My apartment and so forth

Since I did not begin this blog immediately upon arriving in Prague, I anticipate that I will produce several introductory entries in quick succession to orient everyone before I forget what might be of interest to my readers. We thus start with something fairly simple: the Prague apartment itself. I was nervous about searching for a place from afar, as I wanted something reasonably nice and convenient, and presumably pre-furnished, without paying foreigner prices (which can be insanely high). I ended up with what is a very satisfactory compromise, which is to say a nice furnished apartment in the Podoli district, right by tram and bus lines, but toward the top of my price range (still, it is much less than many places advertised in venues directed toward foreigners). My landlady had been living there but decided to try returning to Canada for a year, so I have the benefit of her washer, iron, phone, TV, and so forth. As you can see from the photos, it has been nicely renovated and the kitchen is the object of envy by visiting Fulbright grantees. I have not done much cooking there yet, but my friend Jesse (one of the aforementioned Fulbright grantees) persuaded me that we should attempt a pie, and this was a success. We were not really sure what we were doing—there was sort of a tart pan that is somewhat bigger than the average American pie pan, Czech flour is milled differently than American, and Sandra’s cookbook was North American while her measuring implements were metric—but all the same we concocted a very satisfactory pie out of plums and a couple of apples, held together with an experimental sludge consisting of eggs, flour, sugar cubes, and butter. (Hey, who needs cookbooks anyway? Just throw together whatever likely ingredients are at hand.) The oven was higher-tech than we were used to, but we managed to get it to do our bidding.