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Today was the day I took the addresses I had for a couple of fabric stores and tried to track them down. Emma has this idea that the best souvenir is a length of fabric. I think it's a good plan, and I too look forward to finding Czech fabric selections.
It didn't work out that way today. I did ride buses and trams all over northeastern Prague and get a lot of pictures of huge apartment buildings and amazing municipal architecture. I did get a palacinka in Ted's memory. I did get a photograph of one of the fabric stores, closed for some inscrutable Czech reason -- literally, the opening hours were posted and also a note I couldn't read that mentioned today. 30 ledna. Also I found a restaurant named after Good Soldier Sjvek, which AMirtuth says is too expensive. I may go there to eat anyways. before I leave.
I did, as I say, eat a pancake for my dead. This is the import. My sweety was passionate about palachenken, which was his German-Hungarian mother's version of crepes, served with milk and/or apricot jam. So eventually I had to stop at a street palacinky stand and have one with apricot jam in honor of him, even if it did make me cry. It was so frustrating not to be3 able to say why I was having it! It took the young woman at the booth aboutseven tries to get it right. I kept saying it was okay, I didn't mind a broken one, but she was determined to do it right, no matter how many she had to toss. I took a picture of her, but I won't be posting any pictures till I get back on Tuesday.
Amiruth tells me, however, that if I go back to Narodni Trda and the big Tesco there, there is a fabric department on the top floor. Takes me back. I remember when department stores back home had fabric departments. So I guess I'll go there sometime in the next couple days.
Yesterday Frank took a long study break and we went to Narodni Muzeum -- the National Museum -- and saw a really extensive exhibit called "Republika" which was about the first Czechoslovakian Republic, from the gathering of the Czech and Slovakian soldiers out of the Austria-Hungarian army at the end of World War I to the betrayal of Czechoslovakia by France and Britain, and the dismemberment of Czechoslvakia at the hands of Germany and the instatement of the loathesome Father Tiso at the head of Nazi Slovakia. Frank filled me in on a lot of the details. One of the things he has been doing since coming to live here is reading up on Czechoslovakian history. He says that nobody really wants to hear about anything that happened before 1989.
Then we had a nice Czech dinner (I had cream of spinach soup to die for and I nearly did, later, because I keep conveniently forgetting I can't really digest cream, and Frfank has goulash and knedlicky) and then . . . the opera.
We dithered for days about which opera to go to. We were this close to going to Rigoletto but it turned out to be convenient to go see Nagano after all. This is a truly strange modern opera. Amiruth had warned us against it but I'm really glad we ended up seeing it. Hearing it. It was hilarious and surprising at every moment. The basic outline of the story is this: four times the Czechoslovakian ice hockey team has been within sight of the gold medal at the Olympics. This time they are determined to win. They have to play against Canada, the USA, and the Russians to win. They do, in dramatic play-by-play antics. However to do this, they sing many sings of few words, wear muscle-fat suits, make dramatic declarations, break dance, do gymnastics, sing a lot more, mix in video and industrialist (as opposed to industrial) music, and I can't even list all what. Subplots include the assistant coach falling in love with a Japanese woman who also served as a symbol of the gold medal, the goalie being very small and the puck being a beautiful woman in a ninja suit, a mysterious and hilarious body-building contest thrown in during the intermission . . . I don't know. A clown opera? Anyway it was great fun.
Tonight we're planning to go to the Cross, which I will tell you about anon. I am going to hand the computer back to its owner and hang up my clothes which have just been washed. Meanwhile, we're watching Italian music video tv. They seem to have fixed-up a bunch of stills into a video for Frank Sinatra doing "The lady is a tramp," which is really odd in context. He's still disgusting, by the way, unlike some of those guys who grow on you after a while.
It didn't work out that way today. I did ride buses and trams all over northeastern Prague and get a lot of pictures of huge apartment buildings and amazing municipal architecture. I did get a palacinka in Ted's memory. I did get a photograph of one of the fabric stores, closed for some inscrutable Czech reason -- literally, the opening hours were posted and also a note I couldn't read that mentioned today. 30 ledna. Also I found a restaurant named after Good Soldier Sjvek, which AMirtuth says is too expensive. I may go there to eat anyways. before I leave.
I did, as I say, eat a pancake for my dead. This is the import. My sweety was passionate about palachenken, which was his German-Hungarian mother's version of crepes, served with milk and/or apricot jam. So eventually I had to stop at a street palacinky stand and have one with apricot jam in honor of him, even if it did make me cry. It was so frustrating not to be3 able to say why I was having it! It took the young woman at the booth aboutseven tries to get it right. I kept saying it was okay, I didn't mind a broken one, but she was determined to do it right, no matter how many she had to toss. I took a picture of her, but I won't be posting any pictures till I get back on Tuesday.
Amiruth tells me, however, that if I go back to Narodni Trda and the big Tesco there, there is a fabric department on the top floor. Takes me back. I remember when department stores back home had fabric departments. So I guess I'll go there sometime in the next couple days.
Yesterday Frank took a long study break and we went to Narodni Muzeum -- the National Museum -- and saw a really extensive exhibit called "Republika" which was about the first Czechoslovakian Republic, from the gathering of the Czech and Slovakian soldiers out of the Austria-Hungarian army at the end of World War I to the betrayal of Czechoslovakia by France and Britain, and the dismemberment of Czechoslvakia at the hands of Germany and the instatement of the loathesome Father Tiso at the head of Nazi Slovakia. Frank filled me in on a lot of the details. One of the things he has been doing since coming to live here is reading up on Czechoslovakian history. He says that nobody really wants to hear about anything that happened before 1989.
Then we had a nice Czech dinner (I had cream of spinach soup to die for and I nearly did, later, because I keep conveniently forgetting I can't really digest cream, and Frfank has goulash and knedlicky) and then . . . the opera.
We dithered for days about which opera to go to. We were this close to going to Rigoletto but it turned out to be convenient to go see Nagano after all. This is a truly strange modern opera. Amiruth had warned us against it but I'm really glad we ended up seeing it. Hearing it. It was hilarious and surprising at every moment. The basic outline of the story is this: four times the Czechoslovakian ice hockey team has been within sight of the gold medal at the Olympics. This time they are determined to win. They have to play against Canada, the USA, and the Russians to win. They do, in dramatic play-by-play antics. However to do this, they sing many sings of few words, wear muscle-fat suits, make dramatic declarations, break dance, do gymnastics, sing a lot more, mix in video and industrialist (as opposed to industrial) music, and I can't even list all what. Subplots include the assistant coach falling in love with a Japanese woman who also served as a symbol of the gold medal, the goalie being very small and the puck being a beautiful woman in a ninja suit, a mysterious and hilarious body-building contest thrown in during the intermission . . . I don't know. A clown opera? Anyway it was great fun.
Tonight we're planning to go to the Cross, which I will tell you about anon. I am going to hand the computer back to its owner and hang up my clothes which have just been washed. Meanwhile, we're watching Italian music video tv. They seem to have fixed-up a bunch of stills into a video for Frank Sinatra doing "The lady is a tramp," which is really odd in context. He's still disgusting, by the way, unlike some of those guys who grow on you after a while.
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