Dear Friends and Lovie-Doves,
SKIP THIS PARAGRAPH IF YOU ARE NOT A READER
Just spent over $30 on English language paper backs as I have sucked up everything I brought with me and only have a few pages left of the book Josef brought me. It is a book of essays by Bohumil Hrabel couched as letters to his American friend April Gifford. Besides many a mention of names as well known as Shirley Temple, Charlie Chaplin, Andy Warhol, Milos Forman, Franz Kafka, Rainer Maria Rilke, Boris Pasternak, and on and on--Hrabal also refers to the very same Gulf Stream swept spot in northern Scotland where palm trees grow that is mentioned in the Southern mystery I finished, Patricia Sprinkle's DID YOU DECLARE THE CORPSE? Also read and wept and wept over Elizabeth Berg's NEVER CHANGE. Has anyone read it? If so, let's talk. I loved her exposition of how one can grow into a nurturant adult in a nurturing profession in spite of surviving a cold childhood. She also has thrown a great deal of needed light for me on living with people in difficulty. As the laws of synchronicity have it, Sprinkle also speaks to that through her protagonist who says many women confuse marriage with ministry.
48 hour day
On the road down to Pribram Friday night we passed a short convoy of antique cars with right hand drive, including one with a wicker trunk strapped to the back bumper. Also passed a number of small castles, some open to the public and some not. Perhaps another time...
I stayed in the flat where Dana grew up in Pribram, a flat that will be Jana's in the future. Dana and Josef had brought a fine supply of food and drink for me so I was well set up--especially since I had books and the deep tub for my first sit down bath since leaving the USA! I take it back--I had one at Anne Alexis's. Well, you can't have too many bubble baths.
Saturday we started the morning at Svata Hora, a monastic pilgrimage site at least 800 years old. It is completely unlike any other church or chapel I have ever visited. In addition to the main church with its solid silver massive altarpiece, there is a glorious terrace chapel built for the occasion over 200 years ago of the coronation of a statue of Mary and Jesus to which many miracles are attributed. In fact, the ceilings of the cloisters that run all the way around the main church are covered with the painted record of these miracles. There is also a covered stairway leading from the site down to the town of Pribram. Under the main sanctuary there is also a stalactite chapel. We heard the organ, bells, and clock chimes.
We had few minutes so we stopped to visit Dana's sister Ilona in Lesetice, a tiny village. The conversation was all in Czech and covered the new WC and the newly required well specifications. I enjoyed just being there and looking at a cool l920-30s ish horizontal oval Madonna and Child that covered one wall of the living room.
Next we toured the Vojna Memorial, a prison camp begun by German laborers but taken over by the communists for the punishment of political prisoners who opposed Communism. They were forced to mine uranium. The entry is marked Praci ke Svobode, the Czech version of the Work Makes You Free that is found in German over Auschwitz. The most horrifying thing I saw here was the corrections bunker where prisoners could barely stand and were kept underground for days on end with no food, water, sanitation, etc. Sometimes it rained and the bunker filled with water waist high so the prisoners could only stand or stoop. In hot weather, tar dripped through the ceiling which they used to inscribe messages inside the bunker.
AFter a delicious picnic of rohliky, syr, chipsy, a jabloka (rolls, cheese, chips and apples) we went to the park where Antonin Dvorak's in laws lived. We wandered up onto a wedding at their beautifully maintained ochre and white small mansion (Is this a leto?) The bride and groom were busy being showered with bubbles by their guests and cutting a large heart out of a sheet being stretched out by other guests. Dana assures me this is NOT an old Czech tradition. In fact, Josef called it an invention.
The house is a memorial to Dvorak but was his sister-in-law's residence. I enjoyed the rooms, the letters of tribute, a film in English and the music but was really awed when I asked the ticket seller if the family still used Dvorak's family home Rusalka since it is not open to the public. He introduced himself--Petr Dvorak--the composer's great grandson and said, yes, the family still lives at Rusalka. I am quite atwitter at being only 6 degrees of separation from Dvorak! I learned there that Josef Suk is also a Dvorak descendent and that Renee Fleming had Czech grandparents.
As if this were not already a complete day, we made another stop. We had to take a one lane dirt detour to get through Beltice to the glass blowing studio. I bought a sturdy kostyr/liquer glass for myself and the Zakovi bought several items. The glassblower said he learned first through an apprenticeship but then went to art school. Josef says they were hesitant about where to settle as there is no glass blowing tradition in Beltice, but apparently they made the right decision as their glass is sold in Prague Castle, among other venues. They gave me a DVD catalog to bring to the USA in case you need to place an order! The artisan concluded the sales by pouring us each a tot of oreschovice, a nut brandy.
Then on to the Zakovi cottage in Smetanova Lhota--a restful walled garden spot with the sweetest well water and the most fragrant roses. I ate about a dozen delicious jahody or strawberries from the garden though Jana declared that they were all dried up. After serving a delicious dinner of chicken and vegetables with rice and cherry tomatoes and plenty of red wine, Dana brought out many pieces of her pottery. Larry, I so wish you and she could see each other's work. If Josef sends me any digital photos I will forward them to you. The same if you will send me any digital photos of your work. She has a huge variety in her output, but I especially liked a rooster flat bottomed vessel with a tall skinny neck rather than spout rather like pre-Columbian artifacts. I also loved a skewed rusty clay tower with glazed black details like gargoyles and gutters and window bars.
On the way back to Pribram we stopped at the cemetery in Cimelice to water Josef's ancestor's graves. Graves are generally planted or have very neatly arranged gravel or both and are much more carefully maintained than in the USA. I kept getting my flip flops stuck between the stone kerbs around the graves and could not move in any direction.
Sunday morning there was a big thunderstorm. Also my foot was giving me trouble so I skipped the walk to the very interesting looking silver mining museum and read, read, read and ate, ate, ate. Upon my return to Prague Sunday night I went to the internet cafe for some amazingly good gazpacho which was a great substitute for the salad I was yearning for.
This morning Hana ate breakfast with me again and plied me with cookies left over from the wedding she went to. She felt beautiful in the new black and white striped dress. Then my train trip to Breclav where Betty and Milan picked me up. We went to Hodonin and shopped for the wonderful cherries and berries I am eating now plus other groceries and the rest of the day has been rest, read, and write to you.
Ahoj and love from Beni the poodle, who remembers me,
Lowell
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