February 8, 1998

Olympics-Nagano Japan

We got to see the opening ceremonies for the Olympics.  The live coverage came on at 2 or 3am.  We figured all we would see of it would be some clips on the evening news.  Saturday at 5pm they replayed the ceremonies.  I’m not sure if what we saw was complete coverage, but they showed about two hours of it.  It appeared some stuff may have been cut or edited.  A couple of times there were a whole bunch of people on the field that weren’t there seconds ago.  Of course it was in Czech so any explanations behind the meaning of the traditions were useless to us. 

For instance, what was the meaning behind the four huge poles or posts that one end was raised with ropes to bring them up on end and had guys hanging on to the top of the post with ropes around the post?  The guys may have done some sort of daring return to the ground, but we didn’t see it.  This was one of those times that there were four guys at the top of each post and then suddenly there were only one or two.  We only saw two guys slide down the ropes.  Not understanding the speeches was no big deal.  It gave me a chance to get dinner started.

 Our one thought was the sumo guys who walked with the child in front of each country’s athletes.  Was there that many sumo guys?  Or did they walk around more than once with a different country delegation?  If it was more than once, did they consider cardiac arrest?  For some of them it was probably the most exercise they had had in a long time. 

Who carried the Olympic torch into the stadium?  At the bottom of the TV screen in English it showed who the girl was who carried it up the steps and who the girl was that actually lit the big official torch, but we don’t know who the guy was that obviously was missing an arm and a leg. 

From what Mike said they are televising quite a bit of the Olympics.  It’s a little too early to take the dog for his walk so we are watching speed skating and one-man luge coverage right now.  Everything is in English that is printed on the screen so we know what country each person is from and the time comparisons.  The commentator is Czech, but we can get the drift of what is going on.

Soldiers

We went to the downtown post office yesterday.  The one near us is closed on Saturdays.  As we passed a parking lot opposite of the castle we noticed soldiers loading onto six or eight buses.  Each guy was carrying a gun onto the bus.  Here’s hoping they have a really good safety feature and that the safety is on.  That was a lot of soldiers and guns in a confined place. 

Our first thought was something is developing fast in Iran.  We watched the evening news, but there was nothing on about any military call up.  So it must have been some sort of maneuver.  It was a strange feeling none the less to see all this military personnel and not understand what it is about.  In a way, we got to experience life under communism.  Under communism the public would never be informed what is going on.  We had no way of knowing.  Now with TV coverage, if it was important we know, it would have been on the evening news. 

Which brings to mind another incident that gave us an eerie feeling; it was a couple of weeks ago while walking the dog.  The entire length of the street we are on is on an incline.  Not real severe, just a gradual two long block incline.  We were coming back from the walk going uphill.  For a couple of seconds we heard the loud roar of a truck engine and then it appeared coming up over the top of the hill.  It was a huge old army truck right out of the 1940’s and still in that awful green color.  It made my heart stop for a split second.  Jack’s only reply was a low voiced “wow”.  Again, you could imagine you are right there in the 1940’s with the army truck roaring down the village streets, just like an old movie.  The next thing to flash through our mind was, “Does this guy have control of this thing?”  It was huge and loud.  Not really traveling all that fast, just faster than something that old should be going.  He did have control, but we noticed he sure was bouncing around in the cab a lot as he passed by.

In the News

The last two weeks both France and Germany have been in the news on both Euronews and the Czech News.  Both countries are having demonstrations against the governments because of high unemployment.  Both countries have 12 - 15% unemployment rates. 

Mike was discussing an article that had appeared about the Czech Republic’s increase in the unemployment rate that has been causing concern.  The article was one of those that indirectly have a way of saying “See, under communism we never had these problems”.  It was making issue of their 4.5% unemployment.  Of course a year ago it was 3%, and at one point it was at 2.5%.  So the article emphasized the 30% increase.  True, it is 30%, but it is 30% of something small to begin with.  However, the government is watching and making changes whenever it can to keep it from going up. 

Last week we saw pictures of Kentucky getting snow on the Czech evening news.  The today it was California’s mud slides.

Super Bowl

Mike went over to the old apartment and brought back the VCR.  He called Saturday evening and said to come over Sunday to watch the Super Bowl he had taped.  Even though we knew the outcome we, actually Jack.. was excited to see it since it was talked about as being one of the best in years.  I figured at least I could see the ads I had read about in the USA Today.  The article had ranked all the ads shown.  For some companies this was the unveiling of their entire year’s ad campaign.  Pepsi was one of the better and it said Coke was one of the worst.  Even though the guys would normally skip over the ads I figured I could talk them into watching a couple. 

Wrong.  This was the German version.  It had German announcers and German ads. 

Funny thing was all the football terminology was pronounced like we say it.  You would hear a bunch of German and then “out of bounds”, “field goal kicker”,  “face mask penalty”, etc.  It was always the “Green Bay Packers”. Rarely did they just say the “Packers”. 

It really would have been a great game to see live - and if the Packers had won.  Just for my future reference it ended Denver Broncos 31, Packers 24.  It was tied up until the last two or three minutes.

 Leak in ceiling

When we originally moved in there was a small, dried water stain in a semi-circle on the ceiling of the spare bedroom.  About mid January it had grown, some plaster had fallen, and there was a distinct musty smell in the room.  That same day the aunt from upstairs was washing the entry way (another story in itself).  I motioned her into our apartment and pointing upwards.  She sort of shrugged and said “ano” (yes) even before she had walked into the apartment.  Once she saw the new water damage she still shrugged her shoulders and said “ano, ano” and something else.  I made the motion of dialing a phone and said “call Ivana?” (our landlandy-the niece).  Again she said “ano”.  The next day we were seeing Mike and Hanka at our apartment anyway so we pointed it out to them.  Hanka call Ivana a day or two later.  Ivana said that the aunt had called her and that they knew of the problem prior to this, but there was some sort of disagreement as to who was to fix it.  The uncle had moved the location of the kitchen sink upstairs during remodeling.  Apparently, that is the cause of the leak.  She said she or her husband would take a look at it when they came to collect the rent on the 25th of January.   

Well, on the 25th when the husband of the owner looked at the leak he was surprised to say the least!  This once 10” diameter dry water stain is now a soggy 2’ wet circle.  He was concerned that the water may start coming into our kitchen as they had put a special paint on the kitchen walls.  This special paint is a semi-gloss.  Walls are generally painted with white wash.  Wonder if it costs so much more than the white wash is why they don’t use it on more walls?

This was on the Sunday of the weekend that the uncle and aunt upstairs had gone away.  Tuesday morning (Jan 27) we could tell from the noise that they were going to repair the problem.  This repair wasn’t for a simple leak from a bad washer.  It has been two weeks of off and on banging and other such noise.  Some dry wall was taken out and is now down by the garage doors.  They have been in the basement doing the same amount of plumber type noises too.  In fact, this past week they appear to have also decided to clean out the garage by the looks of the trash can. 

They have been real good about the noise.  It is never before 9am or after 8pm.  It isn’t real loud.  But you know they are working on something.  We are gone most of the time during the day so we really don’t know how loud it got.  It just seems strange that it is taking two weeks to correct the problem.  Jack thinks they may have decided to do additional work or found more problems and decided to correct them now rather than later.

With regards to the aunt washing the entry way, once a week she washes the steps going upstairs, the entry way, and the steps up into the house.  She does this with one of those old fashion rag mops that can hold a bucket of water.  So the floor gets very wet and takes a very long time to dry, especially in cold weather.  It never seems to fail that we come home while she is washing it. 

The really bad part is the washing of the outside steps.  They are made of granite and in the cold weather the water freezes to the steps.  Twice we have gone out and sprinkled table salt on them.  On top of that, she puts the small rug that is on the top outside step back down on top the very wet steps.  It too becomes wet.  The rug is noticeably dirty so if you step on it, and the water in it isn’t frozen, you will make a dirty foot print in the entry.  It’s easy enough for us to step over the rug, but explaining that to the dog is impossible.  It’s like a comedy routine!  I’m a good dooby and wipe up the majority of the time when Shep leaves foot prints.  I say majority because sometimes with their two dogs the entry already has a lot of tiny paw prints, so what’s a couple more, only larger.