Despite only having scratched the surface of an enigmatic city, I decided to
move south to Prague by train, which is a wonderfully romantic journey. For about
an hour one rolls through Eastern German countryside that might best be described
as "Midwestern flat." In these first weeks of spring, the fields were green or
carpeted with yellow flowers and many trees sported lovely white blossoms. The
main difference from the U.S. was the absence of modern cars and farm equipment.
Also the houses are rather old, brown, and decrepit. Rolling into Dresden was
fascinating. Berlin, especially West Berlin, doesn't have large barren spaces and
haphazard redevelopment. It is therefore a bit tough to imagine how thoroughly
the city was bombed. Dresden, however, still looks like a wasteland with a few
restored or at least remaining houses separated by large empty spaces. Some of
those spaces are punctuated by tall plain apartment or office buildings, but the
overall effect looks neither charming nor planned.
After bomb-scarred Dresden, the storybook valley of the Elbe was particularly
beguiling. Our train traveled up this river for about three hours. The German
side is studded with fine old houses and occasional towns nestled into side
canyons. The walls of the valley are often quite steep, with sheer rock faces 75m
high in some places. Eastern Germans bicycled along the road on the other bank
and the river was ever so flat and lazy. Once we got to the Czech Republic, the
river became much more industrial and houses lost their charm.
Germany is great
preparation for Prague. First, although the Czechs heartily dislike Germans, one
often encounters waitresses who speak German but not English (I was glad for once
that I hadn't learned German too well; my accent and mistakes were a plus here).
Second, the filthy cars and cigarette smoke in Germany toughened up my lungs for
the even filthier cars driven by the Czechs. Third, German officialdom takes
itself so seriously that the Czechs seem positively Italian by comparison.
Fourth, the aggressive German drivers cushioned the blow of arriving in a city
where the speed limit is 100 kph on all streets after 11:00 pm.
A quick walk
along the Vltava or Moldau (yes, the same river that inspired Smetana) bewitched
me with unexpected beauty at every corner. A lot of unmarked buildings here have
more grace to them than all of the tourist sights in Berlin combined.
Furthermore, the whole atmosphere of the city is light. One sees lovers embracing
and people eating on the streets, rare sights indeed in Berlin. London and Paris
are wonderful, of course, but 95% of the people one sees in those cities are
rushing off to do something productive. It always makes me feel lazy after a few
days. In the center of Prague, however, one sees mostly tourists or very relaxed
locals.
Upon reaching the famous
Karlov Most (Charles Bridge), I knew that I'd found tourist heaven. Visa cash
advances, pizza, guidebooks, sketch artists, schlock artists, money changers, all
open for business on a Sunday evening. The medieval bridge is reserved for
pedestrians and is thronged with deadbeats from many nations. They strum their
guitars and sing Czech and American folk music. Imagine Harvard Square on
steroids.
After a couple of hours in Prague, I'd already noticed what every other male
tourist had: Czech women are stunning. They tend to be tall, blond, slender, have
interesting features, and are a bit proud and aloof. They won't boldly meet your
eye like women in France or Italy, but it would be unfair to call them cold. In
fact, the unhappiest person in Prague is probably an ambassador who shall remain
nameless. He's single. He's got the mansion, he's got the servants, he's got the
big car. His misfortune is that the country he represents might be embarrassed if
he were seen running around town with any of the locals. Anyway, you won't forget
that Paulina Porizikova is Czech; every tenth woman here might be her sister.
All alone in Prague, I really appreciated how easy it was to meet people,
especially other tourists. Everyone is relaxed and at his or her best. On my
first evening stroll, I met two Czechs, seven Americans, and a smattering of
Europeans. This is the world's best city for practicing languages. In just one
day, I spoke English to the Dutch tourists, French to the French, German to get
food, Italian to the Italians, even a bit of Hebrew to an Israeli and a few words
of Japanese to a couple of stunned Osakans.
Despite spending most of my time
socializing, I managed to see a lot of Prague's tourist treasures on my very
first day. Praguers were early Protestants and prone to hurling Catholic
officials out of windows or off of bridges. The Jesuits were sent in to awe and
threaten the citizens back to Catholicism and dotted the city with Baroque
splendors such as St. Nicholas. This church would have kept Moses busy for
awhile; huge golden idols hover above each chapel and graven images cover the
walls.
As I walked up to the renowned Prague Castle, from which Václav Havel
continues a centuries-old tradition of Czech governance, the guard was changing
with a flourish of brass. The castle is a collection of walled-in buildings on
top of a hill, the most notable of which is St. Vitus Cathedral. My second
favorite feature of the cathedral is an Art Nouveau stained glass window that was
even financed by an insurance company and shows the psalm "Those who Sow in Tears
Shall Reap in Joy."
My favorite part of the cathedral was something I'd
have missed completely without the Cadogan guide: St. John Nepomuk's tongue. John
was hurled into the river in 1383 for appointing an abbot against King Wenceslas
IV's wishes. Three centuries later the Jesuits were casting about for a
Prague-base saint and invented the following tale: that the King had demanded
John relate what the Queen had confessed to him, and that John went to his death
rather than betray her confidence. In 1715 a canonization committee exhumed
John's body and found that his tongue was "throbbing with life" and still
growing; he was canonized in 1729. Although there are numerous parts of dead
people that are available for worship around Prague, the tongue was removed in
the 1980's after further examination revealed that it was in fact a desiccated
brain. John has a 1700 kg (as much as a full-size Chevrolet) solid silver tomb
with beautiful Baroque figures of angels surrounding the swooning saint.
One of the
biggest draws of the Prague castle is the Golden Lane, lined with tiny colorful
houses. They didn't do much for me, not even one where Kafka lived for four
months (he spent his whole life in Prague so that practically every other
building has some Kafka story). The house was rented by his sister Ottla, who was
exempted from wartime anti-Jewish laws because of her German husband. After her
sisters and their husbands were hauled off to the Lodz ghetto, she became less
sold on Aryan culture and divorced her husband. Ottla was sent first to
Theresienstadt, then volunteered to escort a children's train to Auschwitz where
she died.
I walked down the hill to the Old Town
Square--armed with my Cadogan guide to Prague--and found it rich in history. Here
was the balcony from which the communist state was announced and then cheered
every year thereafter, there was the place where Protestant nobles were beheaded,
along the east edge was the church where Tycho Brahe is entombed. The square
looks peaceful today, but it has been the site of numerous bloodbaths. The most
recent was May 8, 1945, a week after Hitler's suicide and the same day people in
Paris and New York were celebrating V-E day. Prague was actually the last
European battlefield of WWII. Three days earlier, Prague had risen against the
Nazis and, in part of a battle that left 5000 Czechs dead, the Germans
obliterated one wing of the town hall with a tank. It was two more days before
the Russians liberated the town (US forces could have gotten there earlier, but
stood idle so as not to breach the Yalta agreement).
My next stop was the old Jewish quarter containing a few remains of a
community dating back at least to the 10th century. Jews were spread out on both
sides of the river originally, but in 1179 the Church announced that Christians
should avoid contact with Jews, by either moating or walling them in. Jews were
locked in at night and all through Easter/Passover. Despite some pogroms and
banishments, the Prague ghetto was a center of mysticism and Jewish thought. In
1784, Emperor Joseph II opened the ghetto and Jews with money or ability moved
out (much as middle class blacks abandoned U.S. inner cities in the 1960's,
leaving them today with just half their 1960 population). The ghetto became a
sparsely-inhabited slum and nearly all the old buildings were razed to make room
for broad streets and Art Nouveau buildings. Only six synagogues, the town hall,
and a cemetery were spared and these ended up being selected by Hitler for a
postwar "Exotic Museum of an Extinct Race."
Everyone had told me how
great the cemetery was, with its tombstones practically piled on top of one
another. Consequently, it was a disappointment. Not only did it look just as I'd
imagined, but it was packed with Italian and French tourists. Unlike the Germans,
the Czechs have developed their Jewish quarter into a major tourist attraction
and the resulting lack of solitude inhibits quiet reflection.
Within the cemetery is the Pinkasova synagogue. After the war, someone painted
the walls with the names, birthdates, and deathdates of the 77,297 Czech Jews
killed by the Germans. The Communists didn't take very good care of Hitler's
Jewish museum and this synagogue was no exception. After the Yom Kippur War, they
ripped out the names and even installed some anti-Israel exhibits in this area.
Artists are currently painstaking painting the names back in.
Although I didn't see the museum containing exhibits of children's art from
concentration camps (it was closed for "technical reasons"--this is a popular
expression in Prague museumdom but I never figured out what it meant), the Nazi
collection of Jewish stuff from all over Europe was nothing to write home about.
Let's face it: the prohibition on idolatry and the sheer poverty of European
Jewry prevented them from ever making anything very interesting.
In the evening, I met Rebecca, Becky, Michelle, and Angela (all Americans
flexing their Delta Airlines employee benefits) at a marionette version of Don
Giovanni. This combines two big Prague traditions: Don Giovanni, which was
premiered here, and puppetry. It was fun if you knew the story well and didn't
mind expressions that were, well, wooden. Being in the company of four attractive
women wasn't bad either, although Rebecca was just recovering from having her
wallet stolen (this is a familiar lament among Prague tourists).
I spent the next day lazily roaming through Prague's innumerable parks and
gardens and ended up back at the castle. My favorite part of the castle is the
window from which two Catholic officials were hurled by angry noblemen. The
Church maintains that the Virgin Mary came down with wings and flew them to
safety; eyewitnesses say that they landed in a dungheap. I had a long
conversation with a 50ish Czechwoman in the tourist information office. She was
sick and tired of people confusing her wonderfully advanced country with such
backwaters as Poland. In fact, she maintained that Czechs were better educated in
science and technology than Americans. I conceded that their subways
and trams were remarkably efficient, but honesty compelled me to note the
unfortunate resemblance between Czech cars and American lawnmowers.
My next encounter was with 25 Italian schoolgirls on their senior trip abroad.
You don't know the meaning of exuberance until you've met 25 18-year-old girls
who are thrilled to discover that an American speaks their language. They
surrounded me and my head was spinning from trying to remember my Italian,
remember their names, and look at them all at once.
In the evening, I had dinner with Yves, Fanny and Corinne, three refined
Bretons. Fanny and Corinne pretended to consider our opinion, but it was clear
which sex was going to choose the restaurant. They picked an established place
that was actually listed in their guidebook. Such places generally have the rude
service the predates the revolution and we were not disappointed. The waiter was
so curt that we just had to laugh. Dinner conversation was relaxed and mostly in
English. That is something I really like about the French I've met: if there is
one English speaker in a crowd they will all speak English, even to each other,
out of politesse.
A perfect April morning heralded the day that best typifies my experience in
Prague. I sallied forth to the main train station in hopes of retrieving my bike.
Taking a bike with you on a German train is very difficult and getting it across
an international border is impossible; the bike must be shipped separately. It
turned out that I was importing my bike to the Czech Republic, and that I had to
go to the customs office. Of course, the ten people in front of me had stacks of
documents for importing cars, radioactive medical isotopes, etc. I stood in line
for 45 minutes. It is incredible sometimes to see the two cultures here. One is
the usual Western tourist culture, which lubricates a smooth journey from the
airport to your downtown hotel, then out to dinner and sightseeing. The other is
the old imperial bureaucracy of which Kafka wrote so eloquently. This culture
flourished under the Communist regime and is alive and well at the train station:
no one thought to separate ordinary tourists with a single bag to claim from
businessmen importing tens of thousands of dollars of stuff.
In a country as exotic as the Czech Republic, almost any situation can be
educational, and this one proved to be rather fortuitous. Behind me was Arnost, a
Czech architect who had applied for foreign travel every year for sixteen years
under the Communist regime. Finally, in 1984, he was given permission to travel
to Denmark to see buildings. He stayed there and has been working as an architect
ever since. Unfortunately, recently the market for architects has gone sour. "My
boss told me that there wasn't even enough room for Danish architects these days
and that I would have to leave." I told him that I'd always thought of
Scandinavians as having such well-ordered societies. "They probably did, but as
soon as a lot of Eastern Europeans arrived, prejudice developed quickly." How had
he adapted to Danish culture? "I wanted to get married, but most Danish women
live only for themselves; they aren't ready to take care of a family. There's
isn't much of a Czech community; we tend to melt into the surrounding culture.
Most of my friends were actually Polish immigrants."
We also chatted with the friendly medical isotope importer who ducked outside
for a cigarette. Attitudes toward smoking here are very different from Germany.
First of all, Czechs seem to observe "no smoking" signs. Second, it seems to be
rude here to smoke in front of non-smokers. Finally, Germans think cigarette
smoke is positively healthful, but this fellow said he never smoked inside his
house so as not to expose his children.
When Arnost and I got to the front of the line, we were told that our bikes
were on the other side of town at the Holesovice station. I kept my good humor,
but Arnost was outraged that his home country could be so inefficient. I said
that he'd been spoiled by Denmark and perhaps could not live happily here after
all, especially on the $300/month that he was expecting to be paid.
When we got to Holesovice, the baggage office had arbitrarily closed for lunch
(people get up at 5:00 and start work at 6:30 so this should have come as no
surprise). We toured around the upper floors of the station to find someone in
authority, but everyone told us we would just have to wait. By the time we got
back downstairs, the office was magically open again and we presented our
tickets. The man said that we should have gotten a stamp back at the main station
and that we'd have to go back. Arnost pleaded with him in Czech and somehow our
bikes were set free. Mine was in a box padded out with excess clothing and
weighed about 25 kg. Getting it home on the metro and then up five flights of
stairs was enough to make me regret having brought the bike from America in the
first place.
After assembling the bike, I headed down Sokolska Street, a one-way four-lane
city street that the Czechs somehow regard as a superhighway and over the
Nuselsky Most, a large modern bridge about 1 km long spanning a dramatic valley
filled with old houses. Just to be spinning along the street with a blue sky
overhead and a fine wind in my face made me forget all of the travails associated
with schlepping the bike.
The Vysehrad castle would have been a rather hot and tedious excursion on
foot, but was marvelous on the bike. In America, someone would have thought to
put up a "no bikes" sign, but there aren't many bikes here yet and restrictions
seem to be few. I rode down the hill to Plzenska where I bought apples and, I am
ashamed to admit it, a meal at McDonald's. This was my first stop at McDonald's
during this entire European trip. I justified it by saying that it would be a
cultural experience to see how McDonald's and Czech culture mix. The result is
just like one of the drug-money-laundering McDonald's in Miami: prices are low,
the food is greasy, and nobody speaks English.
I then rode up to Mozart's villa and the falling-apart stadium complex. The
Communists used to have bizarre synchronized gymnastics in the stadium, the
world's largest, with 160,000 performers and 220,000 spectators. The stadium
shares a hilltop with a model Eiffel tower and a variety of innocent diversions
such as a mirror maze. Heading back toward the castle I was distracted by Hanneke
and Elske, two Dutch sisters who invited me to join them in a cafe. Weren't they
happy to be in a city where everyone is smiling? "We were just saying to each
other how unhappy people here look compared to Amsterdam. Your standards are
warped after three weeks in Germany," they laughed.
After parting from Elske and Hanneke, which I was indeed loath to do, I biked
downhill to the Karlov Most where I spied the best-looking mountain bike I'd seen
in Europe, a superdeluxe aluminum Scott with Rock Shox and XT components. Ivo,
the proud owner, makes his living doing commercial art for advertising and lives
to mountain bike and paint fine art. I asked him where I could find a bike part
and he responded by saying "follow me." Ivo took off down the
packed-with-pedestrians bridge at about 15 kph. His
if-you-don't-like-the-way-I-drive-get-off-the-sidewalk biking style did not seem
to surprise many Czechs. After all, this is the way they drive their cars.
Speaking of cars, I was shocked by the number of brand-new Mercedes on the
streets of Prague. It was sickening enough in America to see a doctor drive by in
a hunk of sheet metal worth four years salary to the average worker. I wondered
how Czechs feel when they see a businessman get so fat from just a few years of
the free market that he can afford the same car, worth about 50 times the average
annual salary here.
I rode home to shower and then
had dinner with Leona, a 19-year-old Czech from the countryside. We'd met on the
Karlov Most my first night in Prague where she told me that she'd come here to
learn English and work as a secretary. Taking her out to dinner I felt a bit like
George Darrow in Edith Wharton's The Reef. Darrow is a 35ish American who
goes to Paris to meet a woman he loves. He gets a telegram while on the train
telling him not to come, but he has arranged time off work and hence decides to
go anyway. On the train, he meets Sophy Viner, a beautiful 20-year-old who is
going to visit friends. Sophy's friends have left Paris so Darrow puts her up in
his hotel and starts to show her around the city. Things that seem uninteresting
to his jaded eyes look wondrous to hers and her enthusiasm proves infectious.
Leona had never had Chinese food, so I took her to the nearby Peking
restaurant. There were no Chinese in evidence, either as staff or customers, and
some of the food was barely recognizable as Chinese (they served rolls, for
example). If I'd been alone, it would have been a disappointment, but I had fun
teaching Leona to eat with chopsticks and learning about her world. She gets up
at 5:00, is working at 6:30, and is ready to swim or run by 2:30. Leona spends
her afternoons playing guitar or singing folksongs with her friends. In the
evenings she attends English class. Leona didn't have anything nasty to say about
anyone or anything, not even about the Russians who made her learn their
hellishly complex language for eight years. Yet when I told her how happy I was
to be able to speak some German, she said flatly "I don't like Germans."
Evidently the numerous German tourists are not doing much to heal old wounds.
Towards the end of the evening, I didn't feel like Darrow anymore. Due to my
age and privileged birth I had a wider experience of the world, but Leona had the
absolute authority of a beautiful woman. I felt like a Bonfire of the
Vanities Master of the Universe in the Chinese restaurant, like an equal
partner in the hip cafe afterwards, and like a bewildered child at the end of the
evening.
"You'll pry my bike from my cold, dead hand"--that's how I felt on my last day in
Prague. Not only was I able to ride through 20 miles of "real Prague"
neighborhoods and visit an obscure Renaissance palace, but I even biked a
downtown walking tour from the Cadogan guide that included the famous Bambino
di Praga. The Bambino is a wax infant Jesus said to perform miracles
for those with cash to spare. The infant is pretty well fixed, being particularly
venerated throughout the Hispanic world, and has scores of fine costumes from all
over the world (even one from Communist North Vietnam).
More tourists would be well-advised to stop and worship the Bambino:
just outside the church, a Frenchwoman stopped me to ask, in excellent English,
directions to her embassy. She'd had her money and papers stolen. I got off my
bike and accompanied her for the two blocks.
On the Karlov Most, I met the Italian girls again, which was like getting an
extra dose of sunshine. Ariana had found a picture-with-a-python entrepreneur
mid-bridge and was posing with a five-meter-long snake around her neck. Knowing
that they were all the same age, I was struck by the contrast between Christina,
mature and seductive, and some of the others, slight and childlike. They demanded
to know why I wasn't married. I said "I'm waiting to meet the right Italian
girl."
While attempting to hold two sausage sandwiches, one Coke, and one mountain
bike, I was greeted familiarly by two Danish girls. "Do we know each other?" I
asked. They said "Of course, you are the German teacher from our hotel!" I
laughed "Ich spreche Deutsche aber nicht zehr gut!" They insisted "you aren't a
teacher of German, but a teacher from Germany." Only after I took off my helmet
were they convinced that I wasn't from Germany. "That's better that you are
American anyway; we really don't like Germans very much." I wondered how
Europeans could ever truly unite given so many old and new cross-border
wounds.
As the red glow of the sunset melted the Baroque palaces along the Moldau, I
met Hanneke and Elske at the Czech Philharmonic. Three dollars bought a ticket in
the 15th row of the orchestra, in between two friendly attractive Czechwomen who
translated the program notes for me. When the orchestra came out, I exclaimed
that it was all white males. A retired Czech gentleman sitting behind us smiled
with satisfaction: "that is why they are good." Despite their politically
incorrect composition, they played a challenging program as well as my own Boston
Symphony Orchestra. The acoustics in the elegant hall are marvelous, mostly
because is has only half as many seats as the newer American halls and everyone
is close to enough to get good sound.
Afterwards, we three went to the main square to sit in a cafe and chat about
the concert, culture and American vs. European life. On the way, I mentioned that
Dvorak had so loved the New York subway that he refused to ride in his
chauffeured limousine. Elske asked me if it was true that only poor people ride
the NY subway now. I said "yes, but in New York anyone making less than
$100,000/year is considered poor."
Elske is one of those women who drives men to distraction with sheer
indifference. Let a woman give a man her heart and soul unreservedly and he'll
soon take her for granted. But if a woman holds herself back, a man will go to
extreme lengths to bring a sparkle to her eyes. He'll do this day after day
because every time he succeeds he gets a feeling of accomplishment.
Elske is a hard-working medical student and hadn't ever been to the U.S. She
disarmingly asked "Why would I want to visit the U.S.?" I was nonplused. I'd met
people who hated the U.S. I'd met people who loved the U.S. But I'd never met
anyone who was simply indifferent to the country that draws more tourists and
immigrants than any other. I'm not sure if this reflects my American or my male
bias, but my first thought was of size: "Hey, we've got three lakes that are
substantially larger than Holland!"
Images of Disneyworld, the canyons of the Southwest, bears in Alaska, vast art
museums, Henry James's Boston, Vermont foliage, New York skyscrapers, San
Francisco vistas, the Rocky Mountains, and the Oregon Coast flashed before my
eyes. It was just like watching a TV station sign off the air except that
everything looked unimpressive and deflated under Elske's cold, unwavering gaze.
Rather than try to stretch words to describe the beauty and variety I'd just seen
inside my eyelids, I moved to an intellectual plane.
I told Elske and Hanneke that Americans are curious about Europe because that
is a source of so many of our cultural ideas. By the same token, Europe now gets
many ideas from America and they might be curious to see the source. For example,
America was the most thoroughly middle class society for parts of the 19th
century and a lot of European modernity is modeled after the States. Big city
life and problems came first to America and then to Europe.
We also discussed chauvinism and nationalism. They proudly noted that they
weren't chauvinistic about things Dutch. I said "So what? I'm not chauvinistic
about Massachusetts. You are chauvinistic about Europe, which you see as the
center of things and the only really interesting place, but not about your tiny
little corner. Americans, if you leave out a few Texans and Californians, are not
chauvinistic about their little states, but do feel there is a richness to the
entire U.S."
It occurred to me that Europeans don't have a visceral feel for the
multiculturalism of the U.S. They can get a tourist's appreciation of authentic
cultures quickly, but don't have the day-to-day contact with watered-down
cultures that Americans have. I said that seeing my Chinese friends every day and
learning what concerns they and their families have teaches me different things
about Chinese culture than a tourist trip to China might.
My sales pitch wasn't effective, for Elske would not consider visiting the
U.S. Instead, she was going to Tanzania for the summer to play Albert Schweitzer.
I was stunned. It is so easy for an American to forget that, in Europe, doctors
are paid ordinary salaries and people study medicine because they have a genuine
desire to help others.
Feeling that I hadn't sufficiently beaten them up about how small Holland was,
I proceeded to question Elske's utopian feminism, which is not quite as
unfashionable in Holland as in the U.S. She said that in fifty years there would
be no differences between men and women. I said that was absurd and that women
were more frequently "feet on the ground" types, content with simple things if
they did the job. It was men who were likely to have crazy, risky ideas. "Would a
woman have said `let's take an enormously heavy bridge and just hang it from two
steel wires'?" I asked. "A woman might have noted that there were plenty of lower
risk bridge designs and that, in any event, one could take a boat across or just
stay on one side. Women are right, of course, as illustrated when the Tacoma
Narrows suspension bridge collapsed shortly after it was completed. However,
society only advances when crazy ideas are refined into better ways of doing
things." This kind of sexism would have gotten me knifed back home in Cambridge,
but Elske took it all with good humor and we parted in fine spirits.
Between talking past midnight, disassembling my bike, packing, and having to
get up at 5:30, I only got a few hours of sleep. Putting the bike on the plane
was far easier than in Boston and things went fairly smoothly until I tried to
change my crowns back to dollars. One can't do this without the original receipt
from the first change. However, as I tried to auction the money off among the
departing passengers, the duty free shop manageress took pity on me and opened
up. I was the first person in Czech history to buy duty free goods with crowns,
as this was the first day that they were accepting Czech currency and the shop
did not officially open until 8am. My bag swelled with about 2 kg. of Lindt
chocolate.
The two-hour flight to Heathrow blossomed into a six-hour ordeal thanks to fog
and running out of gas while circling. Shelly, sitting in the aisle seat,
entertained me with his 38-year-old single Jewish New Yorker's perspective:
"Eight million people in NY, eight million stories. Eight million people in LA,
one story." Shelly quit his job at a big NY law firm because he couldn't stand
the people he was meeting, especially the women who'd been reduced to materialism
and savagery by having to live the NY yuppie life. "I'm despairing of finding a
sane North American Jewish woman, except among the orthodox. The secular ones
have been on too many dates with dentists. They become so starved for experience
that they run off on wild flings in Italy or into bad marriages."
At Heathrow, I had to dodge crowds of wool-suited executives railing at
hapless airline employees for ruining their million-dollar deals. I flew standby
on the last flight to JFK and then standby again on the last flight to Boston,
arriving at my front door 25 hours after getting into the taxi in Prague.
Epilogue
A couple of weeks after I returned, I showed slides from the trip at my house.
My friend Ted brought a couple visiting from Stuttgart and they kept their
opinions to themselves until he was driving them home: "We liked the slides, but
it would be unthinkable in Germany to speak about the Nazi period except in the
most serious terms." Ted said he didn't find the tone inappropriate and a
discussion ensued. Frustrated that he wasn't getting his point across, the
professor said "Well, what if there had been a Jew present?" When Ted told him
that he was Jewish, that at least 20 of the 50 guests were Jewish, and that the
host/photographer/narrator was Jewish, the Germans were stunned into silence.
It seemed almost laughable on one level, particularly since one of my friends
is Orthodox and was wearing a yarmulke. On another level, it seemed that complete
ignorance of Jewish culture would be the natural consequence of Nazi persecution
and the Holocaust. (The Jewish population of Germany reached its peak in 1920 at
500,000. By 1937, 365,000 Jews remained and only 17,000 were left at the end of
the war.) It struck me then how much Jews and other minorities were The Other in
Europe.
In America, a television portrayal of a homeless man in New York City provokes
sympathy from 90% of the viewers. "I might be a racist and that guy is black, but
he's an American and he sleeps in the street. We should do something to help
him," is a typical response. Starving Somalis or the Coast Guard packaging up a
bunch of Haitians into a shipping container excites very little sympathy: "There
are a lot of wretched people on this planet and we can't help all of them."
What's the difference? The Haitians and Somalis aren't part of our family.
Just because we're a family doesn't mean there isn't hatred. In fact, no
matter how racist one is, one probably has hated one's sister more than any
abstract person of another race. But even if you hated your sister more than
anyone else in the world, would you put her in a Concentration Camp?
Minorities in Europe, however, are not protected by any feeling of family. A
few times I asked good-natured open-minded Germans whether they thought the woman
on the subway was correct, i.e., was it possible for a 2nd or 3rd-generation
Turkish immigrant to become "truly German" in any sense? The idea was so absurd
to them that they looked bewildered at first. None of them felt the Turks were
inferior, but none felt any kind of bond with them either. Nor is this phenomenon
restricted to Germany. I met a young Danish university student who deplored the
anti-immigrant prejudice of his fellow Danes. "Of course, many of these
immigrants make matters worse by not converting to Christianity. I'm not a
believer myself, but that is the religion of our country." Third World countries
are no better; Muslim Arab immigrants to Muslim Arab Egypt can expect to wait 125
years to get citizenship.
The most valuable thing I learned visiting Berlin and Prague was an
appreciation for what I'd always taken for granted: a person can show up on our
shores and expect to become "one of the family" after a few years.
The End
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