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every bit as hot as I had feared
Aug. 14th, 2015 08:25 pmWhen I first got off the plane in Prague the heat didn't feel *that* bad. Sure, the guy in front of my said something like "holy shit!" when it hit him, but since I had dressed for the expected heat and didn't add any layers during the flight my body was kind of cold when we landed, so I coped just fine with the walk from the plane to the bus, from the bus to the terminal, and from the terminal to the airport bus to the city center (Note: one does need Czech cash to buy tickets on the bus--go ahead and stop at the ATM on your way out of the building, or you will need to go back in for it.)
Sadly, in my pre-trip research I failed to think about the all important question "on which side of the city is the airport?". Therefore, I didn't realize when I sat down on the right hand side of the bus that it would be the sunny side for the whole way in. I took my spare shirt and held it between me and the window for the whole drive, but still, 35 C is brutal hot when sitting in a hot bus with nothing for shade save a light weight cotton shirt.
By the time we got to town and I met up with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
clovis_t my shirt was quite wet from sweat. We met inside the metro station, where, being under ground, the temperature is much nicer, and bought me a three-day pass for all the buses, trams, and metro lines. Then we took a tram out to the Birkenstock shop, where the proprietor spoke nearly no English. She had just enough to explain that replacing my sandals (which are in rather bad shape from years of use) was possible, but not in black (what I had on me). I managed to convince her that I wanted a wider pair than last time (I have been wearing Birkenstock, size 40, for many, many years, but last time I needed some was right after moving to Sweden, and there is no Birkenstock shop here, so I ordered a pair on line, and accidentally wound up with a slightly different model, a "narrow" pair, which mostly fit my feet, but also caused an unpleasant ridge to form on my little toe from crowding it up against its neighbors. The "normal" width I found today feels *much* better already--width matters, even in sandals. Sadly, by "not black" she meant "dark brown straps with bright blue rubber sole under the cork. I am so not going to lose these, nor mistake them for any other pair of Birks I have ever seen in Sweden. But comfort matters more than looks, so I will cope.
After a hint of sight seeing we came back to his apartment and have been hanging out. I baked a Swedish oven pancake for dinner, andclovis_t agreed that it is, in fact, as yummy to him as I expected it would be. Now I have left over pancake to take with me to class tomorrow and Sunday.
I will be sleeping in the guest-hammock. I hope that it cools down enough to make it possible to get a good night's rest before heading to the workshop.
Sadly, in my pre-trip research I failed to think about the all important question "on which side of the city is the airport?". Therefore, I didn't realize when I sat down on the right hand side of the bus that it would be the sunny side for the whole way in. I took my spare shirt and held it between me and the window for the whole drive, but still, 35 C is brutal hot when sitting in a hot bus with nothing for shade save a light weight cotton shirt.
By the time we got to town and I met up with
clovis_t my shirt was quite wet from sweat. We met inside the metro station, where, being under ground, the temperature is much nicer, and bought me a three-day pass for all the buses, trams, and metro lines. Then we took a tram out to the Birkenstock shop, where the proprietor spoke nearly no English. She had just enough to explain that replacing my sandals (which are in rather bad shape from years of use) was possible, but not in black (what I had on me). I managed to convince her that I wanted a wider pair than last time (I have been wearing Birkenstock, size 40, for many, many years, but last time I needed some was right after moving to Sweden, and there is no Birkenstock shop here, so I ordered a pair on line, and accidentally wound up with a slightly different model, a "narrow" pair, which mostly fit my feet, but also caused an unpleasant ridge to form on my little toe from crowding it up against its neighbors. The "normal" width I found today feels *much* better already--width matters, even in sandals. Sadly, by "not black" she meant "dark brown straps with bright blue rubber sole under the cork. I am so not going to lose these, nor mistake them for any other pair of Birks I have ever seen in Sweden. But comfort matters more than looks, so I will cope.After a hint of sight seeing we came back to his apartment and have been hanging out. I baked a Swedish oven pancake for dinner, and
clovis_t agreed that it is, in fact, as yummy to him as I expected it would be. Now I have left over pancake to take with me to class tomorrow and Sunday.I will be sleeping in the guest-hammock. I hope that it cools down enough to make it possible to get a good night's rest before heading to the workshop.
