Serious Girlfriend Time

Surely we look exactly the same as we did 30 years ago?

My beloved friend from Cottey College, Robin McClellan of Palco, Kansas was in serious need of a girlfriend weekend. Robin has a complicated life right now. She lives in Provence, France, where she is nursing her husband as he recovers from a brain tumor and raising her #2 daughter, her job with the American State Department is in New Delhi, India (currently on hold while she helps her husband) and husband Jim, the king of the grand gesture, is receiving his treatment in Perth, Australia where Robin was last posted as American Consul General. Nothing like a three-continent life to keep you busy.

To say Robin needed a girlfriend weekend would be an understatement. To top it all off, everyone in her house had the flu! Jim, and daughter #1 who was visiting for the holidays from Australia, insisted that Robin come see me in Prague. Yea!

Robin loves to tell the story
(which she did when she delivered
the commencement address at our alma mater)
of how when she lost the student body presidency
she ran off in tears - but not before her dear
friend Karen comforted her with the words:
"Robin, can I have your potatoes?"

Two girls in Old Town Square

Doing what Robin loves best: window shopping!
I think we visited 54 shops.

Relaxing on the Charles Bridge

When was the last time you saw an organ grinder?
This one is on the Charles Bridge over the river Vltava.

Rubbing the lucky statue on the bridge

Following My Favorite Blogs

I'm really enjoying the new feature offered by Blogger where you can sign up to follow someone's blog. It puts new posts from your favorite bloggers in a queue to read so that you don't have to click more than once on their blog to see if they've updated it.

Presumably it cuts down on the number of clicks my blog generated just to see if I had an update so each click is real readership growth.

One of my favorite humor blogs I follow is called "Adventures of a Foreign Salaryman in Tokyo. This guy consistently makes me laugh. He's a Swedish-born businessman working in Japan and he is the master of describing the absurb. Click on my title to give him a try.

Battle Royal for a Chief of a Czech State of Mind

Have you ever heard of the Kingdom of Wallachia? It's a delightful bit of fun thought up by the locals in one area of the Czech Republic. The imagined kingdom of Wallachia has so captured the imagination of Czechs that it is starting to create some real wealth. So who gets it? That's the question. The NYTimes had an article this week detailing the players.

We had something similar in my home state of Iowa. A couple of brothers who owned a T-shirt shop in a tiny town next to the resort lake of Okoboji, Iowa dreamed up the University of Okoboji. The motto: In God We Trust, All Others Cash. It was an immediate hit.

Ownership was clear, however, and the brothers have had a blast thinking up more and more uses for their University. Click on the title to read about the Czech kingdom of Wallachia. Even George Bush had a passport from there!

Wonderful English Language Theatre in Prague

One of the nice things about having a large English-speaking population in Prague is that expats have started to create and grow their own institutions. We are like the population of a smaller town within a larger city. We can keep the doors open to special gathering spots like bars, restaurants, and theaters on our own.

This weekend a friend and I went to see Glengarry Glen Ross, the Pulitzer-prize winning play by American David Mamet. It was presented by the Prague Playhouse under the direction of Brian Caspe. The play was held in a cozy theater called Divadlo Inspirace. The theater holds about 70 people in the gothic basement of Malostranske namesti 13, a stunningly beautiful part of town. The whole place, including the foyer where beer was sold, had the feeling of a secret clubhouse. Who else should be there but Blogging Gelle and a whole row of his pals, which was a fun surprise.

When I saw this play as a movie with Al Pacino and Jack Lemmon, I found the language so brutal it was hard to get passed it. But as Mamet said when he wrote his play set in a real estate sales office in Florida, "this is how real estate guys really do talk to each other." This time I was prepared for the language and was able to see the humor and the humanity of the characters.

There is a masterful opening monologue by actor Curtis Mathew, who played Shelly Levene, "the Machine" who tried to persuade his boss that he had just hit a selling dry spell and only needed the best leads to turn it all around. Throughout the play, Curtis did a great job showcasing the ego dejection of his dry spell and the ego inflation of turning it around.

If you've every been around a sales team, or managed a sales team, you will thoroughly enjoy the point-by-point account of how he closed a sale. Who hasn't heard a business war story retold in detail like that in real life? Heck, who hasn't told one!

There is another monologue I love in this play where one man accuses another of "being like a child" but I won't tell you anymore about it. I have to leave some surprises, right?

As usual, the Prague price for this professionally-acted theater is fantastic: 200 kc or $10 a seat. Brian predicts the show will sell out. Click on my title if you are interested in seeing the play on the remaining three dates that have seats available.

I would like to ask Czechs learning English if hearing and seeing an English language play is easier to understand than hearing an English-language movie? What do you think, my dear Czech friends?

Czech Fashion Report: Tall Black Boots

This pretty lady bought her
very cool hat in Uzbekistan
to go with her black boots

All over Prague this winter, women are wearing boots! Tall black boots predominate but a few other boot colors get in there.

Ivory boots in Old Town Prague

I was telling one of my Czech girlfriends that "European women really live up to their stereotype as chic, sophisticated dressers."

A lovely Czech lady
at Novy Smichov Mall

She asked "exactly how do the ladies live up to that stereotype?"

"Why, all of these ladies in their black boots. It looks urban and hip and feminine!"

She laughed. "Actually," she said, "we just spend a lot of time outside and the boots keep us warm."

Olga from Ukraine says,
"Here you can wear whatever you want."

I asked a new Ukranian friend if this was the reason for the knee high boots and she nodded yes adding "I love Prague because you can dress to be comfortable. Here you can wear whatever you want."

Yet a third European woman shared her pride unprompted at finding a pair with an elevated sole so that her feet never actually have to touch the cold pavement.

Shopping at Swarovski
in Old Town, Prague

Another stereotype bites the dust. It still looks nice though. And since we recently had an unusually harsh cold spell in Prague, I can see their wisdom and not just their fashion.

You Could Feel Something Like This Coming

Today the Governor of my former state of Illinois was thrown out of office without a single legislator rising to defend him. Having spent four days in Springfield, Illinois in October seeing the Lincoln sites that inspire so many Americans (including our new President), I could feel that the situation back then wasn't sustainable. He didn't have a friend left before the news came out about the Senate seat he felt was "golden."

Click on the title to read my post from back then. If you're interested in reading about the Lincoln sites that inspired Obama, please click on the Lincoln label.

Three Hours in Berlin

No, I did not tell them it should read "Welcome TO Berlin."

The Brandenburg Gate

In the strange logic peculiar to governments, several of my TEFL classmates and I needed to go to the Czech Embassy in Berlin to do paperwork to allow us to stay exactly where we are in the Czech Republic.

"Don't get into any trouble," our guide said,
"since your passports are all back at the Embassy.

It seems odd to ask thousands of foreigners such as my classmates and myself to help warm the planet by requiring a drive out-of-country four hours each way all in the name of filling out three forms. But I, for one, am willing to put up with quirky governmental requirements if it allows me to work in the Czech Republic, plus go on a delightful trip to Berlin with my compadres.

Actually, being in Berlin was a bit sobering. We had three hours of "liberty" while our paperwork was processed. The Czech Embassy is in old East Berlin. We set out on foot to see the sights from there.

In three hours, we saw three commemorations of shameful acts of the German government. If someone comes to my country's capital and has three hours there, please dear God, I pray that it will always be inspirational.

First, we saw the Brandenburg Gate. That's the inspirational part of what we saw. If it looks familiar, it's because it's probably one of the most recognizable symbols of Europe. President Kennedy, Reagan, and Clinton have all spoken at this site. Reagan's words were probably the most powerful:

"General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"
We walked over to the Tiergarden and realized where we were standing was exactly where the wall had been. It was so obviously insane that this large united city was divided there for decades. I found it unfathomable. Yet when the wall was up, I found the idea of it ever coming down unimaginable.
We noticed a giant new memorial and wandered over. None of us knew anything about it so we started to explore. It's called The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. It went up in 2005. We learned later that there was a museum underground to explain it. We missed the museum because we came from the Brandenburg Gate (like I assume the majority of tourists would) and the entrance was in the opposite corner.

I couldn't imagine a more solemn theme but the design of the memorial at first brought out the playfulness in everyone. I know that's not the reaction the architect was seeking - but all of those blocks of stone cried out for tag or hide-and-seek.

The stones get larger and larger
as you enter, eventually engulfing you.

But as we spent time among the stones, the feeling of being buried underground, beneath layers and layers of ash was overwhelming and oppressive. The memorial made it's point.

It's not everyday you see the word homosexual
in a street sign.
We assumed this was
pointing to a memorial for
The Murdered Homosexuals of Europe.

I felt my usefulness
since none of these young people
would have known what the giant banners
with the word "Stasi" all over them
referred to: The German Secret Police!
It was a museum in the actual headquarters
of the Stasi describing how the
East German Government
continually spied on it's own citizens.

Before coming to the Czech Republic,
I did not realize it wasn't just the Soviets

who invaded during the Prague Spring.
It was all of Czecho's neighbors, like the GDR, too.

Trying to escape meant death.