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.

Coffee

Yes, I get to travel. Yes, I get to see some of the world's best and most interesting places. Yes, I appreciate it.

But I do have a complaint about Europe.

They serve coffee in teeny-weeny little cups. Honestly, how is that (above) supposed to do me any good? At home I drink roughly a quart a day. (Think two Starbucks grandes, although I never go to Starbucks if there's a 7-11 or McDonalds nearby - they have much better coffee!) This little six-ounce cup not only provides a negligible caffeine boost, it also set me back 59 Czech crowns, roughly $3.50 US. Furthermore, it's in a china cup, not something I can take with me, although that's not such a big problem if it's all gone in 45 seconds.

Don't these people know I have a toddler to keep up with?

Nighttime in Prague

Gratuitous shots of a beautiful city, taken on our walk from the Cafe Savoy to our hotel:

Back to Prague

Back to Prague, and this time we get to leave the airport.

After spending the morning packing and eating an early lunch, we and a large and helpful entourage headed to the Tatran Hotel to retrace our steps and catch a Czech Airlines van to the Kosice airport. Already laden with luggage and souvenirs, we had to decline more gifts, but not before Tessie latched on to a stuffed mouse from Aunt Helenka that she held all the way to Prague.

Leg #6: The very same van as leg #5, but this time driven by an even more aggressive driver. This guy provided a powerful argument against ever driving in Slovakia, as he tailgated ruthlessly and passed on narrow two-lane highways, on more than one occasion forcing oncoming traffic to veer away. We were happy and relieved to arrive in one piece (three pieces?) at the Kosice airport.

Leg #7: Kosice to Prague. Back on the ATR puddle-jumper, this time seated one row behind the plane of the propellers. Nice. (It's an irrational fear of mine. The thought of being separated from whirling propeller blades by a mere 0.02" aluminum aircraft skin makes me a little, um, edgy. I blame Steven Spielberg.) (Airline: Czech. Freebie: a baby rattle.)

We landed without incident, however, claimed our bags and used a van service to get to our hotel, the Hotel Falkensteiner Maria Prag (no, I'm not making that up) which turned out to be both the best and least expensive hotel of the three in which we stayed on this trip. Other than some quibbles about the bathroom layout, it was quite a nice place, with a good location. Tessie was given a souvenir pillow and coloring book at check-in (Czech-in?), and a t-shirt at check-out.

We had a little time to freshen up before heading back out for dinner, where we would be guests of a certain international consulting firm that shall remain McNameless. Tessie's Mom was contacted while we were in Slovakia by a member of the Prague office of this firm with a request to interview her with regard to her current position. The consultant was expecting a phone interview, but when informed that all of us would be in Prague soon, well, we scored a lovely dinner at a cafe near the Vltava River with our new friends Martina and Ursula, and Tessie scored a stuffed Krtek, from which she became nearly inseperable for the remainder of our trip. (She had to: he wouldn't fit in our luggage, so she had to hand carry him everywhere!)

Churches 3, Castles 1

We spent our last full day in Slovakia in the ancient town of Kežmarok. A large contingent of us (let's see if I can get everyone from memory: Pet'o and his daughters Zuzka and Andrejka, Katka and her children Mat'o and Alica, Vlasta, Helenka and her grandson Marek, Tessie's Babi and Deda, and of course Tessie and her parents; 14 of us all together) caught a bus from Poprad.

Kežmarok is one of those rare Slovak towns with a pronouncable name. (See Štrbské Pleso.) This it owes to its founding in 1269 as a German frontier town with a charter to sell cheese. (FYI: in Slovak, a ž is pronounced like the last g in garage. In fact, the Slovak word for garage is garaž.) It seems Kežmarok is a Slovacization of Käsemarkt, German for "cheese market."

Kežmarok City Hall:

The 20-minute ride brought us to the edge of town; from there we made a short walk to see the sights. Kežmarok is one of those showplace historical towns that regional schoolchildren visit on field trips, so most of our contingent were quite familiar with it already.

Our first stop was the Wooden Articular Church, which was built entirely of wood in 1688. No, it's not as obvious a point as that: entirely of wood means that there aren't any nails in it. With the tour presentation conducted in Slovak, I had to wait until just now to learn from Wikipedia that an articular church is a Lutheran church built according to the articles of the 1681 Congress of Sopron. Now you know, too. The church is a simple Greek-cross plan, and while it is made of wood, many surfaces were painted to emulate more costly materials like marble and gold.

We next visited another church of slightly more recent vintage: the late 19th c. New Evangelical Church right next to the articular church. This one contrasts dramatically with the previous church in its design and by its incorporation of a variety of architectural motifs including Byzantine, Moorish and Romanesque. It is now the final resting place of native Kezmarokan Imre Thököly, who fought against the Hapsburgs for religious freedom. He died in 1705 in Turkey, and his remains were not repatriated until 1906. Another notable feature of this church was its touching memorial for the local casualties of World War I. Only on closer inspection did I realize that the mural's soldier dying in the arms of an angel was wearing a German uniform.

Church #3 was the Church of the Holy Cross, the oldest church we saw, dating to 1498. Originally a Catholic church, this one became Protestant in 1548, but reverted to Catholicism in 1673. Each of the changes meant updating the interiors, so what's left is a mix of Gothic, Romanesque and Renaissance architecture.

Our last stop of the day was at the Thököly Chateau, a looming 15th c. castle near the edge of town, which is now a museum housing exhibits of town history. We saw rooms devoted to town guilds, town government, town defense, town education, town recreation and, curiously, Vojtech Alexander, the first radiologist in Slovakia. Tessie's favorite part: a crank to turn!

The end of the day brought us to the train station, itself something of an architectural statement:

Back in Poprad, we began packing for our upcoming journey to Prague.

And We're Back

Apologies for the sudden lapse in posts. Our trip continued, but computer access didn't after we left cousin Pet'o' s.

We're all safely back at home now, so more pictures and posts are coming soon.