Taking a Vacation through Saxony and Silesia, and Stalin v. Jackson

There's been quite a bit to blog about this past week (Czechs finally agreeing to a government, Komorowski winning the Polish elections, Spain winning the World Cup, Germany cooking its citizens in trains), but I was busy with other things. What other things could be more important than a Civic Platform President in Poland, you ask? Well, a trip through Saxony and Silesia, beginning in Dresden and culminating in Wrocław, of course! So the next few blog posts will address your correspondent's impressions of these interesting lands. Perhaps this would have been accomplished sooner, but email access was rather limited and in any case, I was less-than-disposed to writing anyway.

Of course, this is not a completely content-free blog post, so feel free to ruminate on this, courtesy of Tagesschau. For those of you who have left your handy German-English phrasebook at home while you read this at work, the summary is this: not so many years ago, perhaps 50, the largest statue of Stalin outside the Soviet Union was erected in Prague. Not long after, Stalin became somewhat less popular, and his cult of personality went the way of David Koresh and the Branch Davidians. The pedestal of the statue remained however, and a metronome was placed there in 1991, marking time.

Fast-forward to 2010 (Fast-forward? Do we even do that anymore in an age of digital video?). A small group of Praguers has now decided that the Letná Plain, and the pedestal area, would be the optimal place to place a monument to the late, great Michael Jackson. Jackson began his final European Tour not far from the site, and (according to the Wikipedia article, so it's gotta be true) even erected his own 35-foot-high statue there briefly in 1996. Apparently, some form of statue or a bust of MJ would be placed somewhere in the area, though it is unclear whether the metronome would have to be removed.

For reasons perfectly incomprehensible to your correspondent, some artists and citizens are opposed to this proposal. It seems like a natural place to place a memorial to the King of Pop. Or at least a memorial to the cult of personality.