Vancouver Rocks!

After escaping terrorism and snobbish bouncers of all stripe, I flew to Vancouver to be whisked away to this forest retreat for a night of long overdue sleep. Did I mention that the forest retreat was also an art gallery?
Thanks Laura!

London Sucks.

Originally, I thought ha ha, look: a bunch of suits are lined up to get in to the hottest club in London, but it's a T.G.I. Fridays!! Then I realized there was a police officer. Then, 15 hours later, I found out there was a bomb. A car bomb. That I was heading directly towards.

Oh well, at least I got to meet Eugene. He knows what he's doing.

Nasshledano Praha!

I had to leave Prague, but I managed to get these few shots at the airport.


This is me finally getting to drink a Staropramen, the beer I was trying to find _all_ _week_. Good thing for lax liquor laws.

Culture!

I had to present on the 28th, so for the night of the 27th Tarek and I just went out to have a quiet dinner in the old town. We happened across this theatre, at which Mozart premiered Don Giovanni. Here's the man himself:

Architecture in Prague

Here's my rough classification of architecture styles in Prague:

These old 6-story buildings lining every street downtown, without breaks.


Giant imposing Gothic buildings totally out of proportion in size to the rest of the, uh, universe.


Old Jewish buildings housing giant living clay automata .Modern steel-and-glass buildings housing American tech companies.


Large grey Decalogue style communist housing blocks.


Uhhhh, I couldn't say.

The Flopper!

I went back to Wenceslas Square to find a vegetarian restaurant, and planned to skip the tourist-priced pubs off the square ($2.00 for a pint of beer!? unforgiveable!) until I saw Dominik Hasek perched up there. The bartender was unmoved by my knowledge of hockey, but the Budweiser was delicious.

Pre-conference travels

The ACL conference started Monday, so I had Sunday to sightsee. I wandered around looking for a place to read the abstracts and pick a talk to attend. I accidentally found the square named after the real life Good Kind Wenceslas

I found a bookstore/cafe in the square, the Neo Luxor, and made it through the abstracts up to Tuesday morning. I had a Turkish Coffee, so called because there's a big lump of hashish in the bottom.

Then I stopped into the bathroom to be irradiated, as depicted in this totally undoctored photo.
Seriously, that was hardcore UV. If you know someone who speaks Czech, let me know whether the sign below says "PLEASE STAY OUT IF YOU WANT HAVE KIDS!!! THANK YOU"