Locomotion

Just as I had imagined, the post-vacation reality of the imminent changes ahead are sinking in. We're having a baby. ETA - 8 weeks from now. I'm getting big too, a bit clumsy and finding it difficult to maneuver around. Gotta love it when I leave a meeting (usually for a useless albeit urgent tinkle) and have to ask several people to move their chairs forward... no, a little more... and a wee bit more... thanks (grunt). I'm having fun with the size though and I am not bothered by it really. In fact, the shape of my body right now is simply fascinating - it just demands attention because seriously...how does the baby grow so much while the skin, muscles, organs and fluids shimmy around it so effectively?

Anyway, I've got a few cool pregnant activities going on amongst all of this development, sighing and strange movements. One of these regular activities is being a part of the South Community Birth Program. The SCBP is one I was referred to by my doctor since she doesn't deliver babies. I really lucked into this program, which is comprised of both doctors and midwives to support women and their families to deliver healthy babies with as little intervention as possible. The combination of these professionals makes for a comprehensive approach, a comforting mix of education and experience, and an amusing 'love-in' factor. Part of being in the program is to participate in a twice-monthly support group of 10 women who are approximately at the same stage of pregnancy (and their partners/friends) to discuss specific topics that relate either to pregnancy, labour or after baby arrives. These topics are introduced by the doctor in an open facilitation style which is meant for educational purposes and are all up for discussion. For me, this group have proven to be really approachable and fun.

It's really strange to admit it, but I feel normal there. Before we attended the first session, I was nervous and apprehensive because I typically get that dreaded youth group feeling... that I'm going to be weird in the group. It's not an insecurity feeling, its an inability to relate feeling. Thankfully, I don't dread attending group every Tuesday night, in fact I look forward to it.


The other thing I'm doing right now and loving a lot is prenatal yoga. Yet another forum for me to feel normal, which I also feel there. I'm hopeful that I'll be able to hook up with some other mom-to-bes who live in my area of the city to hang with. The most delightful thing about yoga is the quiet of it. I'm greedy for the weekly practice and extremely protective of that time of the day. Between working and processing the baby's arriving, I feel forced to find quiet in my head. Yoga does that so completely. Although, the prenatal massage doesn't hurt either.

At the end of January, I wrote a final exam and opted to not sign up for another course until post-baby. Though I miss the studies, I know I made the right decision to focus on health, work and rest. What I don't miss is the reading... oh, you know... required reading. Despite the fact that most reading in my studies interests me, it's a great relief to now have the luxury to read for FUN!

I started and finished a book this week written by Michael Ondaatje titled Coming Through Slaughter. I had purchased this book with Christmas money from 2004 but forgot about it among the home mini-library. I enjoy Ondaatje and now, having read another of his pieces, I remember why. His fiction reads like poetry (which he does publish half the time) since he gets away with not finishing sentences and yet somehow, those sentences don't feel incomplete. I wonder if he is more choosy about his words and as a result just eliminates them completely from the sentence. I also wonder if Ondaatje is really fantastic at leaving wads of characters and places to our imagination by being vague and elusive in his word decisions or or if he tells it so clearly and concisely that I can smell, taste, touch and see the image he's created.

Anyway, the book is luscious. It's a story about Buddy Bolden, a legendary cornet player and apparent barber by day who also publishes a gossip rag called The Cricket. Buddy is a loud man, a hard-living and hard-loving man who exudes the spirit of the city in which he lives, New Orleans. The story takes place in the late 1800s - early 1900s, and smells like sweat, cajun food and cigarettes. Having been in New Orleans, I enjoyed the flavour of the book because it's so unforgiving to the town that just has a deep dark hole of a soul.

What really got me is that the book is fiction but isn't entirely fictional. Apparently, Charles "Buddy" Bolden was a legend in New Orleans jazz at the turn of the 20th century. Ondaatje simply opted to build the story of a legend with some truths to it and some imagined. Ondaatje experiments with Bolden's demise and comes out apparently controversial. At any rate, the joy of the crude read, which has little in the way of redemption, is the art of the writing. As for me, Michael Ondaatje continues to demonstrate his skills as an exquisite wordsmith. Even though it's hard reading of content that is typically less than beautiful, it's always worth the effort.

We arrived at Frankfurt at 1:30 AM, completely blasted from the train excursion although curious about what would happen next. We departed the train, along with the handy Prague guidebook and our things, and went to the Frankfurt station information centre. Within moments the teacher was off to her destination via taxi and we were in front of the desk with these options so as to continue our journey to Prague:

1. Wait around and attempt to sleep in the station for four hours and get on the next train to Prague or
2. Sleep in a good hotel a mere 50 metres away from the station, get a buffet breakfast at the hotel in the morning at our leisure and then choose which of five trains departing from Frankfurt to Prague we'd like to hop on to next day.

All of these lovely options at no cost to us, which was meant to make up for the first class sleeper, seriously... was there a choice? We'll take option #2 please and thank you.

The sleep was solid, the shower was delectable, the buffet was scrumptious and the 9:30 am departure with Starbucks coffee in hand was... well, ideal. Oh, and the day was bright and glorious (like all of the other days in this tour)... so we got to see our way from Frankfurt to Prague. And what a lavish landscape it was.

And Prague, otherwise known as Praha, welcomed us warmly at 5 pm. We departed the train, hopped on the Metro, went two stops and then ascended to the cobbled street a mere 3 minutes from our hotel. The scene was mellow while bustling at a low hum.

U Tri Bubnu is a sliver of an old hotel that corners Old Town Square (Staromestske), which is the heart of the city of Praha. The Old Town Square is marvelous in the morning, in the afternoon, at dusk, during sunset and at night. Yeah, it's a place that when you close your eyes and just listen to the horses clip-clop along the cobbles you can put yourself in any other historical era. The square is for foot traffic only and is just really big. The fronts of each building is coloured and bordered with green or pink or yellow or cream. One lavish, 2-dimensional dollhouse stands at attention and is attached to another with no space in between. Then, the astronomical clock takes one corner up with it's hourly show which is neat, but a tad overrated considering the crowd that huddles around it and chokes the pathway completely. Our favourite building in Staromestske is the Church of our Lady Before Tyn. This building caused me to question if fairy tales are actually fictional. I swear that Rapunzel was about to let her hair down at any given moment for Prince Charming to come up the tower to save her. The glowy lights on these towers came on when dusk was just past and the sky enveloped the blackened exterior of the church. It was a yummy and unbelievable experience we anticipated each evening.

Praha is easy to navigate, accessible, a city with small town vibes, engaging at every turn and very old. We took our pace to a very mellow dawdle in Praha and as a result, drank in all of the gorgeous subtleties of the city. The Czech people are warm while reserved, embracing tourism with a fresh approach of grateful while prideful of their dreamy city.

Our first day took us to the Prague Castle - simply magnificent. I enjoyed this highly touristed spot immensely. The stature and spirit St. Vitus Cathedral encroached on my Notre Dame idealism, challenging me to consider it the most glorious church I've ever encountered. Seriously though, St. Vitus Cathedral is in a castle fortress with a moat around it, which is in pristine condition, and has the best view of the city. Mind you, that view was work though - not just for preggy, but each and every person to climbed the 235+ shallow steps up the tower - it was literally like climbing a ladder in a counter-clockwise,circlular motion until you got to the top. Huffing and puffing, we reached the top and drank in the city views.


St. Vitus Cathedral view down from the tower. These spires are black, old and have seen a heck of a lot of rain and snow and yet are pristine somehow.
Praha from one of point of view at the top of the St. Vitus tower. The St. Charles Bridge is in the far left corner. The red rooves are the landscape from every angle atop the tower.


St. Vitus Cathedral sanctuary. One view of many impressive views. The light is terrific in this place.


One of many diverse windows at St. Vitus. What I love about these windows is that the theme changes from each one to the other and with that, the art and style changed too. Not every window is a crucifixion, rather a spiritual story peppered with interpretive nuances that, I believe, reflect Czech history somehow. We've never been able to capture stained glass pictures like these on any prior trip. But, again, the light was just magical.


Moving from the St. Vitus Cathedral into the Prague Castle ballroom. The room is massive. That's me, resting along the back wall, drinking in the mad balls that likely raged on into the night with lavish dresses and silly traditions and gossip.... oh the gossip.

This is not a fabricated picture! The astronomical clock is on the left side facing left. The moon is winking at our luck to get the picture. I just get giddy about the pink building sidled up against the stone clock tower.


Here we are in Old Town Square just after sunset. Seriously, can't you tell we've become experts at relaxing and day-dreaming about fairy tales? Praha does that to you, it entices you to take it easy and just be. Yes, that's the point.

Prior to the trip, A and I advertised broadly our enthusiasm for the train that we had booked from Paris to Prague. Our intinerary was to travel from Paris to Frankfurt and then switch trains there to continue on to Prague. The first train was to be a five hour journey in the early evening through until 11 PM. The second train, leaving Prague 45 minutes after our Paris train arrived, was a first class sleeper train. A and I had talked numerous times about the sleeper train. Visions of old movies, like North by Northwest and White Christmas, included slick diner cars and roomy sleeping quarters were sprinkled throughout these anticipatory chats. It also is important to note that we've taken a few trains in our travels - some of you may recall two famous train trips in India; one of which stopped completely mid-trip (never did make it to Jaisalmir) and another that got us from Agra to Varanasi but shaking at the sleeplessness and stench and horror of the beaten up thief en route. And so, we allowed our imaginations to run wild, if not romantic at the idea of a train trip, first class, in Europe.

It all started so well... departed Gare l'Est Paris terminal at precisely 5:03 PM as outlined on our Austrian tickets and moved at a fantastic pace through the suburbs of Paris and then onto the countryside. We even made a few acquaintances in our train car. Two American women were quite friendly with us - one of which lived in Germany since her husband was stationed there, the other, a Tennessee tourist named Roxanne who thought French bread was just too crunchy and that WonderBread, which you don't have to use your teeth on, is real bread. These two American ladies were starkly contrasted by an older lady who was a French-American German-resident teacher who chose to tell us about an intolerable student in her class who actually ordered pizza and got it delivered to the classroom (Anyone else thinking of Jeff Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High?). The car was largely empty and I had finally taken the opportunity to rest and settle into my Prague guidebook occasionally looking out the broad window to enjoy the delightful tour, delightful that is until Metz.

Metz is a French train stop and merely that. It's not a place one stops to take in the sights or to make major transfers to other destinations. We had stopped for 20 minutes at Metz, which wasn't scheduled, and so the teacher inquired about the delay. She returned with information that the French engine on our train was not compatible with the German rails ahead of us. The French conductor was waiting for a locomotive change and once that occurred, we would be on our way. Fifty minutes passed and then and hour and a half had gone by. We noted that our connection to the Prague train from Frankfurt would be missed. Slightly disappointed but optimistic about an alternative solution, we sat in the hot train car waiting for updates on the engine change. I was actually quite calm about the situation, enjoying my guidebook, noting places we were going and processing tips for our visit in Prague. I put the guidebook in the pouch in front of my seat and settled in for a chat with the Americans and the teacher. During the delay, the teacher checked in for updates every 20 minutes or so getting more and more frustrated with the negligible news although somewhat proud of being the messenger to us non-bilingual Canadians. At the end of the hour and a half, she returned from another check-in, harried and grabbing at her luggage. A had joined her and other travellers for this last update and came back on the train car shortly after her saying that the train was not going to be moving any time soon and that we had to change trains. The train we were changing to was leaving at any minute (four platforms away, mind you) and was heading to Saarbrucken. We all moved quickly to the Saarbrucken platform, up the stairs, down the stairs, luggage bumbling and found seats on the slick commuter train. The train left the platform a mere three minutes after we boarded it.

While on the train a DB (Deutsch Bahn) train agent visited our car and explained that from Saarbrucken, we would have to take a train to Mannheim and from there we might be able to get to Frankfurt so as to continue on our journey. The DB agent was less than polished and of course blamed the French for the inconvenience and said that DB was doing their best to deal the problem which wasn't really their problem. It was shortly after this that I realized our not-nearly-loved-nor-utilized-yet guidebook to Prague was back in Metz. Quite a tragedy, but out of our hands at this point.

We arrived at Saarbrucken at about 1030 PM. Now what. The American ladies were in luck, since a train was waiting at a nearby platform for their desitnation. The reluctantly left us, despite their ticket onward, feeling as though the adventure we had all signed up for was too soon to end. We 30+ passengers, without a train. huddled on a platform that apparently was going to be bringing us somewhere yet in the evening somehow. In short order we heard news that a train was coming to meet us on that platform to get us to Frankfurt. I didn't really buy it because that would just be silly. Sure enough within 5 minutes, a DB locomotive pulled up with a group of French train cars to "Frankfurt" which looked an awful lot like the cars that got us to Metz. Yep, it was the very train with a German engine on it.

We laughed and laughed - the teacher less than impressed but pleased at herself for having led us all to this point like herding sheep to the pasture or something. We got back on our train, even our previous train car. I sat down and then went directly to find our Prague guidebook. No luck. A then sorted out that we were driving in the opposite direction and went the other way in the car to claim it. And sure enough... there it was, neatly stowed in the seat pouch for us to reclaim. Ahhh... Prague, here we come.