Showing posts with label restaurants. Show all posts
Showing posts with label restaurants. Show all posts

Saturday, December 13, 2008

Scenes from a month of TEFL

November was a terrific month to come to Prague and take a TEFL course for many reasons. First, our class count was low. The month before was still high season and there were 20 students not ten. Secondly, we were in our school from 8 a.m. till after dark many days. Why not do it in November when we weren't missing any sunshine? If it was July or August, the entire city would beckon with beauty. This way we'll be settled in by summertime.

We all passed the course and begin teaching January 5th. Ian went home to Odessa and I moved out of student housing after finding a terrific flat. Jana and Gulnara helped me move to my new place by each dragging a big red suitcase through the metro, over cobblestones, and through lots of slush.

I'm a Praguian now, Prahan, Prawn? What do you call someone who calls Prague home?

Our first night in town
Adam (aka, The World's most fanatical Blazers fan),
Danielle, and myself


Gulnara, Anna, and Ian

Here we are trying our first Czech beer
at the Hungry or Thirsty Deer Pub
(I can never remember if the deer is hungry or thirsty -
probably both)


Ian says the Russian superstition is whomever sits
in the corner will never get married.
oops, too late

Last day of classes with my gal pals

Gulnara and me

Jana and Gulnara enjoying lunch in our school cafe

They made sooo much fun of me in the cafe one day
for being excited about my broccoli gratin
they took my picture with it -
but come on, doesn't it look like fantastic comfort food??

Great food + great friends = happiness

Sunday, November 30, 2008

We can only do one thing at this moment: listen

Here is an example of the high level of culture I see in the Czech Republic. Every time staff arrive to open the little cafe near me I can hear them taking down the chairs and preparing for the shift with their favorite music playing loudly in the background.

What do they listen to? The same thing: the coloratura soprano aria from Mozart's Magic Flute opera. Occasionally I hear someone's passionate singing in accompaniment with some of the easier lines leading up to the soprano voice soaring. Sometimes the accompanying singing dies off though because the music is just so beautiful it demands our complete attention.

Friday, November 28, 2008

Unexpected Surprise Pleasures

An open iron gate by my metro stop...
I see a sculpture inside...
I want to see it up close.

A surprise...a courtyard
I didn't anticipate or think about courtyards here
I knew they existed somewhere

A hidden restaurant

With a fountain dormant for the season

Another beautiful restaurant setting
A hidden restaurant in America wouldn't last

Yet here it charms


Sunday, November 23, 2008

Ladies Who Lunch

My virtual friend
and now
new 'real' friend Sherry


When I was contemplating moving to Prague, I was especially interested in the first-hand experiences of non-Czech people who were already here. That is what makes websites like Expat Blog Directory and Expat Women so helpful. If you want to read how expats in a particular country view their experience, you can find all sorts of blogs organized by country and quite often, organized down to the city level.

One of the blogs I found was Czech Off the Beaten Path written by Sher, an expatriate who had fallen in love with a Czech and moved here in 2006 to begin married life. Sher had two children in high school when she and Jiři met. Like me, she went through the whole transition of graduating them to college and downsizing her possessions for the big move to the Czech Republic. When I started following her blog, we discovered during those six months how similar our experiences were and became "virtual" friends.

Now here I am in Prague and we were finally getting to meet!

Sher took me to her favorite penzion for lunch. Named Penzion JaS, it was a genteel non-smoking spot near Dejvické, the last stop on the green line. She made me feel so welcome! Not only did she take me to lunch, she even presented me with a bottle of Bechkerovka, the "official" herbal spirit of the Czech Republic, attributed with all sorts of healing properties. I laughed because there could be no gift more "Czech!"

We gabbed non-stop and afterwards went for a short walk in the neighborhood there and enjoyed looking at Czech houses and yards. It's great to have a new American friend so far from home!

I admire how the Czechs
can get flowers to bloom
through mid-November.
How do they do that?

Mom, this picture is for you.
I knew you would be interested
in all decoration - indoor and out


Ladies who lunch, or is it:
Bloggers who brunch!

Saturday, November 22, 2008

My First Czech Adventure Was Actually Vietnamese

One of the first things I wanted to do when I came to Prague was meet the two Prague bloggers who encouraged me as I planned my move across the globe. I think I started reading Michael Caroe Andersen's blog either from finding it on Al Tischler's blog (Al is a Minnesotan who worked at Radio Free Europe for a couple years - he wrote a terrific blog about Prague before moving back to America) or when Michael's blog was chosen "Expat Blog of the Month" by Expat Blog Directory in October 2007. I have links to some of my favorite Czech expat blogs on the right margin of my blog. Reading those blogs was really helpful and motivating as I planned my move.

Michael in front of a mysterious
statue meant to ward off evil spirits

Michael, who originally hails from Denmark, has a gift for inclusion and connecting people. He invited me to join a group of his friends who were off to see SAPA, the Vietnamese community that immigrant Vietnamese have created south of Prague. SAPA is famous for it's stalls of wholesale knock-off clothing merchandise for the various Vietnamese retailers around Prague, Asian food stalls, terrific inexpensive Vietnamese restaurants, even their own Vietnamese kindergarten.

Beautiful Bok Choy

Look at those long beans!
I want to experiment with cooking them
.
The white blocks are fresh tofu.

Vietnamese delicacies

The best part?

Did you know that inside a chicken is a little egg production line with eggs in the making? These egg yolks taken from the inside of a chicken, before they form into full-formed eggs with shells are considered a real delicacy in countries like Vietnam and Russia because of their incredible richness. Who knew this was the best part? Not me.

There were also hundreds of fertilized duck eggs for sale in the stalls. In Vietnam, people enjoy these eggs so much people develop an opinion on when in the gestation they like to eat the egg because the fetus has developed to a certain stage by a certain day that is especially tasty. Some people like it after the tenth day, some the fifteenth, some longer. It’s all up to you.

Carp doesn't get any fresher

Frying fresh tofu

The fish in the bag were
still flopping -
Check out the knife he laid on the cardboard
for chopping off the tails and fins

Dragon fruit

Vietnamese Rice Bread

What do you see? Snakes? Bats? Octopi? Stingrays?

Our meal started with bravery. Dominic, the British organizer of our excursion, shared shots of “snakebite vodka.” I didn’t see the snake but I swear I saw a little hand in that bottle that could only have belonged to a bat! Being new to the country, I abstained. Who would want to chicken out at the last minute and spew bat juice all over one’s newest friends?

Nazdravi!

During lunch, we had one tasty Vietnamese dish after another, which we shared family style. Nickolai and his Japanese girlfriend taught me how to hold my chopsticks properly. Hold the bottom chopstick firmly. It doesn’t move. The top one is the one that does all the moving and if one grips it like a pen, it’s easy to pick things up with it.

Vietnamese and Chinese chopsticks are longer than Japanese chopsticks because it’s acceptable to reach across and pluck a choice morsel from the serving dish as you eat. No worries about Seinfeld “double dipping!” In Japan, that’s not acceptable to do. Therefore, Japanese chopsticks are shorter. By the end of the meal, my chopstick skills had evolved enough that I could pick up a solitary peanut with grace.

The people that "go"

Michael said, “You know how there are people who stay at home and people who go? These are the people that go.” Around the table we had the following nationalities represented: Danish, British, Czech, American, Dutch, Japanese, El Salvadorian, Albanian, Hungarian, Ukrainian, Turkish, and Vietnamese. Many had been expatriates in multiple places.

We ended our meal with Vietnamese coffee
brewed tableside by the individual cup.

I was touched that in a Vietnamese restaurant,
in a Czech city,
there was a bit of American inspiration
in the lobby.


Thank you, Michael and friends,
for my first Czech/Vietnamese adventure!

Saturday, August 23, 2008

Wonderful food eases newly empty nest

This week I took Daughter #1 back to college in Madison, Wisconsin. Madison is a fantastic town for it's natural beauty and intellectual ferment. There are more restaurants here per capita than anywhere else in America. Delightfully, many of the restaurants are ethnic and very affordable.

Within a few blocks of daughter #1's new apartment there is a Japanese, Peruvian, Laotian, Swiss, and Vietnamese restaurant. I especially admire the exuberance of the Vietnamese owners, they called theirs the "I'm Here" restaurant.

The last time I had any exposure to Peruvian culture was my fourth grade shoebox diorama on the Incas, so I voted for the Peruvian restaurant called "Inka Heritage." It was a choice we did not regret.

We were among the first in for the evening
and took a window table.

Andean flute music added to the experience.

As did our terrific waiter Pablo.

Pablo brought us Peruvian corn (very crunchy)
with a tangy cilantro sauce for dipping.

I ordered Lomo Saltado, a dish of very tender beef tenderloin flambed with onion, tomatoes, cilantro, rice and potatoes.
It was fabulous!

Daughter #1 ordered Seco de Cordero, lamb cooked in cilantro sauce, with rice, canary beans, fried yucca, and creole sauce. She enjoyed every bite and said the canary beans tasted sweet.

Almost all of the deserts had a milk-flavored theme.
I chose Tres Leches.
The spongy cake and liquid under whipped creme
was interesting texturally.


Daughter #1 went wild over hers, Mousse de Lucama.
Lucama is a Peruvian fruit that was new to us both.

I enjoyed this Peruvian adventure. Until I get to Machu Picchu, this will be my favorite 'Peruvian' memory. It beats the diorama hands down!
 
Travel Sites Catalog All Traveling Sites Expat Women—Helping Women Living Overseas International Affairs Blogs - BlogCatalog Blog Directory expat Czech Republic website counter blog abroadWho links to me? Greenty blog