Prague’s Wonderful Playgrounds
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4 Days in Newport
 Kai on the wave statue on Thames St
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 Eidan with his zoob creations
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 Produce at my brother John’s farm
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 My grandfather Steven Toppa – as always with a cigarette, a Narragansett beer, and a machine
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If you’ve been following my Tweets so far this week, you’ve already seen several of these pictures.
My uncle Gene (husband of my father’s sister Pat) passed away the week before we arrived, so we visited with Pat and her family. Other than that, it was another whirlwind tour seeing as much of my family as possible in a short time. And they put me to work: I fixed up my mom’s dryer, my sister’s DVD player, showed my step-mother how to burn CDs, and advised my step-father on home broadband options. In return we got several wonderful meals, and the boys got lots of love (and of course, some small presents). I especially enjoyed visiting my brother John’s organic farm (he’s leasing land in Cranston). If he’s still there in a few years, we’ll send Kai out to work on the farm for part of the summer. (I had my first summer job when I was 13, doing demolition work with my friend Aaron – it’s a good age to establish a work ethic).
I had fun using Twitpic to post pictures each day. Twitpic is handy when traveling – it’s more flexible than Picasa (which is what I mainly use), since Picasa only lets you synchronize your web albums on a single computer. I’m going to look into adding Twitpic and Flickr support to my Shashin plugin.
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Eidan’s First Karate Graduation
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For months Eidan’s been dying to start going to karate class, like his big brother Kai, and after we got back from Prague, he finally got his chance. He’s actually technically still too young, but he insisted with the instructor that “I big now and I ready,” so he was given a chance in one class to see how he’d do, and he did well. He’s about a year younger than the rest of the kids in his class – what he lacks in sophistication he makes up for with enthusiasm.
Kai’s been going for about 4 years now, and at Friday night’s graduation he earned a black stripe on his brown belt (red is the next belt, then black). The forms he’s learning now are considerably more complex than the ones he was doing last year. Unfortunately, I was home sick with a cold, and Maria had her hands full with Eidan after his portion of the graduation was done, so we don’t have any video of Kai this time around.
 Video – Eidan receives his new belt
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 Video – Eidan demonstrates his form
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 Kai gets his brown belth with a black stripe
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Kai’s Lego X-Men Stop-Animation Adventure
Kai made this video entirely by himself, using Frame-by-Frame and Sound Studio on the Mac (I combined the audio and video for him using mencoder). Aside from occasional appearances by his hands, the only editing glitch is that he lost the first 5 seconds of audio. He’s been watching various home-made Lego animations on YouTube, so he wanted to try one himself. I uploaded it to YouTube at his request (direct link).
Prague’s Lesser Town – Malá Strana
 View of Prague from the top of Petrin Tower
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Maria and the boys decided to have a quiet day in the apartment, so I ventured into town on my own for an afternoon (they’ve been here for a month, so they’ve seen all the sights already). The central, historical part of Prague is separated into 4 neighborhoods – the Castle Quarter, Old Town, New Town, and Lesser Town. I picked Lesser Town as my destination. Compared to the other parts of town, it doesn’t have the grandest attractions, but it offers the most dazzling view of the city (from atop the Petřín Tower). What really drew me to it though is that it also offers the city’s most unusual attractions:
- The Wallenstein Palace Gardens, with its “grotesquery” (an enormous fake cave wall), owls, carp, free-roaming peacocks, and Wallenstein’s fresco of himself as Mars, the god of war. The garden’s Renaissance statues are replicas of the originals, which were stolen by an invading Swiss army in the 17th century (the originals are still in Sweden).
- The small museum of Jára Cimrman – a fictional Czech character – “the genius who is not yet famous” – who is depicted as “…one of the greatest Czech playwrights, poets, composers, teachers, travelers, philosophers, inventors, detectives and sportsmen of the 19th and early 20th century.” A few years ago he was voted the greatest Czech of all time in a Czech Television contest, much to the surprise of Czech TV, which subsequently disqualified him due to his non-existence.
- The moving (and disturbing) Monument to Victims of Communism Who Survived.
- The Lennon Wall – when Lennon was killed, this wall became covered with graffiti celebrating his life and music. It also became a focal point of quiet protest against the communist regime – every day the police would paint it over, and every night it would be covered with graffiti again.
- The Infant Jesus of Prague in the Church of St. Mary the Victorious – it’s a small statue of Jesus as an infant, which one of the Church’s priests said spoke to him once. Since then “claims of blessings, favors and miraculous healings have been made by many who petitioned before the Infant Jesus… Today, thousands of pilgrims pay homage to the Infant of Prague each year.”
A few days later, I visited the Palace gardens again with Maria and the boys, and the boys got in some playtime at the small Kampa playground on the Charles river (so the pictures below are from both outings).
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Eidan’s Birthday in Prague
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We celebrated Eidan’s birthday last night at Jama – a restaurant specializing in American hamburgers and Tex-Mex food. Maria tells me it’s hard to find good burgers in Prague, but the food at Jama’s is comparable to a place like Chili’s; perhaps slightly better. We generally don’t look for American food much when traveling, but for Eidan’s birthday we wanted to pick a place the boys were sure to enjoy.
Two of Maria’s students joined us – Gisela and Tai – along with Peter – a native of Prague who has helped Maria with planning trips for the students. Eidan has been excitedly talking about his birthday for about two months now, and I think he was especially happy that some of the students came (he refers to them as “the boys” even though there are women in the group too). Over the course of the meal he kept sneaking under the table to try getting at his bag of presents, but I managed to intercept him each time. After dinner we sang happy birthday to him over brownies and ice cream, and then he finally got to open his presents. As we walked back to our apartment after dinner, he zig-zagged down the sidewalk like a drunken sailor and babbled on excitedly about his new toys.
Two Days in Budapest
 Buda Castle at night, viewed from the Danube
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When I take a trip I like to know at least a little about where I’m going. For our short excursion to Budapest, I didn’t. Maria let her students pick the destination for a weekend trip, and they picked Budapest. Before I left Philadelphia, I was so busy with the kitchen remodel work that I only had a little time to read up on Prague, and didn’t have a chance to find out anything about Budapest. After two fun, busy days seeing Prague, I got on an overnight train with Maria, the boys, and the four students.
We got off to a rough start on the train – the couchette we thought was ours was already occupied, and the conductor made a point of being as unhelpful as he could. Stuck standing in the train car’s narrow aisle, we eventually persuaded him to take our tickets out of his pocket and look at them again, and then he grudgingly admitted he had brought us onto the wrong car. Everything went smoothly after that, except for the train itself – the boys liked the triple bunks, and they went right to sleep along with Maria, but I couldn’t sleep at all. Each time I almost drifted off to sleep, the train would screech to a halt at its next stop. Also, I was on the top bunk, and it took me a while to get comfortable enough with the situation to stop worrying I’d get thrown to the floor if we stopped too quickly.
After getting my first glimpse of the city as we walked out of Keleti station, I began to worry how the weekend would go. Viewed from the steps of the station, the city looked grim, poor, and unwelcoming. But I’m happy to say my first impression was wrong. While not as evidently wealthy as Prague, Budapest is a beautiful city and rich in history.
We spent our first day in Buda – the side of the city west of the Danube (the eastern side is Pest). Budapest is south of Prague, and at 90 degrees it was considerably hotter. The students went off on their own, and Maria and I set out with the boys to explore. A city map acquired at the hotel, and less than an hour of internet research were our guides. We had a good time exploring. Maria and I make a good team when traveling – I bring the maps and the planning, and she brings the intuition and street smarts. Too much of the former can lead to missing unexpected opportunities, and too much of the latter can lead to chaos. A good mix of both made for a successful day. We spent most of the day in the area surrounding Buda Castle, home to Hungarian royalty since the 13th century. Since it was so hot, we also spent some time in the very silly but considerably cooler, underground Buda Castle Labyrinth. It’s filled with fake historical artifacts, such as fossilized remains of ancient computers, complete with keyboards and monitors. In the evening we took a one hour cruise on the Danube. While many of Budapest’s historical buildings suffer from graffiti and inadequate maintenance, all of that disappears at night – the city looked absolutely gorgeous from the river.
The next day we visited Pest. Our hotel (the Charles Hotel – reasonably priced and clean) was in Buda, but by this time we had figured out the buses, and their routes were well marked on our map, so we didn’t have trouble getting around. We started the day at the enormous St. Stephen’s Basilica, and then took our time wandering up Andrássy Avenue, which “…is an iconic boulevard… dating back to 1872… Flanked by Eclectic Neo-renaissance palaces and houses featuring fine facades, staircases and interiors, it was recognised as a World Heritage Site in 2002.” The avenue ends at City Park. By the time we arrived there, Eidan had fallen asleep in his stroller, so Kai and I had some fun exploring the grounds of Vajdahunyad Castle, while Maria took a break in a shady spot with Eidan. We ended the day at the Szechenyi Baths. Although I didn’t know this before we arrived in Budapest, the city is famous for its hot spring baths. After a day and half of walking around, the boys needed something that was fun for them. Szechenyi has 3 large baths – one hot, one lukewarm, and one cold. The cold one is intended mainly for lap swimming, the lukewarm one for kids to play in, and the hot one for adults to relax in. The boys had a great time there, and the natural spring water feels great on your skin, so we arrived at the train station feeling refreshed and ready for our overnight trip back to Prague. There was some anxiety for a while since the students arrived at the last minute, but our train ended up leaving late anyway, so fortunately our departure worked out fine. And this time I managed to get at least a few hours of sleep.
I took almost 200 pictures, but I narrowed it down to 21 in order to preserve the sanity of my blog readers 
My First Two Days in Prague
Maria and the boys have been in Prague for a month, and I’ve been with them for the past week. We’ve had 2 days in Prague, 2 days in Budapest, and then 2 days back here in Prague. Now I need to catch up with blogging – I’ll start with my first 2 days.
Prague’s architecture is overwhelming. If you randomly selected a building from Prague, and transported it to a city like Philadelphia or Boston, it would stand out as one of the city’s remarkable buildings. But here there is one finely detailed Medieval, Baroque, or Renaissance building after another. The occasional Soviet-era faceless and bland concrete building actually isn’t unwelcome.
I didn’t sleep on my overnight flight here, so on my first day I followed Maria around town in a mental fog. The buildings were so dazzling I was taking pictures of practically everything I walked past (after a couple hours the realization that I needed to be a bit more judicious with the camera eventually penetrated my foggy head). She mainly took me around the “Old Town” area.
The language, with it’s heavy mix of consonants, is a challenge. A phrase as simple as “thank you” takes some practice for an American. It’s also tricky to sound out words when doing things like reading off a menu, because the pronunciation of certain letters isn’t the same as English and there are several unfamiliar inflection marks (like ě and ý). Fortunately, most of the people we’ve encountered so far either speak at least a small amount of English (especially young people), or are patient enough to work things out with hand gestures. However, outside the touristy areas they tend to get impatient with clueless Americans.
Czech food is tasty but very heavy, and Czech beer is really good (although I say this as someone who knows nothing about beer – to me it tastes smoother and less bitter than most American beers). Fortunately the Italian restaurants here are also very good, as the Czech food is just too much after a while. After seeing people shop in the grocery stores for the past month, Maria’s impression is that a lot of the Czech people do in fact eat sausages, schnitzels, goulash, etc on a daily basis.
The streets are cleaner than most American cities (even outside the tourist areas), and the subways and trams are modern and efficient. On average the people are much quieter than Americans – friends will chat quietly, and even a crowded subway platform is relatively silent.
On my second day we rented a paddle boat from Slovansky island in the Vltova river (the river separates the two sides of Prague) – some of my nicer pictures are from the paddle boat. Then in the late afternoon we returned to the apartment to pack for our 2 day trip to Budapest.
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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.
Glass and Jewelry Making in Jablonec
This post is by Maria, describing their trip last week to the Czech town of Jablonec.
 Video – Kai makes a glass bead
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 Video – Tai tries his hand at glass making – halfway through you can see him operating the bellows with his feet
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Today, the students and the boys and I took a trip to Northern Bohemia to a town called Jablonec. It is the traditional center of glass and jewelry making in the Czech lands. Glass jewelry (beads, e.g.) was an industry hit on by the German-speaking Sudetenlanders faced with little arable land and not much in the way of natural resources except vast hardwood forests that provided the fuel needed for the glass furnaces. After World War II, the Germans were expelled, sometimes brutally, from Sudetenland, leaving behind many of the traditional methods for glass beading and metallurgy. A man named Libos Stryncl, whose family has been in the glass pressing trade for generations, has maintained in his home a museum of traditional methods. He provided us with a fascinating and fun look at the family-based industry. These days, the largest companies like Jablonex and Preciosa no longer outsource the work as a cottage trade. Stryncl is trying hard to preserve the traditions.
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Random Pictures
Ice in our backyard, a few days before Christmas
Kai, Eidan, Matthew, and Alex across the street from the spy museum (my sister's here this weekend too)
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Flotsam
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Random Posts
- 02 Jan 11 - Twitter Weekly Updates for 2011-01-02
- 16 Mar 05 - Breaking News: Kai Gives Up His Astronaut Career
- 31 Jan 05 - Fashionistas
- 16 May 07 - Tanegashima
- 17 Oct 06 - The Sleep Chamber
