It's official!

I faxed my contract off to Moscow yesterday - haven't heard back, so I'm hoping it got to them okay, but they take FOREVER to make a move on anything, so odds are okay. They better have got it, considering it cost a monumental 150 crowns to fax three pages. That, to put it in context, is an average-to-pricey main meal at the sort of neighbourhood restaurants. A night in the dorms at our hostel costs 220 crowns.

On the other hand, I went to another art gallery yesterday, at the Sternberg Palace - old masters, basically. Before I went in, I asked the price of the audioguide. "In Czech?" the woman asked - woohoo! My sentence of Czech passed the test. But I had to fess up, "In English". "Pet set koruny". I put the money on the counter. "Ne, ne padesat koruny, pet set." Not 50 crowns, but 500 crowns!!! (I'm quite good at numbers, provided things don't go above 100...) Now, 500 crowns can get me two nights at the hostel, a gyros (kebab) for lunch at Pizza Roma (mmm, gyros) and a bottle of water. Not bad for NZ $35... So if you're not splurging on crazy things like faxes and audioguides, you can live quite comfortably here in Prague, which is why I'm not flat broke yet.

Anyway, it was a nice little gallery - I reacquainted myself with Durer's The Feast of the Rose Garlands, back in its rightful home, plus there were some Brueghels (one I even identified as such before looking at the card - go the art historian!), an El Greco, a Goya, some Holbeins, a nice Lucas Cranach pere, a Rembrandt... etc. Some others that were cool without being 'names' as well - unfortunately I often really like some of those ones, but they're never considered worthy of inclusion in the booklet or to be printed on postcards etc., but oh well.

After that, I went to the wine bar where Jess & I met this Czech girl who had travelled quite a bit in NZ. She'd given me her number, but I'd always been too busy during the course to catch up, and since then we'd both had various commitments coming up all the time so we couldn't get together. So that was nice, and if the weather's good early next week we're going to take a trip to Cesky Krumlov together, which is a cool medieval town, which is supposed to be like a mini-Prague.