Život v Cizine (was La Vie Expatriée)

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Visiting Ephesus

On Friday the 8th, I visited Ephesus, which contains the largest collection of Roman ruins in the eastern Mediterranean.

The Basilica of Mary, Mother of God, was the site of an ecumenical council in the 4th century. Its existence supports the claim that Mary lived near Ephesus toward the end of her life (since in the early days of the Church, churches were dedicated only to those who had lived nearby).

There's the remains of a necropolis, littered with sarcophogi:

The great amphitheater is the site of the riot described in Chapter 19 of the Acts of the Apostles:

It was still being used as a theater into this century, and Pavarotti and Elton John appeared there, but I'm told that such use is now forbidden.

The Library of Celsus is my favorite structure in Ephesus, and looks to be the best restored:

The Temple of Hadrian:

Looking up Curetes Street:

And looking down Curetes Street, back toward the Library of Celsus:

I don't know who or what this frieze represents, but I liked it:

This theater was next to what had been roughly the equivalent of the Ephesus City Hall. It was a covered theater, and apparently used both as the seat of the city Parliament and for indoor concerts:

The day I was visiting, there was a Norwegian Cruise Lines ship in port and so there were seemingly dozens of groups of tourists visiting Ephesus. In "honor" of their visit, there was a rather hokey "Live Interactive Show":

There were dancing girls:

There was a juggler (off to the left there):

A pair of gladiators held a mock battle:

And they all processed off grandly at the end of their little five-minute show, to return about five minutes later and do it all again:

By the time I was leaving, all the cruise line buses had left, and they were closing up shop:

Last but not least, we have kittens of the ruins:

Grotto of the Seven Sleepers

On my way out, I detoured by the Grotto of the Seven Sleepers, which I found rather disappointing. Everything was fenced away and locked up and I couldn't tell what I was looking at.

Labels: Ephesus, Kusadasi, sightseeing, Turkey

posted at 3:11 PM permalink  0 comments

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Playing Tourist: Sunday at Konopiste

Last Sunday was not quite as grand as Saturday had been: it was a little hazy, but still bright and crisp. So I took advantage of the fine weather to visit another of the local castles, Konopiště.

The inner courtyard:

Konopiště's main claim to fame is that it was home to Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian empire whose assassination in Sarajevo set off World War I. Franz Ferdinand was an avid hunter and so the grounds attached to the castle are extensive and quite lovely:

Perhaps because it's fairly late in the tourist season, only one of the three tours of the castle was available in English, which was a pity, as I would have liked to have seen the private flat. The castle brochure has this to say about he tour that was available in English:

Unforgettable hunting corridor with almost 900 trophies proves Ferdinand's hunting passion. Throughout his life Francis Ferdinand killed almost 300,000 animals. As for representative salons situated on the 1st floor in the southern wing of the chateau, most significants guests such as the German emperor Wiliams II were accommodated there.

The hunting corridor in particular was really unnerving. Just getting up to it required climbing stairs panelled with hunting trophies before being confronted with hundreds more trophies, each with a little plaque detailing when and where the animal in question had been killed. The sight of all these trophies prompted me to observe that Franz Ferdinand had not been killed by Serb separatists, but rather by a PETA precursor!

The tour guide even pointed out the trophy for a kill attributed to Franz Ferdinand's daughter Sophie when she was 2 years old! (Apparently, her daddy helped her.)

Franz Ferdinand was also an enthusiastic collector of guns, stamps, and St. George images. There is even a "Museum of Saint George" at the castle. Besides the expected figures, paintings, and tapestries featuring St. George, there are also belt buckles, medallions, beer steins and goblets, a bed, and several items whose function I couldn't begin to guess. According to the castle brochure, 900 different pieces are on display.

Statue on the southern terrace:

There's a bear named Kazimír in the moat:

Kazimír is 20 years old and is a long-eared bear (ursus thibetanus).

The park has some fine statuary, although I don't know the significance of this piece:

An urn, for no real reason that I could tell:

The Neptune fountain:

This time of year, the Rose Garden is rather bleak:

It must be lovely in the summer:

The autumn colors helped to make up for it, though:

As at Wallenstein Palace, peafowl roam the gardens with no fear of or interest in the human visitors:

Konopiště was seized by the Czechoslovakian government in 1921 as a Hapsburg property. However, one of the conditions of Franz Ferdinand's marriage to Sophie Chotek was that their children would not be allowed to inherit the throne. As a result, one of Franz Ferdinand's descendants has recently filed suit to get it returned on the grounds that it wasn't Hapsburg property.

Getting There

Supposedly, there is a bus that runs from the Florenc station directly to Konopiště, but I couldn't turn it up on a search. Instead, I took the train to Benešov and then walked to Konopiště. I've noticed this before when using idnes.cz search, though, that direct routes that I later find out existed were not displayed. I speculated to one of my students that perhaps my problem is that I use the English-language version of the search and maybe if I were to stay with the Czech version, I'd get more complete results. Seriously, there must be some trick to getting better results; I just can't figure out what it is.

Labels: Czech Republic, Konopiste, sightseeing

posted at 1:49 PM permalink  0 comments

Playing Tourist: Saturday in Mala Strana

Prague Castle

Last Saturday, the weather was so perfectly glorious that I had to go out and do something, so I wandered over to Malá Strana and Prague Castle. My ostensible goal was the Three Women Sculptors: Věra Janoušková, Eva Kmentová, Alina Szapocznikow exhibition at the Summer Palace.

As art goes, I'm not a great fan of painting: I prefer my arts to be more tactile, and so I (usually) particularly like sculpture. However, my taste in art is sufficiently old-fashioned that I also like things to look more or less recognizeable. And so, I was not way thrilled with the exhibition.
A piece by Eva Kmentová, outside the Summer Palace:

But it was still a nice day for wandering around the gardens:

After last month's trip to Plzeň with its requisite Marian plague column, I started to wonder about whether or not Prague had a plague column. After Googling™ around, I found references to one that had been in Staroměstské náměstí, but that had been demolished as a symbol of Hapsburg domination shortly after the Republic was declared in 1918. But I also found a reference a reference to this one, in Hradčanské náměstí:

There's also supposedly one near sv. Mikuláše (St. Nicholas) in Malá Strana, but I haven't seen that one yet.

Hradčanské náměstí is also where the Archbishop's Palace can be found:

A statue of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, the first president of Czechoslovakia, looks towards Prague Castle (the residence of his successors):

I'm not sure what these guys were about, but they were attracting a lot of attention on their stilts:

Wallenstein Palace

On leaving the Prague Castle complex, I decided to visit the grounds of Valdštejnský Palác (Wallenstein Palace), the seat of the Czech Senate. There's an entrance to the gardens conveniently near the Malostranská metro station.

The gardens are really lovely, with a huge pond:

There were a lot of people taking advantage of the fine weather to visit:

The gardens are populated by peacocks and peahens, who seem to have no fear of, nor interest in, people. They roamed the gardens every which way, paying absolutely no attention to the humans doing likewise.

Are there albino peafowl, or is this something else?

Perhaps the most striking feature, though, is the dripstone wall:

From a distance, I had thought it was just moss, but the color was wrong. On coming closer, I could see that it had been created and there were the faces and forms of frogs, snakes, and other unspecified animals in the wall:

I can't imagine what effect that wall might have on Senators if they come out to wander in the garden between sessions, but I found it rather creepy!

The Senate website has some very nice videos of the palace and gardens, if you'd like a closer look.

Labels: Prague, Prague Castle, sightseeing, Wallenstein Palace

posted at 12:32 PM permalink  0 comments

Saturday, October 11, 2008

Little Brother's Visit, Days 6, 7 and 8: The (Inglorious) Conclusion

Sixth Day

Monday was the day I resumed teaching, so Little Brother was on his own for the day. When I got home, LB mentioned that he had revisited some favorite sites in the historic center of town. He also mentioned that he had had a sausage at one of the sausage stands on Václavské Náměstí and that it wasn't setting well. We had earlier agreed that Monday night we would have an early celebration of my birthday, and I suggested postponing our celebration to the next night so he would be feeling better. But no, LB insisted that he'd be fine, and so we returned to U Básníka Pánve.

This time, I badgered LB into ordering something properly Czech, and he got the svíčková, sirloin in a cream sauce. He was very pleased with the results. I think he had been dubious about the cream sauce bit, but he enjoyed it.

After dinner, we tried going back to Bar and Books, but for some unspecified reason, they were opening late, so we came home instead to open my birthday presents. And now I have lovely new copies of Rites of Peace: The Fall of Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna, FDR and Talking Hands: What Sign Language Reveals About the Mind. Thanks, LB.

Unfortunately, by the time he went to bed, LB's earlier sausage had already started taking its revenge and LB got sick.

Seventh Day

The revenge of the sausage continued on Tuesday, and LB stayed home with 7-Up and canned soup.

Eighth Day: The Departure

LB had a 9 AM flight to Amsterdam, so we had arranged for an airport shuttle to pick him up at 6:15 AM. He was still not feeling well, but we packed him off anyway. I had a brief text message from him later that day saying "Made It. Lagos. It's crazy here. Will text u tomorrow". By the next day, he was indeed fully recovered, but alas, his Prague stay had an inglorious conclusion.

Labels: Little Brother, sausage, sightseeing, U Basnika Panve

posted at 11:16 PM permalink  0 comments

Little Brother's Visit, Day 5: Plzen

Plzeň

It had pretty much always been a given that Little Brother and I would visit Plzeň, primarily so that LB could check out the Pilsner Urquell Brewery. Admittedly, after LB discovered Budvar Super Strong, we were toying with České Budějovice to visit the Budvar brewery instead, but Plzeň is only an hour away, while České Budějovice is three hours, so...

We arrived in Plzeň at just about noon and promptly proceeded to get lost looking for the tourist information office. Turns out the tourist information office at the train station is tucked in the back under the stairs going up to the train platforms.

After getting our maps at tourist information, we headed for the historic center of town to take in the sights. There was the West Bohemian Museum:

And there's the cathedral of St. Bartholomew, which boasts the tallest tower in the Czech Republic:

I believe that this is the entrance to the old Franciscan monastery:

The Renaissance city hall:

And the Marian plague column

LB admiring the buildings:

And taking in the sights in the main square:

According to our little guide brochure, the Big Synagogue is the third largest synagogue in the world and also serves as a concert and exhibition hall:

The Old Synagogue, down the street and around the corner, is hard to find, tucked in an alleyway as it is. It has fallen into disrepair but is being restored. Alongside the synagogue is the Monument to the Disappeared:

A cobblestone marked with the name and date of birth remembers each of the Jewish citizens who "disappeared" during the War:

It appears that they go through periodically and refresh the names and birthdates, since the writing on the stones in some sections of this rock garden appear fresh, while others are virtually illegible:

The Josef Kajetán Tyl Theater is another of the highlighted sights:

And there's a pretty little park, Smetanovy sady, that runs down from the back of the theater:

"Daddy" Spejbl and his son Hurvinek were the creation of a Plzeň theater professor named Skupa and are here as reminders of Plzeň's puppeteering tradition:

The Brewery

All this was largely by way of killing time before the 2:15 English tour of the brewery of course.

When we got to the visitor information center for the brewery, we found that, in addition to the fee for the tour, there's an additional charge if you want to take pictures. That seems very odd to me. I could understand not allowing pictures at all, if they were concerned about industrial espionage, say (though that seems pretty implausible). But allowing picture-taking only on payment of a fee (I think it was 150 CZK) seems pretty stingy. On the other hand, some people (including LB) were willing to pay it, so I guess it makes good business sense for them. The following pictures were taken by LB, since I declined to pay for the privilege of taking pictures.

The complex is a large one. Not only is Pilsner Urquell brewed and bottled there, but it shares its bottling facilities with several other beers owned by the same parent company. We were taken to see the facility where the bottles are filled (there are separate facilities for filling kegs and cans). We also got to see where the beer is brewed, in their vast copper vats:

While the beer is aged these days in stainless steel silos, once upon a time, it was aged in wooden kegs, and they still keep these to show the tourists:


They do in fact still age some of their beer this way, but it's strictly for consumption by visitors taking the tour!

LB also liked their railway car:

And their old delivery truck:

Absinth

The daughter of a friend had told LB, most emphatically in fact, that he had to try absinth while he was here. I tried to discourage him: Czech absinth is little more that grain alcohol with green food coloring, I told him. But after dinner that night, we saw absinth on the drink menu, and he insisted on trying it.

The waiter appeared with a pack of matches and two glasses: one glass with the shot of absinth and the other with a couple of envelopes of sugar (one white sugar, the other brown) and a spoon. We looked at this ensemble for a minute (I know the French way of serving absinthe, with the slotted spoon, sugar cube and water, but I've never paid any mind to the Czech approach), and called the waiter back. He emptied the packet of white sugar into the spoon, set the absinth on fire, and held the spoon over the flaming absinth to caramelize the sugar. Needless to say, we attracted a great deal of interest from the neighboring diners. We also got a couple of other waiters appearing at our table to watch the show. After a few minutes, he emptied the sugar into the absinth, covered the glass with a coaster to extinguish the flame, and urged LB to drink up. Of course, after having been filled with flaming absinth, the glass was too hot to the touch, so LB poured the absinth into the other glass. After a tentative sip, which didn't appear to be much to his liking, he tossed the whole thing back, which prompted a coughing fit. A glass of water and 20 minutes later, though, and he was good as new.

I had a very nice sipping rum instead. No coughing fit; no need for a glass of water.

Labels: absinth, Czech Republic, Little Brother, Pilsner Urquell, Plzen, sightseeing

posted at 1:34 PM permalink  0 comments