back to Caitlin's and also took a nap. I was exhausted from the early mornings, the traveling, and the cold weather. When we got up we planned our trip to Prague for the next day and made dinner. Then two of her apartmentmates came with us to a Heurigan, which is a wine garden. We got dessert and a glass of wine and a couple men were going around the traditionally decorated Heurigan playing double-necked guitars which is also apparently some kind of traditional Austrian instrument. Lots and lots of the German language flying everywhere.
The next morning Caitlin and I got up early to catch a 9:45 bus to Prague. It was about a 5 hour bus ride with a half hour stop in another Czech city in between. We arrived around 2:30 or so Saturday afternoon, in a slightly warmer and sunnier Prague. I slept for most of the bus ride, of course. We found our hostel which was quite excellent. We booked a double and it had a private bathroom and a kitchenette. Now that is luxury by hostel standards. No bedbugs! We settled our stuff, got a map, and headed out to the Old Town. Now that is an incredible piece of living history. The architecture is mind blowing. Bright, colorful, ornate. The old brick towers by the Charles Bridge and the entrance by the Opera House really force you to feel like where you're walking looked like that hundreds of years ago. I fell in love with the astronomical clock, of course. We crossed Charles Bridge, past the stands selling art and jewelry, trying to squeeze through the mobs of tourists, to get to the Kafka museum before it closed. Caitlin went into a second hand bookstore with lots of English books while I went to the museum. I really loved the Kafka museum. It was set up to appeal to your senses and creep you out, with the audio effects of leaking water and the red lighting in some spots. But this was a much better museum than the Freud museum in Vienna. This one talked about Kafka, his hatred for his father, his relationship with Prague as a city, his relationship with the Jewish population, his many girlfriends, his interest in theater, other writers he conversed with and inspired him, his law school background, the existentialist issues he tackles in his unfinished works and famous works. There was even a bit on "The Hunger Artist" that I remembered having to study in high school and had made a bigger impression on me than his "Metamorphosis" (probably because of the reputation the "Metamorphosis" has and you already know what you're getting into when you open to the first page of it). The museum tried to transport you back to Kafka's era, tried to create the atmosphere that weighed heavily on Franz Kafka. After this museum, we crossed back over the Charles Bridge and went to the Museum of Medieval Torture Instruments. This was gruesome and disgusting and if they say that the Medieval Times was not a period of creative outburst, well then you're just not not looking at the right things. There are definitely some disgustingly creative torture devices. Did you know that the chastity belt was a torture instrument? Yuck. We got pizza from an Italian restaurant after this disturbing endeavor and there was a table of Italians sitting next to us. I always get excited when I can recognize and understand pieces of Italian conversation. After dinner we went on a ghost tour. Our tour guide was from Oregon so Caitlin and I were excited to meet a West-Coaster. We learned about some Prague history including stories about alchemists, a mysterious Black Madonna, architects meeting the devil, the 27 crosses and bloody political days in Prague history, a royal figure who had reoccurring nightmares of being buried alive and then actually was. Then our guide took us under the church where the astronomical clock is and through cells that used to be for locking up prisoners, torturing prisoners, and executions. He told us stories about the famous executioner, Jan Mydler, who became an executioner to try and save the woman he loved. Our tour guide was clearly fairly skeptical about the existence of ghosts, which I definitely appreciated, and was also a history buff who would throw in tidbits of information prefaced by "This isn't part of the tour but you should look up..." so that was cool. We got back to the hostel around midnight and went to sleep so we could get a good nights rest and make sure we were well rested for the full, cold day that awaited us.
On Sunday we got up around 8 in the morning and went to an American style deli called "Bohemia Bagels" for breakfast. Caitlin was craving American-style pancakes and the ghost tour had handed out discounts for different places including this restaurant. After this we went to the Museum of Communism which was pretty scary. It followed history from the end of World War II to the fall of the U.S.S.R. It was loaded with artifacts, panels, videos, photographs, and even a piece of the Berlin wall. The panels had so much information that it was hard to digest the whole timeline and waves of complications. It was scary to think that pretty much everyone even just a year older than Caitlin and I had experienced living under Communist rule. Especially seeing how scary it was, how impoverished people were, how stuck in hell they were. The propaganda, the censorship, the lack of access to basic necessities...I definitely learned more about how dire the circumstances had been in Czechoslovakia before I was born. After this rather sobering trip through the museum we went to go try and find the Jewish museum. It took a little bit of confusion and anger about being a Jew and having to pay to go into synagogues to realize that the Jewish museum in Prague is split up between six or so synagogues and each house a different category of information. For example, one is on the Burial Society and one explains different major Jewish holidays and traditions and another explains migrations, etc. The two that I found the most moving were the Pinchas Synagogue and the Spanish Synagogue (and of course the synagogue with the attic where Golem lives, where Rabbie Loew had practiced). The Pinchas Synagogue is the memorial to the Prague Jews who died in the Holocaust. Inside, on the walls, are written the names of Jews who perished. I think it was around 200,000 names and all of a sudden I had some idea of how large of a number that is, seeing the names spread out across the walls. I saw my first name quite a few times, as I tend to do in memorials of this sort. Heart-wrenching and bringing it all too close to home, this personal history. But for the first time I saw last names really close to my own. I saw "Bischisky" and something else similar to that and, with a last name as unusual as mine, I was shocked and felt an even stronger horrifying connection to this community. Upstairs was a small exhibit of some of the art work made by children in Terezin. This was particular moving as well, as children's art tends to be. The Spanish Synagogue was a completely different experience. First of all it was physically stunning. Inside were red and gold geometric designs covering every square inch of the walls and columns. There was an elaborate gold dome. It was breath taking. In this museum is the history of the Jews from the mid-1700's through the 1950's or so. It had cases on Jewish artists and writers from Prague, the varying laws that came and went, and the Czech response to Israel under communism. It took me quite a while to get through all these synagogues and to go through the sprawling Jewish cemetery. While I did this, Caitlin did her own thing, get a feel for the city from the architecture, the souvenir vendors, and the available hot drinks. I didn't even get through all of the synagogues. I only missed one though. That's some serious dedication and stamina. It was late afternoon at this point and so we got sandwiches, coffee, and did our final souvenir shopping. We hustled back over to the hostel, I gathered up my bags, said good-bye to Caitlin until our next rendezvous in Amsterdam in April, and by 7 pm was on my way to the airport.
Good-bye Praha. Good-bye Wien. Good-bye Caitlin. Hello English-speaking London! Now its time to hit the books. I had an assignment due today, I have one due tomorrow, and one due thursday. And an application due Friday. And I leave for Berlin early, early Friday morning! Well at least none of my papers need theses, they are all creative writing assignments (re:you know you're abroad when...)!!!!
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