< ![CDATA[  If there was any doubt that we’d entered a second world country it was removed by this evening’s shower. I know white and blue are supposed to communicate clean and fresh and watery, something is lost in that message when the floors are mud brown concrete with slimy boardwalks in front of the sinks and the plumbing beneath the sinks is corked off at the end with a piece of old rag that has turned the color of the floors. The shower was a unisex... did I mention that?! And it was completely open on one side to the parking lot, river, cycle path... you get the idea. As much as I’ve gotten to the point of letting my kids strip to the raw in front of God and everybody to switch into their swim suits, I haven’t quite made it there myself. Nor am I “okay” with the three hundred plus pound man doing so not ten yards from where Hannah and Gabe sat journalling tonight. “I didn’t look Mom!” Says Hannah. “He was REALLY naked Mom!” Says Gabe. Yikes. But, I digress. The showers. The stalls, such as they were, were made of corrugated fiber glass, rather like the stuff we’d use on a cheap roof for a green house. The water was cold, natch, and there were men milling around the place... did I mention it was UNISEX. I’m not over that yet. We weren’t sure what to expect when we crossed the border into the Czech Republic this morning. None of us could remember if it is part of the EU. It is. We cycled through a formidable looking old border crossing with two sets of policemen searching random cars, but there didn’t seem to be any formal process for stopping people. Most everyone rolled through, including us, without any fanfare. The difference between tidy, orderly, rule following Germany and the Czech was immediately obvious. The best description I can give is that it reminded me of rural Mexico, only with fewer palm huts and Mayans and more gypsie type folks and street signs I could not read. It was not lost on any of us that we are now WAY outside the boat and definitely out of our comfort zone... and loving it. The day was spent pedaling along the Elbe... make that the Labe, now that we’re in the Czech... and enjoying the view. Everything here has a slightly disheveled and joyously chaotic quality to it. Maybe it just seems that way since we can’t understand anything or anyone. We actually ordered our campsite this evening in German because we could do better with that than the Czech. Never thought I’d see THAT day! Grocery shopping was laugh out loud funny. I have to say that one thing I’m REALLY loving about this country is that as one enters a new town the shops are all listed with directional arrows on a sign post in an obvious location. This is a definite upgrade for those of us just passing through and if I ever find myself dictator of a small country, I’ll adopt this practice for sure. Even better: we recognized some of the food shops from previous countries... our favorite from the UK exists here: Tesco. They have everything. It was Ezra’s day to shop with me. The one Kroner coin we had in our possession happened to be the wrong one for cart rental. Of course. Ez, however, spotted the kiddie carts with the cars on the front... which were free. He happily saddled up one of those and we roared off down the aisles. Sound bite from every aisle (at least twice): “What’s that Mama?” “I have no idea!” We actually stood in front of a display of something approximating packages of Lipton noodle side dishes and howled laughing because we could not read one single thing and they were 27.00 each. At present there are 16 Kr. to the 1 USD. This made dinner come out to a grand total of 272.00 and camping 420.00. Home school math is gonna get fun! Add to the exchange the existence of two huge (HUGE) tanks of live fish, we assume for dinner purposes and not for children to angle while waiting for Mom, and you have a very exciting shopping excursion. Daddy’s favorite part: Thirty cent beer. We are camped by the Labe, once again. The little campsite we found is right on the bike path and even has a swimming pool (a welded steel one that is about 20X40... kinda weird, but that didn’t stop the kids.) Once we made it through the cold, did I mention UNISEX, showers, everything seemed okay. The sunset was beautiful. The train tracks are noisy (one on each side of the river) and with the slight exception of naked men from time to time, it is a very picturesque spot. I think we’re going to like the Czech]]>