dormouse1953

My last full day in Prague and after a week of sunshine and heat the weather has turned cooler with spots of rain.

All round Prague I've seen shops and kiosks selling something called Trdlo of Trdelnik. (Trdelnik sounds like it's connected to Zwilnik in the Lensman books.) At first I thought it was the Czech for ice cream cone but I finally realised it was something different after seeing signs for Trdlo and ice cream. In the Jewish area, there was a sign advertising the first and only kosher Trdelnik in Prague. "A traditional Bohemian food" said one advert.

So I looked it up. It appears from Wikipedia that it's been a tradition in Prague since 2010, which probably explains why I don't remember it from the last time I was here in 2006. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trdelník It is also described as a kind of spit cake, which sounds disgusting but just means it's cooked on a spit.

Another old Czech tradition seems to be a large number of places offering Thai massage. Sounds a bit dodgy, but it looks like the massages are taking place in the room with windows on to the street so probably nothing naughty going on.

Several shops are offering cannabis beer and I've even seen a cannabis beer pub. I've never tried cannabis and I'm quite happy to drink Czech beer without such additives.

So I was having a meal in a restaurant almost on the bank of the Rhine.  It advertised itself as an Argentinian Steak House but I ordered pork fillet in a gorgonzola sauce with rosti potatoes.  Neither a particularly Argentinian dish, nor specific to the Cologne area.  At least my kölsch beer was local, my second half litre of the evening.

A group of street musicians lined up outside the restaurant: two saxophones, trumpet, double bass, percussion and accordion - a piano accordion, not a button accordion for those accordion geeks out there.  I thought the button accordion was more common in Europe.  They weren't playing German oom-pah music, nor indeed anything South American.  They launched into a medley of Glenn Miller hits that made me feel all nostalgic.  OK, Miller died nearly ten years before I was born, but I saw The Glenn Miller Story enough times as a kid, and every time it got to the bit where his band played Little Brown Jug for his family after his death I got all misty eyed, even though I knew that was ahistoric, he recorded that song in 1936.  My father's two CD set of Glenn Miller hits made its way into my collection after his death and is on my iPod.

Then they did a few Beatles numbers which should be more the music of my generation.  I was ten in 1963, between the end of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles first LP.  But that music has less appeal to me.

When they finished they passed a hat round and I found a handful of euro coins to toss in.

The food, the beer and the music left me in a good mood.  I went passed the Gay Pride event in the Heumarkt where a woman was leading the crowd in a number of popular German songs.  (I think it was a woman, although given where I was it could have been a man in drag.  I was too far from the stage to tell.)  I felt slightly annoyed that I didn't know the words so I couldn't join in.

I had a sudden urge this week to bake a cake, a recipe I've done many times over the last 30 years.  Got all the ingredients this morning and prepared them after lunch.  The cake required a 1.75 hour cooking time so I went off to do other things.

Went back into the kitchen just now.  20 minutes to go.  Then I noticed that I hadn't fully shut the oven door, and thought maybe the cake wouldn't have been fully cooked.  Then I thought that the kitchen would be a bit hotter if the oven had been on for nearly two hours with the door open.  Opening the door fully I realised the cake tin was still quite cool and my immediate thought was I'd burnt out the oven or something.  Then I realised what I'd done.

I'd switched on the top oven and put the cake in the bottom oven!  Another two hours before it's cooked (allowing for the oven to heat up first).

Aargh!

Took the train this morning (or rather, just after noon) from Munich to Salzburg, where I am till Thursday.  The weather here seems to be sunny and warm at the moment.  Hope it lasts.

It's only a short journey - not two hours.  Once more I'm in an hotel next to the main station.

Hadn't realised how much in the mountains Salzburg is.  You'll see a shopping street but behind the shops on one side is a sheer cliff face.

Only went out to find somewhere to eat.  Seems like every other restaurant was Italian.  Even the place I stopped, where they did schnitzels, also did pasta and pizza.  I'll have to find where the more traditional eating places are.