Orvieto's Etruscan Necropolis

So instead of Italian class today we went to the Etruscan tombs today. What justifies a trip to the tombs as part of our Italian class? The history explanation was given in Italian of course! Justification done.

Some models of the necropolis

  

The tombs were built like individual houses and above each doorway is inscribed with the name of the person buried there.

 

A green carpet of grass covers the rooftops of each tomb: the original green-roof!

Roberta (my Italian teacher) even brought her dog out to play

Cool to see Orvieto from a different viewpoint. I always see the necropolis from the rupe above, but now I get to see the city from below.

 

And if nothing else, it was a BEAUTIFUL spring day with all the redbuds and apple trees in bloom

Birthday time with family in Italy

Well the whole Fagan clan somehow convened in Italy at the same time (minus poor Talia, that's what you get for being normal and going to school). And it was right around my birthday time, so I'll consider this my present.

Showed Mom and Chelsea around my beautiful little hill town.

 Not sure Mom appreciates the goofy pictures...

And of course took them to Zepplin's for a FABULOUS dinner.


And even got a surprise when I heard that, after Chef Lorenzo hearing that I was coming for my birthday dinner, was all in a bustle and spent the day making me a special cake :) which was DELICIOUS. It was layers of cake drenched in that good pink stuff that the Orvietans put on all the pastry desserts, with two layers of ice cream, and a light coffee cream frosting

 

An incredibly hectic journey back to Rome early in the morning: getting down the hill, four minutes to get to the train, hassle buying train tickets, getting fines on the train for not having enough train tickets, getting off in Rome and having 14 minutes to get Mom on her tour bus before it left. Getting mom on the bus, getting mom's luggage up to a room that didn't exist. And finally after all that, Mom's very nice tour director invited us to join them for the day's tour to the Vatican. Sure, why not?! (Too bad I was in just whatever clothes I had thrown on that morning and didn't even have a camera.)

So Chelsea and I had missed the first tour bus but hoped on the 2nd bus, got to the Vatican and ran ahead to try to find the 1st tour group (mom's tour group), all the while passing the 3 mile line of people without reservations trying to get into the Vatican. So we got to the front and ended up sneaking into the Vatican with the 2nd group anyway. Chelsea had to check her bag after security found her Ghanaian knives in there (she needs them to cut coconuts duh!) We found the tour director and he said the 1st group had already gone in but just find the pink scarf thing on the stick that they hold up so the group can find then. Of course by then we were red flagged looking all suspicious and the guards knew we weren't in a group. So they told us to sit down and wait until 9am when we could go in with the people without reservations (we did skip that whole 3 mile line though!) So after the guards turned their backs, we stealthily sneaked between the mass of people and up the stairs and bought tickets.

Now for finding Mom in the Vatican... how hard can that be right? Amazingly enough, it wasn't all that hard. She was so surprised because she had no idea we were coming, yay! She wan't to show us something that we had missed so we just went back inside for 5 minutes, but of course when we walked too far away she couldn't hear the guide on her headphone unit anymore and we had lost them... So then we spent another 20 minutes running around the Vatican searching for a pink fluffly scarf on a stick... too bad EVERYBODY has a pink fluffy scarf on a stick! Chose a different color people!

Well we ran into the 2nd group and just took the tour with them. But I swear it took both Chelsea and I, like secret service men, to make sure we always had a visual on Mom and the tour guide. Towards the end the guide realized what had happened and said that the 1st group was just ahead a bit and pointed us in the right direction. Reunited at last! And all was good.

We said goodbye to Mom and left. But it was a whole other fiasco for Chelsea and I to walk all the way back around the Vatican to pick up her bag, and then walk all the way back to that same point to pick up a bus. Where we ran into Mom again! And in trying to find the bus we got a little turned around and ran into Mom again! Her tour directed joked that we just kept popping up everywhere and that he just couldn't get rid of us (that was at least the 4th time we had shown up unexpectedly). But we did finally make it back to the train station.

At the end of Mom's tour I was invited to attend the farewell dinner with the group. So I went to Rome again which entailed: walking, funicular, train, walking, metro, walking along a highway outside Rome for far longer than it looked on the map. It's always an adventure getting anywhere without a car and having to rely on all these modes somehow working together.

But dinner was very nice and I loved hearing about Mom's first time in Europe!

Eurotrip Spring Break - Part 3: Kolin, Czech Republic

Kolin is a tiny town just one hour east of Prague. And to understand why the heck we were in this tiny town, you really have to know the story. Otherwise it’s like foreigners coming to America for 3 days and saying, “you know what I’d really like to see? Wichita…” And the locals would give them the same strange looks as the locals gave us when we told them we were leaving Prague to go to Kolin.

This is a story that my Rabbi in Denver told at every Saturday Bar and Bat Mitzvah, and I’ve been to a lot of Bar/Bat Mitzvot, so I’ve heard this many-a-time. I of course won’t do it justice and with such personal wisdom as Rabbi, but I’ll do my best.

Jews lived in the little village of Kolin for nearly 700 years until June of 1942 when Nazis occupied that park of Czechoslovakia. There were 480 Jews living in Kolin at the time. The Nazis gathered all 480 Jews and 2,202 Jews from the surrounding area in the city square of Kolin in June of 1942. They were then sent on three separate transports, first to Theresienstadt and then ultimately to Auschwitz. Of the 2,202 Jews that were sent to the concentration camps in 1942, at the end of WWII in the spring of 1945, only 16 had survived to return to Kolin. One of whom was the Rabbi of Kolin, Rabbi Richard Feder. All the rest had been murdered by the Nazis.

In all the other countries that the Nazis invaded, it was the plan of the Nazis to liquidate the Jews and to destroy the Judaica. In Czechoslovakia, Hitler’s plan was a little different. It was certainly to liquidate the Jews which he succeeded in doing. Prior to WWII there were 350,000 Jews living in Czechoslovakia, today there are somewhere between 1,500 and 5,000. So he did succeed in liquidating the Jewish community. Hitler made a point in Czechoslovakia to save the Judaica, the synagogue furnitures, and the Jewish ritual objects in the hopes of building a “Central Museum of the Extinct Jewish Race” in Prague to prove to the world that there once was a Jewish community and that he had in fact liquidated them. And so as the Nazis went from town to town, they collected the furniture and the Judaica from homes and stored it in the five synagogues in the Jewish quarter in Prague.

The torah stand, the chairs, the ark, the parapet, the Ten Commandments, and the candelabra of the Kolin synagogue never made it to the warehouses in Prague, they were smuggled out of Czechoslovakia and found their way to Zurich, Switzerland, where they remained in the ownership of the Liberal Synagogue in Zurich until 1988.

While reading a magazine that Rabbi never reads and will never read again, on the last page there was a small add from the Zurich Synagogue for furniture that had been rescued from the holocaust. Rabbi had the privilege of going to Zurich, purchased them on behalf of the congregation and brought them back to Denver to place back into service for the Jewish people.

What makes this so important is that to the best of Rabbi’s knowledge, this ark is the only ark, in the western world that has survived the holocaust. He knows this for two reasons. First, he has told this story at least x amount of times (the number continuously grew week by week) to as many as 150,000 gentiles and 250,000 Jews. Now, gentiles never argue with Rabbis, and Jews ALWAYS argue with Rabbis. So if 250,000 Jews cannot contradict one rabbi, then it must be so. Second, during the traveling exhibit of Daniel’s Story from the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC, the curator of the exhibit came to the temple, Rabbi shared the story with him and the curator responded, “Rabbi, there are three things you must know. First, my wife is Czech and she knew the Rabbi from Kolin. His name was Richard Feder, one of the 16 survivors. He died in 1965 at 95 years of age, and he lost his entire family at Auschwitz. Secondly, this IS the only ark in the western world that has survived the holocaust. And lastly, because of its importance in Jewish history and in the history of the holocaust, this ark really belongs in the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC.” And he thought we were just going to take it off the wall and hand it to him. But Rabbi believes that it’s more important that it stays in the chapel and that we use it each and every week, and that he tells this story because it’s a story that needs to be repeated and remembered.

Now if the story ends there, it would be enough; but the story does not end there. In the arks throughout Czechoslovakia there were 1,564 torah scrolls. Those torah scrolls also had similar fates and were taken to Prague to be stored in the warehouses. There they lay until 1965 when they were sent to the Westminster Synagogue in London and became the responsibility of Mrs. Ruth Shaffer. The Torah Scrolls were in terrible condition; blood splattered, damaged by fire and water, ripped and torn, unable to be unrolled. A scribe by the name of David Brand worked for twenty years repairing those Torah Scrolls and then they were distributed to synagogues throughout the world.

When Temple Emanuel in Denver heard they would ultimately have this ark from Kolin, they inquired whether there were any torah scrolls left from Kolin. And indeed there were two that were taken from Kolin in June of 1942. One was brought back to Denver and was reunited with the ark that it was removed from in Kolin in February 1989. While we cannot use the torah scroll because it is in very poor condition, we do with it every week, we take it out, we honor that community and we share this story.

And so after hearing this story for years, praying in front of that ark, sitting in the chairs on the bimah for my Bat Mitzvah, and carrying that Torah scroll through the chapel for Talia's Bat Mitzvah (pictured); I had always dreamed of going to Kolin, as sort of a religious pilgrimage, and seeing this synagogue and town whose story had intertwined with my own.

We arrived at the Kolin train station, hardly believing that we were actually there, and wondering what Rabbi would think about all of this. After a quick nap at our hotel we followed my google map print out to where the Synagogue is supposed to be. The only indication of anything Jewish was a plaque on a regular looking building. So we went in to what turned out to be the municipal information center and asked about the synagogue. To our dismay, they only allow people in twice a day and we had missed the 2nd one by half an hour… we begged and pleaded and the lady at least let us in to the courtyard.

The synagogue was hidden behind all those buildings and closed in on all sides. The building wasn’t architecturally interesting to say the least, but this was it, this is what we had come for and the emotional disbelief was overwhelming.

The lady did say we could go to the old Jewish cemetery and handed over the key to the gate and gave us directions.
The cemetery was incredible. Small, but a beautiful landscape. Rolling hills, mature trees, and at least a foot of ivy covering the ground and creeping up the massive tombstones engraved with Hebrew. We were the only ones in there of course. The sun cast shadows of the trees and tombstones on the ground. A very peaceful place, but the tragedies of Kolin’s long history were always in the back of our minds. For 700 years the Jews thrived in this little town, and now they have completely disappeared.

When we got back to the office to return the key. With sad puppy looks on our faces, we bought every post card and pamphlet with pictures of the inside of the Synagogue. It worked because the lady took pity on us and let us inside for only two quick minutes.

To finally and thankfully be able to see the inside was incredible. To feel their presence was moving. To be in that place of so many memories was overpowering. We were just in there long enough to snap a couple of photos, but not enough to pray or to sit and reflect on the people who once sat here. Their spirit is here. The Jews are not unfortunately, but their lives will never be forgotten. I was overwhelmed and brought to tears.

(not sure when the new ark was installed)

Afterwards, we recouped with a long lunch-into-dinner meal and walked around a little bit. Saw the gothic cathedral. It’s amazing that such a tiny town deserved such a massive cathedral. You could easily fit the entire population of Kolin in a church half that size. Interesting that every synagogue I’ve seen here in Europe (besides the Jerusalem synagogue in Prague) is quite small and humble. And yet every cathedral built during the same eras is so massive. Just an interesting observation…

We headed out the next morning for Prague, to get a train to Vienna, to take an overnight train to Rome (the sleeper car shared with 3 young annoying American girls and a very nice older Austrian man who tried desperately to be included in the English conversations that he could only understand part of, was an interesting experience…) But we made it to Rome and met up with Mom, who flew in that morning for a guided tour of Italy (and maybe to see her two eldest daughters as well :) ).

Eurotrip Spring Break - Part 2: Prague, Czech Republic

A rather hectic and uncomfortable train ride from Innsbruck to Prague: The ticket guy came around and checked our tickets and told us we had to get off and get on another train. Luckily he caught it in time and both trains were at the stop at the same time, but NOWHERE on the ticket or schedule did it give a clue that we had to change trains. And then we had to sit a 6-person compartment with 3 drunk American military kids who were belligerent, naïve, and rude.

We finally made it at 4am and our Couch Surfing host, Zdenek, was nice enough to pick us up at the train station. When I had talked to Zdenek, and he said his house was in the city center, I though he meant in the center of the city… silly me… So it was quite the treck of buses and walking at 5am to his house. We got 2 hours of sleep before we got up and Zdenek was ready to head out and show us around Prague. When I heard “show you around” I thought we’d hit some important attractions… not the entire city in two days… silly me… We started our walk in old town prague, saw the Loreto church.

We went to Prague castle which is a massive civic complex which also includes St Vitus’s Cathedral (shown here) in Gothic style (Zdenek was very keen on architectural styles and thought it academically stimulating to test me... including his favorite: Cubism, which I really don’t care for) The cathedral was gorgeous though and had incredibly colorful stained glass mosaic windows inside. Zdenek also knew every architect and year of every building… I can’t imagine why I wouldn’t remember all of that…

We had a beautiful view of Prague from the castle though. Zdenek says that Prague is the city of 100 towers. But I swear, every building and church we saw was the biggest, the tallest, the longest, the oldest… clearly he thought a lot of his city.

We kept walking south, all the while Zdenek pointed out every embassy in Prague and residences of famous Czech writers, poets, painters, composers, musicians, etc and was appalled when we didn’t know every one of them. We did pass Beethoven’s Prague residence though, which was cool, that’s one I know.

And then we went to Charles Bridge and were able to even one-up Zdenek when we could read the Hebrew on a sculpture, translate it, and even know the story of how torah scripture got on a crucifix statue (that’s what reading guide books can do for ya).

We went to the John Lennon wall where there has been a continuous power struggle between police and prague youth as they continue to graffiti lyrics and images of Lennon, one layer on top of another since his assassination.

We arrived in Old Town Square where they were setting up for the easter celebrations. We had a terrific view of the Church of Our Lady Before Tyn (shown here). We went inside the Church of St Nicholas and got a little history of Prague (which we soon realized as a very complicated history full of a lot of turmoil.)

In Old Town Square we watched the famous medieval astronomical clock chime on the hour. Every hour it becomes animated where the saints turn on a turntable and are revealed in windows and corner sculptures move and turn like puppets. The clock not only tells time but relates the movement of the planets, and the signs of the zodiac. Amazing to think that it's been ringing every hour since the 16th century...

And then we had our beer break (it’s customary in Prague to have like 5 beers spread out throughout the day.) Zdenek took us to a good local place away from the tourist mobs, bu gGetting to the bar, I swear was like a scene from Harry Potter, where it's in the courtyard of a building where there are no doors... It was TERRIFIC beer though (I believe I had a Wieselburger Bier).

We walked through Wenceslas Square which is really a big boulevard, but a very cool public space. Apparently all the locals’ meeting place is at “the tail” of the Wenceslas Equestrian statue.

Zdenek took us to his college: Charles University, where he’s a geography major. So of course we had to go into the library of the geography department and get the geographical context of Czech… But seeing the campus was cool. I’m sure it’s like the oldest or the biggest in Europe or the world…


Then, at 4pm, Zdenek finally allowed us to eat for the first time since breakfast. But boy was it worth it! He took us to an awesome local place near the university. And we had awesome beer (I had the Budvar, of no relation to Budweiser, sorry St. Louis-ans.) I had Dumplings filled with ground beef and a heaping pile of fried onions and sourkraut.... I still salivate just thinking about it. Chelsea had a traditional dish with slices of pot-roast in a sweet carrot cream soup, topped with a dollop of whipped cream and doughy dumplings to soak it all up MMMMMMM Czech food is delicious!

Then we walked up to Vysehrad park for a beautiful view over Prague and the Vltava River.

We also went to the Basilica of St Peter and Paul up on the hill and walked through the adjoining cemetery which holds the famous composer Dvorak and some of Zdenek’s family is also there as well.

What time is it? Yup it’s time for our third beer of the day. So we met up with a few of Zdenek’s friends from school, two Christinas, who were very nice and fun and lovely to talk to about something more than architects of cubist buildings… A couple things they wanted us to take away from our conversation though: Czech and Slovak are two very different places and are no longer together (But that Czechs are much better than Slovaks J. Communism was truly a devastating time for our country (throughout our trip I got a better sense of this, Communist memories are still alive and well in Czechia and it was really not all that long ago. Fortunately my generation of Americans never had to live through such terrible times). We also learned about the regions of Bohemia and Moravia. All very interesting, and I’m surprised I never knew some of these things before.

(Prague Castle in the background) Afterwards we thought we’d get to go to bed after a LONG day of touring with Zdenek, but no… We saw the National Theater building, the Dancing House by Frank Ghery, and a very interesting wax heart public art piece made from the memorial candles used to mourn the death of former President Havel. And THEN it was time for another trek back to Zdenek’s house and then to bed! (Sidenote, Zdenek told us that his great grandfather built the house and the whole extended family used to live there. Quite the change from our American lifestyles).

3/22: Happy Birthday to me!!! We started our day off in a traffic jam of lightrails that resulted in us walking and taking several trams and walking some more to get to the old Jewish Quarter. On the way of course Zdenek had to show us more churches, more embassies, and the tallest/longest escalator in the world…

Once we got to the old Jewish Quarter, it was time to part ways and take today and the Jewish museum at Chelsea and my own pace… But we had to hit up lunch first, delicious beef goulash! And I opened my birthday present that Chelsea had brought me from Ghana: a hand-made purse and some shea butter.

Then of course Chelsea needed her daily fix of pastries… birthday pastries!

We then first went to the Pinkas Synagogue whose interior was refurbished and includes every wall FILLED with the lines of hand-written names, dates and places of birth of every Jew from the Czech region killed by the Nazis. This was painted over by the Communist regime, but after the fall of Communism, all 80,000 names were painstakingly rewritten. It’s really something else to see the magnitude of the holocaust in this visual way. The building also holds the exhibit of drawings done by the children of the Terezin concentration camp as part of their psychological group sessions with a known artist of the time also in the camp. It was the only way for the children to cope and try to understand the devastation around them.

We then went to the Ceremonial Hall which is where funerals were held and where the preparing of the body was done by the Prague Jewish Burial Society. There’s an exhibit in there will a bunch of tools and religious pieces used in the funeral process. The Ceremonial Hall sits directly next to the cemetery, which we went to next.

The old Jewish cemetery was an incredibly moving site. The oldest tombstone dates from the 1400s. It contains 12,000 tombstones but the number of people buried here is over 100,000. The tombstones topple over each other because there are so many. They say that the burials are ten-layers deep because the Jews weren't allowed anywhere else.

Then we went to The Old-New Synagogue. This is the oldest existing synagogue in Europe (700 years old). It of course was the new synagogue in the 13th century, but became old once more synagogues were being built. The attic is where the legendary Golem of Rabbi Loew was created. If you don’t know what the Golem is, you should either watch the movie Snow in August, read the book, or ask your nearest rabbi. Or Madonna… she’s into Kabbalah, let’s see if she even knows…

Then we went to the Klausen Synagogue and the Maisel Synagogue which are now both museums of Jewish customs and traditions.

Then arguable our most interesting experience in Prague: we stumbled upon the current Jewish community center, and were curious enough to go in but were stopped by a guard outside and interrogated with Jewish-related questions, identity tests, and showings of passports before we were buzzed in. Thank you Sunday religious school for teaching me something useful! (we were tested on what an etrog was). We only went into the kosher shop (afraid of snooping around anywhere else) and bought some kosher cheese! The shelves were as bare as the Jewish section at Dillon’s right before Passover. How do we get this wrong every year? For 5000 years we’ve been needing Matzah at this exact time of year, we know it’s coming, we know people need Matzah, how have we not figured this out and stocked up enough? Haha.

And finally the Spanish Synagogue, which we got to just in time before it closed. The interior of this was by far the most ornately detail. Very bright and colorful.

We went to meet back up with Zdenek, at the horse’s tail in Wenceslas square (I thought it seemed appropriate). And he showed us the Jerusalem Synangogue, which is hard to miss, being pink and turquoise and all… This synagogue is actually still used though.

Zdenek showed us the train station probably not something we needed to see since we’d been there already… clearly… that’s how we got there. But he did show us this emotional bronze memorial statue. Next to it a plaque read: “For the Child: In deep gratitude to Sir Nicholas Winton and all the compassionate rescuers who saved 669 children from the horrors of World War II on 8 transports to Britain in 1939. And in memory of the 15,131 Czechoslovak children killed in concentration camps."

Zdenek then took us to meet up with some of his friends from school to have beers at a place on campus. I had another terrific Czech beer: Krusovice. So we sat and talked all night with five very interesting, very funny, very cute Czech guys. One of which pulled out some traditional Czech pastries that his mom made; I won’t say no to more birthday pastries. We had more wonderful discussions about Czech history, America, and when one guy mentioned South Park, I had to mention that that show actually takes place in my home state. Of which I followed with, do you know Casa Bonita? Ya that place actually exists… To which they responded with astonished cheers. And each one gave me birthday kisses as they left (on the cheek, Kevin and Kevin’s family who might be reading this lol. Don’t worry it’s their culture). Best birthday ever hands down, and a perfect “golden birthday” to say the least.

We were ready to hit the sack again after another tiring day, but not before Zdenek made us take one final hike up hundreds of stairs to a creepy park with no lights, but we did see a gigantic metronome and a great view of Prague at night. Spent one last night at Zdenek’s house and then were given directions from Zdenek’s house all the way to the train station (ya nothing could possibly go wrong there). And that concludes Prague!