What made you smile today?

We received a newsletter from an NGO. It was about gender issues and the like. In Bulgaria. About sex matters, really. In Bulgaria.

They picked a rather awkward, or comical, name for their newsletter ... I'm sure the double meaning was not intended ...



Whoa yeah, baby! Nobody might care about it here, dry spell an' all I know - but YOUR sex MATTERS in BULGARIA!

Someone in Plovdiv is thinking of your punani ... today

Ok, now I'm smiling too. Thanks nimh.

At least it matters somewhere!

There's this little kid who's taken by his mom to the coffeeshop I go to in the mornings, he's close to 3 I think ... I must have mentioned him before, he's the cutest. Very sweet, bit shy, I make faces at him he smiles.

Anyway, this morning I came in and they were standing there with Zs who runs the place, and they turned around, and went: "there he is!". Kid had been asking where I was apparently, cause normally we're in around the same time ... isnt that cute?

Also, last night I made a joke to a friend that was so funny, apparently, that she SMSd a big smiley back and "I adore you!" She doesnt speak too well English, mind you (hence it coming out too strong) - but still, now those are SMSs that're always nice to get ;-).

16.02.06

This morning, the weather was sleet; nasty, cold snowlike rain. Yuck. But that actually reminded me how little rain there ever is, here.

It gets real cold, like last night when pure, dry powdersugar snow came down and coated cars and streets with a neat blanket (and on the sidewalks of Andrassy Boulevard, you could slide, with a little step, for up to two, two and a half meters! Which everyone (mostly young people still out on the street) promptly did...) --

Yes, it gets cold (nothing as imposing as the St Stephens Cathedral in the snow, hazy and very distant through the weather, the snow hanging curtains for it, snowflakes lighting up as they pass the streetlights); and in summer, it gets real hot. But rarely that dreary, annoying cold rain thats bound to always slap you in the face as you bicycle to school or work in Holland, always with the wind against no matter which directin you go.

<thankful> ;-)

17.02.06

- Hungarians are delightful. <grins> It's like a warm bath, after Holland, I tell you. Take this one: I went into the soap shop, handed over my reduction card, the girl (taking over from the other girl) says, your name is <my name>? Are you Dutch? I say yes, typically Dutch name, although in Estonian, I gather, it means "cheese". Oh, she smiles apologetically, in Hungarian it means nothing .. except, she smiles in afterthought, "nice guy". She even actually winked, LOL! Ha ha. Girls must be bored sick, only ever women coming into their shop ... <giggles>

- Also, seeing my friend Susannah, who is also extremely kind, especially lately (since I backed off some, duh), ebulliently glad to see me, touching my hand randomly, telling me to call her as soon as I'm back in town again, etc; that's flattering. Seriously tho, it's also great to have fun, charming talks in a cafe like that with a friend who's really glad to know you - I've been lucky. Wonder if it had also worked if I'd gone to Prague (I'm guessing yes), Paris (I'm guessing no), or Florence (no idea)...

18.02.06

(Dont really know if this belongs in WMYST, it's more kind of a quiet happiness than an extrovert smile...)


So, I dont know what it was, perhaps it was the tape that the taxi driver put on as soon as we set off from my apartment to the airport, a kind of electro-pop halfway between elegant trip-hop and trashy Europop, it went perfectly with sweeping down the road (little traffic on a Saturday), not exactly through the fancy downtown part of town mind you. Images.

A tourist girl being pointed the way to the synagogue (down the other way). The crumbling apartment block down my street, the open spaces where one or the other collapsed or was torn down, reinvented as parking place (man in cabin by the self-made entrance all day in the cold). In fading, peeling paint a sign for "gentlemen's hairdresser" on the wall, on the side of the shop that in fact now is one of those random, tiny second-hand/"antique" shops crammed full with old toys, ad signs, an old pram (there were a couple of those, still, in the Utrecht neighbourhood I used to live in, like ten-fifteen years ago). The busy intersection with the 70s supermarket, election billboards ("Yes, We had it done"), round the corner down the busy boulevard, fin-de-siecle apartments three four floors up in shades of grey, ochre, yellow, brown. People strolling, others hurrying. I am filled with a sense of wonder, at my own feeling at seeing all this slide by mostly, namely utter contentment, a kind of relieved bliss. Almost saying: "I'm home, finally", corrected to, at least: "I am never gonna go back to Holland".

Crossing through Jozsefvaros, man at intersection hawking a homeless people's newspapers, yelling at the two or three cars there, left down the endless Ulloi avenue, the multicolored rooftiles of the Museum of Applied Arts. Basement beerpubs (Söröző's) and winepubs (Borozos), a ten-year old kid ambling down the street by himself, gesturing or perhaps playing some game. The worked-open inside of a courtyard, where one half of the building was torn down and you now look at the inside of the beehive, pretty as always the gallery on each floor, some pastel colour, wrought iron.

The very fifties single, grey tower block with on the ground floor the Torony (Tower) Etterem-Esszpreszo, an aquarium of a government ministry canteen type of place, the big sign on it a throwback to seventies fonts, totally Moerwijk or Vredenrust in the Hague, when I was a kid. The Ferencvaros soccer stadium, industrial areas with sullen railway tracks, single-story factory halls where you cant possibly tell whether they're still in operation or not, a decrepit set of industrial-age warehouses with a hopeful "For Sale" sign on them, a patch of woods between two railway lines, all the bare, besnowed trees leaning one way. A kind of shed in the middle of it, out back of a warehouse, with laundry hanging out (somebody lives there?). More election billboards along the highway, plenty, so this is where they all are. A pretty-enough looking hotel by the side of an overpass, middle of nowhere.

The melancholic wall of habsburg-yellow apartment blocks interspersed with grey high-rises make way for individual houses, each with a little garden, table outside where in summer they'll have lunch, the houses flat-roofed, peak-roofed, crown-roofed; as if you're in a village, snow. Fields. Every ten minutes the taxi-driver slyly taps the volume button one small notch up. Waiting in line at the airport buffet, a business traveller empties two small souvenir bottles of liquor into his soda.

Nimh--

You write so well. English is what? Your second? Third? language?

Kickycan's rap made me laugh so hard I couldn't breathe! LOL

Seeing some of my friends here on A2K made me smile today :-D

Hey, Montana! How's things in NB?

Hiya George :-D

Things be okie dokie in my neck of the woods.

How are things over there in Mass?

Noddy, thank you ... it's my second language, admittedly, started learning it in high school (kids now start when they're nine or ten or something!)


18.02.06

I admit it tho - it's easy to reconfirm when there again - Prague is much cuter. Cutesier. More romantic, too, with all its winding alleyways and leaning buildings and little arches and dreamily shaped churchtowers and all those little golden balls on top of the church, the bridge, the other side of the bridge, little golden balls everywhere (that was one of my strongest impressions when I was here the first time, at 14).

The river here (in Prague), in any case, I do prefer. The Danube is broad, wide, deep, black (or grey, in summer), cold-looking. Intimidating. Truly separating two towns (as it did when Buda and Pest were still separate cities, and there were no bridges). It is, no offence, a river to commit suicide in (an association that comes pretty easily once you've heard all the various suicide-stories that seem to come with Budapest/Hungary).

Its hard to see anyone drown himself in the Vltava. Its a sweet river, with small, leafy islands to wander on, a sloping side on the Mala Strana side (instead of the bouldery Danube shore underneath the severe separator of a highway right along the river edge); its got *swans*, for god's sake, majestic formations of swans. And seagulls, oddly enough, or I could swear they were, all lined up on the perches of the bridge pillars in the night, screeching. Now there's something I'd never guessed I would miss about Holland: seagulls*. The Vltava connects the two shores in mutual majestic views, it doesnt separate. Its a romantic river.

And what a life, if you think about it. I walk out of my hotel, right onto the Charles Bridge. It's like 30 meter down a cobbled street off the Mala Strana side of the bridge. I'm here to attend a launch on Monday. Not that I need to do anything there; I was just curious, and I'm supposed to attend a few of these things. But really I'm also here to meet my old friend J., whom I havent seen in a few years, so I'm lucky at the sponsored chance to do so. And I havent been in this city for a while (I tried to count, I think Ive been here ten times in the last twenty years, but the last time was four years ago or so..). These are the good years, I suppose. Though Prague is a romantic enough city to get to really miss the girl you love, and want to call her (wisely, I didnt).

It's frightening, how much you forget, or rather, how much you discover you'd forgotten the moment that, being back in a place, you remember again.

Remembering walking around Prague, late in the evening, looking for a place to eat. Couldnt find what we were looking for, or something. We walk by an Italian restaurant, just off the Old Town Square in fact; she wants to go in, I hem and haw because I'm afraid it's a tourist trap. She wins. We go in and the food is delicious, the place is pretty, we're the last ones in.

I remembered as soon as I came back. Though first I thought it was just off the Charles Bridge, I changed course fast enough and found it back easily. The food again is great, the place still dreamy-looking.

But I dont remember with whom I was. I think Anastasia, four years ago, not M. - nine years ago.

(That's Ristorante Giovanni on Kozna street, for you; there's a happy underground/studenty-looking bar, with drum'n'bass playing people talking loud over the music in groups at tables, in that alley too).

I suddenly remember inidividual other cafes too, from when I WAS with M., or before even, with E. Remember the record stores I trekked to, collecting Czech music (one up in Holesovice). Remember looking in awe, photographing, time and again the always-beautiful light on the houses by the river, Old Town side south of the Charles Bridge (even prettier south of the National Theatre). Remember two - three - expos I went to with E.; the teahouse that I loved on the street leading up to the Hrad** - in '95, '96.

Remember, even, extremely vividly (the colours, the smell) the working man's pub near by where my gf and I were illegally camping in a park, out west half an hour by tram, by where the highrises start. The overalled men, the tables, some sports prizes or something on a cupboard (perhaps homing pigeon prizes?); the brown bread with cheese we got when (with hands & feet) we asked for for food. That was 1991. Remember, even, the multiple showers in our "Sport Hotel" and the intimidatingly grey towerblocks around, out south in Chodov - in 1989. And of course the huge signs, dolls I think, hanging outside the Art Academy, a communist leader with bloodied hands, and yes, all that (it was December 1989); banners and candles on the Old Town Square, small Czech flags in every window, people who talked to us, TVs hung outside on the streets showing the footage of 17 November over and again, the sea of candles and candlewax outside the Romanian embassy - but all that I'd remembered anyway.

But the reason I started writing all this is how I ambled up from the National Theatre, going up one sidestreet down another alley in a zigzag, until I saw & looked into this small, cosy, tucked away pub: wooden chairs wooden tables, a 1970s clock says it's half past midnight, "plants" cut out in green paper in the alcoves, raw Czech singer on the disk, beer-song accordeon (like a female Jim "Čert" Horacek***). Just seven persons in, a bearded, bespectacled tormented-writer type hunches over a third glass of wine but later gets the sweetest smile and a kiss from the grounded, pretty bargirl, his girlfriend, when he shows her something he wrote or made. I sit down and I remember: I've been here, once. I was going around town, and I'd seen this couple somewhere, cool, cute people. And then I kept coming across them, this was the 3rd or 4th place, I think. I took it as a sign that I was finding the right places. No idea when that was...

(The place is called "Kunirna" and it's on Anenska 11, right off the main tourist throughway actually, it turned out to be just one street off from it. But there were no foreigners; it's odd how the currents separate. Salad bar in the daytime.)



* My friend told me the day after they weren't seagulls but another kind of gulls; and they are not native. They come in and the problem is they eat all the Vltava fish, by the tons! So now, apparently, the authorities ship in containerloads of fish to the Vltava. Why not let 'em die if there's not enough food?, I ask, but it seems that, you see, the native riverbirds aren't getting enough food now either, and they need to be saved. Right. Own birds first. See, the immigration debate is everywhere..

** The teahouse still exists as well: called U Zeleznohe Čaje, on Nerudova. Still a very elegant yet cosy place, just (of course, in that location) expensive (Eu 5 for a small pot of tea and a piece of cake.)

***Jim "Čert" Horaček is a brilliant, wild singer/accordeonist, his CD - and specifically, the song "Havran" - is one of my favourites. He sounds like a crow or a raven, looks (at least, on my CD cover) bewildered with a huge beard, scruffy features - prototype 70s cult dissident figure, kinda. But my friend told me, Sunday, that it was revealed just weeks ago that he'd been an informer for the secret police...

19/20.02.06

Ohh! Sunday and life is good ... open the hotel room curtains to sun and the cobbled street below, go out the front door right onto the Charles Bridge, the sun is out! and it's actually kinda warm, or very pleasant at least, I have to take my coat off, everyone's in a good mood, the view is nice, it's spring! The first spring day of the year, and it's only February ... (at night, there's still small ice floas floating down the river on one shore...)

Then, after going to that teahouse where I got really upbeat cause of the cute children at the next table and hearing Cornershop's Brimful of Ashes ("brimful of ashes / on a 45 / (repeat) / everyone needs a bosom for a pillow, everyone needs a bosom" ;-)), I got to see my old friend J. again, spent the afternoon and evening with her in a relaxed cafe, chatting and catching up, lounging ... just very nice.

Monday was a bit so-so, tho - well, most of Monday anyway. I was so tired for some reason. But when I got home in the evening I was still to meet Esther after I arrived - and that was very nice.

Everyone's so nice ... well, the two or three people I've gotten to know well are so delightfully nice! And ... it's like, after NYE I just kinda totally relaxed, stopped worrying about how things were going or whether something might be wrong, or whatever ... and since then, they're a lot nicer still <grins>. Feel like I can't do wrong, or something.

We went to my new favourite cafe which is the cutest, laid-backest of cosy cafes, a basement pub basically, but with lots of comfy chairs, and bookshelves (did I write about this already?) with real books that include some of the oddest, funniest **** from the fifties or something, and actually a pick-up that turned out to still work, got headphones attached so you can let your friend listen to that record you were just talking about that they surprisingly had there ...

Also, little baby doggie (4 months) was there again as well, rolling over on the floor when you scratch (?) him (her?) behind the ears.

Today I had to drive 2 hours to get to a master's program orientation (and 2 hours back) after work! I was anxious about it, I dreaded the drive, but I ended up having fun!

Wonderful, k!
So all is looking good? (the course, the fellow students, the lecturers, etc.)

Yay littlek!

Nimh, very evocative. I spent time in Prague (just once, about this same time of year, too), and reading that resulted in images from my time there popping up all over the place.

(Johnboy invokes the 24 hour rule. "Any topic left dormant for 24 hours is fair game for a change in direction." It is in the A2K rulebook. Trust me.)
So I was in the Cincinnati airport on my way back from Oregon. Two hours to kill before the last leg home to Cville. I had a beer in a bar, talking with two military-service men, one of whom was probably too young to drink legally. The bartender asked him if he was 21 and the kid said "yes, sir!" and that was the end of that.
Across the tile from me was an Asian looking woman, enjoying a sandwich and a glass of wine. We got into a conversation, which was cool.
I spent the rest of the time walking. I probably walked two miles. I can't sit still for too long.
But I did get to the waiting area inside the gate. I heard the airline folks announce that the flights from Cincy to Chicago, and the one from Cincy to Richmond, were over-booked. The deal they were offering was over-night lodging, supper and breakfast, and $400 in Delta tickets.
"Damn." thought I, "I would go for that."
So my flight was announced and it too was overbooked by two seats. I wandered up to the counter only to be told that I was the sixth volunteer.

I was preparing the bank deposit and noticed the imprinted info in the upper left corner of a check:
Krista (last name) -Movement Educator
Kevin (different last name) - Author

What do yall or what would you like to have on your checks to demonstrate that you are...(what)?

dragoon