Blog written by two Prague residents about life in the Czech Republic.
It’s that time of the year again. The time of flying spiders, spiders suspended in mid-air, spiders sitting in the center of their webs that are spread out from lamp post to lamp post along busy sidewalks. You need to look where you’re going if you don’t want to walk into a thick web and end up dragging a shread of it with you, screaming, cursing and flailing about.
Prague spiders have been discussed briefly in the spiders thread on our message boards.
It’s a wedding mania day in the Czech Republic. Today’s lucky date of 07/07/07 is making many couples believe that this is the perfect day to enter into a marriage that’s going to be blessed, happy and will last a lifetime. Town halls, churches, castles and chateaus around the country are seeing twice as many weddings as usual and some popular wedding locations have been booked for up to a year in advance.
Just passing by Náměstí Míru, Jeff and I saw a wedding in progress at the St. Ludmila Church. I’m sure other Prague churches and town halls were busy as well. May all you newlyweds live long and happy lives together!
I was out at 7:45 this morning (which is very early for me) and was rewarded by being able to experience the festive atmosphere of the day. Today was the last day of school in the Czech Republic. Little kids, older children and teenagers, alone or in groups, headed to school all dressed up. Instead of schoolbags, many of them carried flowers to give to their teachers. I remember how much I used to love the last day of school, which marked the beginning of a carefree, two-month summer break. I still get excited just imagining how it used to feel.
I was at a bank yesterday and overheard a conversation between a very bored looking teenager and his upbeat mother. The mother was making all kinds of plans for the summer and talked about all the fun stuff that her son and his brothers can look forward to – summer camp, visits with relatives, camping, traveling around the Czech Republic (“you can even bring your friend along”)… All the boy had to say was: “Stupid summer break”. I couldn’t believe my ears. What’s not to love about summer break??
Seems like Prague is not alone in battling a graffiti problem. That’s good news in a way. At least we know that unsightly graffiti scrawled on beautiful new facades of historical buildings are not a Prague specialty and that vandals can – unfortunately – be found everywhere. There’s also another benefit to the international character of graffiti vandalism. Cities can share strategies and experiences in their efforts to keep walls clean.
An article that came out yesterday talks about a new set of high-tech tools that many U.S. cities have purchased and are using successfully in reducing the incidence of graffiti vandalism and increasing the rate of arrests and fines. I wish the City of Prague took a similar approach. Judging from the ever present scrawls around the city center (take Ječná Street for example), it seems that nothing much is being done about the graffiti problem in Prague.