The T3sk3y Defenestrator

I’m not sure if things got more or less interesting today in the Tour de France. For those not following – today was “Black Friday” – a day that will be remembered as the day the biggest doping scandal in competitive cycling blew wide open. Here is a quick synopsis:

• May: Spanish police raid a house, find 200 units of blood labeled with nicknames
• Early June: Arrests reveal a list of nicknames and schedules for doping
• Mid-June: Investigations reveal the nicknames are the dogs of famous athletes, mostly cyclists
• Today: The list comes out, thirty riders are given the boot – including 4 of the top 5

As the dust settled, the carnage included Tour favorites Ivan Basso, Jan Ullrich, Mancebo and many more. Others, like Vinokourov, got caught in the crossfire when most of their team got booted. See, even though Vino is clean – you can’t start the tour without a 9-person team.

Here’s what happened. The busted doctor would remove blood, then administer drugs (usually EPO) to help endurance. Shortly before (or during) the race, their own blood would be transfused back in.

No, I’m not making that up.

Anyway, Heather is a huge fan of the Tour – and I’m not far behind. I’m now curious to see if it’ll be exciting and unpredictable or if it’ll be like the “Scrub Year” in the NFL where a bunch of nobodies played out the season to miniscule interest.

Like ErikM said.. “Somebody has to win!”

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Tuesday morning started with our first real European breakfast at Hotel Anna – a meat ‘n cheese tray, hard-boiled eggs, some cereal, yogurt, and fruit – and many warm beverages. No, not coffee or something that is supposed to be warm – I’m talking about the milk, the OJ, and the Diet Pepsi that they were thoughtful enough to supply. This would be a harbinger for the rest of the trip – it would be nearly impossible to get a cold beverage that wasn’t beer. It was delicious and filling anyway – and we were off for a day of touring.

It promised to be a blazing hot day – it was already bright sun and really warm at 9 AM. By day 2, I was already second-guessing my choice of packing. Our trip down to the castle on the tram made us realize how lucky we were the day before – we were stopped by the ticket police – who spoke no English but seemed to want to let us know that he knew there were “50 states!” in the US. I think that’s all he could say. Another quick metro observations – the Czechs love their dogs. They love ‘em so much they come into restaurants and they bring them right on the metro. Strange.

We popped out at the base of castle hill and had to make a steep climb up to the castle in the hot mid-morning sun. By the top, I was already a sweaty mess and was looking for a cool drink. I must have been over-dehydrated from the day before because it took me a few minutes to recover. A short rest in the shade while the ladies bought tickets for the castle fixed me right up.

By this time, the castle is jammed with tour groups. Apparently it always is. We started by entering the St. Vitus Cathedral – the National Cathedral for the Czech Republic. Curiously, it took several hundred years to build – and was only completed in the 20th century. This meant that the front half is medieval, the back half is modern. This extends to the stained glass, where they used contemporary artists to complete them. Altogether, it’s a very beautiful church.

The view from the top of St. Vitus

One of my cardinal rules of European travel is – if you can climb it, you should climb it. This means that the 285 steps to the top of the tower at St. Vitus were a challenge that couldn’t be ignored. When we arrived at the top, there were three things that I noticed:

1. Wow, what a great view of Prague
2. My seven-month pregnant wife demoralized many people by passing them on the stairs
3. I’m a sweaty mess for the second time of the day

After leaving St. Vitus, Heather continued to impress us with her resourcefulness by skipping the 20-woman line for the WC and walking straight into the mens – because there was no line.

One of the high points of the trip was the visit to the Old Palace. This is where the infamous “Defenestration of Prague” took place that started the Thirty Years War. In this most famous of defenestrations, the Bohemian nobility launched a couple of Imperial governors out of the window and into a ditch. (They survived, FYI). Yep, the Bohemians are crazy about throwing people out of windows.

The site of the Defenestration of Prague

After a little more touring, we left the castle and walked down to the Little Quarter for some sorbet. You’ll notice a trend over the next few days – multiple ice cream/sorbet breaks each day. On the way there, we passed the goofiest statues outside the Kafka museum – two guys urinating into a pool – aiming the stream up and down. Is it art?

Probably the most photographed site in Prague is the Charles Bridge. It’s jam-packed with tourists and vendors, but is still a must-see. We made our way from the Little Quarter to the Old Town Square by crossing the bridge – stopping frequently to take pictures and to even purchase one from a vendor.

We had lunch at an Italian restaurant called “Bellini”. After three days of Czech food, we all needed a break. I enjoyed the “Four Seasons” Pizza (and another cold Pilsner) while the ladies had pasta and salad. It turned into a relaxing 2 hour lunch break as we were out of the sun and on a relaxing side street. The sun was really brilliant that day – getting out of it was very nice. For example, we saw a tourist burned to a vibrant magenta at the next table while we were eating. Ouch.

After lunch, we made our way to the Old Town Square in Prague. The square is usually packed with people – today it was especially full because of the World Cup. They had a very large LCD screen assembled in the square showing the game between Korea and somebody else. I know this because the square was packed with Koreans that were obviously enjoying the outcome of the game. While we walked by, Korea scored and the crowd went absolutely nuts. The most remarkable point of this wasn’t that we were watching Koreans celebrate in Prague – it was that somebody actually scored in the game of soccer. Can you tell I’m not a fan?

Korean soccer fans cheering at the first score in an hour

One of the centerpoints of the square is the Astronomical Clock – a large complex movement that tracks the sun, the zodiac, the time, and the saint of the day. Really. To fit 365 saints around the dial, they had to pack them in a 12-point Gothic font, completely unviewable unless you were a foot from the clock. I think June 13th was for St. Joiaseudadfs day. At least I think that’s what it said.

On the return to our hotel, we passed through a large street market looking for trinkets. We were approached by a lady that was amazed we were from America and claimed she had friends in Oklahoma City. Heather, in a rare pregnant moment, responded with “Oh yes! California! That’s a state on the west coast!”. I responded with.. “Um.. try Oklahoma maybe?” We quickly realized she was a beggar when she asked for “A coin from our country for her collection”. Funny – I heard the same crap in India.

One interesting observation made in Prague – and all of Europe for that matter – was the respect given to mothers-to-be. Every time we got on public transportation, somebody would get up and give up their seat for Heather. It even got to the point where one old lady tried to get Heather’s attention by poking her in the butt to give up her seat so that Heather could sit. If only they knew Heather had already walked 10 miles that day without breaking a sweat! Heather also got a laugh out of the signs that read “Prago parking” on the road – but they didn’t appear to be special spots for expectant mothers.

That evening, we went back down to the Old Town Square to the Ungelt Jazz and Blues club to see a band called “Chicken Soup”. It was a really neat club – the stage was in a medieval vault underground and nobody in the room was more than 20 feet from the stage. They played a great mix of funky jazz and they all had some pretty good chops. We stayed ’til close and pretty much got thrown out by the tired staff that wanted to leave.

I had planned to get up early to photograph the Charles Bridge the next day, but being that it was about 1 AM – I wasn’t optimistic. Since it was already late, I decided to wander back to the bridge and shoot some night shots. I’m very glad that I did – they were some of the best shots of the trip!

The Charles Bridge in Prague at night

Once we were done, we realized the Metro was shut down for the night and we would have to either hail a taxi or hike it. When we looked at a map, we figured out that we were only a couple of miles from home so we could just walk. Of course, we didn’t realize it was uphill the entire way. We ultimately found our street for the hotel by accident and collapsed into bed exhausted at about 2:30 AM.

Check out all the photos at: Behind the Iron Curtain 2006

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I uploaded another batch of photos from Prague to my SmugMug site. These were all taken on June 14th as we toured the Jewish Quarter in Prague. Unfortunately, most of the sites didn’t allow photos so it wasn’t a big day for photos.

Check out all the photos at: Behind the Iron Curtain 2006

A super-long escalator leading down to the Metro line by our hotel

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Monday morning started out very early – we were up at 5 to catch a 6:30 AM train to ?esk� Krumlov. ?esk� Krumlov is a small medieval Czech town situated on the bend of a river that hasn’t been heavily commercialized like many others have in western Europe. It’s located about 4 hours (by train) south of Prague near the Austrian border. We originally didn’t plan to go to ?esk� Krumlov, but we didn’t want to see everything in Prague before Beth arrived.

Our adventure started badly – we didn’t have change to buy tickets for the metro. There are no change machines, no ticket booths, and no open shops at 6 AM. We finally decided to risk it and ducked on to the train without a ticket. Even though it was only two stops, it was a big risk since the train cops in Prague are vicious. I bet we were checked a half-dozen times while we were there. Fortuantely, this wasn’t one of those times and we made our train just in time.

We managed to find a seat in a compartment with an older Czech woman and a Canadian college girl that was on her way to Slovenia. Luckily, the conductor spoke enough English to explain that only the last four cars of the train were going to ?esk� Krumlov and we’d have to move before the last hour of the ride.

It was fun to see the Czech countryside on the way – it’s very pretty country and not unlike the area just south of the Twin Cities. No wonder New Prague was founded there! Curiously, we also passed through a town named Veseli on the way as well. For those not in the know, Veseli is just outside of New Prague in Minnesota. I was even able to see an entire train full of old Soviet tanks parked on a siding on the way down.

Old Soviet tanks parked on the railway line

We made it to ?esk� Krumlov at about 11 AM and we had about 5 hours before we had to catch our return train to Prague. We found our way to the city center fairly easily (it’s a small town) and were instantly blown away with how neat it was. It was all cobblestone streets, castles, ornate buildings, and shops. And, being Monday morning – it was almost empty. Of course, that meant the castle was closed – but we could still walk through the grounds. We got lunch at Na Lou�i – another Rick Steves recommendation. It’s a little Czech bistro that serves the hometown Eggenberg beer. My lunch was more protein and carbs – beef with dill sauce and a dumpling. Heather had fried cheese with ham – it was basically the grilled ham ‘n cheese from HELL. Very yummy.


The Town Square in ?esk� Krumlov

The rest of the afternoon was spent doing a walking tour of ?esk� Krumlov with a rented audio guide. It was very interesting, but went on a little too much about the architecture styles of each building. Fortunately, there were also enough tales of defenestration, murder, and mayhem – most involving the Ro�mberks – to keep things interesting. The views from all over town were absolutely postcard perfect.


A view across the valley in ?esk� Krumlov

The long trudge up to the castle and the scramble back to the train station left us very sweaty for the first – and FAR from the last – time on the trip. The train was no joy either – it arrived 25 minutes late to make the connection and it had to be over 100 inside. Our good “Amazing Race” juju held up and our connection in Ceske Budovice waited for us.

Side note: I have a bad habit of indulging a fantasy that I’m either hosting or participating in the Amazing Race. Getting Phil’s hosting job is my dream job. I made a point of adding lots of Amazing Race style commentary throughout the entire trip. I’m sure Heather loved it. Really.

We finally made the joyous reunion with Beth back in Prague at about 8:30. She was waiting in the pub across the street watching team USA getting owned by the Czech Republic team. I think we were being mocked by the locals. One just looked at me and said “KAPUT!”.

We took Beth back downtown through Wenceslas Square and we ended up at U Flecku – the oldest beer hall in Europe. You guessed it – more traditional Czech food and more great Czech beer with drunken Europeans singing soccer songs in the background. Beth and I washed down our dinner with Becherovka – with I think translates into something like “Tastes like wretched burning herbal bile” or something like that. Ugh.

Important point. If a liquor is described as “herbal” – RUN AWAY!! IT’S GOING TO SUCK!

After a really long day, we turned in right after dinner. All in all, it was a great day – especially considering it was a last minute decision to go to ?esk� Krumlov. Both Heather and I agreed that it was one of the high points of the trip.

See all of the pictures uploaded so far at: Behind the Iron Curtain 2006

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I posted another large batch of pictures from our trip to Eastern Europe over on my SmugMug site (teskey.smugmug.com). These pictures are from June 13th in Prague, Czech Republic. On that day – we visited the Prague Castle, the Old Town Square, and closed with some great night pictures.

The Charles Bridge in Prague

I’ll have the full report in the next day or two. In the meantime – go check out the photos. Also, please help rate them by giving them a “thumbs up” or a “thumbs down” – just hover the mouse over the upper right corner. Click the appropriate thumb and the top rated pictures will appear on my home page.

Here is the link to the pctures:
Behind the Iron Curtain 2006

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Our summer vacation to Eastern Europe got underway promptly at 7 PM on June 10th when we took off from Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport in the center of the back row of a NWA DC-10. We left a cool, grey day in Minnesota – little did we know those were the last clouds that we would see in 10 days!

When I traveled to India in 2005, I finally figured out how to sleep on an airplane. These tricks worked again, and I was able to snooze away the hours on the way to Amsterdam. By the time we landed on Sunday morning in Amsterdam, I had a solid 4-5 hours of sleep under my belt.

We had an hour or so to kill in Schipol Airport in Amsterdam – so we wandered the concourses and the top-notch shops. Shortly before boarding our KLM Cityhopper plane to Prague, we grabbed a quick sandwich to nibble on. We gobbled them down as we waited to board our plane.

I honestly couldn’t tell you how the flight went to Prague – because I remember very little of it. I’m not sure if it was fatigue, remnants of the Ambien I took over the North Atlantic, or the the warm sun – I fell asleep before the plane got off the ground. I didn’t actually wake up until the flight was on final descent into Prague. Now that is how to make a flight go fast! I do remember getting one of the most detailed exit row briefings of my life shortly before zonking out, however.

Getting to our hotel involved mastering the Prague public transportation system – which is always the first challenge in a new country. After a bus from the airport to the Metro, we caught the metro that got us within 3 blocks of Hotel Anna. We checked in, hauled our gear up to our room, and settled in for a quick nap.

Before crashing, I decided to get a beer from the front desk. This beer was a familiar name but an unfamiliar taste – and cost about a dollar. It was the Czech Budweiser – but it was anything but the King of Beers. See, in Plzen, they invented the Pilsner hundreds of years ago. About 300 years ago, a Czech company called Budweiser was formed. They make -really- good beer. About a hundred years ago in the US, another company called Budweiser was formed – and it’s crap. A few years ago, there was a lawsuit between the two companies because the Czech company thought Budweiser was giving them a bad name (imagine that!). So, as I remember the story, it ended with the two companies divvying up the world and the Czech company was going to sell as “Czechvar” here in the states. I’m sure there was a few gazillion dollars that changed hands, too.

My vote goes for the Czech version.

After an hour or so, we needed to go to Hlavni Nadrazi – the main train station – to get our sleeper car tickets to Krakow on Wednesday night. That’s always an adventure – train ticket people as a rule don’t speak English well. We somehow got the correct tickets as well as tickets for Cesky Krumlov for Monday.

Heather in Wenceslas Square on Sunday afternoon

We left the train station and went for a wander through town – passing down Wenceslas Square (yep – the same guy as our Christmas song. He’s their national hero). This square is where the Velvet revolution happened in ’89 resulting in a free Czechoslovakia. We continued from there down to the Vltava River (the main river running through Prague) and walked down it to the Dancing House.

The Dancing House

The Dancing House, by Frank Gehry, is also known as the “Astaire and Rogers building”. It’s sort of a small world thing – because Gehry designed the Wiesman gallery in Minneapolis as well – a structure you either love or hate. (I like it, for the record).

After the stroll, we went to a Rick Steves recommended traditional Czech eatery – the Hospoda u Nov�ka. Hospoda means “pub” or something like that in Czech. I decided to go really local and I ordered the pork and dumpling platter. This gave me a pork knuckle, some ham, and some other roast – along with two kinds of dumplings. It also contained two types of cabbage – red and not red. (read: sauerkraut). Of course, this all got washed down with a half-liter of whatever they were serving for beer. Each Czech watering hole only serves one brand of beer. Like they say – Only one woman and one beer per night.

After dinner, we went straight back to the hotel to turn in since we’d have a very early morning on Monday.

See all of the pictures at: Behind the Iron Curtain 2006

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I’m going to preface this post with a quick reminder that I’ve never been to Europe in the summer before. Every other time I’ve gone, it’s been either fall or winter / early spring.

Therefore, armed with that experience and the knowledge of the weather forecasts – I determined that I needed a wide variety of clothing on our Eastern Europe trip that would be suitable for anything that could come up. It could be 85 and sunny.. it could be 40 and rainy.. and everything in between.

It ended up being between 75 and 90 and sunny all ten days of the trip.

Yeah, that’s a good thing – but 90 and sunny is really, really, hot when you are touring on old cobblestone streets and town squares with no trees for shade.

Since we had nothing but heat and sun, 2/3 of my packing was for naught. I hauled around so many things that I never wore. It’s probably the worst packing job I’ve ever done.

List of things I packed but never used

• Jeans – 2 pair
• Black dress slacks
• Brown shoes
• Black shoes
• Socks – 9 pairs
• Belt – black
• Long sleeve shirt
• Rain jacket
• Umbrella
• Sweatshirt
• Fleece sweatshirt

Yep – in retrospect, I could have fit everything in a carry-on roller bag. Hmmmph.

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I had planned on getting the first day recap of our trip to Eastern Europe done tonight – but it’s going to be a major undertaking and will probably take a few days per day. That ought to keep everyone entertained for a month (or three). Until the next update.. here’s a quick photo teaser..

The statue of King Wenceslas in Prague’s Wenceslas Square

See the pictures from the first day on my SmugMug account at:
Behind the Iron Curtain 2006

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Heather and I just returned from a great 10-day trip to Eastern Europe this afternoon. We visited the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, and Austria in a whirlwind tour of countries that love their sausage and starch… and beer. It was so interesting going to countries that during my high school years were pretty much off-limits.

The Soviet soldier statue that formerly stood in Budapest

The weather was great, the food was even better, and I was called the “Luckiest Man in America” by a group of Scots due to my traveling companions (three lovely ladies). The loveliest of all – my 7-month pregnant wife – was a rockstar. We had a day in Budapest where we probably walked 12-15 miles – and I could scarcely keep up with her.

Heather, Beth, and Tamara in Budapest

I really wanted to provide updates along the way, but I don’t really like to advertise the fact that we are out of town. I also don’t really want to spend a ton of time in an internet cafe’.

So.. over the next couple of weeks, I’ll have the complete travelogue of Mark, Heather, Beth and Tamara as they travel through Eastern Europe.

Stay Tuned!

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Okay – let’s get something straight first.

I’m not talking about trying to get in somebody’s network, bank account, government computer, or any phun with the phone company.

I’m talking about taking a consumer device and um.. well.. ‘repurposing’ it. For those not in the know – often times, products are sold that aren’t quite what they should be or quite what they could be. They are rushed out the door before they work correctly – or they are sentenced to a lifetime of mediocrity because somebody was too cheap to add an important feature. Or, sometimes a company omits a feature to add ‘product segmentation’ – two different price points within their product line. A final case is the hardest one to stomach – when somebody decides that something shouldn’t be included because of a rule.

But T3sk3y – you do product development for a living – surely this is heresy!

Yeah, probably. I just feel bad sometimes for the unwashed masses that buy one of these sucky crippled products and waste their money – when all it takes is a little technology to turn that frown upside down.

I ran into an acute case of this recently. My old Verizon V710 gave up the ghost a month ago and it was time to get a new cell phone. Truthfully, I was planning on getting a RAZR. Small usuable electronics = good. When I went to the Verizon store, I saw a new sight – the sexy XV6700 – also known as the HTC Apache.

The Verizon XV6700 Smart Phone

Since I carry both a phone and a PDA – having one unit is a BIG plus. There are other convergence devices on the market – a) Treos never turned my crank b) Blackberries never turned my crank – and c) my oversize mitts I just can’t seem to use the miniature keyboards on the Treos and Blackberries. The thing that made this a go was the sliding keyboard. It is so nice to type on!

As soon as I get it home, I find out that you can’t have WiFi and the phone on at the same time. WTF?!?! Apparently Verizon neutered that. I also found out that you can’t use it as a bluetooth modem. Yep – Verizon again. I also found out that you can’t do OBEX – that’s Object Exchange over Bluetooth. Any guesses as to the culprit?

Then, it started to crash. Frequently. Daily. Multiple times per day. That’s a bad behavior for a phone! When it did work – it was unusably slow. It would sometimes take 3 seconds or so for the phone to pick up once you hit answer. No good.

Never one to be content with a bad device without first trying to subject my will upon it – I did a little quick Googling and found a very long list of “Tweaks and Hacks for the XV6700″ on HowardForums.com – the premier place for phone hacking. Very shortly, I found a method to purge my phone of all of Verizon’s *ahem* enhancements – and to get back the plain vanilla phone.

The results? Nothing short of WOW. It’s speedy fast – I haven’t had to reset in over a week – I can have WiFi and the phone on at the same time – I can do all the nifty Bluetooth things – and I’ve got lots more space available on the device for MY programs. It’s unbelievable how crippled that thing was before.

The really sad part is that people are buying these and getting stuck with something badly hobbled. A little self-modification – and it is a whole new device – that is capable of being all it can be.

… and I’m very happy.

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