so i forgot to mention that i did a tour of the jewish sites in prague. for those who know virtually nothing about jewish prague - like me before i got there - here are some interesting factoids:
according to written records, the jewish presence in prague dates back to the 11th century. according to archaeological findings and oral traditions, the jewish presence may date back even hundreds of years prior to the 11th century.
the jews were persecuted throughout their time in what is now the czech republic, but persecutions depended on the strength of the kingdom...when times were good, jews were left well alone...when times were not so good, jews were treated worse (i.e. increased head taxes, etc.)
the jews lived in a ghetto for hundreds of years. kafka grew up in this part of town, and witnessed the end of the reconstruction of the ghetto, which started in the late 19th century, b/c the ghetto had by then descended into squalor and decay. the reconstruction project was one of the biggest urban reconstruction/planning projects of its day, and was heavily initated/financed/supported by the government.
there are 5/6 synagogues in a very very very short distance from one another (i'm only mentioning 3):
1) the pinkas synagogue, which is now a permanent memorial to those czech jews who perished in the holocaust and the pogroms leading up to it. the names of all the jews found in the records are written on the walls of the synagogue, and are listed according to the town from which they came, with their immediate family members. their respective dates of births, and for most, the day they were shipped off to the camps, are listed as well. a recording of a special mourner's kaddish recited by a prominent rabbi a few decades ago is looped. the names were written on the wall - by hand, you can still see the pencilled line marks - in the early 50's, but when the soviets took over, they painted over the names and closed the synagogue. when the wall fell in '89, the synagogue reopened shortly thereafter, and the names were written on the walls once more.
upstairs, there is a permanent exhibition of drawings that were made by children while they were in thereisenstadt, before they were shipped off to auschwitz and murdered.
behind the pinkas synagogue is a terribly old, terribly beautiful jewish cemetary. despite the fact that you enter it after emerging from a holocaust memorial, and that it is a cemetary which holds dead bodies, it feels quite alive. this is because in the jewish tradition, cemetaries are called "beit chaim" (house of lives)....rather than viewed as houses for the dead, they are perceived as houses of those who are now living something like an "afterlife," but it's a bit more complicated than that, and i can't really explain it. anyway, back to the cemetary. imagine a massive grove of trees, and grassy "mounds," as there are hillier parts. now imagine there are gravestones, of different shapes, colors & sizes emerging out of the earth at various angles. some appear as though they will fall over, some stand virtually erect. there are different types of stones, different types of inscriptions. this jumble is the result of multiple factors: 1. the cemetary represents 600 years of jewish burials. 2. according to jewish tradition, you cannot disturb the dead once they've been buried. so, the jews layered dirt on top of the primary layers, and buried more bodies. apparently there are 6 such layers in the cemetary. archaeologists and art historians can decipher the era that a gravestone represents even when this information is unclear from the inscriptions, b/c of the text used, the ornamentation used, the type of stone used and the way the stone is cut. so, for example, they can tell that one stone is a 14th century gravemarker, and that another came from the mid-18th century. fascinating stuff.
2) the Old-New Synagogue - the OLDEST synagogue in the world. insane. the bimah, the ark look ancient, but very much intact.
3) the Spanish Synagogue is wonderful. gorgeous patterns, colors, and a pretty ridiculous collection of jewish objects that were suprisingly guarded by the nazis, for reasons that "historians still argue about." and then the soviets wouldn't allow for the work to be showcased (shocking)....
alright....on to BERLIN.
berlin is AWESOME. i can't wait to go back.
i stayed with my friend benny in kreuzberg, which is a part of town that has a massive turkish population and a bunch of great parks, cafes, bars, boutiques....young, not gentrified....gentrifying, yada yada....everyone knows the end of this story, but the point is, kreuzberg is still very cool and not yet gentrified.
so on monday, i met benny and some of his friends for late lunch at a russian place in prezlauer berg....really cool as well. to be honest, i expected berlin to be this kind of dark, glib, industrial sort of city. but it's quite the opposite. huge, wide streets - streets, not avenues. tons of trees, green spaces. interesting facades. color. great street art. better dressed people.
did a very cool free tour of berlin on tuesday morning...this organization comprised of young students, etc. believes that everyone should get a great tour of a city regardless of their budget....and it was great. for four hours we walked around, and this really really brilliant, young australian woman who reminded me of my european history teacher in 7th grade (a norwegian jewess named ingrid) told GREAT stories about everything we saw, and everything i probably wouldn't have noticed. we went to the brandenberg gate, learned about the statue on top of it that napoleon stole and then the prussians later carried back from the louvre after defeating him....we saw the memorial to the murdered european jews...and stood above the bunker where hitler auf'd himself...and saw the place where the nazis burned over 30,000 books, and learned about the tv tower - an idea drummed up by the east german government to show off its commie technological and scientific knowledge, which ended up almost failing, but succeeded once the government smuggled in some swedish engineers to finish the job.... !!
anyway, stumbled about, daytime beer drinking, b/c it's berlin and summer...reading "zeno's conscience" by italo svevo...pretty intense memoirs, which start off with his recollections of the first cigarettes he ever smoked and his inability to quit, and his furious imaginative jealousies involving his wife.
another highlight of the week: benny had plans one night, so his roommate paul and i had some of his friends over for dinner....i made ratatouille mom! lol. it was great.
thursday morning i had a meeting at the deutsches musik archiv (the german music archives), which is part of the german national library....awesome meeting. the woman i had been in correspondence with invited two of her colleagues to the meeting and we all chatted for like 2 hours or so about copyright law, and their attempt to create really cool interactive search engines for music...
also went to the neue national gallery - saw the hiroshi sugimoto exhibit, which i missed when it was in san fran last year. very very cool.
then i went to the jewish museum, which was designed by liebskind...interesting building - in parts. but the exhibition was so awful, it actually made me feel physically sick and fiercely annoyed, so i left.
got to london yesterday (friday) morning....met up with my friend max, who i met during the program in budapest and with whom i'm staying with for the next few days....then ran over to the tate to meet up with david bae from wash u, and then later met up with patrick also from the budapest program, to see marc & sara, the two founders of the street art site wooster collective give a presentation also at the tate. met this guy named devin while waiting in line. after the talk, devin, patrick and i, and a few other people joined marc & sara for drinks nearby. then patrick, devin and i walked by the thames, got some beers & walked to the cannes tunnel which the government recently set aside for stencil artists to post their work - it's AWESOME. banksy, blek le rat, faile, toaster, etc. etc. etc. all have work featured there.
then we had chicken "doners" (schwarma?!/) b/c this is apparently what everyone does anywhere in europe now ;) except budapest, lol, where pizza and ketchup or pogacho (little baked things with cheese or cabbage) are still in vogue for late night schnibbles, and i headed off to kensington/notting hill with devin where we met up with some of his friends and then went to a very cool place called the notting hill arts club, where a dj was spinning motown/soul/funk/surf rock....;)
it's very cool finally being in the city where buses are red and double deckered, and telephone booths actually look like that - as opposed to being placed in random places like novelty items (telephone bar in the east village, disney world) - and people sound utterly sophisticated and academic even when asking questions at a street art talk, and being on the tube watching a man vomit between cars, and realizing that it's called the tube b/c it really is a claustrophobic sort of tube nestled far below the earth (@ one station, i walked down almost 200 steps on a chinese staircase to get to the platform!). all of this is great and all, especially the realization that the us dollar is really worth quarter-pound(ers) here.
anyway, off to meet up with david and his friend ryan to get mussels and have a second go at the tate....
cheers,
amie
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