Today I'm feeling a little better. I still wanted to take it easy, but get out a little, so I went with Zed, Phin, and Seth to the southeast of Prague, the Háje stop on the red / C Metro train, to an area called Jižní Město , the "south town". It is a panelák sídliště, a panel-concrete apartment building settlement, which we knew as a Neubaugebiet in former East Germany. The part of Prague we're living in now is older, so it doesn't have any buildings like that, and I wanted to show this to the boys and see how things look. Apparently this kind of settlement is generally called a microdistrict in the former east bloc. (There is lots of interesting history and nice photos in those Wikipedia articles I just linked to!) Here is some of what we saw. Note all the festive colors they've added which really make the buildings nice to look at! Note the terrifying hallway/bridge at the top between the two buildings in this next one! ...
We took a train from Rome to Ancona, Italy, where we had a one-day stop. Ancona is about ¾ of the way up the east coast, on the Adriatic Sea. The next evening we planned to take an overnight ferry to Split, Croatia, so this seemed like a simple transfer place, but Ancona is a really neat city itself! At night I wandered around and ended up hiking to a functioning lighthouse. The stone sign is at 104 meters above sea level, about 341 feet. Our neighborhood had some nice murals / graffiti: Here is a view out over a pentagonal building formerly used as a quarantine colony, a little island right by the city, open to the public: There are quite a few drinking fountains scattered all over, and all the ones we tried worked! This is the correct way for a city to be. It is very hilly, with stairs and steep roads all over. Many narrow little alleys between buildings, and connecting passages and staircases up and down hills, between houses, churches, and pa...
While this is ultimately inspiring, it's pretty painful to watch, because it's really about Chris Gardner's struggle, not about his triumph. It made me feel like I don't work nearly hard enough for what I have. Which is certainly true, but I try not to dwell on it. Except that I try to be grateful. Some of the amazing scenes in the film--like when Chris has to spend the night in jail for parking tickets and shows up at his interview for an internship at Dean Witter wearing the painting clothes he had on when he was arrested--aren't even as amazing as what happened to the real Chris Gardner. He was arrested for parking tickets and spent 10 days in jail, came home to find girlfriend, son and all of his clothes gone, and had to show up at his interview in the same clothes he'd been wearing when he got arrested. He told the truth and got the job. In every article I read about the real Chris Gardner, there was the same basic information, but the details and ...
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