I am sitting on a park bench just below the Strahov monastery, looking out over Prague, the castle, and the river. It’s sunset. I’ve been here now a week and I’m still floating on air. This city must be one of the most beautiful on the planet. Twisty medieval streets, ancient churches, amazing architecture. Here’s a look from where I’m sitting: (taken in the daytime)
Now to step back in time a week....
I got to the Rochester airport on Tuesday the 21st and found that British Airways was having computer troubles with their system. I had to spend 45 minutes waiting while they tried to fix the problem; the manager finally checked me in manually. Hmmmm. Not the most auspicious start. I then flew American from Rochester to Chicago. At O’Hare I went to British Airways and it turned out the entire flight from Chicago to London wasn’t registering in the computer system. They ended up checking us all in one by one from a paper list. The wonders of modern technology! We flew to London, I got maybe 3 hours sleep on the flight, and at 7 am London time (equals 1 am Central Time) we arrived at Heathrow airport. Then, got on the final leg, from London to Prague. I arrived in Prague on the 22nd at 4 pm local time (Central European Time). My colleague (and friend) Leos Dvorak and his wife Irena were there to meet me. Yay! Unfortunately, only one of my two checked bags had made it to Prague. The missing bag was the largest one and had almost all of my clothes, toiletries, etc. Arghhh! I got a claim check from the airport and Leos and Irena loaded me into the car.
We went to their flat for a short time, then it was on to OUR new flat. We met the realtor Lucie there. She had to use 3 different keys to get into the apartment. It was then sort of like closing on a house – there was a whirlwind of forms, checklists, etc. Finally it was done and we had a place to live. Leos and Irena took me to dinner at a nearby restaurant, Marjanka, which had typical Czech food. And beer (pivo), of course. The beer here is fantastically good and cheaper than bottled water or Coke. So why drink anything else? :-)
They also took me down the street a block to the „potraviny“, that is, a small grocery store. You have to put 10 crowns (around 50 cents) in to get a shopping cart; when you finish you get your 50 cents back. After this, I went back to the flat and sort of collapsed.
The next few days were full of bureaucracy. Thankfully Irena, a native Czech, took me around. Being an immigrant/foreigner here, I had to go the Foreign Police and wait to register with the other immigrants. Although they deal only with immigrants, all the signs are in Czech and the officials speak mostly just Czech. It’s interesting to be on the other side of that.
We are now are the proud possessors of 2 Czech cell phones, I have a public transport pass, a bank account, and a signed work contract. Et cetera. Skype is a wonderful thing; I have internet hooked up and skype is a lifesaver.
I’ll finish the post with a picture of our street. Our apartment is at the far left; you can see a red curtain in our window.
The street is STEEP. They have some real hills here. (Spoken like a flatlander!) - Rod
