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Showing posts from June, 2017

WHAT WAS THAT NAME AGAIN?

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This week brings a big change for us. We are moving from our temporary apartment to our permanent flat across the city. That means packing everything we brought plus the extra food, etc we've accumulated since we arrived. At least, we don't have to get it into the six suitcases this time. But however many boxes and bags, we need to move this all ourselves by Friday morning. We are moving from a street called U Libenskeho pivovaru. When we first saw that name our first reaction was WHAT? How do you begin a name with the letter U all by itself. And why is the name so long? After we were here for a couple weeks, we found out that the letter U by itself is a preposition meaning "on, at, near". The area of Prague that we live in now is called Liben. Finally, we learned that the all important word beer is "pivo". So the name of our current street means "Near a brewery in Liben". We are moving into an apartment on Bubenecska. Bubenecska is located i

Take a Ride with Me

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Today I'm going to take you for a "virtual" ride on a Metro in Prague. The train system is mostly underground as it transports people around the city on three different lines - Green, Yellow, and Red - which intersect in a couple places in the downtown region. I'll take you on one of these trains - or at least describe this experience: Train stations are all configured differently. In most cases, you walk down a set of stairs to access the underground tunnels, a cool breeze from below brushing past your face. You might see hallways that access the escalators going down to the platforms below. Other stations are blocks long with stores located  below ground to purchase groceries, clothes, etc. Of course, the ever present coffee shops are there for the early commuters. I can't imagine that too many people shop at these stores. Everyone scurries past on the way down to the trains. I never have ventured into any of the stores to see if they are more expensive than

IT'S THE SHEETS

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This is what our bed looked like when we arrived in our temporary apartment. It's clearly two twin beds next to each other and next to a wall. But what was with the large pillows? And what were the large "blankets" lying on top? And what were the gray things on the top of the beds? All of these questions flew through my mind as our landlords were showing us around. During the quick tour, our landlady showed me where there were sheets up in the cupboard in case we preferred sheets. Preferred sheets? Of course, a bed has to have sheets. After they left, I started checking out the bed. The gray material was almost the texture of terrycloth - but it was clearly not a towel. Well, it didn't seem right to sleep on that material no matter what, so I searched out the sheets. When I pulled them out, I found an off-white soft almost flannel fitted sheet. Two fitted sheets, but no flat sheets in sight. Since I couldn't possibly sleep on the gray cloth coverings, I pull

DOING LAUNDRY IS ALWAYS THE SAME - OR IS IT

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Thankfully, we have a washing machine in our apartment. I was thrilled to hear that. I must say that it's quite tiny, though. It sits below the cabinet in our bathroom as you can see in the picture. Because of it's size, I need to do laundry almost every day. One load consisted of our two bath towels. It seems ridiculous, but the washer was full with just the two towels. The first time I tried to wash a load, I couldn't figure out how it worked. I mean how hard can it be to use a wash machine. I've been using them for more than 40 years. On the day we moved in, the landlord tried to explain it to me in his clipped English, but I just waived him off and said I'd figure it out. When it came right down to doing it, however, it was a different matter. The dial looked much more complicated than I'd ever seen. The strange thing to me was that the red numbers in the display window had 137 in it. I wasn't sure what that meant - temperature of the water? s