Hope this works - I've been trying to post pictures here forever. This is one I took on my very first tour of the Jewish Quarter. The statue of Franz Kafka, one of Prague's most famous writers, stands exactly on the border of the Jewish quarter and the goyim part of town. The reason for this is because the Jews wanted to claim him as one of them, but the goyim protested that Kafka never hung out with Jews, and all his friends were not Jewish. So they compromised, and made him the border.
The statue shows a likeness of Kafka sitting on a ghostly figure that's meant to represent the abstract world that Kafka seemed to live in - a world of fragmented sorrow, of ghosts, of depression and anxiety. Hopefully, I can post more pictures soon!
5 comments:
Hey - your picture came out great! We look forward to more of them. I love the explanation of it. Also loved your reasons for wanting to get serious about learning Czech!
-YLM
Hi Dana,
I did fine on midterms - I didn't fail anything, and nothing drastically brought down my GPA (although geometry came close. . .)
Big News: We got a wide screen TV! Well, we had to catch up with technology sometime. (I'm still the only one in the family to have a cell phone, so I guess that makes up for it)
If it makes you feel any better about your inability to find the Globe Bookstore, I'm a hopeless case with maps. I have no sense of direction whatsoever!
Love,
Emily
PS. There's nothing like someone getting locked in a bathroom to make things more interesting!
i visited chicago this weekend, and took a tour of northwestern. my tour guide was this really sweet girl, and when someone asked her about study abroad, she told us that she spent the summer in prague. this was her description:
"it was pretty much the ultimate place for a college student to study, because everything is really cheap, all they eat is pizza, and all they drink is beer."
i thought of you and smiled and blanched simultaneously. pretty impressive, if i do say so myself.
in other news, you're sucking on the getting me your mailing address, so i asked your sister. love, michelle
Hello Dana,
Glad to see that you're starting to settle in. I hope you'll get your luggage soon!(I myself have experienced several times, Czech airlines' incompetence when it comes to getting the suitcases on the same plane as the passangers....) Hope to keep hearing more about your adventures!
- Tamara
Mich - sorry about the lag time, I think I missed your request. It's true that all some of my fellow questers do is eat pizza and drink beer. I've resisted, somewhat - I tend to eat a lot of pastries and sausage, and drink a lot of bottled water. Glad to hear the college search is going fun.
TAM - I actually flew British Airways, but yeah, major suckyness.
Em - Oh dear G-d, they have television! What will they think of next? One of them newfangled telly-phone things?
Love to you all...
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