Prague Updates (mostly the grocery store)
Frank had to go to the UK for administrative details linked to getting the right to practise medicine there. So it was just Hana and me for four days, one of which was the Strakonice trip for me. Since then we just kind of hung around, with me writing a lot and Hana working on getting ready to move. We have gone for pleasant walks in Centralni Park (pictures in the future), done grocery shopping, and talked a lot. Yesterday we went to the Botanical Park because we thought Frank wasn't coming home today, but we had to cut our trip short because he did come home.
At home I go to the store as seldom as possible. For one thing, it's a way to economize and to limit the treats I buy, because every time I'm in the store I buy stuff I don't strictly have to. For another, the grocery store holds few surprises and little mystery for me. Here, largely due to the simple foreignness of the place, it's an adventure and highly entertaining. I don't buy a lot of extra things, but I sure am tempted to discover the qualities of many of them. I'm struck by the sheer quantities of candy (mostly chocolate) and baked goods in the stores. I'm not entirely sure it's more than in stores in the US or if it's just more noticeable to me because the stores are arranged differently.
Bread is marvelous here. It's freshly baked and unwrapped on miles of shelves and kilometers of bins. Many stores have self-service fully-enclosed safety slicing machines. The variety of shapes and sizes and flavors of bread is stunning. And a lot of the bread is whole grain, with mixes of grains and seeds, just the stuff I love. And it's really inexpensive.
Frank and Hana complain about the quality of produce but I am sure that a large part of that is that they have such a small range of vegetables they will eat. If they were more open to eating more traditional Central European vegetables like beets and kohlrabi and leeks they'd have a better time of it. They do eat cabbage, which is frequently amazing here. Also throughout the peak growing season (which begins considerably later here than in California, naturally, and I think ends much earlier) there are Friday and Saturday markets all over town where some nice produce is brought in by farmers, though those markets are heavy on dairy products, meats, and crafts.
Dairy products are bewildering. There are several aisles in the biggest "hypermarkets" devoted to what I can only call "the yogurt family." This category includes but is not limited to: plain and flavored jogurt of different fat content: plain and flavored tvaroh of different fat content: plain and flavored smetana of different fat content: things which appear to be rice pudding: and things which are labeled desert. (jogurtovy desert is obvious, though the difference between it and jogurt is not: but other things I just don't know). It just goes on and on, with an amazing variety of flavors. At home I'm not very fond of this stuff, but here I have to work at not buying several and eating them all.
Cheese is rarely available in the huge blocks I like to get at home. Instead of Monterey Jack for the economical mild cheese, we have Eidam (note the spelling, which is different here from what it is at home). It's generally much blander than Jack. An equivalent to inexpensive Parmesan/Romano/Asiago is hard to find. However, for not much more money, you can indulge yourself in a fantastic variety of farm-made fancy cheeses, many of them formed into fine strings that are bundled, braided, and looped, either smoked or not, and many of which are flavored with herbs, nuts, fruit, or spices. I intend to bring a bunch of those home with me.
\Fresh meats I have not bought, but there's a lot of them. Frank and Hana are annoyed by their qualities, but I suspect that since I like soups and stews and pot roasts better than they do I would adapt to them better. Sausages and pates are present in a great variety. Last year I got into the latter in a big way (they are called pastinka) but even though they are really attractive if you love liverwurst like me, and they come with all sorts of exciting additions, they are extremely salty and have a lot of preservatives in them.
Hypermarkets sell almost every kind of thing you would want, though they don't have pharmacies in them like the biggest Safeways do at home. They do sell clothes and electronics and in at least one case, fabric (mostly for curtains as far as I could see). Also toys and even, sometimes, furniture.
Yesterday's trip to the Botanical Garden was lovely. The bus stops at the foot of a long, steep hill, and the entrance we took was furnished with stairs. I decided to take them at a decent pace, and because I brought my walking sticks, I could. It costs 50 Koruny ($2.50) to enter the garden and another 70 ($3.50) to enter the greenhouse (alas, we had no time for that today). The featured exhibit this summer is "Flowers of our great-grandmothers" which turned out to be several large beds of cottage garden flowers arranged in color groups. \We had a lot of fun talking about the colors. We also did a tour of the pleasant little Japanese garden (not world class, but cool and lovely) and then Frank called us from the parking lot outside the apartment building so we rushed home to meet him.
He had an adventure! Wandering around London and Kent looking for the places he had to go to, he had a successful ID check, got his blood drawn, interviewed with two locum agencies at both of which he had to demonstrate basic CPR (that is, the level that bystanders learn, not the level of competence he's actually expected to have as an emergency room doctor), picked up the car, and struggled unsuccessfully to insure it.
The car comes with five days' of insurance, so it was legal for him to drive it home. But UK insurance is Byzantine. Since they don't have a UK residence yet, it is unclear how they can buy insurance at all. Frank did ask how foreigners insure their rental cars but the insurance agent wouldn't discuss that. When he said he would be likely to be living in the Midlands, the agent said that depending on where he ended up, they might not cover him at all. He asked for which places they didn't cover (so he could avoid ending up there) and they said they did not divulge that information. And on and on.
Anyway, he drove on the UK side of the road and on the Continental side of the road with a UK-side steering wheel, and got home with little incident, and now they get to spend their days trying to get insurance. I believe I will go out on my own the next few days, after I do my writing and send things in.
On the writing front: finished this new version of The Conduit though I had a flash that I want to alter the ending somewhat, and wrote almost half of the other thing I want to submit before the end of the month (I think I am calling it "Tree-Hugger"). I was having severe doubts about how it was coming together, but I'm feeling somewhat better now. At least the market I'm writing it for is pretty likely to accept it if it is okay. Also figured out the dedication for Outside, which was surprisingly hard ("for the children of my accidental family"--accidental family being a term within the story).
At home I go to the store as seldom as possible. For one thing, it's a way to economize and to limit the treats I buy, because every time I'm in the store I buy stuff I don't strictly have to. For another, the grocery store holds few surprises and little mystery for me. Here, largely due to the simple foreignness of the place, it's an adventure and highly entertaining. I don't buy a lot of extra things, but I sure am tempted to discover the qualities of many of them. I'm struck by the sheer quantities of candy (mostly chocolate) and baked goods in the stores. I'm not entirely sure it's more than in stores in the US or if it's just more noticeable to me because the stores are arranged differently.
Bread is marvelous here. It's freshly baked and unwrapped on miles of shelves and kilometers of bins. Many stores have self-service fully-enclosed safety slicing machines. The variety of shapes and sizes and flavors of bread is stunning. And a lot of the bread is whole grain, with mixes of grains and seeds, just the stuff I love. And it's really inexpensive.
Frank and Hana complain about the quality of produce but I am sure that a large part of that is that they have such a small range of vegetables they will eat. If they were more open to eating more traditional Central European vegetables like beets and kohlrabi and leeks they'd have a better time of it. They do eat cabbage, which is frequently amazing here. Also throughout the peak growing season (which begins considerably later here than in California, naturally, and I think ends much earlier) there are Friday and Saturday markets all over town where some nice produce is brought in by farmers, though those markets are heavy on dairy products, meats, and crafts.
Dairy products are bewildering. There are several aisles in the biggest "hypermarkets" devoted to what I can only call "the yogurt family." This category includes but is not limited to: plain and flavored jogurt of different fat content: plain and flavored tvaroh of different fat content: plain and flavored smetana of different fat content: things which appear to be rice pudding: and things which are labeled desert. (jogurtovy desert is obvious, though the difference between it and jogurt is not: but other things I just don't know). It just goes on and on, with an amazing variety of flavors. At home I'm not very fond of this stuff, but here I have to work at not buying several and eating them all.
Cheese is rarely available in the huge blocks I like to get at home. Instead of Monterey Jack for the economical mild cheese, we have Eidam (note the spelling, which is different here from what it is at home). It's generally much blander than Jack. An equivalent to inexpensive Parmesan/Romano/Asiago is hard to find. However, for not much more money, you can indulge yourself in a fantastic variety of farm-made fancy cheeses, many of them formed into fine strings that are bundled, braided, and looped, either smoked or not, and many of which are flavored with herbs, nuts, fruit, or spices. I intend to bring a bunch of those home with me.
\Fresh meats I have not bought, but there's a lot of them. Frank and Hana are annoyed by their qualities, but I suspect that since I like soups and stews and pot roasts better than they do I would adapt to them better. Sausages and pates are present in a great variety. Last year I got into the latter in a big way (they are called pastinka) but even though they are really attractive if you love liverwurst like me, and they come with all sorts of exciting additions, they are extremely salty and have a lot of preservatives in them.
Hypermarkets sell almost every kind of thing you would want, though they don't have pharmacies in them like the biggest Safeways do at home. They do sell clothes and electronics and in at least one case, fabric (mostly for curtains as far as I could see). Also toys and even, sometimes, furniture.
Yesterday's trip to the Botanical Garden was lovely. The bus stops at the foot of a long, steep hill, and the entrance we took was furnished with stairs. I decided to take them at a decent pace, and because I brought my walking sticks, I could. It costs 50 Koruny ($2.50) to enter the garden and another 70 ($3.50) to enter the greenhouse (alas, we had no time for that today). The featured exhibit this summer is "Flowers of our great-grandmothers" which turned out to be several large beds of cottage garden flowers arranged in color groups. \We had a lot of fun talking about the colors. We also did a tour of the pleasant little Japanese garden (not world class, but cool and lovely) and then Frank called us from the parking lot outside the apartment building so we rushed home to meet him.
He had an adventure! Wandering around London and Kent looking for the places he had to go to, he had a successful ID check, got his blood drawn, interviewed with two locum agencies at both of which he had to demonstrate basic CPR (that is, the level that bystanders learn, not the level of competence he's actually expected to have as an emergency room doctor), picked up the car, and struggled unsuccessfully to insure it.
The car comes with five days' of insurance, so it was legal for him to drive it home. But UK insurance is Byzantine. Since they don't have a UK residence yet, it is unclear how they can buy insurance at all. Frank did ask how foreigners insure their rental cars but the insurance agent wouldn't discuss that. When he said he would be likely to be living in the Midlands, the agent said that depending on where he ended up, they might not cover him at all. He asked for which places they didn't cover (so he could avoid ending up there) and they said they did not divulge that information. And on and on.
Anyway, he drove on the UK side of the road and on the Continental side of the road with a UK-side steering wheel, and got home with little incident, and now they get to spend their days trying to get insurance. I believe I will go out on my own the next few days, after I do my writing and send things in.
On the writing front: finished this new version of The Conduit though I had a flash that I want to alter the ending somewhat, and wrote almost half of the other thing I want to submit before the end of the month (I think I am calling it "Tree-Hugger"). I was having severe doubts about how it was coming together, but I'm feeling somewhat better now. At least the market I'm writing it for is pretty likely to accept it if it is okay. Also figured out the dedication for Outside, which was surprisingly hard ("for the children of my accidental family"--accidental family being a term within the story).