Berlin - Report 1

Monday, May 19, 2008

We got a train at 11 o'clock from Dresden to Berlin (nonstop). We did not have a seat reservation because they had been useless from Prague to Dresden, and I ended up standing. The conductor finally came, and I pointed to the one empty seat where a woman told me it had been reserved. It wasn't reserved until the next light, so the conductor gave me the seat. It was a two hour train ride. Once you got a cab at the new Berlin railroad station, I made another mistake. I told the driver, who spoke excellent English, that the hotel was at 78 Kurferstendamstrasse, when it was really at 78 Kurfurstenstrasse -- about 4 km away. He was a nice guy and turned off the meter, which is already a $25. Our hotel, and Express Holiday Inn, was the cheapest we could find in Berlin -- we had an extremely small, but highly efficient, room.

We went for a walk in late afternoon to Potsdammer Platz, which was an enormous empty lot when we were here 12 years ago (it had not been developed because the Berlin Wall had run through it). Now it is full of modern buildings -- the Sony Center is a large enclosed space with restaurants etc. in a glass ceiling about 20 stories high. We walk through the nearby cultural District and saw the Neue Nationalgalerie, an Eero Sarineen building, on the way home. We had been at a reception there in 1981. We had dinner at a Chinese restaurant next to the hotel, where the food is actually quite good. We even went back to it on our last night.

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

We bought a three-day bus pass and took the bus to Museum Island, which is in the heart of East Berlin. We went to the Pergamon Museum, which we had also visited in 1996, and saw the Pergamon Temple which had been moved here from Turkey, and the Babylonian Gates of Ishtar. We have visited Pergamon on our trip to Turkey in 2004, and had seen the site from which the temple had been taken.

We had lunch near the museum and then walked to the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag, which had been the home of the German Parliament. It had been burned in 1933, shortly after the Nazis took over, and badly damaged in 1945. In the 1990s, it was rebuilt with an enormous glass dome on top and is now the major tourist attraction in Berlin. We and all the other tourists walked around on the roof, with views all over the city. One unfortunate sight was a fire with much smoke in the Philharmonie -- the Philharmonic Hall -- right near the Potsdammer Platz. That night we went to an Argentine steakhouse for dinner, which was a nice change -- and only 100 yards from the hotel.

Dresden - Report 1

Sunday, May 18

On Sunday, we took a cab into town and went to the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in the Zwinger Palace -- it has a wonderful collection of Ruebens, Vermeers, and other old masters, including the Sistine Madonna by Rafael. Mary Ellen wanted to go to the Albertinum, which had contained the modern art collection, but we found it was closed for two years for repairs.

She also wanted to go to the Frauenkirche, ("Church of Our Lady") (right) a high Baroque Lutheran church (which had been destroyed in the war and rebuilt), but it was closed for a concert. So we went to the concert, which consisted of organ music by Bach, an oratorio by Mozart, a symphony by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, and another organ piece. It was actually a religious program with the sermon, but it was over in an hour.

The hotel restaurant was closed Sunday night, so we wandered around and found a nice restaurant a few blocks away. We sat in a glassed-in porch because it was pretty cold and gray outside.

Prague - Report 4

Friday, May 16, 2008

Today was free -- it was a scheduled tour of a suburb where Honza lived in the afternoon, but people were encouraged to finish up their shopping, sightseeing, etc.. We passed on the tour and instead shopped for toys for grandchildren and went to several places we have not had a chance to see -- the Cubist Museum, St. James Church, and the Tyn Church. We also went to the Bethlehem Chapel -- a reconstruction of the chapel where Jan Hus had preached in 1400. We had a light lunch under a tent in the middle of the Old Town Square, because we knew we were having a fancy closing dinner that evening.

It had been cloudy all day (for the first time on the tour) and when we left the Tyn Church, it poured. Fortunately we could wait under the arches of the square, and our hotel was only a block and a half from the church, so we struck out for the hotel when the rain lightened up, and did not get too wet.

That evening, we had the closing dinner of the tour at a restaurant called David, which was across the river, next to the American Embassy. We took trams to get over there, both walked across the Charles Bridge on the way back. The dinner was very pleasant -- Honza brought in some Czech musicians to entertain us before the meal. We sat with two retired flight attendants, so it was hard to make conversation. Mary Ellen had Nona, a Jewish woman from Philadelphia, next to her, and they worked hard trying to get the table involved in conversation. Nona and her husband, John, were very nice, and interested particularly in the tour of the Jewish synagogues. I ran into them when I was walking to the station to buy the train tickets for Germany, and they had been out searching for a synagogue that was not on the main part of the tour.

Saturday, May 17

The tour officially ended after breakfast, and we then took a cab to the Holovice Station and the train to Dresden. When we checked into our hotel, the Hotel Bayerishe Hof, we found that I had incorrectly made the reservation for May 15 -- 17, rather than May 17 -- 19. They had already sent me an e-mail asking why I had no-showed. Fortunately, they had a room available and did not charge us the cancellation fee.

Dresden did not have the beautiful weather that we had in Prague. We walked into the center of town (about three quarters of a mile) and grabbed seats at the first sidewalk restaurant we could find because it was threatening to rain (the restaurant was underneath a roof that extended over the sidewalk). We did not see much of the city Saturday night and took a cab back to the hotel, where we had a glass of wine in the lobby.

The picture at left is a part of the Zwinger Palace, which we walked through after dinner.

Prague - Report 3

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

On Wednesday we had a tour of the Jewish ghetto, which is very close to the Old Town Square. We visited several synagogues and the Jewish cemetery. We finished at noon, had a nice lunch, and took it easy in the afternoon.

In the evening, the group went to the National Theater to see a ballet, Eugene Onegin, performed by the Czech National Ballet. It was choreographed by John Cranko in 1973, and was an outstanding work. We had never heard of it being performed in the United States.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

We took a day trip to Kutna Hora, a town about 60 kilometers (one and a half hours) from Prague. Kutna Hora had silver mines in medieval time, and was wealthy enough to build the Cathedral -- St. Barbara's, which we toured. After a guided walk through town, we were on our own for lunch, and went to a wonderful restaurant, Dacicky (the name has Czech accents which I cannot reproduce) that the guide had pointed out, again with the MacKays from Seattle. We set a picnic tables in a shady courtyard, and I had wild game meatloaf.

In the afternoon, we went down in a silver mine -- down about 15 flights of stairs and then threw very narrow tunnels dripping with water. Fortunately, it came out on the side of a hill, so we did not have to climb back. It was not our favorite event of the tour. We had an equally disfavored stop on the way back -- a church near Kutna Hora with thousands of human skeletons and intricate displays of human skulls. This was designed to illustrate that "dust thou art, and to dust thou shall return". After the bus ride back to Prague, we just had dinner in the hotel.

Prague - Report 2

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

This was by far the most strenuous walking day of the tour. In the morning we started with the Powder Tower and the Black Madonna Cubist building we then walk through Old Town and took a tram across the river to the Lesser Town -- lesser because it is located below the Palace. We went to the Wallenstein Gardens, where we had been on Sunday, but it was more interesting with Honza as the guide. When we stopped for a break, he took water, soda, and a Czech liquor out of his backpack and serve the whole group; we then played the Rick Steve's team of standing around in a circle and repeating everybody's name. By the time the last person goes through the list of 24 names, you do remember at least 12 of them. Someone said this was an old Girl Scout game.

We then walked up towards the Palace through the lesser town. We went by St. Nicholas Church, but did not go into it. Rather than going directly onto the Charles Bridge to go home, we went around towards the side of into a neighborhood which had the Lennon Wall -- a wall of graffiti in honor of John Lennon. This was painted over by the Communists, and then re-created numerous times. We then walked across the Charles Bridge (which we had done on Sunday morning), and ended up at the Havelska Market -- a fairly wide street, with many booths selling food, toys, etc. in the middle. We had lunch with Dave and Mary Lou McKay from Seattle.

After resting for a while in the afternoon, we walked almost a half an hour to the National Theatre, where Honza started his tour of the 1989 Velvet Revolution. We started on a street corner where a student demonstration had turned into the national street, leading from the theater to Wenceslaus Square. Unfortunately, the street corner was one of the busiest in Prague, with trams going by in all four directions -- I have difficulty hearing his lecture. We then walked up the national street and into Wenceslaus Square, with Honza stopping for several other brief lectures. It was very interesting and obviously covered a major event in the history of the Czech Republic. After we ended in the square, we walked around 15 minutes uphill to a restaurant for dinner, and then took the tram back towards the hotel.

Wencelaus Square

Happy Mother's Day

I just logged in.  Tried to add a comment, bu could not figure it out.  So, I am adding a posting, I guess.  I wanted to say "Happy Mother's Day" to Mom.  This mother's day was the first in a few years where my husband was in town, so it was a much more mellow day than I usually get.  We went to Macaroni Grill for dinner - I love Macaroni Grill, and the kids tried to be nice to me all day.  It was great.    Looking forward to your next posting from your trip.

Prague - Report 1

May 12, 2008

We left DFW on AA 78 on May 9, and had a good overnight flight, on which we both got at least four hours sleep. Our first flight connecting to Prague was supposed to be full, but we fortunately got on and were in Prague by 6:15 pm. Our hotel is only one block from the main tourist attraction, the Old Town Square, so after we checked in, we went over there and had a pizza in an outdoor cafe. We were in bed by 10 o'clock.

Sunday morning we walked around a great deal. We stopped in at two churches, for high Mass. The first, St. James, was enormous, and we left when the priest started giving the sermon in Czech. We then walked to the Tyn Church, which had a wonderful high Mass with great music - organ, trumpets, and professional singers. We stayed for half the Mass.

We then walked across the Charles Bridge (see picture) and a few blocks beyond, had a beer at a sidewalk restaurant and walked back over the river on another bridge to get back to the hotel for our 3:00 meeting of the tour group.

After the introductory meeting, the group took a tram and the Metro to Vishyrad, the original fortified position at Prague in about the tenth century. It is now a park. Our tour guide, Honza Vihan, gave a good introduction to early Czech history. We also visited the National Cemetery, which is only for leading intellectual figures. Dvorshak and Smetana are buried there. We then went to a tour group dinner at a nearby restaurant. We got back to the hotel late and very tired from all the walking. (I am in an internet cafe now, while Mary Ellen is sleeping).

Today, we got up early to beat the hordes to Prague Castle. We were there by 9 am, and saw St. Vitus Cathedral, the Royal Palace, and several other places on the Palace Hill. Our formal tour activities ended at noon. We had a light lunch at a sidewalk Cafe, and then went to the Lobowitz Palace, which opened to the public only last year. The family was a renowned feudal family that had several castles and other properties in what is now the Czech Republic. Its properties were confiscated by the Nazis, returned after the war, and then confiscated again by the Communists. The current government returned them and the Lobowitzs are now trying to make a tourist attraction out of it. Here is a picture of Prague Castle.

The weather has been perfect -- dry, mid 70s. and cloudless skies -- and is forecast to continue this way all week. We have been very lucky.