Speaking of the fish pond, we had another bumper crop of frog eggs. On the first exceptionally warm day of spring, we woke up to lots of frogs in our yard "doing it". By the time I had returned from walking Toby, the edge of the pond already had hundreds of frog eggs. By the end of the week, the frogs had disappeared again, but thousands of eggs remained. As far as we can tell, most of the eggs hatched into tadpoles, but then they too quickly disappeared, either eaten by the fish or buried deep in the pond. Occassionaly we startle a frog while we garden out there, but for the most part, we hardly see them.
We also had at least two new baby fish this year. There could be more, but the pond is so deep and dark in the center, that we cannot tell for sure. One baby fish I spotted because he was hanging with all the baby tadpoles on the edge of the pond for awhile. I think he was confused.
We stayed in a pension close to the old town center. Luckily, our hotel was very close to a great ice cream bar that served coffee ice cream (nearly impossible to get easilly in Holland). Every evening on the way back to the hotel, we had to make a quick stop to get our dessert.
We took a boat tour on the Vltava, and a guided tour of the city and the the Prague Castle. Prague is very much a walking city. We only used the metro once to find a museum on the outskirts and used the trams a few times to get back to the castle area.
We dragged the girls to an hour string quartet concert playing in one of the churches up by the castle. In many of the churches in Prague, concerts are continually going on. As you walk around the streets, there are loads of buskers handing out leaflets for various concerts. The one we attended was sort of "the best of" classical -- Mozart, Bach, Vivaldi, etc. All songs the average person would probably recognize. It was wonderful.
Another night we dragged them to see a performance of Oddysseus -- a ballet, opera, with advant guard film being used for scene sets. Peter and I tried to remember the story from our highschool days. It was an unusual performance, but interesting.
We spent a morning walking around the Jewish Quarter. A section of the town where the Jewish people were relocated prior to going off to concentration camps. One of the temples now is a memorial with its walls inscribed with the 80,000 Jewish people who were taken from the Prague area and who never came back. The old cemetary with the mounds of headstones all piling up was also quite moving. (When we returned to Holland, the next week was the Netherlands Armistice Day celebrating the freedom from the German occupation. On TV was the Story of Anne Frank -- with Ben Kingsley as her dad. It was an excellent production. After having visited the Jewish Quarter and then seeing this movie, the girls (and I) had a much better understanding for what went on during that time.)
When we flew to Prague, the Czech Repubulic was not part of the EU. When we returned on Saturday, May 1st, the Czech Republic was part of the EU! There was a big celebration in the center of the Old Square on Friday April 30th. Lots of music and bands -- but the square was packed with people, so we did not stay long. At midnight I woke to the sound of fireworks, but everyone else slept through them.
The girls favorite part was probably all the market stalls selling handcrafted items along the Charles Bridge, by the Castle, near the Jewish Quarter and in the Old Town square. Peter and my favorite part was just hanging out in the cafes in the Old square and looking at all the beautiful architecture.
