We had our first week long vacation since moving to Germany and it was wonderful. A majority of it was spent in Prague, Czech Republic. It was a beautiful city with so much to look at and enjoy. Here’s a quick synopsis of our time in Praha:

• We arrived late on Friday night only to find that we could not find a place to buy 5-day tram & subway passes (these would be our cheapest and easy method of travel for our time there). A man saw the confused look on our faces and helped us by walking us 5 minutes to the ticket counter inside the main subway station and then making sure we could get the tickets. He was extremely helpful.
• Breakfast in the hotel was included and was open until 10 AM which meant we could sleep in.
• When we visited one the most ornate and beautiful churches we have been to in Europe where Alex declared that this was where he was going to get married. Now he just needed to find a woman
• We did a 5 hour excursion to a city outside Prague where the silver mines had been (now “dried up”). There we went into a church that was completely decorated with skulls and bones (including the chandelier and a coat of arms). Alex was a little “weirded out” at first.
• We visited a theater called the “Black Light Theater”. It’s done completely in mime and dance with segments of the show done with only black lights and they create these fantastic optical illusions. It was also about inventions and the imagination so Alex (a self proclaimed inventor) was just engrossed in the event.
• On St. Patrick’s Day, I got to see a Celtic concert in the square. The Celts weren’t only in Ireland but were also the early inhabitants of the Czech area. As a matter of fact, the area is called Bohemia which is Celtic for “the land of Boii”, a Celtic people group.
• On our last day, we decided to do a few last minute tourist things only to find ourselves walking through a snow storm. Even at the airport there were times that we could not see anything out the windows due to the snow. This is March - that’s just not right!!

Be sure to check out our pictures in the Photo Album. Since there’s almost 500 photos in the main Prague album, I’ve also made a smaller photo set with my favorite pictures of Prague. Please be sure to check them out.

OK. You’re on a tour in Prague. They are taking you to the Presidential Palace. But then the bus stops and they say they can’t drive any closer because of an event. No problem as your tour guide says we can easily walk there and still be there in time for the changing of the guards. “Sweet”, you think because you’ve seen changing of the guards at other places and its usually pretty cool. Now as you approach the “event” that has kept your tour bus from approaching closer, you realize that this event has shouting and that it is not an event but a protest. As you start to wind your way into the crowd following your tour guide, you are not sure what they are protesting but then you recognize the American flags which are either upside down or painted with Swastikas. That is, of course, when your seven year old son decides to say loudly in English, “What’s going on? What are they protesting about?” You figure that this is not the time to have a lengthy discussion while speaking English with an American accent so you say “I’ll tell you later. Now be quiet!” Now one of your partners on the tour gets your attention as he is looking all around “starry eyed” and says to you, “Are they protesting us?!?” He even included the pointing hand gestures. That’s when you say softly, “Yes. Now English isn’t probably what you want to be speaking right now.” And your tour guide is still taking you through the maze of people to get you to the palace on time.

Now your heart rate hasn’t really gone up that much yet but as you start to go past a bunch of people lined up against a wall, all of whom are wearing face masks or bandannas so that their faces could not be recognized, your blood pressure does seem to spike but not as much as when you realize that your tour guide has led you (and your family) between these disguised figures and the police officers.

End of it all, they were protesting the missile shield project that the US is wanting to base on their soil and everything ended peacefully with a Techno song . And for us, we got to see the changing of the guard.

So what did you do on Spring break?

Ok, I’m having a hard time with this one. When we were in Prague, we went to the cathedral and this sign was on the way to the Royal Crypt. Now my question is: What “Technical Problems” could there be with a Crypt? Seriously, its a cavernous area with a bunch of bodies. What could go “technically” wrong there?

Well, I’m getting all my photos lined up and I’ll blog more when I’ve got them put together. I’ll also relay some stories from our adventures in Prague.

Yep, another video. I’m a sucker with anything to do with physics (and Einstein for that matter). Well, what could be better but to do Physics with crayons on a computer. Check out the video.

For a demo of the game in the much simpler format, you can find it here at http://www.kloonigames.com/blog/games/crayon

One of the pet peeves many of my co-workers have had over the years is when people point to something on their computer screen and actually touch the screen. This leaves fingerprints and all sorts of smudges on the screen. Well, I have found a great way to clean up those screens. Click here to go to http://cache.valleywag.com/assets/resources/screenclean.swf

Enjoy!