Communication Breakdown

Well it’s been over 8 days since our last post and there is a good reason. Last we left you we were in awe of Berlin and what it has become. Since then we took an awesomely relaxing train ride from Berlin to Prague. After two days in Prague we decided to add to our blog and wouldn't you know it, we couldn't remember the password or username. (Maybe we spent too much time in Amsterdam) Anyway, we tried to contact Blogger support and that proved more frustating than we had anticipated. So after countless emails back and forth and shoddy Internet connections that kept crapping out just when we thought we were back in, we finally figured out the whole thing. Whew!

So now we are back, with our username and password written down in our notebook safely just in case this happens again.

Siince we last left you, like I said, we went to Prague. Andy had been romanticizing this wonderful city during the build up to the trip. She remembered those lovely days 9 years ago as a college student when a full meal was $2 and a nice hotel room was $5. She recalled with glory the charming square center, the amazingly cheap opera and classical music on almost every city corner, and the newness of it all. Oh and the castle, how she raved about the castle!!

Well, we arrived at our apartment in Prague that we found on Craigslist and it smelled. Not just your normal, cigarette smell that we have become accustomed. No, this was different. It smelled of mildew and urine. We weren't actually sure which it was. I said mildew while Andy swore it was urine. (never something you want to be discussing in the first place, but I digress) Suprisingly they smell very similar. We were a bit put off but trying to go with the flow. Despite the long train ride that day we decided we couldn't stand the smell so we went out for dinner in the city square. Andy set her sights on this beautifully decorated, architectural gem near the Old Town Square and we had a seat. When our meal of Beef Goolash arrived, it was a pathetic showing. Accompanying the three small cubes of meat was bread-like potatoe dumplings. When we received the check, to our surprise, they charged us $6 just for sitting down in the restaurant. We asked and they said it was a cover charge for sitting. Andy didn't like this and she argued, saying it was not posted anywhere. The language barrier and an angry American were more than they could take and we got the money back. Go Andy! So that meal, also with our drinks and a basket of bread we didn't know we had to pay for, cost us $30, very expensive on our budget and for this supposedly cheap city.

The next morning we went out to explore the castle. Whoa! I had never seen so many tours with the leaders holding umbrellas to mark their whereabouts and keep the group together. The castle, in itself, was amazingly grand. I was floored by the enormity and detail, as well as the history of the place. What tainted it for me was the amount of tourists blocking walkways, being loud and pushy. Someone actually pushed me! I needed out, fast. We strolled the grounds American style, a quicker more rushed pace then all the older Italian couples and Russian families. The beauty of the place was what we'll remember, unfortunatley we will also not soon forget the crowds, pressing down on the gem we were trying to enjoy. After the previous night’s dinner and now the castle debacle, we were a bit down on Prague, feeling as though we missed its heyday.

After another night of the urine smell, I couldn't take it and I complained. (Dad, you would have been proud.) I asked for some money back or a transfer to another room. She emailed me back and apoogized and said she would send someone over to the room to "fix" the carpet and that she would refund 500 crowns (divide by 22 = american dollars). I didn't think it was possible to get rid of the smell but I had hope. She had the woman remove the offending carpet and replace it with new carpet. And suprisingly, the nastiness that invaded the only private space we had was gone.

The next day we went to the Jewish Quarter to visit the synagogues, a must for any Prague visitor according to travel guru Rick Steves. Of course, Rick was right once again. Apparently, Hitler wanted to create a museum of the extinct race here so he did not destroy the buildings and, in fact, used them as storage for all the artifacts he had stolen from the families we was soon to kill. Now, the 6 synagogues remaining are filled with the most amazing relics from the last 500 years. There were still tons of people everywhere, but nothing like the castle. We strolled through the quarter, from one synagogue to the next, reading about the Prague jews and how they prospered, were killed, then prospered again, then killed again. We also saw the only graveyard allotted for the Jews. It is kind of amazing that it seems whenever the jews get too powerful, they are subsequently hunted and destroyed.

One of the synagogues was turned into a Holocaust memorial site. Written on every wall of the small holy ground were the names of the 70,000+ Czech jews killed at the hands of nazis. It floored us. Every inch of the walls were covered with names of people, many of which I recognized. Seidler, Turtletaub, Pravda, Neuman, just to name a few of the ones I saw. Of course there was Hess, five people attached to that name. And then I found Rubin. There were exactly 39 people named Rubin in the Czech Republic who were killed during the five years of concentration camps. There was even an Eric Rubin there on the wall. Damn it all, I thought. If I were born in another era, that could have been me. It probably would have been me.

That afternoon made going to Prague all worth it. Despite the crowds, tourist traps, overpriced souvenirs, and unfriendly Czechs, Andy and I came away with more than just pictures, castles and meals to talk about. We saw ourselves in their past. We felt what it was to be Jewish in this land. Our ancestors came from Europe and we were lucky they got out when they did. As we left Prague on a bus to Karlovy Vary, a spa town in western Czech, I stared out at the landscape and felt like I was returning to a home I never knew but felt deep inside me. The rolling hills, the oldness of it all, resonated in me without warning or expectation.