Well, since my picture snafu likely dissuaded a lot of people from reading my Prague blog post, I thought I would give a general summary of our long weekend there. Here we go:
-Prague is as gorgeous as everyone says. The architecture is just stunning.
-We ate lots of great food, most of it Czech, none of it vegetables. Just kidding. Kind of. Czech cuisine, like Slovak, is very heavy and rich. Extremely meat-and-carb heavy. We ate in several Czech restaurants, one Irish pub, and a little market of wooden huts / food stalls. We had breakfast in our apartment every morning and managed to find ourselves in a grocery store nearly every day.
-We had most of our fun just roaming around, enjoying the sights and exploring the city. We did hit about one touristy attraction each day -- The Prague Castle Complex, the Town Belfrey, Petrin Tower, and a Communist Museum.
-Speaking of tourists, Prague is crowded. Even during the weekdays in February, it was crowded with tourists. It is also just so much bigger than Bratislava! The hustle and bustle was fun for several days, but we were eager to get back to the slower pace and and smaller feel of Bratislava.
-The lack of Slovak friendliness in public situations seems to have extended to the Czech Republic as well. I certainly don't mean to imply that Slovak (or Czech!) people are unkind or mean. We have definitely not found that to be the case. But there are absolutely widespread cultural differences that we have noticed. Slovak people seem to be both more reserved and also more direct than Americans. Smiling in greeting or just exchanging friendly pleasantries with a stranger, cashier, restaurant server, etc does not seem to be common.* At all. On the whole, people do not hesitate to show their frustration with you and do not make attempts to be friendly for the sake of being friendly. As an adult, I don't think I've ever had someone sincerely roll their eyes at me with disdain.....until we got here! At this point, I've lost count of how many times adults have rolled their eyes at us! For the most minor things! In Prague, we were at a massive tourist attraction (Petrin Tower) and tickets were cash only. We handed the cashier our cash and apparently she was displeased with the denomination we gave her (I swear, it's not like we gave her a $50 for a $2 ticket - it was very reasonable). She wanted coins instead and gave us a sigh, an eye roll, AND hurled our change at us!!! The day before that we got an eye roll and a huff from a server in a restaurant....we had just sat down in a cafe and wanted to order coffees and cake for the kids (like every single other person sitting in this cafe at 3:30 pm), but the man was irritated that we weren't going to order lunch. That time we just got up and left and got the kids amazing gelato elsewhere. Anyway, it's just been a funny thing that I've been meaning to mention. All we can do is laugh. It's particularly funny because we try very hard to be friendly, polite, attempt to speak Slovak, etc. It's not like we are bursting into places screaming and being obnoxious Americans!
Here are a few pictures!
Today, we all got back into our "normal" routine -- girls and I doing school work in the morning while Doug went off to work for a few hours. And then I actually went for a slow 2 mile jog somewhat spontaneously before lunch! I love to exercise, but have taken a multi-year break from running. When I was running regularly, something was always hurting or bothering me. After various running-related injuries, I scrapped it altogether to focus my energy on other forms of exercise that I actually enjoyed more AND made my body feel good as opposed to terrible. I'm not really sure what prompted it, but instead of one of my usual go-to workouts, I decided to trot along the Danube today instead! It was lovely.
After lunch we met our friends for some fun at the park and then, the requisite grocery store trip. We popped into the fancy specialty grocery store first to buy this amazing deliciousness:
Yes, that is all dark chocolate inside that pastry.
*Disclaimer to say that when you actually make someone's acquaintance and are interacting with them in a purposeful way, people in Slovakia are kind, helpful, and lovely.
-Prague is as gorgeous as everyone says. The architecture is just stunning.
-We ate lots of great food, most of it Czech, none of it vegetables. Just kidding. Kind of. Czech cuisine, like Slovak, is very heavy and rich. Extremely meat-and-carb heavy. We ate in several Czech restaurants, one Irish pub, and a little market of wooden huts / food stalls. We had breakfast in our apartment every morning and managed to find ourselves in a grocery store nearly every day.
-We had most of our fun just roaming around, enjoying the sights and exploring the city. We did hit about one touristy attraction each day -- The Prague Castle Complex, the Town Belfrey, Petrin Tower, and a Communist Museum.
-Speaking of tourists, Prague is crowded. Even during the weekdays in February, it was crowded with tourists. It is also just so much bigger than Bratislava! The hustle and bustle was fun for several days, but we were eager to get back to the slower pace and and smaller feel of Bratislava.
-The lack of Slovak friendliness in public situations seems to have extended to the Czech Republic as well. I certainly don't mean to imply that Slovak (or Czech!) people are unkind or mean. We have definitely not found that to be the case. But there are absolutely widespread cultural differences that we have noticed. Slovak people seem to be both more reserved and also more direct than Americans. Smiling in greeting or just exchanging friendly pleasantries with a stranger, cashier, restaurant server, etc does not seem to be common.* At all. On the whole, people do not hesitate to show their frustration with you and do not make attempts to be friendly for the sake of being friendly. As an adult, I don't think I've ever had someone sincerely roll their eyes at me with disdain.....until we got here! At this point, I've lost count of how many times adults have rolled their eyes at us! For the most minor things! In Prague, we were at a massive tourist attraction (Petrin Tower) and tickets were cash only. We handed the cashier our cash and apparently she was displeased with the denomination we gave her (I swear, it's not like we gave her a $50 for a $2 ticket - it was very reasonable). She wanted coins instead and gave us a sigh, an eye roll, AND hurled our change at us!!! The day before that we got an eye roll and a huff from a server in a restaurant....we had just sat down in a cafe and wanted to order coffees and cake for the kids (like every single other person sitting in this cafe at 3:30 pm), but the man was irritated that we weren't going to order lunch. That time we just got up and left and got the kids amazing gelato elsewhere. Anyway, it's just been a funny thing that I've been meaning to mention. All we can do is laugh. It's particularly funny because we try very hard to be friendly, polite, attempt to speak Slovak, etc. It's not like we are bursting into places screaming and being obnoxious Americans!
Here are a few pictures!
Today, we all got back into our "normal" routine -- girls and I doing school work in the morning while Doug went off to work for a few hours. And then I actually went for a slow 2 mile jog somewhat spontaneously before lunch! I love to exercise, but have taken a multi-year break from running. When I was running regularly, something was always hurting or bothering me. After various running-related injuries, I scrapped it altogether to focus my energy on other forms of exercise that I actually enjoyed more AND made my body feel good as opposed to terrible. I'm not really sure what prompted it, but instead of one of my usual go-to workouts, I decided to trot along the Danube today instead! It was lovely.
After lunch we met our friends for some fun at the park and then, the requisite grocery store trip. We popped into the fancy specialty grocery store first to buy this amazing deliciousness:
*Disclaimer to say that when you actually make someone's acquaintance and are interacting with them in a purposeful way, people in Slovakia are kind, helpful, and lovely.
hahaha - I wrote a post last night and deleted it since it involved Joe getting yelled at to the point of tears in Slovak and I knew everyone at home would then be worrying. I love how you describe the lack of friendliness. I don't know if you noticed on your run that you never make eye contact or give the little runners wave. No. Way.
ReplyDeleteI have optimistically (perhaps naively?) ventured a few smiles when running...they have been met with mixed reviews. ;)
DeleteI go out of my way (as in slow down or speed up) to give everyone the runners wave. Sometimes they look at me like I'm insane.
Delete