City Life

The contrast between my normal life in Asheville and the Eastern Europe life I’ve also enjoyed over much of the past year is quite large. But I really appreciate both lives, each with its own associated tradeoffs. It’s fun to transition between the two, frankly, and I hope to continue to be able to do so after this year.

There’s always so much going on in the big city, with things like photo shoots, political party rallies, festivals, and police escorts, just to name a few from today alone.

Sofia is still getting better, and she felt good enough to go to class today, so we met her at her school this afternoon and had a late lunch before heading over to the hillside public orchards and picking and eating fresh juicy apples (for free).

Prior to that, Colleen and I visited the 20th century portion of the National Museum, which was quite large and engaging. There were a lot of Nazis and Communists, interspersed with decades of relief at not having to put up with either. The multimedia show of Prague 20th century history, shown in the tunnel between buildings, is to me one of the best-kept secrets in Prague — it was amazing!!

After the exhibit, we found that it was raining with some decent volume, so I had a “snack” of dumplings, sauerkraut, and $2 draft beer in the museum’s cafe before heading over to meet Sofia.

Following time with Sofia, Colleen and I went our separate ways to run different errands. She found great bargains at a thrift shop, and I struggled to figure out how to buy a charging cable for my smart watch, since I had forgotten to bring mine from home. I found a giant electronics store on the north side of town, so took a tram up there. The interior is huge, and there are numerous well-appointed showcases — better than anything I’d ever seen in an electronics store, and they had all the major brands represented. It looked more like a tech conference showcase or something, with a “stand” for each company. But strangely, I couldn’t find any store staff. There were a few workers with shirts adorned with brand labels for their respective companies (for example, there was a Lenovo guy), but none seemed to be an employee of the store itself (Alza). There were multiple floors, along with different sections on the main floor. I found my way over to a large section with dozens of people waiting around looking up at a big board on the wall showing ticket numbers paired with associated counter numbers for obtaining service. Everyone I saw standing around was holding a little slip of paper. So I figured, ok, I need to take a number to ask someone about finding a charging cable. But alas, I couldn’t find the kiosk from which to obtain my ticket number for the queue. I looked everywhere, and I didn’t see an employee who wasn’t behind one of the counters, for whom one seemed to require a called ticket number. I gave up on that and then made my way over to the other side of the store, where I eventually found a wall full of sets of interactive displays, keypads, and credit card readers. I went to one set and selected English for the display language, but all it asked for was a phone number or order number. That didn’t help me either, and so I opened my phone to see if I could order the cable on their e-commerce website to have it delivered to this store. I put the cable into my virtual shopping cart and went to check out, but placing an order required a phone number. So I selected the country code drop-down, but +1 (United States and Canada) wasn’t an option. So that didn’t work either. I walked back over to the queue waiting area, where I noticed that there was one little counter where a young woman seemed to be standing there with nothing occupying her currently, and so I politely introduced myself with a “dobrý den,” and then asked how I could buy a watch charging cable. After a lot of confused back-and-forth, she eventually turned me over to another guy, who finally realized that I just didn’t understand the entire paradigm of this store — that is, you must order online, eventually receive a text notifying of your order being ready for pickup at the store, and then go to the store and its wall of displays to enter your phone number or order number. There, you then pay for your order and receive a little slip of paper with a pickup number. You (needlessly) traverse the entire huge store to the other side with your paper in hand and wait for that paper’s pickup number to be displayed. When notified, you take your paper to the counter and receive your purchased item. Simple, eh? The guy placed the order for me on his counter computer, but he was also confused by the unavailability of the US +1 country code. So he just typed it into a text field on the webpage. We’ll see then if I get that notification text in the next few days before my watch battery dies.

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Today’s dad joke (A dad joke from a father with two adult children):

What happens when you mistype a search in a computer application like a browser or a document editor?

You’ve Control-eFfed up!

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Today’s travel quote:

It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.

Ursula K. Le Guin