Breakfast the next day

I finally crashed at around 7 local time last night, woke up just after midnight then went back to sleep and woke again about 7:30. I feel drugged. I don't think I've ever had jet lag like this the first day. They have a TV in the room and it has a weird mixture of channels. It promises the BBC, but that's blank, so I had to suffer Sky News, which is the British version of Fox (at least, it's owned by Murdoch) and it was like an uglier version of every morning show. All they were doing was sitting around saying "wasn't it hot yesterday?" (They were showing all the headlines from British tabloids saying things like "Hotter than hell!" with people in hallowe'en costumes and bathing suits.) "Well, it wasn't THAT hot!" "No, actually, I take it back, it was really hot." "Well, not REALLY hot, but I went for a walk with a scarf on, and half way through I thought "phew!" and took it off..." This is what 3000 years of civilization hath wrought? Meanwhile there're some Czech channels (they had House dubbed in either Czech or Russian, I can't tell the difference, which was interesting), some Russian channels, and "Eurosport!" which appears to be in German. In general, there seem to be a LOT of Germans around. One plump older lady I stopped to help me locate myself on a map (everyone I did that with was really polite and gave it their best effort, but was totally useless. Mostly they were older and didn't speak a word of English, and one older guy had to really dig around in his bag for his reading glasses first - and to be fair, I was having trouble with the print on the map myself - my eyes were much worse for not having a wink of sleep - oh God now I sound like the morning show people) spent about 10 minutes turning the map around and around before it emerged that she didn't live here, she'd just arrived from Cologne. But she obviously felt she had to give it a go. Breakfast in the hotel: a lot of various kinds breads (with a really killer baguette chopper that looks like it could have your fingers no problem), something that looks like a cross between scrambled eggs and porridge, a lot of sliced meats, some plums (seem to be big in the Czech Republic), and danishes a-plenty. Not bad, but I don't know what C(o)eliac vegetarians would do. Probably die off, as nature intended. Well, now I have to work out what I'm doing with the day and where the conference actually is. (I'm told it's in a hotel very nearby. We shall see.) I'll leave you with some of the less grand pictures I took yesterday: In case you can't tell, this is a tricked-out Trabant, in mint condition. He was blaring out fifties rock'n'roll, too. Now that's class. It was one of about three vehicles I saw that were NOT Skodas. I think I see how VW is now the second-largest car seller in the world (pushing GM into third - Toyota wins, but not in the Czech Republic. But I digress). I laughed at the Segway part until I nearly got run over by a swarm of the bloody things crossing one of the bridges. Seems that tourists can rent them (and bikes - I'll have to look into that). Erm, no thanks. In general, though, there are some really nice parks for the kiddies. This was the best attraction (I didn't hang around long though - single middle-aged men taking lots of pictures in kiddie parks? Probably not too popular.)

It is true that Converse All Stars are very popular over here, but this seems a bit rich.

For Ye Tourists. At this point my camera battery ran out.