Prague

The train ride from Dresden to Prague, mostly along the Elbe river, was lovely, as I had heard. We were supposed to be met at the train station but no one was there. I handled figuring out how to call the apartment company, with John mostly looking lost. They didn’t have a record that we had arranged to be met. The guide books talk about many rip-offs in Prague so I was reluctant to take a ride with a driver who wasn’t a licensed taxi, and I wasn’t sure what to do when John thought it a good idea. It turned out fine and a lot cheaper than the transportation we had signed up for.

I miss how safe I came to feel in our Berlin apartment; I was immediately on edge about Prague being a more dangerous place for tourists. Another thing that makes this place feel scary is the language. Our daughter is studying German and I took one year of it in college, but German also has many words that are close to the word in English. Czech is a Slavic language so there are almost no cognates with English. John studied Russian in the army so he picks up an occasional Russian cognate, but not many.

Our apartment is not quite as nice as the Berlin one but still roomy and works for us. The big disappointment is that the internet promised doesn’t work with my computer. It is also further from everything. John and I walked to a supermarket and ended up taking a taxi home—actually there was a convenient trolley, but no convenient place to buy tickets for it. The apartment does have a small front loading washing machine so we have been doing our laundry a little at a time. And it is actually in a beautiful historic area of town, south of the castle and not far west of the Charles Bridge.

We had dinner at our apartment and ended up not trying to do anything. We had talked about going out to a nearby view but none of us really felt up to it. John and the kids did take a short unsuccessful walk looking for icecream. Today we will learn our way around and it will all seem better.