end on liver

10512 today we had our Czech language class early in the day, learned a few more phrases which i promptly forgot, todays class did however, reinforce the stuff from yesterday, which is good, cause i can actually say thank you and please now. we wandered around in that area again, looking for food, i had a basic chicken soup, and then i had a fantastic gastronomic experience; fried cheese sandwich. it was awesome, and cost about 1.75USD, also the cheese didnt upset my all too delicate tummy. i got to eat it while walking around, cause it was not at a restaurant, which certainly contributed to the enjoying of the food. we then watched a movie, Goodbye, Lenin! ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0301357/ ). good movie, interesting, the story goes, late 1989, an ardent DDR (east german socialist) mom has a heart attack, goes into a coma, and misses the drastic shift of the fall of the berlin wall. she wakes up, her son in an attempt to keep her calm and prevent another heart attack (which will kill her) fabricates a different reality for his mother. this reality is one in which east germany never collapsed. so the movie about his attempts at preserving the memories of his mother, and help to atleast in his microcosm of a life, have the DDR progress the way he wanted it to. after that we went on a walk through the jewish quarter, we got the cool story of the Golem of Prague. A prominant Rabbi in the 16th century made a clay golem, and infused it with life to protect the jewish quarter of Prague. as the golem was designed to ONLY listen to this Rabbi, just before his death, he deactivated the golem and stored it in the attic here.

that is the Old-New Synagog http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_New_Synagogue this place was real cool, a gothic synagog, which i guess ive never really seen before, built in the 1270s, however, it was destroyed at some point, and rebuilt in the late 19th century, so thats a lil less impressive. overall this was a classic european jewish ghetto, the neighborhood where all the jews were crammed into, to live their lives and be merchants, and commit usury. but this usury was ok, cause the king needed money, so they could damn themselves all to hell and it was cool with the people in power (read Catholic Church and King/Emperor). by the 18th century, the Czech/Austro-Hungarian kings began to reform, and realize that forcing the jews to live in one place was not very nice, so they were allowed to spread across the city, which meant all the people with enough money moved out, leaving all the poor to do what they do best, live in a shitty slum neighborhood. this slum was so bad infact, that the king stepped in again, demolished much of the neighborhood, including many of the synagogs, and rebuilt fancy new buildings. on the tour we also learned of the first jew to be given a noble title, Jacob Bassevi ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Bassevi ) this guy was real good at his job (money lending) and got in real chummy with a number of the Hapsburg Emperors, they liked him so much they gave him a title, and he built a palace, (which was destroyed when that other guy decided to clean up the neighborhood) ironically he never owned this palace, as at the time, jews couldnt actually own property, so the noble title was in title only. we saw more stuff, a synagog with the walls painted naming all the Prague area jews killed during the holocaust, and we wandered through a few other synagogs. after that we got food, we went to this place, and it was a lil nicer than the fried cheese stand, well, it was alot nicer, but i had Deer Fawn and Wild Boar Pâté, goddamn that was good, i had the dark Krušovické, which well complimented the liver.