Plzen!

A few weeks ago we went to Plzen for their Liberation Festival. Actually we went there to see people from Dan's mission, and used the Liberation Festival as an excuse to actually get there. Jan and Katka Houlobovi invited us to stay at their house, so off we went. First thing we did when we got there was go to the branch Family Home Evening. They have a pretty old branch and Vinson was a little out of place. But they definitely thought he was cute and entertaining! The highlight was being able to talk to Sestra Markova. She was baptized before communism and is pretty amazing. After talking to her for only a few minutes she asked me to tykat her (friend language). Almost everyone spoke English really well (How do all of these old people speak English?). Unfortunately, like we always end up doing, we forgot to bring enough diapers so I left with Jan and Katka a little early to get some diapers and milk. Then we went to the Holubs' house. It was really cute! We chatted for a while, it was fun. Then they had us sleep in their bed. I can't believe how nice they are!
In the morning Katka assembled a traditional Czech breakfast: bread, ham or pepperoni and cheese. She also had some cereal and milk. It was pretty funny cause she wasn't sure how cereal and milk work together. They eat it with their yogurt. "So you eat this in a bowl? With a spoon? Milk?" Very cute. When things opened we headed out to see Plzen starting with the Underground.

In the 1500's Plzen dug a huge network of tunnels and wells now known as the underground. Aparently because of the water in Plzen, Pilsner beer is so good. The tour guide told us this at least 3 times. Her tour was in English and obviously memorized. I had a feeling she wasn't comfortable with English cause she kept speeding up the tour and seemed to try to avoid questions. But she was really nice and let us take pictures.
After we climbed up a really high church tower in Plzen. It's the highest tower in the Czech republic and the stairs wind. To top it off Vinson wouldn't let anyone but me hold him, so I used that as my excuse to take breaks and rest. I felt so out of shape. The veiw from the top is pretty amazing! Going down is even worse than going up cause they don't have hand holds on both sides so I had to keep switching arms I was carrying Vinson and could see how far he would fall if I dropped him. I made it down fine, though.

Then we wanted to see the Jewish Synogogue. It's huge and amazingly enough, wasn't ruined during WWII. So then we were at a loss for what to do next. We had some time to kill before lunch. We decided to go to Hell! (Peklo) It's a part of town in Plzen named "hell" in czech. One of my favorite sights was of a guy wearing an American flag over his shoulders like a cape and carrying a big beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. That's where they were doing festivities for the Liberation festival. We walked through a field that they had dug trenches in and "set camps" in like it would have looked for WWII. It weirded me out to see the men in American uniforms move. It's totally something you would expect to see with manequins or something.

Then we went out to eat. The Holubs know a really cute little restaurant with great food and good prices! It was fun to chat and entertain Vinson. He's actually pretty good at restaurants as long as he can walk on the benches or have some freedom and attention. Unfortunately Dan had a big project due the next monday so we had to cut the trip short. So much fun to see Katka and Jan, though! We'll totally have to go again.

Cesky Krumlov part 2...

Castle tour #1 was a lot of fun. We went on the Czech language tour, because, as usual, it was cheaper. I felt bad for Val, though, because I had to fill her in on a lot of the details as we walked between rooms and during other breaks when the guide wasn't talking. The castle was founded sometime in the 1100's and it changed hands among four noble families until 1947 when the state took possession of it. Tour highlights included a gold (plated) carriage that was used to deliver some presents to a Pope during the 17th (?) century. It was pretty impressive. Val's and my favorite room was a large ballroom with amazingly detailed paintings on the walls. They depicted people looking out on the ballroom from balconies; some were stepping out of the balconies and one boy was even looking into a mirror on which was painted his face looking back. The master bedroom was really cool with a little oriental sitting room adjacent to it. There was fancy furniture and tapestries all over with several bearskin rugs made from the ancestors of the bears in our pictures. (see previous installment!) Part of the tour was hearing exciting and possibly true stories of these bears tragic deaths. One of them had a heart-attack, fell out of a tree into a pond, and drowned. Another became very angry while being tormented by some drunk soldiers and committed suicide in a frenzy. And the third... he died of natural causes at a ripe, old age.

After the castle tour, we walked through the castle gardens--very beautiful--checked out the large Catholic cathedral, and spent some more time walking through town. We were inspired by a swimming race in the river and decided to have our own competition. We did our best to stay on course in the direction we were walking and tried to see how many tourists we could force to seperate slightly from their tour groups. Tour groups have this annoying habit of being oblivious to the fact that there ARE other people walking through town. They are also extremely worried that they will somehow become hopelessly lost if their brightly-colored-umbrella-holding guide gets more than 3 meters away from them. We started referring to these tourist groupies as bowling pins that we were trying to "knock" off course. (If we sound rude and inconsiderate, imagine living in a tourist destination city for a few months.)
Perhaps, you're wondering about the third member of our family and what he was up to? Vinson did pretty well, while we were gone, with maybe a little more than his usual ups and downs. At least that is what the Crains told us; we have our suspicions. We are so grateful to Matt and Karey for watching Vince and we're even happier that they are still our friends.

Anniversary at Cesky Krumlov

So, we've been happily married for three years now! Yeah! And, we decided that we wanted to celebrate by going to Cesky Krumlov. Dan's never been there before, is there even a question if I've been there? So we looked at pictures online and got excited to go trippin'. I told the Crains about our plans and they said, "How about you go and we'll watch Vinson." Okay!! I said without a second's thought. So Friday we took a bus out (3 hours) to Cesky Krumlov and crossed our fingers (or held our thumbs if you're Czech) that Vinson would be good. Cesky krumlov is a really pretty city. It's one of the best preserved historical cities in the Czech Republic and is really cute. The town is situated along two horseshoebends in the Vltava river and has a really cool castle. Friday we explored the city by wandering aimlessly around. It's small enough that you can see the whole city this way. These pictures probably tell the story best:

At around seven there was hardly anyone out on the streets anymore. We got a good look at the castle in dusk and didn't have to fight for a spot along the railing to see the bears. Cesky Krumlov is famous for having some bears outside the castle. Right now there are three of them.

Bright and early the next morning we went on a tour of the castle. There are 5 tour routes to choose from but there's a really cool ballroom that we wanted to see so we went on tour number 1.

You've been whipped!

The Saturday before Easter we started celebrating by going to the Castle Gardens. It was really pretty and fun. The only hard part was that we had to "Keep off the grass" and Vinson didn't like that so much.
Easter here was pretty fun. The chocolate here is REALLY GOOD but it's also pretty expensive. So I made cake cookies (our friends work at the embassy and get us things like cake mixes that we can't find here) and rice krispy treats. (We got surprised with rice krispies and a 72 oz. bag of chocolate chips, it made me cry!) So both were pretty special. And they had Milka's on sale so I bought some of them. Dan and Vinson got socks. Vinson's are so cute. They are elephant socks and the ears stick up at the top. We put Vinson's basket in the corner and had to play "hide and seek" to get him close enough to see it. He went ballistic after the chocolate eggs and broke them into tiny tiny pieces but I couldn't get him to eat any. We decided to keep him home from church incase he has chickenpox. (He played with Anna who broke out with chicken pox the day after, so she was at her peak of contagiousness). The sad thing about it was that we couldn't go whip the Vondurskovi girls like we had planned. Whip! What? You are probably saying! The Monday after Easter is almost bigger than Easter Sunday. The boys are supposed to make a willow whip and the girls are supposed to decorate eggs. Then on Monday the boys whip the girls (to give them fertility of course) and the girls give them an egg. If the boys whip the girls after 12 then the girls can pour water on the boys. So we thought, "Hey why not whip Anna? She's the one that might have given him Chicken pox in the first place." So we went to visit Amber, Andre, Anna and Sophie. Anna is really cute with Vinson and Vinson gets so excited with other kids. When Vinson pulled out his whip Anna shrieked "No, no, no!" So Amber let him whip her first to show her it was okay. Then Anna lied on the floor, completely submissive. I thought it was pretty funny. Vinson needed a lot of help. He was just excited to wave the whip around because it has ribbons on the end of it.

Afterwards we visited Monica who was working at KFC. We brought her a little Easter basket full of American treats. It's too bad Vinson was asleep, but she gave us chicken wings and Fanta. I was totally not expecting that. (I still don't know enough Czech to refuse something politely, and don't know if it's good to accept or what? I guess it's confusing in America too. So I've taken some things I really didn't want cause it's easier to say yes, than try to politely decline. Not that I wanted to decline KFC! Are you kidding!) We chatted, it was fun!
Finally our last stop was to see the Canek's. It was a little bit harder cause their house isn't baby proffed and they have a semi handicapped sister who wanted to keep holding Vinson. He was a good sport most of the time. They died eggs with onion. They were pretty. Vinson kept wanting to play with the remote control and pull all of their books off of the shelf. By the time we got home we were pretty exhausted. So I took a two hour breather on the couch watching "Ants" and Dan did homework. Then we made our last stop and whipped Karey. (Karey and Matt moved here and are only here for a few months but live really close to us so we let them use our washer. They are the ones who gave us rice krispies). They gave Vinson cheese popcorn which was the best treat! (Better than the kinder egg. Crazy boy!). So that's how we celebrated the Czech Easter.

EGGcelent

Every Thursday night we have "game night." It started because Val missed playing games with her family so much. Our friend Chris comes every week, but this week we invited some other friends. Monika, Michal, Chris, Karey, Matt, and their friends Becca and Chris from the U.S. (sidenote: They brought us a 72 oz. bag of chocolate chips and I cried with joy!) The coolest part, though is that we learned how to make eggs the Czech way thanks to Monika. Here are the directions: go to town! First you need some pins. We didn't have any but fortunately we have friends in our apartment building so we got some. Then you need a candle. You heat the pinhead in the fire (use a pencil or crayon for a handle: push the pin into the crayon or pencil so you won't burn your fingers off if ya want) when it's good and hot melt some crayon wax on the pin and use the wax to decorate the egg. It's hard but really cool!
Vinson was amazingly good this whole time and only got into a little bit of mischief. There were lots of people to entertain him.

Friday we finally got to see the cool church in Vysehrad. It was our fifth attempt! Every other time we just missed it or it was closed for some unknown reason. It was crazy cool and decorated all over the place. Paintings all over the walls. I wish we had pictures, but we were good tourists and didn't even have a camera!