Tip of the Day - Know What Day it is
Morning all... this will be a quickie post, with a longer update later today. After something has actually happened. :)
Thing the First: Yesterday's post was titled "Tuesdays are for Panicking." However, they day before that's post is titled "Tuesdays are for Planning." Tuesdays are indeed for planning. It is, however, Wednesdays that are for panicking. Clearly, I was so panicked on Wednesday that I thought it was Tuesday. *whoops!*
Thing the Second: A mildly funny thing happened (on the way to the forum... oops, tangent!) last night, so I thought I'd tell you about it. Megan and I left the school yesterday at 7:15. Unheard. Of. We never leave school that early! Never! Clearly, a can of spaghetti just wasn't going to cut it. Instead, we went to this little pub that's in the metro station (weird, I know... more about that later) to celebrate actually leaving the school while it was still daylight. We had this excellent salad (I love salad here... it rarely has lettuce in it, so instead you get big chunks of fresh veggies like tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, etc. and then it's topped with something. The salad place tops it with yummy purple cabbage. The metro place tops it with really salty feta cheese. Soooo good. Anyhoo, back to my story. At least, once I get out of these parentheses.) Where was I? Right. Excellent salad. Then we had our main course... Megan had pasta, and I had these thin pancakes (kind of like tortillas) baked in cheese and cream with ham and mushrooms in it. So good, I could feel my arteries hardening as I ate! These meals are a good size; I could only eat about 1/2 of mine because it was so rich. We washed our meals down with a Plzn (That's the real Pilsener, folks) pivo (beer). Mine came to a grand total 157 Kc. According to www.xe.com, that's a whopping $7.78 CDN. Then it was time to tip.
Tipping here in the Czech Republic is very different from tipping at home. The waitstaff at most (I would almost say all) pubs/restaurants are actually paid a living wage. Tips are just extra. Therefore, you tip minimally, usually only rounding up to the next ten. If you are very close to the next ten, you round up one more. For example. Megan's meal was 152 Kc, so she would round up to 160 Kc. This is perfectly acceptable, and is, in fact, what the Czechs expect. If you run round wildly tipping at 10 or 15%, they're going to know you're a tourist, and they are going to mock you mercilessly behind your back. I think. It's hard to know, because by the time you've tipped them, you usually don't see them again! But given that the citizens here don't always like the tourists, I imagine there's some serious mocking going on. Now. The funny part (which after this long leave in might not be funny anymore!). My meal was 157 Kc. Rounding up to 160 is a bit cheap, so you would round it up to 170. However, I really like the waitress at this little place. She's young, and a bit cranky with everyone, but she does her job well, despite making you feel like you might be inconveniencing her by interrupting her viewing of the Czech version of Big Brother (yeah, they really have a Czech version of BB). Because I like her, I tipped her 20 Kc instead of the expected 13Kc. I set the coin down where I thought she could see it, but as we turned to go, I realized she hadn't seen it at all. Not wanting to be known a non-tipper (!), I turned back, picked up the coin, and handed it to her. As we left, I said to Megan "I hope that wasn't crass. I just wanted to make sure she got her tip, because that was a good one!"
Megan just looked at me, and started to laugh. "Yeah, Elizabeth," she said "your whole dollar of a tip was a whopper!" We both cracked up, and laughed a good halfway up the hill, until we needed that breath for climbing instead of laughing (priorities, you know). I'm clearly becoming a native... 20 Kc is an excellent tip here... but it is truly only worth about a buck! Can you imagine tipping someone a loonie after a sit down dinner, and leaving the restaurant feeling smug about how generous you were? Oh my... the joys of being an ex-pat (we're not tourists anymore... so we're ex-pats!)
Now, I know that you're all so busy laughing at my episodes of silliness that you're having a difficult time focusing, but try. Because I'm sure that somewhere in your brain a neuron is synapsing, wanting to know why on earth there's a restaurant in the metro station. Well folks, it's like this. There is EVERYTHING in the metro stations here. They're like mini shopping malls. Some of it's above ground, which is more like a bus stop. Our restaurant (which shall be henceforth known as the metro place) is aboveground. Some of it is underground. It's the underground stuff that gets me. At the larger metro stops, they're actual stores... like a grocery store, a pharmacy, a florist's shop (they have fresh flowers everywhere here, it's wonderful)... all like a mini-mall. In the smaller stops, they're more like roadside stands. My personal favorite is the lingerie stall. Yes folks, you too can buy your undies at a stand, in a metro station. Forget hygiene! Buy your underpants loose from a bin! From a stand! Underground! In the metro station! :D If you think about, though... you could probably live in Prague and almost never have to see the light of day, because you could do all of your shopping underground!
Well, enough hilarity for one morning. Hope you enjoyed my silliness, now I have to be serious. For it is time to go to school and receive feedback about yesterday's lesson... should be fun. ;) More later!
Love,
Elizabeth
Thing the First: Yesterday's post was titled "Tuesdays are for Panicking." However, they day before that's post is titled "Tuesdays are for Planning." Tuesdays are indeed for planning. It is, however, Wednesdays that are for panicking. Clearly, I was so panicked on Wednesday that I thought it was Tuesday. *whoops!*
Thing the Second: A mildly funny thing happened (on the way to the forum... oops, tangent!) last night, so I thought I'd tell you about it. Megan and I left the school yesterday at 7:15. Unheard. Of. We never leave school that early! Never! Clearly, a can of spaghetti just wasn't going to cut it. Instead, we went to this little pub that's in the metro station (weird, I know... more about that later) to celebrate actually leaving the school while it was still daylight. We had this excellent salad (I love salad here... it rarely has lettuce in it, so instead you get big chunks of fresh veggies like tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, etc. and then it's topped with something. The salad place tops it with yummy purple cabbage. The metro place tops it with really salty feta cheese. Soooo good. Anyhoo, back to my story. At least, once I get out of these parentheses.) Where was I? Right. Excellent salad. Then we had our main course... Megan had pasta, and I had these thin pancakes (kind of like tortillas) baked in cheese and cream with ham and mushrooms in it. So good, I could feel my arteries hardening as I ate! These meals are a good size; I could only eat about 1/2 of mine because it was so rich. We washed our meals down with a Plzn (That's the real Pilsener, folks) pivo (beer). Mine came to a grand total 157 Kc. According to www.xe.com, that's a whopping $7.78 CDN. Then it was time to tip.
Tipping here in the Czech Republic is very different from tipping at home. The waitstaff at most (I would almost say all) pubs/restaurants are actually paid a living wage. Tips are just extra. Therefore, you tip minimally, usually only rounding up to the next ten. If you are very close to the next ten, you round up one more. For example. Megan's meal was 152 Kc, so she would round up to 160 Kc. This is perfectly acceptable, and is, in fact, what the Czechs expect. If you run round wildly tipping at 10 or 15%, they're going to know you're a tourist, and they are going to mock you mercilessly behind your back. I think. It's hard to know, because by the time you've tipped them, you usually don't see them again! But given that the citizens here don't always like the tourists, I imagine there's some serious mocking going on. Now. The funny part (which after this long leave in might not be funny anymore!). My meal was 157 Kc. Rounding up to 160 is a bit cheap, so you would round it up to 170. However, I really like the waitress at this little place. She's young, and a bit cranky with everyone, but she does her job well, despite making you feel like you might be inconveniencing her by interrupting her viewing of the Czech version of Big Brother (yeah, they really have a Czech version of BB). Because I like her, I tipped her 20 Kc instead of the expected 13Kc. I set the coin down where I thought she could see it, but as we turned to go, I realized she hadn't seen it at all. Not wanting to be known a non-tipper (!), I turned back, picked up the coin, and handed it to her. As we left, I said to Megan "I hope that wasn't crass. I just wanted to make sure she got her tip, because that was a good one!"
Megan just looked at me, and started to laugh. "Yeah, Elizabeth," she said "your whole dollar of a tip was a whopper!" We both cracked up, and laughed a good halfway up the hill, until we needed that breath for climbing instead of laughing (priorities, you know). I'm clearly becoming a native... 20 Kc is an excellent tip here... but it is truly only worth about a buck! Can you imagine tipping someone a loonie after a sit down dinner, and leaving the restaurant feeling smug about how generous you were? Oh my... the joys of being an ex-pat (we're not tourists anymore... so we're ex-pats!)
Now, I know that you're all so busy laughing at my episodes of silliness that you're having a difficult time focusing, but try. Because I'm sure that somewhere in your brain a neuron is synapsing, wanting to know why on earth there's a restaurant in the metro station. Well folks, it's like this. There is EVERYTHING in the metro stations here. They're like mini shopping malls. Some of it's above ground, which is more like a bus stop. Our restaurant (which shall be henceforth known as the metro place) is aboveground. Some of it is underground. It's the underground stuff that gets me. At the larger metro stops, they're actual stores... like a grocery store, a pharmacy, a florist's shop (they have fresh flowers everywhere here, it's wonderful)... all like a mini-mall. In the smaller stops, they're more like roadside stands. My personal favorite is the lingerie stall. Yes folks, you too can buy your undies at a stand, in a metro station. Forget hygiene! Buy your underpants loose from a bin! From a stand! Underground! In the metro station! :D If you think about, though... you could probably live in Prague and almost never have to see the light of day, because you could do all of your shopping underground!
Well, enough hilarity for one morning. Hope you enjoyed my silliness, now I have to be serious. For it is time to go to school and receive feedback about yesterday's lesson... should be fun. ;) More later!
Love,
Elizabeth
posted by Elizabeth @ 00:40
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