Stuart Homfray The Weblog

Another rather belated post…

So much for keeping the blog updated! We’ve had a rather hectic time since my last post - we spent a couple of days near Český Těšín… (Třinec, actually, just a little to the south, but that’s not important right now :-))

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(If you’re interested, there’s a couple of pictures of us having fun, on Šárka’s blog - Sophie, the baby, is the child of one of Šárka’s cousins.)

The reason that I mention Český Těšín, is that it’s a town with two halves - one Polish and one Czech. There’s a little more on this at Wikipedia.

Other than that, Šárka started in her new job, and I got myself a job, with Web Design Factory here in Prague. I start tomorrow and I’m really, really looking forward to getting started in full-time employment once again!

Crochet Away!

Šárka has just completed a couple of pieces of crochet for my mom - the second is wonderful, but just see the intricate work on the first! Take a look, and be as impressed as me!

Visiting a Couple of Exhibitions

Last Sunday (8th July), Šárka and I visited a couple of nice exhibitions. The first was the Dalí Exhibition (not much info on this page, aside from a photograph of the man himself, prices, location and opening times), which contained a number of fascinating pieces, my particular favourite being ‘Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea Which at Twenty Meters Becomes the Portrait of Abraham Lincoln‘ (or ‘Pixellated President’ as I like to remember it). If you get the chance, it’s well worth taking a look.

The second exhibition (and it’s just upstairs from Dalí’s) features the Czech artist Alphonse Mucha’s work. If you don’t know him, there’s every chance that you may have seen some of his work in late 19th/early 20th century Art Nouveau art, in particular, posters featuring women in flowing dresses surrounded by flowers and trees. It’s interesting to note that his work also appears on old Czechoslovakian bank notes, postage stamps and many other documents just after World War I. This is wonderful stuff, and you can see it’s influence crop up in advertising through the 20th century. Again, this exhibition is definitely worth a visit.

After taking a look at these, we wandered past the famous Astronomical Clock (or ‘Orloj’) to a free sports photography exhibition: Sport Foto 2007. This is a collection of pictures from some of the Czech photography greats through the years - it’s not HUGE, but it’s nice to look around (and is free! :-))

Finally, before lunch, we decided to do the tourist-y thing, and climbed to the top of the Old Town Hall Tower. You get a wonderful view of the Old Town Square and the Old Town itself, and Šárka took a number of pictures (a couple of which can be seen on her Výstavy blog entry, but we may put the others online at some point).

Transport, and going to Chomutov

One of the major differences between Prague and Wolverhampton (and I do understand that it is a little unfair to compare a capital city with a smaller city from another country) is the transport system. Whereas Wolverhampton’s can be patchy and inefficient, Prague’s is really rather well-organised, with services easily accessible whereever you are. This stems from the fact that when planning a new set of apartments or housing estate, the officials tend to think how best to service the citizens themselves, rather than outsourcing everything to smaller companies that wish to make a profit.

Anyway, the thing that brought this issue to mind (not that it’s not brought to mind daily) was visiting Šárka’s grandparents in the town of Chomutov, in the north of the Czech Republic, near the German border. It takes about two hours, more or less, from where we are in Prague (Černý Most), and everything went exceptionally smoothly: leave the flat and walk outside to the bus-stop, catch bus to metro station, catch metro to the main bus station (Florenc), then catch bus to Chomutov: easy, smooth and without any problems. As you can see, you are reliant on three modes of transport being on time. On many occasions, back in Wolverhampton, you may find that the first mode (bus from near your house) can fail: either you need to take a 10 minute walk to the bus-stop itself, and/or that bus may be late, early, or it may not even turn up at all (slightly problematic in a situation like this).

Chomutov itself is a fairly non-descript town, it must be said, but there is a lot of wonderful countryside to pass through before you get there, and there looks like there may be some nice hillwalking (but we did not have time to sample it as we were only there for a few hours). The grandparents were very nice folks indeed (although I did not understand 99.5% of the conversation :-)), showed us some great pics and gave us a hell of a lot of traditional Czech food (I can usually put away a fair bit of food, but even I was struggling at the end!!) Šárka’s gran gave me a lovely hand-made ‘gel candle‘, and a small, round vase that I liked the look of (although I admit that I felt as though I had almost ‘pressed’ her into giving it to me when I highlighted it as something that I liked - I was assured that she did not)

All in all, it was a lovely day out - I enjoyed meeting the grandparents, and we enjoyed our journey back (although someone fell asleep on the way home!!!

Prague calling…

As I will be moving soon to the wonderful city of Prague (from the currently rather wet city of Wolverhampton), I thought that it might be time to try and start posting on here again. Living in Prague will be quite a challenge, language-wise, but I will be starting out on some Czech lessons soon, and that, along with the fact that a) my beautiful girlfriend Šárka is Czech and b) many people here speak at least some English, will see me through.

Anyway, I’m over in Prague right now with my better half taking a bit of a break from work and checking out apartments (and, if you’re interested, you can see a picture of us, with Šárka’s brother and parents, taken after her graduation ceremony (she’s the cute one in the middle, I’m the guy almost standing to attention next to her, second from the left) - it was a wonderful day!