Happy Thanksgiving!

 

Today is a regular working day here in Prague, but I still feel the excitement of Thanksgiving and the long weekend all the way from the States. We'll be celebrating tomorrow and Saturday - who knew a dollop of cranberry sauce could be looked forward to with such anticipation!

The chef's away

 

Work, which heaps itself upon my head come Christmas season, has done its job and I am buried under snow drifts far from home most days. Here's a picture of James this weekend though, already getting into the dress up game with Caroline.

She had me at ladybug

 

Saturday's rainy weather didn't stop us from getting out of the house for provisions and a treat at mamacoffee. Caroline decided to go out dressed up, and I snapped lots of pictures of her walking through the gloom, armed and capped with a pink umbrella and ladybug hat. None of the pictures came out as sparkly as reality so I added a filter and a poem to dress this one up a bit.

Happy Monday!!

Lanterns for St. Martin

Saturday night the weather behaved and we gathered with friends at the top of one of Prague's seven hills to parade with lanterns through the dark. None of our friends knew quite what inspired the show, but it seemed to be a cross between Halloween and a St. Martin's day parade. All the children dressed up in costume and carried paper lanterns (with lit candles inside, ours only singed a bit).

The organizers carved pumpkins into jack-o-lanterns and handed out candy to the children as they marched through the night, following a candlelit path through the park and the woods on the trail of a mysterious cat who had stolen a giant pumpkin and must be pursued!

The end of the trail led us to a small stage set up for shadow theater. There the cat was duly tracked down by the children, who bought the pumpkin off of her for a treasure of silver coins (chestnuts wrapped in aluminum foil), and were then rewarded with babovka and more bonbons.

It was all very satisfyingly scary and safe at the same time and Caroline ranked it right up there with trick-or-treating for fun, though as she noted, there was a little too much "boo-ky"* involved for total comfort.

*boo-ky = a Czechlish word made up by C to mean scary in a Halloween sort of way.

Ladybugs for Obama

 

I've just set my alarm to wake me up at 2 so I can check the polls (and instant message with my sister who is also planning to wake up then). Exciting times ahead tonight and tomorrow and in the meantime, I thought I'd post a funny pic of C's latest dress-up endeavor.

Because not all things red are Republican...

Updated to add: Hurray! Red or Blue, I'm proud of the United States of America. Can we change, yes we can!

Current Preoccupation

I think I've worn out the link to this site, I'm a bit obsessed these days!! Isn't it elegantly done? I do love good information design. Map courtesy of the Princeton Election Consortium.

Pippi Longstocking - Winter Wear

When October dawned, the choice of a Halloween costume turned into a hot topic in our house. C knew who she would be, but "What would Pippi wear?" became a matter of great debate.

We knew what her braids should look like (and even how to do them) and we already had a pencil picked out for her freckles. I'd spotted just the right stocking/sock combo and had decided to not worry about her shoes - hard to see in the dark, not on her feet at any party she might go to. But we still weren't sure about the main ingredient, Pippi's dress. C suggested we veer toward the ugly and the large. Her babysitter thought she should wear something whose next stop was under the sink as a cleaning cloth. I had visions of a jumper and sewn-on patchwork.

In the end we compromised. I found a denim dress, large, with cool pockets. C wore one of my big painting shirts under it, sleeves rolled up. To keep the winter out, she topped it all with an old sweater of mine (paper patched), a super spotty scarf and a very warm hat. We took lots of pictures, then we headed out for some candy collection.

Trick-or-treating in Prague? Well may you ask. There is no long-term Halloween tradition in the Czech Republic. You have to head to tourist or expat oriented stores if you're looking for Halloween decorations, and costumes come from places focused on costume balls or theater, not October 31st. But every year, it does seem to get easier to find pumpkins, and there are lots of things to do with kids, from pumpkin carving to partying at the bagel shop.

And there is one neighborhood that rolls out the candy carpet for kids. Nicknamed Little America for its suburban feel, Nebušice in Prague 6 has become a mecca for trick-or-treating children. For the last two years, we have met up with friends, woven through bands of costumed children and gone door to door with C. Next to an international school, Nebušice is a favorite spot for round the world households, and a lot of the families dress up in their native costumes to greet the kids. We've seen tiny children dressed in Korean robes, ladies in Swedish dresses, and my favorite - a British family dressed in colonial capes with a prison stock in their front yard.

I'm out of practice with the whole concept of trick-or-treating, so I am inevitably impressed by the generosity of these families as they open their doors to kids who are mostly not from their neighborhood. I appreciate the way an entire community turns a foreign holiday into a celebration that feels like home, and gives kids a sense of being a part of a big group of English speakers. That's something C usually only gets to experience when we head to the States once a year.

Pippi and J (he went as a well-bundled baby) slept on the car ride home, and we spent the drive talking about our favorite Halloween memories. I remembered the parties we had as children, the suburban trick-or-treating in middle school, the massive costume parades we went to in graduate school. We wondered how Caroline would remember her 5th Halloween as Pippi of the long stockings, the night we drove from Prague to Little America and back again.

Happy Halloween!!

 

Home from trick-or-treating with a bag full of candy, the jack o' lantern lit and hot chocolate on the way - all's right with the world, at least for a five year old!

The Cat's Meow - Chicken Store in Prague

Little stores in the Czech Republic still tend to specialize. This Čerstvé Kuřecí Maso (Fresh Chicken Meat) store sells chicken in many parts and the sundries that go with it - spices, butter, and frozen vegetables. It doesn't sell much else at all. The owners are affable guys who wear butcher hats and big, meat-stained aprons and know that I like three of whatever I'm buying that day.

This graffiti cat recently appeared on the store's security shutter (viewable only when closed). He looks to me like he's ready to swallow a canary, or maybe something a bit more fowl sized.

A Kind of Solace

One reason I take pictures of graffiti I like is that it just doesn't last. Most pieces don't wind up on the walls of movie stars, but get painted over or scratched out. A week or two after I found this homage to Karel Gott and vegetarianism, someone took a big stick to it. Last time I walked by more of the print had disappeared.

I borrowed the idea of a postcard poem from Lucy, who is usually found at Box Elder. My postcard is more statement than song though.

Central European Time

The time changed this morning and we are officially back in CET, or Central European Time. Today's been a lazy day of getting up late and finding it is 8:00, of taking our afternoon walk and heading home for a nap at just past noon. I try to ignore the disappearing sun and the fast approach of our nocturnal winter-time existence; Will applies gallows humor. As the sun slipped behind the trees this afternoon he shook his head in that gleeful/mournful way so contrary to eternal optimists and reminded me that it's all downhill from here till the solstice.*

I thought I'd post a picture as the sun sets tonight (4:49) of a copper-headed J. An antidote of sorts!

* As our household's Google addict, I have to add that this is not strictly true. The sun sets in Prague at 4:00 for two weeks, starting December 7. By December 21 it actually sets at 4:02. Thanks timeanddate.com.

Konopiště Popup

 

Caroline has a pop-up book of Czech castles that she's using as a center bouquet this season. It's currently surrounded by browning leaves and horse chestnuts in various stages of decay, so I did a tight crop tonight of her chateau of the week. I thought ya'll might like to see what we're eating dinner with these days...

And now for some history:
Not far from Prague, on the road to Vienna, the red roofs of Konopiště stand sentinel above the treeline. Drive closer and you'll find the castle and lake surrounded by parkland that stretches to the edge of the closest town, Benešov.

Konopiště has everything we've come to expect in a Czech castle - bears in the moat, falcons on the lawn, working tile stoves and ghost stories. We like to take our house guests to visit this particular spot though, because it was part of a story that almost all of our friends recognize.

Does the name Franz Ferdinand ring a bell?

Not the band, I hasten to add; the Archduke. He bought the castle in 1887 and used it as his country estate until his assassination in 1914.

If your only memory of Franz Ferdinand is an open car and a shot heard round the world, I'm not surprised. Here he has more dimensions. Czechs like him - he spent a lot of time in our neck of the woods, and he was an advocate of greater Czech autonomy at a time when most members of his family were not.

Tour guides make him human. They tell the story of his love affair with his wife Sophie, of his children and of his favorite rose garden. They also like to show off his massive trophy collection. The man clearly liked to hunt. He shot thousands of deer and birds and blanketed the castle walls with heads (a form of insulation from cold winters? the ultimate guy's castle?). The effect is a bit creepy. Oddly, it also makes the castle look lived in*, in a way that many castles around the country do not.

* Check out these pics if you want to see the castle looking even more lived in. I love how bored the boys look.

Best Coffee In Prague?

Our new favorite coffee spot - mamacoffee. On the corner of Rumunska and Londynska in Prague 2, mamacoffee's got beans that make our coffee pot say mnam, and serves coffee (for here or to go) that rivals the perkiest of the perky on the US West Coast. We don't even have to cross the river to find it, mamacoffee's in our neighborhood, just a few streets from home.

Soda Siphon

For Will's birthday this year, I hunted down a soda siphon. Bought from our neighborhood's household goods store, or domači potreby, the siphon foams its fizz with one cannister of CO2 and some cold water. Our model arrived from Hungary, but Austria and Poland apparently make good siphons too. Wikipedia tells us that our neck of the woods was the center of the soda siphon industry before WWII, so a Hungarian sziphon seems just right.

I bought the siphon because I thought it would be an elegant addition to W's bar. When we started using it, we realized its other benefits. No more plastic bottles taking up space at home and in the recycle bin, and the soda chargers, or bombičky, come in sets of ten at 2 CZK a pop, and are returnable for a deposit and reuse. In Prague, you can order the chargers online or find them through www.sifos.cz, at their local distributors.

Our favorite mixes so far:

Caroline Collins
1 tsp raspberry syrup
1 cherry and a tiny twist of lemon
1 lowball glass
soda water to the top!

John Collins
1 tsp sugar
juice of 1 lemon
2 oz bourbon
ice
1 highball glass

Dissolve the sugar in your highball by mixing with lemon and bourbon. Fill w ice. Top up w soda. Stir and enjoy. The result tastes remarkably like the drinks my grandfather used to make!

In the picture behind the siphon is another favorite birthday present from this year. Back in August, my brother-in-law knew that my sister and I were searching lucklessly for wipe-off placemats that we liked. Creative fellow, he smuggled a laminator into their basement, cut up navigational maps from one of their favorite sailing trips, laminated, trimmed and gave them to us for our birthday. These are by far my favorite everyday placemats now, and C likes to pretend to sail her spoon around the islands at breakfast time.