Looks eerily familiar!

Sometimes I browse through the archives of PhD comics by Jorge Cham (PhD is short for "Piled Higher and Deeper" and pokes fun at life as a PhD student). I can't say that I can relate to all of the strips, but I today I found something that eerily reminds me of myself!

Picture of the PhD desktop. "Thesis stuff" has cobwebs on it. And I'm laughing at "Pirated music, movies, comics" and "Random programs you only used once".

My desktop right now. Not at its worst, thankfully!

If the saying is true that your piles reflect your brain, in my brain, blog stuff are lumped together with family pictures, recipes and school tasks (though not in that priority, haha)! Having two computers – one at work and one at home – is also starting to get confusing since I now have "piles" in two places. I think I might need an online "dump" for all my files. And I need a new hard drive since recently it has been hard to save regular Word files while having Firefox, Adobe Acrobat, Dictionary and iTunes open simultaneously. Yikes!

Anyway, what I really wanted to say is that my blog is three years old! Three years ago, I thought I was the last person to ever open a blog. I didn't even know what I was going to write about. Now, most of my blogging friends have either switched to micro-blogging in Facebook, changed the titles, layouts and addresses of their blogs at least thrice during the three years, or quit blogging altogether – and I'm still here. Wonder of wonders! Of little wonder is the fact that I'm supposed to be cramming work today before Lea's visit, but I find myself writing this entry. Ain't it great how blogs can make you feel productive even during "wasted" time? ;-)

Seriously, though my desktop looks like crap with all the blog drafts, side projects and pictures beside school articles and paper drafts, I think this hobby-work mix has been beneficial. I love lighthearted blogging after a long day of reading articles that all want to sound important. But then after a while I also realize how similar conveying a train of thought in a course paper is to attempting to make a story sound interesting to both regular and unexpected readers of a blog.

Besides, blogging is a much more interesting way of telling stories to your family than e-mail! (and thanks to my pizza entry, Lea wants to try kebab pizza! How's that for creative writing!)

And I discovered that I liked liver

Back to the topic of Prague, I'm posting something about food and drink from our vacation there. I also changed and added some pictures in the previous post to more "touristy ones" because I needed that photo of the pastry here to explain what it was we ate there, and because I also wanted to show more pictures of the city.

"Eat lots of meat" is one advice I got before going to Prague.
Another one is "drink lots of beer".

Prague is without a doubt a beautiful city. It's not just the architecture – it's the city's situation along the river, its hilly terrain, and its huge lovely parks which you can just walk in for hours. As I said, I could go there again just to see these beautiful things. But there are two other things I like about Prague "the city", and those are: its public transportation system, and the inexpensive food and drink.

I want to talk about the transportation system a while. I'm convinced that Prague is the best city to commute in, and the tram and metro systems are fast, clean and cheap – a really efficient way of traveling! I began to realize why the Czechs won the bid to provide trains for Metro Manila's MRT Line 1. Japan isn't the only country with effective rail systems, apparently. If I were benevolent dictator of the Philippines, we would have a transport system just like Prague's and I would convert all the jeepney drivers to tram conductors. There would be less traffic, less emissions, and less excuses to be late in meetings. We also soon find out the extra advantage of public transportation for Prague residents when we got a glimpse of their eating and drinking habits.

Or, you soon realize that public transportation is important when you see how often Czechs might get a beer. Beer is dirt cheap. Since living in Sweden, I had learned to expect that a glass of beer at a restaurant would cost something like 50 Swedish kronor – in today's conversion rate, 302 Philippine pesos, or 6.4 US dollars. Not so in Prague. Between bottled water and beer, beer is often a cheaper alternative, and between cola, juice or beer, there just isn't any contest. When converted, the value of a glass of beer in Prague is at 5 Swedish kronor. I can't even think of anything that costs 5 kronor in Sweden – that's to illustrate how affordable beer is. No wonder friends report walking around Prague more or less constantly "beered".

After work, the park benches fill with Prague residents talking, working on their laptops, reading homework – and all are drinking beer.

And that's why Czechs use public transportation, because to drive in Prague, you need to have 0.00% blood alcohol content. That's worse than in safety-conscious Sweden, but on the other hand, there's more risk of actually being drunk before you know it when beer pours like tap water. Besides, after a big lunch of fatty food and a tall glass of beer, you'd probably want to doze in the metro instead of driving anyway.

To food then. Compared to Swedish prices, food prices are low and food is generally very good – if you're a carnivore. I understand that vegetarian restaurants are getting popular in Prague (we almost stepped into one before we realized what it was). Who knows, maybe after 364 days of eating meat, you probably crave for some veggies!

Seriously, the only complaint about Czech food I have is the constipation that resulted from a lack of greens and fiber (oversharing!). Aside from a Ceasar's salad and a chicken soup, I don't really remember eating something non-meat. Don't take me wrong – the meats were all good! The ribs fell off the bone and came with three different kinds of dip. We tried a variety of sausages. I ordered goulash soup, schnitzel, and – when we decided to try a "today's special" in a menu that was only written in Czech, we found out that the dish consisted of a pork chop and a piece of liver in a dark sauce with mashed liver and herbs. The verdict? They know their liver. I never really liked liver until I tasted that dish, even if the last portions tasted really, uh, livery.

The dish that made me appreciate liver:
Sliced knödel, pork chops and chicken liver with liver sauce.

That dish – combined with the beer – really knocked me out after lunch. It didn't help that the sliced knödel were all deep fried in garlic oil. Delicious and rich. It was cheap too. But oh, if I lived there I'd probably have to eat other cuisine more.

Aside from food and beer, sidewalk pastry (actually bought in the metro stations) were one of the things we usually bought while exploring the city. A franchise called Princess sells sweet and savory filled pastry by weight, and they're not very expensive either. We buy the pastry, walk to a park and eat them there.

Our "couple picture" shows us with mini turkey-and-spinach snacks. Yum!

With the view below you, the snacks could have come from a fancy bakeshop, but actually, the place you buy them from is no bigger than a usual stall and you have to point to order since the vendors know limited English (though the snacks have English labels besides the Czech). The cherry snack and the spinach and cheese snack are recommendable, as is the choco-vanilla. Obviously, we tried a lot of these mini pastries. Gobble, gobble, gobble!

Two different days, two kinds of rugelach: one chocolate- and one nut-filled.

For a trip full of food and drink, you don't have to wonder much what we took with us back to Sweden: a liter of traditional plum brandy from the duty free shop, and two whole kilos of various flavors of dried sausages!

By the way – my sister Lea is visiting me next week for some days. Don't wonder if there are sausages in the menu, Lei.

See Tags: Food

Experiences aren't only in the guide books

Pictures and captions added 8 May 2009

Mala Strana (Lesser Town) and Charles Bridge at night

I heard conflicting information before going on vacation to Prague in the Czech Republic. First, I was constantly warned about tourist traps. I read about the over-charging taxis, their "super professional" pickpockets, streets full of tourist kitsch and overpriced food. Second, the same people also told me that Prague is "their favorite city", "the most beautiful city in the world", and throw in superlatives upon superlatives about the tourist spots I should come and visit. Other travelers, probably with the latter in mind but meeting the former, describe Prague as overrated and "a let down". And that indeed it could be – if your intention is just to see the landmarks that are already swarming with hundreds of tourists just like you. A few museums and landmarks later, you can add Prague to your "been there, done that, oh-my-it-was-beautiful" list even if what you actually had experienced was any other tourist story in any other tourist place – "but in Prague!"

Anyone can be in this situation – especially when under some kind of time pressure. And being the unembarrassed tourist also has its fun sides: just look at our 3-day Stockholm-on-a-shoestring trip with tourist cards! For the first time though, I spent five nights in a tourist city without paying a single entrance fee, without entering a single church or museum, had minimal contact with other tourists, and had the greatest vacation ever! – It's humanly possible! And come to think of it, why elbow my way through a horde of tourist groups while being on a vacation in a place already reputed for being touristy? Actually, when we booked this trip, there were just too many tourist landmarks to plan for and to go to that I ended up not planning anything at all – and I thanked myself for it.

I can recommend three things if you, like us, want to avoid the tourist spots when they're at their worst:

1. Visit Charles bridge, the town square and the Astronomical clock before 7AM, the earlier the better. Believe me, you will be rewarded by peace and quiet since the other tourists have likely just walked down to their buffet breakfasts. Two hours later, it will be hard to find a free square meter in those places. If you're not careful, perhaps you'll even have a hard time finding your wallet in all the commotion.

Charles Bridge at 6:15AM. Aside from ourselves, there were two other tourists. We saw a fisherman in the river, and the air was crisp!

A bonus for getting up early is seeing "real" people on their way to work. Most are catching trams and metros. The locals in the center are getting ready for the awakening of tourist life: trash are collected, windows are washed, vegetables are delivered. Even ATM machines are being polished for the tourists' arrival. It would be sad to miss this part of the tourism business. By the time people come out of their hotels and take pictures of the beautiful city ("It's so clean!"), everything would have been, well, photogenic.

2. Eat where the locals eat. It's delicious and cheap. We bought our pastry snacks at the metro stations and ate them on the go or in parks. We also bought our cold drinks in supermarkets, since cafés only seem to be the precinct of serious tourists and are on the pricey side.

For lunch, we walked away from the center for a good five minutes, and explored the side streets. For that walk, we were rewarded with reasonable lunch prices. The lunch menus might only be in Czech, but the food is good – locals eat there! The staff translated the menu for us, or in other cases we ordered Central European classics like schnitzel (they're not pre-fab, hooray!) or goulash. The staff are usually more direct in the smaller restaurants – they were there to serve us food, but there wasn't as many pleasantries as in the center, where part of their work will be to make us tourists feel noticed.

3. Bring comfortable shoes and walk. For two days, we took the very extensive tram-and-metro network to explore the city outskirts, which was also a joy, but for the rest of the days, and to get to the hidden and interesting places, we walked like pilgrims around the whole city, until our maps ended. So, you need a good pair of shoes and a positive attitude towards walking. Besides, it's to burn all that pork fat and beer.

Prague has many beautiful parks littered just around the city center, most are located on top of a hill and no two parks look the same. In bigger parks, there are kiosks where we could buy Czech beer in plastic mugs and sit where the locals hang out for an after-work drink. In smaller parks, there was a lot of "normal" city life to observe: retirees reading in the sun, ladies walking dogs (I've never seen happier dogs. They really benefit from the parks), joggers, and whole families on inlines.

In the afternoon, we walked up Letná Park which overlooks the bridges, including Charles Bridge, which is now full of people.

The bonus of going around aside from avoiding the tourist places at their busiest? Toilets are usually paid in the city center and in all metro stations, but a piss in a shopping mall outside of the center doesn't cost a thing. Besides, there's just another life outside the center, even in the side streets. It's a life that seems genuine, laid back and pretty without being hard-sell or being too loaded with tourist expectations.

I would do this trip all over again – we're even thinking of a Czech phrase book for the next time! After all, in a city like Prague, there's so much more to explore if you look at the map rather than the guide book, so I'm glad I didn't plan the vacation all too well.

Look, a "trainbow"!
This was taken in one of the smaller parks outside the center. Most parks had a view of the city below. This view was particularly breathtaking, almost like being in one of those sci-fi movies with trains moving vertically!

I've posted our pictures at Multiply: everything from tram and metro- pictures, to plates of food, from our groceries to beautiful Prague cityscapes, and yes, the usual touristy posing. We can't help being tourists after all. We are tourists. The point is though, even if you do end up following my advice to avoid the crowd, make the experience yours. You will feel so much more fulfilled if you're not only at the spot where everybody else already is.

Whee! Please, let's go here again!

Food and drink is for the next post. I just have to say: in Prague, beer is cheaper than water, cola, or juice. So expect a lot of pictures with beer.