Bertramka, Mozart, Swans, and the Louvre

On Thursday I went to Bertramka with Julie and Ondine. What is Bertramka, you may be wondering? It is the name of the villa in Prague where Mozart stayed when he visited. And he visited a lot. Prague apparently adored Mozart; his music was always very well received here. No wonder he kept coming back!

Bertramka was owned by some friends of Mozart, the Duseks. When Mozart was alive, the house would have been outside the city but now it is right by a very busy shopping center near Andel. Here is the villa.

Now it is a Mozart-in-Prague museum, but unfortunately the museum is closing in October. From what the man at the desk said, the house has been sold and the new owner is going to do something different with it.

But it is not closed yet! We wandered around the small rooms, decorated as they were in Mozart's time. I do not know much about Wolfgang, but it was neat to be in the room where he composed, and to see various letters and programs. The museum focuses on the music and operas that Mozart created in Prague and for Prague, and on his stay in the city. So there are letters about him and the music, and pages of sheet music, and images of Prague as it looked when he was here. Pretty cool. I did miss my little musical sister, as she could have helped me make sense of it all.

It is a small museum but the house and the gardens are very well-kept and peaceful.

Mr. Mozart in the garden:

They still have concerts and other events at Bertramka. The concert hall was through those French doors. Ondine is French, so naturally I made a stupid comment about how the doors are French, and "so is Ondine!" Oh, terribly clever.

Enough cultural improvement for the day. We had a delicious lunch at Jama, a burger place with Rolling Stone magazines and Bob Marley posters all over the walls.

On Friday we rode a swan

boat.

Julie and I took a paddle boat out on the river about 6 weeks ago, but this time we took a swan boat. Ondine and Julie paddled and I sat on the back, clutching my backpack. I had spent the morning at Starbucks using their wireless internet, so I had my laptop with me for the rest of the day. Pretty stupid for me to take it on the boat, but I didn't have any other options. We did not capsize.

Here is Julie and the swan head.

It is so fun to paddle about on the river. I highly recommend it. I had my handy Prague map and was able to situate myself on the river because I had several bridges, the National Theater, Prague Castle, and some islands as landmarks. Even I could do that.

I love this next picture. Julie took it. Self-portraits never turn out well when I take them, but this one sure came out great!

After our watery adventure we walked to Cafe Louvre, a fancy cafe with killer hot chocolate and cakes. The cafe was started in 1910 and has a lovely inside with dark pink and cream walls and mirrors and elegant furnishings. It did feel a bit Parisian. I had the hot chocolate--so thick you had to use a spoon--and a fresh waffle with ice cream. Yum.

I had to scurry to catch the last bus home--a 7:00 one. As a girl who is used to driving herself on those good 'ol American highways, having to depend on infrequent (and early!) buses to get home is rather frustrating. But I am trying to adapt.

In the next installment--I take you to the church of human bones...get ready.

Movie of the Week X

The Harvey Girls (1946)

And now for a musical western starring Judy Garland. Intrigued? It is a great, fun musical about a mail-order bride (sort of) who goes out west and becomes a Harvey Girl. The Harvey Girls were waitresses who worked at restaurants, Harvey Houses, opened by Mr. Harvey in the late 19th century along the western Atchison-Topeka-Sante Fe rail lines. (Harvey Houses were the first chain restaurants.) Mr. Harvey wanted to have family friendly establishments serving good food everywhere the trains stopped. The Harvey Houses and his Harvey Girls became "agents of civilization" conquering the lawless, un-family-friendly towns of the Wild West. To keep the Harvey Houses from becoming a different sort of "house," a senior Harvey Girl served as a sort of house mother, the women had strict curfews, a strict and unflattering uniform, a strict regulation hairstyle, and a strict prohibition against makeup. The Harvey Houses sound like a great premise for a movie, right? You have the wild west, trains, cowboys, "good" young single women and "bad" young single women...plus Judy Garland and some excellent songs from Johnny Mercer and Harry Warren.

Susan Bradley (Judy Garland) is a lovely young woman who was yearning for adventure and so answered a sort of lonely hearts ad. She received beautiful letters from a man in SandRock and eventually accepted his proposal of marriage, bought a wedding dress, packed her bags, and boarded the Atchison, Topeka, and the Sante Fe. She happens to be seated in the same railroad car as a bunch of soon-to-be Harvey Girls. They ask her to join them in their lunch, and she tells her story...they all swoon. Susan herself is rather dreamy and excited about her new life, despite the fact that she has never met her fiance. Here she is singing on the back of the train. The song is lovely, but I am perhaps more delighted by the passing scenery. The same cactus and mountains and bushes pass by two or three times. It is clearly a painted backdrop on a loop. Love it.

The Harvey Girls are all very excited about their new lives, too. They arrive in SandRock and perform an exuberant and wonderful number about where they are from: "We were schoolmarms in Grand Rapids, Mich; but reading-writing-'rithmetic were not our dish...", "I finished high school in Providence, Rhode Island, and Providence, Rhode Island, is where I learned to dance!" and that sort of thing. Then Judy steps from the train and sings her homage to the railroad line and the fresh starts and adventure it provides. The song "On the Atchison, Topeka, and the Sante-Fe" won Best Song that year. It is a fairly complicated production number with loads of singing and dancing cowboys and Harvey Girls and even some 'Injuns. (It is not politically correct; it is 1946 for goodness sake--so don't expect a positive depiction of Native Americans.) Anyway, everyone dances around and climbs on the train and stuff. The reason I mention this is because apparently Judy Garland watched her stand-in perform the complex choreography once, just once, and then she hopped right in and they filmed it. Just once. And it is perfect. She sure was talented.Unfortunately for Susan, her fiance turns out not to be the handsome, romantic man she was expecting from the letters. He is a rather decrepit cowboy and he didn't even write the letters--he asked the saloon owner, Ned Trent, to write them. Susan is, naturally, distraught and quite angry. What is she to do? Marry this gross old man? Go back home? Or join the Harvey Girls? Guess.

And now for the main mystery/western part of the movie. Not everyone is happy about the civilizing presence of the Harvey Girls and the Harvey House. A suave, Clark Gable-esque man who is also a judge (Preston Foster) is determined to close the restaurant and get rid of the women. He likes SandRock the way it is with an empty church, a bustling saloon and brothel, and lawless streets. First he just steals the restaurant's meat, which sends Susan into the saloon with borrowed six-shooters in an attempt to get the meat back.

Guess who is on the right of Garland in that picture? Yes, it is Angela Lansbury. She plays the head saloon entertainer/prostitute? who is in love with Ned Trent. She plays a bad girl very well. Especially in this dress, which is all gold sequins and feathers.

The judge's attempts to close the Harvey House quickly become more serious. Will he succeed in scaring off the Harvey Girls? I shan't say.

I shall say that before he does or does not close the restaurant the Harvey Girls throw a civilized party in which they teach the backwards men how to waltz. Susan wears her wedding gown. It is lovely, with sparkling white satin for the main part with puffy sleeves and pleated white chiffon on the bottom. Love their 1940's hair styles in the 19th century movie.

(The woman to the left of Susan is, I think, Alice from Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. I always love to catch the extras.) Speaking of other cast members, Susan becomes fast friends with two other Harvey Girls, played by Virginia O'Brien (left) and Cyd Charisse (right). They each have their own little sub-plots.

Virginia O'Brien plays Alma who is a hopeless romantic who unfortunately can't seem to find anyone who wants to be romantic with her. O'Brien was known as Miss Deadpan due to a gimmick she apparently stumbled on during an early singing gig. She became suddenly frozen due to stage fright, and sang her song with no facial expression and no movement. The audience must have loved it because she often repeated this in later performances. It is quite funny to watch her. She is a talented singer and comedienne and actress. In this film she has a great scene with Ray Bolger in a blacksmith shop. He is trying to be a blacksmith but he is scared of horses and can't stand the fire and the whole process of shoe-ing a horse. So Alma has to help him, all the while singing about how things aren't really so wild in the wild, wild west, and bemoaning the fact that she is tougher than the tough men she had been warned about.

That is Ray Bolger cowering in the middle of the picture. The same Ray Bolger who played the scarecrow seven years earlier in The Wizard of Oz (1939).

Back to Cyd Charisse, the other Harvey Girl of importance. She is one of my favorites. An amazing dancer whom Fred Astaire called "beautiful dynamite." She is perhaps best known for being the girl in the green dress in Singin' in the Rain (1952).

But she was in loads of movies and danced with all the great male dancers. The Harvey Girls is her first movie with a speaking role. She is rather demure and innocent in this movie. In later films she is feisty and she usually dances a sort of femme fatale role.

But her thing in this film is that she loves to dance and brought her dancing slippers with her from back east. (She is the one who sings about hailing from Providence, Rhode Island, and learning how to dance there in the train's arrival at SandRock number.) Too cute and sweet, but what can you do. She has a tender love affair with the saloon's piano player, and dances a lovely solo in a basic long sleeved dress that has a shocking pink petticoat. So every time she twirls there is a swirl of hot pink. Fantastic costume.

The Harvey Girls is interesting because it combines some of the western genre with the musical. It is fun because it has a great cast, great songs, and it is a visually appealing film. Besides, it is pretty awesome to see Judy Garland in full skirts skipping down a western street, or storming into a saloon, or fighting with prostitutes. Yes, there is a Harvey Girls vs. saloon girls tussle. So if you are looking for an enjoyable musical with a bit more story than is typical, try The Harvey Girls.

Karlovy Vary

On Monday it was off to the spa town of Karlovy Vary, (German name Karlsbad) in the west of the Czech Republic with Julie and Ondine. We took a Student Agency bus for the 2.5 hour trip. These big yellow buses are really nice and inexpensive, and they come with a steward or stewardess who serves free hot drinks and plays movies. I was a little wary of taking a bus that far, but it was a delightful trip.

Karlovy Vary is famous for its hot springs and mineral waters. People have gone there for centuries to be cured of digestive ailments. And people still go there to "take the waters." The town is full of colonnades with mineral water fountains and fancy hotels for the patients. It has a relaxed atmosphere which befits a vacation/spa town.

It drizzled all day and was a touch chilly and grey, but it didn't matter. I felt like I was Catherine Morland visiting Bath, getting some water in the Pump Room and strolling up and down, seeing and being seen. I do so love Jane Austen...

This is the first fountain and promenade thing that we came to. The spring is on the left in a little room.

We bought some lovely ceramic cups so we could try the water. The cups have straws built in--the water is so potent and full of minerals and things that you can actually damage your teeth if you drink a lot of it. So you sip it daintily through the straw/handle. Here I am with my brand new blue and white Karlovy Vary cup.

I liked the ceiling of the colonnade. Apparently you are supposed to drink the water while walking. So all the fountains have beautiful places where you can stroll with your cup. And everyone had a cup! Some of them were huge! Like the kind of thing you can get at gas stations in the US. The Big Gulp version.Here is another fountain. They all have names and numbers and the temperature of the water on plaques. A medical person can therefore design a program of water drinking that you can follow all over the city.

How does the water taste? Well...some people love it. I could barely drink it. All the fountains are slightly different, so maybe there are some really tasty ones. I could only bring myself to try two of them. They were extremely metallic tasting, as though I was drinking the dregs of a solution that had been used to clean silver. Ick.

Karlovy Vary is full of Russians. They just love the city. Signs and menus are written in Russian and Czech, and there is a Russian Orthodox church in the city. Russians own a lot of the buildings, too, and there were even monuments to Peter the Great around the city. He visited once or twice, I think. There were lots of fur shops and high end jewelry and clothing shops. The Faberge shop was crowded. The poor town can't decide if it is Czech, Russian, or maybe German since it is also called Karlsbad.

We walked around and found the church. Here are some typical buildings on the way. The streets were small and lined with lots of trees and greenery. Very pleasant.

I liked this quaint gate. I believe it guarded the entrance to a not-as-grand-hotel.
And here is the Eastern Orthodox Church. All blue and gold.

We went inside but couldn't take pictures. There were some objects which I found quite interesting. I think they were paintings of saints and Jesus, but the painting had been covered up by gold and jewels and silver. Everything was hidden by delicately tooled precious metals except for the hands and face of the person depicted. The metal part was a few inches off of the painting so the hands and face were deeply recessed. Interesting. I wanted to poke the hands with a stick since they were so intriguingly hidden yet revealed.

I like the human, mundane touch of the man cleaning the windows on the left side.

We had lunch at "Little Versailles" restaurant where one of the specialties was a 3000 crown (about $175) plate for two with venison, pheasant, two quails and assorted side dishes. We did not order that. Lunch was yummy and then it was back into the slow rain.

We walked by a fancy shmancy hotel and spa, so I had to pose.

We continued our tour of the city, including the hottest spring. There are fifteen springs, most of which are about 140 degrees Fahrenheit. The hottest one is 163 degrees F. It is more like a mini-geyser than a spring. It sputters and shoots into the air. People sit on loungers and watch it. The building it lives in is all misty and humid. Don't try and fill your little cup from this fountain.

Karlovy Vary is also famous for its wafers. They are huge circles of thin, crispy goodness. There is a tiny bakery where they are made and sold in the same building as the geyser fountain. So we had to try some. Disregard the naked silver lady.

We took a funicular up to the top of a hill overlooking the city. Julie really wanted to find the "deer jump," which, so legend says, is where Charles IV was hunting and a stag struck the ground and a spring suddenly appeared. That is what founded Karlovy Vary as a spa town. Unfortunately, we didn't find the monument to this event, but we found a nice scenic overlook.

The leaves are changing! Oh the transition of seasons is always a little traumatic for me. I am never quite ready for the one to end and the other to begin. Nice view, though.

In the far right corner is the GrandHotel Pupp. You say it like "Poop" which caused us endless laughter. We are mature, adult women, two of whom work for their national governments...but Hotel Pupp and Pupp tea and Pupp cake...wow we did giggle.

Hotel Pupp was our eventual destination. We wanted to stop at the cafe and get some tea and sweets. Karlovy Vary hosts an international film festival, and all the important people stay at the Hotel Pupp. It was also the setting of a 2006 Queen Latifah movie, Last Holiday. The film is about a woman whose doctors give her only a few weeks to live so she takes her savings and goes to have a great time. She stays at the Hotel Pupp, and one of the jokes centers around the Pupp/Poop situation. It is not just us.

We went to the cafe through the lobby, which was beautiful. We felt a touch out of place, like slightly drowned rats, but all the other tourists looked the same, so it was okay. The cafe was beautiful and cozy with roomy booths and mirrors and old pictures. My Pupp cake and Pupp tea, and Ondine's Pupp strudel.

Here we are enjoying our goodies.

Back into the rain we went. To be mature and sensible.

Here is the river that runs through the town. We were near the really hot spring so you can see the mineral deposits and the heat flowing into the river.

They were going to try to use the hot water to heat houses, but the water is so full of minerals and things that it would have eaten away at the pipes. So they had to give up on that scheme.Another fountain and its promenade.

I felt like Catherine Morland again...

What a nice place to have lemonade and cookies and wear big hats on a summer day.

This is the spring. It is the Charles IV one. Notice how the basin is all orange? Those darn minerals again. Sort of scary though...I'm supposed to gulp down what is turning a stone bowl orange and crusty?

But I was brave and tried it. The mural above shows Charles IV and the stag.

The final colonnade we saw.

So forbidding but elegant. And everyone strolling about with their cups.

We caught our bus but instead of riding it all the way into the center of Prague, Julie and I alighted at the airport. There is a bus every half hour to Zlicin, the metro stop where I catch my bus back to Nove Straseci. Julie can get home from Zlicin faster than from the bus' eventual destination, too. It was funny to be in the airport without luggage or plans to go anywhere. We settled at a nice Coffee Heaven and waited for the bus. It was a very pleasant end to a very pleasant day.

Prague and Carnival

After returning from Tabor last Saturday I met the family by a bridge in Prague. They had gone on a boat cruise on the river. Their boat was a good deal later than they had thought, so I had some time to wander with my camera and the driver guy. We strolled up and down the quay. We have spent a lot of time together recently, mainly driving to and from Vienna. So I was sleeping and he was driving...He doesn't speak much English and my Czech is just embarrassing, so we do a lot of miming back and forth. And we laugh, especially when we cannot understand each other.

I am not in Prague very much at night since I am "on duty" afternoons to evenings. It is always a treat to be out and about when it is dark. (I sound like a vampire or other nocturnal beast. I am not.)

Here is the bridge where we waited, Jiraskuv Most.

Some swans in the river. Evil, evil swans.

I was trying to do a longer exposure to get the cool lines of light from the cars...think it is more migraine inducing than artistic, though.

Who knows what this is. But I like the squiggles.

And the Dancing House. Not on fire.

The mom and grandfather and boys finally returned. Honzik had a huge black spider painted on his cheek, and Lukas was sporting an awesome dog face. He looked hilarious, especially when he fell asleep immediately in his car seat. He seemed to be a sort of human bull dog wearing a baseball cap. Adorable.

The next morning the grandparents and I walked the five minutes from the house to the main square of the town. There was a carnival! Also adorable.

The boys loved it. More swans.
Lukas and the balloons.

Sometimes Lukas is very affectionate and cuddly. I taught him to say "big hug" and he likes to surprise hug me and say that. But sometimes he will see me and just say "Don't look at me, Cam-ur-ron!" This does not hurt my feelings. 1. He is four, I don't take it personally. 2. Sometimes I don't want to be looked at either, so I understand. 3. His English! Hurray, hurray! He has gotten so much better from when I first arrived. At first he said "No!" when he saw me. Then it became "No look!" Then "No look at me!" and now, after much repetition, he says, "Don't look at me!" I am so proud. And it has been quite amusing to work on that phrase with him. His little face gets all scowly and he says "No look at me, Cam-ur-ron!" and I calmly and kindly reply, "Don't look at me, Cameron. Don't look at me. Okay, Lukas?"

Honzik is seven and he takes some English at school, plus he was born in the US and heard English for his first two years. So he understands a lot and can speak pretty well. But when I first got here he would get frustrated when he couldn't understand me and when I couldn't understand him. Now, fortunately, our conversations rarely dissolve into tantrums. It is really neat to see him get more comfortable and confident with English. Basic sentences are within his grasp, now. And he has started to venture out of what he knows and try to create new phrases. I can see his brain whirring as he tries to respond to me or ask me questions.

Unlike Honzik, Lukas did not understand that I didn't speak Czech for the longest time. He would speak to me in Czech, chatter on and on, and then look totally confused when I did not understand him. He only recently, in the past month or so, seemed to get that English and Czech are two different languages. It has been a fun transformation.

He tries to take advantage of the barrier sometimes, especially when I tell him not to do something, like "Don't ride your bike down the slide, Lukas." He looked at me and said, angelically, "Ne resumim," which means "I don't understand." He did understand, though. And he didn't ride his bike down the slide. Victory! He has gotten into the habit of saying "Ne resumim" when he doesn't want to understand, and sometimes he says it to his mom or grandmother when they tell him something in Czech. Which is pretty funny.

His latest thing is to compare words in Czech and English. It started when we were eating pizza. I must have said "This is good pizza" or something, and he stared at me in wonder. "Pizza?" he said, "Resumim pizza?" "Yes, I understand pizza," I said. "Pizza is English." He clapped his hands, "Ceske: pizza!" "English: pizza!" I said, feeling like Henry Higgins. "Ceske, pizza, Anglicky, pizza!" he cried. Then we played the game with "pasta." But it sort of ended there since he isn't very familiar with Italian food words and I don't know enough Czech to find other similarities. We still play that game, and he also likes to test me on Czech words. For instance, "Resumim ano?" "Yes, Lukas, I understand ano." (ano means yes.) Before I could barely get him to answer me "yes" or "no" in English, but now he actually asks me what the English words for things are, and he is even teaching me some Czech.

We play "Go Fish" and "Uno" a lot. These kids had never played cards before and were amazed when I brought some from America. Go Fish is great for numbers, and Uno is great for colors. They don't like to sit down and get quizzed on numbers or colors, which I understand, but they love playing cards and they don't even realize they are practicing English. I have learned that child care is basically distractions and tricks. Nice tricks, though.

It is the little things that make this job fun. And I am really proud of how much English the boys have learned. I chatter away at the baby, too, in the hope that he will speak English along with Czech when he does start talking.

Here is a picture taken from my window of the Nove Straseci lake all covered in mist one morning. It has gotten sort of chilly and grey here all of the sudden. Where did summer go? I feel like I missed the summer completely, since this summer was so different from all my other summers. Also, the fact that I have not started school for the first time in what, two decades? I am disoriented.