Wonderful feminist ad Laura found in Sarajevo

The Bosnian says "Know where a woman's place is!" Get it?

The secret to Ann's shoe collection

My friend Ann is renowned for her collection of pretty, but comfortable shoes (see photo below). Where do you find them? we are always asking her. She revealed her secret in Prague where we all spent some time in Leiser's in Old Town, which turned out to look a lot like Ann's closet! She is unrepentant about her purchases -- despite teasing from Bob and me. She is, she informs us, patronizing local artisans."

And another city vista -- I'll start editing out some pix soon

Listen to this while viewing: Is is the tone poem Vltava by Smetana, great Czech composer Http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zuCPYxnqH4&NR=1

As airy and ephemeral as the views are in the city, this seems a good place to talk about Czech food. It's not light.

First, Czechs love their beer, the best know of which is Pilsner.

And with your beer you eat meat  -- especially pork. Wow, especially coming from Sarajevo I appreciated the thick, fatty bacon and pork loin that you didn't even have to chew. The cabbage salads were also great and friend potato balls. dumplings and rice and creamy sauces are common too. Bob ordered the Prague ham as appetizers which was tempting. Ann is not a big fan of this food so we also ate at one of the multitude of Thai restaurants and at Bohemian Bagal, which as you might guess, was American food.

Prague is a little bit of many cities

                                                       You are walking along in Prague -- and the walking there is fantastic -- and you say, Oh, this place reminds me of Venice. A few blocks further on and it could be a fortified city in Croatia, a Roman square ..or a spot in  Mexico City...or sections of Budapest...a neighborhood in Munich.  Prague turns out to be a collection of the best of Europe.

Prague loves animals

                                                                                       You can sightsee in Prague on foot, inside a classic car, by van or in horse-drawn carriages. The horses doing the drawing are among the healthiest animals you've ever seen -- plump, shiny and powerful. They are checked regularly by veterinarians and drivers pamper them. (I also liked how the drivers "toilet-train" their animals, positioning carriages near storm sewers so that their bodily wastes fall immediately into the sewage system not the pretty cobble stones.) 

  We knew Prague was a far cry from African tourist cities in its animal practices even before we came upon two policemen guarding an errant swan that, disoriented and bleeding slightly from a chest wound, ended up off the Vltava River (that's Moldau River if you are trying to win at Trivial Pursuit) and on a sidewalk. The cops said they were waiting for a vet to come and in the meantime were keeping the bird safe from cars and tourists swarms.

Pretty from the bottom up

Prague

is as beautiful as you've heard. I used to say that Budapest was the most gorgeous city I'd ever visited and people would say, "Budapest is nice. Have you seen Prague." Now I know what they are talking about. 

For years under communism the city was drab and gray -- mostly the result of coal burning. You can still see statues and buildings coated in dark grime. But cleaning and restoration is bringing the city of palaces, castles and cathedrals back. The fabulous Charles Bridge over the Vltava River is half rigged with scaffolding as its turn for renovation has arrived.

Prague has 2 million people, but has managed to keep the core city much as it was centuries ago. People live in those horrid square boxes so beloved by Soviet era architects and they are on the outskirts, leaving the mid city pristinely medieval.

The city's cobble stoned streets are one reason for its charm. They are perfectly even and maintained and framed by sidewalks of painstakingly worked-out geometric patterns. They are all variations of white marble and black graphite. 

Apparently, however, Prague residents are not as impressed by their streets as this visitor judging by the frequent piles of dog poop found everywhere. There supposedly is a famous picture of Prince Charles of England on a visit to the city stepping into a steamy heap and wrinkling his nose in disgust.  I have unsuccessfully looked for it.

A Sunday evening in central Chisinau

Children's Day Lollipops Concert at Opera House

Stefan Cel Mare (the great) dominates one of two central city parks and the main street is named for him as well.



The city has plenty of banks, casinos and large public structures.

Sunset over Oresunds from Malmo shore

Storm clouds over Malmo

Lipstick Building and old ship in Goteborg port

Danish day care scene

These are not postcards

But they could be. You point a camera anywhere, as Zied did, and you end up with a shot. As my kids used to say regularly when on vacation with me -- "Mom, we're sick of saying oooh and ahh."

We had a Coke in the Cafe des Delices atop Sidi bou Said.

Carthage Museum

Enough, I kept telling Zied. I have enough pictures of me. "Yes, a thousand pictures," he said, snapping away. I have ended up with a rather thorough catalog of the art and artifacts of the museum. The mosaic is the bath of Aphrodite and the original of the head in the third picture is in the Louvre.

Stupid Tourist Photos

I love taking pictures of tourists taking pictures of themselves. They are so silly and predictable and they are having fun and working hard at having fun. There are patterns, of course. If you are in Pisa you have to pose as if holding up the tower, in NYC you have to raise a hand aloft as if holding a lamp of liberty like the Statue of.

The Roman ruins of Tunisia inspire some classic poses as these shots from the Baths of Antonin in Carthage show and also some predictably silly shot like the last one Zied took in the garden of the Carthage Museum

Animal cruelty in the news and for tourism.

The No. 1 attraction among Muslims in Kairouan is Bi'r Barouta, which westerners, to judge by electronic travelogues, despise. There are campaigns to keep travelers from visiting the place.

It's definitely a weird attraction... and I found it so odd to be visiting it while the news is full of talk about Michael Vick and animal cruelty. (The Atlanta Falcons star has pleaded guilty this week to supporting dog-fighting and killing under-performing dogs.)

Bi'r Barouta is essentially a well, supposedly the very well that once discovered in ancient times was the basis for Kairouan. How it was discovered is a matter of legend with many variations all involving magic and destiny. But anyway, around the water source an inn was established and grew, and then more and more shops and rooms were added and today the well is in a carpet shop in the middle of a market.

That's not the controversy. The trouble is the way water is pulled up out of the well. They use a camel. It's harnessed to a water wheel, decorated with multi-colored scarves including one around the eyes to keep it calm and encouraged by a herder who hits the walls with a stick to go and stop. This turns the wheel to which jars are attached and water comes up and is collected in mugs. You taste the water (a little salty) and pose with the animal and put a dinar in the herder's bowl.

There are more stories about this drink. One book says it means you'll come back to Kairouan, another that is a drink of redemption with religious significance.

Westerners decry the poor quality of life for the camel, although I don't know that life in the Sahara or in Saudi Arabia eating poison feed (2,000 camels are dead in the Kingdom this week from the bad food) is better. If I spoke Arabic I would have asked 1. how they get this giant beast in and out of the well room through all the little stores and up the stairs and 2. how are the animal's bathroom needs taken care of.

More mysteries to go along with the source of water in the desert.

To give or not to give

Beggars make me so uncomfortable.

I feel instantly guilty at the sight of skinny feral-cat like kids, cripples and amputees, mothers with babies at flappy breast and especially of battered old women without sons to care for them asking me for money, I who am traveling to exotic places, spending money on silly souvenirs and dieting because I have too much to eat.

Some people cope with this guilt by seeing all beggars as fakes who are actually earning riches by feigning poverty and deformity on the public sidewalks. I don't believe that, or if it's true, they still deserve something simply because that's an awful way to make a living. Some of my traveling friends believe that giving to beggars encourages more begging, which is why I never give to children in the streets. How likely would it be if they come back with a big haul that their pleased parents would decide, OK, it's time you went to school now! I was overwhelmed in Kampala at first by the sheer number of people approaching me for handouts so I developed this system of giving only to the old women and walking by the children and the lame. I try to keep my pockets full of small bills and all my coins to give away. In Bosnia I gave to the old ladies in kerchiefs on the street curbs.

But I am having some trouble with that system here.

Walking down a Tunis street a man in a wheelchair waved two leg stumps just inches from by body. I gave him money. The other day outside a little aquarium in Carthage that caters to tourists a withered old woman with scraggly hair and missing teeth sat outside on the cement terrace, a wash bucket and a crutch nearby. I pressed a dinar into her hand.

She started laughing and clutched my hand to return the coin. She spoke only Arabic and I only English. But I asked You are OK? and she nodded, still chuckling

Hmmm. How's that for meaning well and giving offense? Or maybe she is mentally ill or has a system of only taking money from countrymen. I don't know.

So, outside the Great Mosque in Kairouan I found this woman above (and no, I didn't coldly train my camera on her. I was shooting pictures of the facade along with about 38 other people and only zoomed in on her later by computer.) Beggars outside mosques are as common as the kicked-off shoes of worshippers. Islam demands the giving of alms, so mosques are a good place to remind practicing Muslims of that. Our newspaper in Algiers did a recent story about a trend the prayerful find disturbing of beggars coming inside the mosque and hitting up donors as they lift their heads from talking to God.

I thought maybe I should give her something. But she wasn't asking; she wasn't even looking at any of us. She was just sprawled on her rug with water and fan in the crushing heat. Was she begging or praying? Appealing to fellow humans or to God?

Hannabal is rolling over in his grave

OK,, This was by far my favorite place in Tunisia to date. Carthage Land.

Disney forces take on the Punic Wars. It was just too good. Entrepreneurs have constructed a history-based huge shopping/hotel complex with Las Vegas like glamour. The shopping center is guarded by a phalanx of war elephants as they may have looking being marched over the Alps. Carthage's mythic navy is grounded in the complex's concert/dining court and even the trash receptacles are lower-caste Carthaginian servants. Tourists pose with elephants or on the mini-golf course-like entrance way with waterfalls and plantings. The sign CARTHAGE LAND, note, is in English not Arabic or French, because, just who is who has the money, not to mention the bad taste, to love this place.

Seaside cafe rigging