Euromaidan memorial

Ukrainians are the largest group of non-natives here in the Czech Republic; they make up about 30% of the foreign population. And the edge of geopolitically valuable Ukraine isn't that far away - only about 250 miles border-to-border, though Kiev is much further. 

Prayers to the people of the Ukraine and to their tenuous interim government. I don't currently have any Ukrainian students, but I do teach quite a few Russians, and I hope current sentiment and the situation in Crimea doesn't affect them in any way, either. Needless to say, we've been glued to the coverage, wondering what will happen next.

This evening we went for a walk and saw a small memorial on Wenceslas Square honoring Ukrainians killed in the uprising. Just devastating.

On a related note, The Prague Daily Monitor reported that the Czech government will be airlifting and treating 23 Euromaidan protesters injured in the fighting.

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From Sochi to Prague

And the final Czech 2014 Sochi Olympics medal count is... (drumroll)...

from Wikipedia.com

EIGHT! 

We cheered the Czech Republic and the United States on in all sorts of places, from a cave bar in the Old Town to through the windows of cafes in Paris to a living room filled with teenagers.

That's right - we had 14 kids in our flat the night of the opening Olympic ceremony. I had taken them to an international Drama competition in Prague, and since it was near our flat, we had them over for pizza, charades and Olympics. It was actually amusing because every 10 seconds some kid was cheering for their home country. Yay, Japan! Yay, Poland! Yay, Israel! Etc. And you should have heard the dramatic gasps when the fifth circle didn't open.

By the way, while the students weren't exactly Olympic medalists, they did win "Best Original Script" and "Best Supporting Actress" against teams all over Europe - and that probably felt just as special to them :)

And, coincidentally, their play was based on Mount Olympus!

 Our own Greek gods and goddesses

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Vie magique

Is it really time to leave Paris?

Really?

We miss our dog and our Prague, but the impending flight home is pulling the corners of our mouths down.

Yes, we accidentally paid 6 euro for a fancy bottle of water, and yes, our shoes are completely grimy from the less-than-pristine streets. But the vie magique of Paris casts a romantic glow on all of it and any annoyances seem to just fall away.

Our last couple of French days were prime; after covering the obligatory EiffelTowerNotreDameArchdeTriompheEtc. (all of which were mammothly wonderful), we poked into some lesser-touristed corners of the city. 

In the Les Comptior General museum, we learned about corruption in Francophone Africa and saw a whimsical indoor garden.

There was a visit to Oscar Wilde's grave (and Edith Piaf's, Jim Morrison's, Moliere's, etc.) at the Pere Lachaise Cemetery.

We tromped around the Belleville neighborhood, where Edit Piaf lived, and drooled over rainbows of produce. If you haven't seen the movie "The Triplets of Belleville", you must! 

This children's artwork pasted on the outside of an elementary school in the 11e caught our eye.

A morning was spent wandering through the extensive maze of antique stalls in the Saint-Ouen flea market. I got barked at for taking pictures, so this is one of the few snaps from that outing.

I'm not sure how many churches we tiptoed into, but it was probably in the 'teens. This one was near our flat.

Olympics scores and updates were collected by BW as he peered in the windows of bars and cafés like this one.

We spent our last night strolling along the Seine...

...and then eating a proper French meal. Mmmmmm - snails!

All roads led to big grins for us in Paris :)

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A big Parisienne web

Paris is an enormous, decorous web of interlaced literary, historical and artistic strands... and it's a complete pleasure to get tangled in it. We've been over, under, around and through a mere fraction of the place and made all sorts of threaded connections.

Connection 1:
For example, in the Paris sewers we learned how Napolean thought one of his greatest accomplishments was bringing clean water to pestilent Paris, though he's not known for that feat...

...and then we saw Napolean's tomb at the National Army Museum...

...and visited the Napoleonic chambers in the Louvre, which were literally dripping with decadence.

Connection 2:  
We stopped at the Petit Palais and saw the Art Nouveau furniture of Hector Guimard...

...then passed numerous iconic Parisienne metro signs that Guimard designed in Art Nouveau style...

...and then crossed the Art Nouveau Bridge Ponte Alexander on our way to a farmers' market.

Connection 3:

We walked 2km through Paris's catacombs, which were originally limestone quarries that had to be filled with bones in the 18th and 19th centuries not only to keep the ground from collapsing but also to handle the bones of unsanitary burial sites in the city...

...and we had an espresso in one of Ernest Hemingway's haunts above the catacombs...

...and then we strolled past the Cathedral of Notre Dame and surrounding neighborhood buildings that were built from the stones extracted from the now-catacombs.

So many more to point out... but our heads might explode!

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Oui Oui Pah-ree

"Amelie" is one of my favorite movies (and the soundtrack is stellar, too), so when we entered the threshold of our latest home exchange - in grand Paris - my heart did cartwheels. Red walls! Funky tile! Quirky artwork! Perfectly mismatched furniture! Books upon books upon books! BW opened the fridge and melted all over the figs and cheese and courgettes. Oui!

Had we been elsewhere, we could have easily boxed ourselves in to this curious place and spent 6 days staring at its lovely innards. But, well, this is Paris, and we have bigger poisson to fry.

Forgive the iSnaps; we'll put our nicer Nikon fare up when we return to our computer in Prague. In the meantime, here are a few from our first day-and-a-half in the City of Lights...

Reeeally excited to be in the Eiffel's vicinity

Entrance to the Place de Vosges, which was built by Henry IV

The outside of Notre Dame...

...and the inside

River Seine scenery

A French woman offered to take this- how kind!

No, that's not BW and friends; those are Rodin sculptures

As Amelie would say, au revoir for now. We're putting our tired tootsies up, cracking some wine and planning a route for tomorrow. 

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Chili peppers and Tchaikovsky

Don't buy your husband a Valentine’s card written in Czech with a heart made of chili peppers on the front and then ask a high school student to translate it for you. She will go bright red, start belly-laughing and tell you it says something like, “I burn hotter for you than 1,000 chili peppers, lover.” Oops.

I should have bought something like this: "I love you."

Overall, V-Day is just not a big deal here; at the pub after work on Friday, BW and I were the only people out of the table of 14 that had a date planned. An Australian colleague said, "No offense, but we see it as a silly, commercialized thing Americans do." 

Touché.

Nonetheless, we took our silly selves to the Czech National Symphony Orchestra and it was absolutely splendid! BW got tickets for a special "Romeo and Juliet on Valentine's Day" concert, featuring works by Tchaikovsky, Rota, Gounod and Proklofiev. 

The view from our seats...

...and close up.

The concert was held in Prague's dazzlingly beautiful Obecni Dum (Municipal House), an Art Nouveau treasure. I kept having to remember to breathe during the performance because the way the music and light levitated above the orchestra was so captivating that I didn't want to move an iota or make a peep.

Even the entrance to the coat check was smashing

And the windows! Oh, the windows!

So we're two happy symphony customers. Thanks, BW! I'm so thankful to have you today and every day.

<3

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Roaming Resslova

On Valentine's Day in 1945, the U.S. mistakenly dropped a bouquet of bombs on residential areas in Prague, thinking it was Dresden, Germany. Malfunctioning radar equipment, clouds and high winds were blamed; hundreds died; and the horrific error was fodder for Nazi propaganda.

Decades later, you can find Prague's trippy Dancing House, also known as "Fred and Ginger," standing at the end of Resslova Street in one of the areas that had been decimated by the aerial attack. It was designed by Czech-Croatian architect Vlado Milunic and American Frank Gehry in a gesture of cooperation. We didn't go inside on this visit, but we plan to someday.

Nearby, there's a Potrefena Husa pub good for Playing e-Scrabble and eating thick cuts of fried bread (topinky) rubbed with fat bulbs of garlic. Apparently there's also a chic cafe in the Dancing House, but we were in a pivo mood.

And just up Resslova Street from the twisty building is a much more visceral reminder of Nazi brutality, Sts. Cyril and Methodist Church. After an assassination attempt on Protector Reinhard Heydrich in 1942, Czech resistance fighters hid in the crypt of this church. The Nazis discovered the hiding place - after already murdering hundreds in retaliation - and flooded the crypt, then sprayed the church with bullets. The resistance fighters took their own lives.

The Resslova area today is so peaceful, so normal. Just another street under a lemon-colored sunset, but with so many stories to tell.

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RIP Shirley Temple Black

The headlines everywhere are referring to the loved and late Shirley Temple as "famed childhood actress" and "Hollywood star." It's true - she's known as the cute kid with the corkscrews - but little do many know that she was also Shirley Temple Black "the diplomat."

From Biography.com

Temple Black served as a U.N. representative in the 60s and Chief of Mission in Accra, Ghana, and Chief of Protocol for President Ford in the 70s. In 1989, she was appointed Ambassador to Czechoslovakia under President Bush. She's reported to have been well-liked and felt honored to serve Czechs and Slovaks during the Velvet Revolution, in the final months of Communism.

From CNN.com

The U.S. Embassy in Prague just released a statement on Temple Black's passing, which can be read HERE.

Also, the Prague Post has an article about Temple Black HERE, which also links to this footage of her in former Czechoslovakia:

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The Pisek coincidence

Pisek, North Dakota: A tiny Midwest American town founded by Bohemian settlers in the late 1800s. In 2010, the population was 106. In recent years, a lost painting by the famous Czech artist Alfonse Mucha was found in the attic of the local Catholic Church.

Pisek, Czech Republic: There are two - A Southern Bohemian town AND a defunct suburb of Prague that was demolished in the 1620s to make way for a palace. However, the Pisek gateway fortification to Baroque Prague still stands - right near my school. And there's an adorable cafe in it, called Písecká brána.

What's left of the Pisek gate today

A photo of the Pisek gate from earlier years (date unknown)

I found this coincidence really special not only because I'm from North Dakota, but also because I was a Bible Camp counselor in Park River, which is very near to Pisek. I've been there a couple of times.

I didn't know about the "Pisek" connection until I visited the cafe twice and decided to research its history. So glad I did.

A picture-perfect window for top-notch tea-sipping

The inside of the cafe, curved brick walls and all

Evidence from a recent gate wedding

My school's art teacher visited the venue last week and is in negotiations to hold a student art show there. So, I'm looking forward to sipping their divine fresh ginger tea, seeing student art and feeling like ND isn't all that far away...

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