Today, I visited my No. 1 of the Czech culture-club. I went to Prague´s New Jewish Cemetery in Zelivskeho. And resting there is great Franz Kafka. The day was quite warm (only -4° Celsius) but worthy a Kafka-Novel, dark, stormy, with sudden snow fall, rubbing over your face like sand-paper because of the wind.

But nevertheless, the Cemetery is a resort of peace and… yes, dignity. Deeply covered in snow, it has an air of remembrance, sombreness and feelings. As this is a jewish cemetery in central Europe, you find many tombstones telling the story of young persons with no specific day of death, only the year, 1943, 1944, 1945…

Amongst these memorials of both, human compassion and human wickedness, the grave of the man who so uniquely told us about the diremption of the human creature between those poles is well placed.

And Prague is becoming much more beautiful when it´s covered in snow. The old, narrow streets are transformed into a mythical, medieval town. And so I spent quite a lot of time wandering through the city, during day and night to cath as many images as possible.

Thanks to the wonderful people at Prague´s Chefparade, I attended an entertaining, enjoyable and teaching evening with nice people, a good atmosphere and (very important) good, traditional czech food.

And boy, it was traditional! But I have to admit, I somehow did enjoy this freedom of panicky counting the spoonfuls of fat or oil and just cooking for pleasure´s sake. (and honestly, an evening of enjoyable cooking should not be about anything else BUT pleasure)
The food itself, and the way of preparing felt very familiar for somebody used cooking Austrian food, the common history (and the similar agricultural circumstances) of this middle-European way of food became quite obvious this evening

The menu:
Garlic soup
Beef goulash (czech way) with bread dumplings
Potato pancakes with ham and sauerkraut
Fruit dumplings

A Bus took two ERASMUS-colleges and me to Theresienstadt.

The fortress of Terezín was constructed between the years 1780 and 1790 by the orders of the Austrian emperor Joseph II in the north-west region of Bohemia. It was designed to be a component of a projected but never fully realized fort system of the monarchy, another piece being the fort of Josefov. Terezín took its name from the mother of the emperor, Maria Theresa of Austria who reigned 1740–1780. It contains two huge fortresses the Small and Main Fortress (Kleine and Große Festung). The Main Fortress contains a small town within the fortifications. The Small Fortress containes the military administration and a prison. By the end of the 18th century, the facility was obsolete as a fort; in the 19th century, the fort was used to accommodate military and political prisoners.
From 1914 till 1918 it housed one of its most famous prisoners: Gavrilo Princip. Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife 1914, which led to the First World War. Princip died in prison from tuberculosis 1918.

On June 10, 1940, the Gestapo took control of Terezín and set up a prison in the Small Fortress (Kleine Festung). This later became a concentration camp. By November 24, 1941, the Main Fortress (Große Festung, i.e. the town Theresienstadt) was turned into a walled ghetto. To the outside it was presented by the Nazis as a model Jewish settlement, but in reality it was a concentration camp. Theresienstadt was also used as a transit camp for European Jews en route to Auschwitz.

After the victory of the Allies in 1945, Theresienstadt was used by Czech partisans and former inmates to hold German SS personnel and civilians as retaliation for their atrocities.

Eating in Prague, especially in the centre, can be hard. One has to find a way through all the overpriced and bad tourist-restaurants. But if you find a good, real pub (and most good Czech restaurants seem to be pubs) than you will have extraordinary food for little money. Yes, you have to be into food that depends heavily on meat, cream and carbs, but as a seldom treat it is wonderful! Unfortunately, vegetables are normally cooked to a sad reminiscence of their former glory (and taste), and also fresh, crunchy salads are hard to find in traditional restaurants.
But there are so many other good food resources, apart from traditional Czech food. As an Anglophile, I was (and still am) very happy finding that English food and clothes retailer Marks & Spencer has several stores in Prague with a decent variety ready-made food and ingredients for things like rice pudding, Porridge, Fish & Chips, Shepherd´s Pie (and yes, I really adore this kind of food).  And just today I´ve found the non plus ultra of good, valuable food. It’s a shop called Culinaria, located only 2 minutes´ walk from Mustek Metro-Station. It’s a lovely small food store with a coffee bar and gorgeous cakes, for example now, during harvest and Halloween season, they´ve got pumpkin pie and pumpkin cheese cake. And both are serene!

Today I visited Carlsbad / Karlovy Vary, a well known spa town in the western part of the Czech republic.

Carlsbad became famous in the 19th century, when vacation became popular among those who could afford it. So grand hotels and cafés were built, parks and esplanades shaped the appearance of the town that had visitors like the Russian Tsar Ivan I, Sophia Lauren, Grace Kelley and others. After the collapse of the Habsburg Empire, Karlovy Vary remained a well known spa town, only to suffer through dismal years under communist occupation.

But after the Velvet Revolution things turned better again. The grand buildings which were left to decay are now carefully renovated and the town again is aim for many assuagement-seekers, walking around with strange cups, slowly sipping the warm thermal water from one of the twelve wells.

And of course, a visti to famous Becherovka Museum and one (or two) Carlsbader Oblaten (wafers) were a must in lovely, grant Karlovy Vary

Jerusalem Synagogue, Prague

Winter has started in Prague, or, so far, has sent us a first greeting in Prague. Saturday, around 11 o´clock am the first snow flakes of the season made their way to charm the pedestrians…

One of the best side of Prague is, that it surprises you when you would not suspect it. Although… this is the definition of a surprise, isn´t it? Anyway, I was making way from the Main Train Station to the old town, I was walking down a random street, narrow, nothing spectacular… and suddenly I was standing in awe in front of a magnificent, beautiful synagogue in neo-byziantic style. It struck me, that the inscriptions above the entrances were both in Czech and in German, a sad reminder of the cosmopolitan culture that has been lost. Unfortunately it was closed for sabbath, but I will definitely return to see its interior glory.

Something more prosaic now, I´ve found a great swimming hall for my (hopefully) weekly swimms, it has even got an heated out-door pool! Wuhuu!

Charles University in Prague finds itself run by people who seem to be afraid of too much usefulness, or so it seems to me. Maybe their fear is that too much functionality would be boring or something like that, but I keep wondering how it is possible, that I have to upload three amounts of money for three different purposes. So, my student ID-Card is loaded with 300 crowns three times and I do three different things with them. Firstly, paying for food in the mensas (at least one amount for all mensas in all university buildings…) one for printers in Jinonice building (Institute of Political Sciences) and the last amount is for printers at two other edifices. So, the question remains, why?

Jinonice apartment complex

Jinonice building is probably the most unusual institute ever… not because of the opinions its scholars have but due to the reason that it is located in a bigger apartment complex built sometimes in the 1990ies. So there is one entry leading to the apartments and one entry (the one with litter scattered all around it) leads to a different, to the university world…

And somewhere in this complex we have the institute-entrance.. who can find it?

And it seems that students knocking on the tables after a lecture is a speciality of German speaking universities, I have seen this so far only in one german speaking lecture which is mostly attended by, guess who, native German speakers…

I´ve found my bookstore here in Prague, or my two bookstores, only a minute´s walk apart, both owned by Brits (wuhuu!) and both full of english books, cosy, familiar atmosphere.. and they even got a poetry book by Tim Burton. I think Vienna should have two good, cosy english book shops as well, not only one which is always fighting with bankruptcy

The pope was in Prague! Well, that´s all to say about it, I didn´t fancy seeing him so all I´ve noticed were the Vatican´s flags at the catholic churches.

At last, I´ve been to the… well, lets say old fashioned Museum of Communism which is, funnily enough, located between a McDonalds and a Casino. It´s quite old-fashioned (not the topic, the presentation ), but still interesting and also touching, strolling through empty shops and standing in an interrogation cell… Memory to the victims

Sturm is the unpasteurised grape juice that is sold from early september until late october. At first its just cloudy grape juice, but when you buy it a few weeks later a part of the sugar has turned into alcohol and so you have a wonderful, sizzling drink with a delicate acidity.
But I had to share a tear of compassion for my German colleges, for they, though also from a wine-country, knew nothing about Sturm or Burcak. For them, it was the first time ever trying this thing. Poor them…