Wednesday
I am travelling in Slovakia and the Czech Republic at the moment and internet access is rather hard to find. This all too brief internet lifeline is a welcome fix to help alleviate my OWLS (On-line Withdrawal Lamentation Syndrome). Horror is a foreign keyboard.
But at least the locals in the deepest rural Moravia are helping me get over the internet withdrawal shakes by stuffing me full of splendid pastries, for which this part of the world is rightly famed.
Interesting glimpses of the recent communist past abound but are becoming less visible by the year.
Remember a time before the internet? Hard to believe, I know! My hosts used this to listen to broadcasts from the West.
I am with the original samizdat people from whom I took so much inspiration and the reason I came up with the name for this blog.
So, what was in the shot glasses? I have an eye for details :-)
Posted by Albion at December 21, 2005 10:42 PM
It is important to remember, and cause to be remembered, that ordinary people right in the heart of Europe put their lives and freedom at risk just for the act of listening to a radio broadcast, or printing an essay which defended basic human rights which many of us take for granted.
Whenever I reflect on the courage required to oppose a truly totalitarian and amoral state, I am overwhelmed with awe, and the sneaking hunch that I might never have had such fortitude myself.
To have had the chance to live as a reasonably free man handed to me at birth is a gift beyond reckoning.
All I can do to repay such a boon is to defend the ideas it rests upon however and whenever I can. Sitting in my living room in midwest America is a far cry from the razor's edge that so many of the original samizdata group balanced upon. My heartfelt respects go out to all of them.
Posted by veryretired at December 21, 2005 11:20 PM
Very retired doesn't post very often, but when he does, it's a killer.
Posted by Verity at December 22, 2005 01:24 AM
I had the priviledge of meeting Vaclev Havel a few years ago. I stammered something inane and shook his hand. I wouldn't wash it for so long my wife wouldn't let me share her popcorn anymore, so I gave in and sudsed up.
He's small in stature, almost frail looking. Can't judge a book by the cover.
Posted by veryretired at December 22, 2005 02:18 AM
This is a great picture, pity the noise due to the poor light conditions.
Posted by Pavel at December 22, 2005 09:01 AM
Well said, VeryRetired. I second what Verity said too. I am glad that most people around here appreciate the bravery and stoicism of those who had to put up with totalitarian socialism in Eastern Europe and who helped to bring it down in that glorious period at the end of the 1980s. I'll definitely raise a glass to them this Christmas.
Posted by Johnathan Pearce at December 22, 2005 10:23 AM
We keep hearing that London is the most variegated gastronomic centre on the planet, yet there are few restaurants serving the nourishing, hearty, tasty cuisine of Mitteleuropa. The Gay Hussar pioneered Hungarian, but where is the Polish, Czech and Austrian fare, or the patisserie illustrated mouthwateringly here?
I'm sick of variations on chicken and pasta hogging the chilled foods section. I'm tired of supermarket chains infiltrating their 'reduced fat' health-fascist options and their rip-off 'organic' ranges (same stuff, 30% dearer, goes mouldy quicker). I demand ribsticking, winter-warming goose, dumplings, paprika, schnitzels, Tokay, sachertorte, cherry soup!
Posted by Luniversal at December 22, 2005 02:39 PM
I do not personally know of any Austrian or Czech restaurants in London but there are many Polish ones... for example the Daquise in South Kensington or Vodka near Kensington High Street or the superb and rather posh Polish Hearth Club on Exhibition Road
Posted by Perry de Havilland at December 22, 2005 02:51 PM
