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Saturday, August 30th, 2014 06:53 am
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, then walking around for a couple of hours taking pictures whenever I felt like it. Then I hopped back on the tram going back, hopped off again, took more pictures, hopped on again, etc. This is possible because I have a monthly metro pass I don't even have to show anybody unless they ask. Hop on, hop off, to my heart's delight. The annoying bit was when the door of the tram wouldn't open at my transfer spot in the way back home and I had to ride to the next stop, cross the track, and ride back to the correct stop. What was annoying about this is that while the day had been balmy and slightly cloudy, there was one very brief period of intense rain -- right when I had to cross the track, up to when I had to walk the block from the correct tram stop to the bus stop. By the time I got off the bus at the "centrum" down the way from Hana's apartment, the rain had slowed to nothing, but my shirt was wet. Fortunately the shirt I wore under it was only slightly damp, so I took off the top shirt and replaced it with the dry sweater I was carrying in my backpack.

When I get around to uploading pictures I will show you the Art Nouveau Nationalist buildings with the amazing murals, the metro station at Luka (the one by home), and some Cubist and Baroque and Soviet-Era buildings. Also I went into Flora mall and took pictures of the international chain fast food joints in the food court, because while it has been years since I went into McDonalds or KFC in the US I am pretty sure these were more different here than just the deployment of Czech language.

For my own record keeping: most of my pictures were in Vinohrady (Prague 10) and near Karlovo Namesti (Prague 2) and all were within a block of the No.10 tram line or from the window of the No.174 bus (the one that runs to Motol). The stop I had to backtrack from was Motol Krematorium, but no pictures because it was raining hard and I had run my batteries down anyway.
Saturday, August 30th, 2014 11:23 pm (UTC)
" ... , because while it has been years since I went into McDonalds or KFC in the US I am pretty sure these were more different here than just the deployment of Czech language."

These U.S. chains do serve and do things differently in Europe than in the U.S, right down to pay. I learned this on my first trip to Italy -- where, in Milan, due to horrible rain, I ended up a couple of times at the McDonald's in the Duomo district. It was a hip place, which was my first comprehension. The menu wasn't the same, and of much higher quality. It cost more in lira than the menu in the U.S. cost then, but -- there was wine! and beer! Both to order and to take out of a vending machine (beer).

Vending machines dispensing beer may have been my biggest culture shock on my first European visits. My very first one was the Netherlands.

Looking forward to your photos very much.

Love, C.