Prague Springs A Leak

”’IN Josefov, the old Jewish quarter, police started banging on residents’ doors at 4am to tell them to leave their homes,” writes the Independent.

”Come on in, guys! The water’s lovely!”

It wasn’t the Germans this time, but a flood of Biblical proportions that was causing the inhabitants of Prague to flee. And they would have been advised to move fast, as more than 90 people have already perished in some of the worst floods to hit eastern and central Europe for an age.

The papers show pictures of Prague’s swollen Vltava River, and of people laying down sandbags in a bid to protect the city’s glorious Baroque architecture.

But the one picture that is sure to epitomise the suffering of the city is of Kadir, a 35-year-old elephant. Like the Lion of Kabul, Kadir seems to embody the suffering of a city as he wallows in a pen that soon became his private wading pool. And, like that one-eyed lion, Kadir is now dead, the victim of an assassin’s bullet.

Efforts were made to move the stricken beast, but they failed, and that meant Kadir had to be taken outside and shot. On a brighter note, the Independent watches as a sea lion escapes the zoo and swims down the swollen river.

And if he swims really hard, he might make it to Germany, and to the flooded city of Dresden. There he can float in and out of the Semperoper opera house and take a genteel backstroke though the magnificent Zwinger Palace, once home to Saxony kings.

But he needs help. So we hereby announce the drive for money to save Pelt – The Sea Lion of Dresden. Send cash and letters of support to the usual address.

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Posted: 15th, August 2002 | In: Broadsheets Comment | TrackBack | Permalink