Prague by Night and Day

Today we went to Prague Castle and walked through St. Vitus's Cathedral: going from chapel to chapel inside this Gothic structure, listening to how people died: torture, thrown into vats of boiling oil, tongues pulled out, infanticide, patricide. Once again the pain of being human inspired the magnificent beauty and uniqueness in each of the many chapels. We entered just as noon mass was ending and got to hear the pipe organ fill the entire church, which is enormous.

But it was the Lobkowicz Palace that brought me into vacation mode. We sat through a concert of viola, piano, and flute: Mozart (the Turkische March was particularly strident and fun), Beethoven (we were humming Romance for hours afterwards), Vivaldi (Allegro from The Four Seasons), Dvorak in a sitting room so that as I listened to each note, I floated back into time, a member of the court invited to an afternoon's entertainment. The Lobkowicz family was always connected to music. The patriarchs were patrons to both Beethoven as well as Mozart, and there are original manuscripts of Beethoven's Fifth and Eighth Symphonies as well as the manuscript for Handel's Messiah, with their own notes for concerts played in the palace. The family first lost everything to the Nazis, then to the Communists, but their possessions and portraits as well as a collection of musical instruments have been reclaimed and back in the family palace.

Walking out of the Palace, we suddenly found ourselves in front of Franz Kafka's house on Golden Lane, a tiny house, where I purchased a copy of Metamorphosis and we all posed in front of the door.

Prague is cosmopolitan yet not rushed. Shops don't open until eleven or noon. Life is slower and it's infectious. All of us are relaxed, only checking email twice a day. Breads, fruits, cheeses are all fresh and flavorful. However, we still haven't met any Czechs. We are traveling, two families, and because we have our nearly adult children with us, we are not ready yet to open our conversations up to others. But we have only been here for two days: today was our first intentional walking, to Prague Castle, which would take weeks to go through. It's the Louvre of Prague and still the home to the President of the Czech Republic.

However, I don't feel ashamed to be an American here anymore. Not with Obama giving his Saturday addresses, appointing an economic team that will restart confidence in the marketplace, banks, and employment. Not with the vitality of our children here with us, two still in college, one her second year out in the work world.