(Berlin, Germany – Prague, Czech Republic – Blue Mountains, NSW)
Prague Airport… going home and readz for it… sort of.
It has been a great several dazs of wallowing in 20th Centurz historz in Berlin and Prague.
Sorrz, this is a German kezboard, so a y seems to come up as a z. Go figure…) There’s onlz 10 minutes to flight time so zou’ll have to deconstruct what zou can. Sorrz.
I have had a great time immersed in the past of Berlin and Prague, punctured bz the odd incident when the images of the past invade the present. Prague is a bit scruffz around the edges, but the inner citzis a stunning mix of architectures from the last five centuries. Berlin is furiouslz rebuilding itself while not letting the past be trampled bz new glass and steel developments, It still amayes me to walk across where the Berlin Wall was on mz last visit, and to go freelz to places from LeCarre and Deighton novels which teem with past histories of fear, secrecz, risk and dread.
I spent a daz wandering the Jewish Museum and the wall (remnants) in Berlin, including a quite confronting section where the remains of the Wall are atop the remains of Gestapo Headquartersn next to goering’s Luftwaffe Headquarters which was decorated for frieyes with the images of happz workers by the DDR communist government.
It was theatre/movie/restaurant going-hoe time in the treelined Kurfurstendam in the centre of the old West Berlin. So, we were in one of the monster cream double decked buses which plz the West where the trams used to go. (Thez still have trams in the East, it was another of those ideological decisions of the 1960s…). The crowd clambered on. It was the mix of languages and ethnicities of middle Europe including Turks and North Africans among the manz Germans and the odd tourist or two.
At the next stop there was a rash of feet at the rear doors and sudden violent stamping and scuffling on the floor above. A rush of passengers charged down the front stairs behind the driver, including some black teenagers who have obviouslz been threatened and are rushing to escape. Thez show bravado, but look shaken. Thez staz on the bus. Down the back stairs and out the door run several booted and leathered skinheads who then stand outside the bus, slamming the windows with fists and hurling abuse at the black kids.
One tall bloke slams his fists on the front door, which the diver OPENS… He leaps on and belligerentlz shouts at the kids from next to the driver, who does nothing. The older Germans in the middle of the lower deck shout back, equally aggressivelz, obvouslz telling the skinhead to leave. He continues the abuse then jumps off.
The doors are closed. Manz passengers reach for mobile phones. The driver eases the bus forward, but does not otherwise respond. The black kids seem relieved, but not undulz surprised, clambering back up stairs to resume their trip.
Welcome to the tolerant and inclusive new Germanz!
Life (Such As It Is) Back In The Mountains: 18 June 2005
Metana’s “The Moldau” is playing in the background, but a feezing cold day in Blackheath, the music cannot quite recreate the sunny Prague of just 4 days ago.
Twenty six hours of Finnair (passable if you enjoy Cardboard Everything) and Cathay Pacific (still better than good), and 4 more security checks with queues and X ray machines reinforced that overseas travel has become a stoic rather than luxurious experience for most of us, landed me, WITH bag (in spite of Czech Airlines wrong labelling) back at Sydney Airport. The good news is that the shorted and log socked Agriculture chappies don’t spray us all in the cabin on arrival any more. One just queues (again) for a quarantine X Ray machine (again) before emerging, fully processed.
I reckon that the best way to face a Friday at school is to be profoundly jetlagged. I must try it again. Soon.
The “quiet term” I left behind has become anything but. Once again the place is going through severe grief and loss and the mutual support is quite wonderful, but it’s terrible to walk back into a work place that is hurting.
Again.
It’s difficult to comprehend that it was only days ago that I spent a lot of time in the Museum of Communism in Prague. (So much time, that I missed the Museum of Torture: possibly a good thing). In amongst the totalitarian kitsch, the ironies were quite cruel, like the film of the Velvet Revolution demonstrations being broken up with uniformed, armed violence and water cannons, superimposed with a contemporary TV interview of the Czechoslovak President stating that these were his citizens and that they were being treated with the respect shown to all citizens.
Quite.
Apparently the Czechoslovakian Communist leadership were infuriated that, after the cruel put-down of the Prague Spring in 1968, Gorbachev’s “Perestroika” followed the same strategies that Dubcek had attempted to introduce into Czechoslovakia 20 years earlier. For the Old Guard it was a major betrayal as their regime collapsed from under them.
The Czechs reckon that the fall of Communism can be summarised as taking 10 years in Poland, 10 months in Hungary, and 10 days in Czechoslovakia.
It is fairly sobering to walk out of this exhibition (now part of the new casino: there’s more unintended[?] irony) into the Wenceslas Square of today.
And history, as always, is constructed by the victors…
And so back to work where this week’s left-fielder (amongst several: don’t mention the bloody canteen) was the actions from a group of Brethren who hired the school hall last weekend. They needed to get a vehicle to the fron entrance of the school hall, it seems, so they naturally decided to remove a section of the school’s security fence (!!). What a gooood idea! It was detected later in the week when the “replaced” panel threatened to topple onto a couple of our students.
And a special thank you to the lovely friend who arranged a welcome home airline meal on a tray in the fridge on Thursday night, in case I was missing such delights, and which is about to be consumed.
