Peeking into the rock

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 Bleu, and I had Czech food. This time it was okay pork in Universal Brown Sauce (not bad but disappointing compared to the really nice sauce I had in Strakonice last week), really nice potato knedlicky (that's an accomplishment, as this kind of dumpling is often just like eating lead), and a sweet and sour cabbage dish with caraway that I thought would be better with less sweet and sour and less cooking so it was less soft. It was nice enough, though.

I can't upload pictures tonight because the batteries for the camera are charging, so you have to take my word for it that the park is beautiful. You know those Romantic landscape paintings? They might as well have been painted in Divoká Šárka. The rock outcroppings and swift little river are that dramatic. It's what passes for wilderness in Central Europe -- no, really, even if it wasn't in the city limits, it would be no wilder than this anywhere in the region. So while it is a park that people go camping and hiking in, you get to it on a regular city bus, and there are restaurants and a swimming pool and houses and fruit trees and farm fields in it.

The fruit trees have a story. Empress Maria Theresa had a lot of interest in fruit trees. She required the roads to all be lined with them and undertook schemes to get householders to plant more of them. Consequently, to this day, parks and roadsides all over Prague are thickly planted with apples, cherries, elderberries, all kinds of plums, and other things I don't recognize. When I leave the apartment, I graze on the plums (which are totally in season here -- the fruit is so much later than in California that the cherries just ended) in the park or on the way to the bus stop. Being plums, they have hybridized to a high degree, and no two trees are alike.

Divoká Šárka has a story of its own. It's all legend but the Czechs used to call it history. Back in the mists of time, the Czechs had a queen, Libuše. The men were kind of restive that she had ended up in charge, but she handled them carefully. She gave herself an air of deference and when the time came to marry she put on a full-force visionary search for the right man -- who happened to be a plowman, Přemysl, who she was already in love with. So she did all right. Then when she died the Czech men went full-force patriarchy and the young women revolted. One of the leaders was Divoká (wild) Šárka, about whose demise there are at least three conflicting versions I have read or heard -- either she was captured and killed by the men, or she leapt from the rocks rather than give in to the men, or she seduced and killed the men's general and then leapt to her death in remorse.

I really feel the fact that I weigh fifteen pounds more than I did a year ago. I really need my walking sticks and I sweat a lot hiking in the muggy Prague weather. Did I mention it rained quite hard for a while? But we were under the shelter at the restaurant, and we waited it out. Anyway, one of my goals on returning is to lose that weight and the weight I meant to lose during the year I was gaining all that.

Frank and Hana continue to struggle with getting UK administrative stuff squared away. Hana found a source for Czechs talking about moving to the UK, and picked up some tips that may be valuable.

Also, today, I (e)mailed off the galleys for Outside and submitted The Conduit to Tor's new e-imprint. I didn't finish the tree-hugger story but I still intend to do that in the morning and barely meet the deadline.

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, which was closed. I wanted to get glucosamine because my fingernails started crumbling again, and a non-drolwsy antihistamine because I lost my bet with the universe so I'm allergic to the guinea pigs. Oh well, I thought it migfht happen, because my rat allergy extended to mice already. It's not nearly as bad with the guinea pigs as the rats. If it had been pet rats I would have walked in the door and been hit by a wave of toxicity. With the pigs oit tookm a half-hour of cuddling before the reaction set in.

Also had my first two typical linguistic interactions. Did I mention that even though I drag my dictionary and declension book with me everywhere I basically have given up on actually learfning Czech? I just get along and it's all fine.

First liguistic interaction type was in the Drogerie. I explaimned that I don't speak Czech, I speak English, and the young woman switches right over with a solicitous air. Czechs know they have a difficult language and they are often very gentle with foreigners.

The other typical interaction was on my way back. I was taking pictures of a plant that I think is related to gooseberries and currants or maybe to heather. It has those pitcher shaped little flowers and the berries are a plausible shape. A Czech woman of about my age came up and told me a lo about the plant, happily acknowledging and then ignoring my apology for not speaking Czech. She used the word for currants, rybiz, but she alspo stepped on two berries while saying something pointed, so I think she was telling me that they l.ook like currants but they aren;t edible. Finally she asked me if I was Russian.

As I say, this is two of the more typlical linguistic interactions I get in Prague. I am not complaining. Nobody has ever endangered or even inconvenced me by refusing to believe I don't understand them, and I think it's hilarious that so many people here think I am Russian (or Portuguese).

I am having lethal connectivity issues that we don't understand. I think it's a compatibility issue, but I can't be more specific. What happens is that most of the time my computer is unable to use the wireless network here, and for several hours today it couldn't even see it. We tried hooking the computer up to the modem with a wire, but apparently the computer doesn't have the capability of using a wired connection? For anywhere from a few seconds to a couple of hours, though, I can get online just fine. I usually forget what task I set out to do with that when it happens, though.

It doesn't matter too much, though. I can use Frank's computer when I need to send things in.

I finished reading the galleys for Outside suspiciously quickly and now I am sure I did it wrong. I only found one typographical error and one continuity error that was totally my fault and easy to fix. But I'm just going to give it a cross-eyed glance again on Tuesday and send it back and hope for the best.

And I'm also making slow but steady progress on the all-new Conduit (written from scratch with a different presentation and predicted to be novella length).

I did take some pictures today but I'll probably upload them the day after tomorrow. I'm going to Strakonice for the day tomorrow to listen to bagpipes. I will keep trying to get Hana to go with me but I think she is not as enamored of bagpipes as I am. Frank is flying to the UK to get registered for work at temporary doctor agencies, and to pick up a car they have bought there. Things are starting to move fast on that front after sitting still for way too long.