czech yourself before you wreck yourself

We left Provence with mixed emotions. We had settled into Provencal life and were looking forward to a new adventure. Plus, we were happy to move on from our studio which we'd dubbed the "cave" (won't say more about that). Provence was at its finest when we left: 80 degrees, blue skies with perfect clouds that looked painted on, market in full-swing, and people packed into outdoor cafes just enjoying life. So, a bit sadly we boarded the Eurobus for Prague. Aside from the mysterious 14 bites that appeared on my face in the morning and stinkiness of some other passengers, we passed the 20-hour bus trip with a good amount of sleep, randomly being woken in the middle of the night to sleep-walk to a rest stop bathrooms in Germany.

Arriving in Prague was like a slap in the face. It was cold (50s/60s) and raining. We missed Provence. Prague appeared gloomy and gray - Matt said it was what he'd imagined an East European city to be. Since we only had 2.5 days, we couldn't let the weather deter us and on a good note, it forced us to conquer the public transit system right away. Oddly enough, the public transit is a trust-based system where you don't have to show/run your ticket through any machine to gain admission. Apparently the fine is pretty steep if you get caught without a ticket, but we never saw this happen. We did not cheat the system :)

On our first full day in Prague, we got some sad news from home. Our dear, beloved neighbor and friend, Pammie, passed away suddenly. She was older but the news was completely unexpected; Prague's gloominess now seemed appropriate. That night, after wandering around a bit, we stumbled upon a lively bar and ended up there all night. We spent a lot of time reminiscing about Pammie, writing down stories, laughing and crying over our beers and Mexican food. It was a nice way to remember her, but I'm not sure if the reality will really sink in until we get back to DC and there's no more merengue cookies (or other treats) waiting for us on our doorstep, or calls to be made from the grocery store to see if Pammie wants a rotisserie chicken. She will be greatly missed by almost everyone in our building - she took good care of all of us.

We explored Prague in our remaining days and found it, despite the grayness, to be a beautiful city with magnificant and ornate architecture. It was largely spared bombings during WWII, so buildings reflect hundreds of years of style and are a rainbow of colors.

view of the "stare mesto" - old town

pivos - Pilsner Urquell

We also enjoyed the break in prices, especially as compared to France. Beers are about $1.50 for 0.5L which is great, but unfortunately I'm not a fan of the ubiquitous Pilsner Urquell as much as the Belgian beers in France. Surprisingly, we haven't found the people here to be too friendly - maybe they don't like wearing jackets and carrying around umbrellas in July either! In France, the French would yell out a bunch of friendly greetings when entering or leaving a place (bonjour! merci! au revoir! bonjournee!). Not so much here - there seems to be barely an acknowledgement. Language-wise, Czech sounds like a bizzaro version of Polish, which is both comforting and disconcerting. But technically I guess I kinda know the language, and have resorted to just speaking in Polish. Usually this worked out great, but sometimes people would answer me in English which I thought was odd. Today we are waking up in Warszawa, where people I speak to in Polish will answer me in kind :) Tomorrow morning we'll pick up Matt's parents at the airport and so our ~2 weeks in Poland begins.

artists on the charles bridge, castle in the background


commentary on children today being raised by media (note the usb-like faces)


john lennon wall. authorities have tried to wash over this homage to lennon countless times before finally giving up