Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

I need a haircut.

Today

I can't remember the last time I went seven weeks between haircuts. Maybe back in Greece in 2022, but if not then ... maybe twenty years? More?

Hair styling was not a priority in the summer of 2022

It's a controversial subject, because while I (obviously) prefer short hair, both because it's far less prone to bed-head and hat-head and because I simply think it looks better, pretty much all the women in my life, whose taste I inevitably prefer to my own, insist it looks better long. But ... ugh, hair over the ears, hair sticking in weird positions, etc.

I mean, it's not even that long, obviously. Imagine if I went another month! I shudder to think.

When I lived in Prague from 2014-2017, I went to a hairdresser's about four or five blocks away, where Zuzanna, who became quite familiar with my hair-styling wishes, consistently gave me the haircut I wanted. Indeed, as her style was to wash my hair both before and after the haircut, and as I am a sucker for getting my hair professionally washed, I loooked forward to these appointments with great enthusiasm.

Me with a Zuzanna-haircut in 2015

She moved to another place four or five months before I left Prague, though, and although her replacements were fine, it wasn't the same. 

When I moved back to Prague this December, though, Filip — who was, once, in the special-medicated-shampoo-selling business, and thus was fairly attuned to hairdressers in the neighborhood — mentioned that he believed Zuzanna's new boutique was somewhere in our neighborhood, though he didn't know exactly where. So, needing a haircut, immediately after signing my lease on December 10, 2024, I headed out in the direction he had vaguely waved at.

I didn't find her, but I found one of the "hip" men's barbershops that have proliferated in recent years, with "flair" on the walls and an ethic that says "come and pretend you're living in small-town America in the 1950s, but the barbers all have perfectly-groomed beards and are in their 20s and will charge you $45 for a 15-minute haircut."

I shrugged and went in, and indeed, got a perfectly good haircut.

But it wasn't what I wanted. So on Monday this week, unable to put it off any longer in deference to my female friends' wishes, I walked down my street again, and buzzed at the first hairdressers' I saw (ignoring the "hip" barbershop right next door). Who opened the door but Zuzanna, who recognized me immediately! Pretty impressive, for someone she hasn't seen in over eight years, and had no reason to expect. I asked for an appointment, and she said her next availability was next Monday, an entire week away!

I hemmed and hawed, but I finally decided I could allow the hair to grow for one more week — and if it reached the floor in that time I would just tuck it in my shoes.

So it'll be a big week next week: Monday I have a business meeting with Ales where we expect to see full beta versions of our big product, then haircut-with-Zuzanna. Thursday all my things arrive from the US, and I'll spend the next few days unpacking, arranging, and making my current "apartment" a home. And then the following Monday I expect to hear about my visa application, which will determine if I'll be staying here or leaving the Schengen zone to set up shop somewhere else (Thailand? Zanzibar? Jamaica? Norway? England?) for three months, during the appeal process.

But it starts on Monday, with a haircut. Thank goodness. Man, I need it.

Groomed David, 2017

Road Trip to Nürnberg

Good, long day yesterday.

Filip and I drove the approximately-four-hours (including stops to recharge his electric car) to Nürnberg to attend the 2025 Spielwarenmesse — the largest annual toy & game fair in the world.  We had been given guest passes by my friend Rob Feltes from Tucson, who was there to represent his Arizona-based toy-and-puzzle-making company, and, when he learned that Filip and I were exploring a card-game business opportunity, invited us to come and experience the Spielwarenmesse in all its glory.

So Filip picked me up outside my apartment at 7 am, and we got to Nürnberg without incident about 11. We changed from our road-trip clothes into something a little bit nicer, and walked the football-sized parking lot to the entrance.

Only another 200 meters and we're there!

Finally!

Craziness. According to its website, at least, the event — the largest event of its kind in the entire world — hosts 2354 exhibitors from 68 countries, in a 165,000-square-meter space, hosting some 57,000 visitors. It's a multi-day event, so it's possible not all 57,000 people were there yesterday, but you couldn't prove it by us. 

Not Filip

The space alone is enormous — larger than the largest airport terminal I've ever been in, with 12 separate (and each individually enormous) halls, divided into stands, spaces, and rooms, with more toys, dolls, games, and puzzles than you could possibly imagine — as well as some sort of only-tangentially-related things you might not expend to find, like some baby clothes, fireworks, body-paint, balloon-and-ribbon vendors, sporting goods, strollers, playground equipment, and just so ... much ... more. It was absolutely overwhelming.

Really difficult to capture the scope and energy of the place

Filip and I spent the next six hours or so walking around, shaking our heads, laughing, experimenting, testing, looking for (and at) potential competitors, and trying to learn about how the industry works. Also lunch in one of the ... I don't know ... 4 large restaurants, which do not include the 6/7 separate cafes and imbisses and additional ice cream stands and beer taps.

Ferrari-branded scooters, anyone?

It was a little surreal, honestly, to be in this one enormous convention center filled to the brim with multi-colored toys and games and whirlibobs and thingamajiggers, including a number of larger-than-life in-costume characters walking around for photo ops (like the Paw Patrol puppies) ... and no kids, who are absolutely not allowed at the event. 

No kids!

It was much busier than this, honestly.

Also surreal to walk past one stand or room or exhibitor-platform and see a full table of adults handling the products, seriously discussing how the games are played, how the toys worked, and so on, all with the eventual aim of making those lucrative deals. "So tell me more about this 'He-Man' I'm holding in my hand? What are his powers? Does his head come off?"

Much business is done in this festive atmosphere

Fairly exhausted, at about 5:30 Filip and I headed back to our car, then drove into the center of Nürnberg to meet Rob and his colleague Rachel for dinner at one of Trödelstuben, which first opened its doors in 1893 — one of their favorite local haunts, as they come to the event every year. 

A quote posted prominently on the restaurant's website reads, "He who has not
been inTrödelstuben,has not been in Nürnberg." Now I have been in both.

A delicious (and very German) dinner of spätzle, beer, and sausages followed. Then we took a photo to commemorate the unexpected meeting, and Filip and I headed back on the Autobahn towards Prague. I finally arrived home to a hungry cat around 12:30 am.

Thanks, Rob!

Today, back to ordinary life. But nice to sprinkle in some excitement once in a while.

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Oh, a little extra news! I received an email yesterday, while on the road, saying that all my things will be arriving from Tucson next Thursday! Needless to say, I'm tremendously excited. I keep thinking of new things I'll have access to. My cheese grater! My knives! Floor rugs! All my clothes! My bicycle! My second tennis racket! My books!

I can't wait. 

Here's a photo of me in my local coffee shop, Cafe Zive Kytky, from last week, but you can imagine it as me reading that email yesterday.

Knuckleheads We Were Not

I suppose it would be disingenuous or clueless to suggest that I grew up in a community devoid of racism, but ... at least overt and undeniable examples of it were few and far between, and, as a result, when they did come, they were almost more confusing than anything else. Of my five or six very best friends, at least before I moved to Germany at the age of 10, one was Cuban, one was Chinese-American, and two were African-American. My neighborhood was working class and diverse, and all the kids played together, had sleep-overs, and hung out pretty consistently. Perhaps some families noticed and were made uncomfortable with it, but mine certainly didn't, and wasn't.

And, as I mentioned in my book, while growing up as a rabid sports fan, many of my favorite athletes were people of color, including the pro football and basketball players we all pretended to be on the playgrounds (OJ Simpson and Dr. J), as well as my favorite Detroit Tigers (Aurelio Rodriguez and Ben Oglivie) and my favorite Michigan football player (Dennis Franklin). I guess I can't say I didn't notice they were Black, but I don't remember paying much attention to it. I simply didn't care one way or another. (I also idolized Larry Csonka and Bob Griese and Mark "The Bird" Fidrych, who were all white).

When you're 7, you can idolize a career .237 hitter

I recognize that all doesn't necessary prove anything. There's that amazing scene in Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing where Spike, in character as Mookie, challenges his co-worker Pino (John Turturro) to explain why he (Pino), is so dismissive and offended by Blacks, when so many of his favorite athletes and musicians are, in fact, Black.

from Do the Right Thing

So I recognize that saying "my favorite musician is Black" and "I had Black friends growing up," doesn't prove much.  And I'm sure there are myriad ways I subconsciously reflect cultural assumptions and stereotypes. I'm just saying, for what it's worth, I at least wasn't aware of treating friends of color any different than white friends, or of thinking of them differently. Who knows?  

Hmm. I began this post actually just meaning to provide some context before transitioning to my actual point, but then became aware of how it sounded and started backpedaling. I should, I suppose, delete this all and start again, but it's ok. You can join me on my mental journey. 😊

Ironically, this was going to be a short post. It just occurred to me, recently, that, even though the four/five of us in our apartment in college — me, Aaron, Doug Baker, and Chris Cantu, plus Doug Karsch in the summers — where all white, with predictable middle-American, middle-class, pedestrian interests (including a lot of sports, both playing and watching, multiple episodes of "Cheers" each day, and pizza), in fact, especially in terms of the movies we liked, we were surprisingly progressive.

I suppose a lot of that came from me — even in this essentially pre-VCR stage, my love of movies was long-standing, and in high school I often spent Friday or Saturday nights at one of the on-campus-movie-society showings of older or foreign movies like Yojimbo, What's Up, Tiger Lily, Notorious (which I remember seeing at the Michigan Theater with Aaron), The Big Sleep, and The Navigator.

Once in college this interest continued, and I became the head of the student film society at the University of Michigan, with an office at the Union, where I was able to book and show movies like Bulldog Drummond, The Maltese Falcon, The Lion in Winter, and The Navigator.

No, not Flight of the Navigator. New Zealand, not Hollywood.

Quick Digression:

It’s funny, now that I think about it. I had a very bourgeois and middle-class appreciation for movies. I liked them, and I had seen enough, over the years, that I could spot references, cinematic cliches, and specific sources of inspiration that most of my friends couldn’t (or weren’t interested in). I was hardly an aesthete or a snob — I enjoyed Die Hard and Aliens as much as my friends did, and I was never particularly engaged by the avant-garde. Still, several of my friends, over the years, have annoyed me by mistaking my ability to speak somewhat knowledgeably about movies for some kind of nose-in-the-air attitude about my opinions. More than one has said, “well, I’m not like you — I only care about whether I enjoy the movie or not.” Forcing me to say, “you think I … apply a higher standard than that? You think I’ll be critical of a movie I actively enjoyed? You think I’ll sniff disapprovingly, while sneering, “well, sure, it was entertaining, if that’s all you want."??? 

Entertaining and engaging is/are the standard(s) for everyone, obviously. It may be, of course, that people who have seen a lot of movies are actively impressed by a smaller percentage of them than those who haven't — which is true with any form of human endeavor. But the question of whether or not I like a movie is separate from whether or not I enjoy movies I like, if that makes any sense.

Digression over. 😀

Back to the Point (finally):

What does this all have to do with Prague, you say?

Nothing, really. I just found myself thinking how surprising it might be to some people that the four or five young men in our small apartment on Geddes road in Ann Arbor during college, though in all apparent ways fairly sterotypical in their “guyness” — straight, white, hormonal, and athletic, who loved playing, watching, and talking about sports pretty much all the time — also made a point of seeing John Sayles’ Brother from Another Planet and Spike Lee’s She’s Gottta Have It when they came out on VHS, and saw Lee’s School Daze, John Singleton’s Boyz in the Hood, and Kid 'n Play's House Party in the cinema when they came out, both times clearly being in the minority in the movie theaters at the time. (An experience I had, even more pronounced, when I was one of maybe five white Americans in an otherwise all-Black Boston screening room when Juice came out several years later). The idea that those movies were "not for us" never entered into our mind.

Eh. I don’t claim we were unique, or in any way revolutionary. I just found myself struck, last week, at the unlikeliness of us four young, white, Michigan-football-loving, middle-class Midwestern men knowing who Mars Blackmon was and quoting him to each other years before most of America was introduced to him. And proud of us for it.

I guess all this boils down to: We were fairly traditional and boring, back then. But knuckleheads we were not.

Pains, All Around

 

Not shown: Bowl of borsch

Lunch special today at Pivnice U Sadu: Bowl of borsch with sour cream (delicious!) followed by chicken breast stuffed with mozzarella and dried tomatoes, with fried potatoes and a carrot salad. Washed down with a Pepsi Max. Total, including tip: 330 Czech Crowns, or $13.80. Five stars.

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My sleep schedule is creeping forward in a way I'm not really happy about. Woke up today at 7:20, stumbled out, fed Catalina, had some yoghurt while I watched the highlights of last night's NFL games, watched an episode of Law & Order, then stumbled back to bed at 9:00 am and fell asleep until 10:20 or so, when I woke up to a headache. 

I don't like this. Tonight will aim for bed around 10 pm, see if I can shift things back. I'd like to wake up no later than 6:30, and ideally around 6:00 am.

The subject of the headache only leads to other physical ailments though. Pretty much ever since I got to Prague in early December I've had really unprecedented soreness and aches in my right foot, ankle, and shin/calves, which has been especially problematic during tennis, making it more impressive that I've been able to win a few tournaments, since running has been sort of difficult — meaning not only do I not go as fast as normally, but I find myself hesitant to launch myself into a run for a ball, as I know how painful it'll be.

Today I woke up to that as well, but then also a really painful back, for some reason. The combination has made it especially difficult to put on socks and shoes, for instance, and I'm walking fairly gingerly.

I wasn't that bothered by it at first, of course. I assume it was something simple that would go away in a couple days or a week or two. And it does wax and wane, certainly — some days it's far less pronounced than others. But it is lingering, and it's annoying. It's connected to my age, of course. This is the kind of problem that I can only assume will become more common in coming years.

Still and all, I'm really hoping it's not a permanent addition to my life. I didn't tweak or injure my leg, and I don't know what's going on. All I can figure it, as these ailments did arrive just when I started wearing my casual Sketchers shoes pretty much every day, and walking in them a great deal, instead of only a couple days a week, and mainly when driving, as I had been in the US, that it's somehow related to them. They're flimsy, and comfortable — easy to slip on and take off, which is especially useful when your body would rather not bend down to tie shoes — so perhaps they're not actually giving my feet the kind of support they need, as I reach my late 50s?

The problem?

The good news it that the pair of shoes I have now is pretty worn, and it wouldn't be a problem to throw them away. The bad news is that I've already bought another pair to replace these when they're done — they were on sale shortly before Christmas, so I thought "why not?". I don't think the pair I bought is exactly the same kind I have now, so perhaps they'll be better? 

I think my plan is to wear some running or tennis shoes for the next week or two, to see if that makes any difference. (I could also go buy some shoes famous for their support, but I've spent something like $600 on shoes since I got here already — I'd just as soon not invest more right now). If not, then at least I'll know it's not the shoes. If my pain does go away, I'll probably limit my use of the new Sketchers to walking to the store or for quick errands, or if I'm traveling —easy on/easy off is very helpful in airports, and if I'm sitting on an airplane or train it won't be a problem).

One way or another, I'd really like to go back to feeling quick sometime soon. 😀

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Before going to the gym this morning I stopped at a tiny little coffee shop next door and had my morning cappucino. As I put on my coat to head out, the young blond woman behind the counter, noticing my M hat, said to me, "did you go to U of M?"

Not my hat, but you get the idea

This kind of stopped me in my tracks, as almost nobody here even knows what the hat is from, let alone knows to say "U of M." 

Turns out her parents — mother Czech, father American — met in Ann Arbor, and she was born and lived her first five years in my old home town, though she's lived here for the last 15 or so. Small world.

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At the gym itself, getting ready to get on elliptical machine, arranging my headphones, a guy approached me. "How are you doing!?" I said I was fine, and he said, "You're American, right?" I said yes, I was, and he said, "you know how I could tell?! Because of your optimism, the look of positivity on your face. You can always tell!"

I murmured my amazement at his deductive skills, and said something like, "you sure were right!", but then got back to my headphones, and I think successfully indicated that this was not a conversation I had any real interest in continuing. I think he — an American too, by the way, based on his personality and American accent — got the message, in any event, and we didn't speak to each other again during my time there.

I don't know. He may be right, I guess. Maybe I walk around with a big ol' American grin on my face. Could be. Or maybe he picked up how I was dressed or some other subtle cues. Who knows? In any event, I think maybe he kind of hoped I would immediately join in a conversation with him about how dour and drim Czechs are, but I wasn't in the mood. 

Besides. I didn't really move here to meet Americans, to exchange our views on how much happier Americans are than Czechs. How dull. I enjoyed the brief interaction with the young woman in the coffee shop more.

But maybe on a day where I didn't have a headache and my back didn't hurt it would have been better. His bad luck.

Sometimes You're the Windshield — A Happy Encounter with the Department of Police for Foreigners

The cool logo of the Department of Police for Foreigners

It turns out that the company shipping all my stuff from Tucson to Prague needs a bunch of information from me, including proof that I am registered here. As every foreigner who plans to stay in Prague for more than three days is required to register with the police, so I took care of that my first week here, right?

Well, I never got around to it, and I had sort of just decided to wait until I moved here officially, after receiving the Business visa. ("Officially," of course, being an interesting term, as what would make my move "official" is me registering with the police, so it's not actually "officialness" I was waiting for).

Anyway, as the shipping company requires proof-of-registration before moving forward, I had no option but to head down to the local police station at which such registrations are done — fortunately, only three tram stops from my place. I could have done so yesterday, but the website I looked at recommended going early to beat the lines, and so I decided to wait until this morning.

Pretty much all the trams at my local "Viktoria Zizkov" tram stop go directly to the stop near the police station, so I got on the first one that came and headed off. Of course, it turned out to be the one tram that didn't go that direction, and eventually turned off the line and headed blocks to the West. Sighing at the inevitability of my life, I got off at the first opportunity — at the Flora mall ̈— and retraced its route, then turning right and getting to the police station about 5 minutes before it opened.

The Brutalist

This is already a long post than the act required. I got in, was given a number by a police officer helpfully standing next to the number-giving machine, and was called to a window in about two minutes. I explained to the nice policeman who helped me that I needed to register, and told him I knew I would have to pay the 3000-crown (about $125) late fee. He took my information, even apologizing (twice!) about the late fee, explaining that he was not responsible for it and that it was mandatory, and went back to his desk and computer.

Not too Kafka-esque, actually

After about three minutes he came back and told me it was my lucky day, because it turns out my landlord had registered me when I signed the lease, so I not need to register at all — and no fee of any kind, late or otherwise, was necessary.

And that was it. I went home, an unexpected $125 burning a hole in my pocket.

Just ... even when you imagine a friendly policeman in the US, do you imagine him apologizing to you, twice, that he needs to charge you a mandatory penalty because you purposefully delayed complying with the law? Imagine, for instance, an immigrant in the US failing to notify the authorities of his presence. Now imagine those authorities apologizing for the inconvenience.

Image — I'm not kidding — from www.policechiefmagazine.org

Sometimes, this place is really charming.

 

Very (Lunch) Special

One of my absolute favorite things about living here in Prague is the daily lunch specials at essentially every real restaurant here (as distinguished from the fast-food kebab shops or pizza-by-the-slice places).

These restaurants literally change the specials every day, posting the changes each morning outside their restaurants — usually with one or two kinds of soup and four or five different entrees to choose from. These specials are usually inexpensive — mine today cost something like $8, including a Pepsi — and, most importantly, extremely fast. The chefs make significant quantities of those particular options in advance to help workers on short lunch breaks get their food fast ... usually within 3 or 4 minutes.

These days, most places list their daily offerings on their websites as well, so you can scan all the places in your neighborhood to find the meal you're particularly enthusiastic about.

It's awesome.

Today I walked the 150 feet or so to the very old-school pub/restaurant ("restaurace") Filip and I have had a few after-dinner beers in over the past few weeks — although it's only about 75 feet from his front door, he had never been in it before — and got myself a quesadilla. (I also ordered a side order of fries, which confused the waiter, but I wanted to know how good the fries were for down-the-road possibilities).

Translated, their website's "About Us" section says: "Welcome to the website of Restaurant U Houdků , located in Žižkov, about 300 meters from the Husinecká stop, [and a] 10-minute walk from the Main Train Station. This is a stylish, cozy and equipped restaurant. We offer excellent and varied cuisine, where everyone will surely choose their favorite - soups, ready meals (Mon-Sun). There is also an outdoor terrace. Of course, there is also a rich selection of drinks. You can pay in cash, but we also accept the above payment cards and meal vouchers. You will be served by friendly and professional staff who will try to fulfill all your wishes!"

I'm a little skeptical about that last promise, but otherwise, it's a nice, old-fashioned place. Their website says the restaurant opened in 1923. Based on the photos, I can believe it.

I wonder if "all [their] wishes" were fulfilled.

The funny thing is, this makes it sound like it's some kind of well-known institution here. It's not. It's on a side street, and it is — now — a fairly dingy, old, tattered pub. Not at all the kind of place you'd want to impress visitors with. Just the kind of place where you could get to know some regulars and have a Kozel or a Pilsner at the end of the evening, perhaps over a game of chess or laughter with friends about political insanities around the world.

I like it.

The opposite of "upscale"

Anyway, I've gotten off track. It's 3:30 as I write this, so they've already taken today's lunch menu down from their website and replaced it with tomorrow's, which ... well, you can see for yourself, in both Czech and (via Google Translate) English versions.

Yes, that word on the top is "Thursday" — try to pronounce THAT.

Maybe the Serbian pork slice?

Hmmm. I don't know. Looks like Spravovna tomorrow has 1/2 roasted baby chicken with lemon and herbs, plus mashed potatoes. Now we're talking!

"Seratonin" Means "I Forgive You" in Czech

Just isolated thoughts today.

Food-Service Language Issues

First, while I'm glad to hear that a Chinese restaurant will be opening soon right down the street from me, I'm not sure they're getting the most bang for their marketing buck. Seems like, here in the Czech Republic, if you're going to advertise in English, you should make sure ...

Also ... "Black Royal?" Asian food?

On a related note, I'm writing this in the Cafe Żivé Kytky that I mentioned a couple weeks ago. Downstairs is a vegan burger place that, when I first lived in Prague, I assumed was a goth club of some kind. In the abstract, or in the context of a goth/hardcore club, it's a great name — probably my favorite name of any restaurant or bar in the world. But it's a terrible name (and logo) for a vegan hamburger restaurant. All I can assume is that the person who thought of the name was so (justifiably) proud of it that he insisted on using it regardless of the actual kind of restaurant they were opening

BelzePub — that's genius!

Cafe Żivé Kytky was crowded when I got here this afternoon, and the only open spot was at one of two small square tables that had been pushed together, with a young couple sitting (and maybe breaking up?) at the other end. I asked them if I could sit at that open spot, and they said "sure,"  so I sat down and stared at my cappuccino for a bit, trying not to disturb them.

They were both Czech, and eventually, when they got past whatever drama had been happening when I first arrived (she with tears in her eyes, neither of them really looking at each other, neither of them really talking beyond short sentences followed by long silences), things got a bit lighter. At which point, though I couldn't understand what they were saying, I did discover that Czech is, these days, peppered with a lot of familiar-to-my-ear phrases and words. That is, unless "Great British Bake-Off" and "Twin Peaks" and "Reality Shows" and "seratonin," sprinkled as they were in otherwise purely Czech conversation, are actually just normal Czech words that happen to sound familiar to me. 

It's possible, I guess. Maybe "seratonin" means "I forgive you" in Czech. Who knows?

David's Adventures Abroad

I played tennis with Ales at the Hamr-Zabehlice club this afternoon — the same club I went to with Rick and Nick a few years ago, where Nick and I played in a drizzle for several hours, and then the three of us got some good food. It's a beautiful club, with a little wooden bridge over a good-sized burbling brook. 

Hamr Záběhlice

Nothing remarkable about the day, really, but I did experience the kind of thing that I feel only happens to me en route to the club. I had happily discovered that a bus that stops directly outside my building goes directly to the club, so the trip that in previous years required transferring and 45 minutes is now a no-brainer. So I got on the mass-transit app and bought myself a ticket and walked out to the bus stop two minutes before it arrived. While I waited I tried to connect my headphones to the phone, but for some reason they weren't connected. I've discovered, over the past year or two, that when this kind of thing happens, I need to restart the phone, so no problem. Once restarted, the phone asked for the PIN code. And wasn't satisfied on either of my first two attempts with the one I've been using FOR YEARS.

Only then did it say I needed to enter my "O2" pin-code — that is, the one connected to the SIM card I just bought a couple weeks ago, with my Czech phone number. Which meant that I couldn't restart the phone without it ... which meant that the bus ticket I had just bought was inaccessible, so that, were I to be stopped by a bus-police guy, I wouldn't be able to demonstrate that I had purchased it.

Sighing, I walked back to my apartment, trying to ignore the bus that came, right on time, behind me as I crossed the street, went upstairs got the PIN code (which still didn't work, so I had to use the PUK code I got as well), and then changed the PIN code back to the one I'm familiar with, and ... ordered an Uber to get me to the club on time.

If I hadn't bought the ticket BEFORE connecting the headphones, or if I hadn't needed to connect the headphones, none of this would have happened. But I did, and therefore paid for the bus ticket in vain, and needed to pay for an Uber. Another seven dollars, down the drain.

All this, to listen to a Crystal Palace podcast

No Guts No Glory

One thing I didn't mention in my tennis summary yesterday was my pride in three specific shots in the finals: 1) Serving at 2-4, with that hole about to become to big to recover from, I tossed the ball up on a serve and saw, out of the corner of my eye, him creeping in — and made a last second adjustment to hit the ball much harder than I had on any serve before then, which he was unprepared for and unable to return; 2) at 5-5, 30-40, with him serving, he hit a weaker cross-court shot to my backhand than usual, and I ran around it, screwed my courage to the sticking point, and ripped a down-the-line winner to win that game; and 3) serving at 6-5, 30-40, I saw him taking up a position ever-so-slightly wider than usual (which made sense, because that's where every serve had been going, and fairly weakly), so summoned up the energy and went for it down the t, and got an ace to bring it to deuce.

These shots are unusual for me, both because, in tournaments (or, in the US, in league matches), my overriding instinct, which I've discovered I can't turn off, is not to make mistakes — not to give away free points — and trust my legs and defense to keep me in points until I finally get to the net or until they make mistakes. This is good against weaker players — consistency, in tennis at this level, is itself an under-rated weapon. But against better players it can get me in trouble, because my relative inability to push them back (because hitting deep, after all, increases the chance that I'll hit it long, giving them a free point) allows them to step up into the court and hit winners past me.

And that happens a lot in these tournaments against good players. Indeed, after I won the finals, my opponent, Filip, said, with some frustration, that he prefers — and is better at — games with people exchanging rockets from the baseline, whereas my softer shots kept dragging him in to unfamiliar and uncomfortable positions. I could see it happening. I actually apologized to him after the match, because that makes it sound like it was a strategic move on my part, and instead it comes from tightness, and an inability to let 'er rip.

Anyway, the point is, with all of those three shots I described up above, I did let 'er rip, in stressful points of the finals. It shows, I think, that I have the skill to match up with a lot of these players even with the kinds of tennis they prefer, and that, when forced to, I can ramp it up a bit. It also shows that I'm thinking, during matches, and when I become aware that they're recognizing my tendencies and trying to take advantage, I can switch things up.

What I assume my forehand looked like.

Don't get me wrong. I still lose often, and even yesterday I needed tie-breakers in two matches to win. I'm hardly over-confident. But I was proud of myself for taking the risk inherent in those three shots, which is not usually how I play.

Little Bit Good, Lotta Bit Lucky

I have most of my next post ready to go, but not quite, and I don't have energy to complete it this (Sunday) evening, so I thought I'd summarize today's tennis tournament, quickly.

It was at the LTC Modrany club, which is among the hardest for me to get to on mass transit, if it's not actually the hardest. Took me over an hour to get there. Bus, to bus, to 10-minute walk.

Hop, skip and a jump

Happily, though, I had a ten minute wait while transferring from one bus to another — enough time to get a cappuccino and a croissant from a convenience store (the 20-year-old woman behind the counter got out her calculator to figure out what change she owed me for a 37-crown charge paid with a 50-crown piece, but, sure enough, she got it right!).

Then, while I waited outside for my bus, I was able to take two more photos.

A nice, absolutely accurate screen on this urban bus stop showing how long until the
next bus shows up, for various lines

There is no chance they don't know what this word means, but I have to admit ...
I can't figure this marketing scheme out.

Anyway, once there, I started playing. I won't go into too much detail, but it was a successful tournament. Started out with a very tight match — I won 7-6(4) against a guy playing his first tournament, though it was tough. He was up 2-0, he was up 5-3, 30-0, and he was up 3-0 in the tiebreak. Playing new players is always tough — the rules require everyone to play their first match at a "Sport" level tournament, but that means they could in fact be much worse (and will play subsequent tournaments at the "Start" level), or much better (and will play subsequent tournaments at the "Challenge" level). In addition, even if they are at the right level, because nobody knows how good they are, sometimes you get a really strong player in your group when you wouldn't have had they known how to seed him correctly.

That's what happened here. He was really good, which wasn't ideal for my very first match on a cold day. Still, somehow, I got the job done.

Next match was against Miroslav Lehocky, the same guy I was super lucky to beat in the last tournament 10-8 in a tiebreak, after I rolled a ball over the next for a winner on his match point. He had played in yesterday's "Masters" tournament as well — playing in six sets before losing in the final — and had just finished his first match of the day today ... and he's 69 years old! I beat him 6-0 this time, though we went to deuce in either four or five of those games.

That meant, because of how the other matches played out, I had already won the group with one left to play — and that was against Martin Pech, who I've never lost to in four matches over the years, all of them fairly easy wins. We stayed true to form, and I won 6-0, again, putting me into the semifinals.

I then took a break for a small Pilsner.

I mean, I'm in the Czech Republic, right?

My semifinal was against a guy I played in my very first tournament here in late November, when I beat him 6-3. He has a killer forehand — in both matches he must have hit 8 outright winners against me with it — and is a lefty, making it a little more difficult for me to find his backhand, as my natural shot goes to backhand-for-righties. But I started, after seeing another winner rocket past me, to focus on getting it to his backhand, and I ended up beating him pretty easily, 6-2.

Putting me in the finals against Filip Tesař, who I played once before — in a tournament a year and a half ago, where our really close match was at 4-4 when the rains came, forcing us inside, where we got a photo op with recent Wimbledon champ Marketa Vondroussova. That match was never finished.

He's the guy right to the right of Vondroussova — our right — in the gray t-shirt

That match in July or August 2023 was crazy. He would hold his serve easily, and then I would need two or three deuces to hold mine each time. It was 4-4, but I was hanging on by my fingernails.

I was not optimistic this time either, as I had watched him play — and destroy — the guy I beat in the first match of the day in his semifinal, 6-3, with the two of them exchanging really hard, nice, deep shots back and forth, in a way I cannot.

Still, I was already happy just making the finals, and heck — you never know, right?

Sure enough, although at one point he was up 4-2 and had several game points to go up 5-2, I hung in there, and served for the match at 5-4. And lost that game. And served again for the match at 6-5. And lost that game. At which point I was completely satisfied. I had taken him to the limit, could hold my head up, and go home to my pizza. I even told myself not to worry about his seven exhortations of "yesss!" and "pod'" ("come on," in Czech), though my friends know that deep down that was irritating me. 👿

He won the first point of the tie-break ... and then I reeled off the next seven, to win going away, 7-1. Again, as in the semis, I just focused exclusively on his backhand, which wasn't bad at all, but it was a purely defensive shot, so he'd eventually either give me a short ball I could put away, or would himself miss one. Either way, I was able to outlast him. And, unlike his semifinal opponent, who went toe-to-toe with him, I didn't really have that kind of consistent power, so I moved him in and back — and my defense kept points alive much longer than other players he played against — and he just wasn't as comfortable trying to hit short shots hard ... and he started to get lazy with his footwork as he grew fatigued.

Well, either way. Whatever the explanation was ... my second tournament win in a row. I think he was a better player than me and played better than me (same with the guy I played in my first match of the day). But they made just enough mistakes for me to sneak through with the win, and I'm not giving either of them back.

Zoom in. There's a "1" on my trophy, baby!

That's it. Took me an hour to get home, again, and I found a hungry cat waiting for me, confusingly unimpressed by my trophy, even when I explained what I had to go through to get it. Weird.

Took a long hot bath, ordered the traditional victory pizza, and now watching some Michigan basketball. 'Twas a good day.

Adventures in Postal Confusion

 A few days ago I got a slip in the mail from the Czech Post Office, but as it was all in Czech, I was a little clueless. A couple days later I got around to sending Filip a photo of it and asking what it was.

A draft notice? Deportation order?

Turns out I had a package waiting for me!

Despite my lingering cold, I bundled up and headed out today, taking the tram four stops to the not-too-far-away post office.

Cheerful-looking place!

This intimidating experience is all-too-familiar to foreigners in Central and Eastern Europe. It starts with a computer system asking you to choose which service you need. These days you can choose to operate it in English, thank goodness, though since "picking up a package" was of course not one of the options presented, I still needed to ask a woman next to me to help. She — working on the system in Czech — guessed that "picking up letters" was probably the right one, which seemed most likely to me as well, so I went with it and headed into the waiting room.

One thinks of Beetlejuice

Printed-out number in hand, I went in, grabbed one of those yellow chairs, and sat, staring up at the sign, which would assign a number to a window. I was 272, but among the numbers called before me were 912 and H11.

Still, only about two minutes after I sat down I was directed to the stern-looking woman at window number 2. Her demeanor sent a strong message, so I started by saying, in Czech, "I'm sorry, I don't speak Czech." She nodded, curtly, took my note, made a few keystrokes, wrote something mysterious (it looked like "F2F") on the form, pushed it back to me, and said something in fast Czech at me. I said, helpless, in English "I'm sorry," then switched immediately to Czech. "I don't understand." She nodded, then said exactly the same thing, at exactly the same speed. All I got from it was the words "doprava, a doprava."

I nodded, and backed away. Back near the chairs, I opened up Google Translate on my phone, and saw that that meant "transport." Hmm.

At this point I was stuck. I had literally already told her I didn't speak Czech, and she had repeated her instructions for me once. Going back to her seemed unlikely to help, and by now she had another customer anyway. I thought about giving up and going home, but ... who knows? Maybe someone sent me a new car, or tickets to Bali. Would be a mistake to give up so closely. I could print out another number and hope to be directed to another window, but ... that seemed far less confident than simply asking someone if they spoke English and taking them back to my window for translating purposes, but I found myself overwhelmed at that prospect as well.

I reopened Google Translate and discovered that a secondary meaning was "to the right." Ah. Um. My right or her right? There was nothing to my right. I went over to her right, at the end of the line of windows, and there was door there! I tried to open it, but it was locked, with what looked like office supplies behind it, so ... I guess that wasn't it.

Feeling pretty defeated, I went outside and walked over to the right side of the building, but nothing there. I thought about getting on the tram, but turned and walked back inside one more time, when, over the number-printing-out machines I saw a poster that said something like "vydat a basiliku" that had a big map on it showing, if you exited the building and turned right, and then right again, there was another office of some kind! 

Almost excited, I ran around the corner, found an office with two windows, went up to the first one, asked if he spoke English, and — when the answer was positive — gave him the "F2F" notice. He confirmed it was the right place! I won, I won!!!!

Got my package — no car, no tickets to Bali, but a new credit card and a check for a refund from State Farm, so not bad! — and took the tram home.

Not the most exciting story, I know. But at the end of the day, a definite success story.

Up and At 'Em

Talk about exciting!

I'm not sure where my current morning-coffee routine began. It certainly isn't (adult) life long. I guess it began my last year or so in San Francisco, perhaps while I was writing my book. I fell into the habit of going for a morning run, but I was so excited to get to the coffee shop with my laptop that I would get the run in and over with as soon as possible so I could get to the coffee shop, first to read the paper over a toasted bagel and coffee, then immediately to get to work on the book, as soon as possible.

In case you forgot

Even then, I don't think I was there when the coffee shop in the Marina opened, exactly, though ... close. Odd, isn't it, that it was only when I wasn't working a full-time job that I started getting out of bed as early as possible in the morning?

In any event, when I moved to Budapest — once again, then, fully employed — I guess I had gotten into the habit. I enjoyed being among the first in the office, so getting up wasn't a problem, and I would always start with thirty minutes or so with my book, a cappuccino, and a yoghurt in the little coffee shop next door. Weekends as well, I would have my International New York Times in hand — purchased the day before, so it would be ready to go — and be at the McCafe in the Mammut shopping mall when it opened.

I didn't, that I remember, make the same point of being the first in the office during my first stay in Prague, in 2010, though on weekends I continued to do the early-morning International Herald Tribune thing  (generally at a Costa Coffee on Wenceslas Square, as my coffee-shop options back then were far more limited than they are now). And then, through Sao Paulo, then back to Budapest, then Prague, then Budapest, then Tucson, now back to Prague, it has slowly transformed into what it is now: Be at the cafe, both weekday and weekend, whether I have a job to go to or not, ideally when it opens, but at the latest 7 am,  to get ahead of the day, as it were, instead of racing to catch up. I can send any emails I need to, read the news, check my messages, etc., and still be among the first in the office. 

After that, the day opens up. I can go back home and watch some of the Australian Open, as I plan on doing today, or go play tennis (as I may also do today), or nap, or do whatever else the day requires. After that first hour or two, it doesn't matter. But there's a compulsion — it literally affects my nighttime planning — to get up and out, and the days I'm unable to do so (like the past two days, when I was sick), I feel trapped, restless, and unhappy.

Part of it may be a fear of missing out, I guess, but since I enjoy working outside of home instead of in it — the buzz of the coffee shop makes me feel part of a dynamic world, instead of isolated/insulated — it's mainly, I think, just an enthusiasm for what I'm doing, and for my life.

Huh. I can't say I feel enthusiastic about that life all the time. But now that I reflect, it seems to me, as long as I'm getting up and out early, that's a sign that I'm ready to meet the world head-on, and am not yet defeated. I guess it's a good thing!

Having a cat that wakes you up at 6:45 — 6:45 if you're lucky — doesn't hurt either.

Huh (again). Would you look at that. I had planned to make this a consideration of the different coffee cultures (espresso-based, not brewed), but those plans gang agley.