Today has mostly been dominated by recovering from the trip to Prague. I woke up this morning way later than I would have hoped and scurried off to class. Luckily, I wasn’t late, but lecture was hard for me because my brain was still waking up. In lecture, we discussed more of the counter-reformation. More specifically, we focused on the effects of the Thirty Years War. As I recalled from AP Euro in high school, the Defenestration of Prague was a large factor in the start of the Thirty Years War (and we got a chance to see the window where it all occurred in Prague!). What I found most interesting from class today was the number of countries that were against the Habsburg empire. France, everything the Turks touched, Protestant parts of Germany, and other various places scattered throughout Europe were opposed to the Habsburg rule. What shocks me is how the Habsburgs were able to hold onto power for so long, despite the many countries that fought them for power.
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| Too soon? Apparently a reenactment of the Defenestration. |
On a tangent from this historical reflection, I remember something I wanted to bring up from my weekend trip to Prague. I noticed more beggars on the streets in Prague than we see in Vienna. We actually even had an encounter with a con man, who convinced one of my fellow students to give him her Euros in exchange for Crowns (the Czech currency) at a “better rate” than the official exchange offices offered. Unfortunately, my friend received Bulgarian money, and as soon as we realized this, the man had escaped into Prague's dark shadows. She didn’t seem to be too broken up about it, but it was shocking to encounter the thievery we had heard so much about firsthand.
Anyway, returning to the beggars, I noticed all the beggars would take on a weird position, kind of like in yoga when you do child’s pose, except less "Namaste" and more "Give me money." The beggars would be on their knees but lying face down, with their hands out holding some kind of hat or receptacle for money. This means that they wouldn’t be capable of making eye contact with you. After a little research, I found that it is a way of humbling themselves, of bowing down to people who might help them out. I spent the last four years going to school in Berkeley, so this isn’t something I can entirely grasp. The “homeless people” in Berkeley (and I use this in quotes because most of the homeless people in Berkeley, or at least off Telegraph, are street kids, or wealthy kids who have chosen living on the street as a lifestyle and usually either return to their homes in the bay area at night or stay in houses with other street kids) maintain a certain intimidating power over the students and pedestrians walking around. My friends and I tried to avoid walking down Telegraph so that we wouldn’t be harassed for extra change. While I never had a bad experience with any of these people, and rarely heard stories of them doing anything terrible, my impression of homeless beggars was and is much different than what I encountered in Prague.
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| Berkeley homeless folk hanging on Telegraph... |
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| And a Prague beggar. |
Yet, oddly enough, I felt uneasy about seeing the beggars in such a submissive position. Sure, they weren’t yelling at me and telling me they needed money for weed, but it made me feel kind of like an asshole. Here I was, strutting about in Prague and buying Absinthe and this poor beggar is face-down on the dirty floor, not even attempting to make eye contact with anyone. I get that it’s a humbling thing to bow down like that, but it almost had me wishing for them to rise from their submissive position and start berating me for following “the man” or whatever those street kids in Berkeley are blabbing about.
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| The aforementioned absinthe and his friends. |
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