http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/struck-living/201110/music-healing-instrument-and-barometer

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This week we’ve gone to a lot of places in the Czech Republic, and to start things off I’m going to tell you about Lidice. It is a demolished town that the Nazi’s destroyed to show there power after the assassination of Hitler’s right hand man. The wanted to make a point: if they say they’re going to destroy a town they mean it. They killed all the men over 15 years old on the spot, then they sent all the children to camps where some were killed or died, put all the woman in concentration camps ,blew up every building and rooted up every tree. How much hate do you have to have to do that?

Lidice Children's Monument

We also went to The Modern Art Museum. I wish I were as good at art as some of these artist. Luckily we live right across the street from the museum. So anywhoooo it has a lot of really cool sculptures, paintings, guns from the period of the paintings around it and furniture too. Some of the sculptures, photographs and paintings were of people without clothes. This done a lot in central Europe. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised since in Prague kids my age like to swim naked in the fountains at the parks. Weird.

UT Students and I Marvel At The Modern Art Museum

Two Critics See Picasso In A New LIght At The Modern Art Museum

Deformed Cameron in Mirror Art

We  also went on a really long bus ride to Cesky Krumlov, but we made some pit stops on the way, like to Zatec (pronounced zha•tets) where we went to the museum of hops. This town is world famous for its hops.Which is in beer. Our other pit stop we made was Plzen where they made and invented the beer Pilsner Urquell (pronounced or•kwell). We went to the Pilsner Urquell Brewery. I also got to sample some beer. I wouldn’t say its my favorite drink, but at least its better than coffee. Over all it was a really good museum/Brewery. At the end I got a hat to prove to my friends that I’ve been to a real beer, or pivo as they call it here, brewery.

Viewing Film At Pilsner Urquell Brewery

In The Cellars At The Brewery

When we finally made it to Cesky Krumlov, I wanted to go straight to white water rafting. But that had to wait till the next day. We checked into our hotel and we got this really nice apartment, but we couldn’t stay for long because it was time for dinner with all of dad’s students. The next day we went to the Cesky Krumlov Castle and toured about 25 rooms out of the 300 the castle has. We went all through it and even went to the old Baroque style theatre which is the best preserved in the world if I don’t mind saying so myself. Plus it’s the truth.

Cesky Krumlov at Night Outside Our Guest House

Finally, it was time to go rafting. Yeah! We did this last year, but this year had some funny things. This really drunk Czech guy jumped into the water and got up on a boat with some of my Dad’s students. He stood on the front of the boat directing them to bring him back to his boat. But then this other drunk Czech guy leaped from his boat onto one of the students named Jake and started tackling him. It was crazy. Finally the students pushed them out of their boat , mom didnt want him getting on our boat so we started paddling away as fast as we could.

Once we got back to Prague we went on a tour through the Jewish quarters of Prague. It was cool and fun especially because our guide gave me and Carson points each time we answered a question right. The question were about the things she told us on the tour about Jewish history. And if we got to 5000 points at the end, guess what? Mom and Dad ended up getting us really good ice cream at the end of the tour. Yummmmmmmmm!!!!!!!!!!

In the last week I’ve been going out with my Dad to photograph in the evenings. He says the lights good then.The “Magic Hour” as my Dad would say. Here’s some of the results.

Tram In Front Of Charles Bridge On A Rainy Night

Dancing Marionette

The Executioner

Caught By The Executioner

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Lidice Sign

This week I visited Lidice (pronounced lee•deet•say). Back in WW II a group of Czech paratroopers shot Hitler’s second in command, a man named Heydrich. He died from his wounds and Hitler and the Nazis were very angry about it. They needed to make a point the scare the resistance. Lidice was a town that when the Nazi’s were very powerful a kid sent a letter to his girlfriend that he was part of the German resistance. That kid was from Lidice. They didn’t know about this letter till they were looking for a soldier in the building that the girlfriend used to live and came upon a book with all the letters from the kid. Then they found out that he was from Lidice, so they figured that they’d destroy Lidice to make a point. So early one morning the Nazi’s came, but then they wanted to do something that would make all their enemy’s tremble before them so they decided to erase the town from the map (like it never existed). When they came, first they burned down all the buildings and shot all the men that were 15 or over, and sent all of the women to a death camp in Poland, and sent all the kids except 7 to death camps.

Below are not original letters, but are translations of original letters.

Child's Letter #1

Child's Letter #2

Child's Letter #3

The remaining 7 were adopted by German families to be “germanized” (taught to hate Jews). The Nazis even dug up all the trees, then dug up all the dead bodies at the cemetery and burned them.

What Happened To The People of Lidice

When it was done, they finally covered Lidice with a bunch of dirt. Now Lidice is nothing but an empty piece of land.

After the war the Czech government rebuilt a 10th of the town and gave it to the survivors. None of them ever moved back there.

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I'll Drink To That

All Boys Table

Then we went by the Plzen brewery where Pilsner Beer first came and was named for the town. When pilsner beers first began to get a great reputation, many places tried to imitate the beer, so the brewery in Plzen named their beer Pilsner Urquell which means “original source”. Then no one could copy them. Interesting fact: Czechs drink more beer per capita that any country in the world. Germany is a distant second. Czechs are very proud of this dubious honor. As a result though, they have pretty strict drinking and driving laws too.

Unpasteurized Beer, Plzen

Brewery Tour, Plzen

Our final stop of the day, and where we would spend the next two nights was Cesky Krumlov (pronounced “ches•key    croom•luv”). This was our 3rd trip there out of 5 years coming to Prague. Krumlov, for short, is a lovely small town in the southern Czech Republic with the Vltava River zigzagging through the middle of it. Incidentally, the Vltava is the same river that runs through Prague. Its stunning castle, built upon the rock/mountain above the town, looks down over the town. The town has the feel of a teeny, tiny Venice. It has become quite the tourist spot especially at this time of year.

Krumlov Bird's Eye

Cesky Krumlov at Dusk

Dennis' Students Walking Through Cesky Krumlov

Every year we tour the castle in Krumlov and every year we love it. The entire castle has over 300 rooms, but we only saw about 20. They had bedrooms galore. Ones that they slept in usually, and ones that they used when they had “company”, wink, wink nudge, nudge. It is, hands down, one of the best preserved castles from the Baroque period in existence in the world. One of the reasons it is still in existence, our guide told us, is that the Nazis, during WW II, felt like this area of Europe was part of their German history, so they were not so destructive here. The castle has been owned by several different families over the centuries. It was known as the House of Rozenberg in the 1300′s, then Emporor Rudolph II owned it in the 1600′s. His son, Emperor Ferdinand II inherited it and later gave it to the Eggenberg’s  who had it until the 1700′s. Then it became The House of Schwarzenberg until 1945. Note: the kids loved the Schwarzenberg family shield. It has a raven pecking out the eye of a Turk. This was  because Schwarzenberg himself had battled the Turks and won. He then put the head of a Turk on the end of his sword (nice) as he rode through the carnage. A raven landed on the head and began to peck the eye out of the Turk’s head, or at least that’s how the legend goes, giving him the idea to add it to his family shield.

Raven On Turk

When the Czech Republic was given to the communists after WWII, the town was pretty much ignored which was also good because some of the older restoration processes would have done more damage than good in actually preserving the castle.

3 Darlings At Cesky Krumlov Castle

Darling Boy Bikers

One of the most marvelous Krumlov Castle sights was the theater. It was designed just like the Viennese ones of the day, but this one, built as a gift, was only used a couple of times and then left to sit. This turns out to be a blessing because well-used theaters of the day usually burned down. Why? In an effort to magically make scene changes without notice to the audience, they regularly set off fireworks inside these theaters to distract the viewers and maintain their suspension of disbelief. Needless to say, there are few theaters in existence from this time period since indoor fireworks is as dangerous as it sounds. In the event of a fire many of the patrons were killed, not good for business you could say. This theater was about 60 meters deep, but with a perspective that made it look far, far deeper. Midgets or children riding miniature horses pulling carriages across the very back of the stage appeared as adults. The performers/actors were set at the very front edge of the stage so they didn’t look like giants. It had side balcony box seating, but the most impressive was the box at the back of the room for the Lord of the manor. It had curtains for privacy in the event he wanted a more “intimate” type of entertainment. He could also come and go from the performance from his box seat which was a must since these opera performances would typically last 6 to 8 hours.

Cesky Krumlov Castle Theater

We also went white water rafting, and I use the term very loosely as the river moves quite slow, down the Vltava right through town. We first did this last year and almost went down the wrong shoot at one point which not have been good. It was not marked at all which shoot out of three rafters should go down. This year the signage on the river is much better and they clearly block off the ways they don’t want you to go. We had a successful and fun ride. It was cooler this year, so the only one who went in the water was Carson who doesn’t mind a brisk dip. There was a couple of drunk Czech guys who came out of who knows where and jumped into the raft of a group of our students. One stood with his foot on the bow like George Washington motioning ahead with one arm. It was pretty funny. The other guy was a bit more obnoxious and tried to throw one of the students overboard. We all watched in stunned confusion trying to decide what to do. Finally he slipped off the boat and we all paddled as quickly as we could to get some distance from that group.

Oh here’s a treat. We really love to eat these cinnamon sugar pastries here in the Czech Republic too. We ate a lot of them in Cesky Krumlov, but they’re typically Czech pastries.. They’re called Trdelnik (pronounced trrr•del•neek). They are hollow bready things rolled ion cinnamon sugar. Here they are bring made:

Trdelnik Delight

The next day we made a pass by a castle called Hluboka (pronounced hlu•bo•kah, the Czechs pronounce every single letter in a word). Hluboka Chateau is regarded as one of the most beautiful stately homes in Bohemia. It is a monumental Romantic chateau – originally a Gothic castle – remodeled in the Baroque style in 18th century. Later it underwent a significant transformation in the 19th century when it was transformed into the English Windsor-style Gothic and became the official seat of the Schwarzenberg dynasty. Recognize the name? Think raven pecking out the eye of a Turk. Yep. The Schwarzenberg family also owned Cesky Krumlov castle for a while remember, but they never really got attached to Krumlov Castle, probably since it was a gift. Wish someone would give me a castle. What I was given was a chance to play this very old piano once played by this guy named Mozart. Seriously. They asked if anyone in our tour group could play, so I raised my hand. Yep, Mama, the lessons finally paid off. I’m now a legend in my own mind. I played For Elise by Beethoven.

Helen On Piano At Hluboka

We also saw a couple of photography galleries over the weekend too. We returned to Prague Sunday night and immediately headed off to our family favorite restaurant, St. Norbert’s Strahov Monastic Brewery. They have this beer that the monks brew there every June. It’s a summer beer called Weissen which many of you may have heard of, but you’ve never tasted it like this. It’s a wheat beer like we’ve never tasted. Even the kids and I like this beer. They have brewed it since the 13th century. Carson and I had my favorite Czech dish, svickova (pronounced   sfeets•ko•va   with the accent on the last syllable). Yummy! It’s a beef dish with a tan gravy that has a slight orange taste to it. It is served with Czech dumplings, which are like round slices of dense bread, and a spoon full of cranberry compote on top of a spoon full of whipped cream. Delicious! It’s almost reminiscent of Thanksgiving.

Now let me tell you that taking 18 students, plus a prof and his family on a whole weekend, chartering a bus, booking all those hotel rooms, dinners and arranging the schedule is quite a complicated dance done by Jarka (prounounced yar•kah), our CET point person. CET is the compnay that facilitates all our needs while we’re here in the Czech Republic. She has been working with Dennis for a few years now. We think she’s awesome! She speaks very good English, she’s young and hip, gets all our American humor and she is very efficient. Who could ask for more? Thank you, Jarka!!! Here she is on our trip wearing Denis’ coat and Cameron’s hat.

Jarka in Krumlov

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Warning: This is a very sad blog. I found this to be a very sad place. If you are not in a good place to read this tragic true story, please move on.

Lidice Sign

Lidice, Czech Republic. This is/was a small town just outside of Prague.

In 1941 Hitler put a man named Reinhard Heydrich in charge of rooting out all resistance, beginning the racial census of the Czech people in preparation for the their assimilation, deportation or annihilation, and beginning the forced concentration of Czech Jews at the Terezin Concentration Camp. Note: Terezin was not a death camp because it did not have a gas chamber. That did not mean, though, that people were not intentionally put to death.

At this same time, there was a group of Czech paratroopers training in England as part of The Resistance. A team of those paratroopers were sent to assassinate Heydrich. They were only able to wound him, but he did later die of his wounds. They eventually hunted those parachutists down and found them in a Catholic church in Prague and they were either killed of killed themselves swallowing cyanide pills. But Hitler did not stop there.

In a show of power and horrific determination, he ordered the obliteration of the town of Lidice. The people of this small farming town of about 600 people never knew it was coming. You would think the Nazis would have killed everyone or sent them to camps, right. Well, they were even more efficient than that. They first brought all the men to the largest farmhouse in town and shot every one of them. The youngest wasn’t even 15 years old. Then they took all the women, approximately 15 years and up, and sent them to a work concentration camp where many died. The children were brutally separated from their families. Of all 98 children of Lidice, 9 were arian-looking enough to be adopted into german families. some were sent to an orphanage, most were sent to Chelmno, a concentration camp. They were all sent with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Many didn’t even have shoes on. Some children wrote letters to whomever they heard might still be alive begging for some food and shoes or anything at all. Not that it did much good.

What Happened To The People of Lidice

Still the Nazis were not done. They blew up every structure and carted away most of the rubble What was left they used to fill in the earth. They dug up every dead body in the cemetery, burned to bodies and crushed and grave markers. Then they dug up every tree, roots and all, and burned them. They left no sign that anything had ever lived on the brown ground once known as Lidice. They did this as a warning to anyone stupid enough to cross them, that their vengeance would stop at literally nothing. The Nazis did this to nearly 50 towns during the war, equally as thoroughly as they did in Lidice.

What would make them pick Lidice. Well, they were never able to verify for sure why they picked Lidice. There are theories that a young man from Lidice wrote a letter to a woman, possibly to impress her, claiming he was part of The Resistance, and that letter found it’s way into Nazi hands. Another theory is that another Czech soldier who happened to be from Lidice was also being trained in England.  In the end we may never really know why they picked Lidice any more than we will ever understand the tenacity of pure, unbridled hatred.

Just over a handful of the children lived to see the outside of the orphanage. Most died. One was actually adopted out. None of those who left Lidice alive were allowed to speak Czech again. They were severely punished if they were caught trying to speak their native tongue. The few that survived and were eventually reunited with a family member or person from the town, had to relearn Czech. There was a mother and daughter who saw each other again just before the mother died, but they could not communicate without a translator.

As for the women sent to the camp, many died as well. Some were worked or beaten to death. Some were gassed. If the Nazi couldn’t gas them in a chamber, they gassed them another way. They put them into trucks and hooked up the exhaust to them. One guide said that the average time to die in a gas chamber was ten minutes. He asked if that sounded like a long time. Of course, that sounds like an eternity. He said then, to be gassed in a truck took an average of 45 minutes to die. You could hear a pin drop.

Now once the Czech government was back in control after the war, they sponsored a competition for leading architects to design homes to build a new Lidice next to the original town site. The homes are lovely and well kept, but few survivors ever lived there, although some of their family now do. A museum was erected on the edge of the site of the original Lidice, and is very well done. They have mostly photographs, video and a few artifacts they found on site. You could fit everything in the museum into a small backpack and yet it is one of the most powerful, impressive museums I’ve ever visited. The lights are very dim, around 7 different videos are playing, some with sound, some without, and it is laid out with respect and in a way that accurately conveys the mood of the subject matter. We meandered each by ourselves, as if we needed some space to take it all in.

Blurry picture of the moody Museum at LIdice

I walked the grounds of what was once Lidice with a knot in my stomach. It makes me more certain than ever that I have never known pain, horror or sadness on this level. I can’t imagine that such hatred could exist or that it could sustain in so many people for such an extended period of time. Further, it is hard to believe that there are those who still maintain that this never happened.

Lidice Children's Monument

Since then I keep wondering about people everywhere who harbor this kind of hatred, and I worry about how much power they may have now or may yet have.

Hitler Stamp

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This is the story of an over hyper jester, a really happy king and a grumpy little midget. thats the useless little camera man, me. The king wore a robe of gold. The jester wore a costume of red and green velvet. The midget, me, wore a yellow LSU tee shirt. Double click on the below picture to start the movie.

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

How’d you like my film? This was at the King’s Parade. This is an old reenactment about the king taking the crown on vacation. He had to travel to his summer castle with his guards and his court. I became part of this parade. I have some pictures of Prague too:

Me listening to the drum music.

Cameron, Mom and I at St. Vitus before the parade.

Tired after the King's Parade

Cameron and I on a horse sculpture in Letna Park.

Me running aorund a merry-go-round in Letna Park.

Throwing the football to David, Dad's student.

Video was done with a Flip camera and the photographs were taken with a E-PL1 (http://www.olympusamerica.com/cpg_section/cpg_digital_slr.asp?section=pen).

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Ok, I’m laughing my traveling fanny off right now, otherwise I’d be crying. As I said previously, we’re in a new apt this year. New apt, new washing machine too. I just thought I’d throw in a load of laundry as we left today for about 5 hours or more. No big deal, right. We do this all the time. However, this was my first time in this apt in this washing machine. At MOST the machine should have been done in a couple of hours. Come to think of it, the machine was making some pretty big clanking sounds before the kids and I even left the apt, but I was more worried about whether I put too much soap in it though, so I blew the loud clanking sounds off. Once we got back though, 5 hours later, I had a sinking feeling something was amiss. You see, its the world’s tiniest washer as it is. It’s a top loader of sorts. But the extremely small tub inside is a metal cage. You have to lock in inner metal tub before you close the lid and press the start button. Apparently. Unbeknownst to me. The machine sits in this dark little corner of our apt, so I couldn’t really see it to be honest. I never saw two metal doors that needed to be closed. I swear I didn’t. If you don’t lock those metal doors though, that little cage thing cannot successfully spin around. It probably clanked around for one spin, though, before it got stuck. 5 hours later, we return to realize there was an issue. Now, we have no tools since we are visiting for a mere month. I did what any self-respecting cajun genius would do, I grabbed a spatula. Hey, it was the best I had. Then out came the wire coat hanger (that fixes anything doesn’t it?) and an umbrella, don’t ask. All I’m going to say is that I was not victorious. The repairman will hopefully be here tomorrow to fix it all. I mean, I can’t go very long with 2 kids and no washer, can I? Here’s the shot of our little broken machine at the moment. Notice the 2 ridiculously small boxes of detergent on the floor.

The Victim

It was truly a day of misses though. Cameron was eating his favorite sandwich. He and Carson had begged to have it for lunch. A smazeny syr, fried cheese sandwich. They really are pretty tasty. Notice how he is happily eating in the first two pics. However, he’s making the fatal mistake though of picking at his sandwich to watch the cheese string out. You never, ever do this:

Good Sandwich!

Yummy!

And then…………………………..

Lunch!

Manna From Heaven!

Yep, he dropped it on the nasty ground. The pigeons had a good lunch though. Cameron was crushed. Too late to get another sandwich too. We had to get to the museum where we were meeting Dennis’ class. Tough luck!

Life is fair. The other day, I accidentally left Carson’s coke on the tram. It was almost completely full. He was bummed. That’s an expensive error too as those cokes cost about $2.50 each. Whew! More better news to come. Love my grammer, huh?

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Yesterday we went to the king’s parade.I had a blast , it was so much fun. I took pictures of knights and jesters. I think I learned a thing or two about photography. I also took some accidental videos. I accidentally pushed the record button. Well, here’s some of what I got. The photos are taken with an Olympus E-PL2 (http://www.olympusamerica.com/cpg_section/cpg_digital_slr.asp?section=pen).

Hope you enjoy the parade.

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]
Double click to watch my accidental video. This gives a new meaning to Prague by foot.

Two forms of transportation from totally different periods. I learned a new word that describes this picture perfectly, anachronistic. It something that doesn’t belong together in terms of time.

Crazy Jester II

Very energetic jester!!!!!

Little Night Boys Knife

A Little Boy Knight

This is a knight’s chain mail and protective glove.

This is St. Vitus. It took 1000 years to build.

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Darlink

That’s actually how they like to pronounce our last name. So, I am now Helen Darlink. What do you think? We didn’t go back and change it cause it would have been another long wait in line. Anyway, you don’t have to show your passport if you get carded on the metro. I guess Darlink, it is.

Hope everyone is doing super back stateside.

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