One good deed deserves another...

...or, a broken leg--the gift that keeps on giving...

P. on the left

     When I landed in the hospital with a broken leg back in February, I was unable to use five of our pre-purchased opera tickets. We decided to give them to friends who might be interested in attending the opera in my place.

     Me out of the hospital a few weeks later and Road Buddy gets an email from P, who had used one of the opera tickets, asking if she and I would be interested in going to his “ashram” in the Prague suburbs, as a kind of thank you for the opera ticket, to eat sushi and meet his friends and fellow yoga enthusiasts. I found the prospect intriguing since I had studied yoga back in my university days in the 1960s and have practiced it, on and off, ever since. However, being on crutches with limited mobility I was a little reluctant and had R.B. ask P about stairs and distance from the station, etc. He said there were some stairs to get to the basement kitchen and it was about a “10-minute walk” from the station (20+ on crutches I discovered). I decided to go and told R.B. to respond with a joke: “Tell him that I broke my leg while doing yoga!” and to accept the invitation. He agreed to meet us at our apartment and show us the way.

     So, an ASHRAM in the Prague suburbs?

 ** Traditionally, an ashram (Sanskrit/Hindi: आश्रम) is a spiritual hermitage...today the term   ashram often denotes a locus of Indian cultural activity such as yoga, food, music study, etc. 

saying grace, meditating...

     It is in this secondary, more modern sense that the Prague suburban ashram we visited should be understood. It is lodged in an ordinary suburban house originally designed for three families and modified for use by the members who all practice yoga. The house is owned (on a mortgage) by a few of the members headed by P, and the others pay a modest rent for room and board. They share the large kitchen in the basement and live as a kind of large family. This is also a financially advantageous arrangement since salaries for younger people are not of the extravagantly generous variety in the Czech Republic and many young people, I learned, share houses and rooms to economize.

"the missionaries" and friends
and road buddy's hand

         This party was an opportunity to meet many new people. Three of them were Korean women who came as guests of P. Getting acquainted we decided to play a guessing game to determine precisely what these three ladies were doing in Prague. Yes and No Questions delving into the more obvious occupations yielded zero. They weren't associated with government, business, students or language teachers, nor did they practice yoga. Finally the idea of religion came into my mind and I asked if they were associated with a church. They admitted that they were. Eureka, “You're missionaries!”, I said. Yes, they were, and proceeded to try and convince me of the uniqueness of their church. It sounded like it was an offshoot of Christianity that wanted to restore the position of the female to the godhead (lot's of mention of the “Mother”). This is, of course, heresy to the patriarchal nature of Christianity--it probably gives the clerical hierarchy nightmares of the return of pre-monotheistic Astarte worship and temple prostitution. Oh, horrors! But they were perfectly charming and delightful proselytizers. I didn't have the heart to burst their bubble.

the man with two passports and friends

     I assumed that another young man who stands out in my mind was a Czech national. I was saying to P that I was surprised to find that everybody, who I assumed were Czechs, spoke English quite well and there were little handwritten signs about the kitchen like: “Please keep this area dry.” and “ Please clean up the stove when you finish cooking.” P said not all the members were Czech, some were foreigners, that English was their common language and then pointed to the young man across the table from me.

     It turned out that he had two passports and alternated them to get around the three-month limit tourist visa in Schengen countries. When I asked him why he had two passports—and what were they, by the way?—he told me the story. He held Argentinean and Israeli passports. His parents were Jewish Argentineans who emigrated to Israel when they were in their twenties. “So,” I said, “You're a sabra! Were you born on a kibbutz?” He said, “No, I was born in Jerusalem! “Oh, a city boy,” said I. “What are you doing here?” I asked. He said he liked to travel and had studied yoga in Romania and was now a teacher here in Prague. Where to next? Who knows?

     Thinking about that, it occurs to me that that could be the motto on my own coat of arms: “Where to next. Who knows?”

more friends

Photos courtesy of my friend Tomoko.

** Wikipedia

Conversation opener

     You meet the nicest people on crutches.

     I am not a particularly outgoing guy. I don't approach people in the streets or in bars to start conversations. It's not that I don't like interacting with people, I'm just not very good at small talk, which severely narrows your range of conversational possibilities.

     But, since I broke my leg and started using crutches, the fact of using them seems to attract the attention and interest of some people, especially people who are themselves handicapped and using artificial devices to get around.

Františku Hospital

     While I was still in hospital and walking around the corridors for rehabilitation and exercise I heard someone call “Hello, hello!” from one of the rooms. Aha, I thought, someone who speaks English! Being on an orthopedics ward where hardly anyone spoke English was motivation enough for me to follow the sound into the room. There were two guys, one of whom was the English speaker. Apparently it was the non-English speaker who wanted to know when I had had surgery since he had had a similar operation, but didn't seem to be making much progress with his rehab. I had noticed him the previous day looking woebegone and struggling with a walker while I was making one of my rather frequent peregrinations on my crutches in the corridor, a lot of which was motivated by sheer boredom. I told them that my operation had taken place four or five days earlier and they marveled that I was walking around so much already. I was taken aback since I didn't think I was doing anything to be marveled at, I was just doing what my physical therapist told me to do. Towards the end of my stay I dropped in on them again. They both looked rather depressed. The non-English speaking guy was still struggling with his walker. The other man looked anxiety ridden and explained that he was frightened over the prospect of having surgery on his ankle. I said that that was a tough call and told them that I was being discharged the next day and wished them luck.

Prague style "hot dog" and hot wine

     Another time road buddy and I were walking near the Old Town Square as I was now doing my rehab walking around the streets instead of pacing up and down a hospital corridor. I was about to get a “hot dog” at the kiosk when I almost bumped into a man using a walker. I grinned sheepishly and apologized nodding to my crutches and shrugged indicating that we were in the same boat. He was with his wife and another couple and we all started exchanging pleasantries: the weather's nice and isn't Prague a beautiful city? How long have you been here and where are you from, etc.? Turns out they were from Amsterdam in the Netherlands and spoke English with a charming accent but quite fluently. They were in Prague for only a few days and were surprised to hear that we were spending the winter and that I had actually just spent 12 days in hospital here in Prague. They said that Amsterdam, too, was a beautiful city and we had to admit that we had not visited that city...yet. They went on their way and road buddy and I shared a “hot dog” and hot wine.

my musician and fellow cripple

     Most recently, yesterday as a matter of fact, road buddy and I decided to go walking at the fair grounds and huge park situated in the Holešovice area a little north of the Old City center where we live. We boarded a handicapped-friendly tram in our neighborhood and headed for the park. While we were walking along a trail in the wooded park I noticed an older man who was struggling along, a little bent over and leaning heavily on two crutches. (When you're on crutches yourself you tend to be more aware of other people in similar circumstances.) I didn't think more about him as we sat near a children's playground watching the kids play, but I noticed him sitting on another bench a little distance off to my left, then get up and move on. I snapped of picture of him at that moment.

     As we were walking back towards the tram stop a man approached us from behind on a kind of golf cart and started addressing me in rapid fire Czech. I apologized and told him that I didn't speak Czech, whereupon he started speaking to us in English. He also marveled at my dexterity with the crutches and said that I was “lucky” to have only broken a leg. He wondered how old I was, and called me a “kid”. I asked him how old he was, but he claimed that his English wasn't good enough. So I told him that I was 71, then he admitted that he was 76. I said that that wasn't that much of a difference at our age. I told him, since he asked, that I was American. He wanted to know where I was from and I told him. He said that he knew Boston well and had played music there.  I exclaimed: "Oh, you are a musician!" But he demurred and corrected that he “was” a musician. He was obviously in more serious condition than I, I'm guessing probably diabetes related problems with his feet and legs. Anyway, we exchanged fare thee well and god speeds and we both continued on our separate ways, he in his cart and me on my crutches.

     These are conversations that would not have happened without my indispensable conversation openers, my constant companions, my spare legs.

    Here are a few random pix from the playground bench:

Sunday strollers

"This is how you do it."

"Yeah,  I come here all the time, that's why I'm so good at it."

a banana a day keeps the jim-jams away

absolute beauty

Who are the clowns?

Vesti la jubba -- Luciano Pavarotti

Send in the Clowns -- Sarah Vaughn

CAUTION: This post may seem incoherent and confused. People of unsound mind should stop at this point and just listen to the songs. 

     Once in a while in this mad confusion we call our short time to preen and strut upon the stage of life, things seem to fit like the final piece of a difficult jigsaw puzzle. In a gestalten flash your life makes some sense as the final piece fits into place and the picture emerges. You are stripped to the core, without pretensions, and you must put your complete trust in someone else's hands. Your very life is in the hands and skills of other people, most especially the surgeon and the anesthetist.

      I consider myself an independent and self reliant person. I am said to be arrogant and aloof by friend and foe alike. The former understand that aloofness is a mask I wear to disguise a rather shy introverted fellow and they accept me as I am. The latter don't matter. It is easy to be self reliant and independent when your path runs smoothly (a phenomenon I call the 'Good Time Charlie' syndrome), but when, through accident, or carelessness, or taking things and people for granted your path is sundered as if it ran across the direct path of an earthquake, then you must drop the I-don't-need-anybody mask and accept unconditionally the help that you do, in fact, need to survive a crisis. Knowing this is both humbling and oddly liberating.

       Openly accepting and acknowledging your vulnerability has the obverse effect, contradictory as it may seem, of making you stronger since you are multiplying the number of people in your corner. It goes from the strength of one to the potential strength of an infinity of others, beginning with your partner and expanding out from there. You no longer have to be Atlas bearing the weight of the world on your own shoulders alone. This, I believe, is the most important lesson I learned from my recent brush with loss of mobility due to an accident in which I broke my leg in a city that isn't where I usually live and a language I don't speak. I had to trust in the goodwill and competence of other people and temporarily relinquish control of my own life to them. Having no choice I made the decision without hesitation.

So, what about the clowns?

       We all wear different masks in our interactions with the other (the not I). This is, up to a point, normal. We don't behave the same way in bed with a lover as we do in the barber's chair getting a haircut. Should we do so, our behavior would be considered inappropriate and we would be labeled as, perhaps, socially incompetent at the very least, insane in the worst case. So we learn early in life to wear masks. The consequence, in too many cases, is that we ourselves no longer are aware that we are wearing a mask and loose touch with the core of our own being. We no longer know who we really are. We are the clowns.

       The night after my release from the hospital for broken femur surgery, we were scheduled to go to the opera to see Mascagni's Cavaleria Rusticana and Leoncavallo's I Pagliacci. I was looking forward to it, but, during supper at our apartment I began feeling nervous and apprehensive about venturing out in public the day after my release from the refuge and safety of the hospital. My normal, pre-epiphany, stance would be to say nothing and wear the mask of I'm-fine-and-raring-to-go. I definitely wanted to go, but I didn't want to bear the burden of pretending, so I told road buddy the truth of what I was feeling. She simply gave me a nod and pat on the arm of sympathy and understanding and thus took some of the burden from me and I actually stopped worrying and felt more confident that I would be able to enjoy the performances. They were both excellent productions (with a slight edge in favor of Cavaleria); I was just enthralled by the acting and voice of the mezzo-soprano who sang the role of Santuzza in Cavaleria Rusticana. But it was I Pagliaccithat started the train (confusion) of thought that is ending in this post.

       I Pagliacci,(translates as The Comedians or The Clowns) and depicts how the stage and life blend into tragedy because of the necessity to wear the mask and put on the show. The main aria Vesti la jubba, (by Luciano Pavarotti linked above) entraps the man into wearing the mask rendering him unable to deal with a love triangle provokedby a jealous Iago type character.

      On a more happy ending note, I was also reminded of another allusion to the masking phenomenon. A Stephen Sondheim song that exemplifies and amplifies the missed and/or crossed signals that pass, out of reach, between, usually, people who belong together but don't realize it until some crisis or crises occur, and they realize that they have been the fools themselves. I refer to Send in the Clowns. One of my favorite versions is by Sarah Vaughn linked above.

Been away....

....haven't seen you in a while. How've you been? 

Straight rip off from a Dave Mason song, herewith acknowledged, because these particular lyrics fit just right. *

     Not to put too fine a point it, I was in hospital for almost two weeks with a broken leg--the horror of horrors for any traveler. I was just discharged this morning.

       I toppled over while doing one of my yoga exercises, balancing on one foot, hands in praying position. Lost my balance and missed the post that I use to grab in just such an event. Landed squarely on the femur near the angle where it connects to the ball and socket joint to the left hip--writhing in pain, shock and disbelief, my whole skeleton buzzing and vibrating. (I did the same thing, albeit not while doing yoga, half a lifetime ago and spent three months in hospital in traction; my arm was broken as well in that fall.)

       Spent an agonizing day first in denial: "I can move it so it can't be broken," trying to stand but impossible, crawling to the sofa to hoist myself off the floor. Trying to walk again to the bathroom with road buddy's help, but that proved excruciatingly difficult. Coming out of the bathroom, felt dizzy and faint, and slid down the wall back on the floor whimpering and whining out of control. Road buddy tried to help me stand up again but, couldn't be done. I literally dragged my butt with my hands about 30 ft. back to the sofa and managed to pull myself back up onto it.

       At that point there was no more denial possible, I knew it was broken and needed immediate medical attention. The next several hours were spent on the phone to our travel insurance company until, finally, we made them understand that I couldn't walk and needed an ambulance to take me to the emergency room. After interminable hours of waiting and anxiety a doctor finally arrived at our old apartment at about 8 p.m. and confirmed that the femur was fractured. She called an ambulance service and they soon arrived and carried me out to the ambulance barely dressed for the cold, planked me in the courtyard freezing and shivering and just about out of my head. Finally, they got me into the ambulance and to a hospital emergency room not too far from our apartment. I was interviewed, examined, x-rayed, set up to receive a drip infusion and scheduled for surgery the following morning to implant titanium rods and screws to reset the bone and allow me to begin rehabilitation the second day after the surgery.

      And that's why I've been away, in case anybody noticed.....

      Of course, I didn't have the presence of mind to bring my camera, which is breaking down anyway. I did do a little very rough sketch of my roommate the other day. This gentleman seems to have had some kind of hip surgery, but just lay in bed all day either dozing or staring at the boob toob that was on from morning to night. He was able to walk with crutches, I saw him do it, but seemed unmotivated if not, in fact, unable. Rehab is hard. You have to exercise and practice walking or the legs will lose muscle tone and begin to atrophy. I worked hard and made sufficient progress to be released today. We've moved to a new apartment with an elevator. Not as charming as our old convent digs, but practicality overruled esthetics this time. The new place is a loft, 1-bedroom, brighter than the old place.

* We Just Disagree
   Dave Mason

got negatively "evented"

     event n. - something that takes place, an occurrence 
     evented v. - something that happens to you (I'm making this up as I go along) 

     You can appreciate an uneventful flight: not too much extreme turbulence, no funny unexpected noises from the normal whining of the engines, no sudden bang or thud on takeoff, no smell of burning ozone coming from the cockpit, no sudden drops of several thousand feet or meters, etc. The absence of all these constitutes an uneventful flight.

     On the other hand, eventful trips are the ones you remember later on. But, there are events and there are events. One of the worst nightmares of a tripper is that your wallet will be lost, misplaced or stolen. So, I got "evented" the day before yesterday. I somehow dropped my wallet at the Tesco supermarket in Prague, where we are staying for a couple months.

     There's nothing to make your day, or evening, like losing your wallet and nothing like it to put you in a self-ass-kicking headspace. Not to mention the stress of taking care of the important details, like canceling your credit card, reporting the loss of certain ID cards to the police and embassy, having a replacement credit card sent to you in a country that is not your "home of record", etc. Thank God for Skype and it's ability (for a fee of course) to call land line and cell phones. Didn't cost a dime to call the US from Prague since the toll free 800 numbers work on Skype from anywhere you are on the planet. A series of calls to our credit card company and we had arranged to cancel the old card before it could be used fraudulently, get a new card and arrange to have it sent to and picked up by us at the Prague FedEx terminal, all without using up any of my cash credit. God bless the Internet and its myriad applications.

on the mend

    The worst is over and I was able to relax enough this evening to go out walking in Old Town and find a very good local restaurant a little off the beaten path. The place is in a converted brickwork-arched cellar, warm casual atmosphere, local customers and simple but delicious food. I knew I was in a good place by the matter of fact attitude of the man I raised two fingers to to indicate a table for two. That beautiful gentleman shrugged and pointed to a table for six already occupied by two--an inoffensive take it or leave it attitude. We took it and were delighted that we did. Here is the restaurant's address; if you're ever in Prague I highly recommend it.

U Knihovny means "at the Library" named for the proximity of an old Jesuit library.

                                    Restaurace U Knihovny
                                                             Veleslavinova 10,  Prague

table in center of picture was our table

                                                   

Get thee to a nunnery

 our apartment -
2nd floor of yellow building in center

     So, taking Hamlet's advice to Ophelia, we got us to a nunnery. Our new apartment in Prague is, literally, in an old convent, or, if you prefer, a nunnery.

Berlin Hauptbahnhof

     Yesterday, we bade Berlin a fond fare thee well, took a train from Berlin Hauptbahnhof (central station) to Prague Hlavni Nadrazi (central station) and were met by our new landlord, Mirek, in front of the Burger King in the station...and he drove us to the nunnery. Appropriately, it is located near Bethlehem Square.

gate to the former cloister

      After settling in we went out for a bite to eat and some basic shopping to launch our two-month stay here in our beloved Prague. After Berlin, it seems like Alice has fallen through the looking glass and landed in Neverland...or, am I mixing up my stories? Hmmm. Anyway, we took a walk to the Moldau River, only a few steps from the nunnery, and the soft haze from the low clouds make it look, in fact, like wonderland—the paving stones all wet and misty and shining and Mala Strana, across the river, looking vaguely ghostlike and full of nostalgia. It seems like coming home after a year's absence, this town is so simpatico.

cloister

door on left is our apartment entrance

interior of our apartment

settling in 

Here came the sun—at last!

      After more than two weeks of gray skies here in downtown Berlin, the sun finally came out in earnest yesterday. That worked out beautifully.

      On the train on our way to Potsdam the other day, I noticed a little lake from the window and what looked like a nice small town on that lake called Nikolassee. I filed it away in the back of my mind as a good place for a walk in the country.

      We had pretty much seen what was to be seen in Berlin and were ready to explore outside of town along the S-Bahn line that runs near our apartment. And we had yesterday with no opera to go to. The night before, on our way home from the opera, the sky was clear and we could see an almost full moon and some stars. It looked like a good omen for our planned trip to the country. The day started out iffy, looking like a return to the usual clouds but the sky lightened up little by little during the morning and by the time we headed out the sky was blue and the remaining clouds had almost lifted.

nice little house on the lake

      Sitting on the train I couldn't drink up enough sunshine and let the rays fall directly on my face. It felt like coming out of a long dark tunnel into a light explosion. After some initial confusion in finding our way to the lake we changed train lines at Nikolassee and took a train for one stop to a town called Schlachtensee (“see” is the German word for lake). The town appears to be a very upscale summer home kind of place with the cheapest homes I estimate at more than 1,000,000 Euros. Very swank. But the lake has a beautiful walking path that goes for some 5 kilometers all around the lake and it doesn't cost one Euro cent.

view from SW end of Schlachtensee

sun followers galore

     I expected that we would be pretty much the only people walking about on a cold albeit sunny winter day and have the whole lake to ourselves. Wrong! It seems that the sun had the same effect on lots of other people and the path around the lake was full of them just walking and soaking up the rays. It was such a pleasure that we decided to walk all around the lake—the whole 5 kms.—meeting people in ones and twos and larger groups all along the way. After about 3/4 of the way around the lake we came across a food and drink stand at the NE end of the lake. We decided to stop and have some glühwein (hot spiced red wine) if they sold it. As we were wondering aloud if they had glühwein and how to ask for it in German, a young woman overheard us and told us the correct way to ask politely (haben Sie Glühwein?) So I tried out my German question, got “Ja.” for an answer and ordered two with my fingers. Sitting in the sun and snow and drinking our glühwein.  Who could ask for anything more?

      Well, how about a terrific steakhouse called Asador to cap off a perfect day in the country with a perfect meal....

forget butter, try olive oil with salt and pepper added
 to dip your bread - goes well with red wine

      Or, maybe a car that "starts where others stop?"

Bentley

another Bentley

or maybe a Bugatti?

this would be my choice if I had the bucks

Photo impressions around Berlin, Winter 2013

our S-Bahn stop Savignyplatz

40 Euro fine ticket

      Berlin has turned out to be a bit of a bummer. As I look back on my posts since our arrival at Frankfurt Flughafen they seem to be mostly a catalogue of bitches and gripes: screwed up trains, language dustups, physical injury and, last but not least, today we got pinched on the S-bahn for not having a properly stamped train ticket and got fined 40 Euros each. Well, at 70 Euros each for a monthly train pass, we still got off cheap.

Schloss Cecilienhof

Churchill, Truman, Stalin in Potsdam
[Wikipedia]

  






   The weather has been uncooperative as well. The skies have been uniformly gray almost the whole time we have been here (since January 10), there has been quite a bit of show and temperatures remain stubbornly at or below 0 degrees centigrade.       

     Nevertheless, we have intrepidly gone out and about town taking daily walks. We took a day trip to Potsdam yesterday for a little more walking and sightseeing. I was especially interested in seeing the venue for the Potsdam Conference among the "Big Three" powers (Churchill, Truman and Stalin) to discuss the fate of Germany and Japan in 1945 at Schloss Cecilienhof, an early 20th Century palace that was spared the allied bombing of the rest of Potsdam. 

Unter den Linden

Brandenburg Gate

     Of course my camera was ever with me and following are a few photos of my impressions going about in Berlin. You will notice that only one photo shows blue sky--a rarity during out stay here. We are off to a Berlin Philharmonic concert tonight and off to Prague next week on Monday. 

guarding US Embassy, not the Tor

 the Wall is an open air gallery, this is one of the paintings

Jewish Holocaust Memorial

section remaining of the Berlin Wall

another painting on the Wall with graffiti

souvenirs at end of the Wall

love hotel? -- across the street from the Wall

this drab station was in old East Berlin

Schloss Charlottenburg Palace, [only blue sky photo]

flea market in Tiergarten

Schloss Charlottenburg statuary 

Burger KIng in Tiergarten

Lion Bridge in Tiergarten

sign seen at U-Bahn entrance 

photo on subway wall near
Brandenburg Gate

portico of Sans Souci Palace in Potsdam

swans bottom feeding in fountain
at Sans Souci Palace

BigThree conference room in Schloss Cecilienhof
[Wikipedia]

Reichstag