<3

Zgubiłam się w twej wyobraźni,

byłam jak mucha w smole.

Myślalam, że pływam po morzu,

a taplałam się w garnku. W rosole.

… aber er geht viel zu schnell vorbei.

Trotzdem hab ich einiges geschafft, neben dem FlurProjekt hab ich noch einige Plätzchen gebacken.

Safari-Butterplätzchen

Gazellenhörnchen

und Kokos-Rum-Würfel

Mit Mama bin ich mal wieder laaaange in “der Stadt” unterwegs gewesen und habe einen super Rucksack für Afrika bekommen, als verfrühtes Geburtstagsgeschenk.

Mit Ralf habe ich die Mucha Ausstellung in der Hypokulturstiftung besucht. Obwohl wir in Barcelona und Wien schon Austellungen von ihm gesehen haben, war doch auch wieder etwas neues dabei. Dank dem AudioGuide auch wieder mehr Hintergrundinfo zugänglich. Das war ein wunderschöner Nachmittag und Abend!

Und gestern waren wir noch mit Alex und Alex im Haus der Kunst bei Ai WeiWei. Gut – aber als Laie mannchmal schwer verständlich und gefühlt zu schnell vorbei.

So, jetzt ist fast Wochenende und ich freu mich auch wieder etwas auf mein Team und die Arbeit. … Besonders weil der nächste Urlaub schon wieder fast greifbar ist! haha

schönes Wochenende, ich genieß mal noch die Novembersonne.

10/17/2009  sometime in the afternoon

Sitting in the food court of the shopping center again, while mom uses the internet.  i think i need about 5 hours online to get caught up with all the things i want to do.

actually slept last night but feel, somehow, more tired and groggy than ever.  jetlag that never ends.  is the air thinner here?  could that have something to do with it?

had a dream about wendy last night but i don’t remember the details – just that we were hanging out in her house.  maybe that’s all there is to it.  maybe i just miss her so much that we decided to hang out in sleepytime.

as we were walking into the shopping mall today, we were surprised to see a big screen set up down the main aisle, a guy at a laptop in front of it setting up sound, awful rock in english pouring out of somewhere.  as we came around the screen, i saw there were chairs set up and a slew of parents fussing over little girls in spangles and makeup, twilring snottily.  practicing their pirouettes.  child beauty contest.  eek.

wow, around the corner and upstairs, i can hear the music playing.  scared to go out that way.

so today we may head down to Wenceslas Square or we may head home and rest up.  there is a child squealing somewhere behind me and a man on the escalator is playing air guitar to the pageant music.  it sounds like rick springfield’s mission magic!  if you don’t know what i’m talking about you are lucky.  don’t look it up or you’ll be cursed with it forever.

so, yesterday.  we tried out the subway for the first time.  it has those extra long escalators down to the platforms, like you see in DC or london.  in san francisco we like to keep our public transit close to the surface, so we can hear it growling at us as it goes by.  actually, that probably has more to do with earthquakes than anything.  so, yeah, extra long escalators, with a constant stream of ads all the way down.  but the ads are tilted so they are parallel to the escalator, while people going down are upright.   but then they look tilted.  it’s disorienting, and actually kinda like an optical illusion.  you can’t tell what is supposed to be upright.  or which way is up.

like so.

it may have a lot to do with the absolutely astonishing length of the escalator as well.

the kids in the beauty pageant are singing now, or one of them is singing.  strident.  ow.

but, yesterday.  we go off randomly, at what looked like the closest station to old town.  it wasn’t, but oh well.  we wandered the cold cobblestoned streets through nowe město (new town) which is where all the fancy shops are.  uber fancy, and crystal shops with little crystal penguins that looked adorable and ridiculous.  boutiques and so many damn cars.  and you walk around a little and you discover places where the car road ends and then it’s just a pedestrian walkway, full of people even though it’s freezing.  and then, boom, back in a car road again and almost being run down by a crazy driver.

it started to rain as we happened to look down a side street and see the Mucha Museum.  my first thought was that annie should be with us for that – she loves his stuff, particularly the ladies.  so we ducked in to get out of the rain, but also because hey, it was there, and neat-o.  i didn’t realize that he left paris after 23 years and moved to America and then moved back to his native country here to dedicate his work to the cause of nationalism and Slavic pride.  hard to have my customary knee-jerk reaction to the idea of patriotism when you remember that this country was under the yoke of the austro-hungarian empire at the time.  then it became Czechoslovakia, an independent country, and nationalism soared.  i wrote “soured” originally.  oops.   heh.  tired.

anyway.  the posters he did for his country were much more startling – darker, intense, hitting you over the head with message – not in an obvious or bad way.  striking, i will say.

after the museum i was able to figure out where the hell we were, and how the hell to get to the radnice, or market square.  i kept calling it the “rynek,” which is the word in Polish.  cold and wind, but it really is breathtaking.  the age of things here.  unlike warsaw, prague survived WWII mostly intact.  so it really is a lot to take in.

sightseeing.  staring at the clock there, wondering what time it is.  tours to goddamn everywhere.  what it must be like in the spring/summer.  jeez.

ok, wrist getting tired.  brain shutting down.  pub crawl tonight, sponsored by the school, hosted by two former students who live here now.  don’t know how long i’ll be able to take it, but we should probably be social.  met two other students today, though one we had met the night our lights went out.  forgot to write about that.  we were just starting to get settled in for the night and the doorbell rang.

well, later.  3:03 pm.

After my grump of this morning, I’ve decided that the number of siblings that Mucha had doesn’t matter for now.  What matters is that I get this writing malarky on the road – which I have.  1,904 words before tea time.  I could have written more, but now I’ve had some victory beer.  Day one and I’m over the necessary word count to be on track.  This will all change tomorrow, of course, as I can’t see me writing 1,667 words after a day’s ‘proper’ work, but for now I’m smug.

10/16/09 8:51 pm

i really intended to begin writing this before we got here, though I kept putting it off because I imagined that it would be just a bunch of boring conjecture.  what, indeed, will happen when we get to prague?  Now I wish that I had put something down, as I feel like this story is incomplete, or there is a jumping in that may be confusing to some, if anyone is actually reading this.

as i am sitting here at my beautifully homey desk, i can hear the tram going by down the hill.  i don’t think i was able to hear it the past few nights/days/blurs of time.  is it suddenly louder?  did i think it was a plane this whole time?  i kept thinking i was hearing planes.  maybe i was.  the tram on its rails is comforting.  i will try not to let it distract me too much.

so, yeah, what the hell am i doing here?  what is this school i keep babbling about?  i will try to keep it short, as i do want to write a little about today.  got to actually get out of the neighborhood today, though i am still not really sleeping.  so, yes, scattered.

i am here in prague with my mom to go to TEFL worldwide, a school for English-teaching certification.  we got to town as early as we could so we could spend some time sightseeing and getting acclimated.  so we are in this cozy apartment up the hill from the school we haven’t started yet, and there are other people in the building all around us who will also be going to the school on Monday, but we have only met one of them in person and i think so far we are all just fine with not interacting as of yet.  or maybe it’s just me who is antisocial and weird.  they gave us all each others’ email addresses a few weeks ago, but i wasn’t together enough to email anyone, though my mom makes up for my soft and cuddly brand of misanthropy tenfold.  she is facebook friends with many of them.  ironically, it is difficult to get on the internet around here, unless you want to hang out in the mall all day, and there are no plugs, so email is not the ideal way of interacting at the moment.

so, why prague?  why teach english?  lots of reasons for the first one, but babbly babble, i think i’ll stick to the second.  last year i was granted my irish citizenship, through virtue of my grandmother on my father’s side having been born in Ireland.  i’m using that citizenship to finally throw myself into the fray of my mother’s side of the family, which i find ironic.  i’ve been trying to learn polish for a decade and can’t seem to get past a certain point, despite having grown up with my mother’s mother and all of her siblings speaking it around me.  my mom and i started doing research into her father’s life a few years ago, and we have stalled in that research because most of the information is in Poland.  so, now, yes, i’m killing all of these birds with one expatriating stone.

so, i’ll have an easy way to make a living while i am doing all of the above, and the means to stay for a while.

there are other reasons, too.  i was so sick of feeling stagnant in way-too-expensive san francisco.  tired of working so much and freaking out over money just to stay there.  i love the place and consider it my home, but every now and then i have my heart broken by its indifference, or by all the assholes, and have to leave for a little while.  it also doesn’t hurt to be out of the u.s. right now, too.

tram again.  there is no way i thought that tram was an airplane … why didn’t i hear it before?  hmmm.

anyway, this is why, this is what’s going on, this is what i am trying to document.  currently i am a tourist, in a few days i will be a student, and then, in a month or so, i will be an US/EU national living abroad.

whoah.

so now we are all up to speed, i’m tired and don’t want to go too much into the stuff we did today.  slept very little, again.  can’t seem to keep my brain from going, even when there are no distractions.  and there are some.  it’s like i forgot how to not be stressed.  just yesterday i was able to finally get through to myself that i can let the packing stress go.  i actually had to say, “you don’t have to pack anything anymore.  stop worrying about what will fit into the suitcase.”  of course, the fact that the girl from TEFL who met us at the hotel reception balked when she saw all of our bags didn’t help much.  how much do people usually bring?  what will i do with it all when we are done here?

you can probably see how i can continue to feed my worry.

but, yeah, ok, today, 4 hours of sleep maybe and then up and, after a short breakfast, into the subway.  we sort of guessed which subway stop to get off at, based on a sketchy map, that would be closest to the old town (stare mesto).  we were wrong.  still, there were some beautiful walks through the new town, and we accidentally found the Alfons Mucha Muzeum, which was impressive.  full-size original prints of his posters, and jesus, i had no idea he created such beautiful posters for Czechoslovakia.  the colors get darker, the expressions more severe and demanding, when you move from his paris posters to his Czech work.  that was the stuff i enjoyed seeing the most.

and, of course, the photography of his models.  amazing shots.

oh, yes, crashing.  i have to remember to write about the optical illusion that is the prague metro.  tilty escalators!  9:54 pm.

No âmbito do 20º Festival Internacional de Banda Desenhada da Amadora, o álbum de banda desenhada de David Soares Mucha, desenhado por Osvaldo Medina e arte-finalizado por Mário Freitas (Kingpin Books), será lançado no próximo dia vinte e quatro, às 15H00.
O evento terá lugar no auditório do Fórum Luís de Camões e, além da apresentação, consistirá numa conversa com o autor e com Osvaldo Medina, moderada por Pedro Mota e Mário Freitas.

Gargantilla La Poesía de A.Mucha_32€+gastos de envío
De metal en tono bronce.

Collar largo Cala de A. Mucha_40€+gastos de envío
De metal, cristal,plástico vintage, ónix blanco, amatistas, aragonita, jaspe rojo y aventurinas.

It is that time of year again, the calendar displays are popping up and by next month they will all be on sale for $5.  This year I am in search of two calendars, one for the kitchen and our general household use and one for my soon to be studio basement. Yup, you heard that right, Studio Basement! , we are moving this weekend into our first (rented) house and there is a small basement that is going to be all mine! I promise there will be lots of pictures once everything is organized.

The calendar I have chosen to get for the studio is the wonderful new calendar from Nikki McClure. The theme of this years calendar gives homage to crafts and the rhythms of  the seasons, I knew when I saw it that needed a home with me somewhere.

The calendar for the kitchen is a little more tricky; we want it to feel good in the kitchen somewhere, we need space to write reminders and it has to be something both Will and I are happy to look at all year. So far these are my contenders:

I want chickens rather badly, but I think that asking to have them might be a bit much right off the bat with our new landlord so I think this calendar might hold me over for now.

Dear Frida, do you know how much I love you? Frida has always been one of my favorite painters, the way she used color, the way she is so heartbreaking in her frankness. She lived out load and in acceptance of her inner-self, if only we all could do that.

The new house was built in the 1920s in the craftsman style and Mucha very much complements the feel of the house, plus his work is just pretty. There are a couple other Art Nouveau calendars that almost made the list.

The house has got a big yard, part of which I am turning into a veggie garden asap, I already ordered seeds for winter greens that I plan to put in the ground in the next couple weeks before it is to late. I like the idea of a calendar that will help me with my plantings.

So what will be on your wall next year?

Am Freitag, den 18. September wurde die Young Designers’ Mall auf dem NT-Areal in Basel mit einem Fest eröffnet. Erstmals war die gesamte Struktur geöffnet. Produkte von über 40 Labels waren ausgestellt. Insgesamt kamen rund 400 Besucher, um die Eröffnung des ersten Schweizer Kaufhauses für junges Design zu feiern.

Die Zahlen der Besucher seien wie erwartet gewesen, meint Sacha Roche, Initiator der Young Designers’ Mall zufrieden. Und auch der Umsatz dieses ersten Wochenendes liesse sich sehen. Auch am Sonntag waren den ganzen Tag Besucher in der Mall, und die Meisten kauften ein. Kein Wunder: die Young Designers’ Mall vereinigt so viele junge Labels, dass wirklich für jeden etwas dabei ist.

Einzig mit den Öffnungszeiten gebe es noch immer Verwirrung, sagt Roche: “Die Leute sind sich nicht bewusst, dass die Young Designers’ Mall eben länger als normale Läden geöffnet ist”. Aus diesem Grund werden hier noch einmal die offiziellen Öffnungszeiten publiziert:

DI – MI
16:00 – 20:00

DO – FR
16:00 – 22:00

SA – SO
12:00 – 22:00

Eingangsbereich mit Auslage und Produkten von Alain Jost Design & Production, dasoptimum, yoshiki und SIRO.

erfolg, obst&gemüse, yoshiki, spunk, Tcheka, inari, KYRSY, Mia Pythoni, Joe Black und Chenaski

aweebit, 004, LeA, primavera, blunt, marshall artist

boNhoM, Elementum, Tarango, KnowMe, fairliebt, zündstoff, epona

rocksi regional recordstore (rechts)

Ankercrew, H-Lunke, Freddy Fox’s Daughter, Kitambaa, airasmus, foldpaper.ch, mono, 10 Swedish Designers, MIRA, Boycottlettes, artig design, parts, mi ha, mucha, z.B. Berlin

My buddy Ben recently left my lovely island nation the Philippines to pursue adventure in Germany.  It so happens that he is also one of my more loyal readers and is in Germany just in time for Oktoberfest.  So I have decided to honor my buddy Ben and Oktoberfest by putting up a post containing this beautiful print by Alphonse Mucha.  I was looking online and apparently Bieres de la Meuse means “Beer of the muse” (feel free to correct me if I’m wrong), which I find fitting since my goal for this blog is to spur on creativity.  If you look close enough you will find that the poster’s background is adorned with some beer ingredients such as “barley, hops, and large poppy flowers indigenous to north-eastern France”(Rennert/Weil p.126).  I think it is another example of a master at work incorporating his knowledge of the product being advertised to create a beautiful composition.

Now we have met, we have look’d, we are safe;
Return in peace to the ocean, my love;
I too am part of that ocean, my love—we are not so much separated;
Behold the great rondure—the cohesion of all, how perfect!

Alfons Mucha, "Dawn"

Open up your arms, like Whitman. Stand at the edge of the world, on a precipice, take it in and love it all. It’s not always going to be like this, whatever this is for you. Dawn/dusk. This flesh, this mind, this world… ephemeral. Fleeting, lingering, curt.

Who hurt you, girls, and who taught you, what made believe that starving bodies are beautiful bodies? When did you forget that all bodies are beautiful, that you are made in God’s own image, however you’d like to consider God, and just remembering that God is love and love is all and love is everyone… no matter what we name perfection and purity and love. How did we get to this space where smart, beautiful women that I know are killing themselves slowly in order to be in control, to privilege shallowness and self-doubt in exchange for care of their bodies, their minds, their hearts, their souls?

Contradiction!, you cry.

It is true, I myself am a lover in and of the flesh, of the sweet curves of her sides, of the tender, soft meat of her inner thigh… of the stubble on his chin, the solid strength of his arms. Of bodies, next to each other, touching, loving, being… as. close. as. possible.

Contradition! No.

Alfons Mucha, "Dusk"

To love, be sweet, with the whole of being, is to, gentle and unafraid, take the flesh into our hands and with our heart at once, and with sweetness pouring out and over and down from every pore. The fear I see all around me – fear of bodies, inward-turned self-deprecation, confidence lacking – the fear I see all around me bases itself in the fear of excess, the desire for control, the inability to view our God-given bodies as beautiful. Who are you afraid is judging you? I can only love you as you love yourself. You can only be loved as you love yourself. You are your own judge, and as a judge, you fail to love. Instead, you try to hand me your hurt – and I will not, do not, cannot, take it. I cannot accept this non-gift, for I love this flesh, this heart, this mind, and so you cannot touch me, even as I wish for you to do so, in love. Your love is hiding, surrounded by winter skies and hardened ice, and my gift of all the salt in the world won’t melt it. You must make your own salt.

Mucha model

And I no longer see you as beautiful because you have annihilated me in your quest for you. I loved your flesh, your heart; I cannot love your sorrow, your bones. What is perfection if in it we only find our demise? And I love my flesh and every ounce of my being, and I love the flesh and souls and minds of those whose hearts are filled with love. Even as I seek to become stronger, leaner, more solid, this is only done in love. Would that you’d love yourselves too, that I might gain back a piece of you, if only for a kiss.

All day and night, would you let me, I would love your so-called flaws. In them you are real, true, beautiful, and human; in humanity we find God/love. Flaws are invisible when we’re enveloped in love. And this I want for every single person, those that let me love them and who love me in return, but especially for the girls who have forgotten how to love.

Being afraid of living is just the same as dying.

xcarolineno (my) other blog: http://revolutsiya.wordpress.com

Now we have met, we have look’d, we are safe;
Return in peace to the ocean, my love;
I too am part of that ocean, my love—we are not so much separated;
Behold the great rondure—the cohesion of all, how perfect!

Alfons Mucha, "Dawn"

Open up your arms, like Whitman. Stand at the edge of the world, on a precipice, take it in and love it all. It’s not always going to be like this, whatever this is for you. Dawn/dusk. This flesh, this mind, this world… ephemeral. Fleeting, lingering, curt.

Who hurt you, girls, and who taught you, what made believe that starving bodies are beautiful bodies? When did you forget that all bodies are beautiful, that you are made in God’s own image, however you’d like to consider God, and just remembering that God is love and love is all and love is everyone… no matter what we name perfection and purity and love.  How did we get to this space where smart, beautiful women that I know are killing themselves slowly in order to be in control, to privilege shallowness and self-doubt in exchange for care of their bodies, their minds, their hearts, their souls?

Contradiction!, you cry.

It is true, I myself am a lover in and of the flesh, of the sweet curves of her sides, of the tender, soft meat of her inner thigh… of the stubble on his chin, the solid strength of his arms. Of bodies, next to each other, touching, loving, being… as. close. as. possible.

Contradiction! No.

Alfons Mucha, "Dusk"

To love, be sweet, with the whole of being, is to, gentle and unafraid, take the flesh into our hands and with our heart at once, and with sweetness pouring out and over and down from every pore. The fear I see all around me – fear of bodies, inward-turned self-deprecation, confidence lacking – the fear I see all around me bases itself in the fear of excess, the desire for control, the inability to view our God-given bodies as beautiful. Who are you afraid is judging you? I can only love you as you love yourself. You can only be loved as you love yourself. You are your own judge, and as a judge, you fail to love. Instead, you try to hand me your hurt – and I will not, do not, cannot, take it. I cannot accept this non-gift, for I love this flesh, this heart, this mind, and so you cannot touch me, even as I wish for you to do so, in love. Your love is hiding, surrounded by winter skies and hardened ice, and my gift of all the salt in the world won’t melt it. You must make your own salt.

Mucha model

And I no longer see you as beautiful because you have annihilated me in your quest for you. I loved your flesh, your heart; I cannot love your sorrow, your bones.  What is perfection if in it we only find  our demise? And I love my flesh and every ounce of my being, and I love the flesh and souls and minds of those whose hearts are filled with love. Even as I seek to become stronger, leaner, more solid, this is only done in love. Would that you’d love yourselves too, that I might gain back a piece of you, if only for a kiss.

All day and night, would you let me, I would love your so-called flaws. In them you are real, true, beautiful, and human; in humanity we find God/love. Flaws are invisible when we’re enveloped in love. And this I want for every single person, those that let me love them and who love me in return, but especially for the girls who have forgotten how to love.

Being afraid of living is just the same as dying.

O Trattoria Mamma Mia miałem wspomnieć niedługo po wpisie poświęconemu Pimiento Argentino Grill, ponieważ w Mamma Mia byłem po raz pierwszy tego samego dnia i było smacznie. Naprawdę bardzo smacznie. Kelner co prawda przed przyniesieniem rachunku wspomniał coś o wylizywaniu talerzy do czysta, ale jako że mieliśmy wtedy naprawdę dobry humor po naprawdę dobrym jedzeniu, zostało mu to wybaczone, a rachunek wzbogacony został wskazanym i wcale nie bagatelnym napiwkiem.

Do pisania o Tattorii po raz drugi zabierałem się kilka tygodni temu, zaraz po drugiej wizycie, gdy po raz kolejny rozsmakowałem się w Gnocchi verdi ai quattro formaggi, które są po prostu pyszne. Nie wyszło. Oczywiście nie zabrakłoby odrobiny uszczypliwych uwag poświęconych ilości czasu potrzebnego na realizację zamówienia, ale na pewno przyznałbym rację sloganowi widniejącemu na Menu Tratorri – Restauracja godna polecenia. Dziś także polecam, podkreślając jednak drobne ale… i o tym dzisiaj przeczytacie.

Chcąc zjeść niedzielny obiad w miłej restauracji, razem z moją lepszą połową i moimi rodzicami wybraliśmy się do Mamma Mia. Rezerwacja została wcześniej złożona, byliśmy o czasie, stolik czekał. Stolik dostaliśmy nienajlepszy, nieco ciemny, na szczęście nie na tyle ciemny żeby mieć problemy z wczytaniem się w menu, które dość szybko dostaliśmy. Wybór był w zasadzie prosty – filet z soli, filet z ło(so)sia, polędwiczki wieprzowe i Lazagnia ze szpinakiem. W ramach dodatków – szpinak z czosnkiem x 2, talarki ziemniaczane, frytki, napoje. Przystawek – brak, zup – brak. Jednodaniowy obiad. Jak widać nic wyszukanego.

Otrzymawszy napoje przystąpiliśmy do rozmowy. Szybki przegląd tematów codziennych, kwestia wakacji tych co były i tych co będą, chwila rozmowy o polityce, o edukacji w krajowej szkole (gdzie jak się okazuje uczeń drugiej klasy gimnazjum ma w tygodniu 4 (słownie cztery) lekcje języka polskiego i o koszcie zwiększenia tej ilości. Rozmowa została na chwilę zawieszona, ponieważ zwolnił się stolik z dostępem do okna, który postanowiliśmy zająć. Po tej “przeprowadzce” wróciliśmy do rozmów. Znowu wróciliśmy na chwilę do wakacji, do polityki, do rzeczywistości nas otaczającej, zaczęliśmy szybko ustalać plany na zbliżający się tydzień… czas mijał, napoje się upłynniały, my czekaliśmy.

Na pierwszej stronie menu znajduje się informacja, że ze względu na przygotowywanie potraw ze świeżych składników, na dania gorące czeka się około 20 minut. My zaczęliśmy łowić wzrokiem kierowniczkę sali po minutach czterdziestu. Udało się, bardzo sympatyczna pani nas przeprosiła za tak długi czas oczekiwania, poprosiła nas o jeszcze chwilę cierpliwości i zapewniła nas, że robi wszystko, aby zmotywować kucharzy do szybszej realizacji zamówień i że w tej chwili to cała obsługa jest jak na szpilkach, żeby nas jak najszybciej obsłużyć. Ponieważ nie zdecydowaliśmy się na dodatkowe napoje, raz jeszcze przeprosiła i poprosiła o cierpliwość.

Wróciliśmy do rozmowy, która nie pochłaniała nas tak bardzo, jak obserwacja sali i sprawdzania kto z tych, co przyszli po nas, już dostał zamówienie, a kto tak jak my czeka. Mijały kolejne minuty, zaczęliśmy żartować o Hells Kitchen, także o tym co dobrego mamy w lodówkach, ale po kolejnym kwadransie perspektywa dalszego czekania “w ciemno” wydała się nam mocno nieatrakcyjna. Po kolejnych pięciu uznaliśmy, że najwyższy czas pożegnać się z restauracją, obsługą i zamówionym obiadem. Zaczęliśmy się podnosić i…

Zamówienie dotarło. Co prawda na raty, ale wyglądało na tyle apetycznie, że postanowiliśmy zjeść i nie zawiedliśmy się. Sola – zgodnie z obietnicą kelnerki – była niewielka, ale za to smaczna. Filet z ło(so)sia świetnie przyrządzony, polędwiczki wieprzowe przygotowane – tu słowa mojej Mamy, kierowane do Taty – tak jak lubisz, lasagna – naprawdę pyszna i w zasadzie rozpływająca się w ustach. Co prawda w szpinaku mało było czosnku, ale za to frytki były prima sort. A talarki ziemniaczane… no właśnie.. z talarkami ziemniaczanymi był taki problem, że ich nie było. W ich miejsce dostaliśmy gnochi… Spytaliśmy czy gnochi to talarki i kiedy już wiedzieliśmy, że nie, postanowiliśmy nie ryzykować i zamiast na talarki czekać, zjeść to co już nam podano.

I było pysznie. I smacznie. Wszystko dobrze przyprawione, estetycznie podane, wszystko ciepłe i w zasadzie wszystko w tempie błyskawicznym znikało nam z talerzy. To, że wyglądało apetycznie udowadniała nam bzycząca nad talerzami mucha. Na szczęście tylko raz postanowiła przysiąść się do szpinaku i to w zasadzie już gdy się kończył, ale coś co może zostało by niezauważone w nadmorskiej knajpce, trudno było ignorować akurat w krakowskiej restauracji z aspiracjami. Fakt, to drobiazg, ale jest to drobiazg dość niesmaczny i chyba jednak eliminowany*.

Powtórzę – było pysznie. Może godzinne oczekiwanie to sposób kucharza, na to by wszystkim smakowało. W końcu już od dziecka się nam tłumaczy, że to głód, ach głód najlepszym jest kucharzem. I niewątpliwie jest… Tyle tylko, że gdyby danie dotarło parę minut później, moglibyśmy się o tym nie przekonać…

Chciałbym podkreślić obecność bardzo sympatycznej kierowniczki sali i zapewne jej decyzję o rabacie do rachunku, który miał nam osłodzić wyczekiwanie. Na przyszłość sugerowałbym podanie klientowi drobnej, nieodpłatnej przekąski, zapewne posmakowało by lepiej. I upewnienie się, czy wszystko co znajdowało się na rachunku (talarki) znalazło się na stole klienta.

Trattorię ze względu na dobrą kuchnię polecam. Aby mieć jednak czyste sumienie, sugeruję aby nie iść tam będąc głodnym. Nawet lekko głodnym. Wizyta tam powinna być odpowiednio wcześniej zaplanowana i nie bójcie się tego, że w chwili przekraczania progu restauracji lub też przy składaniu zamówienia nie czujecie lekkiego nawet ssania.

Spokojnie, zdążycie zgłodnieć.

* Nie tylko Trattoria miewa problemy z muchami. Posłuchajcie:

Aloha! From the altitudes of Nederland Colorado!

Bamboo Clothing Co. is getting ready for our first festival set-up! August 28, 29, and 30 means “Nedfest!!!”; lots of great blue grassy music floating through the air, beautiful smiling faces, and a good freaky time for all!!

So if yer in the area come up and enjoy the weekend in “Neditation” : ) and be sure to check out the new designs at the Bamboo T-shirts tent!! We’ve got some amazing original french vintage designs featuring the art of Mucha, as well as plain bamboo T’s for $10!!

And don’t fear a place to stay, check out this map we’ll show you the way. . . There are some great campsites in the Roosevelt National Forest on the way to the Rainbow Lakes Campground and hikes.  The Rainbow campground is a fee area, but there are plenty of sites along the road and Light and I would revel in some Rainbow Family like close knit camping for the weekend.

So from the Nederland roundabout go 7.2 miles up hwy 72 toward Ward.  Watch for the Colorado Research sign, just behind it is the tiny brown sign for Rainbow Lakes. Take the next Left turn onto the dirt an’ gravel road- there will be a big sign here about Rainbow Lakes and the Indian Peaks wilderness, so you’ll know your on the right road.

Just follow this road 4.6 miles and the road will be a bit wider and here is where there are several campsites (campfire rings) each with enough space nearby for at leat 2 tents. Scope them out down by the river and up the hill- both sides of the road.  If you reach the fee camp, just turn around and go back just past the large meadow at the first gentle curve in the road.  There are lots of sites before this point as well, but Light and I would Love some company!!

Still in Prague.  Today, I went to a museum dedicated to Alfons Mucha, the Ars Nouveau painter.  Then went to the Museum of Communism but didn’t go in.  Instead, walked around a commercial district for an hour.   Had lunch in a French sidewalk cafe with impeccably French service (i.e., poor).  Then rode the Metro about a mile into a newer part of the city where I met up with the choir.

I think I got a good mix of Prague-for-Tourists and Prague-for-Locals today.

The bus took us to  Antonín Dvořák’s home in Nelahozeves.  it is adjacent to a castle which we also looked into.  Then the bus  took us to another town where the choir sang in a church.  I regret that I don’t know the name of the church or the town.

A good day.

Um Mucha, de preferência na versão jóia (não que qualquer artigo dele não seja uma).

delicado e feminino.