happy father's day yesterday!

happy father's day to bob rosenblatt, dave rosso, and all the other fathers and expectant fathers who are reading. sorry we didn't get to call, since we were on trains for 10 hours. but we thought of you!

our first adventure in prague was figuring out how to leave the train station. we discovered that the facilities are not quite as spotless and organized as in many german stations, and that czech is not at all intuitive. at all. we managed to get some money and check our email so we could recover the address of our hotel, which was not listed on our confirmation. the internet cafes at the train station were in a) a sex shop and b) a dark, dank, creepy basement room. we opted for the basement. randy deftly figured out the metro and we made it to our hotel by 6. the room is small but nice, but the bathroom came free with an unpleasant odor that has yet to dissipate. hmmm.

we met up with a former colleague of randy's dad's for dinner, and he took us on a 20-minute hike at breakneck speed (and anyone who knows me knows i walk fast) which included leaping over cement barriers and darting in front of speeding buses. actually he jumped in front of the bus. we waited on that one. after this aerobic activity, we ended up in a giant beer garden filled with expats. apparently this is where they and their dogs hang out during the world cup. a rich perfume of cigarettes, beer, and pot filled the air, mingling with grilled sausage. our dinner consisted of kielbasa served with mustard and two small pieces of wheat bread. it was tasty though. so we watched the last few minutes of brasil/australia, then all of south korea/france. (Randy had to defend his sausage from a large dog giving him the pleading eye, which later turned to an evil eye and several angry barks when he didn't get a single measly bite. that's MY sausage, my friend!)

today we covered a lot of territory, walking everywhere and enjoying the beautiful architecture on every street. most ordinary buildings are extraordinary looking, with all kinds of gold and intricate carvings. i'm sure there are better words to describe this style, but i don't know what they are right now. highlights included an open air market where we played with lots of wooden toys and admired some czech art. the most moving activity of the day was our visit to the jewish museum, which includes several synagogues and the old jewish cemetery. one of the synagogues is dedicated to the memory of 80,000 jewish men, women & children from prague and its surrounding towns. all of their names are painted on the walls. it's a bit like the vietnam memorial in dc, but inside a building. equally as powerful. the cemetary too is stunning. it includes hundreds of graves leaning in all different directions, marking the bodies of many thousands more people, because at one time jews were not allowed to bury their dead in other parts of the city, so they had to create layer upon layer in a small area of land. in one of the synagogues was an exhibit of drawings and paintings by children who were forced to live in the terezin ghetto. the adults were dedicated to ensuring that their children would continue to be educated and survive the horrible experience of being stripped of all civil rights, possessions and homes with as little permanent damage as possible, so ad hoc schools and dorms were set up for the kids, with art therapy to help them express their feelings. in some cases these drawings are the only records existing of children who were killed in the holocaust.

now we're at the globe, an english bookstore and coffeeshop where we will likely eat dinner since a huge thunderstorm started since we arrived. :)