ode to czech... construction, bookstores, news, and the like...

on czech construction...

when we arrived in prague a week and a half ago, we had to climb up a small hill to catch a tram (in the us, you would call it a trolley) into town, and it would drop us off right in front of the mathematics building for the university. this week, we have to get off the tram a stop early and walk the last quarter mile as the tram tracks are under construction.

this is all well and good, but if you've never been to prague before... all of the streets and sidewalks in town are cobblestone! not just streets made of stone, but stones of similar proportions made into fancy designs... so instead of our paste of a pavement that we hammer apart and lay down like paste to steamroll to dry, each day as we go to and from the math building, we watch them dig out more stones, without breaking them, use firetorches to cut apart tram tracks to take them up, weld new tracks together, and starting today, we saw the workers laying out the cobblestones again... quite the impressive process. i guess it doesn't make sense just how much work it is to work with the stones until you see it.

on czech bookstores...

on my walks around today i see bookstores aplenty... the czech word for bookstore is apparently antikvariat with some accents on it though, so at first, seeing that word, one might just think (wrongly) that there are a lot of antique stores around here ;)... anyhow, there's one giant english bookstore that's listed in every guidebook you pick up about the city: the Globe... after our lecture today (by Fiala... another famous combinatorialist... it was about games on graphs, so we got to play games today during the talk :) ), and grabbing lunch at Bohemia Bagel with Melissa (a restaurant my friends and i discovered 3 years ago and that i've been to 3 times this trip), i wandered down to the globe by myself.

here is why english language bookstores in non-english countries rock! for years, The Meaning of Liff by Douglas Adams has been out of print in the states. ... now, The Deeper Meaning of Liff is starting to show up in more American bookstores again, but it too had been hard to find for a bit. Anyhow, today at the globe, I found a *brand new - untouched except for the price of 260 czech crowns (about $10.25) written in the front page* copy of it. now amazon has copies starting at $9.59 for used copies, but last time i had looked (within the year), the $99 copies were all there was. All in all, I consider this an *amazing* deal to have found a *brand new* copy of the ONLY adams book i didn't own.

I also bought copies of two books by a local publisher: the best of Czech fairy tales and great stories in Czech history... they cost about $7 each and I figured they'd be easy and educational/cultural reads.

on czech news...

yesterday, on the way back to the dorm, i bought a copy of this weeks Prague Post. it reminded me a bit of The Budapest Sun, which i read regularly while i was in Hungary. Since both are english language papers in non-english speaking countries, their style is a bit different than american papers, but i find it an enjoyable way to get at least some sense of the local issues and interest.

did you know...
* in the bombings in Egypt a week or two ago, a Czech man was killed -- this was the first Czech killed in a terrorist attack ever
* prague is working on a bill to legalize prostitution (so naturally there's a *LOT* of debate going on about that)
* the czech minister of culture died last week after a very public battle with cancer. he was the last major personality of the velvet revolution of 1989 (when the czechs peacefully overthrew the communist powers and began their own government) who was still working in politics
* the Czech abortion rate is now at the lowest ever since abortions were first allowed in the country... it skyrocketed and peaked at about the end of the communist era
* i can ramble a bit, but finally i thought that this was an itneresting editorial... the EU is currently comprised largely of well established western european nations, but had an entering "class" of 10 new countries last year including czech republic and hungary. these 10 new more eastern countries have a totally different set of concerns than the western european countries, as well as different histories and goals... this article made some comment about different models for how the EU could function to resolve the west/east gap between its member nations.

anyhow, it's just interesting to tune into non-american news and see a little of what interests and concerns a country that's more the size of an american state.

other misc...

yesterday, i saw this building from a distance. while out by the bookstore, i noted that i was even closer to it, so i walked that way to get closer and get a good picture (almost the same angle as this one and with a tram out front too, actually ;) )... after searching and having no luck yesterday to learn more about it, today i finally found an essay on it ... go figure... there's plenty to learn by accident around here as well as on purpose. :)

looks like rain, should run to the dorm... opera tonight... i can't wait :)

later dudes. :P