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| Memorial for member of Prague resistance killed by Nazis. These are on buildings around town. |
I have been
avoiding writing. When I started
traveling a month ago I packed the keyboard for my iPad with the intention of
posting, if not from each of the four cities, at least twice while gone. I was about a week in to my trip when I
realized that in order to do that, I would have to stop what I was doing long
enough to pick a topic, and focus on something other than simply enjoying
myself. The decision was instantaneous
and easy. There was so much to see and
do and eat, not to mention time to rest up for the next round, that all
I had to do was set my ego aside. Yes,
there was that voice in my head saying, “but it would be so cool to be able
to say I wrote that in Prague or the flowers at Giverny reminded me of my
garden.” How often it’s the act of
dismissing that ego voice that makes every moment more enjoyable.
Without
the nagging thought that I should write something about my experiences, I could
put all my attention on where I was at that moment, even if it was relaxing on
the bed in my hotel room. I just had to
remember Lazy Woman’s Commandment #2 and “experience the moment you are living,
while you are living it.” It is most
often my endless thoughts that prevent this from happening, and then I need to reel
in the judge that holds court in my head.
We had a great opportunity to practice putting the “in-house evaluators”
on mute when we reached the airport in Paris for our flight to Berlin. We arrived to the sight of hundreds of
people crowded around an official who was standing in front of an empty check-in counter,
blocked by caution tape. Through what I can only call "crowd
translation," we discovered that there was a strike and our carrier had cancelled
all flights. Dealing with this involved
an “Amazing Race” kind of experience - with conflicting information,
questionable translation, running (with luggage) to another terminal in search
of a flight only to be sent back to the same terminal to wait in line, and
after securing a ticket, waiting through delays to finally depart for Berlin. The good news is that we never lost our cool,
got rude or pushy, but we did stay on our toes, stick with it and also enjoyed
meeting some fellow travelers. Even the
little victories along the way - booking a flight, finally boarding the plane,
getting seats together, getting a taxi in Berlin and at last arriving at our
hotel - were each much appreciated. Things you usually take for granted were so
exciting! We started off in Berlin just being
grateful to be there.
Much of our experience of all of life would be made better by applying those words, “just grateful to be here!” Gratitude
makes everything better. This was
underscored by being in Berlin, seeing the Wall, visiting the Jewish Museum and
reading about the people who had suffered under the Nazis and the Communists. We took the train from Berlin to Prague where we saw its amazingly well preserved historical sites. We visited the Jewish Synagogues and Museum where I found my maiden name Freund on the walls with the almost 100,000 names of those who died under the Nazis. We were
blessed with an amazing tour guide (Marek Täborsky.) His “World War II in Prague” tour was
fascinating and took us through the key sites of both the Nazis and the KGB, including
the underground passage-ways and cellars.
His knowledge of the Nazi occupation was awesome and his observations
about growing up under Russian communism and the parallels with what happened
under Hitler, and what Putin is doing today, were chilling.
High
on my list of things to be grateful for was the view from our hotel room in
Prague. It was hard for me to go back to
sleep if I woke in the night because the view was always stunning. I would risk being tired during the day, just
to gaze out the window across the ever changing light on the Vltava River at the spires of the castle and the cathedral. Sometimes true contentment is found in just enjoying the view.
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View of from Hotel room of the Vltava River.
