Visite éclair à Prague

Bonsoir à tous,

Visite à Prague demain et après demain (pour le "boulot").

Je n'ai pas l'intention d'apprendre le Tchèque... mais si je veux manger et éviter de dormir sous les ponts, il me faudra me faire comprendre... en anglais !

Je vais me peser avant le départ et au retour pour évaluer le taux de compréhension : si je maigris, c'est que j'ai des progrès à faire !

Comme de bien entendu, pour prendre exemple sur mes collègues Américains (que je loue sans cesse ), je vais apprendre 5 mots de Tchèque : Oui non bonjour merci & au revoir / Ano Ne Ahoj Dèkuji Sbohem !

Retour vendredi soir... j'apporte mon ordinateur (on verra).

C'est vrai, Gérard, il est très important de connaître les mots de base : Bonjour, bonsoir, merci et je suis sûre que tu n'auras pas maigri

Hi Muriel, hi everyone,

Well I'm back from Prague. I arrived in the night after hours in the RERs and trains of my suburbs.

I spent 25 hours in Prague and it was a true immersion in languages.
I didn't want to waste time and went immediately in the streets of the old town (Prague 1).
It was 5 pm on Thursday when I left the hotel after check in. I had printed a map and I had a second one from the hotel and there I went!
I rushed to Charles' bridge and could admire the landscape of the numerous bridges as the night was already arriving (just a bit chilly and cloudy).
On the way, I had the impression to hear many French words and voices but was not sure. But so many French, English, German words on shopwindows!
I got lost as I was going back to the hotel (I had an appointment at 7 pm)... I still don't understand as I wanted to go east (but it was in the old town with oodles of narrow streets and sometimes, no street ahead which was obliging me to make decisions between right or left ): I asked my way and after half an hour, I was about 50 meters south of Charles' bridge.

Anyway! people were nice and I met a French couple giving me instructions to find my way.

At the dinner appointment, I could meet 8 guests like me and 8 to 10 employees of the host company including one of the owners, the CEO, CTO, marketing director, developers, etc.
Oodles of languages from Czech to English by people who came from America, England, Poland, Romania and Germany.
Very nice! I spent all Friday with them all and spoke about computing and languages.

More words in a while...

Howdy everyone,

3 short stories of which 2 for which you can make fun of me

We had a meeting for dinner on Thursday night 7 pm. As I wrote it, I got lost but I arrived #1 at the restaurant (I walk fast).

* I drank as much beer as I do in a month (I don't like beer a lot but it's the beverage I usually choose at café langues). I can tell you many nationality reps are far better than me and were visiting the Gent's every 10 minutes
Anyway! About 20 people talking about this and that.
I had to choose dishes in the menu and tried to avoid regional unknown stuff. Of course when the waiter came, I didn't remember the entire name of the main dish and just asked for "duck".
Were there two dishes with duck? I'll never know but I had chosen nothing but a normal line... the waiter brought me an entire duck!! just for me!! along with kind of sauerkraut (white and red) with slices of nice bread soaked with milk then grilled plus potatoes and the like. I am not used to eating meat... oh my!
Okay I ate 3/4 of the duck (not the bones), 1/4 of the sauerkraut, all my potatoes and bread.
In addition, I ordered a wonderful big cake, yum!
So I took at least 600 grams but it was not due to my good English!

* I was talking again with someone (the CTO) and the waiter asked me about drinks...
I should have paid more attention! I understood the waiter wanted to know how many beer glasses I had drunk (finally why would he ask this?) so I responded: 3... I didn't want any beer left but... the waiter was asking whether I wanted other drinks! Fortunately he didn't bring 3 glasses but only one that I drank.
I guess that if he had brought 3 glasses, many of the parched colleagues would have volunteered to help me.

* on next day (Friday) we had our lunch at a pizzeria in the neighborhood of the company I was visiting (Prague 4).
It was funny because as the description of the pizza I was targetting, the menu supposedly in English, was displaying a medley of words in Italian, English and French (at least) for example there were the words "champignon" and "prosciutto".
I asked the British guy in front of me who confirmed it was not very English.
The Romanian guy explained that they used the word "champignon" and prosciutto as well when they wanted to speak about Italian ham. He also told me he could understand most of the words in Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and French... the guy was very talkative, rather fluent in English though his accent was awful but anyway, that didn't prevent him from saying what he had to say! ready for the café polyglotte this Romanian guy!

Hi Gérard
Thank you for you post about your trip to Prague. You wrote in a funny and suggestive way. When I read it I could imagine your immersion in languages, your getting lost (I hate getting lost) the nice french couple giving you instructions to find your way, like two guardian angels, Your trying to avoid regional stuff (I do the other way round)
Thank you for spotting a polyglot guy. When I was in Prague at night, i felt in the middle of a fairy tale story.

Hi Muriel,

I was on Charles' bridge at sunset (around 5:45 pm), it was really enchanting: a big statue every 10 meters, dim lamps on the bridge with this gorgeous castle in the far... except for the filth (but that's lice), I was thinking of Florence in my early years when real statues were in the streets (so I think).

So beautiful landscape!

Hi everyone,

I forgot to say I went to Prague to visit Avast.
Avast is an "AntiVirus" editor. It's the editor #1 in the world and their motto is "avast! be free".
They provide a free antivirus as long as you are not a company. They want to keep it free in order they help everyone on the Web. The free version is as powerful as the professional one.
France is a beloved country for them being the country in which they have the biggest number of users... France was their country #1 for decades but last week, Brazil overtook us!!
180 million users in the world.
A meeting was organized at their Headquarters in Prague as they launched their brand new version 6 avast! Free Antivirus in February 2011 and they wanted to present it to 8 journalists (I'm not really a journalist but went there as a consultant).
There were 8 of us: 2 French, 2 Polish, 1 Brit, 1 Czech, 1 German, 1 Romanian.
The Avast team is composed of about 150 Czech employees led by an American CEO. Avast was started by 2 Czech guys.
I'm going to write and publish several papers next week, including technical papers.
I have to say that my computers presently don't have Avast but Avira Antivir (I used Avast years ago)... Avast improved their product with version 5 last year. The newest version 6 is wonderful: I will now move to Avast v.6!


I also wanted to say that in this meeting, they spoke at their usual speed and it was a bit difficult to understand Americans and Brits joking together with frequent cultural references.
A bit difficult to stay concentrated all day long too.
I've a tendency to stay quiet; in addition I was the oldest guy of the group: I wanted to be invited again next time I managed to talk much, suggest many things.
The British guy told me my English was very good so I was happy!

Hi Gérard
I am sure you are precious for them as you have suggested many things and your english is excellent ! you will be invited next time

Hi Muriel, hi everyone,

I do hope they will invite me many other times in the future as it was bloody nice: everything was payed from the flight, to the taxies, to the hotel (Marriott... I could even stay longer to visit the town), to the restaurant, etc. a very good plan indeed!

I don't want to be a crook (a least no big crook) and as I really think their product is good, I'm planning to help them as much as I can, publishing technical articles on my blog, on Facebook toward high level experts, on my computing forum, etc.
In addition, I will help them get contacts with several other groups of people who can help too.

Hi everyone,

Some news on my blog (in French):
- Avast - Histoire et stratégie
- Avast - visite à Prague
- avast! Free Antivirus version 6.0
- Avast - photos de Prague