Visit to the mountains

Once a year we head to the northern border of the Czech Republic, to a little ski town called Rokytnice nad Jizerou, deep in the Krkonoše mountains. A perfect mountain weekend calls for a camp fire, a hike, some nature study and at least one stop at a hospoda for Czech food. It almost always rains too, so there is usually plenty of time for just hanging around and talking to our friends or reading books.

Last weekend we drove through torrential rains to Roktynice. We ate lunch and watched the sun appear and then, once again, the perfect mountain weekend unwound until Sunday evening fell and it was time to drive down into the city for the week ahead.

Caroline's birthday

1. C and James breakfast together, 2. Caroline feeds James, now she is 6. 3. C at her birthday party. 4. Cupcakes 5. James decides to get down and walk (first time!), since it seems to be a day for celebration.


C's sixth birthday was on her first day of summer vacation, and she woke up bedazzled by all the sleep, strange for a Monday. She remembered straight away though, that it was her birthday and that she was the grand age of 6. Then she looked in the mirror, stared herself up and down and said, "But I don’t feel older. Am I bigger? Are my hands bigger than before?"

Six to C means being grownup, so she decided to be regally polite, and invited James to join her for breakfast at her red table. She even pulled out a chair and poured him some cereal so they could "dine" together. (James plays with cereal, rather than eating it, but as long as he stays in his chair, the flakes don't go too far).

While she breakfasted, we decided that for her birthday dinner she'd like knedlicky with a red sauce. She reassured me that it was easy, much easier than what Dada and I usually made and if I would just get some tomatoes and mash them up she was sure they'd taste fine on the dumplings. And she told me, confidentially, that it was really okay to buy the knedlicky in the store, almost no one made them from scratch any more.

Breakfast finished, and a little time left before our babysitter arrived and I headed to work, we squeezed in a reading from "Now we are Six."

So wherever I am, there's always Pooh,
There's always Pooh and Me.
"What would I do?" I said to Pooh,
"If it wasn't for you," and Pooh said: "True,
It isn't much fun for One, but Two,
Can stick together, says Pooh, says he. "That's how it is," says Pooh.

That's how it is, Mommie, said Caroline. And I gave her a hug and a twirl for being six and my girl.

Where we left off

Summer solstice pictures from June. I pull them out to look at the green and purple every now and then. I love the Maxfield Parrish clouds, and remember how swirling still the longest day of the year sky seemed, light at nearly ten.

A month later and where have I been? Mostly perched in my office chair with pen in one hand, phone in the other - my battle implements against the economy and the inevitable slow down of a European July. 6:30 comes, and I stop typing long enough to make dinner and play with the children for a few hours, then they are in bed and I am back at my desk until midnight. And so it goes.

Poppies, midsummer Saturday

 

Hapu

There is a cocktail bar we love here, called Hapu. Even after 8 years of drop by visits, we still don't know where its name comes from, but to us Hapu means cool atmosphere, drinks that deserve to show up on a dessert menu, and lots of memories. I've still never played the giant guitar yet though.

Happy Weekend!

Hapu
Orlicka 8
13000 Prague 3

Design ideas everywhere

I'm trying to learn how to see with my new camera's eye, so I'm taking lots of shots and then thinking through my favorites. These are more pictures from our Trebon trip. I think they're telling me I see patterns everywhere, I need to work on my cropping before I get to Picasa, and boy is it fun to take pictures that you can blow up to high resolution and not find noisy specs in them!

Besides their clarity, I liked these pictures because of the way they made me think about design, both in photos and in buildings and signs. Here are some of those thoughts...

[1.] Curlicue shop sign. It says Drogerie kosmetika Judita or "Judith's cosmetics and bath supplies." A good reminder that local brands don't need to be immediately readable, and hey, ironwork is in!
[2.] Are Southern Bohemian facades designed to look like fluffy clouds, or is that just me?
[3.] Flower shots are addictive. Plus they count as design - look at those natural color contrasts.
[4.] Again with the S. Bohemian facade, here's another example of a building with sky aspirations (see those curly cloud corners?) The details aren't clear here, but the painting shows God and Jesus discussing the earth, while a devil of some sort writhes in the lower clouds. Home Baroque.
[5.] Symmetry in flowers is fun too (not to mention that playing with the depth of field in a new dslr while shooting flowers is like eating chocolate cake for breakfast.)
[6.] I love how the rigid patterns of the leaves contrast with the doodley ironwork of the tipped up chairs. Deliciously summer.
[7.] Squares are prolific in Czech street and facade design, especially in Prague. Are squares an urban thing? These squares didn't seem to fit in Trebon the way the curlicues did.
[8.] Leaves against the sky take just the right balance of light to get right. I took this by accident, then shot thirty more hoping I'd figure out the trick. Naturally, my first shot was the only one that worked.
[9.] Center - a small door that picks up on Trebon's sky and sunburst themes and delivers its message with beautiful simplicity.

The Lilies of Trebon

 

We spent the weekend in our favorite Czech spa town, Třeboň, visiting one of our babysitters. It's June, but don't tell that to the weather - it has spat rain and chill at us for several weeks. I worried we'd be rained in all weekend too so packed books, paper and pencils, and found a room in a pension that was big enough for all four of us and then some.

My worries came to nothing. We did happily wear our winter coats Saturday morning, but by Sunday, shorts and t-shirts were in season. Saturday's market tempted us all out and around the old Třeboň square, where Caroline and her friend Kačinka looked at every single thing, and I may have taken a picture of every single thing, myself.

Luckily too, because as I scanned through my pile of pics from the weekend I noticed a theme emerge, a lily theme. And in one of the market shots I found a basket of wooden lilies, glowing if not gilded. The floating variety showed up in a canal just outside the city walls and in a fountain just inside the castle's.

Why are lilies so popular in Třeboň? I'd guess because it's a water town, right in the middle of the carp pond region of the Czech Republic, and just beside the largest of those ponds, Svět or the World. Even the town clown is water related, he's the local representative of the vodniks, water sprites who haunt ponds and lakes in the Czech Republic and are appeased by tobacco thrown into the water by fishermen before the carp haul begins each fall. (Note to self, I wonder if Třeboň's vodnik hoped for a plug himself!)

Phoenix

 

I'm back! Actually I got home Monday night, but after an infinitely tiny amount of sleep all weekend, I really did not return until yesterday, or maybe this morning. How little? Thanks to jetlag, a minor flood and flights home I averaged 3 hours of sleep every night I was gone. Luckily the conference was worth it and I'm glad I've seen Phoenix at all hours of the day.

Here then are an assortment of pictures from the trip. From the left:
1. Sunrise over mountains and city, 2. Camelback Mountain from the airport (the camel is lying down, naturally); 3. native terrain; 4. patio misters working full blast to keep diners cool; 5. dressed up and ready to roll; 6. cactuses at sunrise; center: hotel escalator.

As with every collage, I'm struck by the coincidences. For example, my legs look remarkably like the cactuses to their left, do they not? More artistically, I liked how the hotel hung art that fit with their region (center), and reflected the sunrises that are understandably famous. I was actually glad to be jetlagged and awake at 4 since it gave me the chance to see the beautiful side of the city before it got very hot.

And thanks to being up and about early every morning, I managed to avoid getting rained on when the guy above me fell asleep in his bathtub with the water running. Blessings all around! (He survived with all but his ego intact, my suitcase and bed were not so lucky.)

A bike ride, and curlicues

1. Street graffiti, 2. House banisters, 3. Chestnut leaf shadows, 4. Shadows on the staircase ceiling, 5. C on Silver, showing us her pedaling technique.

Since my last post I've taken tons of pictures and written several half posts, only to leave all by the wayside as I remember one more thing I need to do before I head off for the weekend. This morning I'm flying to Arizona on my first solo trip since James was born. It's a whirlwind visit - fly in Thursday fly out Sunday - but I'm still taking a half empty suitcase, just in case I can get some Stateside shopping in.

As it's a business trip, I've become obsessed with trying to figure out what people wear in Phoenix to meetings when it's 100F outside and 75 inside. Other semi-senseless worries include trying to decide what to do on a plane without two children to entertain (C suggested stickers and an activity book), and wondering if James will forget me in four days.

But life in the Kolo* household is not just travel this, travel that. We're really more about wheels. Somehow going to camp helped C decide it was time to learn to ride her bike. She got home Friday and declared her passion. Saturday we spent the morning googling the how-to's and the afternoon trying them out. Thanks to a simple step break down, C started out coasting down a grassy hill, pedaling down that same hill, and then learning to steer round a handy tree. She took the practice very seriously, insisting on trying each step five times before moving to the next, and by the end of our first bike try, had graduated to concrete and the skating slope in front of a local school.

Sunday we packed bike and stroller off to our favorite park, Stromovka, to try out some of the paths there. Stromovka is just by the river and is wonderfully flat, with wide paths ideal for roller blading and biking (and the occasional horse).

Chanting "I think I can, I think I can" under her breath, C picked a path she could coast down, remembered how to balance, and took to the pedals. Instead of stopping after a few feet, she kept going and biked first 30 yards, and then more. By the end of the day she was confidently pedaling past dogs and other bikers, the purple helmeted princess knight C and her horse/bike Silver, ready to roll.

*Kolo, by the way, means wheel or bike in Czech, so it is quite appropriate that we're a biking household these days!

Can you tell what I brought home yesterday?

 

No, not James. And Caroline got home today, tired, smudgy around the knees, but deliriously happy about camp and all the fun stuff she and her friends got to do: ride horses, eat lots of fruit dumplings, discover ant houses, hunt for mushrooms, dress up for a carnival. The stories are still unfolding as she remembers or pulls another souvenir from her suitcase.

But yesterday. Around noon I walked into the biggest store of its kind in the Czech Republic. Swarms of guys wearing black t-shirts, beards and sandals were crowded around the displays and I couldn't push by them without running into one or the other multi-pocketed bag. After taking to the less exciting corridors, I dug up a shop assistant reading manuals in a corner and cruelly interupted his reverie on the new Xyi8300 (at least I think that's what it was). Putting his latest dream down, he reluctantly showed me the top two models in my price range.

Ten minutes later, I was on the phone to my business partner. Twenty minutes, and I walked out of the store with a grin even the jaded shop assistant could understand.

And then the fun began.

Caroline goes to Camp

 

Postcard from camp, I'm guessing there are three horses and she is getting to ride one! And happily, she hearts us. The back of the card says, nice and simply, "CAROLINE IS O.K., BUY"

Every year, Caroline's kindergarten spends a week at Škola v prírode, or school in nature. Half the school's teachers go and most of the předškolní, or 5 year old kids, too and for a week ahead of time, it is the only thing that the mothers picking up their children talk about.

This is C's last pre-school year, her year for kindergarten camp. Back in March, she brought her camp instructions home, and we started going through it line by line. I thought we'd have most everything already, but then again, I'd heard that the girls shouldn't pack dresses, and Caroline rarely wears anything else. So we poured over the list to make sure she'd be set to go.

There were all the standard things you'd expect, like a pláštěnka, or rain poncho, and holinky, gum boots, but it took me several calls to friends to figure out exactly what oteplene sustaky might mean. (Apparently, a track suit lined in flannel on the inside and nylon on the out. Now I know what they are, but I still don't know their name in English!)

Thanks to C's babysitters and several expeditions, we managed to find everything, even the elusive sustaky. The night before she left, I read C her clothing list and she ran back and forth collecting everything while I marked her name on each piece and we folded it away. All packed, down to the smallest bear and largest rubber boot, and I thought we were finished for the night. But no. "Mommie," C said, "can you teach me how to take a shower?"

So it was, on the eve of her first overnight camp, at nearly six years of age, that C decided it was time to step under water and voluntarily get her face wet. What else new will she learn this week? Come Friday, I'll let you know.

The Art of Missing Someone, and a Museum Visit

1 &2. Local graffiti, 3. Nearly empty chapel, 4. Spring at Mamacoffee, 5. Tactile exhibit, 6. Door from chapel, Center. Master of Theodoricus paintings*

Friday, Caroline waved farewell, swung backpack onto shoulder, climbed up bus steps, and headed for the country. As we waved goodbye to her through the bus's tinted windows, I did a quick mental calendar check, because surely she’s still only five. Why did it feel like she should be carrying a guitar and wearing sunglasses behind those dark windows, off to see America. And why were we crying when she’d be back in a week and anyway, we’d all been looking forward to her kindergarten camp since Christmas?

Imponderables. I moped a bit and then threw myself into a spreadsheet so I wouldn’t think for the rest of the day. By the time Will came home from work I was so deep in numbers it took me until the next morning’s coffee to recover my equanimity. We spent Saturday the way we usually do, shopping at our local stores, strolling by mamacoffee for an espresso, pushing the stroller through the park to check out the latest flowers, and keeping my camera ready for any new additions to our local graffiti.

This Saturday though, the green grocers wanted to know if we’d heard anything from the children yet (their daughter and Caroline were bus buddies). The Greek store cashier asked where the little holčicka was and the drug store cashier volunteered that maybe the weather was on its way to getting warm after all. We walked home and I couldn’t help thinking that big cities are full of little villages and I was happy right in the middle of ours, even if it took C heading to camp to remind me.

The next day, still getting used to the quietness of space without Caroline, we decided to do what we hadn’t had a chance to do for nearly six years - visit a museum undisturbed.

Or at least nearly. We lulled James to sleep strolling across the sway and rattle of cobblestone, and arrived at the Convent of St. Agnes happy to have won sixty minutes of quiet. We spent a few of those minutes wandering around the ground floor looking for pictures, lost in a maze of corridors, convincing ourselves that the art collection must have moved. We found empty chapels and a tactile exhibit for the blind (complete with a braille typewriter for leaving notes), we circled the gardens again, and just as we were about to leave, discovered the staircase up to the galleries.

The Convent houses the Czech National Gallery’s medieval art collection, beginning the exhibition with a wood carving from the very early 1200s, and ending it with prints from the mid 1500s. Sometimes, in an art museum that covers the medieval to modern, I’m happy to stroll past the rooms of madonnas and saints to get to the renaissance. But that morning, with a sleeping stroller, and a collection dedicated to the Gothic, we slowed down and took the time to look.

We were the only visitors, the guards decided we were harmless, and we were free of children, so we spent the rest of our hour arguing all we wanted: about the goldfinch in the madonna portraits (from the apocrypha or not?), the Theodoricus blank books and their bindings, the apostles and just who might be Judas, and the aptness of poor Catherine clutching her wheel. We had a deliciously nerdy time, and James slept until the last gallery.

When he woke, he wanted to be carried, and his wiggling turned the paintings back into art to rush by. It was time to go. We stopped to pick up a book to try to solve a few of our morning debates, and headed home.

And if you’re wondering how Caroline is doing, the latest news from this morning is that she hasn’t cried one bit, she can’t wait to ride the horses today and she’s been a perfect milá, or dear. Pshew.

****
Goldfinch – the jury is still out on this, Will thinks they are related to the birds in the apocrypha which the infant Jesus brought to life from mud. The National Gallery guidebook suggests the association of goldfinch with thistle bushes, thistles representing the crucifixion, the goldfinch thus foreshadowing the poor babe’s later fate. My guess is that it could be a combination of the two, depending upon where the tradition started from and if that group of artists even had access to the apocrypha books.

Blank books – it’s pretty unusual to see blank manuscripts already bound, as most medieval manuscripts would be prepped by assembling parchment into folios, scoring the skins for neatness, writing and illuminating the text, and then binding the whole. My vote is a tabula rasa motif, but Will is not biting.

*Master of Theodoricus paintings from the Virtual walk through of the gallery. Understandably, no cameras are allowed in the actual exhibition.

Chestnuts in Bloom Over the Vltava

 

First year roundup

 

James, from 0 to 1 in no time at all.

The pictures are so you can bear the long long post that follows. I’ve recently been tagged for three (THREE) memes. An unusual number, considering the last time I was tagged in my eons/aeons of blogging was never. If you don’t mind, then, I’ll be babbling on about myself and my opinions even more than I usually do. I promise I’ll try to add unrelated pics each time to keep it interesting.

This meme is from Eurolush, via Duvyken.

What are your current obsessions?
Digital SLRS (to buy or not to buy, which one, and when?), the impossibility of keeping a house straight and toys in it, asparagus.

Which item from you wardrobe do you wear most often?
My red flannel pjs. Luckily in Prague it stays cold until June so I can wear them at least 9 months of the year.

What's for dinner?
Pho soup doctored with tomatoes, spring onions, dried mushrooms, and extra bits of chicken and ham; eaten with chopsticks.

What's your greatest fear at the moment?
I’m flying to Arizona at the end of the month on a business trip and it will be the first time that I've left James overnight. Will he remember me when I get back? Will he be wearing clothes when I get back?

What are you listening to?
The hum of the fan belt in my computer (everyone except the computer and myself is asleep).

If you were a goddess what would you be?
Does a muse count? I’d like to be the muse of music.

What are your favourite holiday spots?
France, particularly the Ardèche and bits of Brittany. I also love visiting European cities for long weekends. Copenhagen, Dresden, Zurich, Vienna, Bratislava all make wonderful weekend trips. I am currently looking forward to visiting Amsterdam, Barcelona, and Berlin soon.

What are you reading right now?
I’m reading Swallows and Amazons to Caroline right now, and Keeping the World Away, by Margaret Forster, to myself. I picked up a new mountain of books in Switzerland over Easter and have felt like a kid ripping through a pile of presents ever since. Gleeful gluttony is what it is.

What is your guilty pleasure?
Reading books when I should be doing everything else, not having to fold laundry, taxis.

Who or what makes you laugh?
My family for sure - Caroline in particular is very funny and dramatic. And Will has a wonderfully dry sense of humor.

What is your favourite spring thing to do?
When spring arrives, my first thought is "Time to go on a trip to Germany to buy fresh asparagus!!" In March I start checking German news sites to find out when it will be in the markets. Also, spring in general means travel to me, and lots more light for photographs.

Where are you planning to travel next?
Berlin. It is only a few hours away by car and I can’t believe we haven’t visited yet.

What is the best thing you ate or drank lately?
It would have to be the Colombian meringues from Essen. Also, a wonderful muesli cereal made with grated apples, white yogurt, and oats soaked overnight so they turned fluffy and delicious. Yum! And, of course, the deviled eggs from last weekend.

When was the last time you were tipsy?
Probably last Saturday, though I could still feel my toes so I'm not sure if that counts.

What is your favourite ever film?
I adore Singing in the Rain. Music, physical comedy, no plot and dancing - what more could I want? I also really love the movie Once. I could watch the scene where the couple first plays music together over and over.

What is the biggest lesson you've learned from your children?
That stubbornness is most definitely inherited. Also, that reading out loud is much more fun than I could have imagined.

What song can't you get out of your head?
“Ghost,” by Neutral Milk Hotel. Very rocky, but I love it.

What book do you know you should read but refuse to?
Ulysses, by James Joyce. I’ve bought the book and every James Joyce day I pick it up, determined to read a chapter, but never get through it. Maybe this year?

What is your physical abnormality/abnormal physical ability?
I have never lost a limbo contest, even when I was 8 months pregnant. I’m pretty flexible. Of course, this might also demonstrate a certain competitive streak I'm rumored to have.

What is your favourite colour?
Red for small goods, orange for accents, light sea blue for walls, dark blue and burgundy for shirts, green for grass and trees, white for plates at a table, silver for candlesticks and gold for rings. I love color, but have never been able to pin down a favorite.

Following the rules of the meme, I tag Poppy in Provence, Meg, Lucy, Liz, and my sister, Ee. I'm leaving her unlinked until/unless she accepts the challenge!