After watching the Denny’s Nanerpuss commercial no less than 100 times, I had to make one. It is seen here protecting Easter eggs.

A year ago I took this photo in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I ended up there as part of a fieldtrip with my P.O.V. writing class with James McBride. I’m fairly certain I don’t know what mystic truths I have to reveal, but I still love neon.

Katerina* lives in a two bedroom apartment with her three-week-old daughter, her sister, and her parents. Her mother has cancer. The outside of the apartment building is strewn with waste and there is no grass, but rather mud, for the many small children in the community to play on. The stove in the kitchen provides the home’s only heat. The kitchen opens up to the bedroom in the back where the family sleeps. The room has only one bed and a couple chairs upholstered with a leopard print material. They pay 3000 crowns ($150) a month to live here.

“My dream is to live alone,” she said.

When her baby started to cry she clutched her to her breast and told us that she was three weeks premature. She was tiny, but her mother looked so happy to hold her.

Katerina’s daughter was born in the hospital where many Roma women have been involuntarily sterilized over the past 15 years or so. At least 70 Roma women in the Czech Republic have publicly accused state-run hospitals, like this one, for pressuring them to sign consent forms immediately before giving birth with little to no information.

I met Katerina while visiting a Roma, or gypsy, community in Ostrava, an industrial city in the Czech Republic near the Polish border. There are an estimated 8 million Roma living in Europe who belong to Europe’s most marginalized and ostracized community.

For the past several years, Kumar Vishwanathan, a social worker from southern India, has fought against forced sterilization, dismal unemployment rates and housing conditions for Ostrava’s Roma through his humanitarian organization Vzajemné Souziti, which translates as Life Together.

Four social workers—two Czech women and two Roma women—from Kumar’s organization showed us through Ostrava’s Roma communities. One of the Roma social workers, Pavla, had a 19-year-old daughter who has struggled for several years to find a job. While there are no official records of the unemployment rate among Roma in Ostrava the figure is over 50 percent with some placing estimates upwards of 90 percent.

Pavla said her daughter’s phone interviews for jobs usually went well, but whenever she met her potential employers in person and they saw that she was Roma she was often told that the position had already been filled.

“After awhile she gave up because it was so discouraging,” Pavla said.

While many blame the high unemployment rate among Romas on stereotypical behavior like laziness it is often because of cases like this where they face severe discrimination. It is even worse for those Roma who live in towns like Ostrava that already have high unemployment rates even among non-Romas.

Kumar attended Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow where he met his Czech wife. After the fall of communism he moved to Ostrava with his wife and worked there as a teacher until devastating floods swept through the city in 1997.

After witnessing the destruction he decided to help the Roma families whose homes had been destroyed and bridge the social gap between the Roma and non-Roma communities in Ostrava at the same time.

“There were 27 Roma families and nobody wanted them. Everybody began signing petitions against them. They were considered to be almost evil. I just came to the conclusion that maybe it was necessary for somebody… to be there to ease the tensions and to start working to help the people,” Kumar said in a 2005 Radio Prague interview.

Kumar’s work led to the creation unique neighborhood called the “Coexistence Village” where ten Roma, ten non-Roma and ten mixed families live together peacefully.

Instead of the deteriorating housing projects where we met Katerina and her family, the 30 houses of the coexistence village were newly painted and had well-maintained yards and sidewalks.

While six people lived in the house we visited in the village the space was better suited for a large family with two floors and three separate bedrooms. The family paid 3700 crowns a month to live in the house.

Originally there were many doubts that Romas and ethnic Czechs could get along living in one neighborhood. However, the village has worked out better than many people imagined. “Life is good there. In the three years we’ve been there I’ve never known us to have any conflicts,” said Renata Gaziova, a Roma woman who lives in the village, in a 2005 Radio Prague interview.

On the way to the second home in the neighborhood that Katerina lived in we passed a small garden shed that was in desperate need of repair.

“A family of 10 lives in there,” one of the social workers said.

“However, there is no heat or running water,” she continued, “and the mother is pregnant.”

The structure looked like it could fit no more than two or three people and had no foundation to support its fragile frame.

As we walked down the main street we were forced into the middle of the road while cars zoomed quickly by because there were no sidewalks. The social workers told us that despite trying to have sidewalks put in for five years on this street where many children walk the city paid no heed to their requests.

Six people lived in the second house we visited. It cost them 3600 crowns a month to live there. An older Roma woman named Maria lived there with four of her grown sons and her four-year-old grandson. In the entry hall was an open stove that provided heat for the entire three bedroom apartment. Her four grown sons were in their early to mid-twenties and shook our hands vigorously as we entered their home.

She wore a light blue robe and slippers and spoke to us animatedly about her family and her home. She divorced her husband many years ago, she said, because he was an alcoholic. She said she had “adopted” her grandson because his parents could not take care of him. She considers him hers now. Despite all of her past troubles Maria seemed genuinely happy and was very hospitable to us.

Their family room had a large couch with a tiger print blanket draped across it. On the wall hung an illustrated portrait of a blond woman wearing white go-go boots draped across a Harley-Davidson motorcycle. A shiny plastic clock hung above the entryway and a “chandelier” that had fuchsia plastic flowers hanging down from it.

Music constantly played in their home. At first it was mostly Latin music like Shakira and Enrique Iglesias but then one son played some Roma pop music. He told us he was a guitarist but he did not play much anymore because he had no guitar to play and could not afford to buy one.

Her sons never attended high school and went to a special school when they were younger for the mentally handicapped even though neither of them had any mental disabilities.

Maria’s small grandson sat in a big arm chair and stared us with wide-eyed wonderment and curiosity as we spoke with his grandmother and uncles.

“He is smart enough to go to basic school, he is very bright,” Maria said.

The Czech government has long been accused of wrongly placing Roma children in remedial schools for the mentally disabled. The Roma Rights Centre said in an article last month in The Guardian that Roma children in the Ostrava region were 27 times more likely to be placed in special schools than non-Roma children. The children who attend these special schools were more than 50 percent Roma.

However, in November 2007 Roma activists won a victory in court in the case of 18 Roma children from Ostrava who were forced into these special schools. It is now unlawful for Roma children to be forced to attend substandard schools according to the European Roma Rights Centre. This development shows hope for the Roma community.

Kumar’s organization helped set up a community center within the Roma settlement that we visited. Walking up the stairs to the center the voices and laughter of many children could be heard. The place was decorated like any school in the United States would look like—drawings the children had created hung on the walls next to paper cutouts of Disney characters. Toys were strewn across the floor along with crayons and colored pencils.

About 10 children aged six to 15 sat around the table coloring. The older ones helped the youngest ones pick out colors and spoke quietly with them. They all seemed happy, if not a bit shy at first because of our sudden intrusion.

The director of the center was happy to tell us that most of these children go to regular schools with ethnic Czech children. However, it wasn’t because the government deemed them capable of attending the basic school but mostly because it was the closest school to their homes.

When the children finished drawing they approached us individually and handed us their colored pictures. These children showed me that the Romas have a great feeling of hope and happiness despite being the subjects of severe discrimination and living in such a severe state of poverty.

Even though the community in which Katerina and Maria’s families lived in would be considered substandard, they seemed to be okay with it. While the exteriors of their apartments were filthy and decrepit the interiors were immaculate and very well kept up and they lived like any other family would. Despite being subjected to injustice and stereotypes each Roma I met was cheerful, hospitable, and most importantly— full of hope.

Most of the activists who rally for Roma rights, like Kumar, are not Roma. Even though there are several Roma activists, most of the people who are outraged about the way Romas are treated are not Roma. Perhaps this is why little change has been made within the Roma community in Europe.

However, Kumar’s co-existence village provides a hopeful image of a Europe where Roma families can live among other Europeans and not be discriminated against for social prejudices that have been forced upon them.

“The basic significance is that Czechs and Roma can build together something not just of great beauty, but also great value. I think it’s just a proof that Czechs and Roma can live together,” Kumar said.

* All names have been changed except for those of Kumar Vishwanathan and Renata Gaziova.

]]> http://lyndseymatthews.wordpress.com/2007/12/26/gypsies-in-the-czech-republic/feed/ 1 lyndseymatthews http://lyndseymatthews.wordpress.com/2007/12/19/traumatized-by-techno/ http://lyndseymatthews.wordpress.com/2007/12/19/traumatized-by-techno/#comments Wed, 19 Dec 2007 19:37:46 +0000 lyndseymatthews http://lyndseymatthews.wordpress.com/2007/12/19/traumatized-by-techno/ ]]>

Photo from Flickr.com (not by me)

As soon as I left the convention center into the brisk morning air I vowed I was only going to listen to acoustic folk music for the next month straight. When my friends and I bought tickets to the I Love Techno music festival in Ghent, Belgium that happened on November 10, 2007 we had no idea that we had just committed ourselves to attending one of Europe’s largest raves where we would have to stay awake for over 36 hours.

The following is an account of one of the longest days of my life:

2 P.M. November 10, 2007

We decided to spend a few days in Amsterdam before heading down to Belgium for the festival. We were already a bit haggard from the last two days as we entered the train station to catch our train to Belgium. Due to our lack of Dutch-language skills we were apprehensive if we were even at the correct platform for the train to Ghent. We glanced at schedules and destination names nervously as we tried to figure out where we were supposed to be.

However all of our fears were allayed as soon as we saw a group of five Europeans walk up to the platform we were waiting at sporting neon-hued dreadlocks and five inch high platform boots splashed in shades of florescent pinks and yellows.

“Yes,” my friend leaned in and whispered to me, “we are definitely on the right train to the techno festival.”

5 P.M.

As we arrived at the train station in Ghent I was immediately swept into a sea of brightly clad techno enthusiasts who accosted us as we tried to push our way to the exit.

A rather drunk girl danced about maniacally shouting in a brash cockney accent, “I love fucking techno! I love fucking techno!”

I thought that maybe five thousand people would to be in attendance at I Love Techno. However, I was terribly wrong. I had underestimated the number by about thirty thousand at least.

To say I was severely overwhelmed at this moment would be a vast understatement. The only thought that I could muster was I am not prepared to be here at all. While I do enjoy listening and dancing to techno music I feared that I did not love techno as much as these people did. The looks of dread that slowly crept over my friends’ faces told me that they felt the same way.

“What have we gotten ourselves into?” we asked each other as we laughed nervously and packed ourselves onto the tram that took us to the convention center where the festival was about to begin.

7 P.M.

Neon lights and colorful flags hung all over the massive, chilly interior of the convention center. For dinner we ate penne pasta drowned in a thick red sauce served quite elegantly in a half-liter paper soda cup. It was more than I was hungry for at the time, but I realized that I had half a day of dancing ahead of me so I loaded up on all the carbohydrates I could fit into my stomach. Five smaller rooms off the main hall hosted various electronic and techno acts for the rest of the night. The air was cool inside where we ate in the main hall, but this was the last time I felt cold as I spent the next 12 hours drenched in sweat from this never-ending dance party.

8 P.M.

I was apprehensive to start dancing so early when we had so much ahead of us. I started slowly to conserve energy during a set by a DJ who went by the moniker “Monica Electronica”.

Her music was not terrible, but it wasn’t very exciting either. It was nice to save up energy for all the acts I was anticipating after she finished.

Earlier in the night because we aren’t drenched in sweat.

10 P.M.

As soon as Simian Mobile Disco, a duo from England, hit the stage my energy picked up. All my fears and apprehensions melted away as I began to take in all the music that blasted from the speakers all around me.

We danced from 8 P.M. to 6 A.M. For eleven hours straight we danced, and danced, and danced. I have no idea how I survived, especially since the only thing in my system were two Red Bull energy drinks and about two glasses of water. I was so dehydrated and sweaty that I only went to the bathroom once the entire night.

11 P.M.

Even though none of us had heard of the next act, a Belgian DJ named Dr. Lektroluv, we decided to remain in the same room to hear what he would do.

He entered the stage wearing a bright green mask and dark sunglasses. His suit was made bright gold cloth and instead of using regular headphones he used a telephone to listen to his music. We were all in awe of his ridiculous get-up.

Eventually a few of us decided to brave the lines to go get water. As we pressed through the crowd to get back into the room to dance we lost our friend Jessi. I feared I would never see her again because the room was mobbed by so many people.

12:30 A.M. November 11, 2007

While Dr. Lektroluv did not disappoint, the next act, Digitalism, was the high point of the night. While they mixed electronic dance music they also performed with a live drummer which was unusual but had a nice effect.

At this point the room I was in nearly emptied as crowds forced themselves over to the room where the Parisian pair Justice was playing within the next hour. They put out one of my favorite albums this year, and while I wish I could have heard them perform live I do not regret my decision to stay to hear Ellen Allien, the famous DJ from Berlin.

1:30 A.M.

Ellen Allien is part of the electronic music scene that began to thrive in Berlin when she started DJ-ing and producing music in the ‘90s. Before coming to the techno festival I was most excited to hear her perform.

For the first ten minutes of her set she played a simple beat that repeated itself. Eventually the barely noticeable beeps and blips turned into the driving beat behind an hour and a half long set that passed by in a blur. While everything she did was very minimalist, it provided a cool atmosphere for the middle of the night.

3 A.M.

During the next act my energy disappeared. Miss Kittin and the Hacker destroyed the immaculate vibe that Ellen Allien had so painstakingly created earlier. This was the turning point in my affection towards techno. While I enjoyed it before, she made me start resenting every single electronically synthesized note that I heard from here on out. Her lyrics were incredibly simple-minded and her vocals were nothing short of screams that went on for much longer than my ears enjoyed listening to.

By the end of the night we looked like this….and this.

4 A.M.

Finally at 4 A.M. the headliners MSTRKRFT went on. I wish that they had gone on earlier in the night when I was not entirely drained of energy. They were one of the better acts but I could not manage to enjoy techno anymore at this point. In my head I told myself that if I stopped dancing I would lose all of my momentum and crash. So I continued to dance like a zombie, going through the motions. Each moment we dragged our bodies to the beat it got more and more tiring. Eventually I succumbed to my exhaustion and we decided to leave the dance floor.

6 A.M.

We gathered all of our friends to begin our long journey home. When the entire festival ended, all thirty-five thousand people in attendance raced to get on the tram back to the train station. Being surrounded by that many exhausted, sweaty, angry people (many who were coming down from a various assortment of party drugs) was one of the most terrible moments of the night. However, at this point I just had to laugh at the insanity of it all. As I was pushed forward by the masses I laughed to myself in my deliriously tired mind and wondered

Just how in the hell did I end up here?

At Prague’s National Gallery the rooms of paintings and sculptures stretch on and on. Each time you turn a corner you find another massive room of art that was not expected.

While wandering through the Czech symbolist, expressionist and cubist wing in this museum I thought we had reached the end of the Czech artists of these movements yet there was more to see. This room featured the paintings of Czech artist Jan Zrzavy. I was compelled by the odd nature of his paintings. Each one I could tell was painted by the same artist because similar shapes were used and each had a very dark or creepy aura to them, but there was a change in the colors from earlier works to later works from what I could see.

The one painting that drew me in the most was called The Valley of Sorrow in which a lone woman stands in the foreground of a landscape of a mountain range. While the subject matter is simple the shapes and colors that the landscape and the woman are painted emit an early avant-garde feeling.

The woman’s face is the same pasty pale color of cream that her floor length dress is. Her white figure stands out among the darker shades of the landscape. She is like a specter in the night of the painting. Her figure is shapely yet very thin at the same time. Her face is triangular and her features are elongated. She stares directly ahead and out of the painting at the viewer. This figure reminds me of a figure in a Munch painting because of her stretched figures and featureless face. Zrzavy was probably influenced by Munch since the Munch exhibition came to Prague in 1907 which is around the time when this painting was created I am guessing.

Her neck blends into her non-existent shoulders where the long line of her arm leads to the branch she is holding in her left hand. She wields it as if she is using it to guide or direct the view into or through the rest of the painting. To her right stands a tree that is equally as thin and elongated as she. The branch she is holding must come from this tree.

She wears a blue wide-brimmed hat even though there is no sun shining outside that needs to be blocked by a hat. A long red feather is stuck into the brim of the dull blue hat. The red of the feather matches the red flowers in the tree. I feel that the red feathers and flowers symbolize something, but I do not know what. But these very out of place elements in the scene make me think that they are there on purpose to represent something. Because of this I think that Zrzavy is a symbolist painter with some expressionist influences.

The trees leafs are long and spiny. In a way it looks vaguely like a palm tree but the scene is not tropical enough for it to actually be a palm tree. Perhaps Zrzavy made up this type of tree in his head because I have never seen a tree that looks like this before.

The ground she stands on is a grey-blue shade that nearly matches the color of her hat. The entire painting is permeated by this grey-blue color that is very dream-like and surreal. The dull colors of this painting induce feelings of sadness and depression. There are no bright happy colors that other modern Czech artists, like Kupka, used.

On the left side of the painting a thin road winds its way into the mountain range in the distance. Two similar looking trees dot the side of the road. You cannot see how far the road extends into the mountain range. It disappears before you can see it end at a defined point.

In the foothills of the mountains you can see a small village. There is barely any detail but small buildings can be made out in the distance. On the top of the hill above the town is a structure that looks like a church with a tall skinny spire that emulates the pointed peaks of the mountains behind it.

While the entire painting is very surreal and dreamlike the mountain range is possibly the most unreal part about the work of art. Eleven tall peaks shoot up out of nowhere to impossible heights. There are the same dull grey-blue as most of the painting. There are no rolling hills or soft slopes in this mountain range, but instead acute angles that point sharply skyward. The sky behind the mountains looks hazy as if the sun has just set or it may also be the break of dawn. There is no sun to be seen.

I believe this painting to be from the early part of the 20th century. While there are many modern shapes and angles to this painting that there are also some elements that are reminiscent of impressionist paintings to me. The brush strokes and the soft application of color remind me almost of a Monet painting. However the triangular shape of the face and the mountains tell me that this was painted after that movement. While the angles the mountains created are sharp and diagonal this is not yet cubism either.

This painting is definitely an earlier work than the other painting that caught my eye of Zrzavy’s in this gallery called Cleopatra. In this painting a very unrealistically shaped woman who is entirely red and bald relaxes on a lime green couch in front of two grey pyramids and two golden marijuana leaves. The colors are much more vibrant and modern than The Valley of Sorrow. The shapes in this are much more inclined toward to the later cubist artists of the century. The shape of the couch and her body also remind me of art deco artwork. While The Valley of Sorrow is dark and creates a slightly unnerving feeling while looking at it, Cleopatra is downright creepy because of the unnatural angle that her body relaxes in and her expressionless, hairless head.

Zrzavy was born in 1890 and died in 1977. He was a prominent member of the Czech avant-garde movement of the early 20th century, studied at the Academy of Applied Arts in Prague and helped found the art group Sursum. He is considered by many to be an expressionist who often used symbolist themes. He painted The Valley of Sorrow in 1908, early in the 20th century like I had thought.

After a trip to Paris in 1907, Zrzavy came back to Prague depressed that he could not find work there but full of fresh ideas from seeing the art in the Louvre and various modern French art galleries. This is when he first made The Valley of Sorrow, which was originally drawn with pastels. The next year he painted over it with oil colors.

In a 1969 interview, Zrzavy explained this painting:

“At that time, I didn’t think of how the painting was made. It was all strange to me, and I was happy because that was my first painting, a real one. Only much later, when people were talking about it and about the influences and how things came about, I knew that there was Munch, above all. The landscape and the mountains are from the Mona Lisa I had seen before in Paris. That brown landscape, the small hills, the trees were from Bavaria I rode through on the train, and the girl, well, girls were like that then. They wore long skirts and those hats.”

The Valley of Sorrow was painted in the earliest part of his career like I thought and was influenced by renaissance painters like da Vinci, which I did not realize, but also newer painters like Munch like I had guessed. Looking at the Mona Lisa, I can see how the mountain ranges in the background of that painting influenced the mountain ranges in Zrzavy’s painting.

I was correct in guessing that Cleopatra was a later work of his because in the 1930s Zrzavy began to exchange the muted tones of his earlier paintings for dark rich colors. Cleopatra was painted between 1942 and 1957. In addition to the renaissance and Munch influences, The Valley of Sorrow was also characteristic of the blending of the symbolism of the Czech Art Nouveau movement with expressionism and certain cubistic elements.

Photo by Joe Puglisi

After wandering around Berlin all day my three travel partners and I were mentally and physically exhausted. Our bus from Prague left at midnight and dropped us off on the outer periphery of West Berlin at 5 am at the beginning of a cold November day.

We saw many things that day. We watched the sun rise over the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag, spent a few hours at the Checkpoint Charlie museum, and drank hot chocolate at an outdoor Christmas market at Potzdamer Platz. Through our whirlwind tour of the city I could feel that Berlin’s history was a troubled one that weighed down heavily upon its present. Despite its distressed past, I noticed that Berlin was turning into a bright and modern European city with construction and development happening on nearly every block.

By the time we could check in to our hostel at 2 pm we were worn out and wanted to do nothing but sleep. As we wandered wearily back to our hostel’s neighborhood with visions of soft beds dancing in our heads we happened upon a great open field of stone that took over an entire square block in the center of Berlin just south of the Brandenburg Gate.

Even though my tired mind just told me to keep walking, something drew me closer to find out what these large rectangles made of what looked like granite were exactly. My friends protested, but I insisted that we explore this curious field.

I watched a television special about traveling in Berlin this summer before I left on my own adventures. In the back of my mind I vaguely remembered that Berlin had a very unique Holocaust memorial and something told me that I had wandered upon it here just by chance even though I could not see any visible markers describing what these stones represented.

From the street level this memorial looks like it is built upon a flat surface with thousands of rectangular slabs of black glassy granite spaced closely next to each other. One of the first thoughts that struck me about it was that it looked like a large cemetery because the stones were shaped eerily like coffins. From far away it looks like most of the slabs are no taller than three feet tall.

But this was all a visual illusion.

As I wandered into the field of stone I realized that the ground dipped down and the slabs were all stood at a variety of heights. The stones were spaced only about two to three feet apart so it was necessary to walk in a single file line through the labyrinthine. The first few rows of rock were no taller than me, yet the ground headed downhill more and the stones grew higher and higher until they were three times my height.

As I turned each corner I feared that I would run into another curious explorer of this maze because the stones were so close together and seeing over them was impossible because they were at least 15 feet tall at certain points.

I had never seen a memorial quite like this before. The only other monument that I had visited that vaguely reminded me of this one is the Vietnam War memorial in Washington D.C. While they are not terribly similar in design, the Berlin memorial reminded me of the D.C. memorial because they are both made of cool, dark stone that is built upon a sloped piece of ground. Also a generally somber atmosphere pervades both of them.

Many other people were inside adventuring around the maze but I felt if I was alone. Everyone I passed was very quiet and contemplative. I was shocked into silence because I was still trying to figure out what this was and was surprised by what I had wandered into. I was enthralled with the height of the stones that I had assumed were no taller than me.

The day was cold and cloudy and the stones had accumulated enough condensation that beads of dew clung to the sides of each tall stone we passed. People had taken the time to draw their names and designs with their fingers on the dewy walls. Our coats got wet as we brushed into the stones as we made our way through the narrow spaces between each slab of rock.

Within the memorial the ground undulated up and down as if an earthquake had caused a rippling of the pavement we walked upon. As we neared the street the ground headed uphill and the stones got shorter again until there was just once slab at the very corner that was no more than a few centimeters tall.

The rest of our walk to our hostel that day revolved around what this maze of stone was. We had seen quite a few important monuments that day, but this memorial stuck in our minds the most because of the incredible surprise it held in its center, as well as its sheer size and the wonder it instilled in us.

An architect from New York named Peter Eisenmann designed this vast grid of 2711 rectangular blocks made of concrete to commemorate the six million victims of the Nazi genocide of European Jews during World War II.

The field of rectangles is officially called the Field of Stelae, but most people just call this place the Holocaust Memorial.

The Holocaust Memorial took 17 years of discussion, planning and construction to complete. It finally opened in May 2005 after construction began in 2003. The slabs rest on a sloping and undulating field that is 19,000 square meters (about the size of an American football field) large.

It was created to emulate a giant cemetery like I had thought. It was conceived to be this way so that people could make their own journey through the blocks on their own time to contemplate the design, touch the stone, and watch how light and shadow played between the stones.

My journey through the blocks began at the south-western corner and ended at the north-eastern corner. I didn’t see this, but according to the website, 41 trees (including pine, linden, and Kentucky coffee trees) were planted in various spots along the western side of the memorial to create a smooth transition from the stone memorial into the Tiergarten Park that is across the street from the memorial.

Although I assumed the blocks were granite, they are in fact just simple concrete. Each slab is 0.95 cm deep and 2.38 m wide. The only variation is each of the stone’s height. According to the memorial’s website the field “represents a radical confrontation with the traditional concept of a memorial.”

The architect said in a 1998 interview about the memorial that, “The enormity and scale of the horror of the Holocaust is such that any attempt to represent it by traditional means is inevitably inadequate … We can only know the past today through a manifestation in the present.” I believe that he was successful in achieving this with his wholly unique and modern memorial.

This is cool because we just went there today to tag it. I’ll put those pictures up soon, but probably when I’m back in California in 24 hours or so.

I’m finished with finals and we put up the last issue of praguewanderer.com last night (check it out!).

Now it’s time for Christmas shopping! I just hope it doesn’t rain like it has been for the past few days.

Other things I’d like to do before going home:

Tag the Lennon Wall

Have one last smazeny syr (This probably won’t happen, but my cholesterol level is thanking me, I’m sure.)

Have one last meal at Bohemia Bagel (Scrambled eggs deluxe…mmm)

Go to the Mucha Museum

… and, of course, drink one last time legally (for the next 7 months at least)

The other evening I was out wandering about and saw this from Old Town looking out at the Prague Castle. I’m going to miss wandering about and just happening upon some of the most achingly beautiful sights in the world.

Here is the rest of my pictures from this moment.

I fondly remember celebrating St. Nicholas’s Day as a child at church. One of the older men in the congregation would dress up in the traditional bishop’s robes of St. Nicholas and pass out gigantic, soft gingerbread cookies to us.

The Czechs also celebrate St. Nicholas’s Day, or Mikulas in Czech, but they do it with a sinister twist.

Around 5 o’clock this evening groups of three dressed like St. Nicholas, a devil and an angel set out into the night to judge the children of the Czech Republic and decide which ones have been naughty or nice. The ones who behave get candy while the bad ones get shoved into the devil’s sack to be “taken to hell”.

Most of this revelry was centered around the Old Town Square Christmas Market which was jam-packed with Czechs and tourists alike wearing glowing devil horns or angel wings.

While the children aren’t literally taken to hell, they do get literally put in a burlap sack and dragged around the square. Terrifying, right? Some Czechs defend this tradition by saying it “builds character”. I suppose this is true.

This was simultaneously one of the funniest and most terrifying things I have ever witnessed as parents stood back and had a good laugh as their children were mentally scarred.

It made me think of all of those Santa Clauses in malls across America having to deal with screaming, crying children. If American children are scared of a jolly man there to give them gifts, they probably would have peed their pants if they saw these devils gallivanting around Prague tonight who threw explosive rocks and yelled in children’s faces all in the name of a good laugh.

While I did see many crying children here, there were also quite a few who looked like they were enjoying it. They must have been the well-behaved ones who had nothing to fear.

I saw at least five of these trifectas wandering the square and several more on the metro on my way home. A majority of them were teens. I can imagine that they were just trying to retaliate for being tormented as a small child.