I remember back in 1993, after my first move to Prague, seeing all these friendly “money changers” who would stand around on Na příkopě at the bottom of Wenceslas Square. As someone walked by they would ask “change money?” and boast they had the best exchange rates around to turn your dollars or pounds or francs into … well, something.

I read in an article on the Radio Praha website that money changers are still around and tourists are still getting ripped off. I don’t know why people take a chance with someone who approaches them off the street when there is a wide selection of ATM machines and banks all over Prague. I guess some tourists feel that the chance of getting a better deal is worth the risk of ending up with a stack of Bulgarian leva.

The Žižka National Monument sits atop Vítkov Hill in the Žižkov district of Prague. The large statue that dominates it was built to commemorate the Hussite warrior Jan Žižka (1360? - 1424) and was completed in 1932. It is supposedly the largest equestrian statue in the world. From this area, there is a great view of Žižkov and other parts of Prague.

The communists made their mark on the complex. At one point it contained the mausoleum of Klement Gottwald, who was the first communist president of Czechoslovakia.

Photos © jeffshanberg.com

I read an article in the Prague Daily Monitor this week that was overflowing with the word server. There would be nothing wrong with that had the article been about servers, or at least one server. But the article wasn’t about servers. It was about a website. Here are a few excerpts from the text:

“Many mistakes on server promoting Czech Republic”
“The newly-launched internet server www.czech.cz, aimed to promote the Czech Republic…”
“The server is mainly designed for foreign tourists…”

I’d probably leave the article alone had it not become the proverbial last straw. For some reason, Czechs seem to have a particular liking for using the word server when referring to a website, so I read or hear about a server www this or www that or about someone “running a server about something” a lot more often than I’d like to. And now this article comes along…