On to Scandinavia

Leg #8, Prague to Copenhagen. Still clutching her Krtek, Tessie made it through airport security. More helpful and less obnoxious than their American counterparts (but, apparently, equally effective), European airport security personnel were, on the whole, very attentive to the needs of parents with small children. Water-filled sippy cups did not need to be dumped out, as was once required of us on a US domestic flight; I was allowed to carry Tessie through the metal detector without hassle; and security actually verified that Tessie's Mom was Tessie's Mom when she tried to pick her up after I had brought her through. The whole security procedure was still an onerous bottleneck, but at least these people were professional about it, not like the minimum-wage contract employees the TSA uses in the US.

Tessie had some excess energy to burn off before the flight, so she and Hannah took multiple elevator rides:



The flight, on a real, full size jet (737) was an hour and a half of uneventful travel, during which Tessie played with her stickers and books and was on the ground again before she knew it. (Airline: Czech. Freebie: plastic airplane)

Having flown through Copenhagen on our way to Slovakia, we were familiar with the airport, and knew how to get to our next destination, the hotel DGI-Byen, which is just south of the main train station. In Copenhagen, as in other sensible cities, it is quite simple to take a train from the airport to downtown. (In Los Angeles, by contrast, to get from downtown to the airport, one must switch trains twice, Red Line to Blue Line to Green Line, then take a bus from the last stop on the Green Line because it stops a mile or two short of the airport. No, I can't explain the logic behind that, because there isn't any.)

So carrying what felt like all of our worldly possessions, we boarded the train for the ten-minute jaunt to the Hovedbanegården, or Central Train Station in Copenhagen. We had in total eleven items which we frequently counted. Hannah had:

1. Tessie
2. Krtek
3. the stroller
4. the backpack diaper bag
5. her purse

while I had:

1. a big rolling suitcase
2. a small rolling suitcase
3. a garment bag (full of wedding clothes)
4. a camera bag
5. a laptop computer bag
6. a small black pouch with tickets, passports and other vital necessities like snacks.

We really do need to learn to travel lighter, but it's not so easy with a toddler!

We checked in to the hotel and went up to our room, ready to collapse. The hotel is built around a complex of swimming pools so extensive it's difficult to tell if this is a hotel with pools or pools with a hotel. It does seem to attract a clientele based on the swimming alone; this is not a surprise since its other aspects wouldn't immediately recommend it. The room, and the corridor leading to it, were reminiscent of my first-year dorm, and they looked as though they saw a vacuum cleaner on approximately the same schedule as my dorm room had. We would certainly make use of the pools, but after just checking in and getting squared away in the room we decided to head back out into the city to find dinner.

What we found is that Copenhagen is frightfully expensive. We walked the Stroget, peeking into restaurants as we walked. We would read the curbside menus, do some quick mental figuring, and then move one, hoping to discover something more budget-friendly. We discovered that the cheapest meal option we could find were hot dogs (or pølser) from sidewalk stands on seemingly every street corner. Even these were no bargain at 22-26 Dk each. (1 Dk = ~$0.20, so that's about five bucks per hot dog.) We had one each - Tessie really likes hot dogs - and went back to our rather spartan hotel room for the night.

Poll Results

So the most recent poll has been sitting there for a while, closed out for over a month and thoroughly ignored by me. The results were pretty conclusive: nobody cares but me, so the current video arrangement of me uploading videos to YouTube and linking to them here will continue. Expect some new videos soon.

The results for "Anyone got a a video preference?":
5 votes (71%) for whatever's easiest,
1 vote (14%) for YouTube
1 vote (14%) for Blogger video
and, thankfully, no votes at all for "Eliminate the videos altogether." Thanks for that.
[Once again, the percentages don't add up to 100, but really, who would notice?]

So it's time for a new poll question. I am open to suggestions...

Elsewhere in Prague

Trust me: Tessie enjoyed the streetcar rides a lot more than you'd guess from that picture.

After the castle, lunch. We stumbled upon a pub named for the beloved Czech literary hero The Good Soldier Švejk. As this is one of Tessie's Deda's favorite characters, and one he frequently cites, it seemed to be an appropriate place to stop. Also, we were drawn in by the menu, which featured delicious Czech cuisine, heavy on the pork products.

Fully satiated, we rode a funicular - yet another mode of transport new to Tessie - up to the Petřín hill, where we found a park for Tessie to run in and a swing to ride. No pictures exist of this interlude as we were too busy chasing Tessie all over creation to stop and focus. Sorry. On the morning of our last day in Prague we visited the Museum of Communism. Yes, it's yet another of these "Hey! Look at all the statues we found at the flea market!" museums, this one specific to the history of communism in Czechoslovakia. It presents what it refers to as "the dream, the reality and the nightmare" of communism, and is pretty effective in doing so, from the idealism of the early days, through the corruption and barren store shelves, to the political prisons and executions, and finally the end of Soviet communism . It's a small museum, but densely packed with artifacts and displays, most of which seem to date from the 1950s and early '60s, up until the "Prague Spring" of 1968.

I'll have more to say about 1968 in another post. For now: Irony. I'm lovin' it:
The museum is improbably located above a McDonald's and adjacent to a casino. Times have changed in Prague.

A delicious lunch at the U Posta pub near our hotel was our last delicious, beer and pig-laden meal in the Czech Republic. We returned to our hotel and boarded our previously arranged shuttle for another chaotic drive to the airport.

Have Fun Storming the Castle!

The top tourist attraction in Prague is Prague Castle, located in the Hradcany district. (Hrad = castle, cany = hill.) So, since we only gave ourselves one full day in the Czech capital, we decided to bring Tessie up the hill for a visit.

I love little details like this because they remind me that this isn't a movie set or Disneyland - it's a real, working city:

Tessie charms her way past the guards...

... and we're in!

We wandered inside the castle for a while, past the massive gothic St. Vitus Cathedral (above), but the throng of tourists in line to enter dissuaded us from viewing the interior. That's the tail end of the line visible in the photo above. The entry is almost all the way on the opposite side of the cathedral.

So we did some more wandering, then arrived at the front gate just in time for the daily Changing of the Guard ceremony. We actually lucked into a great standing spot, as the main court was cordoned off and crowded with spectators and we ended up looking through the giant cast iron gates at the guards as they entered, performed their rituals, passed the ensign, and filed back out to their posts.
Since we were already outside the castle gates at this point, and there were so many people inside, we decided to head elsewhere for the rest of the day. The gates, by the way, are topped with enormous statues showing the kind of treatment those who enter the castle grounds without permission should expect:
Down the hill we went, pausing to again admire the view:

456 (and Counting)

The Boston Red Sox set a record last night with their 456th consecutive sellout at Fenway Park, and have created a list of 456 "Reasons to Say Thank You." I call your attention to #215.