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 in the area called Bubenec, so that one made sense. By the way, from the picture you can see that Prague is "Praha" in the Czech language.

As you can tell, the names of streets here are very unusual for our American eyes. Here are some examples: Ceskomalinska, Jilemnickeho, Kaderavkovska,  Ceskoslovenske armady, V jircharich, Marianske namesti, Dvorakovo nabrezi, Chelcickeho, and Vaclavske namesti. We learned that "namesti" mean a square - usually an open area in the the middle of the city where there will be a grassy area or market square.

No wonder we were lost all the time when we arrived.

However, we have found a few names that are more familiar to us. There is a street named Wilsonova - named after Woodrow Wison. Rooseveltova is also located in Bubenec. But the best one is that one block away from our new flat is Ronalda Reagana. Of course, that's probably not too surprising since our flat is down the block from American ambassador residence. We'll just have to stroll down that street when we get homesick for the USA.

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