Karlovy Vary

On Monday it was off to the spa town of Karlovy Vary, (German name Karlsbad) in the west of the Czech Republic with Julie and Ondine. We took a Student Agency bus for the 2.5 hour trip. These big yellow buses are really nice and inexpensive, and they come with a steward or stewardess who serves free hot drinks and plays movies. I was a little wary of taking a bus that far, but it was a delightful trip.

Karlovy Vary is famous for its hot springs and mineral waters. People have gone there for centuries to be cured of digestive ailments. And people still go there to "take the waters." The town is full of colonnades with mineral water fountains and fancy hotels for the patients. It has a relaxed atmosphere which befits a vacation/spa town.

It drizzled all day and was a touch chilly and grey, but it didn't matter. I felt like I was Catherine Morland visiting Bath, getting some water in the Pump Room and strolling up and down, seeing and being seen. I do so love Jane Austen...

This is the first fountain and promenade thing that we came to. The spring is on the left in a little room.

We bought some lovely ceramic cups so we could try the water. The cups have straws built in--the water is so potent and full of minerals and things that you can actually damage your teeth if you drink a lot of it. So you sip it daintily through the straw/handle. Here I am with my brand new blue and white Karlovy Vary cup.

I liked the ceiling of the colonnade. Apparently you are supposed to drink the water while walking. So all the fountains have beautiful places where you can stroll with your cup. And everyone had a cup! Some of them were huge! Like the kind of thing you can get at gas stations in the US. The Big Gulp version.Here is another fountain. They all have names and numbers and the temperature of the water on plaques. A medical person can therefore design a program of water drinking that you can follow all over the city.

How does the water taste? Well...some people love it. I could barely drink it. All the fountains are slightly different, so maybe there are some really tasty ones. I could only bring myself to try two of them. They were extremely metallic tasting, as though I was drinking the dregs of a solution that had been used to clean silver. Ick.

Karlovy Vary is full of Russians. They just love the city. Signs and menus are written in Russian and Czech, and there is a Russian Orthodox church in the city. Russians own a lot of the buildings, too, and there were even monuments to Peter the Great around the city. He visited once or twice, I think. There were lots of fur shops and high end jewelry and clothing shops. The Faberge shop was crowded. The poor town can't decide if it is Czech, Russian, or maybe German since it is also called Karlsbad.

We walked around and found the church. Here are some typical buildings on the way. The streets were small and lined with lots of trees and greenery. Very pleasant.

I liked this quaint gate. I believe it guarded the entrance to a not-as-grand-hotel.
And here is the Eastern Orthodox Church. All blue and gold.

We went inside but couldn't take pictures. There were some objects which I found quite interesting. I think they were paintings of saints and Jesus, but the painting had been covered up by gold and jewels and silver. Everything was hidden by delicately tooled precious metals except for the hands and face of the person depicted. The metal part was a few inches off of the painting so the hands and face were deeply recessed. Interesting. I wanted to poke the hands with a stick since they were so intriguingly hidden yet revealed.

I like the human, mundane touch of the man cleaning the windows on the left side.

We had lunch at "Little Versailles" restaurant where one of the specialties was a 3000 crown (about $175) plate for two with venison, pheasant, two quails and assorted side dishes. We did not order that. Lunch was yummy and then it was back into the slow rain.

We walked by a fancy shmancy hotel and spa, so I had to pose.

We continued our tour of the city, including the hottest spring. There are fifteen springs, most of which are about 140 degrees Fahrenheit. The hottest one is 163 degrees F. It is more like a mini-geyser than a spring. It sputters and shoots into the air. People sit on loungers and watch it. The building it lives in is all misty and humid. Don't try and fill your little cup from this fountain.

Karlovy Vary is also famous for its wafers. They are huge circles of thin, crispy goodness. There is a tiny bakery where they are made and sold in the same building as the geyser fountain. So we had to try some. Disregard the naked silver lady.

We took a funicular up to the top of a hill overlooking the city. Julie really wanted to find the "deer jump," which, so legend says, is where Charles IV was hunting and a stag struck the ground and a spring suddenly appeared. That is what founded Karlovy Vary as a spa town. Unfortunately, we didn't find the monument to this event, but we found a nice scenic overlook.

The leaves are changing! Oh the transition of seasons is always a little traumatic for me. I am never quite ready for the one to end and the other to begin. Nice view, though.

In the far right corner is the GrandHotel Pupp. You say it like "Poop" which caused us endless laughter. We are mature, adult women, two of whom work for their national governments...but Hotel Pupp and Pupp tea and Pupp cake...wow we did giggle.

Hotel Pupp was our eventual destination. We wanted to stop at the cafe and get some tea and sweets. Karlovy Vary hosts an international film festival, and all the important people stay at the Hotel Pupp. It was also the setting of a 2006 Queen Latifah movie, Last Holiday. The film is about a woman whose doctors give her only a few weeks to live so she takes her savings and goes to have a great time. She stays at the Hotel Pupp, and one of the jokes centers around the Pupp/Poop situation. It is not just us.

We went to the cafe through the lobby, which was beautiful. We felt a touch out of place, like slightly drowned rats, but all the other tourists looked the same, so it was okay. The cafe was beautiful and cozy with roomy booths and mirrors and old pictures. My Pupp cake and Pupp tea, and Ondine's Pupp strudel.

Here we are enjoying our goodies.

Back into the rain we went. To be mature and sensible.

Here is the river that runs through the town. We were near the really hot spring so you can see the mineral deposits and the heat flowing into the river.

They were going to try to use the hot water to heat houses, but the water is so full of minerals and things that it would have eaten away at the pipes. So they had to give up on that scheme.Another fountain and its promenade.

I felt like Catherine Morland again...

What a nice place to have lemonade and cookies and wear big hats on a summer day.

This is the spring. It is the Charles IV one. Notice how the basin is all orange? Those darn minerals again. Sort of scary though...I'm supposed to gulp down what is turning a stone bowl orange and crusty?

But I was brave and tried it. The mural above shows Charles IV and the stag.

The final colonnade we saw.

So forbidding but elegant. And everyone strolling about with their cups.

We caught our bus but instead of riding it all the way into the center of Prague, Julie and I alighted at the airport. There is a bus every half hour to Zlicin, the metro stop where I catch my bus back to Nove Straseci. Julie can get home from Zlicin faster than from the bus' eventual destination, too. It was funny to be in the airport without luggage or plans to go anywhere. We settled at a nice Coffee Heaven and waited for the bus. It was a very pleasant end to a very pleasant day.

Prague and Carnival

After returning from Tabor last Saturday I met the family by a bridge in Prague. They had gone on a boat cruise on the river. Their boat was a good deal later than they had thought, so I had some time to wander with my camera and the driver guy. We strolled up and down the quay. We have spent a lot of time together recently, mainly driving to and from Vienna. So I was sleeping and he was driving...He doesn't speak much English and my Czech is just embarrassing, so we do a lot of miming back and forth. And we laugh, especially when we cannot understand each other.

I am not in Prague very much at night since I am "on duty" afternoons to evenings. It is always a treat to be out and about when it is dark. (I sound like a vampire or other nocturnal beast. I am not.)

Here is the bridge where we waited, Jiraskuv Most.

Some swans in the river. Evil, evil swans.

I was trying to do a longer exposure to get the cool lines of light from the cars...think it is more migraine inducing than artistic, though.

Who knows what this is. But I like the squiggles.

And the Dancing House. Not on fire.

The mom and grandfather and boys finally returned. Honzik had a huge black spider painted on his cheek, and Lukas was sporting an awesome dog face. He looked hilarious, especially when he fell asleep immediately in his car seat. He seemed to be a sort of human bull dog wearing a baseball cap. Adorable.

The next morning the grandparents and I walked the five minutes from the house to the main square of the town. There was a carnival! Also adorable.

The boys loved it. More swans.
Lukas and the balloons.

Sometimes Lukas is very affectionate and cuddly. I taught him to say "big hug" and he likes to surprise hug me and say that. But sometimes he will see me and just say "Don't look at me, Cam-ur-ron!" This does not hurt my feelings. 1. He is four, I don't take it personally. 2. Sometimes I don't want to be looked at either, so I understand. 3. His English! Hurray, hurray! He has gotten so much better from when I first arrived. At first he said "No!" when he saw me. Then it became "No look!" Then "No look at me!" and now, after much repetition, he says, "Don't look at me!" I am so proud. And it has been quite amusing to work on that phrase with him. His little face gets all scowly and he says "No look at me, Cam-ur-ron!" and I calmly and kindly reply, "Don't look at me, Cameron. Don't look at me. Okay, Lukas?"

Honzik is seven and he takes some English at school, plus he was born in the US and heard English for his first two years. So he understands a lot and can speak pretty well. But when I first got here he would get frustrated when he couldn't understand me and when I couldn't understand him. Now, fortunately, our conversations rarely dissolve into tantrums. It is really neat to see him get more comfortable and confident with English. Basic sentences are within his grasp, now. And he has started to venture out of what he knows and try to create new phrases. I can see his brain whirring as he tries to respond to me or ask me questions.

Unlike Honzik, Lukas did not understand that I didn't speak Czech for the longest time. He would speak to me in Czech, chatter on and on, and then look totally confused when I did not understand him. He only recently, in the past month or so, seemed to get that English and Czech are two different languages. It has been a fun transformation.

He tries to take advantage of the barrier sometimes, especially when I tell him not to do something, like "Don't ride your bike down the slide, Lukas." He looked at me and said, angelically, "Ne resumim," which means "I don't understand." He did understand, though. And he didn't ride his bike down the slide. Victory! He has gotten into the habit of saying "Ne resumim" when he doesn't want to understand, and sometimes he says it to his mom or grandmother when they tell him something in Czech. Which is pretty funny.

His latest thing is to compare words in Czech and English. It started when we were eating pizza. I must have said "This is good pizza" or something, and he stared at me in wonder. "Pizza?" he said, "Resumim pizza?" "Yes, I understand pizza," I said. "Pizza is English." He clapped his hands, "Ceske: pizza!" "English: pizza!" I said, feeling like Henry Higgins. "Ceske, pizza, Anglicky, pizza!" he cried. Then we played the game with "pasta." But it sort of ended there since he isn't very familiar with Italian food words and I don't know enough Czech to find other similarities. We still play that game, and he also likes to test me on Czech words. For instance, "Resumim ano?" "Yes, Lukas, I understand ano." (ano means yes.) Before I could barely get him to answer me "yes" or "no" in English, but now he actually asks me what the English words for things are, and he is even teaching me some Czech.

We play "Go Fish" and "Uno" a lot. These kids had never played cards before and were amazed when I brought some from America. Go Fish is great for numbers, and Uno is great for colors. They don't like to sit down and get quizzed on numbers or colors, which I understand, but they love playing cards and they don't even realize they are practicing English. I have learned that child care is basically distractions and tricks. Nice tricks, though.

It is the little things that make this job fun. And I am really proud of how much English the boys have learned. I chatter away at the baby, too, in the hope that he will speak English along with Czech when he does start talking.

Here is a picture taken from my window of the Nove Straseci lake all covered in mist one morning. It has gotten sort of chilly and grey here all of the sudden. Where did summer go? I feel like I missed the summer completely, since this summer was so different from all my other summers. Also, the fact that I have not started school for the first time in what, two decades? I am disoriented.

Tabor

It has been a crazy week. I have not delved into any of this on my blog for several reasons, but now I feel like I can say something as the major step has been taken...the dad has moved out of the house, at the mom's request. Sounds like a divorce is not far off. Apparently, things have not been great for over a year. And lucky for me, the past six months have been the worst. (I did not know what I was signing up for when I gamely came over here.) Hopefully things will calm down and get more cheerful now. But it is very sad and I am overwhelmed. I am not prepared for this! And it has certainly put me in an awkward position. Which is okay, I can handle that--I am just sad for the children. I know there is not much I can do; I can't fix anything, but I want to help and especially to be a safe, happy place for the kids. I am quite invested in these children, now.

So that is how that stands.

On a happier note, Julie and her friend Ondine took me to Tabor with them on Saturday for a medieval fair! It was awesome for several reasons.

1. You know how I love Renaissance/Medieval fairs!

(Thanks to Julie for the pics of me!)

2. Great to get out of the house for a little while.

3. Trdelnik.

4. Underground tunnels.

5. No children to take care of.

6. Super cool travel buddies

We weren't able to get tickets to the bus we planned to take, so we decided on a train and headed to Marks and Spencer in Wenceslas Square for some nourishment pre-journey.

Then we strolled to the train station and hopped aboard. But our trip was interrupted. Turns out something was wrong with a section of track so we had to disembark about an hour into our journey and get on buses for about fifteen minutes, then get off of those and re-board a train. Finally we got to Tabor. Travel is never dull.

As we walked to the historical center of the city we stumbled upon a parade. Awesome.

See, this isn't a normal medieval fair. Tabor was built by Jan Hus' followers as a military stronghold from those mean Catholics. The town is wholly identified with the Hussites and their rather violent history. So instead of people in costumes selling funny things and a Queen Elizabeth impersonator judging a jousting contest (like American fairs) this one was all about the Hussites. And people were really into it. Really into it. Julie remarked that Tabor lives in sort of a dream world where they are still under attack from Catholics. They are obsessed with Jan Hus and his one-eyed lieutenant, Jan Zizka. Here he is.

As the people marched they shouted things like, "Health to Master Jan!" and "Zizka is our brother!" and "The anti-Christ is in Rome!"

It is a militant medieval fair. They were celebrating the Hussites and their victories and their victimization, not just the funny things and fun times of the medieval age. There was an atmosphere and an attitude of "Look at what we had to deal with and look at how we dealt with it!" Much more authentic, I think, than the flower garlands and turkey legs that I am used to. And the people looked so authentic, too. A group of hairy peasant men with axes and knives walked by in the parade after the mounted knights and I stepped back a little because I suddenly worried that they might have the plague. They looked so medieval!

There is something a little different about going to a Renaissance fair in an open field somewhere near Charlotte where you wind your way through a meadow of parked cars and pose with plastic dragons and knights...and a Medieval fair in an actual medieval town with actual medieval architecture and actual medieval history. Both are awesome, of course. Just a little different.

We walked around the town and I was amazed to see every square packed with tents and vendors and people in costumes and performances. The whole town was given over to the fair. It is a big deal.

There are some pretty, elaborate buildings in Tabor, but who cares when you have knights in armor walking around?

Look at what we spotted around a corner?

I got a cone of chips and a trdelnik so I was happy.

Tabor is great, but it became fantastic when I learned that there is a huge nextwork of tunnels underneath the town. The residents built them mainly for military uses in their battles against the anti-Hussites and partly for storage. They were also useful since fires often destroyed parts of the town, so the tunnels could help people escape the flames and provide a safe place if their houses were destroyed. There are 14 kilometers of tunnels, but not all of them are connected, so it is not a continuous 14 kilometers. We went on a tour of the tunnels underneath the main square. Almost every house had an entrance to the network. Stairs lead up out of the tunnels every few meters. So I guess people could go down and walk to their neighbor's house if they needed to borrow something. Would be quite convenient if it was raining!

We had to wear hard hats and the tour guide kept talking about the importance of staying together and she asked for volunteers to go last and often stopped to holler back to see if everyone was with us. I wasn't sure if she was kidding or not. It was cold and damp in the tunnels and the ceiling was not very high. An excellent excursion, and something I would not have known to do, and probably would not have had the courage to do by myself, so thank you, Julie!

We found the main square with a huge stage where bands and performances happened all day.

And guess what was playing? I felt like I was back in Cameron Indoor or Wally Wade. Not quite as authentic as the rest of the fair, but I loved it. Especially the dancing at the end of the video...