Praha/Prague/Prag

Great weather her today in Prague. We decided to spend today in the Little Quarter and the Castle. The apartment is a bit down river from the Charles Bridge and we had a nice walk along the river to get to the bridge.

The tower is undergoing reconstruction/preservation or something. Hordes of tourists on the bridge. This is more tourists than we have seen anywhere else. Including a group of what sounds like American high school or college kids. Snapping pics while wandering along.

There are a lot of vendors on the bridge selling everything from jewelry to artwork. And a jazz band. We manage to get across the bridge and head into the Little Quarter. I think it is actually meant to be the "lesser quarter". Or the quarter lower than the Castle? We see one group setting off on Segways - looks like fun.











We walk up to the St Nicolas church. The first entrance we try is just for the tower. 218 steps. Sure to be great views, but maybe not. The inside of this church is amazing. The definition of Baroque architecture - marble and gold everywhere. Except most of it is fake - imitation marble. Very good imitation, however.

We stop for lunch at a cafe on the street leading up to the Prague Castle area, then start the hike uphill. Nice view from the top. When we get to the top we see a really long line and hope that is not the ticket line. Lots of people. Michael decides there has to be away to avoid this long line and walks through the gate. We find a place that sells tickets and the audio sets. The ticket seller convinces us we have to have the audio as there is very little English. This turns out to be true in some cases, but not everywhere. We are advised to do the New Palace and the Basilica first and leave the cathedral for after 4 as there are too many people right now. (It's only 1:00) We are supposed to get the audio sets back by 3 - but no problem if we don't.

We spend about an hour going through the palace and the basilica. The line at the Cathedral is still long. According to Rick Steves, if you have the audio device, your can get in the exit. So Michael decided to try it. The guard says - that was last year - then decided that since there are only 2 of us, we can go in. Nice man.

Did I mention there is no room to get a shot of the front of this Cathedral?




There are 25 audio stops in the Cathedral. I don't listen to all of all of them, just enough to know what I'm looking at. There are probably 20 chapels around the outside of the nave. Although we took pictures of all of them, I'll just post a few. This is really the national cathedral. The oldest part is Gothic, but it has been added on to. Some very old tombs of early kings and Archbishops. Each side chapel has its own style of stained glass - most post WWII as the original glass did not survive. As I have found in the past, stained glass is very hard to photograph well. Michael takes over taking the photos, but I'm not sure it's going to help. As you can see, some of the altars are very ornate.

At about 3 we are able to turn in the audio set and head back down to town. Having taken the long way up, we take stairs down and cross the river on another bridge, closer to the apartment.

Walking back we pass by 3 possible restaurants for dinner. Mr iPad checks them out and we decide on Cartouche - grilled meat on skewers in a basement "cave". The entrance is a bit dark and not enticing, but the food is wonderful. The had an appetizer of goat cheese with warm apples. Dessert was a chocolate lava cake with a side of berries and lemon sorbet in a chocolate cup. Should have taken the camera.

Tomorrow there is an 80% chance of rain so we "ll see how it goes.

Munich to Prague - or Praha as it is here

I decided to listen to David Siegels presentation on market segmentation - or how the marketing department may not know what they are getting with all these analytic analyses. I am typing on a Czech keyboard. The z is where the y is on a QWERTY keyboard, but it is typing a y. I cannot figure out how to get an at symbol - or quotes or an apostrophe for that matter. I see them on the keyboard, but cant find the keys. The at symbol is on the v key.

Anyway, we got the car - a Citroen - with a TomTom and diesel, and managed to leave town at about noon. It was a nice day and we had a good drive to Prague. When we got here the GPS wanted us to turn right, but there is a lot of construction and the right was not allowed. It eventually figured out another route and got us here. Lida - our landlady, ended up parking her car and taking a tram to get here. Crazy traffic. The Czech countryside is very pretty - mostly farmland.

We are staying in a 2 room apartment in the old town. Lida is really nice and pointed out where to find an exchange and the grocery store and a couple of restaurants. After the long day, we ended up grabbing a pizza. Czech food tomorrow night. Weather is calling for rain, but we are hoping it will be intermittent.

The old town square is very cool and the architecture seems more consistent here than in Munich, or even Vienna. Ill get some pics up tomorrow - probably with my own computer so I can use the right keys! Aha - found the " key - uppercase 2. And the '. Whoopee!  : - )

Munich Day 2 and 3

Slipping up here. We did not get back to the hotel until midnight last night so no blogging.

We did go to a museum yesterday morning. It's about "modern" items, but we focused on the industrial design and architecture sections. And the bookstore.

We did some wandering around the Marienplatz then went back to the hotel to change for the reception. UPA does a nice job with good food and a drink coupon for one drink. We finally left the reception at 9 and headed out to dinner at the Ratskeller. We decided to eat outside and they turned the lights out at 11, but still no pressure to leave. The young waiter did a yeoman's job of dealing with 3 pairs who were not sitting together and a single. They will split the bill, but it's a bit of a hassle. I'm beginning to get tired of the Bavarian food and have a salad.

The first day of the conference is interesting. The keynote speaker strikes me as a bit naive, but she makes some interesting points. The session on stories is fun. I can't find Kath or Elisa, but I do connect with Susan Dray and a couple of others. and we have a nice lunch at the Augustiner - mushroom ravioli.

The afternoon is hectic. The sessions are only 30 minutes and there is only a 5 min. break between sessions. I attend one session on complex forms - I should just buy her book. Another on UX and Agile development and a third on "intentionally biasing users" - in other words, persuasion. The last long session I went to was Pieter Desmet on Designing for Happiness. I had read some of Pieter's work when we were looking at rating some web sites for their emotional impact about 18 months ago. The first half of his talk is about that research, but he has been extending his thinking and research and is actually working on some products that are of interest to me.

We finally round up the group. I call Michael at the hotel and we go back to the place I had lunch for dinner. Much earlier than last night.

Sorry this got lost in the shuffle.

Dachau

well, I did battle with the not so user friendly munich transit system and managed to get myself to Dachau while Diana was at the conference.

Dachau is now just a few buildings and a museum with horrific photos and even more horrific stories along with them. similar to yad vashem in that regard. Very depressing. Saw the barracks where people were crammed like sardines, the gas chamber, and fhe crematorium ovens. I will post some photos later.

Dachau was the first concentration camp, and the prototype for all the rest. It was a concentration camp for undesirables, but not an extermination camp, per se, as was Auschwitz. People died from disease and malnutrition mostly, with some hung or gassed. It was mostly a slave labor camp. Most survivors said a quick death would have been better.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

More of Munich

I spent the day at the conference. Strange pizza for lunch. Remember I mentioned the tuna pizza I had in Romania? I saw a tuna pizza on a menu here. Come to find out, it is raw tuna - as in sashimi - on the pizza. As I said, a bit strange. Cooler and rainy today.

 Michael took the S-bahn out to Dachau today, but I'll let him tell you about that.

I am remembering why I have not been attending conferences of late. On the other hand, if you get a few useful tidbits, it's a good thing. I enjoyed a 90 minute session on ethnographic research this morning that was very well done byt someone who clearly knows what he is doing. And another this afternoon by a Brit who made a good argument for what causes delight. Anxiety resolved through effortlessness, surprise, cleverness - and one other thing. I have decided that panels are not that helpful (I did not attend Kath's so no brickbats, please.) You can't cover much in30 minutes.

I'm going to one more session in the morning, then we head for Prague.

Vienna to Munich

I thought I posted this last night, but Michael and I are sharing a T-mobile log-in here in Munich and he logged in while I was typing so all was lost. Oh well.

Yesterday started out pretty well. We entered the address of the hotel here in Munich and started driving. Unfortunately, when we got to the end of the street, the GPS apparently lost the signal, or the route. We spent about 10 minutes trying to get it to work before deciding to try a town in Austria, just to get out of Vienna - I had no idea which way to go. Fortunately, we picked up the signal again about 100 yds down the road and we were good to go. Turns out the CD we have been using did not include Germany, so I'm sure that was part of the problem.

Nice sunny day yesterday so we got a chance to see some of the scenery we missed the last time through in the rain. For some reason, the Austrians have erected what look like sound barrier walls along a lot of the highway. Not near any towns so maybe it's a safety thing? some are wood, others metal. Some are decorated.

Yesterday was a holiday in Bavaria and we saw hundreds of sailboats out on one of the lakes. - Chiemsee I think.

We were able to return the car to the Avis depot at the Hauptbahnhof, which saved us a trip out to the airport. Our hotel is about a block from the train station. In an "interesting" part of town, but way cheaper than the conference hotel. Like the US, the up scale hotels do not have free wi-fi. 8 E for 30 minutes. What's with that anyway?

We had dinner on the Marienplatz at one of the Bavarian places - Donils. Not bad, and we were serenaded by a small ensemble playing classical music. Apparently a number of musicians do this as we saw several - including a guy with a grand piano and another with a large didgeridoo.  They set up in the entryways of the stores along the pedestrian walkways.

Kath and Elisa found us at breakfast. There is a move afoot to visit a museum this morning.

Vienna

Sunny this morning so we took a walk to the old town. Sunday morning so no shops open, but a lot of window shoppers. We took pictures of St Stephens and were able to go inside, despite a service going on. Other churches specifically request that you not enter during the service, which seems quite reasonable. There was actually a small orchestra accompanying the choir. Bad sun angle for the photo. The roof was destroyed by fire in WWII, but the townspeople rebuilt it by 1952.

Then we walked down another of the major shopping streets to St Peter's church, turned a corner at Cartier and headed for the Hofburg Palace. Amazing place. In addition to the usual Imperial Apartments exhibit, they also had an exhibit of the Imperial glass, porcelain, and sliver. A lot of which the Empress schlepped around Europe with her in large wooden  chests. Some of the silver is still used for state dinners. No photos allowed in the apartments so I can't share. But these people clearly lived a different sort of life than you and I. Sorry about the reflections. I did not use a flash, but there were windows.

After grabbing lunch at the Hofberg Cafe, we walked over to the Judenplatz to the the Holocaust memorial. There is also a museum built over the ruins of a Medieval synagogue. It was destroyed in 1421, but they have found the foundations, shown here. There is a short film about the Community and the synagogue.

As we left the museum, the sky was darkening and we heard some rumbles so we hightailed it to the closest tram stop. This tram follows the inner ring so it's a good way to see some sights that might be too far to walk. By the time we reached our stop, the rain had let up enough to walk back to the hotel for a rest. And some chocolate gelato on the way. mmmm.

At about 4:45 we headed back out to the Natural History Museum. This museum was started back in 1748 and has over 20 million items. (The Smithsonian claims it has 3 million items.) It has one of the oldest collections in the world and it is housed in an amazing building, as you can see. The first photo is up the main staircase. The next one is from the second floor, looking out over the staircase. And the last one is me and a friend in front of the museum.

Michael found a nice restaurant near the hotel. He had weinerschnitzel and I had a pot au feu with guinea fowl. Prices are definitely higher in Vienna than anywhere else we've been.

Headed for Munich tomorrow for the conference. Next week, Prague.