On Saturday we took a trip to Brno with friends from Prague. Time with these friends is always fun. They are natives of the Czech Republic, raised and educated here before the Velvet Revolution of 1989. Part of what makes visiting with them fun is that they offer a new perspective on the history I learned growing up in the United States. This week’s educational opportunity: political elections in the Czech Republic.
Five parties dominate the political scene in the Czech Republic: Civil Democrats, Social Democrats, Christian Democrats, the Green Party, and the Communists. Our friends are hoping that in this year’s election the Civil Democrats will outpace the Communists. Apparently there are still large numbers of people in the Czech Republic—mostly those of an older generation—that look back on the communist years and see something better than what they have now. This is especially true of those who worked labour jobs: factory workers, farmers, and construction workers. In the communist era these occupations paid well, for the government valued basic labour as the foundation of society and economy. Alas, educated professions like physicians and engineers were not looked after so well; they fare much better under a government supporting a free-market capitalist structure. (Our friends are engineers who see the great improvements in life since the Velvet Revolution.)
We spent the afternoon wandering around Brno, the central town in the region known as Moravia. The city is an industrial centre but also boasts many historic buildings and beautiful churches. For us it was fun to have locals (our friends come from Brno) give us the “real tour” of the town. I had hoped to see some traces of the radical reformation that gave birth to the denomination known as the “Moravians.” Alas, though their name does come from this region, their geographic traces have faded. The trail starts in Germany now, where Count von Zinzendorf lived with this sect after they fled Moravia in the fifteenth century. But not all history was lost to us on this trip.
In central Brno there is a monastery with a large lawn in the middle of it. On that lawn—which was a garden at the time—the monk Gregor Mendel conducted his experiments with pea plants. His gardening and observation established the foundations for the present understanding of genes and inheritance. I got to stand where all that “AA, Aa, aa” stuff from my biology classes began. Very cool.
So we had lunch, toured the town, had coffee, said good-bye to our friends, and hopped on the train back to Prague. It’s a three hour train ride that, unless you have a good book, can be relatively boring. Well, you can have a book or a diabetic episode. Take your pick.
About an hour into the ride I heard a shout from the end of the car near the washroom. I looked down the aisle and saw an arm sticking out, near the floor. As I stood up and moved toward the fallen man I realized that he was one of the three Italian men sitting in the group of seats right next to us. I summoned one of his friends to follow me.
The man had passed out at the washroom door. They didn’t speak English and my Italian is horrible, so my attempts to offer assistance were largely unhelpful. But he was conscious now and hadn’t hit his head, so things seemed alright. I took our water bottle over to him as he lay in the end of the train car, but he shook his head. He and his friends fumbled with words until they arrived at “sugar.” I proffered an apple we had, but he insisted, “Sugar, sugar.” (Glucose, I guess, not fructose. Isn’t that the same in Italian?) It wasn’t until one of his friends went to the dining car and came back with three packets of granulated sugar that I understood: he needed the real stuff, straight up. Our best guess is that the guy was diabetic and hadn’t eaten for a while. But after some time with his feet up, some sugar and some water he was able to make it back to his seat. Two hours later he had made it back to Prague well enough, but he looked like the episode had spoiled his journey. I’m glad it wasn’t worse; I don’t think the train crew includes a physician.
Now we’ve seen the capitals of both major regions in the Czech Republic: Prague in Bohemia and Brno in Moravia. With some politics, history, and excitement along the way.
~emrys
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