Prague #4of7

By the time we visited in 1991 they had overthrown their Communist government, rather easily. It’s been said that the Polish Revolution took 10 years, the East German’s took 10 days, and the Czechoslovakian Velvet Revolution took 10 hours. It took all three, one by itself would not have worked.

I decided to get some Czechoslovakian money at the border, as we entered the country. An elderly lady from Poland was trying to exchange an old US $50 bill. Since it was so old, the manager decided not to change it, they didn’t know if it was still any good. Money dated 1928, from any country in this part of the world, would no longer have any monetary value. Much to her delight, I gave her a new $50 bill I had received in Gdansk, put the old one in my wallet, and hoped it was OK. It was dated 1928, and said it was redeemable in Gold. We found it was worth exactly $50, but in Greenbacks, not Gold.

On the far side, and high above the Vltava River, a huge metronome, with a red pointer perhaps 60 feet high, oscillated 10 times a minute, or every 10 seconds (references disagree). The best we could determine, it’s on the spot where a huge statue of Stalin stood from 1955 until 1961, when Kruschev said, “Tear it down.” Soon after the Velvet Revolution in 1989, the Metronome was erected to symbolize “a new time for Prague.” For whatever reason, during the days we visited in 1995, the metronome was still.

The US Embassy in Prague, located in an old palace a mile or two from the Prague Castle, is rather nondescript as palaces go, but the US Marine guard, dressed immaculately, was smiling and very helpful. On our second visit, in 1991, we asked to see the Ambassador, Madam Shirley Temple Black (yes that Shirley Temple). Appointed by President Bush in 1989, she served until 1993. She was busy that day, we didn’t see her.

As a fascinating coincidence, Ms. Black was in Prague on a humanitarian mission in 1968 and saw people shot and killed when Soviet troops marched, and tanks rolled down Wenceslas Square in Czechoslovakia's capital, to crush a reform movement known as Prague Spring. She was there again, as U. S. Ambassador, when the Czechs celebrated the Velvet Revolution, the collapse of Communism in 1989. Czechoslovakia became the Czech Republic, during her term.