Culture Shock

We have been in Prague for one week now and we have down lots of sight seeing and picture taking. It has been very magical as we wander around our new nation’s capital exploring all the nooks and crannies. We have discovered some awesome local restaurants, majestic cathedrals, and wide-open parks. However, some things have surprised us in a different way. For example, as we travel underground along the metro lines, the public bathrooms have become privatized – 5 crowns per use. I was desperate, so I walked into the bathroom with 5 crowns in hand only to find a woman sleeping at the payment desk. Without breaking my stride, I selected my urinal of choice and began to take a complimentary tinkle, without stirring a mouse. I was careful to use the faucet quietly and we know that the air blower would surely wake her, so forget dry hands. I walked out comfortably and satisfied with my rogue bathroom break.
Our second adventure comes to us on behalf on my beautiful wife, Sarah. As she tirelessly shifts furniture around the room in order to appease her neurotic husband’s OCD for efficient coffee table placement, she takes a break to plug in our North American surge-protected power bar. Sarah isn’t dumb, so she applies a power adapter to the end of the power bar chord so that she can plug it into the European outlet. Sure enough, it worked! ...Until she flicked the switch to “ON.” A flash so bright it could double as a stun grenade fills our bedroom. Sarah leaps onto the bed away from the smoking power bar and all of the sudden we’re in the dark. My fear was that we knocked out the power for the entire building, but sure enough, just our entire apartment. Talk about good news... We spend ten minutes at the fuse box with a flashlight pinned between my teeth and a Czech/English dictionary in my hands. Everything was flipped back into its upright positions but no power. Enter Hradhart - a South African who lives three floors above us. Hradhart comes to point out that the fuse box for our floor is what we need and they are located outside of our apartment. He simply opens up the box, flips the switch, and we’re back in business. Thanks Hradhart, we now know to use voltage converters, not power adapters. We're learning.