One of the things that people who want to be experts on Prague like to do is to ascribe things that they don't approve of to the Communists. Prague was a Soviet Bloc country from roughly 1945 to 1989, almost forty-five years: long enough o start some tradtions and lose some others. So it seems likely that there is Soviet inlfuence in daily Prague ( Read more... )

The details are here.I promise this livejournal is not turning into All Book Promotion All The Time. I just feel I must do my job ( Read more... )

Yesterday we rode the funicular up Petřín Hill to walk around the rose garden and the Secret Garden, which is one of the most beautiful gardens ever. It's not really a secret, though its entry is subtle. It's laid out on a hillside, with benches strewn about it. It smelled so sweetly of alyssum that I was just rapturous about it. This was the first ( Read more... )

Monday night Frank took me to see the Berg Orchestra do a concert around the streets of the Clementinum. It's kind of hilarious, listening to modernist music in a Baroque chapel. The music itself is actually very nice. The soundwalk in the first part of the concert didn't work for me because I could not keep up with our leader, so we went back to ( Read more... )

At noon on Sunday the village church bells go off for a long, long time here. Also they still have the noon civil defence whistles on I think Wednesday? I haven't heard the whistles but I heard the bells today while I was writing writing. That's all I did today. I wrote wrote wrote except taking time off to watch "Belle" on Frank's computer ( ( Read more... )

In a week and a half we're going to walk up to the hilltop amphitheater to see the opera Čert a Kača (The Devil and Kate) at Divoká Šárka, which is a park in Prague. Today we went walking there to go to the restaurant Šárka which is a little higher along the path. There, Frank had barbecued boar's ribs, and Hana had a rather bland Chicken Cordon ( Read more... )

Yesterday I went out to take pictures. I used to have thousands of pictures of Prague architecture and street scenes, but a computer crisis of my own making obliterated all but the tiny fraction I had posted to Picasa. So I thought I would replace some of them. I did this by hopping on a bus, changing to a tram, riding till I felt like hopping off ( Read more... )

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 ( Read more... )

In heading off for Strakonice for the last day of the bagpipe festival, I undertook a great adventure of the adventuring kind. The trip was under-planned and under-resourced (I should have printed out the program and maps of the town before I left California). Also, the bankomat gives out money in 1000 Kč bills, which is equivalent to about fifty ( Read more... )

Successful mission: go out on my own, find bankomat, get money, buy maple syrup for Frank and Hana at the DM Drogerie. A drogerie is a store that sells shampoo, body oil, shower gel, suntan lotion, very small packages of tampons, deodorant, inexpensive and hygeinic cosmetics, baby food, and a wall of "natural foods." Drugs are bought at the Lekarna ( Read more... )