My good deed for the day...

Returning from a visit to our new building yesterday (see previous post) I came to the top of the escalator at the Muzeum metro station and saw one of the metro police with a young woman. At first I thought that the young woman was trying to get help in working the automated ticket machines, since they were standing next to a bank of them and they are not that easy to decipher. So I decided to stop to see if I could help.

As I approached I could see that the young woman was sobbing and I heard her say "I don't understand" to the unmoved female policewoman. I suppose I could have bailed but she looked so distressed that I thought I would at least see what the problem was.

Apparently, the girl had just arrived from the airport. She had purchased a transportation ticket at the airport but when she was spot checked (the metro police often check riders of the metro for valid tickets since the honor system is used, i.e. no turnstiles) the policewoman said that there was a problem. She would have to wait for the regular city police an dbe dealt with accordingly.

You can buy tickets that are valid for 24 hours anywhere within Prague, but there are also tickets where the validity is based on either time or distance (in zones). I listened to the young girl and explained that I didn't speak Czech but that perhaps the ticket she bought at the airport might, indeed, be expired. Not to worry, I said, they usually just want you to pay the fine and then you can be on your way.

I asked her if they told her the amount of the fine. 700 crowns, she said (about $44). That seemed a bit steep to me - I had expected around 400 crowns. I turned to the policewoman and asked if the fine could be smaller - and for effect I placed the thumb and forefinger of my right hand close together. I expected some answer in Czech that I wouldn't understand. But she said, in perfect English. "That is impossible". I didn't dare ask what was impossible about it since I didnt want to get arrested myself.

Hmmm. I asked the girl if she had any crowns and of course she didn't. She was just coming from the airport. Hmmm. I had another thought. "Do you have friends in Prague?" I asked. Yes, her boyfriend was here in Prague. Great - I would lend her my cell phone and she could call him to come and help her out. Then she quickly went on - "but his mobile phone is off, I can't reach him".

Hmmm. I knew I only had 300 crowns on me, well short of the 700 needed. If I wanted to trust her I could leave and find an ATM (there was one at my building just a few minutes away), get some money and come back. But that would take some time and the police might show up by then and take her somewhere else. Then one of those strange occurences - occured. I looked up and there in the station was an ATM, not 30 feet from where I was standing.*** I had never noticed it before. But I took it as some kind of sign and told her to wait and I would be right back. I walked over to the ATM and put in my card. While it was reading my card I began to worry "what if I can only get 1,000 crowns out of this thing. I don't think the metro police will make change".

Just then I heard the girl's voice behind. I turned to see the policewoman leading her away and the girl pleading "they are taking me somewhere else". They vanished around the corner.

I typed my PIN and, as luck would have it, while the machine didn't offer a 700 crown amount it did offer to spit out 600. I withdrew that and added 100 crowns from my wallet. I grabbed one of my business cards from my wallet and went to see if I could find them. Luckily, I turned the first corner and there was the girl and the policewoman - they had been joined by two Prague policeman.

I folded the bills so that they were smaller than my business card and walked up to her. I tapped her on the shoulder and handed her my business card, but in a way so that the others wouldn't see the money behind it. "Here is my card", I said, and then whispered that there was also 700 crowns if she needed it. And I turned and walked away. Her look as I turned was a mix of gratitude, relief and a little disbelief.

I didn't think much more about it the rest of the day and even forgot to tell Kathy about it when I got home (maybe because it would sound like a crazy thing to do). I had just cleaned up the dishes from dinner when my cell phone rang. That doesn't happen very often and so I wondered who it was. It was the girl from the metro. She had to use the 700 crowns for the fine and wanted to meet me the next day to pay me back. We agreed to meet in from of the National Muzeum right across from my office at 12 noon today.

She was right on time, and had her boyfriend and another girlfriend with her. She explained that the ticket she had bought at the airpotrt was indeed for a set time and that she had exceeded the time on the ticket by 3 minutes! All of this hassle for 3 minutes. The police had threatened to hold her for 24 hours if she hadn't paid the fine. All three of them were very nice and very grateful.

It was nice to act as a good samaritan, especially as an American. Also, I can't believe that Prague would allow this kind of treatment of tourists by it's police. It's not like tourism is important to the city or anything (//sarcasm//).






*** There was also an ATM even closer, just right around the corner, not 10 feet from where we were standing. I passed this one every day but only remembered it later.

The new Radio Free Europe building...

I made a visit to the new building today, after about two months since I was last there. There is much progress but also much work to be done. Our technical guys will get in soon to start


Here is the building juxtaposed against the artist's concept on a billboard.

This is the view from inside the building looking up to the top of the atrium. Of course, it will look a little better when all of the scaffolding is gone.

You have to use your imagination to visualize it, but this is my future office. This is where the future magic will happen.

First anniversary of the blog...

Tomorrow, April 9th, is the first anniversary of my first blog post here at www.tischlersinprague.blogspot.com. It was a riveting account of our Easter festivities. You can reminisce here.

In that one year I have posted 347 times, or about 95% of the days. I don't think that's too bad. If someone bothers to visit I feel that I should at least have something recent to offer. That's not to say that they were all quality posts - I am painfully aware that there were some clunkers and others that qualified merely as space fillers. Still, in the end the readers get what they pay for.

In the beginning I experimented with widgets, being generally fascinated with the variety available. I added headlines in the Czech republic and a basic hit counter. Later, I added pictures showing progress on the new Radio Free Europe building here in Prague.

What really got me excited, though, was when I added the capabilities of web-stat.com. After that I could not only see how many people were visiting, but where they were, what time and for how long they were at the blog, and how they found it, even down to the words they put into the Google search. That has made checking the blog much more interesting.


I am now up to over 1,000 hits per month, which is extremely modest as things go, but still much more than I ever thought I would reach with my little blog on our life in Prague. There are a few topics that I blogged on that keep bringing readers. Starbucks always generates a lot of interest. The Palladium mall fire, while not very interesting to my friends and family back home, brought (and still brings) a lot of English speakers to the blog since information on the fire and resulting shutdown of the mall was hard to come by. The same is true of the reporting on the murder of American Mike Murray in Prague by a drunk off-duty Prague policeman. If you are a friend of Mike's you know that there was very little information to be had (that is still the case) and all I did was accumulate it into a single spot.

Other posts that get a lot of continuing hits relate to places we have visited. The Colliseum in Rome and Terezin here in the Czech Republic have continued to draw readers over time. And, of course, my multiple posts on the fall of the US dollar seem to be of interest (despite how awful I have been at predicting where the dollar will go).

I will continue to post as long as the name - Tischlers in Prague - still applies. We don't know yet how long that will be, but while we are here we are enjoying the experience.

Noah's feet...

It was cool and rainy today - the weather we were supposed to have yesterday for the birthday party but didn't (thank goodness) so after church we took a drive to Prague's first outlet mall that opened last fall. Noah needed new play shoes and we needed to find something reasonably priced. For his last pair we tried a Czech brand because they were quite a bit cheaper, but they only lasted a few months, so we decided to go back to a name brand

The outelt mall had stores for just about every brand of show that we are familiar with - Nike, Addidas, New Balance, Rebock, and others. Kathy said that the Rebocks ran a little wider and Noah has wide feet so we went there There was a sale going on and we were able to find a pair that he liked on sale for 1200 crowns (about $75, and that's a GOOD deal)

I know that Noah is getting big, but I wasn't prepared for the fact that he now wears a size 9 1/2 (European 42.5). I wear a 9. They say you can tell how big a dog will get by his paw size when he is a puppy. I wonder how big Noah will be at 18.

Noah's birthday party...

Yeah, I know he turned ten years old six weeks ago. But we had visitors in town and also wanted the weather to be warmer, so here we are havinig his birthday party in April. All week the forecast for today was cool and rainy, so of course it was mild and partly cloudy - thank goodness.

We had six other boys invited to the party and so we had a long list of games to keep them occupied. In a fortuitous turn, Noah won one of several items that were raffled at his school a couple of weeks ago. What did he win? Free use of a large inflated bouncy castle, and a large custom made cake. (See the pictures).

Kathy's organizational and culinary skills were put to great use. Besides the list of games, she had each kid make their own personal pizza, and that was a hit. What kid doesn't like pizza? The kids seemed to have a good time and were well behaved. Two hours, though, was enough.


Here is Noah with the free cake he won in the school raffle.

Here is Noah with the free bouncy castle that he won in the school raffle. It was really big, but it inflated in only about a minute.

The obligatory blowing out of the candles on the cake. The cake is really about 30 cupcakes with loads of frosting. If we had paid for the cake the cost would have been $125 (which means, of course, that he wouldn't have had this cake).

Here I am giving instructions for the egg relay race. The non-American boys were bemused by the idea of racing carrying an egg on a spoon.

The Falling Dollar - April edition...

It's another first week of the month, and no it's not April Fool's Day - I purposely didn't post about the dollar on the first. In a nutshell, over the last month we have had more of the same from the dollar - weakening. You can see from the graph that the trend is still lower. There was a brief recover from 16.0 to 16.5 in the middle of the month, but that was just the dollar mocking us before it turned and continued its slide. As I write this the dollar is below 16 again, standing at 15.94. When we arrived in Prague in August of 2006 we could get about 23 Czech crowns (koruni) for one dollar, now we can only get around 16, a 30% drop.

Today's Prague Daily Monitor reports that the Czech government is going to get proactive in moderating the crown's strength. While the dollar has fallen tremendously to the crown, the crown has also grown stronger against the Euro, but at a slower pace.

Measures against strong crown to be established in a week
prepared by Prague Daily Monitor editorial staff / published 4 April 2008
An agreement concerning the excessive strengthening of the Czech currency being put together by Ministry of Finance and Czech National Bank should be ready in a week. E15 informs that the aim of the agreement is to freeze the flow of foreign currency into the Czech economy.

We'll see how much this helps - and how quickly.

Baseball in the Czech Republic...

Major League Baseball has opened the 2008 season, and it looks to be a long season for my Minnesota Twins, especially with the departure of ace pitcher Johann Santana. Baseball is a fairly obscure sport in the Czech Republic, but obscure does not mean non-existent. There is a web site - in English! - for baseball news and information in the Czech Republic and throughout Europe. It is called mister-baseball.com. Here is the link to the Czech Republic page.

Grant's Prague Bike Blog...

An American co-worker here at RFE/RL has a blog dedicated to biking. He is a journalist by profession so it's not too surprising that his blog is very well written. Here's the link to it. It also has the benefit of being focused pretty much on a single topic (unlike mine, which flits around to and fro like the feather in Forest Gump). Amyway, Grant's blog is often linked in the Prague Daily Monoitor, as it was today.

Grant has a very interesting story about a bike ride to Okor, where he stumbled upon a childrens' fair with a small old merry-go-round and a shooting gallery from 1895. Here's the video of the shooting gallery:



Look at the whole post and the rest of Grant's blog. I'm adding it to my ever growing list of blogs on the left side of the page.

Paint ball for 10 year olds...

Noah went to a classmate's birthday party today. The whole class of 17 kids was invited. Surprisingly, the party included 2 hours of outdoor paintball using the normal guns and safety equipment. Even more surprisingly, it is a girl in the class having the party. We suspect that the father may be living precariously through the girl, but maybe the little girl loves paint ball.

They were going to have 30 minutes of safety training before they actually went into mortal paint ball combat, but my expereince tells me that 10 year olds aren't capabable of absorbing information related to safety. The paint ball portion of the party ends in a few minutes and we haven't received a call yet, so we have our fingers crossed that they are all OK.







Noah and his classmates get safety instructions on the paint ball rules equipment.






The paint ball grounds (field? course?) next door had the typical teenaged boys in full combat mode.











The paint ball grounds are on an island in the Vltava, just south of the city. Even with the Garmin we decided not to drive, but there is no direct way to get there using public transportation. We ended up driving to the Dejvicka metro station and hopping on a tram that we thought would take us all the way to the island, except that on weekends its route ends about a mile short of our destination. So we had to transfer to another tram to get us the rest of the way, and then it was a 15 minute walk after that. A trip of about an hour and twenty minutes to go less than 10 miles. I miss the wastfull American way of just getting in a car to go anywhere quickly, because after all the most important thing is convenience.


Here is the church of Saints Peter and Paul at Vysehrad as seen through one of the fake buildings set up at the paint ball course.


Here is Vysehrad as seen from the island as we walked back to the tram after dropping Noah off.

Another semester over at ISP...

Late last week we had the teacher conference for the end of the second (winter) semester at ISP. This time, though, instead of sitting with the teacher and having her go over how each student had performed the student, the student led the conference.

This was very interesting as each student spent ten minutes with their parents on each of four stations - math, science, social studies and a summary of the work that had been done all semester. The teacher, Ms. Light, was on hand to keep things moving, but the student was responsible for covering the information. Noah is a bit of a ham and is very proud of the work he has done. It was fun and the 40+ minutes flew by.

The one section included a review of his report card. He did well, but had a drop in the area of classroom behavior. He seems to be developing the attitudes normally associated with teenagers at 10 years old. We are hoping to keep the attitude problems at bay with a combination of positive and negative reinforcement, but I fear it will be a losing battle. We'll see.



Noah's web site for class work. Each student has their own web site. Boy, they sure learn this stuff young.


Noah builds and demonstrates an electrical circuit as part of the science module.


Noah shows us his timeline of significant events over the past 2,000 years (all the back to BCE - Before the Common Era, instead of BC - Before Christ).

The Lent diet is over...

Lent - the period of the Catholic calendar from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday - is meant to be a period of reflection and fasting as good Catholics prepare for the Easter celebration of the resurrection of Christ. For the last several years as my Lenten sacrifice I have given up both alocohol and sweets. It has gone from something that I dread to something I actually look forward to.

It does take a little adjustment, though. In the evening after putting Noah to bed I usually have one beer or one drink. For the first few days I have to fight the force of habit and not have a beer, but then I get used to the new status quo and it becomes easy.

Giving up sweets is a little easier since there are so many sugar free substitutes now. I allow myself sugar free gum, sugar free jello and diet soda.

One of the non-spiritual benefits I noticed from the first year is that giving up alcohol and sweets made me lose weight. The weight loss has varied from year to year, but is always noticeable and last year it was 8 pounds. When I got on the scale yesterday (Easter) morning, the loss for the 46 days of Lent was 11 pounds.

Someday I am going to write a book called The Lenten Diet and make a fortune, but until then I will have to be satisfied with having my clothes fit better for a portion of the year.

Starbucks in Prague update...

The blog receives quite a few hits based on google searches looking for information on Starbucks in Prague. I'm not sure why. But, always give the customers (even nonpaying customers) what they want, so here is an update on Starbucks stores in Prague.

The first Starbucks opened on Malostranska namesti back in late January. I obviously have no access to company records but based on anecdotal information from friends and our own observations, this location has been very successful. Even opening at the absolute low season here in Prague it has always been busy when we have been there. Business this weekend should be booming with hordes of tourists (mostly from Europe) visiting Prague over the long Easter weekend. The cool weather and snow flurries should also help hot beverage sales.

The second Starbucks opened in the Palladium mall last month. Unfortunately, the day after they opened the mall experienced its fire which closed the mall for weeks, reopening just within the last few days. The Starbucks at Palladium was doing a good business yesterday afternoon and it would seem to be a good location assuming no more serious problems at Palladium. It is located one level below the main entrance, so you see it right away when you enter, but you have to go down a level to reach it.

The third Starbucks has opened at the Prague airport in terminal 1. I haven't heard anything about this location yet - other than it is open.

I will post when I hear of additional locations, which are expected to be numerous.

Friend's visit and St. Vitus Cathedral...

A good friend from Minnesota is visiting this week. Yesterday we spent the day sight seeing, starting at the castle and St. Vitus cathedral, then down to Malestronska namesti, the Charles bridge, Old Town square (we climbed to the top of the astronomical clock) and then the Jewish quarter.


Barbara up at the castle.

From the top of the tower at the Charles bridge.


Views from the inside of St. Vitus cathedral.

More on the Czech Easter tradition of beating women with sticks...

Tomorrow is Good Friday and the start of Easter weekend, so it's a good time to discuss the Czech tradition of pomlazka takes place on the Monday after Easter. Here is some of (American married to Czech) Emily Prucha's article from the March 14th Prague Daily Monitor on an American woman's reaction to the tradition.

Whipping Easter into the 21st century
By Emily Prucha / Prague Daily Monitor / Published 14 March 2008
My first information about Easter in the Czech Republic, in spring of 2003, was relayed to me by my English students at the time. They told me there was no Easter bunny and no traditions involving Jesus.

At first I was surprised by this. Prague is filled with churches, primarily Catholic churches of historic significance. But in reality, the majority of Czechs are not religious, a sentiment in the country that was prevalent even before the banning of religion under Communism. In his article “God at Large” published on Christianity.com (Spring 2003), Philip Yancey outlined different phases of a country’s Christian life. The Czech Republic, Yancey claimed is in a “divorced” phase. Vying with Denmark as having the lowest rate of church attendance in the world, the Czech Republic lays only ceremonial claims to the Roman Catholic Easter tradition.

The pomlazka, as these braided willow branches are called in Czech, are...but one of the primary traditional objects of the secular Czech Easter holiday, celebrated on the Monday following the Christian Easter Sunday. The pomlazka dates back to pre-Christian times and is a symbol of health, fertility and springtime.

While this seemed lovely and benign, I was taken aback when my student Jana told me of her Easter plans to spend the weekend at her family's cottage in the countryside. “It’s going to be terrible!" she complained. "All my father’s friends will come to our house. I’ll have to hide upstairs and keep the lights off.” She groaned and shook her head. What was she talking about, I wondered to myself.

From my other students, I learned Easter Monday was generally embraced by one-half of the Czech population—men and boys, who go door to door singing Easter carols, demanding "treats" (eggs, chocolate, liquor, or a peck on the cheek) and the right to beat the women with their pomlazka whips for good luck. While my female students said they generally enjoyed decorating Easter eggs and preparing Easter sweets, none seemed too fond of the pomlazka or gendered traditions.

According to the pre-Christian tradition, good health, beauty and fertility are assured in the upcoming year to those women who are whipped. More modern tradition holds that the bearer of the “beating” comes equipped with an Easter chant, which includes the following lines, “Give us dyed eggs. If you don’t give dyed, give at least white. The hen will lay a new one for you.” Usually the whippings are a lighthearted token of the tradition. From noon on, originally, the women anointed the men with perfumed oil, but in modern times the oil treatment has more often than not been replaced with buckets of ice cold water.

After noon on Easter Monday, you can see groups of boy coming home, exchanging their experiences and showing off their loot, as well as groups of dripping wet, drunken teenagers and men stumbling home after them.

On Easter Monday 2003, my stroll through the Old Town resulted in nothing but empty vendor stands and not a pomlazka in sight. Wanting to have a better sense of the festivities, I joined my boyfriend Radek and his friends for a drive into the country. The real celebrating goes on in the small towns and villages, they assured me. After a pleasant drive we arrived at family friend’s cottage and knocked on the door. Since my trip mates were Czech and male, they were greeted with decorated eggs and shots of liquor.

Being both female and a foreigner, I presented a problematic situation. Should our hostess offer me chocolate eggs and liquor as she did her male friends? Should she offer me nothing? In the end, I was given a warm welcome and a glass of red wine. Was this group of family and friends representative of a traditional Czech Easter? I wasn’t sure. For one thing, my male friends didn’t bring pomlazkas and the females didn’t hide in the attic.

Freezing Prague...

Well, the temperatures in Prague have dipped in recent days to the low 30s, and there is a dusting of snow on the ground for the first time in two months, but the "Prague freezing" that i'm talking about isn't related to the weather.

"Freezings" have occured in other cities before - New York, Paris and even Portland - and involve a flash mob showing up at a predetermined location and then standing still and quiet, freezing" for two minutes.

We had our first Prague freezing yesterday at the Muzeum metro station at 5:09 PM. I was in the same metro station at 5:32 PM so I missed the event by about 20 minutes. What did I miss? Well, thanks to YouTube here is a video from last night's freezing.



The Prague Daily Monitor reports on the freezing today. It's an interesting article, but I have to admit that it seems to me that this is justproof that a bunch of slackers habe too much time on their hands. This is just a varient of the chinese fire drills that we used to do with friends in cars at intersections. The article doesn't mention any motive, such as protest, so maybe it's supposed to be performance art. But as I have told people before, if I could do it then it is by definition not art.

Freezing Prague 2008: Hundreds block metro station
By Jan Flemr / Prague Daily Monitor / Published 19 March 2008

Hundreds of Czechs, mostly in their early twenties, flooded and then literally blocked access to the Muzeum metro station from Wenceslas Square after 5pm Tuesday. They all wanted to freeze.

Following the example of the public stunts held in New York's Grand Central Station in January and in London's Trafalgar Square a month later, the organisers sent out e-mails to recruit participants. But things got out of hand.

The idea behind the "flash mob" event was to bring together people who would "freeze" in the same place at the same moment and hold for two minutes. "If you are eating a banana, freeze with the banana in your mouth!" read the invitation.

"At 17:09 a man dressed all in orange will move around the [metro station] vestibule to alert all the people that the flash mob will start soon," said the message. The "Orange Man", wearing an orange tracksuit with a hood, appeared bang on time. He was visibly surprised by the crowd that he had to fight his way through. Then he raised his arm and the mob froze and fell silent.

"Where are you?" one of the rare passers-by who dared to force their way through the crowd cried, drawing a few smiles. Someone laughed out loud. "Máňo!" called another, prompting more laughs. Two policemen stood nearby, watching incredulously.

Then the Orange Man moved, and the crowd started to disperse. Several people clapped, and a small group around the man in the tracksuit made a speedy – considering the circumstances – retreat to Wenceslas Square. On the way out, the Orange Man took off his hood as if to puzzle the crowd that was chasing him with cameras held high.

A while later, resting at the foot of the St Wenceslas statue, the Orange Man, who refused to give his real name, said, "I thought it was for 30 to 40 people, not for 1,500." He was exaggerating, but when asked about his estimate, he just shrugged: "Many. I have no idea."

And, asked if he was happy with the outcome, he was quick with a response. "No. It should have been different."

The next freezing event is scheduled to take place in two months, said a young man standing next to the Orange Man. "Next time it will be strictly unofficial," he added, still shaking his head in disbelief.