Nanny Ogg in Bohemia

Here we are. I'm posting from Emma's apple laptop, which is a bit annoying but less so than any other apple computer I have ever used. It's about eleven in the morning on Tuesday, and we went out to take care of a little business (metro tickets, cash, some toiletries, and a phone I don't quite understand) and now Emma's crashing and pretty soon I am going to go out and forage snacks.

I keep having linguistic weird moments. A woman approached me at Schiphol -- the airport in Amsterdam -- and started asking me, in Spanish, if I happened to know which gate she needed to find to get the plane to Venice. Recall that this is a language I am not fluent but somewhat functional in. So I was able to tell her I didn't know, and that I was going to the gate for the Prague plane. She seemed a bit startled that I answered her in the language in which she spoke.

My first conversation in Czech went like this:

Me: "Kde je WC?" (where is the bathroom?)
Airport employee, sweeping the stairs: "Prosim?" (excuse me?)

Me: "Kde je WC?"

Airport employee; "Prosim?"

Me: "Toalety?" (another word for bathroom).

Airport employee points and says something which is definitely not the exact words I would expect for "The toilet is over there," or "The WC is in that corner," or any direction words relevant to the situation. But I see where she is pointing so I understand.

And: I said: "Gracias." (oops, wrong language: should have been "Dikuju.")

Second conversation in Czech:

Me: "Chtela bych dva jizdenky pet deny." Not correctly constructed, but roughly: "I want 2 five-day tickets."
Trafika employee points to the five-day ticket representation on the counter with an inquiring expression.
Me: "Si," ops, again: ought to have been "ano."

Third conversation in Czech: Tesco cashier says something I do not understand at all. I hand over my debit card and all is well.

Fourth conversation in Czech:

Me: "Mluvite anglicky?"
Mobile phone employee: "Yes."
Me: "Okay, good. I need an inexpensve phone . . . "

Trafika, by the way are sort of like convenience stores. They carry snacks, newspapers, metro tickets, cigarets, and some other stuff. The trafika where I bought my tickets was in the metro station at Devicka, and looked like an old-fashioned subway staton newstand, but some are hole-in-the-wall shops.

There was an Easter market on the street by the Tesco we went to, but Emma needed to crash so we marked it as a place to go back to later. You can totally buy spanking sticks there.

Frank tried to buy us 5-day tickets last night at the airport, but the Trafika was closed and the machines were misbehaving, so that one of them wouldn't give him anything and the other one decided that "two five day tickets" means "two 75-minute tickets, one of them a half-price one." So we decided that for the purpose of getting to the hotel, we would pretend that we thought I was old enough for a senior ticket. Not that anybody checked, of course. They very rarely do.

I'm going to go forage now. There's a cheese deli and a bread shop in this block.

I found my thrill on Petrin Hill

Frank took us to the Monastery beer garden at the base of Petrin Hill. Maybe not the base, maybe partway up. There's supposed to be an antenna on that r. We had beer and beer-based food. Emma and Frank adored ther goulash in bread bowls: I would have found it too salty to finish. Emma also ordered a beer cheese spread and potyato pancakes but could only eat a little, and I could only help her out with a few bites: way strong. I had beer-onion soup and a kind of blue cheese (don't know what kind of blue cheese) on thin whole wheat toast. And a cucumber salad with roasted pumpkin seeds and a tin splash of soy sauce (I thought it was probably dark beer at first, but it wasn't). We had two beers between us: an amber and the Easter beer, which was kind of lager-y or ale-y, I don't know enough about beer to say. Anyway, my Easter beer was a rich, light yellow color, with a light taste but a strong aftertaste that I called pleasantly bitter and Emma called too hoppy. Frank's amber had a thicker, sweeter (but not too sweet) taste, and an interesting aftertaste, less so than mine. The waiter was terribly surprised that we didn't want more beer.

Not far away in the complex of buildings around the monastery was a miniature museum which seemed to showcase the work of a SIberian who also designs tools for eye micro-surgery. Which explains why his wok features things like horseshoes on a flea and a caravan of camels marching through the eye of a needle. Understand I am speaking of literal fleas and needles and poppy seeds and mosquito wings. The museum has a series of counters which hold actual microscopes which appear to have been made for the purpose as the housings are fine oak. You cannot see the works without the microscopes.

Then we were on our way somewhere else when we had the idea to show Emma the HungerWall. This is a medieval version of the Works Projects Administration. So naturally we walked around the wall for a long time talkng about economics and governments and taking pictures (which I will post some of eventually). Then it felt like time to go and check on the funicular and see if it was running and we were coming down a shortcut and . . .

Emma took a nasty tumble and did something to her ankle, and it took us a couple of hours to just get down the hill and into a tram hotelward. Frank did some quick diagnostics and we iced her up (which involved me having another awkward conversation in Czech at the potraviny around the corner, where they nemaji led but the receptionist at the hotel found us some. Then we sat around talking and Emma chatted with Jason online and after a couple of hours Frank and I went out in search of food which was a minor adventure and finally produced kung pao beef, beef with broccoli, lemon chicken (without deepfried coating), and tiny glasses of plum wine for Frank and me while we waited.

It's early, early morning -- I'm going back to sleep for a while after this, I really only got up to get more acetaminophen for Emma (and me -- I am not damaged but we're on the fifth floor and I've been making a point of hardly ever using the elevator) and to pee. I kind of think Emma will still be in pain today. The pan for today is to put her on a streetcar and to ride around town just looking at things. If she's not up to even that, I intend to take that as a sign that she should be seen. So if it's that bad I'll ask the very helpful receptionist how to do that. They are very fluent in English, so I can dodge trying to express all that in Czech.