Parlez-vous le français?

Oui!!

Okay, okay, so I answered that question like I was fluent or something. I am not just yet, but have made tons of progress in the past three days.

As you might have guessed, I'm back at it again, and am in language school- this time for French. Thanks to Switzerland having four official languages, we are now living in the French speaking part, and have said auf weidersehen to German. For the next two weeks I am spending three hours per day at school in Lausanne, then after that will move to going two days per week.

I'm excited and having fun trying to bring French back to the front of my brain. Now that I'm being reminded of the French I know, it doesn't take me nearly as long to recall words and sentence structure as it did when first learning German. Although, it is strange that occasionally when asked about a word, sometimes I can only come up with the German word. Never thought that would have happened, but after 18 months of being immersed in Basel, it's probably a pretty natural thing.

Where is Baby K you may wonder? She stays home with a babysitter while I'm in school. We're on the waiting list for creche (nursery), but you often have to wait quite a long time before getting a spot, so in the meantime, a babysitter it is. I gave her Baby K's schedule in French, and they seem to be doing well together. They get out and stroll, she feeds her, they play- you know, the typical baby stuff.

A reassuring pic from the babysitter on our first day apart

One thing I really like is that she is a local; she is Swiss and speaks French with Baby K. Now that I've been going to class and picking things up again, I try to communicate with her in French. This typically involves me speaking to her in French (simple things) and her speaking back to me in English (she knows some). We're making progress.

I have to wrap this post up now. I have homework to finish before Baby K gets up from her nap.

A bientôt!
(See you soon!)

Prague, take two

So it's back to Prague we go! After our parents' night out on Friday night, we hit the ground running on Saturday. BK was a little weary about the trip, with lots of questions about exactly what we were going to be doing because I didn't do the serious planning that I normally do. I looked at some stuff, knew the landmarks and areas we should see, but didn't have a ton of stuff booked and scheduled, like I normally do. Not sure why; but don't worry, things turned out just fine.

We started Saturday with a walking tour. For some reason we also started like amateur parents as well, forgetting Baby K's coat, mittens and hat. I'm not sure if we thought it was warmer than it was or what, but we seriously failed on that one, and then we didn't have time to go back and get them. At least there was a blanket in the bottom of the stroller and we had the winter lining on it. We stopped and bought the hat, mittens and a scarf.

Make-shift bundling

We went on the Royal Free Walking Tour. The guides work off of tips, but it's essentially free so they get you into their other tours available (which we did as well). We took this tour because it was ranked the best on Trip Advisor, and it was a really good experience.

Outside of the fact that there are a lot of people on the tour with you, our tour guide gave lots of great info, turning everything into an informative story that kept our attention. BK and I were both interested in hearing some of Prague's history since we had no clue about it prior to arriving, and the guide did a good job at incorporating that in as well, but not bogging you down too much.

In a nutshell, here's what we did in 2.5 hours (as to not make you take 2.5 hours to read this post)...

Astronomical clock

Old Town square

Rudolfinum

Old New Synagogue in Jewish Quarter

Franz Kafka statue

Spanish Synagogue

After we walked for the first tour we had a little less than an hour before the Castle district tour started. We figured we would probably just be wandering around otherwise, so we figured we might as well go on this one too. The Castle district is across the river from Old Town. We worked our way from the Astronomical Clock again, took the tram up and walked around the district. All of Prague is really old and charming, and this area does not disappoint either.

Starting our second tour

Monastery at the castle

St. Vitas Cathedral

Flying buttresses, back of cathedral

View of Old Town from Castle

Saturday night BK and I enjoyed another dinner out in Prague while Baby K slept soundly at the hotel. Sunday we took it a little bit easier and wandered around leisurely. We had brunch at Cafe Savoy, which feels much like a cozy Parisian cafe, then walked up Petrin Hill.

Cafe Savoy

Petrin Hill has a tower you can climb to the top of that was done by the same person as the Eiffel Tower and typically provides a great view of the city.  It was foggy the day we climbed to the top of the tower, but it was still a nice walk and climb to the top. We also stopped at a playground "for" Baby K, and got some good giggles from the merry-go-round and teeter totter.

Fun on the playground

Observation Tower

Cloudy Prague

Monday was our last bit of time in Prague and when the stomach bug came and got me. We were up and out relatively early and spent the morning exploring the Jewish Quarter. It was once the Jewish Ghetto, where no one wanted to go and where Jewish people were sequestered in a tiny little area of the city. It often flooded and was a nasty place to live. Now, it is one of the nicest places in Prague and a highly desired area to live.

Jewish Quarter

We did the walking audio tour of the Jewish Quarter, which consists of the museum, synagogues and cemeteries. The whole thing is extremely impactful, as there is such sorrow, discrimination and pain in all of these monuments. The Jewish Museum is a former synagogue which now has over 77,000 names of the Czech Jews who were killed during WWII, along with their date of birth and last known date of life- typically the day they were shipped to a concentration camp.

In the museum we also saw the Jewish cemetery. The Jewish population was only given a small plot of land for the cemetery, but it seems like it goes on and on. Because the city would never give more land for burying Jewish people, there are generations and generations piled on top of one another, dating back from the 1400s.

Jewish cemetery

BK and I decided that Prague is definitely somewhere we would visit again. We missed a few things we wanted to see and thought we would also like to a day trip outside of Prague. Of course, Baby K was a great traveler as usual, so I'm sure she'd be up for it as well.

Like many other places we've visited in Europe, go if you get the chance!

Prague + an unwanted gift

I'm sorry to report that our trip to Prague has been overshadowed by a nasty stomach bug I brought home, then passed to BK, who then passed it along to Baby K. Yuck! But now that we're all recovered, we can move on with life.

Prague was our last European destination of the year and somewhere we've had on our list for quite some time. It is a beautiful city and somewhere BK and I both agreed we would like to visit again. There's so much history in Prague, but I guess that's true about most of Europe. Being here, I'm constantly reminded just how young the US is.

We spent a long weekend in Prague- from Friday afternoon to Monday afternoon. Flying from Zurich, it's just an hour long flight to get there. Baby K was a little restless on the flight, but not all too bad overall. We arrived in Prague, got settled, then headed out to explore a little bit. We stayed at Unitas Hotel, which I would highly recommend. It is in a great location in Old Town, the room was perfect for us, breakfast was included (something that I seriously love), and they were helpful with anything we needed.

Our first evening we wandered around Old Town and across Charles Bridge, kind of getting a feel for the city. Charles Bridge connects Old Town and Lesser Town, which you go through to get to the Castle District. We enjoyed the sights and stopped at Kampa Park restaurant to have a drink on their terrace. It was fun for the three of us, and Baby K had an exceptionally good evening with us, being playful and cordial the whole time. It gets dark around 4:30 or 5:00 in Prague right now, so even though it appears to be late, it was really early evening, and quite chilly.

Something BK and I typically try to do anywhere we go is find a babysitter for at least one night when we're traveling. Everyone wants to know how we find someone we're comfortable leaving Baby K with. One thing is, we always do bath time and bed time ourselves, so that we essentially just need someone to physically be there while she sleeps. So how do we find this person? Usually the hotel can recommend a nanny placement agency who has a bank of people who have been checked out and are available for other jobs. Just contact them and they can typically send someone. Yay for us!

So Friday night we went to a restaurant close to the hotel, Klub Architektu. It had a great wine-cave type atmosphere and the food was good as well. We discovered that Czech waitstaff are typically a little standoffish; they want to get your order quickly, and leave you alone otherwise. After that we stopped at Bonvivant's CTC for one more drink. According to BK they made a really good Old Fashioned, and my cava was good as well. It was a great little place, and you could tell they really cared about the drinks they made and served.

So that's all for our first night. More to come on the rest of our weekend- we did LOTS of walking over the next few days, braving the chilly weather and seeing the sights.

More to come soon, but French starts tomorrow, so I need to get ready for that. I'm very excited and am hoping it all comes flooding back very quickly. Au revior!

Baking for Baby K

I'm excited to report that I have someone new to bake for...Baby K! I didn't really think about this possibility until recently when either my mom or sister asked me if I had teething biscuits for Baby K. Oh yeah, I forgot about those things.

This is my first time baking for Baby K, but it's not my first time cooking for her. I've been making her baby food since she started eating solids. I'm not opposed to feeding her store bought food, but I figure, I like to cook, so why wouldn't I cook for her? Not to mention that each packet of baby food is 1.95 CHF (about $2), and I can buy 2 pounds of fruit for 3.50 CHF; not much of a comparison there as far as cost goes. Every two weeks or so I spend a couple of hours making food and then we're set.

They were easy to make, and Baby K sat in the kitchen with me while we were baking. She wasn't always this excited about baking with me, but at least I caught a good one.

I used this recipe, which is made up of things she's had before (my main requirement). In addition to the other couple of ingredients, I used banana and avocado as my "pureed fruit". Doesn't sound too appetizing, but it works; they were easy to mash up and I didn't have to use another cooking utensil.

After I rolled my dough out, I was all excited to get to use my cookie cutters, as I don't typically make cookies that require a specific shape. I somehow overlooked the fact that all of my large cookie cutters seem to be in shapes that are related to dogs. So I have a dog bone, dog paw, dog house and a dog shape. All of the cute ones I have are miniature cookie cutters, which I did not want to use, as they would be too small for Baby K. For easy handing we went with the paw and bone. I apparently need to work on my collection of cookie cutters...

Regardless of what they look like, I think they were a complete success. They occupied her and stopped the fussing for quite a while. I think her favorite part of the biscuits was that she "got" to share with the dogs. Of course, the second I put her in their vicinity, they were all over that. They seem to think it looks like a dog treat as well. She was delighted to go ahead and give Toby the majority of the biscuit below. On the upside, at least he gently removes it from her hand, being gracious and all.

So when you see pictures of us out and about, and on our trip this weekend, don't be alarmed thinking she's eating a dog treat. Nope, just a teething biscuit that looks like a dog treat.