Diary

Today we left for a short vacation in Prague.

As you know I was a bit apprehensive about the passport check at the Dutch airport but it turned out to be no problem at all. The lady who had to check my passport looked very carefully at me and at my picture in the passport and she came to the only possible conclusion: This was indeed my passport. And that is all she needs to know. If I look similar enough to the picture in my passport it doesn't matter if I die my hair green or purple or grow breasts. So she smiled at me, handed back my passport and told me I was free to go ahead.

The second hurdle is the security check. But since I passed the metal detector without a bleep, people hardly looked at me there. Julia had a lot more trouble passing that stage. She hadn't taken off all her bracelets, so the detector bleeped and she was searched as if she were a terrorist. The personnel was quite unfriendly to her. Ridiculous to think we would want to blow up the aircraft on our way to a great vacation! If we want to do that, we will do it on our way back home!

We had not yet been in the air for very long when the pilot reported there was a problem with the airplane: "The feedback-switch on the latch of the hatch of the landing-gear is not displayed correctly. That doesn't mean that the landing gear isn't up, nor does it mean the hatch is not closed, nor that the latch isn't on it, but we cannot see that on the computer. This cannot be fixed in Prague, so we will have to go back to Amsterdam to have it repaired."
This way our flight took three times as long as expected, but eventually we did reach Prague.

We were staying in hotel Tyl, at Tylovo Náměsty, near subway station I.P. Pavlova and the famous Václavské Náměstí (Wenceslas Square). On our first evening we immediately set out to explore the environment. When we rounded the corner of Tylovo Náměstí, we saw the first interesting building already: St. Ludmila's Church. Our travel guide didn't mention it and we haven't visited it; we would soon find out that it is impossible to see everything in Prague...

The first thing we were looking for was a modest restaurant where we would be able to eat real Czech food. We found restaurant Ztrány nálezy and ordered Kachna pečená, a typical Czech dish consisting of grilled duck, red cabbage and potato dumplings.

After dinner we walked to Václavské Náměstí, a square measuring 70 by 800 yards; the place to be for strolling and shopping. It also has an important role in the recent history of Prague. In 1989 Václav Havel and Alexander Dubček announced the end of communism on this square.
17 years of freedom! The Czech people have made a lot of progress since then. We strolled down the square to the other end while the evening fell. On our way we could admire the modern, luxury shops where spoiled tourists can buy the same products as in London or Paris. For most Czech people this decadence is way beyond their league!

It took us about twenty minutes to reach the other end of the square. From this side you can see the museum in the distance. A gloomy, unattractive building we didn't want to enter.
We felt like a drink, so we ended up at Šenk Vrbocek, a so-called vinárna, that is a café where only wine is served. We had a large glass of white wine and we even had our first contact with a real Czech. It was an elderly man who spoke enough German to be able to have a conversation with, even in spite of the large number of wines he seemed to have had already. He was really charmed by Julia and me and kept on calling us "schöne Frauen" ("beautiful women"). He would have loved to accompany us back to our hotel, but understandably we were of a different opinion on that...

We returned to the hotel and celebrated our arrival with a glass of Grand Marnier.

Na zdraví (Cheers)!


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