Festival Schmestival

Did I tell you that I live on the coolest street in Prague? Well I do. At least that's what some magazine or whatever said. The whole area is becoming more cool every day, and more expensive, ordinary schlubs like me are being slowly pushed out. This building is being fixed up and we're expected to pay for it, and I don't mean just by having to listen to the construction going on.

Anyway, this super cool street has a festival every year in May on a Saturday and this is the day. People, music, food and drink stands, dogs barking at the horror of being surrounded by so much noise and people, that sort of thing. I'm just not feeling it. When you have no friends and no money it's all a bit, well annoying. I did go down there for a while, but more for anthropological and documenting purposes than actually being a part of it. There's too many people, and if there's a halfway decent band going on the crowds watching in what is a quite narrow street make it impossible to pass. I mean you can pass, but it's a pain in the ass. So here I am, on my own, being grouchy. I think this is all I have to look forward to.

One word.

A little bit o' snow

Earlier this week.

Time for another photo.

I quite like it.

It just keeps on raining..

And it rains and it rains and it rains. It's been only 3 or 4 days now, of continuous rain that is, there's been rain on and off for, well since it stopped being freezing cold some time in March or April, not sure exactly when that long winter ended, we've got new things to whine about now.

It just rains and it rains and it rains. At first it's like, it's raining, we expect it to rain sometimes. It rains on a Saturday, again, and we get pissed off that it falls on the weekend. Then it rains a couple of days and you whine about it, but that's what it always does, it rains, it just does. Then it rains more and you start thinking, this is going on a bit long.. and it just keeps raining. You start worrying that it might cause more problems than you not being able to enjoy that barbecue or having generally unpleasant weather that puts you in a bad mood.. but.. they haven't said anything yet, about the f word, and really.. you think this every year there's a bit of a prolonged period of rain.. you're paranoid because you were here in 2002.. and then you say.. well that was like, a once in a 100 years thing, so, we're not due for that yet.. give it 89 years..

but, then you read about warnings, see articles about the floods and the final nail in the water coffin.. international articles where our humble little city is actually mentioned, because of flooding. It's official.

a bit o' action here

Yesterday my city was in the news. The proper news that is, the one that goes all around the world. There was an explosion, heard all throughout the center.. well, nothing (at this point there has been no foul play discovered) sinister.. just an unfortunate, er, mishap. Gas explosion.. o course, those have been happening with some regularity recently so.. who knows. *looks around suspiciously* No one has been reported dead, thank goodness, though up to 40 people are injured. It could have been much worse and for that I suppose we should be thankful. My personal involvement was knowing 2 people who were in the center who heard the explosion.. a whole lot of early contradicting reports and walking by here.. Not a lot to see.. just a closed street, police and a bunch of gawkers. *shakes head at gawkers* I mean.. what's the world coming to?

Life round here..

in picture..



bit noisy, travel disrupted... at least it's nice walking weather.

Yoohoo.. I'm home..

Yes. Home. Very tired. Long trip. Lots of changes and waits. A last trip to Tel Aviv for a few hours with luggage and nothing in particular to do with a few adventures on the way, including being accosted often.. mostly for a ride.. ie money, but also for our souls.. sorta. It's not as sinister as it sounds. But anyway, back home, with the kitty.. she's already as bratty as ever.. and we're settling back in to winter again. Pretty tired at the moment, might go into details at some point.

A bunch o things..

the yard behind  "my old work".. you know the place I went to for 3 + a little bit days this week for mostly training and a few poorly executed phone calls.. anyway, today things are pretty much back to normal for me. Nothing new yet..

Too hot too cold.

Would you rather it be too hot or too cold?

Don't answer that, it's rhetorical.. in any case, there's only one answer to that, Does't matter, if it's too anything it's rubbish. All other answers are wrong. 

Having said that, I'd prefer it be too cold. If it's too cold, you can rug up, heat up, do exercises. If it's too hot what can you do? If you're in the coolest place, and naked all you can do is get into water. That's it. 

Of course, it depends how much hotter or colder than the ideal it is, and if you have access to the necessary refreshments, so, it's kind of, well.. a rubbish argument. 

I speak of this because today in Sydney was the hottest day on record, apparently, 45.6° C. I would not enjoy that at all. And here it's like, cold, -7 and everything covered in snow and do you hear me complaining?

Well.. I don't have to go outside, at the moment anyway, and don't need to walk people around the city this evening, and well if it was like the last days of doing said job, I would be complaining. A lot.

If I lived somewhere that it gets regularly that cold and colder, and didn't well, live in a place that actually does have a few ridiculously hot days in summer, and visit a place sorta regularly that is quite hot, and come from a place that is known to be hot, and is currently stupidly, and certainly horribly uncomfortably hot, I might feel differently.

Oh and if it wasn't all covered in snow and pretty outside.. I might feel differently right now, being winter and all.

Just a picture..

cos it's been a while since I posted one



it's drizzle.. well me, and umbrella the street.. but mostly drizzle..

there's been a lot of that here.

And for the most exciting news of the.. month.

Some goobers put a hole in our wall. Yeah. Didn't even leave the house, didn't do anything, barely spoke to anyone, but, something happened.

There we are, lying in bed in the morning when some worker dudes next door start making ungodly amounts of noise. And ungodly noises they were too. It started with hammering, then some drilling, then they hammered a bit more and then did a combination of both. It was some time before 8 when they started, and well.. needless to say things were already pretty vexing.

So we get up.. it's about time to and really, with that going on, you at least need to have a coffee.

Well to cut a not all that interesting and already too long story short, one of these dudes knocked a hole in the wall. I was first alerted to the fact by the cat running into the bedroom, eyes wide with terror after a particularly loud noise in for a particularly noisy work crew. I go into the kitchen, and there it is, hole in the wall, with rubble and shit on the floor. Thanks.

I alerted the dudes to the fact, through the wall, seeing as there was now a convenient little porthole to talk through.. and they tell me "yeah yeah, I know". And then of course they came over immediately apologizing and getting right down to fixing it.. oh wait, no they didn't, they ignored me after that. We called  the landlord, eh said he'd get on it.. and some hour or so later one of the guys came in and did a rudimentary fill in of the hole. Still looks like crap, but at least I didn't have to listen to them yammering after that.

And that's pretty much it. Next time something happens I'll be sure to write again.

The disappearing city.

Been very foggy here.

Well it wasn't quite 20 years..

One can now again enjoy a nice whiskey or vodka or other spirit containing more than 20% alcohol here in the Czech republic, legally, provided it was not brewed/bottled in 2012. Oh did I happen to mention you couldn't.. well not unless it had been bought before or brought back to the country from wherever you happen to be..

Ok, it started when a couple of weeks ago there was some tainted alcohol being sold here. Apparently fake booze, laced with industrial cleaners or something horrific like that, in regular bottles, so you can probably guess it was pretty fucking poisonous, and some people died, and many got very sick. As you can imagine, this was quite a big deal. This was just before I left for Israel, and it was a big story while we were gone.

Just before we got back, prohibition was introduced. We returned to a city full of jazz and bobbed hair and rolling down stockings and ok, I exaggerate, but hard alcohol was not allowed to be sold.

Beer and wine's status stayed the same as it was, so life for us here changed remarkably little. Some spirits and liqueurs were still available, and bars got inventive and had cocktails with.. like other stuff. There were witty jokes on bar signs, offering non-alcoholic cocktails.. and prohibition parties with flappers on their signs, back in those temperately warm mid to late September of 2012 days...

Then today it finished. Any spirits made before the cutoff.. I guess any from 2011 can be sold and served again. That's still a lot of booze that will be gotten rid of, and it seems as if my first guess when I heard about this was right, it was a mostly  to put a freeze on selling alcohol so that all the poison shit could be gotten out of the system, and would not continue for very long. It's still not completely over I guess, and a lot of places have lost a lot of money over this.. but, one must be as safe as possible, one supposes. I mean without entirely giving up alcohol that is.

*sweats*

Well.

Summer has certainly arrived.. in a big way. Right now it's raining, kinda heavy, maybe stormy.. fine with me,  just got in and missed the worst of it, though it may not have been so bad, as it's still pretty warm.. hot even.

Yesterday was certainly the hottest day of this year, and likely the hottest for quite a few years and of course it was a day of an outing out of the city, which involved a lot of walking to and from out destination, as well as around our destination. It was good though, a beautiful castle that was the residence of the man who got himself shot and started a war which changed the world.. Konopište.. if you want to be a bit more direct. Very nice, though the castle and grounds can probably be enjoyed more extensively on one of those days it's nice to walk around.. you know, some lovely gardens which a sweating couple was getting married in, nice, but very washed out in the light.. and way too hot to walk around, if we'd been able to..

Still, a very nice day, and a I learned a lot, something that sadly is not so typical of my weekends. The evening was better suited to walking and we tried it again after dark but the fatigue from earlier kept it to a minimum.

Today was cooler, particularly by the evening, and again met up with the same people for a walk around our own lovely city, from up on the hill where the castle is, down the hill, across the Charles Bridge with a few starts and stops because of some erratic rain.. and into a lovely pub just in time for it to get real heavy.

Well we still had to get home, and managed to run across the road to shelter, and then across again to a crowded tram which got us home in time for.. well, we didn't have far to go so didn't get too wet, but it either  is raining like it was or even heavier..

So that's it, my weekend complete with weather report. If anyone still was reading this blog, I guess that probably takes care of them.

Oh and there was a European cup final on this evening. I think Spain won.

Ah summertime..

This is the sort of thing that goes on. :)

Enough to get a bit parched..

Some doggies yesterday for the Prague Veggie Parade 2012. Was a fine day.. mostly, bit hot, bit cool, bit in between and the parade was long for a lazy ass person like myself but pretty cool.

And the afterparty in the park was, well it was hanging out in the park.

Oh and go vegan! I mean.. if you want.. or as close as you can.. *not exactly, well not at all vegan myself*

One down..

4 to go. And then it's the film of the show.

So.. opening night of Marat Sade, by Akanda Praha.. went fine. Really well actually. Possibly not flawlessly.. but everyone was.. well.. kind of awesome. I can't say so for myself but I didn't mess things up for the whole cast so I did alright. I'm sure it looked amazing, and sounded good from the audience.. it looked pretty good from my position at the back.

It was very weird being up there on stage.. well, there there, in the space in the big hall, the old, disused laundry that we used for a stage.. we'd rehearsed there so often in the same space that the lead up felt like another rehearsal.. I had to keep reminding myself that an actual show was going to take place.. and when we were on.. well.. I was just there.. doing what I do. It didn't feel really nervous or anything.. of course, I have a teeny tiny role.. not even any lines.. so that could have something to do with it.

I did get a workout though.. it was my job to keep all the patients in line, one in aprticular and I sweated a bit at times.

The main thing is, the audience seemed to really like it.

So.. on to the next show.

What is that doing here?

Just a picture, for no particular reason.

These days..

Around here. Just a pic, no reason.