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My Friday night visit to hear Martinů’s Řecké pašije (Greek Passion) marked my first visit to any serious theater since leaving California. The opera is based on Nikos Kazantzakis’s novel Christ Recrucified.

Brief synopsis:

The preparations for the annual Passion play in the Greek village of Lycovrissi are interrupted by the arrival of refugees whose village has been destroyed by a Turkish attack. The refugees are defended by the shepherd Manolios, who had been chosen for the role of Jesus Christ. Other villagers, particularly the Passion play’s Mary Magdalene (who in real life is also the village prostitute), St. James, St. Peter, and St. John, similarly attempt to help the refugees, but the priest, Grigoris, leads resistance to their presence. Finally, in an argument, the villager Panait, the Passion’s Judas, kills Manolios, and the refugees leave the village in search of a new home.

This was my first visit to the National Theater (Národní Divadlo), since it’s not open to visitors except for performances. It’s a really lovely theater (alas that I’m still camera-less).

The performance itself was wonderfully sung and beautifully staged, and I very much enjoyed the evening out.

Občan Havel is a documentary that follows Václav Havel during his terms as first President of the Czech Republic (1993-2003) (not to be confused with his term as tenth and last President of Czechoslovakia from 1989 to 1992). It came out at about the same time as the latest presidential election that re-elected his successor, Václav Klaus. The filmmakers followed Havel for the 10 years of his presidency, and reportedly filmed 45 hours of images and recorded 90 hours of sound material.

It was shown (at least in some theaters) with English subtitles, so I went to see it as part of my ongoing efforts to understand my current country of residence. I was worried that it might be a bit obscure, and I did in fact spend a fair amount of time wondering, “Who are these people”? However, the movie was more focused on examining the man than on his politics, and so I was pretty well able to make sense of it. It also gave me plenty of fodder for conversations with my students, e.g., “What was Charter 77?” ” What do you think of Dagmar Havlová?” (Apparently Havel’s second wife is not universally beloved, unlike his first wife.)

I kept trying to picture a similar documentary about President Bush (or indeed, to be fair, any other American president), and couldn’t. Any such attempt would be stage-managed to a fare-thee-well. Havel, though, appears to be largely indifferent to the presence of the cameras, although we occasionally see him being friendly with the crew (and his staff is not always similarly unaware of the cameras). And, while it’s certainly a partisan portrayal, we do sometimes see Havel being superficial and/or petty, fretting over his dandruff or sniping at Václav Klaus. Mostly though, it’s simply a thoroughly human portrait of courageous and principled man.

Last fall, I visited the French Embassy, which was open to the public for the day as part of European Heritage Days. When I got to the main dining room, the little brochure told of François Mitterand’s 1988 visit to still-Communist Czechoslovakia and Mitterand’s insistence, as a condition of his visit, that he be allowed to meet some of the dissidents. The Czech government complied, and Havel was among those invited to have breakfast with Mitterand. Reportedly, he showed up with his toothbrush, just in case he ended the visit by being arrested (again).

I don’t suppose that the movie is likely to play in the U.S., or even to come out on Netflix, but it would be worth checking out if it does become available. There’s another review here: prague.tv/articles/cinema/obcan-havel.

I wrote about Czech pedestrians and their willingness to wait on traffic lights several months ago. This past weekend, I particularly noticed the phenomenon again. I was waiting at a traffic light, and on the other side of the street, there were a couple of Prague police officers and another couple. The couple, after checking to make sure that there was no oncoming traffic, started across the street. One of the police officers started calling after them, but they ignored her until they had crossed the street. Only then did they look behind them to acknowledge the officer. I couldn’t understand what the officer said, but from her gestures and her tone, I would guess that it was something along the lines of, "Get back here and wait for the light". The couple shrugged and went on, while the pair of officers waited for the light. I turned around to peek after crossing the street, but no, the officers did not set off in hot pursuit of the jaywalking pair.

I mentioned this to the students in one of my classes and found that the penalties for jaywalking, in Prague at least, are quite stiff. In fact, if you’re the victim of an accident that occurs when you are crossing against the light, you will leave the hospital only to be hit with a citation and a hefty fine. That "The pedestrian has the right of way" is apparently an entirely foreign concept here.

The winter weather has been making me restless, but of late, it has turned relatively mild. It’s still too early in the year to venture outside of Prague, so I turned my thoughts to sights within Prague that I’ve not yet visited. On consulting with some of my students, I was advised to check out the Zoo, Troja Château, and the Botanical Gardens. This sounded like a pleasant excursion, so I took myself off to Nádraží Holešovice and the bus for the Zoo.

Now I must say at the outset that I’m no great fan of zoos: I always feel so sorry for the animals. However, the Prague Zoo is very nicely laid out, and the animals have plenty of space. I still worry about the predators especially: some of the big cats were looking very restless, and I can’t say as I blame them. I particularly enjoyed visiting the penguins and the gorillas: their pavilions are very nice.

Since it was so early in the season, it wasn’t very crowded, although a good number of families were taking advantage of the relatively mild day to have an outing.

The amount of space given the animals means that the zoo is very large, and even after five hours wandering around, I think I saw only about 2/3 of it. But I was getting tired of animals and had other stops on my day’s itinerary.

Conveniently enough, Trojský Zámek is just across the road from the main entrance to the zoo. The grounds are perfectly lovely: I’d like to come back later in the Spring to enjoy them in their full glory. I had to wait for about half an hour for the next tour of the zámek, so I had ample opportunity for strolling the grounds.

The tour was rather disappointing. While the architecture is lovely, I was unimpressed by the exhibits. The art struck me as rather pedestrian. I also thought that the ceiling frescoes had been badly restored: the colors were too strong and had been applied without subtlety. The resulting frescoes looked like the products of paint-by-numbers kits.

Language Note

Zámek is usually translated château, which of course is just French for "castle", while hrad is usually translated "castle". So what, I asked one of my students, is the difference between a zámek and a hrad? Well, he told me, a hrad is a stone, defensive structure, usually Gothic, while a zámek is a later, more luxurious, less defensive building. Fair enough, but then what is the difference between a zámek and a palác ("palace", predictably enough). Well, a palác is usually within the city limits and has no grounds, whereas a zámek has extensive grounds and is usually located on the outskirts of the city, if not actually in the country. Zámek is sometimes translated as "villa", which strikes me as more accurate.

There’s also a wine museum: it’s small, but interesting. It describes the viticulture of Bohemia and Moravia, and offers a wine shop. I didn’t buy anything, though.

By the end of my visit to the zámek, it was nearly 5:00, so I decided to save the Botanical Gardens for another visit…

Last month, one of my students told me, in response to my usual "So, what did you do this weekend?", that she and her boyfriend had visited the Butter Museum at Máslovice.

"Wait: did you say butter?"

"Yes, the Butter Museum."

"Butter? The yellow stuff they make with milk and you spread it on your bread? Butter?"

"Yes, the Butter Museum. They have a Betlem (Nativity scene) made out of butter."

"So wait, now where is this? Máslovice? Where’s that?"

"I’ll bring you a map."

And the next class, she did indeed bring me

• a map showing where to find the correct bus stop at the Kobylisy metro station;
• a map of Máslovice, showing where the museum is in relation to the bus stop;
• a bus schedule; and
• notes about when the museum is open (Saturday and Sunday, from 10 to 12 and from 1 to 4) and how long the Betlem would be there (from the beginning of December through the end of January).

Máslovice is north of Prague, and there’s a certain logic to a Butter Museum being housed there, as the Czech word for butter is máslo. The bus ride from the Kobylisy metro station takes about 30 minutes. The countryside surrounding Prague becomes rural amazingly quickly, and the map of Máslovice was really not necessary, as there’s hardly anything there and the museum, small as it is, was hard to miss.

The "curator" is a very nice young man named David, who seemed delighted to have a native English speaker to practice his (very good) English on. He willingly showed me through the museum, explaining the exhibits, leaving my side only to collect the admission fee from other visitors and then returning to continue our conversation. There is in fact no butter connection to Máslovice: the town was named after a person named Máslovics. I asked about the Betlem: it was carved by a 24-year old actress living in Prague, but this was to be its last weekend. It was beginning to stink, David candidly observed. Only the third of the three rooms of the museum is devoted to butter, but it is full of butter making implements and paraphernalia, including butter molds, a collection of butter wrappers from around the world, and more kinds of churns than I had ever realized existed. I was particularly taken with one in the form of a child’s rocking horse. The container for the milk forms the body of the horse, so the child’s rocking can churn the butter. I thought that was particularly ingenious.

The second of the three rooms of the museum is actually dedicated to chocolate. It turns out that the person who is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as having the largest number of chocolate wrappers is a Czech (though not an inhabitant of Máslovice), and it’s a rotating portion of his collection that is on display.

The first of the three rooms is just the gift shop/reception area. If you’re in the Prague area looking for gifts depicting cows, this is where you want to come.

The weekend of April 12-13, there’s to be a Butter Festival at which visitors will be able to participate in making their own butter. I’m thinking that it might be fun to go back for that.