We would like to wish all our regular, occasional and accidental readers a very Happy New Year!  We hope it is a good one for all of us!

Dana and Jeff

It’s Christmas and we’re spending a nice, relaxing time at home. The gifts were all given last night, on Christmas Eve, as is customary in the Czech Republic. As every year, some people were still gift shopping yesterday. I’m glad we were not among them. We kept busy doing some last-minute cleaning, wrapping gifts, making potato salad and frying carp for dinner.

I bought our Christmas tree on Náměstí Míru last Wednesday. It is 1.3 meters tall and came to 400 Kč. It was shedding needles as I was decorating it yesterday and it is already turning a rusty color. I wonder how long ago it was actually cut.

Getting the carp was a bit more dramatic. In the Czech Republic, you can either buy carp live and keep it in your bathtub until it’s time for you to kill it (!!), or you can have it killed and cleaned by the vendor right in front of you. Neither is a pleasant experience for an animal lover like me, so I had Jeff go out and bring back some carp fillets. He came back with a bloodied bag and ”very fresh” carp, which had supposedly already been floating dead in the tub before he bought it. I tried to believe him…

Here are some pictures of the season:

Christmas market on Náměstí Míru, ended yesterday

Christmas market on Old Town Square, open till January 1

A Christmas tree vendor - choose your tree and take it away, or have it wrapped for an additional 20 Kč

A carp vendor on Národní třída

P. S. I had carp and potato salad for breakfast.

The Czech artist David Černý created a life-size sculpture of Sigmund Freud, which was originally installed on Jilská Street in Prague. The sculpture was hung on a metal rod over the street from the top of a building. According to an article on the České Noviny (ČTK) website, the sculpture has been shown in Europe and in the U.S. In Grand Rapids, Michigan, the latest city to host the installation, the “Hanging Man” was hung on a seven story building and a number of citizens thought it was was a real person who had taken their own life. The sculpture will make it back to Prague one day, so if you see it here, you’ll know it is just Freud hanging out.

The “Hanging Man” in Prague

I hear that the ski season began in the Krkonoše Mountains today. It has been snowing there for a few days and there is now enough snow to allow skiing. Winter is starting early this year. Who knows, maybe the ski resorts are going to make up for last year’s terrible ski season.

I’m in Northern Moravia for a few days and we had our first snow here today. When I looked out the window this morning, I saw that the ground was covered with snow. It’s been snowing for most of the day, snowing so hard at times that one inevitably thinks of Christmas. Large, wet chunks of snow are falling from the sky slowly and quietly, creating an idyllic winter scene outside. Too bad I don’t have a camera with me.