London is on - Just different dates.
Well, we finally coordinated everything. The airline has us reserved and we’ll go down tomorrow to pay and pickup the tickets. The hotel had vacancies. I’ve faxed everything they requested a couple of hours ago. We’ll confirm they got it all in a few days.
The kennel was kinda booked for our original dates so I take back all my evil thoughts from the other day. During the week isn’t the problem, it is on the weekends that they were booked. There was no snow for skiing in December and January so everyone is going in February. The girl who spoke English had quit. No doubt for a better paying job. Her English was quite good. Apparently it was unexpected. The standard here is to give two months notice. However, that is no excuse for their business manners to both Hanka and me. Hanka got the same treatment from the guy when she called on Friday. After Hanka had talked to him she thought maybe because it was Friday and he didn’t want to deal with it that he just told her they were booked.
So - we will be off line from February 18th thru February 24th as we will be in LONDON. Finally, we can start traveling.
Since we are always going to plan at least four weeks in advance we have started on our next trip. The end of March we’ll be in Budapest. We had almost gone there a couple of years ago. The first plan was to go to Vienna and Budapest, but there was so much that we wanted to see in Vienna that we chose to just see Vienna on that trip. April we are tossing around ideas. I would still like to go to Lisbon, Portugal. Jack is thinking Munich or Berlin.
I have a catalogue from one agency - Egypt, Israel, Turkey, Cuba, and an island off Algeria. We have no plans to even consider any of these. Morocco sounded interesting but Jack nixed that idea. Croatia has a beautiful coast along the Mediterranean with huge hotel and resort complexes along the coast. Still it doesn’t sound appealing either no matter how much they reassure me that the coast hasn’t seen fighting.
To fill in the days in between, I have started looking into day trips to different cities in Czech Rep. We can catch a bus, see whatever it is we want to see, and then take the bus back all in a six hour maximum time frame. Just to go up to the foot hills would be nice. It will take some advance research as many tourist sites in the not so touristy areas are only open April - October.
Australian Open
The Czech, Petr Korda (it is spelled Petr, not Peter), won. They showed it live starting at 5am here. We watched the semi finals, or at least the last couple of sets. We didn’t get up to watch the finals-too early. Everyone is all excited, naturally.
Shuttle
We saw the shuttle docking with the Russians and the landing back on Earth.
Been off the farm too long
According to Mike and Hanka the use of white wash on the walls is common here. For anyone who hasn’t come in contract with white washed walls it leaves a powder. So when you bump up against it you have to brush off the white powder. We’ve adjusted to that. Problem came when I had to clean something that splashed on the wall. Now I know Kirk has this silly grin on his face already! Water in contact with white wash equals a gooey mess. Luckily, it wasn’t that big of an area, but what started out as a small spot gradually got some what bigger. Now there is a spot the size of a half dollar that is completely down to the paper of the dry wall. But we have a bigger problem coming up someday. Both Jack and I said last week we need to clean where the dog rubs and sleeps against the wall. I’m glad we didn’t attempt it, but how will we clean it???
Jack walks dog
I caught a cold, so Jack volunteered to walk the dog this morning. He got is butt chewed from a home owner.
One block south of us is a garden area. Because so many people live in apartments with little or no grassy area, it’s very common throughout Europe for them to have a small plot in a garden. This particular garden area is close to four or five blocks long and two or three blocks wide. There are little plots divided out for people to have their gardens. Some people have even erected little storage sheds. How a person acquires this little plot of land is unknown to us. We’ll have to ask Hanka someday. The length of this garden area has no houses on it. There are houses across the street. There is grass between the street and the fence surrounding the garden area; therefore it makes for good dog walking. Not just ours, but a lot of dogs judging by the paw prints in the snow and droppings. It appears one homeowner who occupies a home across the street must also take care of the grass between the street and the garden area that. We surmised this because it is the same width of the lawn of his house and the height of grass along both are of equal height.
Being a typical dog the motion of walking makes him, shall we say, take a dump. Jack happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and with no plastic bag along. The guy who lives in the house mentioned above was leaving the house when Shep decides now was the time to squat. The guy was not happy and started to yell at Jack. Jack thought if he said he didn’t understand and said “English” it would just make the guy madder to know not only was this dog messing his claimed area, it is the dog of some #@*% foreigner. Instead he kept walking. The guy probably was telling Jack to pick the stuff up and Jack was ignoring him. Along this same street are two huge dogs. I’ve seen other messes bigger than what Shep makes in this same area that would match to those two dogs. The guy may have thought all those messes were Shep’s, or pissed that yet another dog messed on his claimed area. I think we will just avoid that walking route for awhile.
February 6, 1998
My cold really did get me down this time. I always thought the one I caught in early December never really came through as a cold, that it was the start of one and was just hiding in the back ground to really whap me. And whap me it did. I’m down to just blowing my nose a lot. We didn’t venture out at all until yesterday to pick up our airline tickets. I got the confirmation from the hotel. Now I’ll double check with the kennel the early part of next week. I’m leaving nothing to chance here.
We also found a web site for Budapest accommodations and have narrowed it down to three hotels. I’m waiting to hear back from the hotel website operators as to the walking distance to public transportation. The closest will be the one we ultimately us. We’ll go by train to Budapest.
Sounds like California and the south east have gotten hit with a lot of winter weather. Of course, what we have read always says El Nino effect. Euro news and weather here is called “changing weather patterns”. I’m glad we are not there to hear the endless use of the phrase El Nino.
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