Missing a Toilet?

Couldn't pass up sharing this sign with you all. We spotted it on the way up for a "Family Adventure Afternoon" at Petrin Park. The text of the sign says something to the effect of "Service Vehicles Only", so nothing about toilets.

Looking a little closer at the sign, it looks more like someone decided to play a prank on us - the toilet stencil is cut out, and pasted onto the sign... it's not quite straight, and not quite centered - both dead giveaways when looking at signs for toilets!

Lurking Valuables

OK - so this isn't really a sign as such... but I got a kick out of the convoluted English on the following notice, left in our mailbox today:

IMPORTANT!!!!!!!!!!PLEASE READ IT!!!!!!!!!!IMPORTANT
Dear shareholders and inhabitants of Mala Sarka area,

We would like to inform you about cases of breaking in cars, which are parked on the public roads or on drive to your property. Because of this reason, I would like to ask you for parking your cars in your garage. Nevertheless, if you decide to park your car outside, please, don't leave there any valuables, which could lurk on an attention and increase the danger of breaking into.

Thank you.

At least the notice was understandable! Both Erin and I have been a little surprised at how little English is spoken in the Czech Republic. Though we've lived overseas most of our lives, we've always been able to communicate in either English, or in the "native tongue" we grew up learning - Arabic for Erin or Sinhalese for me. Living in a country where our language skills are worse than your average 2 year old's has been painful. Shopping involves a dictionary and a lot of extra time... you know the box with a picture of a white liquid is probably milk, but what exactly is Trvanlivé Mléko Polotučné? (It's long life, half-fat 1.5% milk, in case you're wondering.)

Learning Czech is more than just memorizing vocabulary too... just when you think you've learned a word, you realize that the word changes, based how it's used in the sentence! Yep, to learn Czech properly, we're going to have to dig up that dusty high-school grammer to remind ourselves what nominative, genitive, dative, and the four other cases of Czech mean.

My goal? To someday be able to babble like a Czech two year old. Mleko? Mleka? Mlekou? They'll get the idea... I want milk - no matter whether I'm drinking it, jumping into it, using it for a recipe, hiding behind it or adding it to my coffee. Just like those "lurking valuables" - they'll understand what I'm after!

Word for the day? Say this three times really fast:

Zmrzlina

It means Ice Cream - a very important word to memorize! Oh - did I mention Czech uses some really neat consonant combinations? More on that later!

Funny Signs 2

OK - this settles it. I guess I won't be swimming in these waters! We're guessing this must have been somebody's idea of a great practical joke... but they did have floods here not too many years ago. Who knows what might have washed in from the ocean?

We spotted this sign at the entrance to one of the canals leading out of the Vlatava river. The ducks don't seem to worried about the possibility of sharks, but wouldn't that make for an interesting story though? Killer sharks, roaming the canals of Prague?

Click the link below to see the picture in a little more context.

Doesn't look like the diners are too worried either. Maybe they throw their leftovers over the rail to the sharks!

Funny Signs 1

OK - here's a first of a series - funny signs we've seen in Prague. OK, I guess funny signs is not really accurate. They're not so much funny as they are different to our American minds. So - here's the game. I'll post a sign, and you all guess what it means! When we find out, I'll let you know!

Here's the first - not too far from our house: Click here for a clue...

Here's a hint - this sign is very close to the first one: