Before We Forget...

We had better update everyone on our trip to Prague a couple weeks ago before it’s time to start talking about our next trip!

A couple weekends ago we spent 2 ½ days in Prague, the capitol of the Czech Republic. Prague is a short, and very cheap, flight from Amsterdam. In fact, most everything in Prague is cheap! We went with another U.S. expat couple from Amsterdam, the Coopers originally from Chicago, and had a great weekend.

For those interested, the Czech Republic used to be Czechoslovakia until early 1993 when the country peacefully split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. It was also a communist country until 1989, but has been a democratic republic since then. The Czech Republic is part of the European Union, but still uses the Czech koruna rather than the euro at this point.

One of the best things about our weekend in Prague was the weather: sunny and warm! Well, Saturday was pretty cloudy with some showers, but we seemed to miss the showers as we ducked into cathedrals, towers, or a castle. Like many European cities, a river, the Vltava, runs through the city, kind of dividing the center of the city in half. In fact, we enjoyed paddle-boating on the river Sunday. Because of all the sun and cloudless skies we all ended up getting a bit sunburned. After being so long in Amsterdam, land of clouds and rain, none of us were prepared with sunscreen and none of us imagined there might be a place (apart from the beach) with enough sun and heat to really affect our skin! Our sunburns weren’t really very bad and have now faded to tans. We have lots of pictures and spent some time on the famous Charles Bridge, a footbridge that crosses the Vltava taking you from the Old Town to the Mala Strana area of Prague.

Prague is a beautiful city…especially from a distance. And tourists have their choice of great views of the city from a distance since there must be about 87 towers around the city that you can climb, for a small fee of course, to get “the best view of Prague.” We actually did end up climbing 3 or 4 of these towers and got good pictures. Up close, however, Prague is a different story. Many of the buildings and walls in the parks are covered in graffiti. We’re not sure if this is a testimony to life during the communist era or not, but the graffiti in Prague seemed much more plentiful than in most other cities we’ve visited. Although noticeable, this didn’t really affect the overall beauty of the city or our enjoyment of it.

Without going into too much detail, suffice it to say we saw and did all the regular big city in Europe stuff. We investigated the extensive Jewish quarter, complete with the Jewish cemetery and several synagogues; we walked around the squares and streets of the Old Town, Mala Strana, and Kampa Island; we toured several cathedrals; we visited the extensive castle compound with it’s many towers, cathedrals, museums, and other buildings; we hiked around in the huge Mala Strana park; and we ate good food. The paddle-boating experience was a fun extra on our trip since we had pretty much seen the “top ten” tourist attractions by then.

Prague has an extraordinary number of saints attached to their various cathedrals. Apparently before the Holy See took over exclusive rights in the 1600s for administering sainthood, practically any notable, official, or church leader could make anyone a saint for any reason. Thus, we saw a lot of stained glass depicting various saints and a lot of bones belonging to various saints housed in cases in the churches.

The Czech people are extremely friendly. Everyplace we went people were helpful, kind, polite, and personable. Well, almost everywhere. The guy running the paddle boat operation tried very hard to get an extra 50CK out of us. No where was a time limit for the paddle boats posted, and when we got into the boat at 2:30 the guy did not say anything to us. We returned at 3:45 to have him continually repeat in a loud voice, which turned to yelling, that we were gone an hour and 15 minutes and owed him more money. John and Jacob went over to deal with him, calmly explaining that they didn’t realize there was a time limit and asking the guy where on the posted rules it listed the time limit. He never could show them or explain how we should have known that we were only to be out for an hour so he gave up the argument and we kept our 50CK.

The other aggravating experience was trying to buy a subway ticket. The machines in the underground take coins only. We had bought tickets for a trip over to a restaurant, but when we tried to return, we found out the machines only take coins less than 50CK. For both of us to get one-way tickets was only going to cost 40CK, but all we had was a couple 10CK coins and a 50. We noticed there was a uniformed man sitting at the ticket counter. Now, one would think his job, sitting in a uniform at the ticket window, would be to sell tickets, or at least give us change so we can buy a ticket in the machine. Nope. When John asked to buy tickets he pointed over to the machine. When John explained all we had was a 50 and could we get some change, the guy just shook his head, motioned with his hands, and said no. Huh. It seems his only purpose for being at the ticket booth was to use the TV in there to watch the World Cup game.

Speaking of the World Cup, Adidas, a huge World Cup sponsor, set up a giant soccer ball-shaped souvenir stand along with a huge screen in Old Town square to broadcast all the World Cup games. It was interesting to be there that weekend since both the Czech Republic and the U.S. were playing games.

Other random excitement of the trip includes watching three fire engines pull up to a building in the center of the city, smelling smoke, and watching as the fire men went in and out of the building, seeing a homeless man pass out near the big screen that broadcasts the World Cup, and awaking Saturday morning to find the window in the front door of the apartment building we were staying in had been completely broken out. 1. Although there must have been a fire in the building, we never saw flames. 2. The passed-out homeless guy was being watched over by two policemen until back-up arrived. A few minutes later a police van pulled right up to the man, several police officers roused him and got him into the van, which had windows for all to view what was going on in the back, and then a fist fight ensued as the man apparently did not want to be taken to jail to sleep it off. The police won and off they went. 3. Jacob was the only one who heard the front door window shatter Friday night while we were sleeping and for the rest of the weekend we lived a building sans a window in the front door. Otherwise the apartment was nice and in a good location.

Perhaps what made this trip all the more enjoyable was the fact that we amazingly did not get lost and were not late for anything the entire time! We really enjoyed our time in Eastern Europe. And we’ll be off again to that part of the continent in a week and a half when we visit Krakow.

A Visit From the Parents

Erin’s parents left last Saturday to return to Texas after a two-week trip to Europe. The highlights of their trip included all the gourmet food they ate in France, visiting the Loire Valley chateaus, and, of course, seeing us! The low points all revolved around Paris: trying to figure out Charles De Gaulle Airport, which is apparently anything but intuitive, getting on public transport going the correct direction, and maneuvering luggage and person through endless turnstiles in an attempt to reach their train to Blois at Gare d’Austerlitz station.

We spent a total of about 8 days in the Netherlands with Erin’s parents, acquainting them with Dutch culture, history, and landscape. Of course, the beautiful warm, sunny weather of a month ago had disappeared. It was a bit cooler than expected and cloudy almost everyday. The sun finally appeared the last two days they were in Amsterdam. No amount of persuasion could convince either parent to ride a bicycle in Amsterdam, which is probably smart since neither of us would know exactly how to work things out if someone injured him or herself resulting in a visit to the emergency room. Hopefully we can continue our life here ignorant of that particular bit of information.

We did, however, ride bicycles in Park de Hoge Veluwe, a national park about an hour southeast of Amsterdam that we visited in some of our first weeks in the country, so they did get the bicycle experience in a bit calmer, more conducive environment. We’re happy to announce there were no falls and it only rained on us for a few minutes. We also visited the sculpture garden and art museum on the park grounds and drove by the sand dunes that look so out of place in the midst of all the forests and trees. Besides Park de Hoge Veluwe, we took a trip to Delft and toured the factory where the famous delftware is made (resulting in some souvenirs of course), went to the Keukenhof the last day it was open for this year and were still amazed by the rhododendrons and other flowers still blooming, and visited the traditional Dutch village at Zaanse Schans where we saw a demonstration of wooden shoe-making and a working windmill that processes peanut oil (and acquired yet more souvenirs). Other tourist attractions included going to the grocery store, visiting the Van Gogh Museum, walking through Vondel Park, traveling to Alkmaar to attend the cheese market on Friday morning (that was a lot of cheese), and attending a street market in the Centrum on Saturday morning. It was a full and fun visit.

Erin’s parents also partook in almost every traditional Dutch food while they were here: croquettes, meatball sandwiches, tostis, coffee (of course), almond cookies, erwenten (split pea) soup…and more coffee.

Having family in town for so long is a vacation for us as well as for them. John had a whole week off work, Erin took a break from counseling, meetings, and the few other routine activities of her life, and we got to do fun things every single day!