The metro and the Czech language
As I’m getting here and there by metro most of the time, I thought about devoting it a small entry J
It is very conveninent that we live near I.P. Pavlova, as I probably mentioned before, where Metro and tram stop regulary, the metro even in about 2 minute intervals. So theres no need for hurry to catch it, because you can simply take the next one!
Seeing that we were already wondering about the subway announcements on our last school trip to Prague, I will share what I found by chance on one of the expat websites 
(Martin and me were already guessing, they might say ‘Oh no, another 200 tourists just boarded the train. please be aware…’ )
In fact, once on the train, the following announcements can be heard:
1. Name of the station where the train is currently stopped, e.g.
“Můstek”
2. Warning:
“Ukončete prosím výstup a nástup, dveře se zavírají.”
(Please finish exiting and boarding the train, the doors are closing.)
3. Name of the following station (e.g. Muzeum) followed, if applicable, by ‘Transfer to line A/B/C’:
“Příští stanice: Muzeum”
“Přestup na linku A/B/C.”
Who would have thought it translates as such a boring pronouncement 
One thing that I’m really not used to, is going into a country, where people speak a language I don’t understand a word of. I was trying to learn some Czech, but its difficult and time consuming, and when you’re used to understand sentences, be able to use verbs, its disappointing if you apply yourself, just to know basic 10-15 expressions.
First it was funny to guess how a sentence might split up in words, as the Czech always stress the first syllable, but then you don’t only want to be able to repeat, you want to understand a word or two
I decided to get into food-related-words first, which probably wasn’t a bad choice. Still if martin and me go to a restaurant with Czech menu only, we order something we don’t know what it is. Take lunch on Thursday for example: I desperately needed French fries so I went for the only dish with hranolky on it: Argentinska something with hranolky.
Not bad thought, but also not what I had chosen I’d known that it was not an Argentinean steak but some small pieces of meat, accompanied by a strange sauce.
Same when Tobi and I went to that vegetarian restaurant (‘Today we go for vegetarian, because you like it so much!’ ; I really needed meat that evening…) .
They had some pictures, so Tobi chose from these and I tried to get the Korean waitress translate some words. She even offered to ring her son, but we chose to have a good guess again. It was nice in the end; still we didn’t work out what was deep fried on Tobis plate. Tasted like fish, but in a vegetarian restaurant…
I might go on to learn some more expressions in the park later, I printed out a good overview, 6 pages, that should be feasible, before it’s too late, and I’m going back home
Concerning the new blog, it is no longer possible to get email messages whenever I write a new entry, but you can subscribe to rss feed and add it to you iGoogle or other RSS- Readers. Then the new message, or part of it, is automatically fetched to that site, and youre always up to date J