Infancy
Oct. 2
OK, so here's the latest from Prague.
I saw the Infant of Prague. Here they call the figure Pareszka Jesulatka, which I presume is "Little Jesus of Prague."
Like finding anything else here, it took me two hours on the bicycle to get to the church. But of course, getting lost is part of the fun. And a bicycle makes the work easy.
The figure is made of wax and is about a foot and a half high. It was brought to Prague by a Spanish princess who was married off to one or another of the Holy Roman Emperors. The Carmelite Sisters, who run the church, venerated the image and the devotions were rumored to have resulted in interventions for petitioners. There are plaques on the wall on both sides of the infant's altar that say "Thank you, Jesus," in various languages.
There is also an altar in the same church dedicated to the Black Madonna of Brazil.
The church is on the western side of the river, which is where the castle is. Not to be intimidated by a little climbing, I went back up to the castle. Castles are always up, because the guys who lived in them could afford horses, which did all the work getting up the hill.
The castle in daylight was stuffed full of other tourists—not like last night when it was almost empty—but I got to see one of the cool things in Prague. Sometime in the 15th or 16th century some Bohemian aristocrats got fed up with the Holy Roman Emperor. They stormed into a meeting of imperial officials and threw two of them out a window.
This was the second Defenestration of Prague. There was an earlier one in the 13th century when city officials were thrown out a window of the New Town Hall.
I have found that one English word that everyone in Prague seems to understand is "defenestration." I have had difficulty ordering beer now and then. But defenestration? Everybody can tell you where. The policemen at the New Town Hall, the girl selling postcards at the castle, the lady punching tickets at the palace. So you're all set if you want to see a window that somebody went out of.
Today's photo, perhaps appropriately enough, is "Harry Meets the Defenestration of Prague." The photo was taken into the sun, but you can make out the top window on your left, where the guys went out.
By the way, what's even funnier is that the officials landed in a pile of horse shit and survived. Depending on one's point of view, this was a miracle, or a sorry testament to the prevailing state of sanitation at the time.
This is also a sort of defenestration that I found in Prague:
This is also a sort of defenestration that I found in Prague:
I have to leave the hotel at 4 tomorrow morning to be at the airport for 5 to make a 7 o'clock flight. The moral of that story is be careful when you book flights online.
Bye for how.
Harry
Home again
Oct. 3
As it turns out, and I forgot to mention yesterday, Budvar and Krusovice are better on draft. There is a Budweiser Budvar dark, which I had at the bar of the Three Ostriches hotel. It didn't look very dark at all, but that's what the waiter called it. It was quite tasty, very different from Anheuser-Busch Budweiser.
Krusovice is OK. Svoda Vaclavske (St. Wenceslaus's) is one of the best beers widely available in Prague.
I came across another story. It seems that a bishop named John of Pomuk was thrown off the Charles Bridge in the 14th century on the orders of King Wenceslas IV. It seems John heard confession of the queen. The king suspected her of conducting an adulterous affair and demanded that John tell what the queen had confessed. John invoked the seal of the confessional and refused. The king became frustrated and had John thrown into the river.
There are several memorials to John on the Charles Bridge. this video of the hand-cranked reenactment was made outside a marionette shop just under the bridge. (There are lots of marionette shops in Prague. Marionettes are as popular here as wooden giraffes.)
[Editor’s note: A search for “John of Pomuk” on the Internet will turn up an alternative story and date. A cleric of that name was tossed into the Vltava for appointing an abbot that wasn’t the king’s choice. Wikipedia has more than you may care to read about John, but I found it fascinating. Pomuk, where he was born, was later renamed Nepomuk, so if you go surfing, look for John of Nepomuk.]
Since he is the bad guy of this story I assume Wenceslas IV is not St. Wenceslas, the holy Slav for whom the beer is named. But I am not up on all my Wenceslas numbers, so I can't be sure.
I also came across a statue that appears to be of Darth Vader. I didn't know that he was Czech. It is the subject of today's photograph.
The flight back today was unremarkable—only a few minutes late getting out of Prague. It carried one sleep-deprived lot. I don't remember much because I slept through most of the trip.
Harry
Jeff
Oct. 3
Interestingly, today's XKCD hints at this problem:
Karl
Oct. 3
Welcome home. I always thought of George Lucas as such an original.
Hey, Harry did you know the Pliegos' dog died last week? His name was Vader. Coincidence, you say? Well, maybe not ...
Alan
Oct. 4
I had the same beer experience with Lowenbrau, which may be the best German beer I ever had but is totally undistinguished in the States.
Prague followup: Sketches on the barroom wall
Oct. 6
I've finally had a chance, thanks to the wonder of the modern Internet, to track down some possibly accurate information on the three Czechs pictured on the wall of the Pivnice U Tomase Stitneho. Well, actually on two. One I already knew—Jan Hus, a religious reformer who was burned at the stake at least 50 years before Luther got going.
It seems all three were connected with religious reform in one way or another. Here's what I found on the other two.
This turned up online in The Free Dictionary (http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Tomas+Stitny), complete with this introduction: “Warning! The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.”
“Stitny, Tomas
“Born circa 1333; died circa 1405. Czech writer.
“Stitny studied at the University of Prague. He wrote the first prose works in Czech and was a forerunner of the writers of the Hussite era. His tracts include On the Three States—Virgin, Married Woman, and Widow; On Man, Wife, and Servants; and Words From Conversations. Reflecting the views of the petty nobility, who were opposed to the Catholic Church, the tracts criticized the contemporary social order, defended the common man, and preached Christian morality and moral self-improvement. Stitny's style was simple and clear.”
The next selection is from Wikipedia. I pass it along with its foreign accent unaltered except for a few special characters that became garbled and had to be replaced.
“Jan Zizka z Trocnova a Kalicha (German: Johann Ziska or Johann Schischka; English: John Zizka of Trocnov and the Chalice) (c. 1360-1424), Czech general and Hussite leader, follower of Jan Hus, was born at small village Trocnov (now a part of Borovany) in Bohemia, into a gentried family. He was nicknamed 'One-eyed Zizka'. From his youth, he was attached to the royal court and held the office of Chamberlain to Queen Sophia.
“He fought in the Battle of Grunwald (July 15, 1410), where he defended Radzyn against the Teutonic Order. [Harry's note to old film buffs: these were the bad guys in Eisenstein's "Alexander Nevsky."]. Later he played a prominent role in the civil wars in Bohemia during the reign of Wenceslas IV.”
[Another note: Wenceslas IV, by the way, is the king who killed John of Pomuk. I don't know if John of Nepomuk’s Wikipedia entry was cribbed from Soviet sources or not.]
More random notes
Hotel Red Lion, just below the castle: Master dark, Czech beer, rich and bittersweet. It had a flavor advantage, because I was coming downhill after a lot of exercise: biking to the castles stairs, carrying the bike up the stairs, touring the castle grounds and palace. In other words, my thirst was high.
Pivnice Stuparksy: Gambrinus Plzen good. Crisp, but not as full-flavored as Pilsner Urquell. Salt, sweet, and a bit of sour. A hint of spice on the back of the tongue.
Tomase Stitneho: Zlatopramen OK. Radio in the kitchen had another Czech cover, “One of These Days These Boots Are Gonna Walk All Over You.” I tried to tell the girl behind the bar, who spoke maybe 20 words of English, that I once had a girlfriend, years ago when this song first came out, who used to say that to me whenever I pissed her off.
Svato Vlaclavske “SWAH-toe Wa-CLAU-ski”
Krusovice: “Crew-so-VEE-tsay”
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