New Years In Prague

•January 1, 2007•

Paul and I almost never go out on New Years Eve so staying home and going to bed at ten is no sacrifice. It's the tradition here to shoot off fireworks, not just little poppers but big, loud boomers. It sounded like war had broken out. Paul's cousin, Milan, usually spends New Years Eve in his front yard with a hose at the ready in case fireworks set his roof on fire. The main celebration takes place in Wenceslas Suare and is covered on the local TV station.

Which brings me to television in the Czech Republic. I'm sure there are the equivalent of cable stations but we don't get them in our apartment. One local station shows old episodes of Night Rider, Charlie's Angels and Air Wolf all dubbed in Czech. These are shows I never watched when they were current much less in Czech and how ever many years later. Current American shows like Monster Garage, Pimp My Ride and Orange County Cycles are popular here, all dubbed in German. We get CNN and thankfully Conan O'Brian and Jay Leno.

We've gotten addicted to a German reality show called the Ludolf's about four, bachelor brothers who own a car parts junkyard in some small German town. It's in German with Czech subtitles and the characters are so compelling we never miss an episode. The two middle aged brothers live in an apartment above the junkyard and look as though they haven't bathed, cut their hair or changed their clothes in weeks. They all love to play with model cars. Everything in the yard is piled high in well organized rows and the oldest brother has total recall of every item. If someone needs a carburetor for a 1970 Volvo sedan, he knows if they have one and exactly where it is in the yard. It's a kind of idiot savant show and we're hooked. I wonder what that says about us?

•January 10, 2007•

It is coming up on three months since we arrived and I have to extend my visa. Our first trip to the Czech Republic was in 2002 for a family reunion. Three generations of relatives came from Canada, Slovakia and America. Paul and I became enchanted with the country, decided to buy a house here and began the complicated bureaucratic process to establish foreign ownership. We spent months in the States searching Czech real estate sites on the Internet. We wanted to buy an apartment in Prague but even in 2002 that was really out of our reach. The price of real estate, like everything else here, is going up and the British and Dutch are buying in.