They did make it on the 10:30 PM flight on Monday. It could have been worse, because KLM put them up in a swanky hotel near the airport and gave them vouchers for dinner, breakfast, and lunch. The Amsterdam Airport is quite nice too, so they found an Irish Pub after they returned to the Airport from the hotel. We were glad to see each other at the Prague airport, finally!
The weather here stayed cold. That gave us the excuse to sightsee for a maximum of an hour at a time and then find a warm café or pub to thaw in for the next hour or so, before venturing out for another bit of being tourists. We saw all the high spots, and several quite lovely warm-up spots. Saint Nicholas Café was one of the most quaint, even having a stone sofa carved from the subterranean walls. At the Koncerty (the Goat)we captured 3 big leather chairs in a perfect people watching spot. Czech cuisine didn’t quite work for them, so we found a wonderful French restaurant with an extensive wine cellar from which Meg selected a excellent sparkling wine for us, and a good Thai place too. Steve’s favorite was the breakfast place, Gourmand’s, where Carol and I ate our first few days last summer. Lexington notwithstanding, Meg and Steve have a strong city-life gene in them and it was fun to explore the “third places.”
After a weekend of catching up on my sleep and getting ready for my Monday class, things are back to “normal.”
I thought my class had settled at 5 students, but today I learned that there is another one who has been sick at home and wants to join the class now. Whatever! Also, I learned that my once-a-week class that meets for an hour and a half on Mondays, will be cancelled for three weeks…Easter Monday is a holiday in this 85% atheistic country, and May 1 and 8 are national holidays. The semester started on February 20; I cancelled one class to go to the Fulbright Conference in Berlin, there are three holidays…that means we will meet a total of 9 times, including the first and last days, which tend to not be the highest quality class time. Good thing it is a small class and we can really work together when we do meet!
My consulting continues to be great fun. This week I have done a lot of web surfing as follow-up for meetings I had before Meg and Steve came. The consulting gives me an excuse to search for things I have always wanted to search for but never felt that I could justify the time. I also met with the director of public relations for the University of Economics, and got to guest lecture in a Marketing Communications class there. I was a bit envious of the fact that it is a campus and that if I were there all the time I would probably have had a chance to meet even more cool people because it is big and vibrant and crowded, unlike our calm, shared space in the attic (I mean penthouse) where we try not to converse for fear it will bother the class that is going on over the partial wall. But, everything has its charm, and we claim bragging rights for being the only Charles University faculty in a penthouse.
I am hoping to find and visit the Botanical Gardens on the first warm day. I hear they have a beautiful orchid collection.
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