Made it to Prague
 The view east from our apartment on Reznicka street
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 The view west from our apartment on Reznicka street
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I arrived sleepy but safe in Prague yesterday. My flight to Zurich was delayed 4 hours, which meant I would have missed by connection and been stuck in Zurich for a long time. So I switched to a Frankfurt flight (after waiting in line for an hour and half at US Air’s customer service counter, manned by an Army of One), and got to Prague only a couple hours later than originally planned. I sat near a medical student who was a Prague native on both flights, and she was kind enough to let me follow her around in the airports, since she was familiar with them. With crying babies on the trans-Atlantic overnight flight, I didn’t get any sleep, but I did enjoy reading the Murakami novel The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Almost every page has at least one very clever turn of phrase – for example, after the main character’s wife returns from a long day of work “…Kumiko was sitting in the living room with the lights out. Hunched down in the dark with her gray shirt on, she looked like a piece of luggage that had been left in the wrong place.”
I made it to the apartment about 2 in the afternoon yesterday. Most of the day is already just a blur to me, as I went about 36 hours with no sleep, but I do remember the boys were stuck to me like glue the whole time. Maria took me out for a tour of the neighborhood. We’re just a few blocks from Wenceslas Square. I also remember that the ice cream here is very tasty. Today is a rainy day, and Maria is working this morning. So far I’ve memorized “yes”, “no”, “please”, “thank you”, and “excuse me” in Czech, which are probably the 5 most important phrases when traveling anywhere. They were sufficient to get me through a grocery store run with the boys this morning.
If the weather clears up, this afternoon we’ll take the boys to a playground that has miniature cars they can drive. Then tonight we have a baby sitter lined up so Maria and I can go out to dinner, and tomorrow we’re leaving for Budapest with the students for a couple days. After that we’ll have about one more week in Prague before we head to Germany.
