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Normal House 6 – Prague

Sixth in our series of beautiful, but normal for Prague, houses throughout Prague. This time focusing on some of the ornate decorations on houses in eastern Vinohrady.

21-Language Ingredient Label

Back in the US, where we’re from, some people get all bent out of shape that some signs and labels are in Spanish. It never bothered us; we actually saw it as kinda cool. Inclusion of other people is nothing to be afraid of. Well, in Europe, you get lots of signs and labels in multiple languages. In the Czech Republic, pretty much every product label is in at least two languages: Czech and Slovak. That makes sense because the Czechs and Slovaks used to be members of the same country–Czechoslovakia. Companies selling products prudently understand that the more accessible their products are, the more sales they can get. So it is not a surprise to see multiple languages on a label. More languages means more people can understand what is being sold.

This is the European Union, so there is a common market for manufacturers. If you are willing, you can sell to over two dozen countries. Of course, it works best if you can describe your product in as many languages as possible. That’s what we see so many packages with four, six, ten or more languages on them. We don’t know why but the packages with the most labels are bags of chips. Potato and corn tortilla chip bags get their ingredient lists translated into 14 or 17 languages. Here’s the current record holder that we’ve seen. A bag of tortilal chips with ingredients in 21 languages.

Normal House 1 – Prague

Prague is a beautiful city. Almost everywhere you look you see a a beautiful building and sites you don’t see elsewhere. This is the first in a series of photos of normal houses in Prague. Most people in Prague live in these large ornate buildings, mostly five stores tall. They usually contain ten to fourteen units, but it’s unfair to think of them as typical apartment buildings. Prague had a tremendous building boom in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as the city expressed its grandeur as part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. There are thousands of these buildings in the city. Each one is unique with elaborate stonework and windows. They are painted in colors you seldom see elsewhere in the world.

This photo of some of these wonderful buildings D took on his arrival in Prague in 2016. It was our second trip to Prague, before we moved there two years later.

normal house 1

Two Views Down Jugoslávská

Jugoslávská ulice in Praha 2 has some wonderful views. The street runs only three blocks from Náměsti Míru to Legerova ulice, where it becomes Ječná ulice toward the west. The first photo below is facing east toward Kostel sv. Ludmily (Church of Saint Ludmila) and the second is facing west. You can see the bluff on the other side of the river Vltava.

Views down Jugoslavska

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