Winter

Winter has come to Czech Land.

Bummer.

On Thursday it snowed big, wet flakes. On Friday I woke up to white ground and even more snow that eventually turned to rain which washed away all the pretty fluff on the trees and houses and grass. Today it snowed in the morning again. It is the middle of October. Come on.

The zinnias on Friday.

A field near the house.

From a window.

And some video so you can see how it was coming down.

I know I am going a little crazy with the snow, but it has snowed more here in the last three days than it usually does all winter at home! My po' 'lil Suh'thun heart is not used to this!

Last week I went ice skating with the boys--first time in probably five years? I can't remember the last time I had been skating. And it was never a very common occurrence. But almost everybody ice skates here--hockey is a popular sport.

Lukas thinks it is hilarious that I am not very good at skating. He and I are about the same level, actually. He is four.

The first time we went I was very cautious and pretty scared of falling and breaking something. Like my face. We went again yesterday and I tried to bend my knees and be a bit more fearless. It was better. Still not great, but better. It is funny to be skating around with all these little kids and to push them out of the way so that I can grab the wall.

Just kidding. I didn't push anyone down. I was very aware, though, that I would not be able to dodge if a five-year-old did start coming at me.

Here are my borrowed skates. I always wanted a white pair! Just like in the Olympics. These are a bit dingy, but they used to be white! I think Eva borrowed them from a friend. As far as I can tell, they don't rent skates at the rink. Because everyone has their own.

Honzik is pretty good. All the kids wear helmets. And it is really, really cold in the rink so we are all bundled up.
Lukas got tired after half-an-hour of trudging along in his adorable miniature skates. So Eva pushed him around in a chair. There are several normal wooden chairs in the rink for kids to push or ride on, as well as the metal goal post things you can see. I used one of the metal contraptions for a little while but I felt guilty. They are for tiny children. I do get some funny looks at the rink since I am the only adult who is not a good skater.

Sorry about my creepy laugh at the end. Scary.

Sally!

I have been a bit more silent than usual--a rotten cold, COLD weather, and the GRE subject test...yuck...have occupied me more than I would like. But my cold is better, it has been snowing for three days so I am sort of getting used to it (but actually not at all), and I took the GRE last Saturday so that is over.

The test wasn't so bad; it was getting to the test center. I took a 6:00 bus from the village, got to Prague at 7:00, walked to the metro, rode on that for a few minutes, then attempted to find the center. It was a building in Prague's Technical University, and fortunately the complex was just by the metro station. I found the correct building, but the man at the door did not speak English and did not know that they were giving the GRE there. I showed him my ticket and we mimed for a little while and then he finally let me in. But I was about an hour early for the 8:30 test and I was the only person there. I didn't know which floor never mind which room the test was in, so I wandered for a while looking for signs. I tried to get a cup of coffee from the Nescafe machine--the coffee came out fine but the plastic cup that usually drops from the dispenser did not fall. So the coffee poured straight from the machine into the drain. Awesome.

I was getting a little desperate and trying to figure out who I could contact to give me the room number, when I heard another desperate sounding American voice downstairs. It was another test-taker, but this time the man at the door was being a real jerk and wouldn't let her in even though she had the same ticket as I did. Luckily, the GRE test givers arrived at that moment with their signs and were able to talk to the door man and figure it out.

There were six other people taking subject tests. Three from America besides myself--two studying abroad and one working in Germany--one person from Bratislava, and then some Czech people. Certainly a unique test taking environment!

After the lovely three hour exam I scooted out of there and met Julie for lunch in the city center. Then it was back to the bus and back to the village for an afternoon of child care.

So that was last weekend. But on Sunday night!!!!

Sally came to visit!

We went to Mala Strana and the Castle on Monday. Here we are by the castle:

By Malostranska Namesti (Lesser Town Square) we saw this awesome man and stag statue, which includes a crucifix in the deer's antlers. What does that mean? It looks like the man is worshipping the deer or expressing his undying love for it.

We walked across the Charles Bridge under a funny grey sky.

We asked a woman to take a picture of us with the river as our backdrop. She did, indeed, take a picture of us. And nothing else. This is the actual photo. I don't know how she found the zoom on my camera.

We walked through Wenceslas Square and Old Town Square before having lunch at my favorite Indian restaurant by my yoga studio. Then it was trdelniks for dessert:

and some shopping (though neither of us bought anything...) We did see an awesome Disney Princess playhouse. Too big for Sally's carry-on, unfortunately.

We took a late afternoon bus to the village. It was a bit too chilly for comfortable strolling in Prague. Sally met the grandmother, which was nice. The boys loved my sister. Even the baby was totally enamored. He gave her lots of hugs.

The boys enjoyed playing Go Fish with her and just hanging out. I think they were confused and excited to see two of us all the sudden. When I came downstairs on Tuesday morning the reply to my "Good Morning!" was "Where is Sally?"

Sally and I went to Karlovy Vary on Tuesday. Another really cold, rainy day. Naturally, Sally wore all my clothes, several layers worth. She does hate the cold. Sally tried the magical spring water and spit it out. It tastes a little like coppery blood. So yuck.

I got a picture with a giant Vodka bottle. Excellent.

We walked to the indoor spring to get warm.

Then it was a stroll to the Hotel Pupp for some excellent and expensive cappuccinos. After we had our fill of Karlovy Vary, which included two hot, fresh spa wafers (delicious!), we headed to Loket, the small castle town I went to a few weeks ago. We took the castle tour, which means we wandered around by ourselves, went into the church, walked around the teeny, tiny town, and then it was off again. I had wanted to go to Karlstejn but we didn't have time to make it there and catch the tour, so it was back to Prague for lunch at Cantina, a good Mexican restaurant. After some rather frenzied calculations (on my part) we hopped on a tram going one direction, got off, got on another one going in the opposite direction, hopped off that, got on the Metro, and made it back to the bus stop just in time for a bus back to the village.

So cold! It started to hail as soon as we were back in the house. That night we played UNO with the kiddies.

Sally took some pics of me and the boys, which is nice because I don't have a lot of those. Usually I am the one taking the pictures.

I went with Sally to the airport on Wednesday morning, cried when she left, kept crying, and then kept crying...the people on the bus looked at me funny. It was so wonderful to see her and to have her here so she could see where I live and meet the family and everything, but gosh it was hard when she left.

Movie of the Week XIII

Easy Living (1937)

I discovered this movie quite by accident (second half of a "box set.") Hurray for accidents! Easy Living was written and directed by extremely talented and capable screwball comedy people: Preston Sturges, of The Lady Eve (1941), Sullivan's Travels (1941), and The Palm Beach Story (1942), (the latter two films star Joel McCrea, my favorite,) wrote the screenplay, and Mitchell Leisen, who directed Hands Across the Table (1935) and Midnight (1939), directed it. Fact: There is a 1949 film by the same name but they are not otherwise related.

Screwball comedy is all about flipping reality upside down and seeing what happens when people act silly and step outside their normal roles. This is an excellent example of the genre. The movie has a typical Depression-era Cinderella story of rags to riches, and a riches to rags to riches plot, too. J. B. Ball (Edward Arnold, who often played loud, sometimes corrupt businessmen who yell a lot) is the 3rd biggest banker on Wall Street--the "Bull of Broad Street." The films opens to find him furious (and extra blustery) because his wife is spending way too much money. He is the stingy type of millionaire. Mr. Ball completely loses his temper when he sees a bill for a $58,000 fur coat. After a comical chase around their penthouse apartment, he throws the coat off of the balcony.

It falls down down down and lands on Mary Smith (Jean Arthur), who is riding a double decker bus to work. Mary immediately gets off the bus and tries to find the owner of the coat. She is honest and good, you see. Rather improbably, in my opinion, she finds her way to the Ball's door and runs into Mr. Ball, who is leaving for work. He admits that it is his coat, but gives it to Mary since she deserves it more than his wife. He doesn't stop there. When the coat fell on Mary, it broke the feather in her pert little cap. Mr. Ball insists on buying her a new hat. He takes her to a chic salon and purchases an expensive chapeau that matches the fur coat.

After this excursion, his limo drops her off at the offices of "The Boys' Constant Companion," the wholesome magazine where Mary works.

It may be wholesome but it is not friendly...the women see Mary's coat and begin gossiping. Within a few minutes of her arrival, Mary is called into the editor's office and asked about the coat. She says that she bought it on a payment plan since she knows that no one will believe that the coat fell from the sky. She is right; they don't believe either story.

Mary is fired because everyone thinks that she got the coat as payment for sexual favors or something. And that sort of thing can't happen at "The Boys' Constant Companion!"

She very satisfyingly breaks a portrait of "The Ideal American Boy" over the editor's head and storms out.

Mary gets home and we see that she is late on the rent and has no food in her apartment. In a funny but poignant scene she breaks open her piggy bank (first blindfolding the cute little piggy so it won't see the mortal blow falling) and heads out for some dinner.

But wait! A note from the posh Hotel Louis Louis arrives, asking her to stop by. Turns out that the people at the hat shop talked...word has gotten around that Mary is Mr. Ball's mistress. Mr. Louis is in debt to Mr. Ball, and his strategy to keep his hotel alive is to treat Mary like a queen and hope that Mr. Ball will forget about his debts. He gives Mary his nicest suite, a masterpiece of extravagant 1930s art deco, practically for free.

Mary is confused but she accepts the suite and heads out again for that dinner. She goes to an automat (awesome, wish we still had them, though I suppose vending machines are basically small automats) and tries to get some food, but she can only afford some coffee. She is very hungry...and when a handsome young waiter says he will rig the machines so that she can get some pie for free...well, she agrees to the scheme. But the waiter is caught and a fight breaks out. Wonderful, funny scene.

The waiter is fired, naturally, and Mary feels somewhat responsible. She invites him back to her hotel penthouse to talk it over. And who is this waiter? Why, it is Mr. Ball's son, Johnny (Ray Milland.) Johnny wanted to show his father that he could get a job and earn some money, so he left his mansion and worked for one day at the Automat.

Mary doesn't know that Johnny is Mr. Ball's son, and Johnny doesn't know that everyone thinks (wrongly, of course) that Mary is Mr. Ball's mistress. Think of all the fun stuff that can arise from this situation!

One of my favorite moments comes as Mary is giving Johnny (how everywoman and everyman are the names!) a tour of her suite. They try to figure out what the different dials and knobs on the insane bathtub do, until they mistakenly turn on the jets. When struggling to climb out of the tub, Johnny almost wipes out on the slippery side. That fall was unplanned and just happened--for a moment you can tell that Ray Milland is really laughing as he tries to regain his balance. The scene cuts almost at once because they actors must have completely lost it. Blooper Reel!

Everything escalates from there. Mary is suddenly overwhelmed by free cars, free gowns, free diamonds, free dogs, free stocks by vendors hoping she will put in a good word with Mr. Ball. She has no idea why people are suddenly so anxious to give her things! Johnny starts to wonder, too. Is Mary really as innocent as she appears?

As usual I am afraid I have given too much plot summary...I have a hard time stopping once I start talking about these movies! So--to be very brief--Mary and Johnny start to like each other, Mrs. Ball hears some unpleasant rumors, and Mary unwittingly starts a stock market crash...how will it all end? You can guess.

This movie is fresh and quick and it doesn't run out of steam, even though it centers on a fairly simple misunderstanding. The mistaken identities and screwball happenings keep the movie moving along. I love Ray Milland and Jean Arthur together, and the whole film looks fantastic and sort of ironically glamorous.

The movie is not just entertaining. It is especially interesting given that it was produced during the Depression. Beneath the funny surface there is some serious anxiety over the stock market (it all seems so nebulous and arbitrary--if Mary can cause a crash with a silly tip, then what is protecting people's investments?), working women struggling to pay the bills (so much false "prostitution!"), the irresponsibility of the wealthy (Mrs. Ball), and fear of the mob (the hungry people storming the Automat). Even the title is interesting: easy living for whom?

Zoo

On Sunday Eva and the boys and I headed to the Prague Zoo. It was a blustery but not too cold afternoon and the zoo was crowded with lots of parents and kids. The zoo is in the city but you don't feel like you are in an urban area. There are beautiful trails and the animals seem to have lots of space inside and outside. I forgot I was in Prague.

We saw some weird monkeys in the Jungle exhibit. I like monkeys. They seemed a bit sluggish; they didn't swing around Tarzan style. Perhaps we were interrupting their afternoon nap.

The Jungle part was a big indoor pavilion so they could simulate a tropical environment. But most of the animals were outside. We strolled with the stroller along the trails and saw loads of animals in their paddocks.

There were so many dogs! It seemed like almost everyone there brought their dog to the zoo! There were signs up about keeping your dog leashed, duh, but still. I am not sure I would take my dog to the zoo. I would be afraid that a dog would see the lions and go crazy. Especially since a lot of the animals were outside behind fences that a dog could find his way through. Maybe European dogs are better behaved or more used to zoos?

I saw Hedwig!

A hyena sleeping underneath a skull. I felt like I was in Arizona or something. I wish the hyena had been awake since I wanted to see it up close.
This picture of a bison came out a bit more artistic than I planned. I did not mean to focus on the grass but I sort of like it. It was odd to be all the way in Prague and see animals that are native to North America.
I liked the camels, too. There were lots of them. I always thought that the "Sally the Camel" song was about my sister and my first grade class was singing it because I was there. I have since realized the truth.
Zebras are so cool. They make zebra print look silly in comparison. These zebras were having some lunch by their cabin. But they had a large grassy area in which to roam.
The Prague Zoo has an upper and a lower part. You can walk a trail between them or take a chair lift down. We had the baby so we walked. About halfway there, as we passed various animals and the boys ran around, we saw this house in the distance.
I think it must belong to the zoo since it is basically right in the middle of it. It seemed sort of Edgar Allen Poe or Hitchcock--deserted and alone against a grey sky with ivy crawling across the side.
It is probably administrative offices or something very mundane.

I was amazed at the different terrain the zoo possesses. A huge wall of rock, a cliff, was suddenly right there amidst the trees and flat land. You can see mountain goats perched impossibly on the rocks.

If you look very carefully you can see the chair lift. Up on the hill is the upper part and down where the people are is the lower.

The lower part was covered with water in the horrible flood of 2002. There was a flagpole with a pennant on the top marking the water level at the worst moment of the flood. It was probably thirty feet high. They were able to save most of the animals, thank goodness. There were pictures of the zoo when it was flooded. Absolutely covered with water. The lower part is next to the river, which is why it was hit so hard. I would have liked to read the plaques and learn more about the flood and where they put the animals and what procedures and protections they have in place to prevent something similar from happening...but it was in Czech. And even if I could read it, it is hard to pause when there are two young boys running around and a baby in a stroller who really wants his yogurt.

Much of the lower part has been rebuilt so the pavilions are new and there are nice places to eat. Overall, I was very impressed with the zoo. It was so kid friendly. There were benches everywhere, lots of places to eat, many, many little statues and exhibits and playgrounds for kids to touch and climb on. So the boys spent the entire afternoon running from a wooden bear statue by the polar bears to a mini-ropes course by the monkeys and a playground by the seals. It wasn't fun for me to have to keep track of them during their wanderings, especially in the dark jungle-type buildings...but they were fine. At times it was tricky to juggle my irrational fear of even seeing a snake behind glass and trying to keep an eye on the boys.

They liked the tigers. The boys would jump and squeal if the tiger even came near them or looked in their direction.

I don't know what these are but they were next to the tiger pen. Too cute.
This bird was a shocking orangey pink. Hard to believe it is natural.
Here is a kid train that the boys loved. It went around in a circle but they pretended to drive it.

See how kid friendly the place is? They even have carts you can use to pull tired kids around. And I love how the cart is a Mercedes. Not really, it is just an ad. But funny.

So now I have been to the Prague Zoo! Check that off my list. It was a fun, if at times stressful, visit. I was reminded that zoos are really amazing. It is so cool to see animals like that in real life and up close.

Cesky Krumlov II

After several attempts and a great deal of stress I finally found my way back to Cesky Krumlov.

Five hours after leaving the house I arrived at the castle, bought a ticket for Tour 2 and ran up the hill just in time to join the group. As the tourist season has passed, the tour was not offered in English. So I listened to the Czech and read the English off of a sheet of paper in a plastic sleeve. There were two other English speakers and three Czech people, so I was not alone in staring confusedly at the tour guide and glancing searchingly at the paper. It was a bit frustrating since the guide spoke English and so could have given us a little bit of guiding...but it is about 100 crowns more expensive for an English tour and we only paid for the Czech. Bummer. Still cool though. Tour 2 takes you to a different part of the castle where the Schwarzenberg family lived in the 18th and 19th centuries. The rooms were a touch shabbier than the ones on Tour 1, (the main part of the castle with the banquet halls and things) but interesting, nonetheless. The part I remember most was the bedroom of two young princesses, whose mother, Duchess Pauline, died at the ball celebrating Napoleon's engagement to Maria Louisa. A fire broke out in the ballroom but Pauline stayed inside, desperately searching for her young daughters. Horrible. Next to one of the beds was a girl's white dress; a replica of what one of the daughters was wearing at the ball. How awful! Let's show what the child was wearing the night that her mother died in a fire. Terrible.

The Schwarzenbergs acquired a tremendous collection of early 17th century Dutch tapestries. My question: where did they get them? Strange, you never hear about how these noble families got all their stuff. Did they purchase them legally? Steal them from an enemy they destroyed? Pillage someone else's country estate? Go to Holland and take them from the workshop? I don't know. They are beautiful and apparently quite valuable. It surprised me, then, to see the windows open in the rooms where the rare tapestries adorn the walls. We are so strict about climate control and preservation and obsessively monitoring everything special in American museums, so it always amuses me to see the more relaxed attitude over here. Maybe since they have so much old stuff they aren't as concerned about it? I remember my family and I were in a small town in Austria on a tour of a palace, or maybe a town hall? and the tour guide was really strict about "No pictures!" of the tapestries on the walls because the flash would damage them. Then we turned around and saw that all the windows opposite the tapestries were wide open and the sun was rushing in along with dust from the road...We chuckled.

There was a photograph of the Austrian Empress Elisabeth (Sissi) in her wedding dress, I believe. Sissi and the Schwarzenberg Princess Eleonore were contemporaries. It was funny to see Sissi in Cesky Krumlov. The Austrians, or at least Vienna, is obsessed with her. You see Sissi everywhere--on mugs, bags, jewelry, books, postcards, blankets, shirts...etc. She is a sad figure--depression, anorexia, hypochondria, obsession with her own cult-like status...but enormously popular and fascinating in her own time and ours.

The tour ended in the Cloak Bridge, which is a two story passageway from one part of the palace to the gardens farther up on the hill. The passages were begun in the 18th century. They are beautifully decorated with painted walls, lots of windows, cool lanterns, and Baroque maps of Europe. Every 15 feet or so are metal doors folded back against the wall so you can barely see them. They are painted to blend in with the walls, but in case of fire they could be closed to hopefully stop the spread of flames across the passage from one part of the castle to another.

No pictures inside the castle--darn it, but here is the Cloak Bridge from the outside.

The Cloak Bridge is neat, but it seems sort of wasteful to take up all of that space with just a passageway. If I had been their architect in 1706, I would have suggested they build a new wing to connect the castle to the gardens. A long hallway seems to have limited uses when compared to a whole new set of rooms! But no one consulted me.

You can sort of see the white Cloak Bridge on the left of this picture. The main castle is the grey-ish beige block on the right.

I bought a ticket to tour the Baroque Theater later in the afternoon and began walking about the town in search of lunch. I had an excellent pizza at the foot of the castle. But then I started to worry about catching my bus back to Prague. I had the ticket for 3:00, so I knew I had a place. But. There are two bus stops in Cesky Krumlov. I had gotten off at the first one since I could see the castle tower from that one and figured I was less likely to get lost if I could keep the tower in view. But my ticket said the bus left from the second bus stop. I didn't know if the bus would stop at the first one on the way back, and I was also stressed about making it from my 2:00, 45 minute tour of the theater to the bus stop at 3:00. Especially since I didn't know where that bus stop was or how long it would take me to get there. So I let my stress get the better of me and spent the next hour and a half fretting. I did a "practice run" from the castle to the bus stop, which should have taken me 12 minutes but took me forty since of course I got lost. The woman at the bus stop didn't speak any English so my "Does the bus stop at the other bus stop, too?" query did not make it through. I walked back to the castle, figuring I should try to return my theater ticket since I didn't want to get stuck in Cesky Krumlov. I asked the woman at the tourist information desk about the bus and she said that it did stop at the first stop, Spicak. So I felt better. I asked another person, just to be sure, and they said it did, too. So I bought a trdelnik and settled down on a bench by the castle to try to breathe. Welcome to my neuroses.

I had a shopping list from Eva to fulfill so I spent the next few minutes accomplishing that task. When we were in Cesky Krumlov back in July she bought two mugs and some excellent dark chocolate, and she asked me if I could get two more mugs and some more chocolate. I bought myself a squat, chubby blue mug with an elephant on it. I had seen it in July and was very excited to find it again.

Then it was off to the Castle Theater Tour. Which I am so glad I stayed for. It was really cool. There are only two Baroque theaters like this in the world. One in the Royal Palace in Sweden and this one. There are some other stages and things, but only two theaters with their original buildings and stages still intact. Cesky Krumlov was apparently an extraordinarily active place for theater, which is why the occupants of the castle built this one. They had their own theater troupe and professional musicians so they could have performances all the time. The theater was constructed in the 18th century. There is a beautiful royal box and upper level where the nobility would sit.

The tour group (me, three other Americans, and about 25 Japanese people--indeed, when I was here in July the town was packed, but this time it was quite empty except for groups of Japanese people and me,) sat on the long wooden benches while our tour guide told us about the theater. She was in her fifties but she was dresses like a tween in a black plaid mini-skirt and a red sleeveless shirt and lots of big necklaces. Her makeup was something to see, too. She had a pretty thick accent but spoke slowly and loudly so it was okay. And I was just excited that this tour was in English. She was a great tour guide--very enthusiastic and excited about what she was showing us. At one point she said, "Baroque music was extraordinary. (That was her favorite word and she smoothed it out into about ten syllables). Here is a song for you." I assumed she was going to turn on the TV which she was standing next to and show us a taped performance, but instead she began to sing! Awesome.

The stage itself seemed to go on and on.

The coolest thing about the theater is that the 18th century sets and costumes still exist. There are more than 350 backdrops (extremely elaborate and beautiful), almost 600 complete costumes including accessories like shoes and hats and gloves, 2,4oo props, and lighting equipment and stage machinery. The tour guide demonstrated some of the equipment for us, using replicas, naturally. There was a machine that looked like a wooden lawnmower and made a sound like thunder when you rolled it on the floor. Another big circle thing made a rain noise when you moved it. The flying machines still exist that would raise and lower gods or angels or whatever from the stage. We got to go under the stage so see the trapdoors and all the ropes and equipment. Really amazing. They could completely change the stage with all of its backdrops and everything in about ten seconds. Something like 24 boys would be at work beneath the stage pulling ropes and dragging backdrops around and making thunder noises. It seems that the extraordinary quickness of the scene changes and the special effects were the stars of the production, not the actors or the play itself. It would have been magnificent to see it, especially since only candles would have lit the theater so everything would have been sort of mysterious and dim. It would have looked like magic.

The theater reminded me a little bit of the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza, Italy. Professor Finucci and I went there one of the last weekends I was in Venice. It is older, a 16th century theater, and was designed by Palladio. But it had the same amazing decoration of the building--this is the back of the theater:

...and an incredible stage. Palladio designed it as a Roman theater. Scamozzi designed the set, which is the oldest surviving one in the world. It has remained on the stage since the first performance since it was so beautiful.

The perspective he created makes it look as though the stage keeps going and going into the distance. Apparently, to sustain this illusion, they would hire short people and even midgets to walk around at the back of the set during performances.

I like modern, spare sets as much as the next person, but after seeing these ornate, gorgeous theaters I wish a bare stage with one chair and a bed wasn't so typical today.

Back to the Czech Republic: the Cesky Krumlov theater was in a horrible condition until 1966 when it was closed and they began restoring it. They have a few performances here every year, which are mainly for studying the theater. Since this is basically the only theater like this left (I don't think the one in Sweden has as many props and machines), a lot of people come here to study it. There are some machines and other objects that we still don't understand. So they make replicas and experiment to try and figure out what in the world it was used for. Isn't that cool? The whole thing is an amazingly intact relic from another time.

My trip, including the seven hours in a bus and the stress I needlessly caused myself, was worth it just for the theater. So farewell Cesky Krumlov! I finally made it back and I can check that off of my list.