All-access doggie

A POST BY JAYDA. WOOF.

My little paw pads are used to the cobblestones now. I have adapted to Czech dog food, which has overt chunks of animal parts in it. The city sounds no longer inspire me to bark inappropriately. I've made some doggie buddies whom I see on strolls around the neighborhood. And I'm allowed to go pretty much everywhere mom and dad go.

I am living the high life!

Mom's coworkers gave me my very own chair to sit in at dinner last night. It was even at a fancier place, called Olympia Restaurant, near the theater where mom is directing the school play.

See me and dad on the right? We cycled along the Vltava River and took a break in the shade. Sometimes he even takes me grocery shopping on the bike.

I get my own seat. It's kind of embarrassing...

...but the views are reBARKable!

I also enjoyed watching sports at the beer garden.

The one called Letna is near mom's school so we went there after work one day.

Sometimes other kids like me go there, too, like this guy. I said hi, but I only came up to his knee.

All this fun really tires me out!

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Feeding a green Cyclops

The amount of plastic bottles we accrue at home is obscene, thanks to the national past-time of drinking bottled voda rather than its piped counterpart. I actually don't mind the Prague tap water, but the bottled water comes with so many delicious choices - perliva (with gas), jahody (strawberry), citron (citrus)... you get the point.

Guzzled

Thankfully, another national past-time is recycling; the Czechs were "green" long before it was en vogue. Everyone brings their own bags to the markets, butchers and bakeries, and containers are literally reused until they fall apart. (I'm not sure if this was out of concern for the environment or out of a need to be frugal, but either way it's good.) The public transportation system is excellent, and grocery stores offer 3kc per beer bottle returned to the store.

Moreover, I read that there are about 3,000 recycling receptacles in Prague, like the one below. They're color-coded for rubbish like this:

·    Paper/Cardboard (papír) - blue bin
·    Plastic (plasty) - yellow bin
·    Glass (sklo) - green bin*
·    Beverage Containers (nápojové kartony, tetrapak) - orange bin

Our corner glass bin, which looks a lot like a Cyclops

In other home news, dad's North Dakota cabin keeps growing; here's a photo from FaceTiming a week ago:

Wow!

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Theatrics with MN and MT

Grunts and roars were BW's lines in his theatrical debut last weekend. He played the Golem in a production by Blood, Love and Rhetoric Theater on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights. Between having to collapse on stage and getting carried off by Rabbi Lowe and astronomer Tycho Brahe, he's full of bruises. But it was a hilarious scene and he did a great job. I was even persuaded to fill in for a member of the Emporer's harem in the play on Saturday night. Here we are, partially costumed:

The cast is getting ready "backstage" in this photo:

And the fuzzy picture below is from the production itself. (BW wouldn't let me post one of him in action.) Wouldn't you know... the guy front and center is from Montana. We were at the pub after the show and he mentioned that his favorite bar in the world is a place called Moose's in Kalispell. I couldn't believe it; that's where my grandma always wants to go for pizza and beer when we visit!

The theater, Malostranska Beseda, was on the top floor of a building right below Prague Castle. The window views from it were excellent;

This week, BW is helping with kayaking practice at the junior high school... maybe he should wear the Golem outfit?

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Rainy ride

Too bad the kayak-loving Ma R. wasn't in Prague last week; the Canoe Slalom World Championships were north of Prague. We'd intended to cycle to them but ended up running into road construction so opted instead to do some sightseeing by bike in the city.

We started with the gardens of Wallenstein Palace, which now houses the Czech Senate. It was built in the 1600s by the calculating general Albrecht von Wallenstein; he constructed it to rival Prague Castle and was assassinated by Emperor Ferdinand II for being too ambitious.

BW and the bikes

Pretentious peacocks roam the gardens

Yeah, it's pretty nice

Headed toward the Senate

One of 47 dozen statues bedecking the garden

"Senate"

The "Grotesquery," a drippy limestone wall

The construction that blocked our way to slalom supremacy

 Afterwards, we took a drizzly refreshment break in the Mala Strana area and found ourselves next to some sort of a middle-aged group of Scottish punkrocker guys. They were wearing "Good Night White Pride" logos on their clothing, which is a German movement to oppose hardcore punk neo-Nazis.

Love the colors of the part of town

The Scottish punk dudes just kept coming and we kept getting drizzled on

 Finally, we ended our ride in the Havlickovy Sady vineyard area. It really started to rain, so we took the metro partway home.

Tired!

Headed for a hot shower at home

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Electricity and gelato

When we left the U.S., all I had to do with our electrical service was call Xcel Energy, tell them we'd like it stopped on a certain date, and pay the final bill online. Que facil.

Here in the Czech Republic, I've already made 2 headache-inducing trips to the PRE utility company headquarters in the center of Prague to get gas and electric service changed over from my landlord's name to mine. And we had to get a Czech friend to be a "guarantor" for utilities - basically a co-signer who agrees to pay our debts if we skip town. Getting electricity is as serious as securing a car loan!

Awkward people in a screen shot from our utility company's web page

Utilities services work like this: You guess roughly what you'll be spending each month on gas and electricity and have the amount deducted from your bank account. (And if you don't do e-banking, you receive a bill in the mail and then pay it at the post office.) At the end of the year, you either pay more in or get money back.

Anyhow, the trips to PRE took about 3 hours; it would have taken me three minutes to do the same in Minnesota. I figured gelato would be an apt reward for weathering the long lines, so I headed for the nearby Lucerna (Lantern) passage on Wenceslaus square. A tangle of passages were constructed in the ground floors of a number of the square's grand old buildings in the early 1900s, and they're fascinating to poke around in.

An old cinema in the passage had a collection of vintage Czechoslovak posters:

I like the bird riding the hairbrush on the bottom left.

This shot from the inside of the passage doesn't do the stained glass on the ceiling justice. I was taking pictures with my phone.

Walking into the belly of the building

Avant garde Czech artist David Cerny made this hanging creation as a parody of the beloved St. Wenceslaus statue that crowns Wenceslaus Square. It's called "Horse" and it's meant to poke fun at the institution.

Apparently the horse's tongue gets stolen a lot

I got hazelnut gelato. Pretty sure it's one of the most divine tastes on the planet. And in the solar system.

Yum.

Then it was back home to BW and J-dog, who will now have hot water, cooking gas, lights and a warm home this Fall thanks to PRE (and a Czech friend willing to take on all our debts should we skip town).

She's saying, "Where's my gelato?"

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Auf Wiedersehen, American friends

After a wine and olive oil-filled roadtrip through Austria, Croatia, Italy, Switzerland and Germany, ChiroK and DJ made their way back to Praha to drop their rental car off and hang out for one last night before flying home. We spent their final European evening wandering through the lamplit streets and along the shimmering waters of the Vltava. Since then, it's been gray and drizzly, so we're glad the night was so temperate and tranquil for our guests.

It just so happened that Prague had its annual free museum night while we were out, so we dropped into the Goethe Institute where we saw a photography exhibit and took a "Learn German in 10 Minutes" lesson. A few days later, I remember that "pineapple" is "ananas" in German... and that's about it.

We were sad to say goodbye to our American friends but grateful for the time we had with them! We hope the trip was monumental for you :)

Here's a blurry snap of the National Theater at night; I thought the pictures was kind of neat even with it's fuzziness.

The Goethe Institute is in a stunning Art Nouveau building

Ich heise Martina Navratilova... (In our German lesson. Note the bottle of wine on the table.)

A German photography exhibit

The Memorial to the Victims of Communism in Prague

Can you spot our travelers on Charles Bridge at night?

A kiss to seal their magical Euro journey!

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BW's a cook AND an actor

I got up at early o'clock in the morning on Saturday to direct a Romeo and Juliet rehearsal with my students... and BW attended his own playpractice that day, too. More on that below the fold...

Saturday was my school's annual welcome picnic for students, staff and families. It was held at the Junior High/Primary campus north of Prague, nestled in a curve of the Vltava River. Attendees bring a dish from their home country, the school provides burgers and sausages, and everyone digs in and then attempts to play sports, canoe, etc., with very full bellies. BW made "American hotdish" while I was at rehearsal, and every last bit was eaten.

A looooong spread of international food

Delicious cherubek from Turkmenistan

The magnificent view from the campus

The building on the right is an old mustard seed factory; how appropriate! :)

We showed our Minnesota pride...

...and we ate more of these plates of food than I care to admit

Back to BW's play involvement... On Friday night, we went out with my old buddy Logos and a bunch of his acting friends; he owns an acting company in Prague. They really, really needed someone to play the golem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golem) in their play next weekend, as the they felt the guy they had cast wasn't tall enough. BW, having had a couple of pivos and feeling very agreeable, said he'd do it. So, late Saturday afternoon, BW was practicing for his 5-minute Prague theater debut in Elixir:

I will for sure post a photo of him in a golem suit unless he can convince me otherwise :)

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Autumn is upon us

Amid reports of 90-degree temperatures in the American Midwest, we're grateful for the cool September weather here in Central Europe. Autumn is starting to unfold in Prague.

Perhaps one of the biggest indicators of Fall is the advent of Burcak (pronounced Ber-chak) a cloudy, yellow, partially-fermented young wine that packs more punch than one would expect. Next weekend, there will be a festival in a nearby square that celebrates the harvest, and big tankard Burcak trucks will roll in. Locals bring plastic bottles and fill them up and sit around and drink until it's gone. Czech friends say it wreaks havoc on the tummy, but I've also read it's a super source of Vitamin B. Here's our first carafe of the season, at Havlickovy Sady:

Speaking of drinks, the cool weather also calls for hot beverages, and one of my favorite things in the whole world is the hot chocolate at Cafe Louvre on Narodni Trida. It's thick and rich and divine.

The end of Summer also calls for a reduction in tourists; things are never exactly quiet, but having elbow room near the city's historic sites is nice.

Finally, people are trying to get their last visits to the beer gardens in before they close, usually in October. We hit this one up after trying a new church on Sunday.

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