just when you thought you had gotten rid of me...

hello lovelies!

i know, i know it has been quite a while...since my last post we made a trip to Libin, a mountain lodge in Sounthern Bohemia,(it snowed--believe it or not), I have handed in my first paper AND gotten it back and one of the girls in our group broke her tailbone--ouch! Most importantly though, today is day one of the World Cup. Now, I know what you are all thinking: but jessica, you don't even watch soccer! And I agree with you. However, this whole continent is pretty jacked up so its hard not to be excited. There is a giant tent in Old Town Square and I'm not sure what they are going to do with it...maybe show the games? I will keep you updated.

So, in the span of two days this week we visited Terezin and the Communist museum. Terezin, for those of you who were like me and didnt know, was a holding camp for jewish people before they were sent off to places like Auschwitz. Anyway, after seeing all this, the old wheel started turning again (and it was not impressed let me tell you, after my paper writing I think my brain just wanted to shrivel up and die). The Czech lands have been under control of one ideological force or another for a very long time. From the Hapsburgs to the Nazi's to the Communist regime, this country has not had long to exist on its own terms--as I mentioned before. With this, each new controlling force attempts to erase the past and reinterpret and reinvent historical symbols and figures in a way that has been manipulated to benefit their own gain.
For example, there is a statue in Zizkov of a celebrated Hussite warrior from like the 14th century, Jan Zizka (hence, the name of the town). Below this, there has always been a memorial to fallen soldiers and in some instances, the remains of "unknown soldiers". This has not always been the case though: during the Communist regime, Zizka was reinterpreted as a "good communist soldier" and the unknown soldier became "all soldiers who have died fighting for communism". Similarly with the Nazi's, historical streets were renamed, buidlings were torn down, so that people would be unable to remember a time before "the new dawn".

In light of this, I was at first amazed by how, after all these attempts, the Czech people have continued to hold onto their history and it has become a very important part of Czech culture. But then it occured to me that perhaps they too are exercising a certain selectivity in this. This may not make any sense because I never wrote about my thoughts on Cesky Krumlov (a small, almost disney-fied town in Southern Bohemia) But there is such a thing as living so much in the past that moving forward becomes increasingly difficult. As well, there are dangers to ignoring even the bloodiest of pasts. As I said before, the Czech Republic as it stands today is a young nation. Yes, it had a democratic history previous to WW2 but times have changed. There was an election here last week and the Communist party of the Czech Republic gained somewhere around 13% of the seats. In a minority government, hell in any government, that is 15 years out of a period of terror caused by communists, how can this happen? Is there a piece of the history that maybe I don't understand? Because, a good 50 years after the fact, if a fascist party gained 13% of the seats in a German government...well that would newsworthy. They aren't even allowed Fascist parties in Germany! And yet, did they not cause similar years of pain?

Also, (to make this even longer), could the globalization and Americanization be one more controlling ideological force descending upon the Czech Lands? And if it is, will it too require its own reinterpretation of history?

And to think, this all stemmed out of the fact that I went to McDonalds yesterday.

until next time,
jd--out