Looking for Baby Aspirin

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Bill - The Russian cold front truly arrived overnight. I have a habit here of opening the window when I wake to see what the outside air temperature feels like. Well this morning when I opened the window in our apartment this morning a rush of COLD air smacked me in the face.

“Whoa, it is cold out there,” I said to Nancy. “The Russians have arrived.”

The air is a clean, dry cold, at least to we Marylanders who are used to the humid air of the Chesapeake Bay. Several people commented during the day that, “The air is humid.”

“No, it isn’t,” we replied. “This is dry compared to where we come from.”

We have been so pleased meeting and seeing our friends who are still here from last year. Often, it seems, we humans do not realize how much we have missed seeing friends until we meet them again.

After lunch, I rode the bus downtown to see if I could find baby aspirin, multiple vitamins, Vaseline and dishwashing detergent. As Nancy reported our baby aspirin, our multiple vitamins and several other items disappeared from one of our suitcases somewhere between BWI and Prague. The Vaseline is for the leather bound books in the library. Nancy learned how to use it for preservation from one of the librarians of the EMU library in Harrisonburg, VA.

Mirka, our friend in the library told me the location of a good drug store. I went there in the afternoon and spotted Centrum Silver multivitamins and ask for one bottle. I was really lucky because the druggist waiting on me spoke quite good English. How foolish we feel not knowing how to speak Czech. But this language is much harder than the Chinese we studied to be able to live and work in Xi'an.

I then ask, “Do you have 81 Mg aspirin?”
“No,” he replied, “they are impossible in the Czech Republic. The smallest is 100 Mg. There are two packages left.”

I took them. “Do you have Vaseline?” I ask. We need Vaseline for use on some of the leather bound books in the library.

“Yes,” he said. “Do you want one or two bottles. They are only 20 krowns each.”


“I’ll take two,” I replied. Twenty krowns in just a bit less than one dollar. The exchange rate is hanging around 24 krowns to the dollar.

Stopping in a small grocery store I bought some detergent. I hope it will be all right as I have no knowledge about Czech brands. About all I can say is the detergent that I bought is green and I cannot pronource the brand name. The proof in the pudding will be whether the dishes wash easily or not.

Purchases in hand I made my way back to the seminary.

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Photos

Did We Mention That It is Cold
One of the library windows at three in the afternoon.