Bird Search.

At 8:30 this morning, my nieghbor Cassie and I began our search for a turkey. For the past week, we have been planning a big Thanksgiving meal between three of the CEA apartments- hosted by us. By now we've gotten used to hard supermarket searches- shocking, I know, that I haven't managed to learn fluent Czech yet. However we knew that turkey was going to be our toughest quest- not so existent in Czech lands. The majority of turkeys that were rumored to be in the city were those bought by expat restaurants to host Thanksgiving meals.

Regardless, we wanted to try our luck. We first tried Tesco, the Super Wal-Mart of Europe, but all they had was duck and chicken. Refusing to settle for such mediocre holiday birds, we kept on. We were going to try the international specialty food store, but before we got there we stumbled upon a Butcher Shop. And what do you know? Hanging in the window, neck still attatched and all, was a giant raw turkey. Before going inside, an old Czech man came outside, smiled, and said something in Czech to us. The word "anglicky?" rang from our mouths, which followed by a laugh and a "get out of here" wave from the old man. He walked away.

We went inside, contemplating how we were going to order this bird in a small shop where clearly no one spoke English. We went up to the first register and pointed over to the dangling bird in the window. The lady smiled and motioned for us to go around the corner to the next counter. We went around, but because we were around the corner we could not motion to the turkey in a way that the woman could see. All of a sudden, the woman from the first counter came over and began translating for us. In the process, she tried to teach us some of the words she was using- unfortunately none of which I can remember now. She motioned for us to look at the scale and see if they had measured out the correct amount. The shop did not have a whole bird available- just cut sections, so Cassie and I decided on two large pieces. We later determined we ordered about 7lbs. The woman literally took the pieces off the scale, and without wrapping them up threw them into a plastic bag. We waited to laugh at this until we were outside on the street. The two woman smiled at us and said goodbye.

Cassie and I left elated. We had never encountered such nice service in Prague. The fact that the one woman left her own work to come and translate for us is an incredibly uncommon occurance, one which we have had yet to occur until today. And perfect timing- on the day we Americans give thanks. So to the employees of the anonymous butcher shop- thank you for your help and thank you for your bird.

Thanksgiving Blog Entries to be continued...