False starts
Sept. 28 , 2011, 12:56 p.m.
I'm getting ready to set out for Newark Liberty and points east.
Adventures already.
I packed this morning and took the bag with me on the train to the office. I was all set. I even had the ticket for the 2:30 train from Penn Station New York to Newark Airport.
I was so good: remembered chargers, meds, underwear, camera, euros—all the kinds of stuff that I have forgotten on past trips. I was checking a Web site for bike rentals in Prague. You need proper identification. OK, I tell myself, I can use my passport. Which is safely stored on the shelf at home. Oops. Go directly to the house. Do not pass "Go," etc.
So at quarter past 11 in the morning, I'm at Penn Station to get a train back to my starting point.
After I get my passport, I can take the train back to Secaucus Junction at 2 and catch the Jersey Coast Line to EWR. That might be fun.
But more likely, I'll drive and leave the car in the long-term lot, which is sounding like a better idea with each stroke on the keyboard.
I'm scheduled to leave at 6:10 tonight on KLM 6086 and arrive at 7:50 tomorrow morning in Amsterdam. I'll have an hour and a half for some pancakes and maybe a Palm, if I'm feeling reckless enough to have beer at that hour. After all, it won’t be quite two in the morning at home, and in most New Jersey towns, that’s about the time for last call.
I'm due in Prague at 10:50 a.m. local time.
First up will be getting to the Hotel Dalimil on Prokopovo Namesti. That's where I'll be sleeping.
Then I'll go rent a bike, and use my passport for ID.
More later, when I remember something.
Harry
Jack
Sept. 28
Prague, yes. Take pix! Always wanted to go there....
Bon voyage!
Larry
Sept. 28
Jeez....time for Prague already? We didn't even talk about it last week! Have a great time.
Jeanie
Sept. 29
The start of your trip reminds me of the time we couldn't fly to Canada without baby Emily's birth certificate. Ah, the travel stories!!
Just wanted to recommend a hauntingly beautiful site in Josefov. The Jewish Museum just beyond the Jewish cemetery. The names of each person taken away to concentration camps and the dates for each, hand painted in white—covering midnight blue walls.
Harry
Sept. 30
I haven't seen this, but will try to find it.
I have been to Josefov, and it is beautiful.
False routes
Sept. 29
I found my passport and got here. So far so good, and a man can't ask for more than that.
I had time to get some sashimi at the Newark airport, also hot sake, and something new, egg and onion over rice. Very good, tasting a bit of caramel in it. Maybe from the browned onion. Maybe they added sugar. I think it was called something like tagami don. Any food that sounds like it’s named for a gangster can’t be all bad.
I passed a bar on the way to the gate—well, not literally passed. I got a Goose Point (I think that was the brand. I didn't write it down) toasted lager. It was strong, dark, and bittersweet. Very good. It cost almost ten bucks, and if it was a pint, I've shrunk. Even Harry didn't have time to finish it, and you know he can go through beer.
The lady behind the bar was trying to multi-task and not doing the best job of it. She was holding the twenty I gave her while she got a knife and fork for the guy at the end of the bar, served two other people drinks, and pissed off a lady who had been waiting by telling her to wait some more. In the meantime, she had forgotten what I owed her and had to stop to read the register.
I got to the gate about a half hour before shove-off time, and was the last one to board. That is a luxury, not having to stand in a confused crowd.
This was another Delta-for-KLM flight to Amsterdam, like the one I took last December. This plane, however, didn't sit at the gate for six hours waiting for an engine part. The plane set off on time, around 6:10 p.m. But during the welcome-aboard message, the auxiliary power system cut out.
The APS, the captain explained, powers the air conditioning, cabin lights, and is needed to start the engines.
This time the problem was corrected in five or ten minutes, but we may have lost our place in line because the plane didn't take off until a few minutes before seven. Even so, we got to Amsterdam less than 10 minutes behind schedule.
But no time for pancakes, Palm, or even coffee. There was less than an hour to cross the terminal, go through passport check and security, and then board the plane. Maybe I'll have a chance on the way back. Or else I'll have to go back to Amsterdam for pancakes. That might be worth a trip. All the other cakes I had in Amsterdam were worth traveling to get.
The sections of the Schiphol terminal are lettered, so I walked the gamut from A to B.
The continuing flight to Prague was in an Airbus flown for KLM by Czech Airways. During the climb, the engines made a sharp, disconcertingly plastic-sounding buzz. Once we reached altitude and leveled off, the noise settled into the usual jet rush.
I didn't see Amsterdam on takeoff, but did see plenty of white windmills generating electricity for Holland and lots of neat green fields, most of them rectangular.
No crop circles, though. Maybe the aliens have completed their takeover here and don’t need them anymore. That explanation gains credibility when I remember that just about everybody I have run into over here would be an alien in the U.S.
The van from the airport set me down near a square in the city. I had no idea where I was, but if I could find the landmark known as the Powder Tower, the gate to the Old Town, I would be able to cab it to the hotel.
Turns out, I was a short walk to the tower.
I got to the hotel around two local time and the manager sent me up the street to a place called U Krouzko, which has diacritical marks that cannot be reproduced here. Staropramen Granat, which the bartender called the "house dark," is a little bit sweet. All right, but weak, not much better than an American commercial beer. The Stropramen light was not any better. The novelty was that I was drinking them along with cafe au lait, because it was breakfast of a sort. It was 9 a.m. back home and I hadn't eaten since about five the day before, at the sushi bar at Newark airport.
It wasn't easy getting there, but I saw Prague’s old town this afternoon, including the Old Town Square.
Part of the time I spent being lost took me to the town center below Wenceslas Square, where the demonstrations of the Velvet Revolution took place. Wenceslas, known locally as Vaclav, is the subject of a monumental sculpture at the top of the hill. He is surrounded by four bishops, but he is the only figure on a horse. So today's photo is “Harry Meets the Holy Slavs.”
I had a dark called Cerna Hora Granat at another place, a cellar on the Old Town Square.
So far, 75 percent of the local beer is disappointing, The kind that you drink and say "OK, done that," and then move on to another, which has its advantages because it means each beer you have is your first.
On the way back to the hotel, I stopped at a place called Pivnice Stopartska. I've lived in New Jersey all my life and still have no clue how to pronounce that. There I had a Kozell (not sure of the spelling) dark. When it came it was half foam in the mug, but it was a little below cellar temperature. It was the best so far, and good in itself, not just by comparison. It was almost as rich as a dark or amber ale. That one I may try again.
The Cerna Hora Granat, because it was served in the tourist section (well, everything seems to be packed with tourists here, but Old Town Square is the Prague navel), was 95 Czech crowns, or just over five bucks.
The Kozell was 37 crowns or about $2.
The currency is difficult and I sometimes think I'm being ripped off when nothing of the sort is happening. The bank ATM gave me 17.5 crowns to the dollar. Euros were a dollar and a third, pounds one and two thirds. Not too hard to figure in your head. I’ve been trying all day to divide by 17. It makes my head hurt.
This is all great fun. I've spent a lot of the day lost because the maps are confusing and the Google map of the route from my hotel to Joanna's is just plain wrong. You have to go through, not past an old city gate called the Powder Tower.
I rented a bicycle for a couple of hours, from a place a block from the tower, so I could be lost more efficiently, and that added to the fun. What's more, when I took it back, I mentioned to one of the guys about my map trouble and he pointed out where I went wrong. I had been looking for Pariszka, the street with the Intercontinental Hotel, on the wrong side of St. Nicholas Cathedral. I went back on foot and, sure enough, there it was. The Google map didn't help, even confused the bike guy, but my inadequate sense of direction was in there creating mischief too.
I'm starting to know the place, at least the old town and the route to get there and a little beyond. After all, I must have biked through every street twice trying to find my way.
I'll rent another bike tomorrow morning. I'm supposed to meet Joanna at the Intercontinental at 5 so I'll go exploring till three, come back to my hotel and change, then drop off the bike on the way to her hotel. I've got it all figured, just like getting everything together and leaving for the airport from my office.
The neighborhood of my hotel has few tourists on the streets, but lots of bars. After I send this, I plan to go out and see if the locals are drinking anything like the Kozell. Or maybe some other surprises.
More later, gang. I was stuck in an airplane and had to be a good boy all day yesterday. I have to build some bad karma for balance.
Harry
Sept. 29
Dear Harry,
Didn’t you just love Prague?
Did you see where the defenestrations took place? The opera house in which Don Giovanni made its debut?
Like you, we were lost most of the time in Prague, but each square is even more beautiful than the previous one so it made little difference.
I’m so glad you got to Prague. We’ll talk about it when we meet for the Mozart concert on Thursday, Oct. 13. I’m thinking about a restaurant.
Beatrice
Beatrice
Sept. 30 [Mountain time]
Harry, it's none of my business, of course, but who is Joanna?
Jack
Sept. 30
Sept. 30
Joanna is on a European river cruise. She is stopping in Prague, so I came to take her to dinner.
Harry
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