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November (2019#20)
Nov. 30th, 2019 10:10 amI'm currently about as sick as I've ever been with a nasty flu or something, very congested and hard to breathe, was wondering if I'd have to resort to a Czech ambulance last night ... but I seem to have come through the worst and am hopefully on the mend, so let see what happened in November:
We spent first full week in the little town of Mikulov in Southern Moravia because there was the big yearly Czech/Slovenian radiation conference and E was informed that he was to attend. The conference was literally held in a bloody castle, which was kind of a trip. Our pension was one of the nicest accommodations I've ever stayed in. The pics don't do it justice; it was lovely, plus we were shown the wine refrigerator and told to take whatever we wanted and just tell them when we checked out how much we'd had. I worked for a lot of the time we were there, but we also took some time to explore the town, which is really lovely.
The town is also near the site of Dolni Vestonice which is the oldest known permanent settlement ever found and one of those groovy mammoth hunter sites complete with their own venus statue. So you can imagine my disappointment when we got there to find it closed! They were filming some stupid movie and no way no how could we see the museum. BUT, the conference organizer M is also E's boss and she said, this is a small town and everyone is friendly, let me see what I can do. So she arranged for us to visit not the museum but the actual research institution and meet director! So after the conference ended, M drove E and me plus an older professor out to the research center where we met the director of research. I was a little shocked at how young he was (about my age, so not that young, actually). At first he addressed all his comment to E (grr, they always do that), but both E and M made a point of saying that I was the one with the PhD in archaeology, thank you very much, and once it also became clear that I was the only one who really knew anything about the site, he talked mostly to me. So he spent about an hour and a half with us and showed us several artifacts and the research premises. I tried to get him to tell me what his overarching research goal was, but he said he didn't know yet as he'd only taken over as director in the last year. So all in all very cool, although I still would have liked to see the museum!
The following week, E left for Japan and my good friend M from grad school arrived for a visit! I took him around to a lot of the sites and a couple museums, and we generally had a really nice visit. We talked mostly about books, and did some souvenir shopping and also visited the plague cemetery and in the evenings watched The Umbrella Academy, which pissed us both off. The same day he left E came back (E was supposed to be home earlier, but his trip got extended), and it's been pretty quiet ever since.
Last weekend we ventured out to Old Town to check out several crystal stores (Czech crystal is a THING and we wanted to get some gifts). We'd both been feeling somewhat under the weather and even went to a Dr. on Wed who basically said we were fine and gave me some allergy meds for my congestion. Of course after seeing her, I got significantly worse, to the point where I was worried about pneumonia, but E is definitely on the mend and I think I am also, although I'm still in pretty rough condition. I'm hawking up all sorts of disgusting crap, but at least it's coming up and not settling in my lungs, so I have hopes that I'll recover with having to negotiate the Czech health care system any further.
We are in the home stretch now, less than 4 weeks before we head back to OK and our Prague adventure ends. We contemplated taking a final trip to Athens (we were invited by friends), but then we really started feeling crappy and decided that if we got a sudden burst of energy we'd do a more local weekend trip.
We spent first full week in the little town of Mikulov in Southern Moravia because there was the big yearly Czech/Slovenian radiation conference and E was informed that he was to attend. The conference was literally held in a bloody castle, which was kind of a trip. Our pension was one of the nicest accommodations I've ever stayed in. The pics don't do it justice; it was lovely, plus we were shown the wine refrigerator and told to take whatever we wanted and just tell them when we checked out how much we'd had. I worked for a lot of the time we were there, but we also took some time to explore the town, which is really lovely.
The town is also near the site of Dolni Vestonice which is the oldest known permanent settlement ever found and one of those groovy mammoth hunter sites complete with their own venus statue. So you can imagine my disappointment when we got there to find it closed! They were filming some stupid movie and no way no how could we see the museum. BUT, the conference organizer M is also E's boss and she said, this is a small town and everyone is friendly, let me see what I can do. So she arranged for us to visit not the museum but the actual research institution and meet director! So after the conference ended, M drove E and me plus an older professor out to the research center where we met the director of research. I was a little shocked at how young he was (about my age, so not that young, actually). At first he addressed all his comment to E (grr, they always do that), but both E and M made a point of saying that I was the one with the PhD in archaeology, thank you very much, and once it also became clear that I was the only one who really knew anything about the site, he talked mostly to me. So he spent about an hour and a half with us and showed us several artifacts and the research premises. I tried to get him to tell me what his overarching research goal was, but he said he didn't know yet as he'd only taken over as director in the last year. So all in all very cool, although I still would have liked to see the museum!
The following week, E left for Japan and my good friend M from grad school arrived for a visit! I took him around to a lot of the sites and a couple museums, and we generally had a really nice visit. We talked mostly about books, and did some souvenir shopping and also visited the plague cemetery and in the evenings watched The Umbrella Academy, which pissed us both off. The same day he left E came back (E was supposed to be home earlier, but his trip got extended), and it's been pretty quiet ever since.
Last weekend we ventured out to Old Town to check out several crystal stores (Czech crystal is a THING and we wanted to get some gifts). We'd both been feeling somewhat under the weather and even went to a Dr. on Wed who basically said we were fine and gave me some allergy meds for my congestion. Of course after seeing her, I got significantly worse, to the point where I was worried about pneumonia, but E is definitely on the mend and I think I am also, although I'm still in pretty rough condition. I'm hawking up all sorts of disgusting crap, but at least it's coming up and not settling in my lungs, so I have hopes that I'll recover with having to negotiate the Czech health care system any further.
We are in the home stretch now, less than 4 weeks before we head back to OK and our Prague adventure ends. We contemplated taking a final trip to Athens (we were invited by friends), but then we really started feeling crappy and decided that if we got a sudden burst of energy we'd do a more local weekend trip.
