A Saturday Afternoon at the Cemetery

But not just any cemetery... a couple Saturdays back I joined a Polish friend on a beautiful afternoon walk of Olsanske hrbitovy or Olsany cemetery. There was so much to discover from 18th century grave stones, dedications in Czech, German and myriad other languages, upside down doves, interesting displays of urns, the British POW cemetery, Soviet Red Army cemetery, monument to Tsarist Russia, Bulgarian cemetery, WWI cemetery and a Russian Orthodox church that was just beginning service with the beautiful lull of a women's choir.

Since it's a pain in the neck to post more than 1 picture on blogger, I started to experiment with tumblr. Here's the link to my cemetery photos. Enjoy! Olsanske hrbitovy photo stream

Spring at Last!

It's officially spring in Prague and it's BEAUTIFUL. Last weekend my highly competent and absolutely lovely Polish friend organized a hike to Sächsische Schweiz (Saxony Switzerland) National Park, which is basically the border area between Germany and the Czech Republic along the Elbe river. If you take the train from Prague to Dresden you get off after Usti nad Labem and Decin at Schoene. From there we took a ferry across the river to Hrensko and then a short walk to the border crossing and to Schmilke. The area is filled with amazing sandstone formations and gorgeous forests. Highly recommend it! However, it's not for the faint hearted. There's some pretty steep inclines. We went UP and DOWN several times. My poor, poor knees took a bruising, but they survived. I definitely wont be doing that type of hiking every weekend, but just perhaps once a month :)

May Flowers

Well, the old adage "April showers bring May flowers" is true every now and then! Recently I spent a couple of weeks in the U.S. for my sister's wedding in Asheville, NC and for family and friend time in Charlotte, NC, New Orleans, and Washington, DC. For the most part I experienced spring or early summer weather especially in the South.The night before flying back to Prague I checked the weather and saw 0 C and chance of snow listed. I literally freaked out - this after spending the previous 10 days in 75 F. I thought for sure there had to be a mix up with Celsius and Fahrenheit or something so I kept checking different sites. To make a long story short, when I did get back to Prague, it was about freezing in the dead of the night but it was a high of 55 F during the day. Thankfully, the second of my two short but sweet days in DC the temperature dropped like 10-20 degrees so it wasn't the shock it could have been when crossing the Atlantic. But better yet, each day I've been back in Prague it has seemed to grow warmer and the sun has come out pretty consistently. This Wednesday I got out of the bldg for lunch with two colleagues and along our way we passed a gorgeous row of short (or miniature) lilac bushes along the street. The fragrance was intoxicating. We had lunch on the terrace of the restaurant and it was glorious feeling the warmth of the sun on my skin. I never quite understood the Egyptians' worship of the sun until that point :) Okay, that might be a tad of an exaggeration, but I've certainly learned how sweet a sunny day is.

And, go figure, the World Hockey Championship is taking place right now in Slovakia. I don't understand how hockey (which I alway thought a winter sport) carries on into the spring and early summer, but it does! Too bad for the Czechs, they lost earlier to the Swedes in a semifinal. I was told by a Czech-Canadian friend that the tournament does not include the very best in hockey as the NHL is still at play, but that doesn't seem to matter to most Czechs. I passed many a person wearing Czech national team jerseys and painted flags of Czech or Russia on peoples' cheeks. There was a big screen set up in Old Town Square for fans and those curious in watching the Russia - Finland game. I thought about it for a second and decided home was calling me hither...