Stop and See the Babies

Everything in Prague is very close to you, all the time.

That's what I've had trouble remembering since it first smacked me in the face one day, when I was "wandering," "lost," through a new part of town and suddenly I was standing at the rear entrance of a very familiar grocery store. That's what it's like here. Megan and I went in search of some David Cerny public art, and it turned out to be hanging from the roof right above our heads, just a few yards from the first restaurant we ever patronized, no less.

So things in Prague are close. I've known about the TV Tower babies for months, of course. And I've known about the view of TV Tower through my living room window.

But you can actually see the babies from my living room. Really -- just standing by the window, on a clear day (of which there are hearteningly more and more as we tiptoe out of winter), you can see a good snatch of gunmetal tykes frozen in their eternal climb up that futuristic shaft. It's really, really cool. I don't want to become jaded to it.

My final roommate arrived today -- Leonor, from France. She speaks English very well, and also Spanish, which -- and try to follow this -- is what she was speaking with her two Czech friends when she showed up at the flat today. It seems that their conversational language of choice is Spanish, but Jana, the other roommate, and Megan both speak French, and French seems to be the main language spoken between Jana and Leonor, so far, but Jana also speaks Czech with Leonor's friends, so that the breakdown is something like this: Frenchie Leonor speaks Spanish to Czech friends and French and English to Czech Jana, who speaks French and English back to Frenchie Leonor and English and Czech to Leonor's friends (who just adore Hobbes, by the way), while (theoretically) speaking both French and English to Megan, who can speak French and English back, while everyone speaks English to me.

Huh!