of peacocks and didjeridoos

Prague is so beautiful, it it doesn´t break your heart, you haven´t got one. Its also overrun with fat American tourists, horrid restaurants for Anglophones, Christina Aguilera music, and slightly dysfunctional English signs. Its one part paradise chained to two parts kitschy and banal commerce (matryoshka dolls! your portrait as a bobblehead with Angelina Jolie sized lips! garrish watercolors of the Charles Bridge for your poor unsuspecting friends!) . Still, one minute you might be cursing the day you were born as you fight your way across the Charles to the sounds of some dude bellowing on yes, that´s right kids, a didjeridoo while some Slovak teengager in a cheap white suit sings showtunes, and the next find yourself alone in some improbable little garden with peackocks bobbing their heads like Egyptians and staring at you cock'eyed (well, who doesn´t these days).

In short, I love it here. I sat down in a small cafe off the beaten path in the Malo Strana today, only to have 8 czechs (I think they were two families) descend upon me and begin chattering to me in Czech. When I explained, poorly, that I didn´t speak, the son began to translate, sort of. When I said I was from New York, the mother lit up--Rangers!! Yes, that´s right, Rangers. They were so nice, and offered to take a picture of me with their dog, Lia (who the mother, as best as I could tell, was training to be a seeing eye dog). But alas and curses, I can´t figure out yet how to download pictures, so that little gem of a photo that has me flopped over forward with my eyes a'goggle, will just have to wait.