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 :)