I have no idea if this is left over from communism or what, but all the construction workers, and other manual laborers as well, wear matching outfits - sort of coveralls with not quite an overall top and not quite suspenders but an odd mixture of the two. I've realized that they might even be color coded according to their position. I come across troops of this deep sea green with the plastering guys, and then a really blue bunch of guys are setting something else, and the guys in white are usually getting garbage.... It's a little odd, not that big a deal, just different.
There's been a housing shortage in Prague for decades now - 20 years ago you could wait for 20 years for a place on the list to open up so you could move you wife and kids out of your parents house... Then things changed. However, there's still been a major shortage in the housing market, and gosh, but the people here are doing everything that can to fix it!
Construction and manual laborers work seven days a week - not necessarily the same workers are out there but the crews are working seven days a week. They work long hard days and they just don't stop. It's been really interesting watching them put together some apartment buildings in our neighborhood - nice apartment buildings.
The ones I've been aware of had already been erected and were standing with the brick shells. Since then the balconeys have been built, windows have gone in, the roof is in place too - but what's been super interesting is watching the insulation. They use sheets of packing foam - not the little peanuts, but the hard foam you'd find cushing and encasing a new tv or other large electronic appliance. The cut those pieces of foam in to strips and attach them to the brick - so the brick walls have become completely white walls - and then they cover the foam in some sort of cement or cement like substance.
While watching the process has been interesting, I had an unusual experience today - I took the tram all the way from school to as close to home as possible - 3 bus stops away. I usually take the metro where I need to be, but I wanted to see more of the city and gain a better understanding of my physical relationship to the rest of my life's locations....
I have seen such beauty and inspiration and grace and character in these old buildings that the contrast I saw today was near horrifying. I recently had a conversation with Coral's principal where she was talking about living in Belarus and the opressive gray communist panaleks - the harsh looking buildings, reinforcing the bleakness of communist life.
I've heard of them but hadn't seen them until today. They sucked the life out of me - me and everything else in the surroundings. It really was like rounding a corner and being met by this oppressive looming dreariness.... like the NOTHING in the Never Ending Story - if you happen to have caught that movie.
It was startling - I'll go back to take some pictures and to check out the little cheeriness there I did see - but it made me so grateful that we're in the home we're in, by chance, and in our surroundings... light, bright, graffiti free, and in as pretty and green an area as you could hope for in a city.
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