Ceska Posta IV

12 June

Just how totally royal is it to be me? Spent the afternoon and evening lounging in this beautiful Moravian garden surrounded by grapevines which both Milan and his dad got up every now and then to pick a handful of suckers from. Those are the extra vines that can deplete the energy from the grapes. I have armloads of sweet smelling clean clothes and am filled with a wonderful chicken and pasta salad and frankcovka 05 and strawberries and cherries and too many chips. In Moravia, instead of having hor d'oeurves before and dinner after, you eat dinner, then continue to nibble alll night long. I have the illusion of having been helpful in the production of all this because I put a few clothes on the line to dry and helped haul a table outdoors and chopped vegetables for the salad. But actually I mostly lazed about in the lawn chair and read an episode from Dawson's Creek (I had no idea it was a teen agers' program) and The Secret Garden and scratched Beni's ears and followed the progress of a bright green ultralight overhead. Also ate green peas straight from the garden and smiled a lot. Milan's girlfriend Veronika, who is also a former English student of mine-no, I have not taught every single Czech--came over and we had a wine tasting in the Supalkovi cellar. Ivo told me it was empty but he missed a jug or two apparently.

Tuesday--more of the same. Finished LUCKY JIM by Kingsley Amis between arduous sessions of vegetable chopping and dry clothes folding. Funnier than P. G. Wodehouse without being so contrived and should be must reading for all seeking the academic life.
Walked to the bakery to choose breakfast bread with MIlan. We stopped by Veronika's as he had bought her one of her favorite type of bun--sunflower seed braid with cheese filling.
Upon return home, I had a BLT with no B on rye bread, a slice of Dutch Gouda and a fresh peach. We lunched on last night's salad with shreddded lettuce and ice cream sundaes--walnut, strawberry, whipped cream, strawberry syrup.

Pronunciation note with a bit of culture thrown in: Though both Hana and Radek have told me that it is foreign to Czech culture to tell anyone except your mate that you love them, several people here have said that to me and to others in much the same sense that we do in America--children, parents, good friends. I do not want any native English speakers to get cocky until they can properly pronounce the R in Dvorak and the CH in Mucha but Czech speakers often have difficulty with both TH and V/W. The TH thing makes brother into brudder and the confusion of V and W often makes my name into Lovely. LOW-vull-ee.
The EE on the end is a diminutive noting affection and not a plural as is usually the case in Czech. Though I am the giant economy size by their standards, there are not two of me. This is not Theo's LOO-ver-ly which she usually uses to denote things that are anything BUT lovely, but an actual heart-melting pronunciation.

These links are from Josef Zak and are for the readers who think it is just me who has this fascination with things Czech. The Pendolino train lines Fulgham refers to include the train I took down here Monday.
http://robertfulghum.com/index.php/fulghumweb/entry/400_czech_news/
http://robertfulghum.com/index.php/fulghumweb/entry/402_czech_news_exhumed_and_resumed/

Slave labor: I shelled garden fresh green peas and pulled baby carrots after having filled my plastic baggie that I have been using for a coin purse with ripe mulberries for Betty on a walk with Milan and Veronika. Betty and I drove through vineyards, peach and apple orchards, rapeseed fields and barley fields to Naklo, the highest hill in the area, from which you can see many villages and the White Carpathians on the Slovak border and another range whose name I forget. The site is marked by a tall wooden pole with interesting knobs at the top and village coats of arms on the base. It is surrounded by large stones inscribed from nearby towns and villages. There is a gazebo with a bell but it had been vandalized and the clapper removed. I learned to tell the differnce between barley and wheat fields. Wheat heads remain upright while barley heads droop at a sharp angle.

We drove on to Dubnany (where the Thai masseur Mojmir lives when he is not in Iceland) to see Betty and Voytech's workplace, Orfus. It manufactures truck parts for Dutch and German firms and is on the site of an old coal mine. (The Suaplekovi have an old coal mining car in their back yard which they use as a cooling off sort of swimming pool in the summer and as a cistern from which to water the garden.) At the behest of another employee we went mushroom searching but all the ones I found were poisonous, worm infested, or too little.

For all of you who ask for pictures, I will try to explain these in order so that this will NOT be a matching test.
Dvorak Memorial--exterior of house and long shot down central hallway to spiral staircase in rear hall
Meat Cake--literal translation of this party food--rather like a 3D party platter available form the butcher shop that belongs ot my landlady;s family in PragueDoll Museum in Paris--these are all from Raynal which is sort of the French equivalent of Madame Alexander
Svata Hora--Looking toward the terrace chapel built for hte coronation of the wooden statue of Mary and Jesus
Vojna Memorial--one of many wooden towers situated between two rows of barbed wire fencing--convenient for pot shots at desperate escapees

Na shledanou, Pronouced NOSK luh don oo and means good bye,
Lowell

Ceska Posta VII

19 June

Photos:
Betty and Lowell with the potter they bought a little keramika from in Borsice
The Supalekovi and the potter were discussing "evangelicka" which sometimes
means any Protestant and sometimes means fundamentalist proselytizer
Betty and Lowell at the palace at Buchlovice
Betty and Lowell in the "green chapel" at Buchlovice
one of many peacocks at Buchlovice. Voytech got some shots of him with his fan spread but I liked this one best.

Sunday afternoon we drove to Buchlovice. From a distance Betty pointed out a huge hilltop fortress and said it was Buchlov. When we got to Buchlovice and parked I looked up at that fortresss in the distance and thought how in the world is my wonky foot ever going to climb up there (it appeared to be about 20 KM distant)? Well, it turns out that the fortress is the actual ancient castle and not our destination at all, but the much more modest and modern--well, baroque--Buchlove Palace which was right around the corner.

Buchlovice is prettier than most I have seen, with two separate residences facing each other across a graveled courtyard with a fountain and formal hedge plantings. There are low terraces behind stone balustrudes and all sorts of curvy noooks and crannies. The gardens alternate between bubolic curvaceous things and straight line greens and alleys with overarching rows of trees and graveled paths that are very comfortable to walk on.

We toured the exhibit of fuschias in every color including fuschia, the cavernous wine cellar (about 50 degrees inside and 90 outside) with its well in one corner and the orangerie which was fitted up with displays of keramika and 1900-1930 photography of peasants at work and funerals. No one smiled. My favorite keramika was a holy water wall thingy in the typical bright Moravian colors which featured Chirst crucified on the grape vines.

The return trip home included acres of white poppies which they grow for the seeds for culinary use but they are the actual opium poppies, I am told, and a bright red glider that seemed to just hang in the air.

Libor picked me up Monday morning to go to Hodonin to meet my friend (former student along with her husband Martin) Edita and her new little girl Martinka, who is named for and looks exactly like her very handsome father. We had a salad lunch at a sidewalk cafe almost directly across the street from your former flat, Theo.

Libor and I went to the teachers' library while Edita took Martinka to "the boss of the baby bath tube" which I think means to a diaper swim-gym class. We also went to a bookstore and probably horrified the other clients and employees. I walked in and the clerk stepped out from behind the desk and we rushed to embrace. It was Radek's girlfriend Veronika (not the same as Milan's Veronika) who speaks no English at all. She then resumed her place behind the cash desk as though this were an everyday occurrence.

Edita and I spent the afternoon looking through her English class materials for inspiration for my teaching and playing with the baby. Then Libor took me to a pub to work on the course but most of you know that it was much too late at night for an unfed, sleepy Lowell to get much done.

Every year I read a Jerome Klapka Jerome novel here when his name never rose over my horizons in English literature. This year it is a set of satirical essays in which he bats away at luck, science enhancing both women's appearances and characters, matchmaking and the like. On the whole, I prefer the novels, in which both the content and the writing are funny. In the essays, the content is so dark that the clever writing style doesn't stand a chance with me. Also found a couple of novels in a "Dear Vittie" series written partly in Czech and partly in English--ostensibly to ease Czech readers into learning English. Hm.

Tuesday I worked feverishly on the course and am rolling a bottle of frozen Magnesia water under my hurt foot here at the keyboard. Betty and I went back to Hodonin to buy vegetables this afternoon. I found my way to the teacher's library all by myself and even spoke enough Czech to get me admitted through two doors and to exchange some books!

We will pick all the rest of the green peas form the garden this afternoon so I am gearing up for a marathon bend and stretch session followed by a marathon of shelling out.

Fondly,
Lowell

images of Europe

These are:

a multi media Moravian headdress I did in my Moleskine journal right after seeing one by Benka that I really really loved. Ususally these are typical of Joza Uprcka. Right after I scanned it I tore it so, Libba, we need to see if we can maybe get a good print form the attachment.

a postcard from the museum for smokers in Paris--applicable to very few of you.

the Botticelli Venus with a Slovak flag painted on her face. This exhibit was called Slovensky Mytus or Sovak Myths and this work is definitley a myth, at least as far as Slovakia goes.

local sites and sights including Milotice castle, the Ride of Kings (a local village festival commemorating a king riding into the village so drunk he could not stay on his horse so his friends crowded round and probably tied him tothe saddle with all these ribbons--local society honor in the same sense as mini Mardi Gras royalty), and wine cellars.

Lowell, Veronika and Milan after our drezin ride on the railway.

Ceska Posta VI

16 June

I had no idea what good DJs my friends would make. Thanks for all the food and color song suggestions. Some of my favorites were the camp songs which, alas, have not made it on to Limewire. Charlie Deaton, would you take care of that, please? At any rate, I now have plenty for my English courses. I will let you know how the students like them.

One tiny glass of red wine last night in the garden, along with a mini Slovak language lesson--you buy produce at the ovoce a zelenina in CZ (pronounced OH VO TSAY ah zell uh nee nuh) but the Slovaks contract it to Zelevoce--produced a new English word--fruigetables (FROO juh tuh bullz), which is what you buy at the Garden Spot. I put a great many of them into a huge composed salad with the Supalkovi's first experience of French vinaigrette for dinner Thursday night. Betty accompanied it with thick slices of rye bread french toast coated with grated eidam cheese.

Last summer's readers may recall Betty and Jerry, an American couple with cousins in this area. Libor translates and interprets for them while they are here ancestor searching. One of their cousins or other family connections named Jiri (YEER zhee) Horak has a wonderful photographic exhibition at the art gallery in Hodonin. They are black and white shots taken in Croatia and Bulgaria. All are perfectly composed though very natural shots--many of children and of people with dogs--and all showing things like exotic looking cobbled streets. All his subjects have a rather third world sense of fashion but that makes them way cooler--the whole idea of complete other lives that never have a care about what matches or what sags.

Though, speaking of matching, I have a new pair of $2 Birk style orange sandals to match my fetching WalMart t-shirt and skirt purchased especially for ease of wearing, packing and laundry for this trip. This is sort of the accident of finding them at the Vietnamsky this morning and sort of in celebration of my new wealth since the US dollar now stands at 29 Kc compared to the 21 Kc while I was in Prague.

The Czechs need to enter an Olympic haircutting team. Milan went to the hairdresser with no appointment and rejoined Veronika and me with a short haircut before we could buy those $2 shoes. He has slept it off this afternoon while I watched Shall We Dance?--the American version with Richard Gere, which made me weep a tear but was not as beautiful as the Japanese verson we watched in a popcorn theology at church about 10 years ago. For my movie buff friends like Theo and Dan--don't think I am making it a habit but life is quiet in Ratiskovice and I need to save up my two remaining books in English.

Have been reading one of Sophie Kinsella's SHOPAHOLIC books and feel the infamous Becky Bloomwood has rubbed off on me. In addition to yesterday's purchases I bought 6 colored pencils and an eraser (three pictures today, Libba!) plus two stocking stuffers for Theo in Brno today. This is apparently the most popular possible day for weddings, not only for our dear Helen, but for half the brides in the Czech Republic. We saw parking lots, roadways, and horns-a-blaring parades full of "wedding cars." The guests' are decorated with white ribbons and the bride's has a bride doll affixed to the hood of the car. One bride had the unconventional taste of adorning her hood with a huge yellow arrangement rather like the coffin blanket for a funeral. Hm.

WE went to see the Andy Warhol appreciation (he was Slovak) which I enjoyed in spite of the buildup of his philosophy of using "art as a tool for getting rich and famous." There was a bit about consumerism, glorifying gloss and drugs, and making unequal things equal. I could not quite decide if it was a matter of empty space between the ears or the achievement of true non-attachment. An entire room was devoted to 8 or ten of the Campbell's Soup cans including Pepper Pot, a soup I never see on the shelves any more but was always curious about as a child.

In the course of pottering around the gallery, I learned that instead of "dead ends" Czechs have "blind shoulders." Love love loved the orange and aqua and indigo portrait of Queen Ntombi Tuala, the same colors as his somewhat less friendly portrait of Hans Christian Anderson, but was amused that Lillian Carter was identified as "the wife of ex-President Jimmy Carter."

Next we saw a museum exhibit tracing what it described as the "vagaries of history" from the Middle Ages through the present with stuff stuff stuff from all over Europe in order to try to determine just what constitutes the Slovak style. The exhibition brochure features the face of Botticelli's Birth of Venus with a Slovak flag painted across her face, but that lovely work was not present in the museum. I truly am NOT going to catalog the whole exhibition but those of you who are not interested in art or interesting connections can skip the next list.

Especially for Jennifer and SUzanne: a renaissance tapestry with a corner panel showing Mary kneeling before the Tiburtine Sybil
A Medieval zinc baptismal font made in Hradec Kralove where I am going next week to visit a former student.
"Bizarre objects made from coconuts and seashells" including coconut shell chalices which are supposed to reflect the love of exploration which characterized the Renaissance.
A 1750 parrot shaped faience bottle made in Holic (HOLE eats) which is a tiny depressed hole in the road just across the border into Slovakia from Hodonin--not a place one associates with museum quality pottery.
A gigantic reliquary cross alleged to have bones from 6 different apostles plus two splinters of the True Cross
A Gustav Klimpt "jardiniere" which looks like a piece of George Ohr pottery
A room dedicated to the "Female Principle" and female protectors of the SLovak people.

DAy ended with a Saturday night barbecue in the garden, a bottle of red wine for me from Veronika's father's cellar, and lazy speculation about what charming day trip could be planned for tomorrow. I correctly identified oplatku syrovu (cheese crackers) for points both in taste bud ed and in Czech grammar.

Lowell

Ceska Posta V

June 14, 2007

Dobry den,

Libor and I spoke of how mutually unprepared we are to teach this year's courses last night. He said his older son Mattias had met Robert Fulghum at the Rover Scout meeting referred to in one of the links I sent you in the last travelog. It seems to be a big year for meeting people--me and Petr Dvorak, Matias and Robert Fulghum, GWB and all the disgruntled Czechs who do not want their city closed down by a visitor who wants to use their soil for missile bases.

And as for the question of royalty: Voytech speaks no English in spite of his one week course with me four years ago so I guiltily hung around all morning while he mopped and cooked lunch. My attempts to help were met with laughing "ne, ne"s. The the coup de grace fell when he delivered slices of watermelon to the garden after lunch. I tried to entertain Beni by squirting seeds from between my thumb and forefinger but ended up entertaining myself with the pleasant thwock of seeds hitting grape leaves. None of you except my relatives and former students know that I knocked a contact lens out a girl's eye in l966 and avoided being the scandal of Girls' State (the students don't know this part) only because two girls from Bassfield, Mississippi pre-empted my newsworthiness by being caught in bed together.

Anyway, I tried to be guestly good and weeded in the vegetable garden a bit. I hope I don't learn that I have uprooted some valuable interplantings. Also used experience removing the suckers from tomato plants to help discern what to remove from the grapevines. Did not come away with any handsful of the infant grapes so guess I did a good job there.

We began the early afternoon over wine and snacks in the garden but were driven indoors by a hail storm which damaged nothing important. We continued our festivities indoors with a Czech movie with English subtitles. The movie, Ucaztnici Zajezdu, which would probably be translated into Tourists in English, is about a group of trippers who go with a travel agency on a bus to Croatia. The drivers are obsessed with having their brown plastric coffee cup holders returned, a middle aged couple is dying to find a partner for their "ham-thighed" daughter who ends up finding a great one on her own, and there are two elderly ladies who spend a great deal of time on one of them's past. It was quite good and reminded me of my similar trek to Croatia three or four years ago.

Milan came home with cherries from Veronika's grandfather's trees so I stuffed as many as possible into my mouth while kicking the soccer ball around for Beni. Also made the family recipe slaw from the outer leaves of the cabbage which Betty was discarded from her pork and cabbage dinner. Voytech really likes it, Betty ate some politely, Milan snubbed it cold, and I ate a huge heap.

Thursday afternoon we finally realized my fondest Ratiskovice hope and rode the drazin. Now, I remember from my Mickey Mouse Club Jiminy Cricket educational cartoon days that the draisine was an early version of a wooden foot-pushing-on-the-road bicycle. This drazin is a pedal powered private rail car that covers 2.2 KM and back on disused rail line that once went from a coal mine near Ratiskovice to the canal heading north and the Morava River. There are two blue upright bicycles, complete with darling little bells to warn traffic out of our path. These can bemoved to face inthe direction in which you wish to locomote and turn the carriage wheels. Suspended between them are facing two seater green canvas seats resembling lawn chairs. Milan, Veronika, and I took turns pedaling while the third party got to sit in the canvas seat and be the queen.

A few meters past the edge of town we were riding through pristine forest with blue and yellow and pink wildflowers, orange and yellow and white butterflies by the beezillion, and mushrooms growing between the rails. On the outbound we spotted a small red deer eying us but he finally bounded on over the track. Coming back, a little bird ran the rail in front of us (rather like your protagonist, Lee) until we got too close and he flew off.

Then we perused the tiny railway and coalmining museum in two railroad cars--one about 70 years old and the other about 160 years old. The seats were made of wooden slats, would seat about 6 people each and originally had controllable steam heat under them. The caboose/baggage car was the older carriage and looked like it would make a great playhouse.

A small 10 percent beer in Milan's favorite pub and now it is back to work on the English course and the salad I promised to make for supper.

Slave driven,
Lowell

Ceska Poste III (I think) which music lovers need to read through and a special appeal to Larry VanDyke

Dear Friends and Lovie-Doves,

SKIP THIS PARAGRAPH IF YOU ARE NOT A READER

Just spent over $30 on English language paper backs as I have sucked up everything I brought with me and only have a few pages left of the book Josef brought me. It is a book of essays by Bohumil Hrabel couched as letters to his American friend April Gifford. Besides many a mention of names as well known as Shirley Temple, Charlie Chaplin, Andy Warhol, Milos Forman, Franz Kafka, Rainer Maria Rilke, Boris Pasternak, and on and on--Hrabal also refers to the very same Gulf Stream swept spot in northern Scotland where palm trees grow that is mentioned in the Southern mystery I finished, Patricia Sprinkle's DID YOU DECLARE THE CORPSE? Also read and wept and wept over Elizabeth Berg's NEVER CHANGE. Has anyone read it? If so, let's talk. I loved her exposition of how one can grow into a nurturant adult in a nurturing profession in spite of surviving a cold childhood. She also has thrown a great deal of needed light for me on living with people in difficulty. As the laws of synchronicity have it, Sprinkle also speaks to that through her protagonist who says many women confuse marriage with ministry.

48 hour day
On the road down to Pribram Friday night we passed a short convoy of antique cars with right hand drive, including one with a wicker trunk strapped to the back bumper. Also passed a number of small castles, some open to the public and some not. Perhaps another time...
I stayed in the flat where Dana grew up in Pribram, a flat that will be Jana's in the future. Dana and Josef had brought a fine supply of food and drink for me so I was well set up--especially since I had books and the deep tub for my first sit down bath since leaving the USA! I take it back--I had one at Anne Alexis's. Well, you can't have too many bubble baths.

Saturday we started the morning at Svata Hora, a monastic pilgrimage site at least 800 years old. It is completely unlike any other church or chapel I have ever visited. In addition to the main church with its solid silver massive altarpiece, there is a glorious terrace chapel built for the occasion over 200 years ago of the coronation of a statue of Mary and Jesus to which many miracles are attributed. In fact, the ceilings of the cloisters that run all the way around the main church are covered with the painted record of these miracles. There is also a covered stairway leading from the site down to the town of Pribram. Under the main sanctuary there is also a stalactite chapel. We heard the organ, bells, and clock chimes.

We had few minutes so we stopped to visit Dana's sister Ilona in Lesetice, a tiny village. The conversation was all in Czech and covered the new WC and the newly required well specifications. I enjoyed just being there and looking at a cool l920-30s ish horizontal oval Madonna and Child that covered one wall of the living room.

Next we toured the Vojna Memorial, a prison camp begun by German laborers but taken over by the communists for the punishment of political prisoners who opposed Communism. They were forced to mine uranium. The entry is marked Praci ke Svobode, the Czech version of the Work Makes You Free that is found in German over Auschwitz. The most horrifying thing I saw here was the corrections bunker where prisoners could barely stand and were kept underground for days on end with no food, water, sanitation, etc. Sometimes it rained and the bunker filled with water waist high so the prisoners could only stand or stoop. In hot weather, tar dripped through the ceiling which they used to inscribe messages inside the bunker.

AFter a delicious picnic of rohliky, syr, chipsy, a jabloka (rolls, cheese, chips and apples) we went to the park where Antonin Dvorak's in laws lived. We wandered up onto a wedding at their beautifully maintained ochre and white small mansion (Is this a leto?) The bride and groom were busy being showered with bubbles by their guests and cutting a large heart out of a sheet being stretched out by other guests. Dana assures me this is NOT an old Czech tradition. In fact, Josef called it an invention.

The house is a memorial to Dvorak but was his sister-in-law's residence. I enjoyed the rooms, the letters of tribute, a film in English and the music but was really awed when I asked the ticket seller if the family still used Dvorak's family home Rusalka since it is not open to the public. He introduced himself--Petr Dvorak--the composer's great grandson and said, yes, the family still lives at Rusalka. I am quite atwitter at being only 6 degrees of separation from Dvorak! I learned there that Josef Suk is also a Dvorak descendent and that Renee Fleming had Czech grandparents.

As if this were not already a complete day, we made another stop. We had to take a one lane dirt detour to get through Beltice to the glass blowing studio. I bought a sturdy kostyr/liquer glass for myself and the Zakovi bought several items. The glassblower said he learned first through an apprenticeship but then went to art school. Josef says they were hesitant about where to settle as there is no glass blowing tradition in Beltice, but apparently they made the right decision as their glass is sold in Prague Castle, among other venues. They gave me a DVD catalog to bring to the USA in case you need to place an order! The artisan concluded the sales by pouring us each a tot of oreschovice, a nut brandy.

Then on to the Zakovi cottage in Smetanova Lhota--a restful walled garden spot with the sweetest well water and the most fragrant roses. I ate about a dozen delicious jahody or strawberries from the garden though Jana declared that they were all dried up. After serving a delicious dinner of chicken and vegetables with rice and cherry tomatoes and plenty of red wine, Dana brought out many pieces of her pottery. Larry, I so wish you and she could see each other's work. If Josef sends me any digital photos I will forward them to you. The same if you will send me any digital photos of your work. She has a huge variety in her output, but I especially liked a rooster flat bottomed vessel with a tall skinny neck rather than spout rather like pre-Columbian artifacts. I also loved a skewed rusty clay tower with glazed black details like gargoyles and gutters and window bars.

On the way back to Pribram we stopped at the cemetery in Cimelice to water Josef's ancestor's graves. Graves are generally planted or have very neatly arranged gravel or both and are much more carefully maintained than in the USA. I kept getting my flip flops stuck between the stone kerbs around the graves and could not move in any direction.

Sunday morning there was a big thunderstorm. Also my foot was giving me trouble so I skipped the walk to the very interesting looking silver mining museum and read, read, read and ate, ate, ate. Upon my return to Prague Sunday night I went to the internet cafe for some amazingly good gazpacho which was a great substitute for the salad I was yearning for.

This morning Hana ate breakfast with me again and plied me with cookies left over from the wedding she went to. She felt beautiful in the new black and white striped dress. Then my train trip to Breclav where Betty and Milan picked me up. We went to Hodonin and shopped for the wonderful cherries and berries I am eating now plus other groceries and the rest of the day has been rest, read, and write to you.

Ahoj and love from Beni the poodle, who remembers me,
Lowell

Ceska Posta II

Friends,

First things first. Is there a volunteer to pick me up at the airport in Jackson on July 16? Here is the catch--it is at 11:30 pm. Still--know any teenagers? EYC-ers? Anyone?

Bought chips, beer and soda at the Koubkov (my landlady's family) butcher shop at 6:40 though the sign clearly says they close at 6. Items were for guests as the Zakovi visited last night. They also brought chips, wine and fizzy water and the landlady came downstairs with cookies after giving Dana a guided tour of Pan Koubkov's wood carvings.

The wine was a commercial white wine from Moravia--quite good--and was a nice top to my first Czech beer of the year at noon yesterday. Dana is learning the placement of head and face features in ceramics and Jana has a new drivers license. She also just finished a very good 13th year piano recital and is scheduled for a choral performance tongiht. Her parents may not get to attend because they are awaiting delivery of a new refrigerator. Josef translated tirelessly for Dana and me and brought me a new Bohumil Hrabal book which is next in line after the psychological thriller I am reading now. Greg (my preist) gave it to me in France when he finished it--a murder in Seville with lots of history of the Spanish civil war and WWII.

Hana, the Koubkov daughter who is a friend of Theo's former pupil Kamil, had breakfast and good visit with me this morning. She is a tall, beautiful size 6 or 8 redhead who is in a frenzy about buying clothes for her law school graduation and a family wedding because here she wears XXL and has difficulty finding pretty youthful clothes. She begins her new job in two weeks at the international law ministry! Kamil also graduated and begins an international sales job.

I lunched at a pizza place on felafel and Czech salads with a yougurt and granola sundae.
Jim, your Japonsky is now Express Sushi.

The Koubkovi trwins are now adorable two year olds. The part of the garden where they filled and spilled bowls of red currants last summer is now planted intomatoes. Wonder what they will do with that.

I spent the morning tracking down and buying a new phone as the antenna on the brand new one from the USA is broken. Anything to stay in touch!

After directing some Canadians to the right metro stop (I am SUCH a tour guide) I went to eat lunch with my old friend/student Ivo who manages a chain of shoe stores in Prague. I ate a roast chicken breast and roasted mushrooms piled on a salad with a mayo-ish dressing and a large high alcohol content draft beer.

Ivo has lost about 30 pounds playing on a local soccer team and has let his black curls grow out a bit so he looks very good. He has a new girlfriend and hopes to move back to Ratiskovice to live in the house he recently inherited from his babka/grandmother. He knows eh will make much less money but likes the possibility of having a simpler life with his own garden and winecellar. He tells me that his father's cellar is empty becuase he and Milan and Martin have drunk it all up but I don't believe him.

Read all afternoon--The Blind Man of Seville--a psychological thriller Greg passed on to me after he finished it at Taize. It is the second novel I have read lately which features an artist who paints his wife/lover/model as a landscape. But I can't remember the first one so I don't know what good it does me to read?

On my way to meet my evening friends I overheard a group of fifteen German teens receiving the same sort of lesson I had tried to impart to our kids in the Paris Metro. The leader was showing them how to know where they are and which train to get on and where they will get off. Another leader was snapping photos. Just like us except more kids and fewer adults. And the Prague Metro is much much simpler.

Spent the evening with my old friend Jakub who is now in charge of 56 branch managers at the headquarters of a large Czech bank. He spends the rest of his time being immensely proud of two year old Tomas who is walking and learning to talk. His wife Dana has taken the baby with her to her family's home so they can babysit while she completes her dissertation and her exams for her degree over the next few weeks. He said a few nights ago he and Dana sat up until 3 am working on the dissertation--the only alternative to killing her!

The party also included Jakub's brother Karel who is an engineer for a multinational headquartered in Hollad. He usually works in North Africa and has a sweet deal of working a month, then furloughed back home for a month. HIs girlfriend Anna, pronounced Anya, is a beautiful blonde Pole who was excited by my dove cross as she has been to Taize too and was eager to talk about it. We even sang a few Taize hymns right there in the pub to the astonishment and puzzlement of the rest of our party.

There was also Canadian Bob, whom I have met before in Hodonin, a sort of ex pat hanger on with foul language and dull conversation except for his one idea of fillling the American presidency thorugh a lottery open only housewives since housewives know how to balance budgets, treat people civilly, maintain a clean healthy environment and tell their families what sorts of things are out of the question.

Last in the group was RAdim who is a PR man for Pilsener Urquell, Coca Cola and several other high profile clients. He was smiling, quiet and kindly accompanied us to the subway since Jakub had had three beers to every one of mine and had enjoyed tequila shots with every one at the table while I had only one and did not even want that as I have been off tequila and liquor in general.

Had breakfast with Hana again and she modeled the dress she had bought for the wedding--a black and white stripe that falls from a high neckband and has a belt low on the waist. Craig and Theo, you will not be surprised to learn that it came from H & M.

Best wishes to all and love to some--you know who you are!
Lowell