Prague DevCon, Days -1 and 0

Yesterday was a very long day (actually two days). I'm speaking at DevCon in Prague this week, so I got up Saturday at 4 am Mountain Time, which is noon Central European Time (the time zone for Prague), and didn't go to bed until 10 pm Sunday. Except for about a one-hour nap on the flight, I was up for 34 hours.

The flight was uneventful (always a good thing). Igor Vit picked up Craig Berntson and I at the airport because even though we came from different cities on different airlines, we arrived at exactly the same time. After freshening up at the hotel, we had a very traditional Czech lunch of roast pork, bread dumplings, and sauerkraut.

We then met up with several other FoxPro folk (including wOOdy, his wife, Uwe, Venelina, JoKi, and Alan Griver) and took a four-hour walking tour of Prague with a very knowledgeable tour guide, Martina. Prague is beautiful. I loved the architecture of the historical buildings. There were lots of statues and fountains, interesting bridges, and, because it was a gorgeous day, tons of people everywhere. Martina explained the historical significance of the pedestrian-only Charles Bridge and several of the many statues on it. We took the Fundicular (a cross between a cable car and gondola ride) up the hillside and walked through a picturesque park to the Prague Castle. The castle is one of the largest in the world. It isn't a single building but a collection of many, including a Gothic cathedral similar in design to the one in Cologne or the Notre Dame in Paris.

Here are a couple of photos of the areas we visited:

Here's a group photo in front of the fountain in the second courtyard of the castle:

After the tour, we joined up with Hans and Gaby Lochmann and two of the local Microsoft people for dinner at a Brazilian restaurant. If you haven't been to one before, I highly recommend it. We started with a "salad" bar which, although there was no actual salad, had lots of delicious cold foods, including sushi. The waiters then brought us an interesting combination of fried bananas and fries (only Hans and I ate the bananas, so we had all we wanted). Next, the waiters brought an unending series of huge skewers of meat (pork, beef, lamb, sausage) and carved off pieces of any you wanted. You were supposed to flip a card on the table in front of you from green to red when you had enough, but the waiters ignored them and kept bringing tempting morsels anyway. Between all the food, great Czech beer, and pear schnapps in a cool tri-glass, I was completely stuffed. Great conversations with old and new friends, great food, and great beer made for a great evening.

After returning to my hotel room, I called home on my PC using Skype (thanks to Rick Schummer for introducing it to me). I love Skype: it's free to download and you can place calls to another PC on the Internet for free. In my case, I talked to my wife and son on her cell phone using a feature called Skype Out, which isn't free but is very cheap: my 10-minute call from the Czech Republic to Canada cost $0.24.

Time for bed!