Kathy and "le Sabrage" (Using a sword to take the top off a bottle of champagne)...

Kathy had what she described as one of her best days in Prague yesterday. She went on one of the "Let's Go" tours with several of her friends from ISP. This one was called "Surprising Spring Walk" and covered some hidden places in Mala Strana including the Palffy Palace (music school) and Royal Gardens.

It also included a stop at the restaurant U Maliru (literally,"At the Painters") which is described on-line as "A landmark restaurant with a history spanning 460 years, appreciated by kings, diplomats and politicians alike. Fine French cuisine among the restored frescoes or in the summer garden with a view of a picturesque little square on the Lesser Side. When the famous gourmet King Rudolf II sent his spies to investigate Czech pubs, a superb kitchen was indicated by one star, an excellent one by two. The only restaurant with three stars was this one."

U Maliru's sommelier, Dita Skrivankova, demonstrated a technique called "le Sabrage", where the top of a bottle of champagne is removed with a sword, sabre or knife. This tradition was initiated in France in 1812 by Napolean and used to celebrate victories in battle. She then let several of the women try the technique themselves.




Here is Dita Skrivankova with her "weapon".


Kathy tries out Sabrage on her own.


Here is a demonstration of the "le Sabrage" technique by a French-sounding guy on YouTube.

Grant's Prague Bike Blog...

An American co-worker here at RFE/RL has a blog dedicated to biking. He is a journalist by profession so it's not too surprising that his blog is very well written. Here's the link to it. It also has the benefit of being focused pretty much on a single topic (unlike mine, which flits around to and fro like the feather in Forest Gump). Amyway, Grant's blog is often linked in the Prague Daily Monoitor, as it was today.

Grant has a very interesting story about a bike ride to Okor, where he stumbled upon a childrens' fair with a small old merry-go-round and a shooting gallery from 1895. Here's the video of the shooting gallery:



Look at the whole post and the rest of Grant's blog. I'm adding it to my ever growing list of blogs on the left side of the page.

More YouTube Radio Free Europe video...

I found another video on YouTube that talks about RFE/RL. It says that it's a movie trailer but when I googled it I didn't find anything, so I'm not sure if this video is a piece of something bigger or not. Stoll, there's some good stuff here, including video of the effects of the bombing of the RFE building in Munich in 1981.

Funniest. Movie. Bit. Ever...

It's Friday and I needed a bit of the old Inspector Clouseau humor.

The last lecture...

Here is a great story about Dr. Randy Pausch, Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie-Mellon University. The university has a lecture series called "The Last Lecture" where professors give a lecture as if it was the last they would ever give. It's a way for them to decide and define what is really important in their career and in their life. Dr. Pausch, though, is dying of pancreatic cancer and is only expected to live a few weeks, so this may really be his last lecture. Here is a report on his "last lecture" that occurred just on Tuesday (Sept. 18th).

Radio Free Europe on PBS...

The PBS show Think Tank with Ben Wattenberg is focusing on RFE/RL in a broadcast that airs in some locations this weekend. I wasn't able to find it on the TPT channels in the Twin Cities, so you might have to wait until later to catch it. I hear that we will get DVDs of the broadcast and if we do I will report on the show after I see it.

Here comes Spider Pig...

In my review of the Simpsons Movie I mentioned a Tim Burton-esque version of the spider pig song that is played at the end of the movie during the credits. Well, ask YouTube and you shall receive. Here is the song over some stills from the movie.

The Simpsons Movie in Prague...

Today (Thursday) is the premier of The Simpsons Movie in Prague. According to the internet (so it must be true) the movie doesn't open until tomorrow in the US. Of course, the challenge here is finding it in English. Although it might be amusing to watch it in Czech, I would prefer the original voices, and a language I understand.

So I went to www.expats.com and started checking the web sites of the individual movie theatres, of which there are many. Starting at the top and working my way down I kep seeing the same words - Český dabing (dubbed in Czech). Doh!!! One after another, only Český dabing. Ah, but one theatre with three screens showing The Simpsons Movie actually had, in English no less, "in original language"! I'm saved. The theatre is Slovansky dum, where Kathy and Noah and I have gone for a couple of movies as part of a group from the international school.

So, tonight at 6:10 I will be in my comfortable stadium seat with my tub o'popcorn and 2 liter cup of Coke Lite all settled in to enjoy the movie. I will try to post my review tomorrow.

Note: It's been a long time since I have been to a movie where I have had great expectations. The more recent movies I have seen I expected to be bad, so that when they sucked less than I expected I judge them as being pretty good. I have the bar set pretty high for The Simpsons Movie.

Another vintage Radio Free Europe PSA...

Isn't YouTube amazing? Here is another vintage public service announcement (PSA) for Radio Free Europe, and it stars Ronald Reagan! It doesn't give the year, but a quick search of google (isn't google amazing?) yields that World Freedom Bell mentioned in the PSA was dedicated in 1950, so that would put this ad probably in 1951.



Upon doing a little more research on google I found that the symbol of RFE/RL until recently was the World Freeddom Bell. I had assumed that the logo represented the Liberty Bell. Our RFE/RL web site has some historical information, and it says:

"It starts with an account of how Radio Free Europe (RFE) came to take the bell as its symbol. It was not, as some people mistakenly believe, America's famously cracked Liberty Bell. The origins of RFE's logo are a 10-ton bell especially made in the British foundry Gillett and Johnston and decorated with a frieze of five figures representing the five races of mankind passing the torch of freedom. It arrived in New York in 1949 and traveled to 21 cities in the United States as part of the "Crusade for Freedom" drive to raise money to found and promote Radio Free Europe. More than 16 million Americans responded with contributions and RFE and its bell logo were born. Instead of the five figures, the RFE bell logo had a vertical divide into a darker and lighter side, generally interpreted as the divide between the democratic West and the communist East. But for many years now, Europe has been whole and almost free and both the dividing line and the bell have lost their meaning. The original Freedom Bell was permanently installed in West Berlin in 1950. Few people today know where it is, why it is there, and what it represents."


The web site Bells of Peace and Freedom says of the Freedom Bell "(it) has chimed every day at midday from the tower of Rathaus Schöneberg. Its sound has become the symbol of freedom in our city, the expression of American support for Berlin and the symbol of German-American friendship." One other note, the Rathaus Schoenberg (city hall) where the Feeedom Bell resides is where President Kennedy gave his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech in June 1963.

"Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"

With everything that is wrong with the world we live in, the visit to Berlin has made me reflect on some of the big and wonderful things that have happened in the not too distant past. Nazism was crushed in 1945 only to be replaced by Communism as the primary threat to mankind.
It was 20 years ago - June 12, 1987, to be exact - that President Ronald Reagan in a speech at the Brandenburg Gate, in the shadow of the Berlin Wall, challenged Soviet General Secretery Gorbachev to "tear down this wall". I went to YouTube and pulled up that part of Reagan's speech just to remember what a geat moment it was. Here it is.



Within two and half years, in October of 1989, the Berlin Wall was effectively down. Here is a part of a report from the late Peter Jennings of ABC News covering those events.



Despite all of our current problems there have been some huge successes against tyranny. I hope that 20 years from now we can say the same thing.

More Embedded Video...

I've gone back through the blog and embedded the other videos that were originally linked. These are the two Radio Free Europe PSAs and the eToys commercial. Going forward all video will be embedded (as long as I have the Html code).

Embedded Video (Nice pictures of Prague)...

I've figured out how to embed videos into the blog so it looks better than just having the link. I wanted to try it out and found this photo montage on YouTube. I t has some great pictures of Prague, although you also get a lot of pictures of the couple who took all of the pictures (I can live with that).

Another RFE/RL PSA...

Here is another public service announcement for Radio Free Europe, this time from 1971. Gone are the ominous tones of the 1959 PSA, replaced with a more upbeat attitude. Instead of somber scenes of the Iron Curtain we get an ultra-hip Hungarian DJ - replete with jacket around the shoulders and smoking a cigarette - spinning "On Broadway" by The Drifters. It's not freedom that those in the Communist bloc wanted and needed - it was American pop music. "The 'In' sound from the outside", indeed. This was the era of detente, after all, and the Soviet Union was a nation to be coexisted with, not feared. It wouldn't be labeled the "Evil Empire" by Ronald Reagan for another 16 years. Oh, how naive we were...

We interrupt the Cold War to bring you this message...

I stumbled across this old 1959 public service announcement (PSA) for Radio Free Europe. It's scary and ominous and refelcts the times in which it was made - at the height of the Cold war. You will notice that at the end they ask for ordinary citizens to donate to RFE. More on that at a later date.