Its a bit difficult to use the computer
this week as I have to type it on my comouter and then to jump drive, then to
my host's laptop for upload etc. I will
be posting some new pictures so please if you have the time, take a look
We of course back in Czech Republic in
Ostrava again, but the guest of the other club that exists here To night we gave another presentation and so
far the technology is working out OK. I
am trying to phonetically speak Czech and I guess its mostly humor time for
them till I switch into English.
We enjoyed Slovakia and returned via a
different route on sunday than when we went down. I am staying with the former president of the
local university of 24,000 students.
Definably a high powered and well respected professor. We have have many discussions about the
differences in US college education. He
has been all over the world, from Southern Ill University at Carbondale, to
Saudi “Arabia, China, to mention but a few.
My team member and I are sharing a house he owns and really does not
live here, he has a flat downtown about a mile away. Today we also went sightseeing and went to
the TATA automobile museum. I have
vaguely heard of them, but they started making cars in 1898, all through both
wars, and have trucks that were specifically designed for military application
and dump trucks. I think they are now
owned by an Indian company.
We leave Saturday morning for Prague,
change trains and head south to Pizek till later in the week. One of the sightseeing trips is to a nuclear power plant. We also will visit the ORIGINAL Budweiser
brewery. Needless to say, I am looking
forward to that side trip. Then Thurs we
head to Prague via Pilzen and another brewery visit and arrive in Prague for
the final 5 days.
Rotary has only existed in this country for
20 years, and this club tonight celebrated their 10th anniversary.
My vocational day was with RPG
properties who own and manage 44,000 apartments! Talk about a big operation. They are redoing the former Soviet butt ugly
8-10 story buildings by replacing the windows with new energy saving
models. Given, there is at least 4
windows for each flat, that's a lot of windows.
Fortunately, they are mostly the same size. This cost is projected to be $250 Million
US$. Then, they are covering the buildings with about 4” of polystyrene and
painting them in attractive colors. Its
still the old Soviet building, but sure looks a lot better. Its complicated, but RPG has been able to
raise the rent about the amount of the savings in energy. Typical rent for a nice 700 sq ft 1 BR is
about $1000/month as near as I can tell, but the energy for heat and
electricity pops that up to about $1500.
Supposedly..... the energy savings is a wash so the owner gets the
savings to rationalize the expenditure for the energy savings. It's actually a bit more complicated than
that but generally, that is what is happening.
So much better than in Slovakia because the government has not allowed
to raise the rents by the owners.
Thanks for listening
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