"Blanka go Boom Again"

Big apologies for so long a silence on the blog. We're all taking turns fighting the flu (just regular kind, no swine stuff).

There is something we've been meaning to write about...there are tunnels being dug under our house. And for several weeks now, we get reminders several times a day by the dynamite blasts.

Now, before you yell "Freeze Gopher!!", you should know these are not ordinary tunnels. This is on par with Boston's Big Dig, as Prague tries the same to alleviate congested traffic. The project is called Tunel Blanka (the "Blanka Tunnel") and is tunneling under the city center, the Vltava river, and Letna and Stromovka parks. When the Blanka Tunnel is finished, it will be 3.5 miles long (5502 meters). Construction started soon after we got here and, from the constant blasting, it seems they're making a lot of progress. Should be finished in mid to late 2011, so we're thinking we won't be enjoying it personally.

What we do enjoy is the constant reminders, from underground dynamite blasts which rock our building in a very real way, once even shattering our downstairs neighbor's bathroom mirror. (Mattias thinks it is thunder and says, "Uh oh, it's raining!", even when there is a sunny blue sky outside.)

If you visit the official Tunel Blanka website, you can read exactly why we're concerned. On the website listing the buildings most affected, you'll see our building is "directly affected" - meaning it's subject to the maximum projected fall of 35mm. That's 1.5" which doesn't sound like a lot, provided the whole building will fall evenly.

But, honestly, there's little reason to think a large area of the surface would just cave into the ground. After all, it has only happened twice since they started construction!

After these setbacks, it's no wonder why they're taking such precautions as building a wooden, catch-all skirt around our house and all the "directly affected" buildings around us. See pictures - the skirt is just in case parts of a building should break away. We're sure the 2" planks will keep any passerby below safe from falling walls.

Happy Birthday Sis

Today, my 'baby' sister Jeannine turned... no, I can't give the number. But we wish her a graceful transition to her new milestone.
Ugh...hard to believe, really. Not so long ago I was making her stuffed animals talk (esp. a Pekingese named Sam), getting Jeannine to laugh uncontrollably. Now, fast forward a few decades later, we're all grown up and laughing at life.
Jeannine's a pro expat, finishing some 8 years between Scotland and Saudi Arabia, as well as a personal heroine of ours.
Happy Birthday, Jeannine - we love you and wish you & Kari all the best for the move home.

-jeff & parkers

Dad & Gang Doing Fine

Maylia's away in Lisbon, Portugal with friends from back home Michelle and Erin for 4 days.

I would write "While the cat's away, ..." but the mice play fine even with the cat here.

Before she left, Maylia wasn't worried about dad and kids having plenty of play time. That part, Daddy does real good at. No, it was everything else, like planning meals and getting from commitment to commitment. Maylia is the more organized parent, so she, bless her heart, wrote out for Daddy a cheat-sheet and got all groceries ahead of time for meals planned out. But the real help was the schedule list complete with transportation tips. For example, Fridays are Ella's Palechek days. Palechek is Ella's get-together/drama class/puppet-show place. My Friday cheat-sheet starts with "Start leaving by 9am; hit sidewalk by 9:15am." Maylia even gives 3 alternate times for the wheelchair trams back home. (Wheelchair trams have big access doors for strollers). Cool.

May's gone from Thursday night to Monday night. I took Friday off from work, of course. Couldn't have Ella and Mattias fend for themselves, right? Right? We have hired help coming in for all day Monday, though I'll come home early.

Today we have a birthday party to go to. Tomorrow's open, so perhaps the aquarium

In short, we're doing okay.

Just before May left, she and Ella were treated to a ballet. Our friend Karen gave Maylia and Ella tickets to Swan Lake at the National Theater for their birthday. Last week, Maylia, Karen, Ella and her friend Sasha all went to beautiful National Theater. Talk about an experience for a couple 4 year olds, let alone adults. Sounds like Ella and Sasha really enjoyed themselves. Here are some pictures from that night.

Olomouc in Pictures

We're back from Olomouc. We really enjoyed our time there. It is a beautiful city of about 100,000 people.

As Jeff mentioned, Mattias and Olomouc just don't mix very well. Our first attempt was boycotted by chicken pox and this time the poor boy stepped off the train with a fever...we're still fighting the fever and whatever bug it is that is causing it. But, other than that, it was a great trip.

The Czech Republic is a small country. I was quite worried when we arrived in Olomouc that we would have a hard time getting any medicine for Mattias as it was late Saturday and the stores were closed and wouldn't be open on Sunday or Monday, the holiday. Jeff was with Ella in our hotel and she said, "Hey! That's one of my friends from Palecek!" Jeff didn't believe her at first, but sure enough, we knew the folks one floor up from us and they had come prepared with Panadol (like baby Tylenol). So we were in luck! It saved us tracking down the regional 24-hour pharmacy. (THANK YOU!)

So, the tour begins. Here is our hotel, the building with all the flowers.

And around the corner from our hotel was Vaclavske Namesti (Wencesles Square - yes, there is one in Prague, too, there are many repeat names throughout Czech Republic.) and the cathedral of the same name. To give you an idea of how old this city is, construction of this church began prior to 1107.

Next to the cathedral is the Archdiocese. It housed a really neat museum that all four of us enjoyed. You'll see Ella, below, with Cinderella's coach, or was that the pope's? Speaking of the pope, he was in the Czech Republic this weekend, supposedly the most secular (some say atheist) country in the world. But that's a whole other story.

Horni Namesti, the main square, is dominated by the Holy Trinity Column, which put Olomouc on the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage List in 2000.

The City Hall with it's beautiful astronomical clock is located in the center of the same square, and has been here since the 1400s. There is also a model of the city that Ella, Mattias and Froggie really got a kick out of.

You can figure out what day we were there with this close-up of the clock.

The square is also home to three fountains. Arion's Fountain was our favorite.

The city is full of beautiful and interesting architecture. Here are a few examples. They are simply residential or commercial space, now. Nice places to live or work, I say!

Of course, we can't go anywhere without checking out the parks and playgrounds. We visited two of the city's big parks and found a playground in this one, Cechovy Sady.

And we always appreciate yummy food, too. Here's Ella settling in for a meal at Konvikt.

Given Mattias' (and Jeff's) love of planes, we couldn't pass up the opportunity to take a peek at this 1950s TU-104 Soviet commercial jet. There were only 200 built and only one Soviet and one Czech airline ever used them. Now, if only we'd visited between 10pm and 5am we could have taken a peek INSIDE, as well.

I include this picture only because Ella took it. Not bad, eh?

Holiday in Olomouc, Czech Rep. (Finally)

It's a 3-day holiday weekend here, so we got away from Prague to spend a few days in Olomouc. Olomouc is a small city, Czech's 5th largest, located in the eastern part of the country nearer to Poland.  Lovely city, beautiful fountains and very tall Baroque statue which gave Olomouc its UNESCO heritage status. 
We came close to visiting here before, but Mattias getting chicken pox stopped us at the last minute.  Little bugger tried stopping us again with a cold and fever, but we told him to toughen up and we came anyway.  (Well, it's not a high fever). heehee.
Right now, we're split in two teams with mom & Mattias napping, while Ella and daddy are dining outside sharing trout, beer and juice.
We're taking many pictures to post later.