Road Trip, Czech Republic and Beyond

The phone rang in our flat in Prague one morning at around 11, which for us is right after breakfast.
“No, there must be some mistake,” I heard Stan telling the manager. “We aren’t leaving today. It’s NEXT Friday.”
There was indeed a mistake, and it was ours. We simply had it in our heads that we had another week in Prague, and hadn’t bothered to check our calendars the entire time. I had meant to firm up some travel plans for a few days outside the city before heading off to Portugal. Rent a car, book hotels… but I hadn’t gotten to it yet. And new tenants would be arriving in our Prague flat the next day.
Oh, well! We made some calls, packed our belongings, and headed off to Europcar. But Prague had its hooks in us; there’s so much to see and do there, and the city has such a compelling personality. We vowed to return.
One part of Prague we had intended to explore more fully was the Jewish Quarter. We breezed through a couple of times on foot, but had never taken tours or even paused long enough to get very good photos. The history of the Jews in Eastern Europe is fascinating, especially to Val, having a Jewish heritage. In 1700, 25% of the population of what is now the Czech Republic was Jewish. As of 2005, there remained only around 4,000 Jews.
We did, however, spend a day in Terezín, better known by the German name Theresienstadt. Because of its fortress built during the late 1700’s, the town itself was evacuated by the Nazis during WW II and used as a ghetto to house Jews, the fortress becoming a prison for use by the Gestapo police. Today, the fortress and various sites and museums around the town itself form the Terezín Monument.
Theresienstadt was not a death camp, but served rather as a stop-over or pass-through point for Jews, most of whom were later transported and met their ends in one of several death camps. But many died here anyway from the appalling conditions, disease, and torture or execution by the Gestapo. 60,000 were housed at a time, in barracks designed to accommodate 7,000.
To outsiders, including a famous visit the Nazis orchestrated for members of the Danish and the International Red Cross, Terezín was presented as a model Jewish settlement. Embarrassingly, the Red Cross was fully duped by the Germans and rendered glowing reports of the conditions there.
Of course, the world abounds with reference material pertaining to this episode of history. But if you are interested in a very engrossing historical novel about World War II in general from an American perspective, and European Jews in particular, don’t miss the epic works by Pulitzer Prize winning author Herman Wouk, ‘The Winds of War’ and ‘War and Remembrance.’
We brought granola bars with us for lunch, knowing that we would not feel much like eating. And we’re glad we didn’t visit this place until after Jody and Amanda had left; a little intense for an 11 year old. Val did OK, even seeing her maiden name inscribed on the memorial wall; after all, it’s so common. And most likely, none of her father’s family members from Łódź in central Poland, and Zastavna in what is now western Ukraine, ended up here. They were no doubt transported to the Treblinka, Auschwitz or Chełmno death camps.
It wasn’t until we saw the wall of colored drawings by the ghetto’s children that we really began to lose it. Thankfully, that was near the end of the day. Reading only takes you so far; standing there lends a much greater sense of the reality. Meanwhile, the somber little town goes about its life. We wonder: did the parents and grandparents of the current residents step aside when the Jews were transported in, then return to their homes after the war? Honestly, we can’t imagine how one could choose to live there today, its walls having borne witness to so much cruelty. Bad Juju.
Switching gears in every sense, we headed southeast for a couple of days, into the Czech Republic’s wine country in Moravia.
The countryside is gorgeous: hilly, dotted with small, pretty towns, many of them with castles. It’s easy to imagine medieval feudal lords riding off to hunt game in forests dense with birch and black oak. The lords are gone, but the woods remain. And the wine is a surprise, especially the whites. Scrumptious, and a real bargain.
One of the small picturesque towns we happened upon in the heart of the wine country was Mikulov, which turned out to be the center of Judaism in Moravia for three centuries.
We visited the Jewish cemetery, dating from the mid-1400’s.
Being so close to the Austrian border at this point, we decided to spend the rest of the afternoon in Vienna.
Vienna is a beautiful, sophisticated Old World city.
Tons of tourists, but we’ve gotten good at making our way to quieter neighborhoods, where there’s no English spoken or on the menus, but it’s less expensive, and more fun to linger in the authentic, if smoke-filled, atmosphere.
Vienna is famous for its cultural attractions, but we’re embarrassed to admit that the closest we came to cultural enrichment was sampling some Pez out of the Mozart Pez dispenser in our funky boutique hotel room.
In the morning, we had to leave to catch our flight to Lisbon.
But that’s a story for the next chapter!