In which stuff happens slowly and nicely
beth in paris, now denver....
Whoo... not doing so great keeping this updated. Briefly: last week in DKB not too interesting, tours of window factory and furniture, tour by night watchman, presentation of our work to Dinkelsbuhl community.
Crossing the bridge was to get over to the Prague Castle, a landmark visible all across the town... spent some time wandering the suroundings, excellent coffee in the sun, meant to meet friends at a set of stairs i thought were the main ones from the map, but missed them when they were at the other end of the huge complex... ran up and down the steps a bunch of time working off the dumplings, but went in and got to experience it - lots of heavy turrets, a street of fifteenth century almost doll-houses.... 5'6 doorways, just all miniture authentic, armour museum hallway to run through creepily, old churches, present-day soldiers still marching around in formations like back in the day....
Woke up as I usually do, with an obscene amount of energy to start the day. It usually serves me pretty well, especially in Paris the days start out sunny and cloud over by 9 or 10. A little afraid of this, I set out without waking everyone up (it was before 7), leaving a note I hoped would allow us to meet. Unfortunatly it wasn't clear enough, but I had a pretty great time wandering by myself too. Walk down to the river, just happened to chance by Gehry's Tom and Ginger building, a cool post-modern building (whoa did i just say that?) but it fit in really well among the decorated flat houses along the river. impressive. The walk was really fun, in the sun and spring it was easy to see this had been the Bohemian playground of rich europeans - highly decorative buildings, Gothic and Baroque and Rococo... walking by myself along the very high river, barely anyone keeping me company on the streets. Crossing the Karlsbridge in the morning was a far different experience then later, beautiful morning light and mist and not crowded at all.... nice pictures with the streetlights still on
Got in pretty late, easy trip to the hostel, quite a lot of confusion getting new currency and then trying to break the rediculously large bills coming out of the atm.... hard to take out more then 1000 units of currency, even when you know it's only $40.... we went on a walk with our hostel roommates, college boys from Stuttgart, they promised to show us a fairly cool restaurant, they were totally lost too though.... we stopped at a place for really delicious food mmm. we were told dumplings and pork were the specialties, and they were.... mmm.... dumplings were breadish, and sliced as such, with lots of gravy and greasy-good meat. Served with Budwiser! don't gasp at the sacriledge, it was real Czech Budvar, not american water-berr, and i had the Budvar Dark... almost black, a little molassesy and absolutely great. the german Weissbier was good with a lot of things, but this meal called for thicker stuff. Fun wander past tinker-bell palace and through Wenceslas Square (whores and western commercialism) back to the hostel and a good night.