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a neglected blague

2005-08-22T08:08:00.000+02:00

the poor blague has been neglected, and so i feel i ought to just go ahead and wrap it up, give it some closure, etc. etc.

rhys is in nyc. i'm in bama, but will probably move back to austin within the next month. i will be living with amy and kristen. kristen is currently living in rachel's room while rachel visits rhys up in new york. it's a small world, when you're from austin.

so that everyone can look and feel reminiscent with us. here's a picture of rhys and me at the prague castle. we may no longer be together in prague, but at least we'll always be together in pragueblague.

romania pics

2005-07-03T07:50:00.000+02:00

i'm looking at ronen's pictures from romania right now and thinking "man, i wish i was in romania right now." and the thing is, i bet it's beautiful right now, like all in bloom, and full of romanians and bears and werewolves and all that. and i'm also listening to beck and thinking "man, i love beck."

here's a pictures. it's the outskirst of brasov, romania, taken from the woods behind this guy's farm.

concerning my future

2005-06-29T07:07:00.000+02:00

confidentially, i'm sort of freaking out.

i really would just like to go back to belgrade for a while.

where to next?

2005-06-23T02:49:00.000+02:00

i think i want to go to ecuador now

Keep up with the PragueBloggers

2005-06-20T02:46:00.000+02:00

Nicole noted rightly that I don't post to PragueBlague as much as I used to. When we were in Prague. Well, that's because I started a new blog. And, you know, we're not in Prague anymore. Now I'm in Brooklyn, working at a vegetarian restaurant, living with Joe and Brooke, and spending all my free time trying to Beat Jeremy Coon.

Chatting with Nicool

2005-06-18T17:17:00.000+02:00

Nicole and I aren't in Prague anymore. It's just a fact. But last night we chatted over Friendster, and I felt transported to another land, another time, another place. A land more magical, a time more ancient, and a place more friendly. Welcome back, Nicole. Welcome back.

kristen and me outside of tito's grave in serbia

2005-06-18T07:16:00.000+02:00

also- this is us in front of the blue mosque in turkey

chronological list of the countries i visited this trip

2005-06-18T06:51:00.000+02:00

england
czech republic
germany
poland
austria
romania
hungary
slovenia
croatia
(austria again)
turkey
bulgaria
serbia
bosnia
(croatia again)
italy
belgium

2005-06-18T05:53:00.000+02:00

rhys doesn't write anymore.

rhys?

and adjustment

2005-06-16T18:50:00.000+02:00

i woke up at 6:30 am, because, well, that's 2:30 pm in the place i just was.

i keep trying to put my door key in upside down.

the waiter brought us our bill without us having to hunt him down and ask for it and my subconscious reaction was to think that he was trying to get rid of us, but, oh yes, that's how people do it here. i remember.

i paid for groceries with credit card.

people speak in the language i know.

whenever i have an inclination to use the computer, i can.

i don't know anybody here. i've gained about 6 pounds, which really isn't so bad when i think about the shit i've been eating. although i would like to get rid of it anyway.

i LOVE my dog.

being west

2005-06-15T21:16:00.000+02:00

i'm home.

i didn't sleep for three days.

i was on airplanes or in airports for 27 hours straight. and for about 18 just the day before that.

belgium is/was a disaster. the taxi drivers drive mercedes and take credit cards and charge 38 euros for sixteen kilometers. i am never going back to belgium.

i will write more when i am properly awake.

meanwhile. i'm happy to be sitting at my computer in my bathrobe, although i very much miss the former yugoslavia. oh! i got an email from our bosnian hostel friends today!

oh yes, and i have strep throat again.

moving west

2005-06-07T21:03:00.000+02:00

into...

1.hordes of tourists (western, american brits etc.)
2.complications (how the fuck do we get to venice from here without spending inordinate amounts of money? how will i get from venice to brussels?)
3.mean ladies (the woman we are renting a room from is probably satan)
4.expenses (how much is this internet costing?)

we're in dubrovnik. it is probably the most pictaresque city. i can't say i'm too in to it, though, for the reasons listed above. i think i would've loved it four or five months ago. in fact, i think i would probably be obsessed with it. but i just came from bosnia, and before that serbia, and this is just too too pretty for me right now. sarajevo was pretty, but in a different way.

i mean, i'm being a grumpy pants because i'm a little tired and sick. i like it here. but i want to go back east. but right now i have no time left on the internet and i've lost too many blog entries to prepaid internet sessions running out. i'll explain more later.

dear kss- let's go a traveling.

from an email i wrote to darling

2005-06-06T21:31:00.000+02:00

no time to write a real entry, so i am copy-pasting from an email i wrote to my dear friend kristen darling.

sarajevo is too touristy and mostar is full of dead people. i am in the shit right now. i am in mostar, and this is the middle of the world and the middle of conflict and peace and death and life and i'm all caught up in it and i'm feeling so much all at once that i'm dizzy and might fall over any minute. we are renting a room from man who can't be any younger than 250 years old. we befriended a dog who was inhabited by the spirit of a bosnian croat who died in 1992 or 1993, but no earlier or later because this dog was trying to show us things, show us what happened here. this place is full of death. and also life. because people who live in birmingham alabama and want to become business men and make money so that their children can drive jeep grand cherokees instead of bicycles and eat steak for breakfast don't feel life the same way as someone who walks past mine-infested ruins on their way to work or has seen their neighbors' head roll of their bodies in a real honest to goodness i
hate you so much i could kill you war. the dead people here
are really really dead and everyone else is really really alive.

i am a war tourist and i feel bad about it, but at least i'm feeling
it. you know? at least i'm seeing the buildings now from my safe
distance in time and i can take these images with me to alabama, where i will be less alive, maybe, but also safe and happy.

sarajevo- a whirlwind post

2005-06-04T17:54:00.000+02:00

sarajevo is easily one of the most beautiful cities i've seen. we drove in on the bus at sunset and the houses were turning on their lights and you could see the mosques next to the churches next to the temple, and from the hills (because sarajevo is in a valley), it looked so peaceful. it was a scene from an anime film, or a disney claymation film, or from a well-illustrated graphic novel. are you catching my drift? kristen cried. i cried too, but as i mentioned earlier, it was just because i didn't want to leave belgrade. belgrade belgrade.

but sarajevo makes me antsy. i don't know if it is just because it is belgrade, which is the best place and i never wanted to leave, especially after watching the sunrise over the danube with the angry bojan barge-bartender, but even before, when we were just walking down the pedestrian street, that was packed with people (not tourists!) from the early afternoon to the late evening EVERY day (tuesday, wednesday, whatever). this city was so full of life. belgrade belgrade. the way you say belgrade in serbian is beograd. that's a bit prettier.

in the center of the city is an old citadel that was destroyed forty-four times or something like that. most of what remains was reconstructed by the austrian-hapsburgs and also the turks in the (i think) 18th century. i don't have my guidebook in front of me, so my facts could be wrong. anyways, it is a massive complex in the center of the city with the ruins of defensive walls and old moats (that are now tennis courts) and museums and tunnels and green green parks with people everywhere sitting and talking and playing chess and being old or being young and laying on the crumbling walls by the sava river with their shirts rolled up past their stomachs to catch the sunshine eating icecream and popcorn and drinking fizzy lemonade and smiling and smoking and speaking serbian with one another and making lace, selling lace, selling buttons that say 'i heart yu' with a picture of the yugoslav flag and shirts with josef broz tito on them because he was yugoslavia, but then he died, and kristen and i saw his grave too. and we were the only ones at his grave, besides two older ladies and lots of strange statues and the people who worked there. but his grave was in a garden inside a building with grass inside under a roof, but not a green house. and then we went to a museum with all the gifts that tito ever received from countries around the world, which were mostly swords and folk costumes. and there was also the military history museum (but at the kalemegdon citadel) where they had pieces of an american jet that they shot down and also the uniforms of the captured soldiers and all sorts of bloody weapons and some kosovar skulls and also pictures of serbian civilians who were killed by NATO bombs in the outskirst of the city of beograd. one picture was a street vendor whose head was rolled back and blood was coming out of it blood was everywhere and his blood was spread around him like his vegetables that he had been selling a few minutes before. little pieces of cabbage next to his inanimate body. cabbage is everywhere in eastern europe. really, everywhere.

and can you understand why this place made me feel so intensely happy and also sad? it was so beautiful and so bloody. these people have blood on their hands, but also sorrow. they are sad. but also alive. i have never seen so much singing and rejoicing and dancing in a place (just on the street!), but they also know war. there were ex-soldiers my age who had killed people and they were drinking at the bar on the danube that we were drinking at. we met one. he had killed a incompetent sargeant who was sending his friends to their deaths and then they called him a war criminal and so he fled to south africa and then the dominican republic and now he's finally back in serbia, because that's where he wants to be, because that's where he is from and that means something here. i say i am from alabama, but it doesn't mean much because i don't feel like i'm from alabama. i feel like i am from my family and my house, which happens to be in alabama, which is a place that i have been visiting and observing for 23 years but where i don't really fit. kristen and i decided that we are misfits. and i want to find my serbian soul-mate, bojan, who said that the people in serbia were happy and sad and angry and stupid and everything all at once adn this is how i feel all the time, but he feels like he fits in serbia and i feel like i fit nowhere really, which isn't all bad, really, and part of me wants to find bojan and take him with me around the world so that we can be misfits together and then wander the world in mutual lonliness, but then also he would cease to be the concept that i've made him, as a person who represents many more people in a place that represents more than the present (anything but the present, according to bojan) and it also represents more space than is in its geographic boundaries (and that is the problem, isn't it?), and if i took bojan away it would not work at all. because he is serbian and all i am is not exactly alabamian.

what i'm saying is that i love serbia, or at least belgrade. these two countries-- they are made of the same stuff. but one of them seems prettier and sadder (that's bosnia) and the other seems more real and angrier (and that's serbia). they are both terrific, of course. but i think that really i just need to learn serbo-croatian so i can come back here and communicate with more people.

guest entry (a few days late) from kristen about sofia

2005-06-04T17:47:00.000+02:00

Currently I am in Sofia, Bulgaria. We arrived last night via train. Somehow we ended up in the train compartment full of the most disgusting and lecherous men in the country. But then some of them left and we made friends with a young guitarist who played us Mozart. We had spent the three previous days in Sozopol, on the Black Sea coast. It was rather boring because there were not that many people there and everyone we met couldn't get enough of bad-mouthing the Roma. But the food was good and we got some rest. I seem to have left my wallet in Margarita's house, but she is supposedly sending it, so it should get here tomorrow.

Sofia is very interesting. It has given me a completely new perspective on Bulgaria. Not to pass judgment on a whole country, but I had been getting rather melancholy energy from this land. Last night when we arrived I had a strange feeling I was entering a kind of netherworld and thought that perhaps Sofia would be more of the same. But, in fact, it is quite lively here. Sofia is certainly changing and beginning to look a lot like many western European cities I've visited. As in other parts of Bulgaria, people make very good use of public space. But there is something underneath the glitz that is very East Bloc-ish and extremely dark. I don't mean this in a bad way. There is just some intense darkness. There are an abundance of bizarre, tortured looking statues. There is the 20 foot head with a slash in its skull as well as a number of starving corpses throughout the city. There are also an inordinate amount of swastikas everywhere and in front of the Alexander Nevsky church someone was selling a box with Hitler painted on it. Someone else was also selling old photographs, and I purchased a funeral scene that I like very much. The whole walk up to the church is thus rather eery, and the suddenly sinister-looking sky only intensified this mood. The church itself, which was built to honor those who died fighting the Turks in the late 1800s, is the darkest and perhaps most morbid place I have ever been. There was very little light at all and there was something very peculiar and unsettling but also really beautiful about it. Clutching my funerary photograph, I stood in a spot on the floor where the tiles met and formed a circle and closed me eyes. I am not sure what this means, but for a long time afterwards I was not sure if I was in Satan's palace or the Nevski church. I am not sure they would be separate buildings. I thus like Sofia immensely.

We are staying at Art Hostel, which is indeed somewhat artsy. Last night we went to the bar downstairs to get our complementary welcome drink and stayed there for entirely too long. Nicole met a sketchy Brit (another football tourist... and we thought we had left all of these fanatics behind in Istanbul) who would not leave and then I talked to a bunch of slimy others, including one Bulgarian boy with three nostrils whose first words to me were, "Canadian women are even more beautiful than Polish women." I think he had some mental problems, and his gay mohawked Macedonian lover eventually got jealous and forced him to leave. Cheers for Kristen, the international gay weirdo magnet. Then some kid from Georgia with a wife and a girlfriend who are not the same individual told me he loved me. I finished up the night with a hunk of chicken at 4:30am. I was awoken early by the Polish theater troupe staying in the room next to mine who felt inspired to perform a muscial at 9am and then some asshole composer's musical alarm that continued to go off every 10 minutes despite his absence.

We were going to head to Macedonia next, but I think we are going skip it and go to Belgrade for a night and then on to Sarajevo. I am most excited to be in Bosnia-Herzegovina, so my eyelids are sweating beads of anticipation at this very moment. I am enjoying the East Bloc very much, though the people are hard to get to know. They are not very friendly in a superficial way, though of course there is a lot of heart underneath it all.

Someone spray painted the word "sorrow" in English on the side of a building next to this one.

the balkans

2005-06-03T15:09:00.000+02:00

i never have time to write emails, blogs, and also be in the balkans at the same time.

i need to say this though:

i think i have finally found my place. i fell in love with and in serbia. i met a boy on a barge and he is so angry and also happy and full of life and also tragedy and so smart and thoughtful and we didn't even kiss, but if everyone in the balkans is like that then i want to meet them all.

i cried when we left belgrade; kristen cried when we saw sarajevo. we are in the center of the world. this is it.

3 minutes to write this

2005-05-31T19:55:00.000+02:00

before the internet thing kicks me off.

we are in belgrade, serbia and we love it. it is full of life and singing people and reasonable fashion. it's a team hamabam (that's me and kristen s.) recommended city.

thanks to matt, parents, and kss for sticking with blague. :)

love you guys!!!!!!!!!!

the balkans rule!

p.s.

2005-05-30T19:10:00.000+02:00

i can sort of read cyrillic now. also, does anyone besides my parents still read this blog?

immobile in sofia

2005-05-30T18:47:00.000+02:00

when kristen and i were on the train from istanbul to bulgaria, i looked out the window at dawn and saw bulgaria for the first time. what i saw was a vast green field with two bushes. so my first impression of bulgaria was as flat, with two bushes.

when we were in our little abandoned town on the black sea, i asked kristen what words she would use to characterize bulgaria. they were something like empty, depressing, and prom. mine were something like empty, green, and vast.

now we're in sofia, and my impressions still include the color green, but now they also include graffitied swastikas, yellow brick roads, and the gates of hell. sofia is by far my favorite place in bulgaria.

i don't like all the nazi stuff all around, obviously. it is very distressing, in fact. we see swastikas scrawled all over signs and monuments and sidewalks and walls all over this city. and we went to a street with a row of vendors, and one of them was selling a little box with a flattering portrait of hitler on it. kristen bought a picture of a funeral from the vendors. i bought some crazy earrings. but neither of us bought anything from the hitler vendor.

the vendors were right next to a statue park with images of people dragging dead people on their shoulders, or screaming in agony whilst breaking free from some sort of cube-like prison, and, of course, a giant pillar with a swastika spray-painted on it.

the statue park was right next to the alexander nevsky church, which is sofia's main attraction, and, after seeing this church, i can honestly say for the first time that a church deserves to be a city's main attraction. this place was INSANE. it was giant and empty and utterly creepy. there were candle-light chandeliers (now electric candles, but they were once certainly wax), that hardly lit up the immense space. there were small windows surrounding the tall domes, but no light came through them. there was an alter with painted images of saints on the panels, but the saints looked so so sad. they were not dramatically sad, but they were more, like, just subtly and deeply sad looking. they all had mostly neutral expressions on their faces, but i couldn't even look at them. there were also lions with pillars coming out of their backs that also looked very, very sad. sad lions. and there were monks singing. and kristen and i were thinking that we'd entered the gates of hell. this was the most sinister church i have ever seen. when we came out of it, the sky looked like it was about to crush us.

the worst thing about being in bulgaria is the fact that i can't move when and where i want to because i'm on crutches. and unreasonably uncomfortable crutches at that. i'm worried that my immobility is going to dramatically decrease my quality of vacation for the next few weeks. adn i'm worried that there might be something seriously wrong with my ankle that should be attended to before a few weeks from now. but there is no way to know and getting home would be so depressing and also expensive. i want to see some things here before i go back there.

anyways, we're changing our itinerary a little bit. we were going to go to macedonia tomorrow, because the lonely planet description looked really good, but now it looks like we'll be going to belgrade, because it is more central (meaning there are more buses going in and out of it than skopje) and the macedonians we met said that skopje wasn't all that interesting. so we'll go to serbia and then we'll stay there for a night and head on over to sarajevo. then croatia. then italy. then home. oh, the other thing is that if we went to skopje, we'd have to bus through kosovo (and maybe albania), which sketches me out a little bit, although i'm sure it is safe as long as we stay on the bus and etc. it's a non-issue anyway; it's just inconvenient.

some guy told kristen that canadian girls were even more beautiful than polish girls; she was flattered despite the fact that we're not canadian.

bulgaria

2005-05-24T17:50:00.000+02:00

so, of course the nicest computers i've been on in europe are in this random town in bulgaria, and i have no time to write. the good news is that i have no time to write beacuse i am going to bulgarian prom with a bulgarian friend of kristen's and also with krsiten. i'm excited. here's the email i wrote to my parents. you know, just for an update.

here i am in stara zagora, bulgaria. we're
staying at yoanna's family's apartment. yoanna is a friend of
kristen's from indian springs (she came the year after i left). she
is super sweet and really awesome and her family is SO nice. her mom
keeps feeding us more food than we could possibly eat, and then
demanding that we eat it. it is all vegetarian too, because yoanna is
vegetarian, so her mom knows how to cook good vegetables. today,
yoanna took us to her family's garden up on this hill by her
apartment. her grandparents stay in the garden all day to look after
the potatoes, strawberries, melons, roses, and especially the cherry
tree (because young hooligans and also birds keep trying to eat the
ripening cherries). none of her family speaks english, although she
speaks it perfectly (she goes to school in california), but they all
love us and demand to socialize with us constantly, which means that
yoanna constantly has to translate. but she doesn't mind. she has a
beautiful personality.

my ankle is still hurt, but it is feeling better every day, although
it looks pretty bad. it is swollen and a little bruised, but i've got
some crutches (that are painful and wooden!!!!!!), and so i'm not
putting much weight on it when i walk around. we are going to stay
here one or two more nights, and then we will go to sozopol, which is
on the black sea coast. it isn't the most direct route to the west,
but we had to come to stara zagora first because yoanna is leaving for
prague (of all places!) in a few days where she will be for the
summer. i'm excited about her going to prague, though, because this
way i can help her find the good vegetarian food.

guest entry from kristen

2005-05-23T14:27:00.000+02:00

hey folks. this is what kristen wrote for her own blog, and i thought i'd repost it for you guys so that you can have another perspective.

with love from constantinople
MERHABA!!!! I am in Istanbul, Turkey. got here friday night after a long flight where i made a friend from azerbajan and then there was this loquacious turkish man flailing his hands the whole time and talking about how he was looking for good people because he loves good people and then i took the tram alone and there were only men and i felt weird but then there were women. and then i got to the hostel and i was very tired air france lost my bag it sucked. but then it came later, after nicole got here. no sleep too much turkish beer and somehow i made out with Vili. bad idea he is insane and wants me to move here and live with him sketchy he kept waking me up note to self no hostel employees because now he wont go away because loco loco. then the next day we went to Haga Sofia, the Blue Mosque, the underground cistern, the grand bazaar etc. we made some friends in the mosque i really liked the mosque very peaceful and serene. WE are the only Uruguayoas in Turkey. We met the same pair of kids 3 times but each time they pretended not to know us. new best friends are the best. We went to Taksim square at night and saw this fun turkish pop band with Naco and Becky and Vili and some other kid i dont know from California who says this other girl I know from the US has a crush on him. They sang a song in English about a sexbone. Also Nicole is a superstar. before she got here i met 2 people who knew her from Prague. Crazy. some socialist and another boy with really bad hair. rad, but what is not so rad is that nicole fell in a hole and then me on top and owwwww owwww she hurty hurty in the bed with pillow ice and blankey. Vili was mad and said he was going to break his foot too. too much drama no thanks. and then yesterday we looked for crutches but didnt know how to say it in Turkish and we never found any but I think I found a 12 year old husband for Nicole and we saw the Golden Horn and lots of stuff for sale but everyone kept saying how everything was closed. did not look closed to me. then went to see the whirling dirvishes at the train station it was awesome they whirled and whirled like in a trance and then we went to the TURKISH BATH. It was awesome, everyone wet and naked and then they cleaned us and then washed our hair stroking naked naked lots of naked. then last night we came here and it was fun i was tired had not been able to sleep and then went to bed late again and then today got up and now we are waiting for crutches and Becky. And then tonight we are taking the overnight train to bulgaria. sorry for the stream of consciousness. in a hurry and wanted to update. evil eye evil eye a la TSATF eye but really the Istanbul eye. Can someone please use a high quality printer to give me pictures of saddaam in his underwear hot hot hot turkish bath. Istanbul is so great, east meets west, Europe and Asia. The people are really friendly and open, it reminds me a little of latin america. going to topkapi and asia now. I want more turkish bath. I will write more later. Adios!

istanbul ii

2005-05-23T14:04:00.000+02:00

so right now i have some time to write a little blog entry because i'm waiting for the crutches i purchased to arrive at the hotel next door. who knows if crutches are what i'll actually be getting, because everyone has seemed confused that i'd want crutches and not a wheelchair, a cane, a shoulder, or this one guy's son. language barriers. i think that yesterday's quest for crutches almost won me a fourteen year old husband.

anyways, despite my injury (which sucks a whole friggin lot), istanbul is potentially my favorite city i've been to in europe (we still haven't been to the asian side). it feels different from any other city i've been to. the people are really really friendly. lots of times they are just trying to sell you things, but if you refuse to buy their things and drink their tea or just ask them for directions, they're really nice anyway. this one guy walked us a block and a half to help us find a bathroom because the one in his restaurant was out of order, then he just left us. he didn't try to make out with us, get our phone numbers, or sell us anything. he was just nice. we've been having that experience over and over here. also, the guys are really hot. like the goodlooking ones are REALLY goodlooking to me. i like the look. one guy at the hostel fell in love with kristen (i'm with b'ham kristen now, darling is off with her parents in germany).

here is a list of things we've done:
-hung out in hostel (a lot)
-wandered the streets in sultanhamet
-blue mosque
-underground cistern (beautiful!)
-dancing to a turkish band/hanging out with hostel owner and austin-friend becky
-breaking ankle on the street
-aye sofia (used to be a church, then a mosque, now a tourist location)
-seen the dervishes whirl
-been to the turkish bath (also known as a hamam; also known as incredible)

we still need to go to asia, get my crutches, and also go to topkapi palace today (this is a priority). i REALLY want to see topkapi. NOW! but i can't walk.

tonight, we get on a train to stara zagora, bulgaria, where kristen has a friend. then we're going to the black sea coast on bulgaria. hopefully my ankle will hold up.

oh, i just found out that we're probably not going to get to go in to topkapi because we're still waiting for my stupid crutches for mty stupid ankle. i am really sad. it was the number one thing i wanted to ddo.

anyways, i will just have to come back.

okay i still have a little time, so i will elaborate on some of my favorite things that we've done.

turkish bath:
okay, this is where you get naked with a bunch of same-gendered people in a steamy room and lay on a hot rock slab in the middle of it. you lay there confused for a while, looking at all the different women and trying to figure out if you would prefer to be shaped this way or that way, when all of a sudden, five or six large old naked turkish women come in and command you to lay down in front of them. they get this exfoliating glove adn rub it all over the back of your body, then they slap you on the butt and you turn over. then they rub it all over the front of your body. then they pull your arm and you sit up and they rub it all over your arms. then you lay down again and they get this bag with all these soap bubbles in it and squeeze it all over you and clean you and massage you at the same time. then they take you in to this other room where they shampoo your hair and pour little bowls of water all over you. then you lay on the rock slab again for as long as you want. when you get too hot, you can go into the little rooms on the side and pour bowls of water on your head. it feels really nice and also makes you clean and makes you feel like you are on a greek vase or something, being in that room with all those naked ladies and pouring bowl fulls of water over your head and shoulders.

dervishes:
you think it'd be boring to watch people whirl in place for half an hour, but really it isn't at all. you start to notice all this different whirling techniques. like this one guy always put his foot down in exactly the same place, and looked like there was an invisible pole through his left ear, down the center of his body, and out one of his heels into the floor. then this other guy also turned like 200 degrees and so his foot was always coming down a little bit farther ahead of the last time. first, i watched their feet, then i started noticing their heads. they were so still, even though their bodies were moving adn it made their tilted heads look like they were in motion. then i started to notice the fabric of their dress- how it billowed out in this whooping patterns. i got in to sort of a trance watching them. i've never seen people in constant movement appear to also be so still. and i don't know how they didn't fall down with dizziness. no wonder it is a religious experience for them. i bet they feel like they are on drugs when it is over.

okay, i'm gonna stop now because i have to see about going out in this town.

istanbul

2005-05-23T00:18:00.000+02:00

hey folks, i'm in istanbul. it rocks here. tonight, an old woman who i had never met before scrubbed me and soaped me up and massaged me in a room with about 20 naked ladies at the hamam. it was awesome.

tomorrow, we leave for bulgaria. so far, though, istanbul is my favorite big city that i've visited since i've been in europe. it's totally unlike any of the other cities. oh, but the only thing is that i'm pretty sure i sprained my ankle last night on the busy party street. there was a pothole. it's already feeling a little better, though, so hopefully i'll be able to walk properly within the next few days. the people are nice here. the architecture is beautiful (mosques!). the food is good (turkish delight!). the hostel is one of the best in the world, probably.

k, i'm tired from having been scrubbed and massaged so thoroughly by the big naked lady.

p.s.

2005-05-18T19:45:00.001+02:00

i'm in prague again, by the way. and i'm leaving for istanbul on friday. k.

last night- the story of no sleep

2005-05-18T19:45:00.000+02:00

i could write about all the incredible things that happened on our road trip through eastern europe, but instead i want to write about last night.

so i ended up staying at my friend matthew's place. he owns/lives above the bar. he lives in filthiness. this doesn't bother me. he has no shower, hot water, or toilet (there is a toilet in the hall). this is a bit inconvenient.

so anyways, around two, michelle (very nice girl who works at the bar but floats from flat to flat instead of having her own) shows up. i'm really excited because i have insomnia and i want to hang out with her for a while. so we chat for a bit and then she passes out, because she's been drinking. then, i lay down and try to sleep some more. meanwhile, matthew's cat is very persistently sniffing, kneading, and sticking her butt in my face/hair. no sleep. then, at six am (still awake, and with plans to wake up at 8:30 to go to the rental car place and sort out paperwork), noah (the other owner) shows up at the door with katka, who just broke up with her boyfriend (who she lives with), and says, "matthew has graciously offered his bed to katka, who needs a place to sleep." i let her in and show her which piece of foam on the floor is matthew's bed, and which piece is nicole's temp-bed, and which is michelle's temp bed. while i was letting katka in, matthew's cat ran out. so i ran out after it and chased it all around the building at six am. when i get back, katka is already snoring and sleep talking in slovakian. it was pretty adorable, but not sleep conducive for me. about thirty minutes later, i'm still trying (and failing) to sleep, and the cat decides she wants desperately to play. so she jumps from a tall table onto my chest to 'wake me up.' i don't want to give in to her wily ways, so i pretend to stay asleep. so she starts rifling through my stuff and pawing at my legs. i keep ignoring her. so she goes into the kitchen and knocks over a few pots and pans and then comes up and sniffs at my face again. i pretend to still be asleep. finally, she curls up in my lap and falls asleep. i begin to have those still-awake-pre-dream dreams. one specifically where i'm riding on the curling leaves on a giant head of cabbage as if the cabbage were a jungle gym with slides. but then it's time to wake up and go to the car rental place.

the night of no sleep. zero minutes, actually. absolutely no sleep.

matthew never came back to his apartment, so i just left the sleeping ladies there and left the key in the door. and now my stuff is there but i'm locked out. tonight, i am going to sleep at anthony and lindsey's place. they are very sweet people who have offered me my own futon, a toilet, AND a shower.

but it was an interesting night, anyways. not bad, but i'm dizzy-tired now. and now i'll go meet my cousin for dinner. yay!

the end.

nine minutes in vienna

2005-05-17T12:20:00.000+02:00

this is how long i have on the internet before it kicks me off.

we're in vienna. we are kristen, amy, and nicole (that's me).

yesterday we were in plitvice, croatia, looking at the garden of eden/the plitvice national park. it was like this- levels of clear, turquoise colored lakes, with little silver fishes hanging out by the surface. a little wooden platform winding between several waterfalls, and around the nearly invisibly clear lakes. bright green foliage hanging from hundreds of trees. and old white-haired people winding around the little wooden platforms. i thought that we had died and gone briefly to a place where all the nice old white-haired people go when they die. then we had to leave. kristen said, "awwww, sucks that we have to leave." i said, "well, you can only stay in a place like this so long when you're not dead yet."

there were also old french dudes who were actually wearing berets. can you believe it?!?

i want to show you pictures, but i have no access to a place to download my pictures right now. hopefully i will soon, though, because my memory card is entirely full. today we look at klimt paintings and then go back to prague for a few days. then i meet the other kristen in istanbul!

IKEA

2005-05-13T21:46:00.000+02:00

This is me and Nick on our daytrip to Holland

2005-05-13T04:46:00.000+02:00

Gone to Texas

2005-05-12T17:03:00.000+02:00

I got back to Richardson yesterday afternoon. After Prague, Berlin, Krackow, and Stockholm (and Brasov and Vienna if I can count places Nicole went while I was in Prague), Richardson seems like a charming, idyllic utopia. Well, not really, but it's got family and Suma Veggie Cafe, so it's not the worst place in the world.

But back to the memories. In 1628 - the year Britain introduced The Petition of Right (An important document setting out the rights and liberties of the subject as opposed to the prerogatives of the crown) - Sweden was at war with Poland. Now that Sweden's worst warmongering is a mild cultural rivalry with Norway, it's hard to imagine them decapitating Poles and ripping out their spinal cords for territory. But aside from blond hair and blue eyes, ancient Swedes had little in common with their modern counterparts who are known for being passive, afraid of uncomfortable situations, and, in general, neither happy nor sad, neither great nor horrible.

1628 was the year Sweden completed The Vasa, a giant warship meant to wipe Poland off the map until the end of time. One version goes like this... The ship was almost completely built when the King of Sweden realized they should double the number of cannons on the ship, just to make sure Poland couldn't possibly think about rebuilding their society out of the rubble. Since The Vasa wasn't designed to hold all those extra cannons, the ship was really unbalanced, and people on deck had to watch where they walked. Fifteen minutes after it set sail, it caught a mild gust of wind, fell over, and sank to the bottom of the sea. Fifty of the maybe 200 soldiers, women, and children drowned. No one was held responsible for the accident. Probably because it was the king's fault.

Then, in 1959, the Vasa was discovered and dredged up. Sweden spent 30 years restoring this shame of their past, and now The Vasa is an artifact in the most popular musuem in Stockholm. I went, and I have proof. This photo. It was dark at the Vasa, and it's kind of hard to see the ship behind me, but trust me, it's there.

Photo credit and Photoshop credit goes to Nick Stevens, the guy I went to Stockholm to see.

Last post from Europe for real... this is Rhys

2005-05-10T22:44:00.000+02:00

I guess this is it. Good-bye to Europe forever. From now on, Europe may as well not exist as far as I'm concerned. Well, Nicole is still in Europe, and I don't want her to get sucked into a vacuum of non-existence. Or Nick for that matter. Otherwise, to me, there might as well be nada on the other side of the Pond we call the atlantic. No, no, that's not true. I can't leave the blog like this, so short, so sarcastic, so anti-climactic. Stay tuned for every single Prague and Stockholm incident that I didn't have the net time to write before. Seriously, this isn't another of my empty promises. I can already tell, though, my catch-up entries just won't be the same. I've already noticed my mentality changing. Just look at my recent Jeremy Coon obsession. Not possible in Prague or Stockholm. My head had to be at least halfway in The USA to think like that. Nevertheless, this isn't the end. Perhaps Nicole's tales from Europe will keep me in line. Good luck on your adventures, Nicole! Goooooooooood Luuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!

Last day in Stockholm

2005-05-10T11:55:00.000+02:00

Yes, you read that title right. This is my last day in Stockholm, maybe forever. I have had many adventures here - too many to even begin to recount, or even hint at. The best part has been seeing my old friend Nick - one of the few connections to my Dallas, TX past - playing Dungeons & Dragons (my character in Stockholm is a human barbarian named Taschen, a far cry from my old character Basil Spire who was a half-elven half-theif/half mage), reminiscing about our school days and Cafe Brazil nights, and preparing for our high school re-union. In only two years, we will be re-united with all our high school mates, and this has got me thinking of my nemisis again. I have to beat Jeremy Coon.

Jeremy Coon produced Napoleon Dynamite, which, even if it may get a little slow by the end, is a cultural behemouth - a defining film of our generation that will influence art and even society building for at least the next 100 years. Do I have it in me to help create something as worshipped, as quotable, and that inspires as many laughs and smiles as Napoleon Dynamite will do for generations to come? Something more brilliant, yes, of course, there's no question that that's in me, but something as beloved? I'm not so sure.

No matter what, the next two years of my life will, in part, be a ceaseless, undivided effort toward that perhaps impossible goal. And that is just one of the many reasons I must leave Europe (for now?) and return to my real life, the the land where I was born, The United States of America. See you soon, everyone!

slovenia

2005-05-10T11:48:00.000+02:00

in slovenia, they like to take random one-syllable english words and turn them in to city names. for instance, we are now staying in a town outside of bled. also outside of bled, there was a town called log.

anyways, if i am even somewhat of a reasonable person, i will not spend more than 5-7 minutes writing this entry. i am in a small town outside of a small town outside of the small slovenian city of bled. we are staying in a gigantic apartment for 13 euros a piece in a valley with some mountains and some lakes and one slovenian receptionist, who is very nice, and his very very nice dog.

it took us about twice as long to get here as it was supposed to, but the upshot is that i can now drive a manual transmission car with confidence.

here are the things i want to tell you about but don't have time because i need to eat, shower, and interact with slovenia at some point:

-floor crashing/apartment hopping with amy in prague (sort of miserable, sort of great)
-specifically, austin's apartment (and floor) and matthew's apartment (showerless)
-puke everywhere (the horrible hostel)
-tesco picnic
-getting lost in klagenfurt (the most beautiful, picturesque, weird little college town i have ever seen)
-the austrian countryside.

i should spend a minute on that anyway. the austrian countryside is easily the most beautiful countryside i've ever seen. the green of the grass is so green that it almost hurts your eyes. right where czech republic and austria meet, there are fields covered with yellow flowers that are so bright that my mind had previously been unable to conceive of such a color. the sky was blue with supermario little white fluffy clouds everywhere. basically. it was nice.

okay i have to go.

things and stuff and

2005-05-04T13:04:00.000+02:00

today we watched a spanish movie with czech subtitles in my art and architecture class. our teacher was not the best of teachers. we all speak english and not spanish or czech.

last night i got really really drunk unexpectedly. the thing is, i left my listerine at the dorms and i wanted to kill the germs in my throat somehow, so i drank a sizeable shot of vodka and then forgot about it. then i went to the blind eye to see a concert and had a glass of wine. and it didn't immediately hurt my stomach (like alcohol usually does), so i drank another. and then it was all over for me. but noah printed out my paper for me at the office in the bar, so i didn't have to worry about that this morning. that was very helpful.

now i feel hungover and awful and have a 10 page paper to write by tomorrow morning, not to mention another class tonight. not to mention that this is my last night at kate's and my stuff is still strewn about the city in the most illogical of places. ugh! curse that landlady!

amy is coming to town tomorrow. i am extraordinarily pleased with this new development. YAY!

speaking of new developments, kate has a full length mirror, and it turns out that somewhere along the way (between junior year and today), i have acquired love handles. curse full length mirrors!

this internet session is going to cost me a fortune. curse bohemia bagel!

the stress is slowing paying itself off

2005-05-03T12:56:00.000+02:00

my cousin's apartment is beautiful. i have it to myself right now. and she has a computer, so i'm gonna buy some cd's, write my papers at her apartment, and print them elsewhere. it's impossible to get a computer at the study abroad office right now because everyone is writing papers, so this is more help than it sounds. the key board i'm on right now is awfu l adn it adds in random spaces.

okay- to paper wri ting.

this is nicole, stressed out

2005-05-02T14:51:00.000+02:00

so i had to leave the apartment today. we sort of had a choice and sort of didn't as far as whether i had to leave. i chose to leave in order to save everyone money, but it really wasn't worth it AT ALL. I AM SO STRESSED OUT!

not only did i waste a whole day and a half cleaning and packing (what i will just have to unpack and send off), but i have two papers to write and a test and also no place to stay tonight. well, i didn't have a place to stay tonight until a few minutes ago, when it turns out (now that all my stuff is at the dorms, where i'm not allowed to stay) that my cousin's friend can let me into her apartment even though my cousin is out of town and has no idea that i'll be staying in her apartment. but the thing is, her apartment is over there, and i (and all my stuff) are over here. i think i'm gonna buy a bunch of boxes and send off everything today so that my stuff will be in transit without me. but that means i can't write the papers or study for my test that i have to do all within like the next two days and all without the use of a computer.

annnnnyways. i'm about to have an awesome vacation, at least. and i'll have a little extra money from being homeless that i can use to, i don't know, eat extra food or something.

alright. off to do things.

This is Rhys, live from Sweden

2005-05-02T12:45:00.000+02:00

I'm on welfare now. More soon...

Stockholm Blockue

2005-04-30T18:44:00.000+02:00

I got to Stockholm yesterday. It wasn't easy, for reasons I may or may not elaborate later (after I never finished my Terezin entry, can my blog promises ever be trusted...). My first few hours in Stockholm weren't so pleasant either, mostly because of the weight of my luggage, but also because Nick and I had never agreed on exactly where he was to meet me. Going even a block with my luggage was so daunting that I didn't want to move an inch if I wasn't sure that it was the exact right inch to move. Eventually I dragged my luggage to what seemed like the most logical place I could possibly be. I layed down on the ground with my head against an imitation marble ashtray, looking about as destroyed as I ever had. A cop came by and said something to me in Swedish. 'English,' I asked, and then he supposedly said the same thing to me in English that he had just said in Swedish - 'That looks bad. Move to the bench.' Not only is poverty completely wiped out here... even the appearance of poverty is wiped out. I've been brainstorming ways to bilk the system...

stockholm

2005-04-29T14:48:00.000+02:00

when rhys reads this post, he will already be in stockholm, and i will still be in prague.

nice and sleazy

2005-04-28T21:26:00.000+02:00

so... looks like i'm breaking up rhys's last entry from prague because i'm here at the dorms with nothing to do but use the computer. anna's in her room drawing a fellow naked. kristen and hannah and kelli were supposed to be here, but, well, they're not. so i'm here in hannah's room waiting for anna's gentleman friend to get dressed. this is not the sleazy part of the entry, i'm gonna get to that.

so there is this one guy in the study abroad program who is more or less a repulsive pervert. i know those are strong words, but those are the only ones that could adequately describe him. all he ever talks about is sleeping with women. he really likes eastern european women who don't speak much english, especially ones that around 30, unless he's 'girl shopping', in which case he likes 'high school aged girls.' he's a sort of tall, awkward, soft-spoken guy. from looking at him, you'd get the impression that he was really in to, like, role playing games or something. one of the first times i ever talked to him, he said that he really wanted to have sexual relations with a woman while he was defecating. ok dude, nice to meet you too...

so he meets these women on the internet and then flies all over the eastern bloc meeting them and, presumably, sleeping with them. anyways, yesterday, he was talking about how he'd met the woman that he was 85% sure that he wanted to marry. we asked him where that 85% came from. he said that he liked that she was close to thirty and hot and didn't speak english. then we asked him where the 15% of doubt came from. he said that he wasn't sure if he could convince her to be bisexual. then he started talking about how hard it was to find the type of woman he wanted to marry. we asked him what his criterion were, he said 'well, around 30 years old, hot, and bisexual, preferably with no knowledge of the english language.' we assured him that there were probably plenty of women like that out there. he said that his ideal life would be having sex with his wife in the morning and then going girlshopping with her in the afternoon and evening.

okay okay. maybe i shouldn't be so judgemental. i think it is okay for a person to be bisexual and all that. but i guess i do think this guy is a big perv. he girlshops for high school girls! then he showed us the letter that he'd written to the woman that he's 85% married to; it went something like this-

"I think you are the hottest woman in Prague. You smell nice. I know that you do not speak English very well, but this is okay. I could teach you English and maybe you could even teach me some Czech. I think it would be fun to shower with you. P.S. I want to do gross things to you."

he was going to have this translated to czech and then he was going to give it to her. the reason i thought of this just now is because i opened myspace to find the following two messages- (i know this is different because i've never met these guys and they probably just copy-paste this message to all the girls they see, but i still think it is funny-weird-gross)

1)do you like to make love? if so I am interested in making love to you!!!!
Alright, forward, but honest, actually I meant to write something else, but i have drunk tyoo muych.

2) Good Day! I am glad to find there are interesting persons in this place! And I would be glad to get acquainted with someone like you! I want to introduce myself: . My real name is [REAL NAME], i also stay in my country Nigeria now. I am 22yrs of age. I will like to use this opportunity to tell u that i'm active and strong in any area .I promise, i will be good to u and take good care of u more than any other person can do, i hope u will like to be in my country Nigeria cos. u will experience some of our cultures , will u like come to my country Nigeria?, with me it will be possible for u. I wanna make a real love with u ok, i realy luv. u, if u don' t want to come to Nigeria then tell me how we gat to meet face to face and share our love together, this is my contact address. My email is [EMAIL]
U can contact me through it

Ur picture trip me, Anyway i'm looking for a pritty lady that is caring and know what is called love that will be my life parttner for life, Even if we don't get married, i want u to be a good friend of mine, the one i can give all my trust and can rely on, then i will send my picture to u for a court marriage, or if it is INVITATION LETTER. While i'm saying this is that it will be fasten our love and we will now have a real love and a physical sex . I hope u have a postal address and phone number, i need all ur contact. Comming to know me much My real name is [NAME], like i said it in the begining,i was born in Enugu State that's my state of origin and i was born in the year 29th march 1983 by the time month of march 2005 will runs over i will become 22 of age. My full contact is [FULL CONTACT] and also my cell phone number will be soon, i give it u. You can easily contact me any time ok.i really care for u sweet heart, ur so sweet, i care for u badly. Have a greate day.
.
pls sweet heart if ur interesting when replying just give me ur postal adress so that i will send my pictures to u ok.

Do u like masquerade?, if u woundn't mind i will purchase it and sent it to u soon, it is one of Nigeria culture , it is a masquerade cultural dance. It is in VCD . Believe me u need to watch it. I love u honey.
With Love From
[NAME]

For real, last blog entry from Prague - Part 1

2005-04-28T09:14:00.000+02:00

A couple of weeks ago, I woke up with the idea of posting to PragueBlague after I'd left Prague, pretending I'd gone back to Prague. "I'll trick them!" were the exact words in my half-awake, half-asleep mind. After I woke up for real, I abandonded that idea. There's no fooling you guys. So, I'm going to have to admit it - this could very well be my last blog entry ever from Prague as such. Tomorrow morning I leave for Stockholm, and not long after that Nicole heads southish east. We will still post, but the name PragueBlague will become a bitter-sweet anarchonism. In reality it will be StockholmBlolhmg when I post and AnyNumberofCitiesBlog when Nicole posts. Yes, Prague will still be in our hearts, but the reality of our immediate surroundings will be in our minds.

Yesterday was my second to last day in Prague. I spent most of it in Terezin, the fortress city in the Czech Republic that was once "a police prison of the Prague Gestapo in June 1940; in November 1941, a ghetto and concentration camp for Jews was established in the Large Fortress and town of Terezin." (http://www.photo.net/bp/terezin)

Why did I spend my second to last day in Prague in such a dreary place (a question I asked myself many times yesterday)? I don't know, actually; I just got the idea the night before. I guess I thought it was the best way I could spend the rest of my time here, since going to Auschwitz was so worthwhile. One big difference was that Rachel went to Auschwitz with me, and on the way there, we talked about all the thousands of babies we would have and all the crazy places we would live. Terezin had no such redemption.

Bad omen: someone had scrathed a swastika into the door of the bathroom stall. I can only hope that it was supposed to be the spiritual pre-nazi swastika, but if it was, then why was it painted over? The Jewish Ghetto musuem was way too much to take; not so much emotionally... there was just way too much information. It's hard to read a book when all the pages are posted on the wall (though Rachel and I both agreed that we would wallpaper our thousands of kids' walls with fancy small type words and mucha paintings so that they would always be forced to learn no matter where they looked... even if they try to hide under their blankets, which will be designed with old newspaper pages).

After the museum, I went to the gift shop to buy some Terezin gear for people back home (will you be one of the lucky few who gets a Terezin fanny pack?). Turns out the stuff was really expensive, and I didn't have enough crowns to pay for it. So I asked how much it was in Euros, since I had some Euros left from Berlin (old news but relevant again now that Nicole posted that Berlin photo). I didn't have enough Euros either, so I had to pay in Crowns and Euros. She took every crown I owned and had to pick through my 10 cent Euro coins to raise enough funds for everything I got. This meant that I had absolutely no money left for the bus ride home. Did I ask if I could return the packet of postcards so I could have enough crowns for the bus ride home? No. Did I know that I should? Yes. So why didn't I? Because I'm irrational. Which is also the reason I bought all these heavy souveniers when I had the whole rest of the day ahead of me. And also the reason I refused to take more money out of a cash machine no matter what. The weight of my backpack and the weight of the fear of being stuck in Terezin for the rest of my days was very heavy indeed. But man, those postcards were drawn by Jewish kids who were being taught in secret classes, and the drawings were about their life in the Terezin Ghetto. Definitely worth it.

I wandered back toward where the "Small Fortress," the main event, was supposed to be. The whole town is walled though, so I kind of thought I was already there before I was. I walked down into this grassy valley between the highway and a giant red brick wall. Basically it was an old European ditch that was designed in the 18th century to stop invaders. Long story short, I wasted a lot of time watching snails. There were a ton of snails in this ditch and for some reason I wanted to mess with their heads a little bit. I put five snails, who were originally scattered about the ditch, all right next to each other to see what would happen. I was hoping it would be something like Microcosmos. Instead, all the snails ran away from each other. Some brotherhood! It gave me a good idea for a fable, though. I would tell you, but I don't know who reads this blog. There could be a Hollywood producer out there just waiting to rip off a good idea. So I'll tell you in person. Anyway, snails are really slow, and not always easy to find, so I wasted a lot of time on this venture.

After that, I walked into a strange, dark hole in the brick fortress wall. It went for a really long way and had no light at the end and was really scary. The end of the tunnel was blocked off by wood. I know, I know, I should have broken through, but I ran into a spider web and am horrified of being eaten by brown recluses. So I ran out of there, very scared. It was the most scary thing that happened to me that day. Notice the passive phrasing even though it was my fault that I was in that tunnel? That's because I evade responsibility every chance I get. When I find out who put me in that tunnel, they are going to regert the day they put me in there, that's for sure.

I wandered around the old fortress town for a while. It was pretty interesting, and an urban explorers dream, but I just wasn't in the mood. Maybe it was the backpack or the lack of money or the fear. I looked on the ground for some money near a bicycle ramp, pretty much the only place in this old concentration camp town where kids can have fun (Oswiecim was pretty miserable too; why would anyone raise their kids in a city that used to kill thousands of people a day?). I found half a crown in a pile of dirt on top of an old couch that also had an old tractor tire on top of it. Half a crown used to buy you a lifetime of shaves and haircuts in Prague, but now it's nothing. I would have to rely on my cunning.

I pretty much gave up on seeing any more of Terezin. My goal was to get back to town without taking any money out of the cash machine. Another note on the ATM business - I only had a day left in Prague, and knew the cash machine would force me to take out more than I need.

Okay, I will finish this later.

bloody bunny heads

2005-04-27T16:16:00.000+02:00

as we mentioned, rhys and i went to the zoo with some friends on monday. it was pretty fun, as far as zoos go... but not the most fun. the zoo in austria was probably the best zoo i've been too. the most striking features of the prague zoo were not the animals they had on display so much as the cuisine provided for the animals they had on display.

we got to the big cats' cages around their lunchtime, which meant that some of them were ripping in to huge chunks of raw meat, and that others were somewhere behind their cages being provided their raw meats. when we got to one cage, the tiger that was supposed to be there was suspiciously absent. in its place, however, was its lunchtime leftovers...

...guys this is so gross...

...the cage was entirely empty except for this tiny little dead white bunny with its eyes open and all the meat on its legs scraped off, to reveal two tiny little bloody little red bunny leg-bones. i took a picture. i'll post it eventually (hopefully). english steve (who is awesome) spotted the bunny's backside in the next cage over. another cage feature a severed bunny head.

okay okay now i have to keep writing this paper.

pro crastination

2005-04-27T15:54:00.000+02:00

the thing is, i can't think about something more than once or twice and then still enjoy writing about it. it feels like i've already written it and that everything i say is somehow stale or overdone, even though it's never actually been written before. that's why my paper that i'm writing right now really sucks. i'm not sure it matters, because the classes here are so undemanding. but it still pains me to have to write something that i don't really like. i'm trying all kinds of different tactics to freshen it up for myself, but they are only moderately helpful. and i left something i very much need at home. oh well.

anyways, i leave my gmail window open when i'm working on the computer. this way i know when i get a new email. it is just so exciting to look down in the corner of the screen and see that the number count has gone up one. but then i never actually respond right away. i just think about my response too much so that when i actually respond it seems like it must be hopelessly boring, when in reality, it's probably okay.

here is a picture of rhys and me in berlin:

here is one in prague

and here's this because it's funny

the first homework of the semester

2005-04-26T17:57:00.000+02:00

study abroad classes in prague are sort of a joke. i've done hardly any work. i've learned things- from traveling, from zdenek, from readings- but i've not had any real assignments. i had to skip class this morning because i'm sick and i was feeling rotten. now i have three papers due in the next week. i'm being kicked out of the apartment on may 2, and will have to sleep on the floor in the dorms, which sounds fun (to be w the girls) but a little miserable because i'm allergic to dust, hate noise, and am extremely susceptible to germs, of which there are plenty at the dorms. i was gonna be able to sleep on a mattress, but it turns out that i'm not gonna be able to do that as i though that i was going to be able to do.

i'm not unhappy; i don't want to give you that impression. i'm just a little sick.

i'm getting really excited about post-prague travels, but i'm also really really really sad to leave. if i don't get the job in bama that i want for next year, i might come back here. there are worse places to be. and i like the people i've met here. i might also go to san fransisco to be with darling and chad, my cousins, and will are all also out there. or i may go to chicago to be with brother (who is my favorite person) and leema (who i really want to get to know better). or i could always go back to austin, but that would be moving backwards instead of forwards. or maybe i'll move to new zealand. who knows? hopefully i'll just get the job i want. i'd really like to teach.

anyways, i love school, but these classes are not very challenging (to say the least).

i'm procrastinating. this paper is stupid. i only have half a page left, and then i will only have three papers and a test left in undergraduate school ever.

pictures from spring break

2005-04-25T17:34:00.000+02:00

first: the zoo was way fun. i will also miss prague. i will miss rhys. rhys will miss prague. rhys will miss me.

second: here are some pictures from spring break (from ronen) that are awesome.

okay- here's team awesome (which included charley, and started once we got to budapest) before we went in the caves.

here is team awesome while we were just brand new and still in romania (last night in brasov)-

here is me in the caves-

me and charley in the budapest caves-

here's ronen's picture of the creepy weredogs in transylvania

kristen darling, uh, i mean dracula, by a tree

crossroads in the mist

this is enough for now.

Prague lasts

2005-04-25T10:16:00.000+02:00

1. Cooking

Last night was the last time I will ever cook in Prague. I made brown rice and barley, and sweet potatoes simmered with cabbage and onions. About half of the sweet potato dish was spice and garlic, since I had so much left and didn't want to waste it. As a consequence, you can hardly taste the sweet potato, but it's just nice to know that it's there. Besides this, we have beet tahini sauce, refried pinto beans, whole wheat cous-cous, red lentils, and stir fried vegetables in the fridge. If we run out, I have bags of dried lentils and yellow split peas. I also have enough oats and flaxseed and walnut milk to last for more than a week, as well as a bunch of seaweed, Country Life bread, tahini, and that French sugarfree jam to finish off. There is no way Nicole and I can finish all this before I go; maybe she can finish it before she goes. There's also some vodka, but I'm not going to touch that stuff after what happened yesterday (see 4). The thing is, I've hardly been hungry at all lately. I've still been eating almost as much as I usually do, which, despite what many think, is a lot (Nicole will back me up on this). It's just that instead of eating out of hunger, I've been eating out of habit and duty. Better than eating out of hate, I guess.

2. Aimlessly wandering

Yesterday was also my last day to aimlessly wander. I did a pretty decent amount of aimless wandering in Prague, but not as much as you might think. Once it stopped snowing, it was harder to get motivated to go outside without a real plan. I didn't do any urban exploration, or steam tunneling, or breaking into Prague movie studios, or any of those adventurous things from my past that are still linked to who I am, or at least who people think I am. Who is the real me, by the way? I hardly even peeked into any doorways where I wasn't supposed to be. I did a little bit, but for the most part I didn't see the point. I mean, it's pretty obvious what's going to be in there. It will either be cardboard boxes, a vacuum cleaner and some chemicals, or a person doing their job. In Prague, the only difference is that the room might have piles of neglected Stalin statues or rusted crucifixes. Once I figured that out, I was content.

But I know people expect more from me, so yesterday I randomly boarded a tram that I'd never taken to see where it would go. I found out it goes to some place I'd already been I tried to convince myself that it was exciting and new, but no, it was utterly recognizable. So I got on the metro and decided to find the Prague Eiffel Tower. If I couldn't explore Prague randomly, at least I would have another thing I did in Prague to talk about for returning to the states judgment day. I half-intentionally lost my way, though, and ended up watching a neighborhood football match for a while. Then I sneezed and got a nose bleed. I had no tissues, so I left pinching my nose. I would have left that way eventually anyway, as the football players had to be the worst in Prague. They didn't even have neo-nazi megafans! I walked through a new part of town for me, which had plenty of poverty and communist style "undignified rabbit hole" tenaments (this is what Vaclav Havel called them when he took power in 89, promising to get rid of them all; obviously, he failed). Nobody seemed too unhappy, though. There were picnics, parks, and beautiful walking paths amongst the filth and the pots of urine. From the top of the hill, I had a nice view of the city. I imagined two naked giants destroying it all.

Then I walked down the hill, and ran into the girlfriend of Frederique, the owner of Gulu Gulu who had me fired the first time for cleaning up the broken glass. I didn't recognize her, but she recognized me. "I saw you at Gulu Gulu, two times," she said. "I'm the owner's girlfriend." "Oh, Helena, right?" "Right." "I was fired twice. Maybe that's why you haven't seen more of me." "Oh," she said. I would have talked to her more, but I was embarrased about having dried blood all over my nose and hands. "It was good to see you," I said, and by dark I was home.

This may not really be my last time to wander Prague. Nicole's friend Sam wants us to take the trams and "get lost." I suspect we'll end up at Tesco.

3. Going to the Prague zoo.

Nicole and I are going to the Prague zoo with Henrik and Steve (a British guy who everyone loves, and is characteristically taking the Siberian Express and ferry to Japan to study calligraphy). This will be our first and last time to go to the Prague Zoo. Yeah, I know that zoos exploit animals and that animals are born free. But so what?

4. Getting drunk on my birthday.

I'm pretty sure this is what accounts for my nosebleed. Every day after a night I get drunk, I'm struck with some malady: sickness, blood, demons in the head, guilt; you name it, I'll blame it on the booze. Usually I become more of a genius when I'm drunk, but I wasn't especially clever this last time. Maybe it was the group dynamic. I'm better one on one, sober or drunk. I did have a great birthday, though. We went to a squat to watch our Blind Eye friend Austin play at a benefit show. Czech anarchists, unlike their American counterparts, are a bit disorganized, and the show was no longer happening by the time we got there. Austin played anyway, and he was amazing. It was much better than watching Mystic River for the second time for your birthday. Not that I didn't have a good birthday last year, too! After the squat concert, we went to The Blind Eye. That will probably happen again before I leave, to be honest.

5. Using the internet at a library.

Rachel got me a computer for my birthday. A G-6 1,000 gig triple decker geothermal-charged power-book. Just kidding, just kidding. It only hase 999 gigs. Still, it's going to change my life. Rachel denies this, but it's true. No more coat ladies, no more internet cafe fees, no more borrowing other people's computers. Never again will I be untapped, unconnected, unhuman. I will be immeasurably happier and more productive from here on out. Not just because of the computer. Because Rachel is in my life. Now that is something that will last (in the other sense of the word) for sure! Happy birthday, everyone!!!

What's with waking up being sad about leaving Prague?

2005-04-23T10:29:00.000+02:00

When you wake up at 7 on a Saturday morning because there are construction workers hammering on your window and shouting at each other in some horrible foreign tongue, you would think you would want to leave Prague immediately and forever. Turns out, this just isn't necessarily the case.

italians to the left of us, italians to the right, but here we are....

2005-04-22T14:22:00.000+02:00

(post written with brother matt)

so it turns out that there are more italians in prague than there are czech people. as roberto, or ricardo, or rodrigo, or whatever-his-name-is, says- 'you pick up a rock, there is an italian; there are italians under rocks here.' everyday, i (nicole) walk home, i have to dodge, frogger-like, through swarms of italian high-school groups who hang out in front of the spanish synagogue next to my house. and usually, some young italian hipster-in-training, with sunglasses bigger than his face, will look at me and give me an enthusiastically approving thumbs up.

ricardo says that italian women are like elaborate meals and you have to cook and coerce them in order to become their lover. this must be why the young italians start practicing the food preparation early on. ricardo also says that czech women are too easy; they are like frozen-food and he prefers cooking.

i told ricardo that i thought that italian men were too easy. he said, "have you ever had an eetalian lahver?" i said, "well, no." he said, "well then you don't know, do you?"

backtrack. let's explain ricardo.

yesterday, kelli picked up some italians in the school cafeteria. ricardo, potentially the most energetic person we have ever met, told her he was studying here for the semester. later, when he realized that he'd have to cook kelli, instead of eating her as frozen dinner, he admitted that him and his friend daniela (a male) were only here for the week. then he laughed for about five minutes. at one point in the evening, ricardo and daniela asked me if i was from alabama (they could tell from my eyes?), they started singing 'o zuzanna' in italian and kicking and dancing in circles. i said i didn't quite get that, so they did it twice more.

ricardo firmly maintains that the only reasons people come to prague are to a) live cheaply, b) pick up easy girls, or c) be an easy girl. he could absolutely NOT believe that matt was here ONLY to visit his sister. in fact, he thought that matt was tricking me into thinking he just wanted to visit me, when he really just wanted to go to a country with easy women. he said "ha ha. yes. i wish i had a sister in an easy-woman country! ha ha ha! yeees."

if matt was here only to pick up easy women, then he is being VERY unsuccessful... especially when he spends 30 minutes in the back of a bar talking to his lovely girlfriend of two years.

in other words, matt and i love ricardo.

okay, now we're going to abbreviate this entry so that we may go shoot crossbows at things in the prague castle.

Getting the shaft, once again

2005-04-22T11:42:00.000+02:00

I got fired right before what was to be my last shift at Gulu Gulu. Philip apparently called to warn me, but I missed it, and the Slovakian guy had to tell me, "Uh, I think Philip say your work is not necessary tonight." He didn't even apologize for how unsympathique it was for him to tell me that!

Nicole, Kristen and Matthew were also out of the loop, and came to see me work my waitering magic for the very last time. Instead, they saw me alone at a table in the back room with the melancholy live jazz band, nursing my conciliatory free cheeseless pizza. I had no idea they were coming; it's lucky I didn't order a cheese pizza; they totally would have caught me! It ended up being a very pleasant night, though. Instead of working like a slave for almost nothing but satisfied customer smiles, I got to eat dinner with the three best people in Prague.

I woke up sad about leaving Prague this morning. Is it true what Kundera said about Prague? Only time will tell.

My last entry in Prague Blague

2005-04-21T09:11:00.000+02:00

Nicole and I put together (it's a small apartment) have about fifty PragueBlague entries in the works. Problem is, I only have a week left, and she only has two. I could write them all during my stint in Austin, but will any of you care at that point about me bitching out the Astronomical Clock, or my pleas for Czech/Roma understanding? I could spend the rest of my time here doing nothing but writing blog entries and packing, but I might regret that later.

A week and I'm gone. I've been desperately longing for this moment the second I left Dallas and everything I knew behind. Yet now that the end of Prague is approaching, I don't want to leave. Everything is finally falling into place!

I have a job again. I work four hours a week, Thursday nights at Gulu Gulu, where I make upwards of five dollars an hour and feel productive and happy. I was a clapper boy on a short film starring real life Czech people. My Swedish friends Olga and Jan invite me to picnics and rock climbing bars. My writing has never been so prophetic. I've been picking up some "Cesky" phrases. Nemluvim dobry Anglitsky? Nicole taught me how to switch a Czech keyboard into an English one: alt-shift. Hannah and I are friends again, though our friendship will always be tainted by the time she pulled me out of her chair and dragged me across the floor. I actually like The Blind Eye now, even if I am still hesitant to call it, as Nicole does, the happiest place on earth. I sometimes drink beer willingly, though only dark beer, since it has more B-vitamins (this is actually quite exciting since I'd only thought there were four possible drinks available to me: water, juice, smoothies, and vodka for when I need to be talkative. Turns out there is a fifth drink, and I actually like it). I am now officially a citizen of the EU, care of Great Britain, and can work and live anywhere in the EU legally. A fat lot of good this does me with a week left in Prague! I could at least be legal at Gulu Gulu for my last night. We saw Roman Polansky and Jessica Biel, and with Elijah and Ed in town, the celebrity sightings can only double. Construction on our apartment, which mainly consists of workers banging next to our windows with hammers at 7 in the morning until it's impossible for us to go back to sleep then stopping, is almost over. The next tenents are going to have some pretty amazing window mats, without the nightmares. I still have food

And let's not forget the regrets. All the things I could have done and didn't! I haven't even been to the Prague Eiffel tower, the mirror maze, and maybe a dozen other things here. I could have spent more time with my new friends, but I felt like that would be cheating on my old friends. Now I realize that you can have old and new friends, and it's okay. But here's what really scares me: "So, what did you do in Prague?" "Yeah, man, why'd you go to Prague, what was that all about?" "Did you teach English or something?" "You must have done some pretty amazing stuff there, eh?" "You were there for three months? You must be totally fluent in Czech now." "Did you go to the Prague Eiffel Tower? Wait, why am I even asking, of course you did!" "You must be totally different now. In which ways are you different, and in which ways are you the same?" "How does your time in Europe make you feel about being an American? You must have spent a lot of time thinking about that." "Bet you took a ton of great photos! Show us your photos!" "Why so quiet, sport? Tell us about everything you did in Prague!"

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

P.S. This isn't my last entry. I was just being sensational so you all would read it. You'll know it's my last entry when you see me in person. And even then you may not know.

quickly quickly

2005-04-19T13:40:00.000+02:00

1. my brother is in town. he is awesome. he tells grandiose stories. sleeps.

2. rhys birthday on saturday (april 23)

3. rhys and i ate icecream next to roman polanski the night before last

4. matt (brother), rhys, and i walked by jessica biel, who i still wouldn't be able to recognize (matt recognized her), who was also boasting about her flat that looks right over the jewish cemetery

5. i will be sad to leave prague

dear everyone

2005-04-17T23:36:00.000+02:00

i need to go be more social, but i thought i should update you that i think i'm addicted to coffee, because it improves my mood tremendously. furthermore, chadwick- i would love to see you at end of may, but i will be in bosnia, but i heart you, of course.!

Okay, another "Prague experience": narrowly avoiding a master pick-pocket

2005-04-16T18:20:00.000+02:00

If the U.S. ambassador to The Czech Republic warned us once, he warned us a thousand times: watch your wallets, visitors. The Prague pick-pockets are top notch.

Id heard this warning from so many people - most of them more knowledgable about the ways of Bohemia than George W. Bushś folksy mono-lingual Alabama raised spokesmodel in the Czech Republic - that I was even paranoid keeping my wallet in the zipper pocket in the front of my coat. Could they not slip a malnurished, paper thin arm underneath my coat, trim out the back of my pocket out with nail scissors, and steal my wallet in half a second? Even leaving my wallet in my lock box at home made me nervous. Surely they could cast a wallet nabbing spell they by plucking one of my hairs, could they not?

No, actually. They could not. They seem to prey mostly on passed out drunk tourists wearing hawiian T-shirts, who have their wallets taped to the outside of their bags. Last night, though, on the way back from Nicoles birthday party, I was targeted. If you are walking through old town square at 4 in the morning, you are presumed to be a drunk American.

I saw a man and a woman about a hundred feet to my right. I didnt think much of it. Two people. Big deal. I see people all the time. Humans are pretty amazing creatures, but you get used to them. I thought they were Italians at the time, but applying stereotypes in retrospect makes me think they might have been Gypsies.

The woman broke off with the man she was walking with, came up to me, said "Ciao" a few times, then grabbed my arm, as if to steal me away to a passionate love affair. "Ne, ne," I said, shaking my head and waving her away. I didnt know anything about this woman, and she expected me to fall in love with her like that? This isnt a Dvorzak opera, lady. This is PragueBlague!

She was really insistent, though, and wouldnt let go. At first I didnt know what to make of her. She clearly wasnt a prostitute, because she didnt keep saying "sex" while looking at me with big, sad, desperate eyes. Also, she was with someone who appeared to be her boyfriend, and who seemed mildly annoyed that she was harrassing me. "Cant I take you anywhere without you trying to steal some poor Americans wallet?!"

Yep, she was a pick-pocket. She noticed the button pocket on my vest with a bulge in it, and rubbed my vest, as if she were scrubbing my chest lovingly. Thanks to the Ambassador, I knew exactly what she was doing, knocked her hand away, and spun around. "Oh," she exclaimed, truly surprised that I wasnt up for chest scurring/wallet losing that night. Her boyfriend, even more embarrassed at this point, called her back over.

What really pissed me off is that she wasnt even going for my wallet. She was going for my notepad with all of my ideas! What the hell was she going to do with that? My notepad was in English, which she clearly cant read because she kept saying Ciao, which may as well be Greek. Even if she could read English, theres no way she could read my tiny handwriting. My parents raised me, and they cant even read that. And even if she had the same sort of handwriting as I, spoke English, and thus could read it, she wouldnt know what to do with all of my ideas. They just wouldnt make sense to her. She might have written a few pages of a short story or two based on something I jotted down, but it probably would have been bad. She would have tossed the notebook that means so much to me into the trash, and gone right back into her career of choice. Thank God I wasnt walking through Old Town Square drunk and passed out with my wallet taped to my vest.

PS. I thought Nicoles birthday party was more than okay. It had Waynes World, Hair, friends, pizza, pincnics, jumping photos, mirror mazes, and good times. I had fun at least. Though, had it been my birthday, I probably would have been a little disappointed too.... no pinata.

yesterday was my b'day and it was only okay

2005-04-16T17:25:00.000+02:00

prepare yourself for my most self-indulgent blog post ever.
dashed out and unedited.

if you want to avoid uninteresting self-reflection, i recommend you skip to the bottom part of the post that includes information about the CRAZY football game i went to this afternoon.

THE MEDIOCRE BIT:
i've really given up on the idea of having a great birthday. i haven't had a great birthday since i was in grade school and we used to make all of my friends come to the roller skating rink and eat cake with me. this year i was far away from my two homes and, even though i feel very close with a lot of my friends here, the birthday felt relatively unspecial.

THE MEDIUM-GOOD BIT:
i shouldn't say that, though. the girls threw me a picnic in this beautiful park. and it was delicious and joyful. but everyone had to do homework and was tired from staying out late the night before, so the picnic was packed up, over, and moved out within an hour. then i went on a beautiful walk through prague's gardens with zdenek and some other study abroad kids, and, well, that was the best part of the day. we went into a mirror maze, which is too awesome to describe without pictures.

THE DEPRESSING BIT:
the night before my birthday, everyone wanted to go play darts near the dorms and then, i guess go somewhere else. i was all ready to go to the dorms when i texted kristen and she said she was at some beer garden instead. i asked her where it was, but instead of texting me with directions, she told me only that she was with austin and that the girls were still at darts. so i figured she didn't really want me to come out (knowing full well that i was probably wrong, but sometimes you just get in these moods... you know). so i texted kelli and asked if they were still at darts, she said yes but that they were leaving soon. i asked how long she though they'd be there and she never responded, so i just stayed in. one other guy wanted to see if i wanted to hang out, but i was in the midst of a lethargic self-pity session.

right at midnight, i got a call that i thought would be a happy bday wish, but it was someone looking for the other nicole. then i opened the cards my parents left for me and my mom got my age wrong. so, what else could i do but make myself a bday card and read half of milan kundera's the joke.

the next night, everyone sort of acted like they had to come out, but didn't really want to. evidently, they all stayed out really late the night before and so they all left for home early and rhys and i watched hair in the backroom of the blind eye with one regular and one owner. that was okay.

WHY IT ISN'T THAT DEPRESSING:
i didn't actually feel depressed. just baffled at how birthdays are always let downs. so i instead just treated it like a normal night and was pleased to have some alone time to read and reconnoiter. maybe one day i should have a good, old-fashioned birthday party where i make all of my friends come to a skating rink and also get a cake. (vegan cake, of course.)

i feel sort of depressed right now, but i think that's for other reasons (i.e. staying out too late.)

THE GOOD
i probably should have started with this. i woke up, went to the internet cafe, and had already received emails from amy (from austin) and kristen (from b'ham), who are my two best friends in the world. this made me feel happy. then, when we met with zdenek for the tour, he had brought me a little dish with a string attached too it. i don't know what it is for, but it was the perfect b'day present because only zdenek would get me a tiny yellow dish with a string on it. then, at the end of the tour, russ called. ! russ is one of those people that i just feel happy when i think about him. sometimes i also feel frustrated or annoyed or other things. but, you know, the two of us really care about each other and always will and it was great to hear from him. today, i received happy b'day emails from many of the other important people in my life. chadwick, brazos, diana, my brother, will mangum, geeti, etc. i'm surprised how many people remembered!

also, rhys got me really thoughtful and small gifts, which made me really happy. the small was key, too, because i'll be traveling with only a backpack and messenger bag for over a month after class lets out. and hannah's parents got me pretty flowers. oh, and blind eye noah bought me a birthday pizza and played buddy holly for me at the bar because i really really really wanted to hear it. so, really, i had a really nice birthday where tons of people did nice things for me. i really shouldn't complain at all. man, in retrospect, it was really all very nice.

MORE GOOD
i keep thinking about how happy i am that amy is coming to visit and then, as soon as she leaves, i'm meeting kristen s. (from b'ham) in istanbul for the best vacation of our lives.

also, brazos is gonna like this bit...

THE FOOTBALL GAME
and by football, i mean soccer...

today was the sparta vs. slavia football game. it was way intense. i didn't even really watch the game, though. i just watched the fans. evidently, it is legal to bring flares to football games in the czech republic. right after half-time, the fans pulled out the flares for the first time. they got really rowdy and started waving them around and throwing them. the stands actually caught on fire a few times. and there were what looked like tussles in the stands. the police kept having to storm up through the fans and then firemen with buckets followed behind them. i saw one guy throw a flare at one of the firemen's heads! at one point, one of the flares made it onto the field, and the firemen had to storm onto the field and put out a fire! Dudes! Crazy! (oh, we were in the part of the stands where there were no hardcore, flare-lighting fans, by the way.)

the other interesting thing about the soccer game was that, in the light of what happened to my friends anna and greg (who were beat up by neo-nazis that were in town for a football game), i kept watching for neo-nazis and accompanying propaganda. well, i found it. the slavia fans had put up signs all around the stadium, a few of which included the slogan red and white power (the team's colors are red and white). i don't know if they know exactly what white power means, but right next to the biggest sign that said red and white power, was another smaller one that said something like 'red and WHITE POWER' and had a picture of a fist. i don't really think it was all accidental either, just because of what i've heard about neo-nazis coming in from the countryside to watch football matches. i kept wondering whether the slavia and sparta players had any idea that they have a neo-nazi following. i also wondered how many of the fans knew or thought this. i also wondered why almost all of the signs around the stadium were in english, even though both teams are czech. i'm guessing it had something to do with the fact that football is so big in england, but i don't know.

anyways, that's my day so far. i'm gonna go read for a bit and go out to eat with the girls. hopefully i will wake up a bit first, so that i'm not a drag at dinner. i think i'll go have some espresso or something.

ehhhh...

and, amy and kristen, if you are both reading this, I AM SO EXCITED TO SEE YOU I CAN HARDLY CONTAIN MYSELF!!!

and, matt (brother), i'll probably see you before you read this, BUT I'M SO EXCITED TO SEE YOU ON MONDAY!!!

post prague travels

2005-04-13T14:12:00.000+02:00

tentatively-

(in response to rhys-post)

amy comes to see me on may 5th. we go to plzen on may 7th for the day of liberation from facism festivities. then amy, darling, and myself travel to croatia (through slovenia, maybe? hopefully?) and back up to prague by the 17th. amy leaves on the 18th. then darling and i hang out in prague with darling's parents until the 20th when...

i fly to istanbul and meet kristen (who has already bought her ticket! i don't know how or where to buy mine!)on may 20th. we hang out in istanbul for 3 or 4 days and then to bulgaria, where we bask in the sun on the black sea for as long as possible and also learn cyrillic (or however you spell that). then we travel west through (maybe) serbia and (definitely) bosnia. get back to croatia and catch a ferry from split to venice. stay with charley (who is my twin in awesome)and then hopefully travel south and see my friend ginny. i'd say what is most up in the air is what happens in italy, which is unfortunate because i need to figure out where and when to fly out. also, my life's savings are being eaten up.

the thing is that i've been saving money since i was 12 years old in order to travel in europe, and i have enough to travel in europe, but not to probably have any after it's over. but i guess that this is pretty much a dream vacation and so i'm probably spending the money well. unfortunately, the tickets to istanbul from here are really expensive and going up by the day. i need to figure this shit out. quick.

here's a picture of charley and me posing funny under a bridge in budapest.

Soon its goodbye to Prague

2005-04-13T13:28:00.000+02:00

On Friday, April 15 (Nicoles birthday, as everyone knows... RIGHT??), I will only have two more weeks in Prague. We paid for our apartment until May 10, but really, who wants to stay in Prague for that long? In "The Metamorphisis," just about the only book Kafka finished writing, Kafka (speaking as a character who just saw a giant cockroach that used to be her son) said, "Screw Prague. Its too touristy." Its cliche to complain about tourists, and I feel blessed for every day I walk on these ancient cobblestones, but I´m going somewhere else anyway. On April 29, I am flying to Stockholm, to hang out with my friend Nick. Then on May 11, thanks to Rachel´s negotiating genius, I fly from Stockholm to Texas to be re-united with my American patriots. Somewhere on or around June 1, I will fly from Austin to New York. I am not quite sure what Nicole is going to do once our lease is up, and neither is she, but it looks like her post-Prague travels could involve Serbia, Russia, Greenland, South Korea, and/or the Isle of Sky in Scotland. Istanbul for sure. But by no means is Prague over. I am going to start posting regularly to PragueBlague again very soon. The blog, by the way, will go on long after Nicole and I have sold out to American militarism, settled down to our separate lives, and resigned ourselves to never leaving the Untied States ever again.

a list of things that nicole likes

2005-04-10T17:51:00.000+02:00

i like:

vampires, werewolves, magical forests, ghosts, pirates, dance pirates, outerspace, aliens, robots, monsters, strange animals, the theory of evolution, traveling, eastern europe, cute guys, smart guys, smart people, good friends, emotions, my family, deep sea, sea monsters, movies, inexplicable things, wizards, elves, mountains, trees, creeks, caves, dwarves, goblins, talentless dancers, good dancers, ballroom dancers, space dancers, searching for my real soul-mate (who i'm pretty sure i found, identified, and let go), hanging out in coffee shops for hours, and this picture of me and my dad

romania condensed, and with pictures

2005-04-08T19:11:00.000+02:00

from an email.

I. Here's the original cast of characters (otherwise known as Team Botmania):

Kristen Darling: Darling is easily my best friend in Prague, and I'm
almost positive that she's going to be a key figure in my life
forever. We're perfect travel buddies; we always want to do the same
things, eat the same food, and talk to the same people. She's from
Nevada City, California, where she grew up with nature-loving parents
in a log cabin. She's had the same group of girlfriends for most of
her life, including one popular harpist/singer/songwriter named Joanna
Newsome. And she talks frequently of a river in which she would
skinny-dip almost every day (during warmer months) since she was a
child.

Ronen: Ronen is a fast-paced New York City
musician/artist/student who always wants to do everything, see
everything, and eat everything he can. He thinks that sleep is for
suckers and anyone who sleeps more than 5 or 6 hours a night whilst
traveling is therefore a sucker (eh hem, sleepy-faced me). His
quick-witted comments that he spits out when we all sit on park
benches and watch strangers do stupid things (like pet and feed wild,
rabies ridden, Romanian dogs) are impressive, as is his expository
story-telling voice, which he uses to charm strangers into being our
new friends. He gets annoyed if Kristen and I talk to boys for too
long, or if we giggle too much when we do it. He almost always needs
espresso.

Nicole: That's me. When traveling, I'm one of those people
who is somewhere in the medium maintenance category. I need a full
night of sleep every night, pretty much, or else I get sick, and not
the kind of sick that goes away easily either. And I'm a vegetarian,
which makes things harder for travel-buddies sometimes. Other than
that, though, I enjoy most activities and am willing to spend a little
extra money for particularly awesome things (like the hot spring spa
and the caving tour that we went to in Budapest), but prefer to work
on a tight budget for most other travel expenses. I like to factor in
down time. I prefer towns and countryside to big cities and
nightlife.

All three of us wanted to go somewhere a) cheap, b) harder to get to
directly from the States, c) interesting (duh) and d) where we could
hike in pretty mountains. ROMANIA!

We met tons of other interesting and wonderful people, but I will hopefully have the time and patience
to go into this more later.

II. The itinerary:
-20 hour train ride to Brasov, Romania (i.e. the heart of Transylvania)
-5 nights (6 full days) in Brasov at the Rolling Stone Hostel
-overnight train to Budapest, Hungary
-1 night (2 full days) in Budapest
-overnight train back to Prague
*(Note that we saved three nights accommodation expenses by taking
overnight trains, the results of which include a nasty head cold that
I am currently fighting.)

III. Dracula, the Fortress, and the Black Church

Transylvania is most famous for being the home of Dracula. Dracula
the vampire, as imagined by Bram Stoker, was actually based on a real
guy named Vlad Tepes, who was ruling prince of an area of Romania
called Wallachia between 1456-1462 and 1476-1477. Tepes was not his
actual last name, but rather a name given to him for his preferred
method of capital punishment. Tepes means 'impaler'. Prince Vlad
would carefully impale his enemies, making sure to miss all vital
organs so that the victim would survive (and be conscious!) for about
two days before he died. Another nickname of Vlad's was Dracula,
which means son of Dracul. Dracul means dragon. Vlad's papa was a
knight of the Order of the Dragon. Evidently, Vlad Tepes is somewhat
of a folk hero for Romanians, due to his key role in maintaining a
strong resistance against the invading Ottoman Empire.

On our first day in Brasov, we visited 'Dracula's Castle' in a town
called Bran, knowing full well that it was just a vampire-ish looking
castle on the top of a rocky hill, and that Vlad Tepes never actually
lived there. The fortress at Bran was actually just a pretty castle
that Dracula may have once attacked, and it is rumored that he spent
one night in prison there, but it was also the inspiration for Bram
Stoker when he envisioned his vampire's evil fortress. The castle is
surrounded by little booths selling plastic fangs, monster masks, and
t-shirts that say 'Someone in Transylvania Loves Me' over exaggerated
pictures of vampires. Darling and I had some fun posing for photos in
our plastic fangs. Ummm, we also bought matching t-shirts. Don't
tell.

Actually, though Romania probably has nothing to do with real vampires
(although who REALLY knows the truth), it isn't hard to see where the
clichés come from. The people sort of look like vampires- they all
have pale skin, black hair, and mostly light eyes. There are funeral
parlors on almost every corner, including one 24-hour funeral parlor
right next to our hostel. The Brasov city center borders the Gothic
'Black Church" that is actually black, due to a fire that occurred in
1689. The streets and the city square are full of people all day
until sunset, when they suddenly empty completely. And, when it
rains, the mountains mist over entirely. Team Botmania went on a hike
up the mountain during a foggy day and had about the eeriest
experience of our lives. This will be featured in another chapter.

I love shit like this.

IV. Train Ride Goes Creepy

Admittedly, we were all slightly daunted by the prospect of a 20 hour
train ride, but the time actually flew by. We slept for twelve hours,
and despite being woken up six times (!) for passport control, we were
undisturbed by any interlopers trying to sit in our compartment with
us. (Please, if anyone can figure out what six countries we might
have traveled through between the Czech Republic and Romania, tell
me!)

We officially woke up somewhere in Hungary, we think, and we got into
Transylvania about an hour before sunset. Within a few minutes of
crossing the Romanian border, we noticed that our car kept filling up
with ashes. We looked out the window and saw several small fires on
the side of the tracks, which we attributed to local agricultural
practices. Then, at sunset, Ronen decided to 'go exploring' on the
train, leaving Darling and me alone in our compartment for the first
time since we got on the train. The sun set quickly, and we came
immediately upon a hill side with little fires lit in a horseshoe
pattern that centered around two gnarled, dead, black trees. Beside
this hill was another one where we saw an orange glow sort of haloing
the black hill; there were fires lit behind the hill. The only
explanation I can think of is the obvious one- we were entering
Transylvania at sunset on the night of a full moon, so it must have
been some sort of ritual tied up with vampires or werewolves or
something. Of course. We also passed an old run-down building with
all the windows knocked out. Behind one of the broken windows, we saw
another lit fire, but no people. Oooooh. Spooky.

The rest of the train ride was uneventful. There were some Roma
children trying to get us to buy things from them. A legless man
stared at Kristen through the window while she drew a picture in her
sketch-book. One older guy with red pants must have walked by twenty
or thirty times within the course of four hours.

V. Day Hike Number 1

On our train ride back from Budapest, I asked Kristen and Ronen what
their favorite parts of our Spring Break trip were. All of us agreed
that our first sunny day hike ranked number one and that the Hungarian
caves were number two. For number three, Ronen liked the thermal
baths in Budapest, and Kristen and I agreed upon hanging out at the
hostel. We all loved every minute, of course. Ranking is just one of
those things people do to review things they like in an organized way.

Our first two days in Romania had beautiful weather. We're talking
mid-60's, sunny, intermittent slight breezes. It was especially
refreshing to us after our cold, snowy winter. So, enticed by the
second day's sunshine, we walked off in the direction of the
mountains, expecting to just find a trail somewhere. We ended up lost
in somebody's backyard. We heard a ruckus behind a fence, and so we
figured that someone back there could help up find a trail. I walked
through the fence and saw a gigantic lawn next to a run-down shack,
with about six people whipping a horse that was pulling some logs up a
hill. I timidly called "Poiana Brasov????" because that is the name
of a town that we heard we could hike to. One of the men walked
towards us and said "Speak English!" Encouraged, we told him we
wanted to go on a hike and that we'd heard that Poiana Brasov was
near. He took us through his property, which included not only the
horse, but about 10-15 half-wild dogs (Romania has a problem with wild
dogs) that would excitedly bang up against our legs, several chickens,
and one turkey that chased us for a little while. He showed us his
own personal path to the outskirts of town, where we could find more
paths, and warned us about bears before he disappeared behind a little
hill.

We walked through a small wooded area that led into someone else's
backyard. Then we walked to a road where everyone knew each other and
nobody knew us. And then we finally found our path. After hiking it
for about five minutes, we saw a man running frantically past us with
a horrified expression on his face (bears? vampires? vampire bears?).
The hike progressed pleasantly, except that every time I saw
paw-prints in the small amounts of snow that hadn't yet melted, I
stopped and made Kristen and Ronen assure me that they were too small
to be bear-prints, and too near to boot prints to be werewolves.

The next four or five hours were sunshine, chit-chat, pb&j, cows
crossing roads, and basically just pure happiness.

VI. Day Hike Number 2 (Werewolves and Haunted Houses)

Even though our sunny day hike was our favorite, our rainy misty fog
creepy day hike was also one of the best experiences I've had. On the
side of one of the mountains near town, there is a big sign that looks
like the Hollywood sign, but says Brasov. We wanted to go there. So,
again, we just walked towards the mountains until we found a trail.
This trail was more grueling than the last, and because it was
raining, we kept slipping in the mud. We walked almost straight up
until we got to a crossroad where the mist was so thick we couldn't
see fifteen feet ahead of us. We decided that we didn't want to hike
back down, so we followed signs to the cable car. At one point, Ronen
wanted to see if there was another trail near us and he walked about
twenty feet away and disappeared entirely into the fog. We followed a
winding dirt road up and to the left, by a tree that looked almost
exactly like a crucifix, complete with white bark-shapes twisted like
Jesus' dying body. We saw no signs of people, no footprints. We
heard nothing except what we thought was the roaring of the cable
cars.

Meters before the cable car station (that we couldn't see in the mist,
so we didn't yet know was there), we found an abandoned house with no
roof or doors or windows, so we went in. There was another section of
the house that we couldn't reach without exiting and going behind the
ruins, so fearless Kristen led the way. As we tiptoed through the
dripping branches behind the back corner, a dog suddenly barked a
warning and the three of us simultaneously ran away and down the stone
steps back to the path. Two wild dogs followed us and eyed us
suspiciously. We continued down the path, now with two creepy
weredogs following us, until we came up the cable car station. It was
abandoned. There was a restaurant with no people in it, sidewalks
that led into concrete walls, and voices coming from inside that
didn't seem to be connected with any bodies, and didn't respond when
we knocked. One or two little barks from our dog-adversaries sent us
quickly back to the trail until we found a nice zig-zaggy path down
the empty mountain.

VII. Traveling and Touring

The Rolling Stone Hostel was the center of our social life when we
were in Brasov. Like I said earlier, the streets empty at night, so
there was not much to do except stay in with the other travelers. It
was anything but tedious.

One of the lodgers was Nick. He works for Maria, the owner of the
hostel, in return for reduced rent, and leaves it only rarely. He was
born in 1960, and spent his youth in the English punk scene, doing
drugs and watching shows. When music turned sour in the 1980s, he
started moving. He's traveled through the busiest and the remotest
areas of Europe and Asia, and doesn't want to stop. His proudest
accomplishment is that he has been to Albania. He said that when he
went to Albania, one of his taxi drivers offered to take him on a tour
of the sights for the equivalent of about 40 or 50 British pounds.
Nick responded that, although he'd love to see the sights, he couldn't
afford it. "I'm not a tourist," he said, "I'm a traveler."

I thought this was an interesting distinction that Nick drew. Many of
the guests at the Rolling Stone Hostel were travelers. Brasov is a
small town with one square, one pedestrian street, and no nightlife.
You don't go there to party. You don't go there for postcards or
museums. You go there to live, for a little or long while. For many
people, our five nights in Brasov would probably have been tedious,
but for all the people who we met at the hostel, five nights in Brasov
was a horrible tease. I could've stayed there for months. I would
hike in the day, watch Romanian VH1 in the afternoon, go to the
internet café in the evening, and read at night. I could be perfectly
content doing just that for months. I think Nick felt the same way.

[WARNING: NEXT PARAGRAPH IS A TANGENT AND YOU MIGHT WANT TO SKIP IT.]
I'm not going to fool myself, though. I'm a tourist, not a traveler,
even as much as I want to be. I'm going home soon, where I'll have to
start thinking about my future career (psychology? literature? which
one?!?!?! either?). I'm not living in the places I go. In many ways,
I'm using them. I'm studying them and the people in them. I'm trying
to use them to figure out who I am, where I fit, what I like, who I
belong with. I went to Milton's house in England, hoping that Milton
could tell me what I was supposed to do with my life. I ended up with
photos and no answers. I went to Freud's house in Vienna, hoping that
his consultation room would extract the answers from my subconscious,
and ended up only with some more postcards and some confusion. Truth
be told, I love people and want to know all about them and maybe
interact with them too. So which avenue do I take? Will my travels
tell me?

This is a tangent. I guess what I'm saying is that traveling is
appealing, and interesting, and everything all at once except only for
a little while. I can't run around my whole life. I want to, and
can't. I think Brasov is like my impossible promise land. I've had
some moments in my garden and I probably won't ever go back. And, to
be honest, it is probably changing soon. I have a feeling that
tourism is about to devour Transylvania, so, please, if this email was
interesting to you, go now and don't bring the rest of America with
you. And if you can think of a way that I could live and work there
for a few months, tell me and I'll go.

VII. Nicole Gets Sleepy

I've been writing way too long, and although I've only just touched on
all the impressions I had of Romania, and I didn't even talk about
Budapest and my favorite caves in the world, I'm tired and need to
stop soon. Three more short chapter things and I'll let you guys go.
Sorry this is so long.

VIII. A Picture of Kristen and Me at Rasnov

VIX. YOU CAN HELP ME!

I'm planning to travel as long as my funds hold after the semester in
Prague is through. Currently, the plan is to go through Austria and
Slovenia to Croatia, and then back up to Prague to drop off sweet Amy
Sommer who is coming to visit (yay!!!). Then we'll spend a week in
the Czech/Slovak area with Darling's parents. And then ___. I know
for sure that Italy (Milan and Venice definitely) go in the blank, but
after that I could go anywhere. Spain, Greece, Switzerland, Bulgaria
even. This is where you may come in.

a) Suggestions? Sights? Cities?
b) Anybody wanna come visit me in Europe?
c) DO YOU KNOW ANY FRIENDLY PEOPLE IN ANY OF THESE PLACES WHO CAN SHOW
US AROUND AND/OR HOUSE US FOR CHEAP OR FREE?
d) Donations? Just kidding. But if you want a postcard, send me your
address and you'll get it some day.

X. Finally. Do You Want More?

I know I've been talking for a while and you're probably sick of this,
but I'll just list some more topics that I wanted, but didn't have the
energy, to write about in this email. If you want to hear about any
of them in particular, let me know and I'll probably re-energize
myself again soon.

-why Prague is great, but not for me
-Maria, Silvia, and their obsession with keeping our kidneys warm
(including ear pulling and head-bopping)
-Charles the Australian Capricorn who has been traveling for 9 months
(Rhys wants you to know that this is more potentially interesting than
it looks)
-the Germans who love to party, and their pet sausage, Matt
-Roma (Gypsies) in Romania; the kid who stole my coffee and tried to
charge me for it
-the mean cop who woke me up to write me a ticket for having my shoes
on the seat
-the American whose first time out of the country was to go to
Romania, and who managed to find the only sports pub in the country
-the British girls who worked in the orphanage
-the British Lauras who live in Brighton and love us and we love them
-the bathtub sized Jacuzzi in which we squeezed four girls
-Jeremy and Megan who Peace Corps in Ukraine
-Rasnov, my favorite castle in the world, where Cold Mountain was filmed
-internet café culture in Brasov
-Sinaia, the town full of castles and weird souvenirs
-the six mean-funny English guys who love Dracula
-the mean-mean missionaries from Bucharest
-who ate Ronen's Nutella?
-Romanian chocolate
-the graveyards
-the Mexican restaurant and the final countdown
-bryan adams EVERYWHERE
-taking out 4 million lei from the ATM
-wild dogs everywhere. Dogs can recognize foreigners by scent.
-the busses that don't stop for you, and you have to jump on them
while they move
-romanian folk music
-the Budapest thermal baths, naked ladies, nice steam room
-the Budapest caves (ooooooh yeah!) including 'the Sandwich'- (one of
my favorite activies)
-renting bikes in Budapest, the Croats from the caves in a bike gang
-nikki gets sick
-returns and parents are in Prague for a visit!

I'm sure I could think of some more if you gave me some time. But I
think this is probably more than enough, isn't it?

What Janey did on her vacation in Prague

2005-03-31T15:49:00.000+02:00

On the way to the library, I overheard a one sided conversation between an American woman with dyed red hair who looked to be ïn her fifties, and her husband, who had gray hair and looked to be in his sixties. I had never seen them before, but it was not too surprising that such people existed:

"´So, Janey, where did you shop in Prague?´" Janey said, pretending to be a friend back home. "Oh, you know," Janey responds for her future self. "Jewelery stores, clothing stores, and (slight pause for effect) the gun store." Then Janey laughed at her own future witticism. Her husband took a neutral stance on whether this was funny or not. The jewelry stores and the clothing stores were probably her idea, whereas the gun store was his.

I wonder if, while at the gun store, Janey was conscious of how scandalized her friends would be on first hearing about it - and how less scandalized they would be after getting more details - and was going over in her head how she would drop the bomb. Kind of like how when I´m doing or overhearing anything, I´m thinking of how it will affect my blogging.

Janeyś friends are evidentally so predicable that Janey already knows that when she returns from her adventure in a strange foreign land, they will only think to ask about her shopping. Perhaps she is predictable enough for them to know that there will be nothing else to ask about. Now, I have never met Janeyś friends, but from what I know about Janey and her husband, I´m pretty sure Janey has them pegged. She also, calculating witch that she is, already knows exactly how to sum up her trip (and this might only be her first day in Prague!) in such a way to knock their wigs off and establish herself as queen of the hair salon for a day. She´s got her obvious yet slightly quirky retort all set and ready to play her easily amused friends like so many harps from hell.

Since her pre-planned conversation is all but guaranteed to happen exactly as she has cleverly devised, we can probably predict how the rest of it will play out:

"Goodness gracious, Janey," her best friend Maude will exclaim. "I can hardly believe you made it back from Czechoslovakia in one piece! Is it still communist over there?"

"Oh, no, there is plenty of shopping to do in Prague, thatś for sure," Janey slyly responds, taking the conversation just where she wants it. Perhaps Maude will beat around the bush for a few more lines, but the trap is set, and her fate is sealed. Maude is going to ask the question Janey has been waiting to hear.

"Well, then, I´m glad to hear it. Maybe I will go to the Prague Republic one of these days. So tell me all about it! Where did you shop?"

Janey can hardly prevent herself from pumping her fist in the air triumphantly. We have already heard a rough draft of her surprising response, but maybe on the plane she devised a few flourishes.

"Oh, you know, just the ordinary places you see in Prague, nothing too unusual. Jewelery stores, clothing stores, and (here coems that pause) the gun store."

Just as Janey forsaw, Maude is flabbergasted.

"Janey, you have got to be joking," she practically shouts.

"Nope, it´s true," Janey says with a knowing smile. "Just ask Russell. We went to all the jewelery and clothing stores you could imagine!"

Maude puts her hands on her hips. "I meant about the gun store!"

"Oh, that," Janey says casually, feigning modesty. "I almost forgot about that little adventure."

"I mean, sure, my husband owns a gun store," Maude says, calming down a little. "But this is Texas. What in the name of Godś green earth were you doing in a gun store... IN PRAGUE?!"

"I would tell you," Janey says with a cocked eyebrow and a devilish grin. "But then I would have to kill you."

And Janeyś small Texas town will never be the same again.

That is the most likely possibility, anyway. There are others.

For instance, what if Janeyś friends arent the least bit amused? What if, somehow, all of her friends are disaffected 20-something hipsters, and she doesn´t even get a titter?

Or maybe this conversation won´t take place at all. Maybe Janey will get caught smuggling absinth, hash, and Roma orphans out of Prague, and be thrown in the United Nations slammer for life.

This got me thinking about what I am going to say when I get back from Prague and everyone asks me where I shopped. "Oh, you know, Joe, I shopped at Country Life, Tesco and (slight pause for effect) the scarf store!!"

After this I saw a British man who had a bright red face and talked with a stuffy British accent, like all the old British men I´ve seen here. Then I saw an overly tan, prematurely aged woman walking with her teenage daughter, who was dressed like a hippie who especially admires native-americans. I dont see why everyone is so down on tourists. I think theyŕe interesting.

Look, I know everyone just wants to hear about Romania now, but I am still in Prague and I have something to say!

2005-03-30T18:23:00.000+02:00

There’s no denying it: people come to Prague from all over the world. Some come for the cheap beer. Some, for the trendy CCCP hoodies. Others, to investigate their Czech heritage without messing with their backward distant half-relatives in the countryside. Still others, for Charles University’s world-renowned English department. Some, like me, don’t have a clue why they came. Most people, however, come to Prague for one reason, and one reason only: to worship this little wax doll.

This is The Infant Jesus of Prague, one of the most recognized idols in Prague. Though this wax doll was born in the 1500s, Princess Polixenie Lobkowitz brought it to Prague in 1628. Here it was venerated by the Carmelites, a sect of Catholics uniquely concerned with the words of Matthew 18:3: “Unless you become like one of these little children you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” The doll got credit for all sorts of crazy miracles, bringing thousands to Prague, anxious to stoop before this effigy of a grandly decorated baby Jesus.

Zdenek took me, Rachel and Nicole to the Church of the Infant Jesus of Prague on a tour that also included the John Lennon wall and a church that is now an apartment complex. We were most struck by the museum upstairs, which was nothing but dozens of ornate mini-robes - speckled with gold and jewels, encased in glass - for the Infant Jesus statue to wear on different occasions. A television in the wall plays a looped video of pious nuns changing the Infant Jesus doll’s attire (protecting the holy infant’s modesty with discrete jump cuts) to prepare for more full days of granting completely unreasonable blessings. Well, a wax doll’s gotta do what a wax doll’s gotta do.

In the center hollow of the spiral stairwell is a wooden adult half-naked Jesus nailed to a crucifix in agony -- tossing a cross to all the adult Jesus worshippers who pass through -- but mainly it´s all about the serene, unbloody, formally attired babe at The Church of the Infant Jesus at Prague. Presumably, baby Jesus is divine through and through, without (unlike his adult counterpart) the stain of a hotly contested last temptation, though he probably had original sin to contend with.

Someone could make a good horror film about this doll getting fed up with all the constant blessing, coming to life, and poking out the eyes of all its devotees with those two extended fingers, while slamming them in the back of the head with that spiked golden orb. It would be a logical evolution. The ability to magically grant wishes as flawlessly as that doll does can only come from the Evil One himself, IMHO. God’s more about mysterious ways.

The fact that devout Catholics worship a statute of an angelic little boy is a bit disturbing — even more disturbing than them worshipping a dead bloody adult poked through with nails, I think. Certainly the infant Jesus is a more pleasant image. He’s happy, dressed all fancy, has his hand raised in a perpetual offer of blessing, and, you know, he’s not being tortured to death. In these “dark times” (overheard at a restaurant), it’s refreshing to see an image of Jesus get so popular without resorting to gratuitous gore. The absurd thing about this statue, though, which I think discredits the Infant Jesus of Prague Church entirely, and Catholicism on the whole as well, is that Prague’s baby Jesus wears a cross around his neck! That’s right, Baby Jesus wears the symbol of a religion that wasn’t yet a twinkle in the world’s eye, and was to be the bed of his own death three decades later!

The Infant Jesus Prayer Books, available for free in every credited language in the back of the Church, provide more insight into the mindset of the doll worshippers. Technically, you can pray to infant Jesus however you want, but modern language confuses His highness, and if you want to be fully understood, these prayers are your road to more accurate blessings and magic gift-giving. Unfortunately, you can only do these prayers in the Church of the Holy Infant Jesus, or with a Holy Infant Jesus candle, or a miniature likeness of the original statue, available in souvenir shops all over Prague (though only the kind with a removable cloth suit will do, not the kind where the suit is painted on the ceramic).

Here is a prayer you are supposed to say on DAY SEVEN of your visit to the Church: “On Your breast, O Infant Jesus, shines a Cross. It is the standard of our redemption. I also, O Divine Savior, have my cross, that, although light, very often weights me down. Help me to bear it and may the carrying of it be fruitful. You well know how weak and worthless I am. Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory Be to the Father. By Your Divine Infancy.”

The Carmelites want to have it both ways – a Jesus before he was the blood-spattered messiah he grew up to be, yet still as wise, holy and tortured. Fatefully, adult Jesus declined to be king, yet here is baby Jesus dressed in the finest Royal attire. Indeed, how could anyone have ever questioned Jesus´s messiah-hood with an infant wardrobe like that? This suggests either confusion or wishful thinking on the Carmelites´s part. Unless, that is, they are not worshipping the actual infant Jesus who existed for a temporary time before he became pre-pubescence Jesus, but rather are worshipping the crucifix-wearing doll itself.

On DAY FIVE of your visit to the Church, this is how you pray: “I gaze upon You, O Most Sweet Redeemer, dressed in a mantle of purple. It is Your royal attire. How it speaks to me of blood! That Blood which You have shed solely on my account. Grant, O Infant Jesus that I may respond to Your great sacrifice and not refuse, when You offer me some difficulty, to suffer with You and for You.”

What great sacrifice did the Infant Jesus make? Did he offer his holy golden spiked orb to a covetous infant in Bethlehem? No, his sacrifice involved bloodshed, suggesting nothing other than his famous crucifixion, of course! How could infant Jesus have been crucified when he was later to grow up and be crucified as an adult? Was it a miracle? Not that I know of, though I admittedly haven’t read all the available literature. Most likely, though, the Prague Catholics are retroactively granting baby jesus all the qualities admired of his adult counterpart, including his death. Why not make a statue of serene, elegant infant Jesus nailed to the cross? That’s what those sick, child-worshipping monks really want!

Worse than the absurd contradiction of the messiah babe, in my eyes, is the extremity of the worship he receives. Monks venture from this Church all over the world to spread the good word, not about Christianity or Jesus per se, but about this miracle-granting statue. And following those prayer guides they hand out is a humiliating experience, as you really have to cut yourself down to ingratiate yourself with this little devil statue.

For instance, this is the FIRST DAY prayer: “Sweet Infant Jesus, here at Your feet is a soul that, conscious of its nothingness, turns to You, who are all. By Your Divine Infancy, O! Jesus, grant me the grace that I now ask (express it) if it is according to Your will and for my true good. Do not look upon my unworthiness, but rather on my faith and show me Your infinite mercy.” And don’t forget the “weak and worthless” self-loathing on Day Seven. Can’t you love yourself and love the infant holiness?

These Carmelites have a serious inferiority complex, debasing themselves, grown adults whimpering and pleading to this little doll. This doll should be whimpering to them! Arguably, though, infants will always be superior to adults, if purity and lack of sins is your measuring stick.

For those of you lucky enough to be in Prague, or to own a likeness of the Infant Jesus of Prague statue (ahem, Rachel), here are some more prayers to declare your utter worthlessness and desperation to the retroactively holy one himself. For you cynical, ironical types, the prayer for students is the best...

PRAYER REVEALED BY OUR LADY to the Venerable Fr. Cyrill O.C. D.:

“O Infant Jesus, I have recourse to You and ask You through the intercession of Your Holy Mother to help me in my need (you can mention it here), for I firmly believe that Your Divinity can help me. I love You with all my heart and with all the strength of my soul. I am truly sorry for all my sins, and bet You, O good Jesus, to give me the strength to conquer them. I shall never offend You and I am ready to suffer rather than to cause You pain. From now on I want to serve You with complete faithfulness and for love of You, O Divine Infant, I will love my neighbor as well as myself. Omnipotent Infant, Lord Jesus, again I implore You, help me in this need of mine (mention it). Grant me the grace of possessing You eternally, with Mary and Joseph and of adoring You with the holy angles in Your heavenly court. Amen.”

PRAYER FOR THE HEALING OF A SICK PERSON: “O Holy Infant Jesus, lord of life and death, I bow before You, unworthy and miserable sinner that I am, to implore You to cure (name the person on behalf of whom You are asking this blessing) who is so dear to my heart. He (she) is in great suffering, wracked with pain, and can find no relief except in You, in whom he (she) puts all his (her) hope. Relieve him (her) in his (her) agony, o heavenly Doctor, free him (her) from his (her) suffering and give him (her) perfect health, if that be Your Divine will and for the good of his (her) soul. Amen.”

PRAYER FOR A STUDENT: "O Infant Jesus, eternal Wisdom made flesh, who shed Your blessings so generously on all, and most especially on schoolchildren and students who trust in You, please look kindly on me as I implore You to guide and assist me in my studies. You, o God made Man, Lord of all learning, source of all understanding and memory, come and help me in my weakness. Enlighten my mind, give me a ready ability to acquire knowledge and truth and the capacity to remember all I learn. Be my light, strength and comfort in moments of special difficulty. By the grace of Your divine Heart may I do all my school tasks to the best of my ability and gain the utmost profit from them, so that I may get good marks and, most important of all, be moved up next year. To merit such favours, for my part, I promise to perform faithfully all my duties as a Christian and to love You more and more. O Sweet Infant Jesus, keep me always under Your protecting mantle and be my guide, not only on the path of learning, but above all on the path to eternal salvation. So be it!”

These praying students are selling their souls to a doll! Maybe school is especially tough in the Czech Republic, I wouldnt know, but in the states, most people get moved on to the next grade without even trying, much less making insane promises to a wax doll. Study and hold tight onto your souls, children!

I wonder how much of a trial and error process goes into devising prayers like these. Did the monks test their effectiveness and then re-word them for better results? If you, my readers, come up with versions of these prayers that reap greater riches than the original versions, please email them to Prague Blague, and I will alert the monks. Also, if after reading this blog entry you wish to become A Missionary of the Infant Jesus, please go to http://www.santuario-gesubambino.org/missioni for more information.

anecdotes from team botmania

2005-03-29T11:42:00.000+02:00

THE CANDLELIGHT MOMENT

the day before yesterday, we took a short day trip to sinaia, which is a ski-resort town about forty-five minutes away by minibus. darling and i both had to pee before we got on the minibus, and were displeased to find that the station only had those female urinals. we dealt with it, though, and went upon our merry way. but then we both had to pee again once we got there (we had three cups of coffee each that morning), and, after the last experience, we were prepared for the female urinals, but this is not what we got. we got female urinals sans electricity! they hand you a candle when you go into those dark, disgusting cubbies with their dark, disgusting holes in the ground. it was all sort of romantic, really.

'PUSSY' KISS KISS

we ended up taking the fast train back to brasov, mainly because we didn't want to stand up on a minibus (the seats were full). right after we entered the compartment, a cute, young romanian guy handed me a back of potato chips and said 'you want?' well, yeah i want it! okay, so then he left for a while and we chowed down on the chips. but later he came back and said 'speak english?' we told him we were from the states and he nodded and smiled, then sat there for a while and got up and left. when we disembarked the train, he said 'bye bye! ciao! pussy!' and then blew us two kisses. kristen and i looked at each other and then at ronen. did he really just call us 'pussy?' oh my gosh! we were mightily offended. later, we were recounting the story to an english friend of ours who used to live here and she laughed and said 'well, you know pusi means little baby kisses, don't you?'

oh! that's actually pretty endearing, and not at all offensive, like we imagined. poor guy, probably doesn't know why we looked so horrified.

WEREWOLVES

yesterday, we again decided on a hiking day, only the sunshine has left us and now it is cold and rainy. we wanted to hike up to where the brasov sign (very similar to the hollywood sign, except is says 'brasov') is, and then take the cable car down. we walked through the rain and mist for a good hour and a half or more. we couldn't even see fifteen feet in front of us. we ended up in this terrifically creepy field bordered by dead, black, gnarled trees. kristen posed as a vampire by one of them. then we found an old abandoned house and went inside. we were exploring around the back of it when these two wild dogs barked at us. they were probably werewolves. or weredogs. it turned out that we were right next to the cable car station, so we went there. the dogs followed us menacingly. we saw an empty restaurant inside and heard voices, but we knocked and nobody answered. there were probably only vampire ghosts in there. we got freaked out and rapidly retreated down the mountain, where we found a market with spinach!

BLING BLING

our hostel bosts the only jacuzzi in an european hostel. unfortunately, the jacuzzi is in a private room. well, the private room (finally!) cleared out last night, so maria let us use the jacuzzi, as long as we paid for the hot water. kristen, two english girls who are both named laura, and myself all climbed in the jacuzzi, which is the size of a small bathtub, and squished ourselves in there. we also brought gold medallions, champagne, and a video camera, and then we made a rap video.

COLD KIDNEYS

the hostel is owned by a charismatic romanian family. there is maria, the primary owner, who talks faster than anyone could possibly think and gives the most brutal backrubs imaginable. then there is silvie, her daughter, who can't stop dancing and laughing, and diana, the other daughter, who is shy. and greg, the husband, who likes to muss people's hair. one day, darling, ronen, and myself were all lying by the empty pool in the sunlight and silvie started yelling at us for getting our kidneys cold like that on the pavement. then later that night, maria pulled our ears for getting our kidneys cold on the pavement (silvie told her), and then she knocked me on the head for unintentionally letting my kidneys show under my pajama shirt (which was riding up). she says that i shouldn't blame anyone but myself when i get sick. i love this family.

okay, aussie dude is done with the net, so i ought to peace out too.

more than words

2005-03-26T22:43:00.000+01:00

okay awful title, but the truth is that i feel overwhelmed. so much has happened in the past week or so, that there is no way i could possibly document all that i want to. i want to write about vienna, because i loved it and had several of those important "oh, so this is the answer" moments. i guess the thing i wanted most to blog about while i was there was going to freud's apartment and waiting for the answers to come to me (because so many had been in the previous few hours) about whether i wanted to go into psychology or literature. what i left with were not answers so much as some postcards and some dorky pictures of myself looking psychological on the stairwell and ponderous in the consultation room. i also really wanted to talk about the schonbrunn palace, which was the most ridiculously beautiful and also aristocratic-like place i've ever been. it's also home to the oldest zoo in (i think) europe, which is also one of the happiest places on the planet. we ate some delicious austrian fried garlic pita thing called a langosse and some ice cream and we looked at penguins (!) and some families of wart hogs and we took pictures of us jumping all over austria. i' ll show you later, hopefully. anyways, so that's... oh wait... no, one more thing... we went to an all you can eat sushi restaurant where the sushi came out on a conveyer belt and i ate so many fried bananas that i almost threw up. it was incredible. okay, so that's austria in the tiniest little nutshell i could manage.

now i'm in romania. what a sad life i lead, right? actually, i have been frequently having moments where i look around at where i am and who i'm with and what i'm doing and wondering how my life has taken me here. i keep saying "where are we? who are we? how did we get here?" i'm in friggin romania! what am i doing here?!

i should say that i've never liked a place more than i like this place. i mean, first there is the eerie beauty, which i briefly described in my last entry. i know why the vampire legends came from transylvania. we went hiking through the forest all day today, and at one point we came upon a wider part of the trail that was lined with thick, tall, dark green trees. the brush around was all grey and black and everything was so silent that the slightest movement of wildlife sounded like an avalanche. i told kristen that my spider sense was working overtime. i was almost positive that a vampire bear was going to leap out of the forest and turn us in to night creatures.

but vampires are the tiniest part of what makes transylvania the best place ever anywhere. the place is so untouched by mass tourism that people actually still like americans and view us as somewhat exotic (in a positive way). today, when we started on our hike, our method was actually just to walk towards the mountains until we found the trail heads that these british blokes from our hostel were talking about. we ended up on some private property where some kind of ruckus was being made from behind a fence. after we stood in a state of paralyzed confusion for about five minutes, i peaked through the fence and said 'poiana brasov?' which was the name of the place we wanted to hike to. one man walked up to us and said 'speak english!' and so we told him we were looking for a trail to poiana brasov. he was very pleased about getting to help us. he led us through his farm (it was a yard, i think, but there were so many animals that i will call it a farm), where a large group of people were trying to break in a horse. we avoided the bucking horse, only to be approached by several half-wild barking puppies who kept bumping into my legs. then a turkey started following us and loudly gobbling. the chickens all kept to themselves. our new friend took us along the road we'd just come from, except on his side of the fence, and showed us a path through to the outskirts of town, where you can pick up the (extraordinarily well-marked!) trails. before he left us, he said something almost unintelligible, but which included the word 'bears.' so that sort of freaked me out.

we walked over this little hill and ended up in someone elses backyard with more barking half-wild puppies, and traversed the most picturesque cobble-stone sidewalks through these colorful delapidating houses until we found a road that went by a stream. we followed it away from town, and i'm almost positive that we were the only non-residents who'd walked those streets in a while, because everyone seemed to know each other and were all bewildered (in a friendly way) by us. we found our path, jumped on it, and happily hiked all the way to some raod we didn't recognize, where we jumped on another path and happily hiked it to a brasov overlook point, where we ate sandwiches and met more superfriendly locals who wanted to walk us almost all the way to the path they thought was best for us to get back to town.

mmmmmm. what a day.

yesterday was also the best day ever. (i've been having several 'best days ever' this week.) we went on a mini-bus tour with greg, the hostel-owner's husband, which ended up costing us twice as much as promised, but was also very pleasant. he took us (and two british guys named joe and dan) to the castle at bran, which is billed as 'dracula's castle', but confidentially, it's just a vampire-ish looking place on a hill that vlad tepes may once have attacked. it was a nice castle. we took a lot of cool pictures. then we bought some plastic fangs and posed with them later that night under the full moon. i'll show you those later, hopefully. after bran, we went to rasnov, which was way better than any other castle i've been too. again, because tourism isn't such a huge thing here in romania, the castle is just now being renovated and spruced up, which means that it is still authentic-ish. also, because romania is known as the 'wild west' of europe, meaning basically that it still, in some ways, operates as if it were from another century, people use horses and carts interchangeably with cars. so, not only did we get to see a cool, authentic fortress/castle, but we got to meet some of the workers, who were equipped with horses and carts to carry all of their materielle. by meet, i, of course, mean say 'salut' to. according to greg, that means hi. romanians shares a lot of words with other romantic languages. it is the least slavic of eastern european languages. this is helpful.

last night we hung out with the german guys who just wanted to party like anyone else. they were funny. i'm not sure there's too much more to say about that. it was really fun though, and we all ended up staying up later than we expected for our big night on the front porch of the hostel.

the hostelling experience is interesting. it really does give you and instant community, and everyone is from different countries and different backgrounds and different decades, even, but everyone also speaks english and shares the same passion, which is travelling. one of the guys who works at the hostel, an english guy named nick, is most proud of the fact that he's travelled to albania. he talks about it all the time. he's been almost everywhere in world, but mostly he is proud of the four days he spent in albania, because it was so difficult to travel to. he said that when he was in albania, one man tried to be his tour guide for something like 50 euros a day, and nick's response was 'i'm not a tourist; i'm a traveler.'

i've been thinking about this label. there is definitely a difference between the two, and i've not heard anyone articulate it so well until nick did. i've met so many people over here who, for one reason or another, don't want one home. when you aren't at home, you make fast friends, and reasonably close friends. this morning, after our german friends left, the landlady made up their beds. i looked at their made up beds and felt a little sad. i made a joke like 'in and out of our lives just like this.' and it was sort of true, though. i like these people i've met, and i feel as close to them as some of my acquaintances from austin or birmingham after only knowing these guys/gals a few days. but all this traveling has also made me crave a rest. part of me never wants to stop traveling, but another part of me wants to go home. i'm guessing this is why people like to travel with significant others, because when you find someone you love, they can become a sort of mobile anchor. for instance, i've known kristen d. for only a few months, but i feel like we've been friends forever. she's my best friend here, easily, and i think part of it is because we've become sort of like traveling anchors for each other. but what about these travelers who go alone? my next project is going to be to toss this around in my head for a while and talk to a lot of homeless nomads.

okay. it's time to sleep. this entry only says 1% of what i want it to. good night, transylvania, i love you...

p.s. i'm not editing this tonight, or maybe ever. muah ha ha ha ha

nicole in transylvania

2005-03-24T22:58:00.000+01:00

'hey guys, i have an idea, let's go to transylvania on the full moon right before easter and hang out alone on the deserted street by the black church.'

nicole b. 3-24-05. one hour before midnight.

no no, seriously. it's not THAT creepy here. actually, it is beautiful. it's only a little creepy. the street by the black church was lonely, true, but that's only because the main square is on the other side of the black church. the church is huge, and actually black, from a fire that happened some time ago (i can't get too specific, unfortunately, because i don't know the facts just yet).

i don't really feel like i just got off of a twenty hour train ride. my stomach sort of hurts from junk food and i'm a little bit dizzy, but i think that's because the computer screen wobbles everytime i type a letter. the twenty hours really wasn't so bad, mainly because we slept for 12 of them. we kept being woken up about every two hours for passport checks. we actually got our passports stamped five or six times, so i guess that means we went to five or six countries? the way we figured it, only a slightly illogical route would've taken us through slovakia, austria, hungary, and then romania, but that still doesn't account for the other two passport stamps, so i'm just gonna say i went to, hmmm, lets say belarus and ukraine, just to confuse people.

the highlight of the train ride was sunset. we were already in transylvania by sunset this evening, and, for some reason (probably having to do with warding off the vampires that came to celebrate the full moon and protest the easter celebrations), all of the romanian farmers decided to light little fires on their property at dusk. the sunset was gloomy and colorless, and we hit it right as we were traveling through one of those picturesque, dilapidated towns that doesn't look like it has renovated any buildings since the seventeenth century. then, as we were on our way out of town, ronen decided to 'go exploring' around the train, leaving kristen and myself alone in the car. just at this moment, i looked out the window and saw an entire black hillside covered in some strange fire-pattern. like little fires were lit all over it in this huge squiggly, semi-circular shape, and in the middle were two black, dead trees. i sort of half-squealed and grabbed kristen and made her hold me while we marvelled at the quiet creepiness of the scene. on the other side of the hill was a faint red glow; there must have been fires there too.

romanian countryside is unlike any other countryside i've seen. the plains are as flat as houston plains, but they have sort of louisiana style marsh-swamps on them, presumably from the melting ice now that it is getting warmer, and then hills and mountains suddenly spring from the plains, as if a child had drawn his conception of what mountains were like. flat, then bumpy all of a sudden. and, of course, there are little fires everywhere. and also tons of gigantic balls of hay with sticks poking out of them. oh oh, and people riding bicycles and staring and waving at the train as it passed by--- old people on bicycles. actually, most of the old people on bicycles were in bulgaria.

... and now, my friends, i have to wrap this up. kristen and ronen are done eating and i'm tired and dizzy. i'll be back tomorrow, hopefully. i should at some point also tell you guys about vienna, which was (predictably) marvelous. and i saw penguins! those of you who know me personally, must know about how much i love penguins! okay okay. till tomorrow then...

p.s. tomorrow we're going to dracula's castle, i think. but i hear that he never actually lived there. k bye

Getting by in Poland

2005-03-21T10:09:00.000+01:00

This is Rhys, still in Poland. I like it here, but I don't think it's my future home. The fact that everyone here is reasonable and un-pretentious is a plus in some ways, but it also means that there are fewer artists and interesting people. I used to haughtily look down on pretentious people from my lofty, exclusive mountain of non-pretentiousness, but thanks in part to a stirring defence of pretentiousness Nicole gave me a while back, I've come to almost admire it a bit. Would "Who is Jim Holt?" have come into existence without a certain amount of pretentiousness somewhere on someone's part? Probably not.

Nicole should be back in Prague by now after a life-altering adventure in Vienna, but you wouldn't know it from reading this blog. Nicoooooole! Wheeeeere areeeee youuuuu?! I'd like to harp on the absurdity of how often we've blogged here in backwards Crackow while Nicole never came within 200 metres of the internet in futuristic Vienna, but having a free computer with internet at the doorway to our hostel was kind of a big factor in that. What if Nicole came back to Prague completely different? Could she be a murderer now, or an architect, or an insane fan of Motzart? I'm actually kind of scared to go to Prague and find out. What if she tries to kill me and Rachel, or tries to re-build our apartment in the Baroque style, or makes us listen to Mozart's 9th over and over until we get sick and have to jump out the window? For now I am safe in Krackow, full off a banana, marveling at all the synchronicities in mine and Rachel's thoughts. Here's a blog entry that she wrote about being in Poland. I couldn't agree more with her version of the events:

I'm sitting right now in the lobby of the hostel Rhys and I are staying in in Krakow, Poland. Sad that we change the K to C in English, huh? It looks so much nicer in polish, complete with the little hat over the o...if only I knew how to do that on this keyboard.
Right now The old man behind the desk is arguing with an old woman with a fur trimmed coat. I think it is a joke argument though....they both keep pausing to laugh.
A lot of people wear fur in Poland. Yesterday I saw so many to-the-floor orange and gray dead oddities draped over people's shoulders that I wanted to cry....
But besides that, Poland is tops. This is my mother land. I can't deny it, I'm Polish. Well, I'm a mutt, but I'm more Polish than anything else....25%.
Growing up in America, Poles are subjected to a lot of jokes about their culture. So are lots of other cultures, but I mean, come on, the Poles have it rough. There are volumes and volumes of Polish jokes! We get picked on more than the blonds!
In grade school and junior high, everyone was Irish, and I always wished I was Irish too. I'd lie and say I was Irish, and the listen to the kids tell their Polish jokes in the playground. What was wrong with Poland? I wondered. My grandma was from Poland! She spoke Polish....she didn't seem stupid...
Yet, as a result of this early experience with shame in my people, I've always sort of hidden my Polish heritage, even until today.
Why still? Maybe I'm just used to it. If you were to ask me what I 'was,' even a few weeks age, I would play up my Italian roots, mention the small bit of Scottish and French I've in me....but somehow always leave out the Polish.

How do you get a one armed Pole to fall out of a tree?
Wave!

No more of this though, folks. I have become an ocean of Polish pride in the last 24 hours. Poland is a beautiful place. Riding in on the train just as the sun was rising is one of those experiences I will never forget as long as I live. We passed a tiny village full of cottages fit only for a midget race, complete with a church in the center, also to scale. We passed huge industrial centers, spewing gray smoke into the pink sky. As far as you could see was green green countryside.
But Poland isn't just looks, although all the people (at least the women, since I can't tell if men besides Rhys are attractive) are quite nice looking. This is a country with a rich culture and a very sad history. Poland has been taken over and stomped on for hundreds of years. It's relatively fresh as a nation in its current incarnation. This government has only been in power since 89, when Communist rule ended. As the travel guide said, now is a great time to go visit "a nation rebuilding itself." Krakow is the only Polish city that's architecture was completely spared by the bombs of war, and it shows in every step you take down every street.
Go Krakow. Go Poland!

Today will be our second full day here. We took the night train on Saturday night and got into the city at 5 in the morning. The train was 9 hours, and neither of us slept all that much. We walked off the train tired and cold (its freezing here, about 28) and with no idea how to get to our hostel. A rather intense looking girl with gray hair gave us directions from the train station, and as it turns out we were only a few blocks from the station. Once at the hostel we were informed that our room wouldn't be ready until eleven.
"We're so tired! Is there anywhere we could sleep?" I asked.
Why yes, there was, said the cute Polish girl behind the counter. We ended up being able to sleep in another room for four hours until our room was ready.
We have our own room with four beds. The hostel is designed like a co-op should be, with lofts and tiny staircases, and everywhere odd mirrors and paint jobs. We have a queen size bed in a huge loft that takes up half the room. I hope to take some photos of it, and perhaps inspire JR back at Royal to assist me in creating a similar structure in my own room. The hostel also has free breakfast, free tea and coffee whenever you want it, and cute Polish girls who will tell you where all the rock concerts and vegetarian places to eat are. Yesterday we were told about the "most important bar in Poland," but have yet to go there. I wonder if she literally meant to say important, or if there was some other meaning she was searching for. I love language....

After we settled into our room, we walked around the city for hours. We saw the famous castle, wandered into many churches, ate popcorn, went to a carnival and then an English language bookstore where they were having an open mic. The mid 40s man running the open mic sat in a circle with its younger attendees, and kept reading his poems since everyone else was to scared to. He even read a really bad poem and told them that if they didn't start reading. he'd subject them to more torture.
After that, we went to a grocery store, bought chocolate, olives, and bread, and then stumbled across a Mexican food place. We found it because a man was dressed in a hilarious mariachi outfit and dancing around outside of it. It didn't work on most people, I guess, because we were the only people inside.
Mexican food in Krakow is funny, and the guac was the fluffiest I've ever had. We got appetizers, meals, dessert and a beer for about 15 dollars American. Krakow is pretty cheap.
Today we are going to see Auschwitz, and then maybe to an indoor go-kart arena in the south of the city.
I must sign off now and eat my lovely free breakfast. Hope everyone is doing well in the states....

First day in Krackow

2005-03-20T17:50:00.000+01:00

I never really thought about Poland before, so it's strange to be here. I don't know if I would raise kids here, but Poland is certainly not a country to be completely dismissed. We got to sleep in an empty room before we could check in, and I discovered a trick for falling asleep really quickly. You just think about quinoa milk. At country life back in Prague they had a sale on quinoa milk, which is just like soy milk or rice milk or oat milk or almond milk, except that it comes from that fantastic aztek grain, quinoa. It's white, liquid, and tastes like quinoa. Just thinking about it is very comforting and helped me fall asleep in that strange, temporary bed. We went to a carnival, a bunch of churches, the castle, and will soon go to an open mic. There are a lot of vegetarian restaurants here. We should be getting back Wednesday morning.

Overnight train to Poland

2005-03-20T11:27:00.000+01:00

We took the overnight train to Poland, arriving at 5:30 in the morning. Neither of us got any sleep, we didn't have walking directions to our hostel, and we weren't to check in until 11 a.m. It seemed we were to wander Poland aimlessly for hours in the cold, but as soon as we got off the train, a young woman with gray hair gave us a map and told us where to go. We haven't done anything in Crackow yet, but just like Nicole, I loved it immediately. Everyone just seems very reasonable. Only exception: a British guy in the lobby of our hostel who is very fascinated with Slivovice. Rachel says hi.

Land of the Jets

2005-03-19T14:27:00.000+01:00

Tonight Rachel and I are taking the overnight train from Prague to Crackow. Nicole is in Vienna, curly haired Issac is in Berlin, Benjamin is in South Carolina, Carrie Anne is in Austin, and it just didn't seem right for us to stay home during the American spring break. After that nightmarish excursion to Berlin a few weeks back, I was sure I would never leave the comfort of Prague again. But then came Rachel, with her wanderlust, her fluent Polish, her deep Polish roots, her love of the Polish people, and her unequaled understanding of Polish culture (Vienna was too expensive). I just want to go to the land that coined the phrase, "When you're a Jet, you're a Jet all the way, from your first cigarette to your last dying day." I'm still bitter about being cast as a Shark. That just made no sense.

Gulu Gulu gets what's coming

2005-03-17T19:57:00.000+01:00

This week's Prague Post has a review of that sinking ship of a restaurant, Gulu Gulu. Here are some of the highlights:

Ominous dining: Good intentions run aground on iceberg

By Evan Rail

March 17, 2005

I'm not certain what happened at Gulu Gulu, the Old Town cafe and restaurant, but it sure seems ominous. Everything starts out fine: It's got a great location at the back of trendy Tynska street. There's a casual, cafelike atmosphere. There are wall paintings like something Joan Miro's kids would have done after visiting Timothy Leary. But that's not the scary part. What's frightening is that someone composed a creative dinner menu with a number of interesting-sounding dishes. And then, apparently, this person simply disappeared.

Because what seems to have happened is that another, completely different person who had never heard of these dishes was then asked to prepare the food. In the process, many details were overlooked: Meals are inappropriately portioned, side dishes are limited and ill-prepared, garnishes are as boring as the most blase pub garland, and even simple tasks like grilling meat are not handled well.

Among starters, you may be tempted by the "mini skewer" of beef sirloin. This would be a mistake. The meat is tough and chewy, for one thing. For another, the accompanying side salad of rough-cut iceberg lettuce and flavorless tomato wedges is undressed, thrown upon the plate like an afterthought.

In that regard, if you ask for spinach or broccoli, you're out of luck. There is a "warm vegetable mix" that your server may recommend. Pay attention! This is another trap. Veggie mix is composed of chunks of partially cooked tomatoes, red bell peppers, zucchini and eggplant, very much like a ratatouille, only without the flavor. It probably goes without saying that the eggplant was not salted and drained before cooking, so each bite has the texture and taste of raw Mediterranean sponge.

With such relatively high prices and such confusing dishes (seafood en papillote with a side of plain iceberg?), Gulu Gulu is certainly not what it could be, ranking far below other restaurants in this category. Mozaika has the same sort of casual atmosphere, but the food is much, much better -- and less expensive. In the center, any Potrefena husa would offer better food at lower prices, as would Orange Moon, Kolkovna, and many other places. Why anyone would go here instead is, indeed, quite a mystery.

vignettes from nicole

2005-03-17T16:31:00.000+01:00

1. rachel and i were walking on the side street between vodickova and narodni trida one bright afternoon when we saw a man drop a small black leather pouch. it looked deliberate to me, so i just pretended not to notice. but rachel stopped and half-whispered 'nicole!' i looked back and she was staring at the pouch and gesturing at the man, who was quickly walking away.

r:'nicole! open it!'
n:'i think he dropped it deliberately.'
r:'i know! open it!'
n:'i don't want to open it. you open it.'
r:'what if it is a bomb?'
n:'why would i want to open a bomb?'
r:'open it!'
n:'you open it.'
r:'what if it has money in it?'
n:'then you should open it. but i don't want to open it.'

then rachel went up to kick it and make sure it wasn't a bomb. we were both still alive after she kicked it, so she bent down and slowly unzipped the pouch. inside were several small tubes and what looked like a needle. she zipped it back up and we walked away.

we thought it'd be funny if we'd taken the pouch home and gotten really fucked up on mystery-drugs before rhys came home, but then neither of us are in to hard drugs, so we just pretended and told rhys that we shot up some mystery drugs.

2. the days are getting longer here, which means that my 6-7:30 jewish studies class coincides with sunset. the classroom has a huge double-window that looks out on a view of the prague castle ('prazky hrad' in czech). last night at the sunset, the castle was an obscure mass with towers rising steeply from it. the sky glowed intensely with pink and purple swirls. it was like someone had poured pink and purple acrylic paint in pools on a bright light. some black birds flew by in a flock. my professor looked over his shoulder and stopped what he was saying mid-sentence. 'ees bootiful, ma frenz. les go to wihndoe.' and then he turned off all the lights and we watched the sunset pink and purple, and then purple and navy, over the prague castle. this is where i live.

3. on my way back from jewish studies class, i saw a 100 kc note on the ground. i debated over whether to pick it up or not. there was nobody anywhere near, so i wouldn't be able to locate the person who dropped it. i picked it up. then i couldn't decide what to do wtih it. i thought it'd be good to buy some friends dinner with it or something. like give it back to the community or something. but then a 100kc is only work about 4 or 5 bucks, so it wouldn't be enough. i bought myself a bagel sandwich and a bottomless soda, and i felt sort of guilty about it, but also happy.

4. on my way to bohemia bagel, where i bought myself a sandwich and a soda, i saw a guy walking across the sidewalk with a bottle in his hands. without slowing down or changing the expression on his face, he threw up on the crosswalk. it was gross.

***

today is st. patrick's day. folks are going to the blind eye, but i have a bad scratchy throat and we're going to vienna at 9 in the morning, so if i go out, i'll be in by 11:30. that's my limit. i think i'm going to go eat vegetables and fruits now, to try to scare away this scratchy throat problem.

last week we saw dvorak's and karel capek's grave.

Life in Prague with Rachel

2005-03-16T20:55:00.000+01:00

For English speakers, it's really impressive that the German language has a lot of single words to express complex ideas. I wonder, however, if German speakers are equally as impressed with all the really, really long English phrases there are to explain complex ideas.

Yes, I recognize that this is an atypical entry opener for me, but I've been a lot more philosophical about things since Rachel got here. The fact that she is completely fluent in German makes me think more about the German question in particular. Germany: what is to be done?

If Rachel got here a century earlier, she would have owned this place with her mastery of the German language. There isn't all that much German here anymore, since Austria was kicked out and Czech came back in vogue, but there's a lot more than in Austin, and Rachel's been milking it. So far we've been to the communism museum and on the Jewish synagogue tour, and Rachel goes for the German explanation cards every time. I have to read the English explanation cards, which makes her roll her eyes. Today she purchased a bunch of books, all of them originally written in English, translated to German: Ulysses in German, Catch 22 in German, and even the Complete Works of William Shakespeare in German! She gets really pissed off when restaurants have menu items in Czech and English, but not German. She tries to talk to me in German most of the time, which is kind of annoying, but with my knowledge of English and Czech, we're able to communicate okay. She even talks in her sleep in German, which is really frustrating, because I'm desperate to know if she's cheating on me in her dreams! She's right here. I suppose I could just ask her if she cheats on me in her dreams. I bet she would say, "Nein."

Today we went on a tour of the Jewish museums in Prague, some of which touched on the Nazi presence in Prague, and I got to thinking. Would flying cars exist today if not for the Holocaust? So many geniuses and innovators - and potential geniuses and innovators of future generations - were exterminated. Could one of them have been the inventor of the flying car, or have had an idea that would have led to it?

The Jewish synagogue tour is the best musuem event in Prague. It's even better than the Kubrick museum in Berlin. Yes, the Kubrick musuem was great, but it had one serious flaw: Kubrick made a bunch of amazing movies, especially 2001 and Dr. Strangelove, but then he got lazy and made three movies in 20 years - two good ones, and one merely okay one (decide for yourself which are which). Maybe it was his legacy that freaked him out. He didn't want to mess up and make a bad movie, so instead he made hardly any movies at all. I can relate to that strategy, but as a consequence, the Jewish museum tour in Prague was better.

How my life in Prague is different with Rachel here:

Before Rachel got here, I had only eaten out three times. I doubled that record about fifteen minutes after Rachel got off the plane. Right away I explained to Rachel the Czech people's "woman pays" tradition, earning myself a ton of free meals.

I read less and write less and sleep less, but live more.

I actually went into the Our Lady Before Tyn Church, the behemouth of Old Town Square. It's a little embarrassing that I never went in there earlier, but hey, I had grocery shopping to do.

I'm more philosophical about things.

I have someone to hold hands with. Which made me wonder... have there ever been siamese twins attached at the hands? If so, that would be really adorable.

Remember when I was all lonely and depressed about being in Prague, and writing stuff like, "Get here, Rachel!" Well, I got over my depression soon after that, but I still wanted Rachel to get here. And now she's here, and I'm even less depressed!

Oh, Rachel knows how I really feel. I don't have to tell anyone.

oh the blind eyeeeeee

2005-03-16T13:54:00.000+01:00

last night, darling and i decided to go to the blind eye for another 'blue grass' concert, although this time it wasn't austin, it was another woman. we got there for the end of her set because we missed the first tram by a few minutes and had to wait awhile for the second. our plan was to go, listen to music, come home, study, crash, get up and feel great about it all. the slumber party of a century! we ended up staying for 'a drink' after the show, which turned into four drinks and home by 3:30 am. (don't worry, mom and pop, we called a taxi.) that place just sucks you in. i just feel comfortable there. and i want to stay there.

and this is the thing. ever since we've found the blind eye, and the people there, i've felt so much better about being in prague. i finally feel like i'm connecting with the city, even if it is with other ex-pats. and i feel like i have a place to go, where i'll be welcome, where everybody knows my na-a-ame.

the other thing is that our last two house-guests (rachel and eddie) have made the place seem more exciting too. eddie showed us the bar and a bunch of other things. rachel wants to do everything and is very fun. and i didn't really feel like i had to like be a really hands-on host to either of them because eddie had his own thing and was really independent and rachel's got rhys to drag around when i want to be alone or do school shit. it's a win win win win situation.

well and another thing is that suddenly the weather is beautiful. i didn't even have to button my jacket today.

and another thing is that i really like hanging out with kristen d.

oh oh but the sad part is now that i feel like this is becoming my home, i have no more time left with it. we're going to vienna this weekend with the program. then next week we'll go to romania, which i am excited about, but also wish we had more time here and there. then my parents are coming for nine days, which i am also excited about, but i probably won't have that much time to do the stuff i've been starting to really get into doing here. like interacting with prague as a resident rather than a tourist. then i have a week in which i might have to travel back to the states for interviews, although that is looking less and less likely. then matt (my brother) is coming, which should be awesome and i imagine he'll take care of himself when i'm doing school stuff or whatever. but i really want to travel with him, so that's more time away from prague, even though i want to do it. then another week or so and the program is over! i feel like i'm already leaving prague and i don't want to yet! part of me wants to stay home from vienna so that i can be here and have one more available weekend in prague. but who passes up a free trip to vienna? not me.

i hate this. i know it sounds like i'm complaining. but all i'm complaining about is being too happy and having too much good stuff to do and too little time to do it. what i'm saying is i just realized this week how much i like this town, and not just because it is different and european, but also because there is a good community here that i want to continue to interact with.

in other news, i just re-connected with my old best friend from 6th grade, and i am SO happy about this. i still miss her, even though it's been ages since she left b'ham for charleston. oh taylor! i miss taylor! i'm thinking of driving to see her when i get back to the states. i would love to spend time with her again.

nicole

2005-03-15T14:55:00.000+01:00

for days (days!) i've been wanting to get some real quality time with the blog. to come up with some new profound way to look at my travels and wow our readers with insights and lively prose. but now i'm here. i have time. i don't know what to write.

i want to write about anna and greg. i suppose i could just give an elaboration and an update. i'll copy it from an email i just wrote so i don't have to re-think about it over and over. i know they're will be some rehashing. last thursday, my friends anna and greg were coming back late from the european student dorms on a night tram. at one stop, anna saw a group of six skinhead kids get on the tram. they walked up to greg, who was sitting silently and inconspicuously in the back of the full tram, and asked him something in czech. he said 'nemluvim cesky' which means 'i don't speak czech' and they basically just started kicking the shit out of him. they would grab on to the railings at the top of the tram and jump up and kick him in the face. anna is sort of a tough, like very admirable girl. after she got over the shock of what was happening, she started kicking one of the nazis to divert attention from greg, who was being severely beaten. she said one of them turned around, smiled at her, and then kicked her in the chest and face. they jumped off at the next tram stop and a woman helped them call an ambulance. another american couple was beat up by the same guys right after greg and anna, and when they heard the ambulance coming, they ran towards it. anna and greg spent pretty much all the rest of the night and the next day in the hospital and police station. greg's face is smashed and bandaged. anna is mostly fine, but shaken.

i had a dream about her last night, but she wasn't being beaten by nazis. she was at a rape trial of six men who had raped her as a child (this didn't really happen, it was a dream fabrication). i kept crying at the horror of her experience and laughing at the absurdity and i tried to help her escape. then i woke up.

rachel is here. i love having her here. there's not really much to write after her terrific guest-post. team xod (that's the three of us) had a great day yesterday. i like how positive and energetic rachel has been about prague. she gets us to do things. i like that. my friends like her too.

i ran into corbett from austin who was teaching in korea for a year and now travels around hoping to eventually end up in japan with his lovely girlfriend. you might know him. he has really cool grey hair. he's pausing for a month in prague to take a toefl class so that he can be an english teacher. hopefully we'll get to hang out. he seems like he'd be fun to hang out with.

i'm having a lot of trouble concentrating right now because the kids in the study abroad office are all having animated conversations, which is nice (you know, bc they're all happy), but making it hard to concentrate.

last night we saw a bad ballet. i've seen three ballets in my life, and all of them here. the first two were so good that i didn't really understand what made a bad ballet- i just figured all of them were good. i'm glad i now know the difference between good and bad ballet. you learn something new all the time.

okay. good ballet: the movements are light and graceful. the dancers don't look like they are straining. they don't express emotion with their faces so much as with their bodies. the choreography reflects the theme of whatever scene is being presented. there is a plot. all the dancers lift their arms and legs to the same heights as each other, etc. etc.

bad ballet: no plot. random characters just randomly dancing pretty with no purpose. the pretty dancing really isn't that pretty, it's just spinning around and moving limbs in various directions. the movements look heavy and difficult. the dancers are all out of sync with one another and they forget where they're supposed to dance. people drop things. costumes fall apart on stage.

none of that is very articulate, but listen, it's beautiful outside and i need to get out of here.

read rachel's blog beneath this one; it's got more.

vergangenheitsbewaltigung

2005-03-15T14:19:00.000+01:00

a real word, meaning 'coming to terms with the past' in the german language.

Rachel in Prague: a guest post from the horse's mouth!

2005-03-15T11:53:00.000+01:00

Look how happy!

This will be my fifth full day in Prague. I’m sure you are all wondering how it has been going, so this is my story so far:

I got to the airport in Austin early on Wednesday. I called a number of my friends and told them that I loved them, and that they should always remember this if I were to die in a plane crash. From Austin I flew to Houston and from Houston I flew to Paris on the famous Air France. As a first time international traveler, I was terrified that the Air France people would look at my ticket, look at my passport, and laugh. I thought they wouldn’t let me get on the plane. The idea of leaving the country seemed too unreal to me. But they did let me on the plane (I fooled them!), and I sat on the window next to a man going to Dubai to work as an electrician. He’d worked in Iraq for many months before. His work had something to do with the U.S. government and the war. I asked if it frightened him, and he just laughed and said no, and pulled out his Passport. Inside were 6 stamps for the Baghdad International Airport.
He was nice, but had big shoulders and dominated the armrest. I wanted some!
Anyway, the flight started out good. I took full advantage of the free booze and got some wine and a rum and coke. The vegan meal that I had so much trouble ordering showed up before everyone else’s, and I marveled at its deliciousness: cantaloupe, grapes, salad, carrot and celery sticks, rice, a big roll, mashed lentils with unmashed peas, and (my favorite) chick peas with curry. I was drinking and eating like a king! I thought the flight was going to continue on this awesome path….but then I made a mistake.
I originally planned to drink enough to make me sleepy so I could dream the flight away.
But then, after my meal was warming my tummy, the Air France attendant offered me coffee in the irresistible tone that comes from no one but the French. I accepted (damn!) and ended up staying up the entire rest of the flight, tossing and turning and trying to get to sleep. The monitors on the back of the seat in front of me kept mocking me. Four more hours to Paris? I’d think. No, I’m not going to make it.
We finally did get into Paris, and late. This terrified me because I only had an hour layover until my next plane, and the airport looked huge. We didn’t even pull up to a gate….there were stairs wheeled up to the plane. We were to get out on the runway and walk. Where I had no idea. I was panicking, and time was slipping away. When I finally started making my way out of the plane, I noticed a woman standing at the bottom of the stairs with a sign that said “Prague.”
“Hello!” She yelled, with another beautiful French accent. “Is anyone going to Prague?”
“I am,” I said, raising my hand as I trotted down the stairs.
“Are you Miss Osier?” She asked. She pronounced as it was meant to be, back before it got Americanized.
“Yes, yes I am.”
“Oh hurry, Miss Osier, we don’t have much time!” She grabbed the side of my coat and we started running to her van. She drove me half way across the airport, driving on the runways, and past empty, waiting planes. She dropped me off right by a flight of stairs.
“You board up there, in 22. Now hurry! Go!” I thanked her and ran up the stairs, excited by the adventure and excited about not having to wait for my next plane.
I ran up to the gate and then….found out the flight was delayed for 2 hours.
The anticipation started to kill me. I couldn’t wait to see Rhys. I’d missed him so much that the thought of seeing him made me want to burst. My little heart ran a mile a minute. I was really scared. What if he’d turned into Euro-trash? What if he didn’t remember me? What if he wasn’t at the airport to pick me up? What would I do then? I didn’t even know his and Nicole’s address…
(also note that I was also delirious from lack of sleep by this point. I had stayed up almost the entire night before I left, thinking I’d sleep on the plane and then when I woke up I’d be all adjusted to European time. By the time I landed in Prague I had been awake for nearly 40 hours.)
Much to my luck, Rhys really was at the airport. I didn’t even recognize him at first. He has really long hair now and was wearing his glasses. He helped me get my bags and we got on the bus. I just sort of stared at him and poked at his shoulder the whole way to his house. Was he real? Poke. Yep, solid. Not a figment of my imagination. The joy I felt was masked by my sleepy delirium. I was extremely happy. So happy. I felt like he’d come back from the Civil War or something. But it was only 2 months. Funny, it seemed like at least three or four years.
Rhys realized I was sleepy and decided to mess with me:
“And that over there is the national museum.”
“Really? Cool.”
“No, actually that was just a shack.”
“Oh.”
“And now we’re in Dresden.”
“Huh”
“Yeah, I bet you didn’t know Prague was so close….”
Etc, etc.
When we got back to his and Nicole’s apartment I dropped off my stuff, took Rhys out to eat at Country Life, a vegan eatery that delighted my taste receptacles, and then passed out. I woke up the next morning free of jet lag.

On my first day in Prague Rhys and I wandered the city. I told him to Vogue, and he did this

Then Rhys has to go to a costume fitting for a Czech commercial he was in, and I went on a walking tour with Nicole’s program. We went to see this church and the cemetery next to it. Afterwards we went to the thrift store in the train station. I accidentally asked some gypsies for a cigarette, and they started yelling things to each other and I got scared. So we bought some popcorn and went to a ballet. It was free! Whoo! We even got to see this sign:

Saturday, which was my birthday, we went to Kutna Hora, a small town with a bone church. The picture speaks for it self….this is the ceiling.

After that, we went to another huge church and then took the train back home. I have a deep affection for trains, and this was the first time I ever got to ride in one with the little cubbys with privacy curtains. I pretended I was taking the train across the country, instead of for only an hour. Once home, I slept some more and then Rhys took me out to dinner at this place called Ratos which is also a dance club and has a hilarious website. We were attacked by singing bums who kept asking us for money and then danced around us, pulling cutlery out of their sleeves. They even accused us of being Swedish.
Most beggars don’t dance….just look like this:

On Sunday, Rhys was in a commercial for “some red liquid,” so me and Nicole hung out at this place called Kava Kava Kava! that Tara from Royal recommended. We played on the internet for hours, but didn’t write blogs. I was reading the Golem, by Gustav Meyrink while she was working on my computer. The book was starting to get really good and scary. I was capitivated…and also terrified. That’s all here, right in this here city. We ended up running into someone from Austin at the coffee shop, someone Nicole knew, which was pretty random. When we left, I walked quickly.
Why? Oh, I was afraid of Prague! Stupid books. I woke up in the middle of the night after having a bad nightmare and couldn’t move. I was paralyzed in fear. I thought the Golem was going to get me. Luckily, he didn’t, and I woke up the next morning and went to the big metronome with Rhys and Nicole. It is on a huge hill overlooking the entire city. A statue of Stalin’s head used to be there, but now it’s a metronome. It is meant to symbolize the lives of the Czech people….sometimes good, sometimes bad. We sat up there and took everything in. We also took a lot of pictures of us looking tough and whatnot.

Hanging out with Rhys and Nicole is awesome. We’ve created a team and have a secret hand signal and everything. Sometime before we go, we’ll have to go back to the metronome and have a picnic. Here they are trying to break into a car.

After the metronome, we got on the tram and went to see the baby tower. According to Nicole, who is a wealth of knowledge on all things Czech, the radio tower was built by the communists. They built it because they wanted to dominate the skyline. After they went away, an artist was hired to “humanize” the statue, since everyone sort of hated it. The artist decided the most human thing there was is babies, so he made a bunch of them and they can be seen in this picture, crawling up and down the tower….

After that long day of walking and looking and taking photos we ate some ice cream and I finally got my first look at the Old-New Synagogue, where, apparently, they have hidden the Golem that scares me so much. I’ve been interested in him and the old Jewish culture since I read “The Golem: Legends of the Ghettos of Prague” about a year ago. And I was infatuated with Prague even before then….I’ve wanted to live here since high school, when I got all into Kafka during English class and decided Prague was the place for me. When Thomas was having his going away party, he said “You know Rachel, when I first met you I asked you what you wanted to do with your life, and you said ‘Move to Prague, open a coffee shop, make lots of friends and write all the time'.”
I did? Cool!
Yes, Prague was my dream city. And it isn't disappointing.
And then it became even more of a dream city when I fell in love with the old tales of the Jewish ghetto in that book.
Little did I know that I’d actually be in the place I thought about so much in less than a years time. So, while Rhys’s departure was very sad, it did give me this once in a lifetime opportunity. A free place to stay for 16 days in Prague!
Anyway, back to the Golem. Apparently he is up in the rafters of the church. From the outside of it, there is a staircase that starts halfway up the building. It leads to a metal door that’s probably locked with a big skeleton key. The ledge that the staircase leads to has nails stickin up from it. They look to be about 3-4 inches high. The other ledges there, leading to two similarly blocked windows, are covered in these nails two.
See:

There’s gotta be something in there. I really really want to go see. Even if it’s just dust.

Later we went to another ballet, and then to a very strange bar for spiced wine.

And now it’s today and I’m at a coffee shop with Rhys. Soon we are going to get a pass to all the old Jewish tourist attractions, including the Old-New. We’re going to find out all its secrets. Or die trying.

No, just kidding. We'll probably just take pictures and then make sandwiches. Delicious, tempeh sandwichs.

okay- this is nicole, by the way

2005-03-13T17:39:00.000+01:00

so i don't really have time to keep posting pictures, but i have some things i want to say, so i'm going to try to write a quick entry.

first, i thought i should talk about my friends anna and greg. they were on a night tram together late at night on their way home from some far away student dorms when anna turned and saw some nazis with swastikas tattoos approaching them. without provocation, the nazi kids started beating up greg- like kicking him in the face and shit. she tried to stop them and they kicked her the chest and i think the face too. the two of them spent all night and the next day at the hospital. turns out these stupid kids were going around just beating up random people. this sort of violence is not usual in prague, i hear. but one of the kids was evidently wanted for murder. this just further proves to me that i will from now on take taxis home from the blind eye, which is our favorite bar in zizkov.

now i'll talk about the blind eye. when eddie was here, he introduced us to the blind eye, which could be my favorite bar ever. the owners are really nice and let us go pick out music in the back. tonight we're going to watch a movie before the bar opens in their movie room. we've got a nice set of expat friends there, but the bar isn't totally ex-pat-ish. they've made a concerted effort to draw in czechs as customers. the only thing is that the czechs all speak english with the english-speakers, so it doesn't feel all that authentic, but i can also converse with them, which is nice. i've also met some nice swedes and scottish folks, etc., there.

the other night, austin (who is one of the owner's little brother and is also a bar tender) played a show there. looking at austin, you'd expect his show to be a bit raw, a bit crust, but it turned out that he is an incredible bluegrass artist. sitting at the blind eye, listening to austin sing his beautiful lyrics from the depths of his beautiful diaphragm that was all covered up with tattoos and beer-gut, i had one of those moments i was afraid i'd stopped having altogether. these are the moments when you feel like you're watching yourself from a younger perspective. i wondered how i had come into this world where my friends can make such moving music in their own dive bar in their own corner of prague. who was i? i felt like i was fifteen years old, envying the life of an older acquaintance. but it was my life. i'm here.

i have so much more to write. i have no time to write it. i miss everyone. and HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMY!!!!!!! (two days too late, but HAPPY BIRTHDAY!)

p.s. rachel is here. it's really fun to hang out with her. HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO RACHEL TOO!!!! and we went to kutna hora yesterday and saw, among other things, a church where all the decorations were made of human bones.

more later, hopefully. more later.

no time for a blog, so i'll put up pictures of the bone church

2005-03-13T17:29:00.000+01:00

A hush falls over the city of Prague... could this be the end of my waiter days?

2005-03-09T14:26:00.000+01:00

“It is not very sympathique for me to have to tell you this,” Philip told me over the phone last night, “but…”

I doubt Rachel will ever admit it, and I know for a fact that Carrie Anne is too much of a professional to breach confidentiality, but I think Rachel has been secretly paying Carrie Anne to pray for me to lose my job at Gulu Gulu, so she can have more time with me on her visit (only a day away!). I admire Rachel’s ingenuity, and I would definitely love the extra time with her, but I hope she’s been paying Carrie Anne extra to make sure I at least have a job after she leaves Prague.

I had a bad day at work yesterday, and I think my perfect TGIF sitcom job is in serious jeopardy of turning into something more like a critically heralded cutting edge HBO Original Drama.

After Saturday, I wasn’t supposed to work again until Thursday, if even then. But Philip called me on Monday night, asking if I could come in Tuesday, so I could train behind the bar with Anna and Tereze. “Nah, screw that,” I said. Actually, though I wanted the day off to prepare for Rachel, I think I said something more like, “Certainly, absolutely, yes, oh most definitely.”

I got to Gulu Gulu at 10:30 yesterday morning, but it was locked. I’d run out of minutes on my phone, so I couldn’t text Philip, and knocking wasn’t working because someone was blaring music inside. So I had to wait about 10 minutes before Tereze and Anna were able to let me in.

Turns out I just don’t get along with Anna and Tereze like I do with Petulka and that other awesome person whose name I never knew. A & T’s English isn’t as good, which makes it harder for me to idly chat with them. Beyond that, nice as they are, they aren’t people I would have become instant friends with even if we did speak the same language. My motivation then to “šhóót thě břěěžě,” as we say in Prague, was really low, and I think I came across as a quiet loner guy, pretty much the last category of person who needs to be working as a waiter/bar tender at an upscale international restaurant. Which is a problem, because I am currently scheduled to be Anna’s replacement as Tereze’s shift partner.

I did end up being somewhat sociable, but only when Petulka and, jeez, really, what is her name?, came in for some drinks. “He’s going to be famouse celebrity,” Petulka told the other one. “Nooooo,” I denied humbly, while thinking bitterly to myself, “It’s about time the Czech people acknowledged my imminent rise to super-stardom!”

I thought I did okay with Tereze and Anna, though. I learned how to make café lattes, espressos, café piccolos, cappuccinos, and hot chocolates fairly easily for never having thought about most of those drink before in my life (though perhaps not easily enough for someone who purports to have vest experience making those drinks). I also quickly figured out where the different wines were, how to tell at a glance if they were Czech, Italian, French, white or red, which bottled waters had bubbles and which didn’t, and the various buttons to press for Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola Light, Sprite, Fanta, and Soda Water on the soda dispenser. All the while, however, never fooled for a second that this was my true calling.

Apparently no one else was fooled either. Maybe always forgetting to put the lemon in the Coca-Colas gave me away. The only blatant mistake I made, however, involved me breaking a glass. It wasn’t breaking the glass that was the problem, though. It was cleaning up the glass!

That was, in fact, the most unusual event of the day. Earlier I got a hint of it when two customers came in and Philip whispered to me, “Those are friends of Frederique. Be careful!” Well, I was. So careful that I all but avoided them completely. In a bold, spontaneous move, I asked them if they needed anything else. They said that they were fine with their drinks. Damn, I’m good.

Frederique is the boss. He’s even above Philip, if you can imagine that, though I suppose Hans could kick Frederique out of the building in a merciless German heart thunk if he found out Frederique beliefed in Got like on idiote.

I had never seen Frederique, but heard that he was as short as his temper… which is short, as he is known far and wide for his screaming fits. He had a big business meeting yesterday, and the international investor he was wooing wanted some water. Frederique specifically requested that I, the new guy, complete the task. “Bring ‘im á moi!” he must have bellowed. I didn’t realize it then, but over everything else – writing the daily menu on the chalkboards, waiting tables, making coffee, pouring wine, putting lemons in Coca-Colas – bringing Frederique’s client this water was to be my big test of the day. A test I most definitely failed.

It should have been easy enough. “Fřěděříqué wantš ýóů tó bříng hím wátěř,” Anna told me, as if it was nothing. She didn’t know if he wanted bubbly or still water, so I expertly whipped out an Aquila and a Mattoni, and the corresponding glasses for each (just about every drink at Gulu Gulu has its own glass with the product name splashed across). I plopped the bottle opener on the tray, and then for some reason, probably for presentation, Anna put the glasses upside over the bottles (an important detail to remember for later, readers!).

Frederique was “upstairs,” and since I had no idea where that was, Anna told me to follow her. She dashed off, and by the time I got out from behind the bar, she had already rounded the corner and was out of sight. In a rush, I grabbed the tray, and as I lifted it off the counter, the Aquila glass flipped off its designated bottle and crashed to the floor.

A conundrum, but I didn’t realize how dire. I either had to delay Frederique’s water to find a broom and dustpan and clean up the Aquila vessel’s shattered remains, or I had to put Gulu Gulu’s customers and workers in mortal danger by leaving huge, blood-thirsty shards of glass at the bottom of the steps in the main hallway. Anna was still out of sight, waiting vainly for me around the corner, so the decision was all on my shoulders. Perhaps this too was a staged part of the test.

It takes three days to die of thirst. Broken glass can cut your foot in a second. Glancing under the bar, I found a hand broom and dustpan. AHHHNNNNTTT! WRONG! The whole process of breaking, finding cleaning implements, and making sure I had every piece of glass off the floor set me back at least five minutes. Not only that, but Frederique might very well have enjoyed the sound of a cook’s pained scream after a slip and a gash.

When I finally put a fresh Aquila glass on the tray (not resting on top of the bottle this time), Anna came back and led me at a more reasonable pace, so I could actually follow. She led me through a back door, past a courtyard, over a small hill, and to an elegant apartment building. She pressed a button, and after about 30 seconds (which Frederique doubtlessly spent drumming his fingers together and cackling), we were buzzed in.

Anna led me to a marble staircase with an intricate golden banister. It wasn’t narrow enough to be a spiral staircase, but it was circular, so that the inner part of the stairs was more treacherous than the outside. In my rush, I almost stumbled a couple of times – which would have been the end of me for sure – until I had a good sense to slow down and take the outside track. We must have walked up five floors, with brass cherubs, stone lion faces, and the stuffed heads of endangered animals benevolently watching over us the whole way.

Anna opened a door for me, and here I was in Frederique’s office at the top of the palace tower. Frederique was in a giant leather chair, holding court with the businessman, who might have been American or English, but thanked me in Czech after he chose… the Mattonni! If only I’d known! Had I looked closer at Frederique’s diamond-studded coffee table, I might have seen an angry stopwatch blinking emergency red.

“Happy now, Napoleon?,” I asked the emperor with a sneer.

Actually, I said lamely – in my best possible Czech accent - “Thěřě ýóů gó. Ěnjóý!”

Frederique seemed happy with me (evidently a sign that he couldn’t be more displeased), and since it hadn’t occurred to me that I’d been undergoing a trial all along, I skipped joyfully on my way back to the bar, little realizing that I’d failed catastrophically in Gulu Gulu’s eyes… eyes which stare at you from every wall of the restaurant, cubist and very colorful. Hopefully history and the international community will take a kinder view of my fateful choice.

Not long after I settled back in the bar, prepared to satisfy the mind-bogglingly diverse thirsts of our now completely non-existent customers, this charismatic born-to-be-a-waiter Slovakian named Petyr bounded confidently in the door and announced to Philip that he had worked at Gulu Gulu for three months over the summer, and would like the job again. Philip, it turns out, who has always been the face of Gulu Gulu for me, is rather new there. Anyway, it was certainly Petyr’s right to demand this. Though I am supposedly on the schedule full time starting on Monday, the sign looking for waiters who speak English is at the window. Savvy, my dear Frederique. Very savvy.

I wasn’t too worried at first, since Philip actually seemed put off by this guy. Philip demanded a CV, which he never asked of me, and acted miffed when Petyr didn’t have one. Petyr, who of course speaks perfect Czech and Slovak and decent enough English, said he was a student of English at Charles University. Philip, not betraying a hint of being impressed, pointed at me and said, “You ‘ave a good English teacher here,” optimistically implying that both Petyr and I could work at Gulu Gulu – doubtful, since Anna is the only one leaving. Philip, still appearing annoyed with Petyr (perhaps for initiating this exchange in front of me), reluctantly offered his phone number and went away. I figured that was that for Petyr, at least for the moment, but I must have missed a sentence or two, maybe some things were said in Czech, because Petyr stayed to chill at the bar with me, apparently waiting for Philip to come back.

He took off his hat, revealing a perfect waiter do, and asked for some soda water from the soda tap. “That iz thě frěě watěř, Í rěměmbér,” he bragged. This guy wouldn’t debate cleaning up the glass for a second. He even pointed out the button he thought I needed to push for the soda water, but anyone with half a brain could tell that was for the Sprite. I didn’t fall for the trap, and pushed the big button in the middle to fill his glass. “Summer was a long time ago, eh?” I thought with a smirk.

Then we went through the usual how are you’s where are you from’s.

“Ah, Těxas! Vůck, maín, Í havě fríěnd hěyré fřom Houžton!” “Houston? Puh! I’m from Austin,” I huffed. “Aůžtín! That íž capítal of Těxas, Í tínk!”

Yeah, you’re real smart, I thought. You know the capital of Texas, and I bet you think I couldn’t name the capitals of most of the countries in Europe without Nicole here whispering them to me. And, yeah, you’d be right. Jerk.

Petyr’s English was worse than mine (and, admittedly, my Czech worse than his), and I had trouble getting where he was from out of him. “Are you from Prague,” I would ask. “Přagué? Yěž, Í waž hěyré ín summéř, trěé monthž!” Finally I learned he was from god knows where in Slovakia. Man, in retrospect, I should have gone on about my sort of friend Tomas, Marie’s fiancé from Slovakia, and how I bet Tomas knew the capital of Slovakia. Then again, in retrospect, I shouldn’t have dropped that Aquila glass. Also, in retrospect, I should have studied Czech, not French, and should have spent more time as a waiter and less time cooking in the states. While I’m at it, I should have got Michael into that screening of Sean Connery Golf Project. Also, I shouldn’t have joined the Columbia House music club in sixth grade. And… oh, this is a bad game to play.

Petyr seemed like someone I could be friends with, if not for our unfortunate bitter rivalry. Still, I was the guy behind the bar, on the schedule for next week, and he was just some schmuck applying way too late. It became clear, however, that Petyr saw our current roles as a mixed-up illusion. He asked about my waiter experience, was surprised when I claimed to have some, and talked about how the tourist season was picking up, making it easier for unemployed waiters to find jobs. But he wasn’t saying this to console himself. He was giving advice to me! When he finally realized that Philip wasn’t coming back to toss me out and give Petyr the job on the spot, he said, “Góód lůck, máín,” and walked out the door.

By the end of my still more eventful yet too tedious to recount half shift, the cooks thought I was arrogant and thankless, the waitresses thought I was quiet and boring, Philip thought I was slow, Petyr was certain I was a temporary apparition, and I myself thought I was nothing but a depraved white flour chomping butter-eater. Was that the eerie howl of a wolf I heard as I walked out the door, or the malicious cackle of emperor Frederique as he tugged all of our puppet strings?

Then came Philip’s call late last night, apologetically giving me the decidedly non-sympathique news that I didn’t need to come to work today, because Frederique was training someone else instead, and he would call when he wanted me to come in next. I wonder who this mysterious trainee might be. Perhaps I’ll look up the capital of Slovakia and stop by for a chat.

If Philip has to fire me, I hope he doesn’t lose sleep agonizing over it. He needs to look out for Gulu Gulu, not me, and if that means firing an American fraud for some hotshot tri-lingual food service expert, Phil needs to drop the guillotine. Of course, Frederique, who must relish such bloodshed, will probably be the one to do it. I think, in any case, Rachel’s fears of never getting to see me during her trip may have been premature – and probably resolved with voodoo.

By the way, as I type this on my laptop, in the relative luxury of my fine fully-furnished room, Ukrainian laborers are outside my window banging on pipes, and our landlady is squatting on our bathroom floor, scrubbing it with a toothbrush. No, wait, okay. She was just squirting the toilet with a spray bottle.

puppy love

2005-03-08T11:49:00.000+01:00

on our way to krakow, we drove through this very small, very cold town on the border between the czech republic and poland. it was absolutely silent and still until all of a sudden a dog came bounding out of one of the ugly gray apartment buildings onto the snowy sidewalk. the dog's owner followed less enthusiastically, but was certainly cheered by his adorable puppy.

that night, i had a dream that i got play with caesar (our cute little cute shih-tzu puppy in alabama) for hours! it was so great! then, last night, not only did i get to play with a dog (who wasn't caesar, but who looked similar to caesar), but i got to ride around on a bicycle with him! then i got to walk home from germany to prague with a friend of mine. that was nice too.

in other news, guy hasn't been emailing me. (what the f?!?!) but, like a timely, magic drug for my self-esteem, i was approached by a handsome young czech man last night. i was tired from the weekend, though, so i went home early, had a phone conversation with mum and pop and went to sleep. i'm still tired though. i feel asleep for a minute or two in class and my teacher made fun of me. but that's what happens when you put soothing music on and ask students to meditate on a text at 10 in the morning! at least that's what happens to me.

i'm gonna take a nap.

p.s. rhys is at work now! good news! thanks to eddie for finding rhys an occupation. yay!

krakow

2005-03-07T14:55:00.000+01:00

saturday was one of my favorite days ever. krakow is one of my favorite places ever. i wish i had more time there. it was so pleasant.

the bus ride to krakow ended up taking about 4 hours longer than it was supposed to because we kept stopping at gas stations and everyone kept getting off the bus. i had bad insomnia the previous night and only got about 2 hours of sleep and then some asshole on the bus decided to put in reservoir dogs at 9am on full volume. the result was that i got about zero minutes of sleep for the entire 12 hours on the bus. but the other result was that i slept like a baby once we got to krakow.

kristen d. and i shared a room, of course, because it was in the stars for us. (by this i mean that had i lived in the dorms, i was supposed to be her roommate.) we're like minded. we both like to sleep and go out about the same amount. we both wanted to sleep. first we watched LOTR that was actually still in English, and wasn't dubbed, but had a voiceover in polish. you know, like when they're translating on the news. it was a little distracting, but i was so tired that i felt intoxicated, and so i didn't care a bit what it sounded like. i was just enjoying the pretty pictures.

the next morning we woke up early for free breakfast and one of zdenek's spectacular walking tours. the old town in krakow was a walled city, so to get to the center of town you have to walk through a gate. when we walked through the gates, there was a long, wide cobblestone road lined with shops and restaurants, street performers, and pretzel stands. it was so suddenly full of life and happiness that i pretty much instantly decided it was one of my favorite streets that i had ever been on.

the town square was just a few minutes down the road. the first building you come to in the square is a catholic church consecrated to the virgin mary. every hour a bugle call sounds from the tower of the church, but is cut off abruptly. the reason for this is that once, when the town was being invaded, a bugler was sounding a warning call from the tower, but was shot in the throat before he could finish it, so now the melody is never concluded. across from the church is a market, where i purchased some amber. and outside of the market is a rotunda (which is a romanesque church) and tons of street vendors and street performers (even in the middle of cold cold winter).

less than 10 minutes walking from the square is a castle. outside the castle is my favorite garden i've ever seen. because it was very cold in krakow, there was snow covering the entire garden. i've decided, though, that krakow is home to my favorite trees i've ever seen, and they look beautiful even when their leafless, and especially when they're covered in snow. the trees in krakow look black against the thick white snow and the bright white snowy sky. they have narrow trunks that burst into a hundred twisted, splaying, black branches about ten to fifteen feet off the ground. there are other trees there too, of course, but there are my favorite ones.

kristen and i returned the garden after zdenek dropped us off in the town square because i spotted a door nestled in some hedges, and became convinced that it was a portal to another world. kristen and i slowly circled closer to the little wooden door and actually heard some distant music that seemed to be emanating from it. so we both became even more convinced that there was a magic world on the other side of it. but i wish we'd stopped there because we made it all the way to the door to find out it was an antique music shop. i suppose that's a pretty nice thing to be in the magic door, but i would've preferred dragons and princesses. oh, they love dragons in poland, by the way. pictures and statues and models of dragons are everywhere! and there is also this strange tradition of putting little statues of pale, creepy looking monks on the streets outside of restaurants.

when we were let off, kristen and i also went first to the catholic church that zdenek told us was a 'must see'. it cost about 30 cents to get inside, so we grudgingly coughed up the money and went in.

!

it was huge!!!!!!!!!! it is famous for the bugle call, but also for it's alter piece, which is gigantic and sort of tacky. the whole place was a little bit tacky, but in a breathtaking way. there was not a single inch of that entire interior that wasn't decorated. there were greens and mauves and sort of subtle blues everywhere. and golds. there were skulls nestled in the remotest corners. there was a portrait of a women with a dagger in her chest and another one of a martyr being shot through with arrows, who was tied to a twisted tree trunk. there were little engravings of weapons (daggers, axes, etc.) all around, and pictures of different babies and old men with halos on their heads. there was a large crucifix and uncomfortable wooden pews, which were mostly empty in the visitor section of the cathedral, and totally full for the worship section. kristen and i sat on the pews for almost a half hour, just looking around in horrified awe. there were skulls hiding behind babies under bleeding jesuses. skulls everwhere! a picture of a crow holding an eyeball in it's beak. it was so full that kristen and i almost missed the GIGANTIC crucifix stretching between the two center walls, way above our heads. it must have been about fifteen feet tall, and about 15-20 feet above our heads, just floating there in between the walls, touching the high gothic ceilings.

while we were sitting there, admiring the grotesque beauty of the cathedral, a group of worshippers started chanting in unison from the back of the cathedral. it felt like a scene from a horror film. it was perfect. now i'm not a big doer of drugs. in fact, i'd say i'm one of the littlest doers of drugs. but i really wanted to be stoned in that church. is this sacrilege?

after the church, kristen and i were too cold to continue on outside. it was fucking cold there. yikes. so we went to an overpriced, posh coffee house full of hot polish guys. polish guys are hot, it turns out. we spent an hour there bonding because krakow is a great place to bond, it turns out. then we walked around some more and started making our way back to the hotel. we saw an open door on the side of the road and, naturally, went in. the noise of the streets instantly fell away, and was replaced with silence and a strange red light. we took some cool pictures and left.

something about the cold weather made us realy want to go swimming, so we put on our bathing suits and went to a water park. actually, i'm not joking. they have an indoor water park in krakow that's open until late at night. and the park has slides adn dragons spitting water out of their mouths and a climbing wall where you drop off and fall into the water and a sauna and steam room and a cool black slide that has flashing colored lights inside so that you feel like you're in that scene at the end of 2001: a space odyssey.

okay. people are waiting for the computer. this is an explanation of my saturday in krakow. sunday was spent at auschwitz, which was less fun, but still an extraordinary experience. i will blog about that sometime later, i think. it was so intense that i couldn't speak or move for hours.

okay okay. i'll go i'll go now.

A German Invasion

2005-03-07T09:58:00.000+01:00

I have the best job in the world. I can’t believe how lucky I am. I wish Nicole were here, so I’d have someone to talk to. (I’m writing this on my computer on Saturday night. Nicole is, for all intents and purposes, in Poland) Eddie, who is probably at The Blind Eye right now, deserves some serious pats on the back for finding me this job. It’s perfect. I’m not usually one for drunkenness, but a job that just kind of watches and smiles as its employees get drunk can’t be all that tough. I was so worried about messing up, but if I can do this job slightly intoxicated, on my second day, at the busiest time of the week, I have nothing to worry about. I didnt go to work drunk, obviously. It just so happened that when I got to Gulu Gulu on Saturday night, it was almost entirely bereft of customers, and Satan, the owner of Gulu Gulu’s building, decided to school me in the ways of the dark side.

Who’d have thought the devil would frequent Gulu Gulu? Perhaps the most honest, most gentle, most well-meaning restaurant in Prague, and the building is owned by the prince of darkness! Could be a case of opposites attracting. Satan is, not surprisingly, a German.

Why does Germany still exist, by the way? After Nazism, all decent Germans should have said to themselves, “There is nothing good about being German. The German national identity should be abandoned forever,” and they should have evacuated and raised their kids as Czechs, or Frenchies, or Brits, or Indians, or Thais, or Americans, or just about anything else. Maybe not Albanians. Then, once Germanness had been completely assimilated away, the territory once called Deutschland could be re-settled. Why oh why are children still raised as Germans? No good can come from a German upbringing. Is this not entirely obvious by now?

Historians scratch their heads about how Nazism arose in Germany. “But they were so artistic,” historians say. “Look at Fritz Lang!” Anyone who has met a German, however, wonders how it didn’t arise earlier, and how it ever stopped. Germans are fascists through and through. I flew Lufthansa airlines to Europe, so all the flight attendants were German. They were all gigantic, Aryan, and eerily polite with a sinister undertone. They didn’t ask, “Vill you do us dees favor?” They said, “You vill do us dees favor.” How could a genocidal totalitarian ideology not come out of that country?

Nevertheless, I approached Hans, the owner of Gulu Gulu’s building, with an open mind. Only because I at first didn’t know he was German. He was at the bar talking to Philip, the world’s best restaurant manager. Hans was gigantic, tanned, with light brown eyes, a face with firm wrinkles that never move, and short hair with a newscaster poof in the front. I later learned that he is 40 years old. For whatever reason, Hans liked me instantly, and assumed I was an elite businessman, not a common waiter.

“So yore in Prak to start a com-pany,” he said “No,” I said. “What kind off com-pany,” he continued, unabated. “Yore yonk, zo you must know sometink about computers. Is it an IT com-pany?” “No, I’m not starting a company,” I insisted. “What kind off IT company,” he pressed. I had no choice but to play along. “I don’t know, what do you recommend?” “Definitely not makink Veb sites,” he said. “Maybe I’ll make video games,” I said. He didn’t understand. He nodded and said, “Hum.”

Hans moved to Prague a decade ago and made a fortune by buying five buildings and renting them out, one of which now houses Gulu Gulu. Hans thinks I should do the same thing, except in Romania. “Prague is too Vestern now,” he said. “It’s too lot. But yore yonk. You con open dees business, close dees business, you don’t care. Me, I half to look offter my pension.” Hans warned me, though, that Romania has no middle class, so it would be useless to buy buildings there for restaurants or theatres or anything entertainment related. “Zey liff like cavemen dere,” Hans reported.

“You shut start a pob,” he told me. He even agreed to move to Romania with me and give me the money to start that pub. No doubt I’ll take him up on it, and will be the proud owner of a pub in Bucharest called Hans and Son within a year. “You vill be there every day from four p.m. until closink every night, cos it’s a cosh business, und ze bortenders vill cheat you. But offter five yars you con sell ze pob and use that money for yore IT com-pany. Und ve sure to hire Russians. Zey are cheap und vork hart.” Will do, Hans. Will do.

When Hans heard that I was from Texas, he was suspicious of me. The East and West coasts were blue, and okay. They know where Germany and the Czech Republic are, for instance. But the red states in between! They scare Hans. You bring an Uzi to the flyover states, and everyone thinks you’re their friend. You bring a nudie magazine, and they turn their uzis on you. Even worse, they’re all religious, “belief-ing in Got, like idiotes!”

Hans told me about this guy he used to work for in New Jersey, a fundamentalist Catholic who had never been married or had sex, “Because Jesus vos his loaf. He belief-ed in Got, like on idiote! He said dis to me, a Garman! Ve Garmans, ve loaf nipples. To tell me this, that he never vucked, was on offense os big os saying he didn’t kill ze Jews!” Then he laughed, “Hoh, hoh, hoh, hoh.” See what I mean? Germany has to go.

Throughout this forth and forth, Hans ordered us three shots each of Slivovice, the Czech liquor distilled from plums that I was sometimes tempted to drink because I had a silly hope it might taste like plum juice. It didn’t, but it wasn’t bad. I was a bit worried about getting drunk when I was supposed to be working, but Philip, by far the best restaurant manager in the world, happily poured the Slivovice for us, so I figured I was okay.

And I was. I just got slightly intoxicated, the only consequence being that I realized how strange Hans’s face looked if you really stared at it. Though he had a big head, his eyes were slightly closer to the edges of his face than most people’s, paradoxically giving his face kind of a stretched yet crunched look. He looked like an orange raisin. I also took note, maybe because of the Slivovice, that he kept glancing over his shoulder at the door, as if he feared capture for crimes against humanity. “He’s right here!!” I should have shouted to the world police. That would have been a risk, though, because Hans had drunk a lot of wine earlier, and the Slivovice had taken him over the edge into full-on sinister mode.

One of the reasons I never got drunk before a month ago was fear that I had all these demons hidden inside of me, and when the alcohol released them, I would turn into a rampaging Hulk, smashing things, screaming incoherently about injustice, and beating up people. Turns out, all that happens is I get more smiley and talkative. Not Hans, though. Hans gets angry.

Hans tried to explain his theory to Philip and I. He had to repeat it a few times before we could decipher it through his thick German accent. “Ze lower people, zey are attracted to ze lower leffel” we finally heard. That was the theory. The practice was that he thought I should take one of the waitresses home.

“Har. You shut half har,” he said, pointing to Petulka. “I have a girlfriend in the states,” I protested pointlessly. “Ja? Zo vot?! Vemon are nathing but pieces of meat!” Yes, he actually said that women are nothing but pieces of meat!! The conversation got even stranger, though.

Hans asked how long I was staying in Prague. My line for anyone at all related to my job is that I am staying indefinitely. “A yar,” Hans asked. “Two yars?” “At least a year,” I said. “If you stay a yar,” Hans said, “She (Petulka) will vant to half bay-bies. Dat is a responsibility. Are you veady for dat?” “Yes, I am,” I said firmly. “Goot,” Hans exclaimed, and slapped me on the back, hard. Then he invited me to Žižkov to try to bring women home. To express the idea of women, by the way, he cupped his hands over his chest and giggled.

I had hoped he would just leave and pay a visit to one of his other fabulously successful buildings in Prague, but finally I told him I had to get to work, and that it was good to meet him. This just made him more belligerent. “Nein, it is not goot to meet you!” he blurted. Fortunately he was too drunk to chase after me as I went to the back room to put up my coat and put on my apron. He was still at the bar when I came back, but he failed to recognize me after my transformation from globetrotting venture capitalist to lower-leffel waiter, and he eventually wandered out.

What Philip sees in this guy, I don’t know. He has to deal with him because he’s the owner of the building, but Philip seems to have respect for him too, which I have to think is because of the language barrier, and Philip’s trusting nature. “Hans, he is very sympathique,” Philip explained, “But he drinks too much. I ‘ave never seen him like that.”

I love Philip the way Nicole and Kristen love Zdenek. He has the widest eyes and the friendliest smile, poofed up salt and pepper hair, and calls everyone “sympathique,” as if it were an English word. The restaurant itself absorbs his joy.

I had such a good time after Hans left! Philip had brought me in to help out before my official start date, supposedly to ease the busyness, but there were hardly any customers at all. Those that were there, though, were the best.

I got to wait on the sweetest elderly British couple in the world. Before I said anything to them, the British woman asked, full of hope – in the most polite voice I’ve heard since Wallace discussed cheese and crackers with Gromit – “Excuse me? Are you English?” “I’m American,” I said. “Oh. That’s second best,” she said cheerfully, and we talked about Prague, which she and her husband had never seen before. I said that it must be nice living in Europe, where you can travel to so many other countries so easily. “But there’s that little bit of water around Britain that makes it that much more expensive,” she reminded me. They were so nice, it made me wish I were raised British.

I messed up once. Someone with a Czech accent asked for a bill, I heard wrong, and I brought what would have been his third beer. Usually you can’t go wrong bringing beers to Czechs, as I learned early on here (props to Yuval!), but he really did just want the bill. No one cared, though. I think one of the waitresses drank the beer.

By the end of the night, I was kind of drunk, because one of the waitresses had messed up and made three needless margaritas. I hesitated, and then had one. That could have been why, after all the customers left, when the waitresses were talking amongst themselves in Czech, I was at rapt attention, understanding nothing, yet smiling and laughing every time they did, thinking about how great life was. But I think I was just happy.

I know I’m going to keep this job, because it’s a world that instantly made sense to me. The building itself has so much personality, and I can already see a cast of characters forming in the waitstaff, the cooks, the managers, and the customers. Working there is like being in a sit-com. An innocent, happy, TGIF sitcom. People wander in and out, and nothing too serious is at stake.

After we’d closed, an Italian guy the waitresses knew and grudgingly tolerated came in, chatted them up in Czech, and shouted boastfully at the waitress behind the bar. She shouted back even more ferociously (she would have wiped the ceiling with Hans if he´d dare tell her his theories), and they got into a furious, incomprehensible, discussion that eventually calmed down. About a minute after I realized that the Italian guy kind of looked like Robert Deniro, except for a gap tooth, he turned to me and said, “You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me?” Then he grinned, winked, and ran out the door.

This place is a 5-minute walk from where I live! How could I get so lucky?

I love statues of pious old men

2005-03-04T09:27:00.000+01:00

Prague is filled with them. Statues of wise looking pious old bearded men in robes, holding a crucifix firmly to their chests and reaching out with their other arm, their faces serene with a touch of despair. Did people like this ever really exist? And if so, what were they like when they weren´t holding crucifixes to their chests whilst grasping out for the Holy Ghost, quietly imploring the world to be just and moral?

I bet Jesus was pretty much their favorite, and if you asked them about it, you could really get them going about their "flock." You could usually find them in churches, on hills, or on corners, and if they ever said anything, it would be in Latin, unless they were imploring the poor. Then and only then would they consider debasing themselves with the common tongues. Even Jesus dained to walk amongst the prostitutes to do the blessed work of the Kingdom, and God knows that Italian, German and English are the mother of all whores.

I don´t think these men said much, though. I see them as like the token-giving No Face in Spirited Away, just making desperate "Uh... uh..." noises, grasping their crucifixes even tighter to their chests in times of confusion, never understanding why everyone walked proudly down the path of darkness. They were always there, hunched over in those statue-sized cubby holes on the sides of buildings, relentlessly thinking of the suffering of Jesus and wanting the world to be a holier place, while knowing in their heart of hearts that everything outside of heaven was crap and always would be crap, so what can you do? When they died, they were bronzed and left in their cubbyholes to futilely implore humanity for all time, an apology to them and their ilk for the world not going their way at all. But was there ever anything else to these pious old robe wearing wise men? Did they ever eat, sleep, procreate, dance, or play? I hope not. I love the idea of these men.

dracula, here we come!

2005-03-03T16:45:00.000+01:00

first, i want to talk about my czech lit professor, because he's incredible. have you ever seen dark city? do you remember keifer sutherland's character? our teacher talks like keifer sutherland's character, breathing deeply in the middle of sentences, sometimes even in the middle of words, as if the air were too thick to take in discreetly. i loved that movie, dark city. my brother and i were the only two people in the theater for the matinee. at the end, when we came outside and it was still light, the light felt artificial. i liked it.

so our czech lit professor. he worked for five years at brown university. he shares three loves of mine: star wars, lord of the rings, and penguins. (his cell phone rings the star wars theme. he wears a middle earth t-shirt to class and talks about LOTR all the time! and his mug has pictures of penguins on it!) he holds class in his office, where the windows can't shut because they are full of plants. he also has these incredible collages in frames all over the walls. (my favorite collage shows a type-writer with an opening fist coming out the top, with letters and leaves being thrown from the fist.) the three hours on thursday morning that we are in class with him are the most inspiring three hours of my week. i love this class.

today we discussed the metamorphosis and the unbearable lightness of being. we travelled through several different topics, one of which was the notion of a graspable enemy. what or who is the enemy in the unbearable lightness of being? communism? czechoslovakia? each person to him/herself? it's not clear. what or who is the enemy in the metamorphosis? ummmm. definitely not clear there. who turned gregor into a bug? there are no clues.

now. who is the enemy in lord of the rings? sauron. who is the enemy in star wars? darth vader. who is the enemy in bram stoker's dracula? yeah. dracula. dracula! i started thinking about dracula.

so.

we bought a ticket to transylvania for spring break. yes, folks, that's right. kristen darling, ronen, and myself are going to brasov, romania for spring break. it is only $120 round trip on a train, and we are going to stop in budapest for a few days on the way back (it's on the way!). the hostel we are staying at in brasov has a jacuzzi, free breakfast, free internet, a heated pool, pool parties, a bar, and it is cheap (about $13 a night). we've heard from others that it is a good hostel as well. there is hiking around brasov, and tons of beautiful mountains and foothills. (there are even organized hikes, we've heard.) it is also just a few minutes from dracula's fortress. but the real dracula. his real fortress. the vlad the impaler dracula. i am SO excited.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

okay. that's all for now. though i have more to say, that's all for now.

The Adventure of the Floating Car in Josefov

2005-03-03T09:13:00.000+01:00

Yesterday morning, just near the statue of Franz Kafka sitting on the shoulders of a giant empty suit (a reference to The Trial, I think), a tow truck with a crane attached to it lifted an illegally parked car off the street, into the air, and let the car hover for a good five minutes as it inched over to the bed of the tow truck for a soft landing.

This didn’t strike me as strange or noteworthy at first, until I saw a giant throng, all American students, gathered to watch Prague’s draconian parking laws in action. At least twenty cameras and camera phones were at the ready, snapping shot after shot of the miracle floating car. Others had nothing but their sensation seeking eyes, which were equally as riveted. Strangely, nobody thought to walk under the car and have a picture taken of themselves pretending to lift it, which I thought was the only worthwhile photo possible at this scene. Maybe fear of death or arrest stopped them. Those American students went absolutely wild over this floating car, though. One of them said, "This is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen!"

Uh, excuse me? Cooler than the statue of Franz Kafka sitting on the shoulders of an empty suit? Cooler than the Maisel Synagogue, named after the man who scored a bunch of gold from forest-dwelling dwarves? Cooler than the Prague Castle off in the horizon, which is easily a thousand times more cool than an ordinary car being tugged through the air? Apparently, yes. It was cooler than all of these things, and more. It was cooler than anything he had ever seen! Gawking at floating cars is what our world has come to. I would hate to see the lamest thing he ever saw. No, scratch that. It would probably be breath-taking.

Another of the American students said, "If you’re going to tow a car, that’s the way to do it, man!" When the car finally got to the bed of the tow truck, the crowd actually applauded! Someone’s life is likely to be ruined for the next two or three weeks because of having their car towed, and the audience was eating it up. Tow truck drivers are normally reviled, in the United States at least, but these officially sanctioned car-nappers were considered heroes. They were performers, magicians, modern day Merlins regarded with awe. They smiled and waved as they received their praise. If the owner of the car had been there, she probably would have wiped a tear of joy from her eye. "I never thought I’d see my humble little car reach such glorious heights," she would have said in Czech gibberish. If they’d just put a hook under the car and lifted the front slightly off the road before they stole it away, they’d be dodging shotgun blasts.

Every day someone asks me if my "paradigm has shifted" since living in Europe. Have I become more liberal? Am I less puritanical? Can I speak ten languages? Have I realized that public transportation is the only way to travel? Have I converted to Catholicism? Am I able to make general observations about life without having to resort to the caveat, "Er, at least that’s how it is in the states." Have I cultivated an appreciation for the finer arts? Do I have a greater understanding of the world and its history? Have I taken to referring to the United States as "The Empire?" On a related note, do I treat all Americans with contempt until they personally assure me that they hate Bush? Am I more cultured, more enlightened? Have I become a borderline alcoholic? The answer to all of these questions is no. I haven’t learned anything, nor have I changed in any way during my time here so far. But at least there is this... I got to see a floating car, and that could only happen in the magical city of Prague.

More on Berlin coming soon...

2005-03-03T01:18:00.000+01:00

Last night, during ballroom dance lessons taught by the much beloved and wise beyond his years Szednek, I got a call from Philip, the manager at Gulu Gulu.

FLASHBACK: Last Time on Prague Blague! Philip told me on Thursday that he was "satisfied" with me, and that I might have a job as a waiter/bar tender/cappuccino maker at Gulu Gulu, a French Italian restaurant in Old Town that has a mostly tourist clinentele. The catch was that there was only one new position, and someone else had applied before me, so Philip would have to think it over. Eddie theorized that whoever was the better looking would win.

I missed Philip’s call, though, because I was too busy dodging Szednek as he paraded gracefully across the floor, always with a new woman in his arms, as in his youthful days (Nicole seemed to be his favorite). Presumably, I was there to learn how to dance the way civilized people do, with one arm around the waist and one in the air, stepping together in a semi-memorized, semi-intuited pattern, identical to all the other couples in the room. I did manage to pick up the very basic step that is the foundation for every other dance in the world (shuffle shuffle step, shuffle shuffle step), but I didn’t progress much beyond that.

Dancing in clubs, where the all-knowing beat is your only guide, comes more naturally to me than a memorized series of steps that seems entirely random, save for the fact that centuries of practice have established them as universal patterns. Which is not to knock it, though I could if I wanted to, because I have tried it. I had a great time watching Szednek and the women of AIFS flying around the room, following these arcane (to me) stepping traditions that I couldn’t quite grasp. Szednek promised to take us to a ball at the end of March, confident that all of us would be ready. "Szednek is the best," Nicole and Kristen agreed.

When I saw that I’d missed Philip’s call because of my dodging, I was a little disappointed. I was afraid I might have to call him, which costs money, whereas receiving a call is free. I wasnt willing to pay more than a few crowns to find out I got rejected. So I sent him a text message, telling him I missed the call "because of a ball thing," and could he call me back?

Philip did, and said that starting March 14, I had the job. Today I met with him and learned that I’ll be working partial shifts starting on Friday. Man, oh man, I’m going to be a waiter! Now whenever I see a homeless man, supplicating with his face down on the streets of Prague, his cup shaking in his hand as he uses the last energy he has to desperately hold it up for money, I can think, "Hey, maybe that’s the guy I beat out for the job!"

Suddenly, all of my worries are gone. My money worries anyway. Now there are new worries, like whether I will make a good waiter/bar tender/cappuccino maker, and whether I can handle the 14-hour shifts. Time has been moving pretty fast lately, so I doubt the 14-hour shifts will be a huge problem, except for when Rachel is visiting. But what if I accidentally put whiskey in the café au laits? Or whip cream and cinnamon in the bloody mary’s? Or get customers who absolutely refuse to speak English on principle, because they don’t know how to speak it? Is it better to have a job and be fired than to never have a job at all?

Overall, getting this job is a huge relief. No longer will I have to go out to eat with Nicole and our friends and not order anything, for fear of bankrupting myself. Actually, though, the time I did that at Architechtu wasn’t too bad. When everyone’s food arrived, it suddenly got quiet as everyone but me was eating, and I had nothing to do but switch between looking at the table and looking at the ceiling. I thought I was in for a horribly awkward night, until everyone finished their entire meals five minutes after getting their plates. But I digress!

Thanks to Gulu Gulu, my traveling after Prague will be a lot more feasible. I can buy people presents now. Nicole will have more time to herself at the apartment. I can buy prunes, god I love prunes, even though they are one of the more expensive bulk items at Country Life. I wont be broke by the time I get to New York. Gulu Gulu, while no Casa De Luz, has a cheeseless pizza and vegan pasta that I can eat for free on my shifts, so I will only have to compromise one of my ideals (no white flour), not both of them, as so many food ideologues do overseas.

My big regret is that my job has to start around the same time Rachel is coming to visit, but the thing is, if I didn’t have a job, the beast of debt and poverty would haunt me at every museum we visited, every dinner we ate, and every night we had to pay for a hostel in Budapest. Me having this job will make our time together (which will still be a lot of time) much more pleasant. Plus, Rachel will respect me more if I’m gainfully employed, and we’ll have more to talk about since we’ll both be in the same line of work.

I don’t know if it will be good for my half of this blog, however. From now on, most of my entries are going to be about annoying customers who don’t speak English, aren’t obligated to tip and don’t. Oh, but don’t worry, there will still be plenty of promises to write more about Berlin, defenses of snow, and theories on why opera is inherently awful. Luckily, we still have Nicole´s entries!

sitting in the abroad office

2005-03-01T19:03:00.000+01:00

for about three hours now. there was lots i wanted to do on the internet. i did some of it. mostly, though, ronen, darling, and myself just looked around the internet at ways to get to bulgaria for spring break and were frustrated by it. mostly, right now, i just wish i knew what i was doing for spring break. man. this shit is tedious. mom, i salute you for organizing so many family vacations.

in other news, we are about to have a ballroom dance lesson. we have no boys though. rhys is on his way. i'll be curious to see whether he can find us though because he has a tendency to get lost and wander around for hours here. me? i get lost and freak out and then call a cab or something. i'm not a big wanderer.

i will write until the dance lesson starts.

last night we went to the blind eye (a bar full of nice people that i like very much), and it was good. but then the way back was about the worst experience i've had in prague thus far (or in europe thus far, probably, too). i'm not sure i can actually write about it right now because i don't have the concentration and it will probably just make me nervous to think about again. let's just say briefly that i encountered roma in a fistfight blocking the entrance to the tram, an old man with a pussy wound on his face nodding at me (nodding nodding staring) the whole tram ride, a roma prostitute and her pimp trying to hustle/pickpocket the random assortment of prague's scuzziest gathered around the tram stop, waiting for the night tram, lots of creepy dudes, and one really nice woman who came up to me and said something in czech that i didn't understand. 'mluvite anglicky?' i asked her, and she said 'oh yes yes. isn't this scary?'

it's weird. prague usually feels so safe and not sketchy. okay i'm out of time.

stress and nostalgia. rambling.

2005-02-28T16:54:00.000+01:00

for some reason (well, for several reasons), i'm feeling incredibly stressed out and also nostalgiac today.

first stress.

1. i had a long conversation with my parents yesterday (after only a few hours of sleep, which only made it worse) in which they repeatedly tried to 'motivate' me to find a job, figure out how to graduate, etc. things i've already been worrying about, but they made me worry even more about them, which i think just paralyzes me more because i'm too stressed out to be productive.

2. i can't figure out how to graduate. i wrote someone for help. i don't know if it'll work.

3. i can't figure out how to find a job. i took down the phone number of my old high school, so i guess i can call them, but first i have to figure out how to add 500kc to my cell phone so that i have enough minutes to call them. also, the internet keeps freezing. i almost started crying in frustration in the study abroad office.

4. i had a dream about my ex-boyfriend last night. he was in prague, living with a homestay family. 'WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE? WHY DON'T YOU GO AWAY?!" i asked him, but it didn't really matter because he was here and he wasn't going away.

5. i can't figure out where to go for spring break or how to get there. i want someone else to do it for me, but then i'm worried that i'll have to take a bus to bulgaria, which would take so long. i'd rather take a train, but i can't figure out how because the internet keeps freezing. my parents want me back here on the 2nd (my dad's birthday!) when they get here, but this is very very inconvenient as it is the saturday before spring break ends and who will i find to travel on a bus back from bulgaria with me and cutting a few days off their spring break? (i don't have class till tuesday.) i'm not doing it alone. i'm not leaving anyone alone in bulgaria either. and it wouldn't really be worth it to travel all the way to bulgaria for a few days. but it would also be a shame to let the opportunity to go to bulgaria pass us by. oh yeah, by the way, i think we're trying to go to bulgaria for spring break.

okay okay. i love love my parents. they try only to do good things for me. but sometimes it works better than other times. right now i feel simultaneously guilty and paralyzed and stressed.

now nostalgia.

1. i had a dream about my ex-boyfriend last night. that'll always do it.

2. i've been listening to music that makes me think of sunshine.

3. i've been trying to graduate, which requires some e-travelling around the UT website.

4. my friend eddie's still here. he's from austin. i love austin. maybe i ought to just go live there for the rest of my life. no no. it's not where i'm meant to be

5. i had a long conversation with my parents last night. i love them. and i also miss dog.

i'm realizing that i think i need to end up somewhere sunny. although the other night i had an opposite realization and that was that i loved snow and felt like i needed to live somewhere where it snowed. maybe i just need to constantly travel.

i want some chocolate. bad. but i vowed to go one single day without it, because i haven't yet.

more on snow: i really have never so peaceful as walking through the snow alone after dark. no footprints yet. big fat snowflakes hitting your face very cold, but also you are warm enough because you're dressed appropriately. snow on the statues and on the churches to make them prettier and also covering all the ugly cars and store signs that are the only things that make prague less beautiful. prague in the snow is probably more beautiful than most other beautiful things. being alone in prague in the snow is probably more awesome than most other awesome things.

the reason i've not been writing is...

2005-02-25T17:23:00.000+01:00

... simply...

berlin.

it sucked something out of me. it wasn't a bad place to be, but it felt so empty and it filled me with emptiness. it hit me when we were on a walking tour (that we managed to sneak on to for free) and the tour guide showed us a monument where all the students burned books in the 1940's. the monument was invisible because it was under a tarp behind a fence because they were doing construction. we were near another old building that we couldn't see behind fences and tarps. the tour guide said that the monument, which was basically a depression in the ground with books in it, was a symbol of the void left by the destruction of the books. void. berlin is a void.

when i'm in prague i feel like i'm full of life and emotion. sometimes i'm happy, sometimes i'm depressed, but i'm always looking around in awe, picturing who was here before me and why. when i am in prague i want to write blogs just to get everything that gets into me here (the history, the impressions, etc.) out of me and turn it all into something. berlin had the opposite effect.

i had fun there, i don't want to give the wrong impression. i'll get to the fun later. but i need to continue with the walking tour.

we went to this gray little plot of dead grass and stood on the sidewalk beside it. the tour guide said "beneath us is hitler's bunker. it is where he committed suicide with his wife at the end of world war ii." i looked down and i saw my feet, and below my feet i saw the sidewalk, and below the sidewalk i saw nothing. we may as well have been inside a classroom, for all i felt standing there.

when zdenek takes us on walks and he shows us, for instance, the cafe that mozart frequented, i see mozart walking in, or pounding on the door early in the morning drunkenly demanding entrance. i see it.

in berlin, we walked all around the east and west side. (now i'm on the east side of the wall. now i'm on the west side... unintentionally making a mockery of all the people who were trapped for so many decades.) we walked around the street where hitler lived and worked. i thought 'i, as a jewish person, could not have walked here six decades ago,' but all i felt was 'cold, gray, empty.' the ghosts of my people swarmed around us in berlin, but i couldn't feel them like i do here. they've all come here to prague, maybe. it's so much nicer here.

i think part of the reason berlin felt so empty is because it was so badly damaged in the war and all the buildings are new. but it really went beyond the aesthetics. and it wasn't that empty, people-wise. i don't know how to explain it. i've never not felt as much as i didn't feel there.

i'll move on.

what was fun about berlin. well, i learned a lot, of course, about the history of berlin. it really made me want to learn more. i think it sparked rhys's interest even more than mine.

the people of berlin were the friendliest people i've met here. germans would see us looking confused on the s-bahn (that's the metro) and would just come up to us and take us where we needed to go. one girl, lina, heard kelli and darling talking and came up to them and very animatedly declared her love for americans. she had lived a while in ohio and thought that it was absolutely the cutest thing ever how americans tried to party and tried to say that gutteral ch sound and failed to do both. she was on her way to a date she didn't want to go on, so she agreed to meet us later by the metro and take us to a club. boy did she take us to a club. it was the biggest club i'd ever seen and it was jam-packed with germans. germans dancing to reggae, germans dancing to salsa, germans dancing to 80's music, germans pole dancing in leotards (this one woman was so strong! i couldn't take my eyes off of her!). turns out ronen (our new york friend here) is a terrific dancer, so i danced with him all night. then schuyler lost 300 euros. he handled it pretty well though, and the trip was fun.

we also went on a pub crawl (earlier in the evening) because they said we'd get free alcohol and we had no idea what else to do. it was crazy. they weren't joking about the free alcohol. that's probably all i should say about the pub crawl. i managed to find some greasy french fries with sriracha sauce. yum.

my favorite part of the whole trip was probably the stanley kubrick museum. my face was about a foot away from alex's costume from a clockwork orange, the 'born to kill' helmet from full metal jacket, the final picture w/ jack nicholson from 'the shining,' more costumes from 2001 and barry lyndon and spartacus. dude! i was in heaven. for those of you who don't know, i've always had a series of obsessions in my life starting with alice in wonderland, then piers anthony (the fantasy writer), then the beatles, then stanley kubrick, then evolution, then videogames, then playing guitar, then lord of the rings. if i talk about kubrick i will become so sad at my inability to express the intensity of my passion for his films that i'll have to end this blog, so i'll move on.

the train on the way back was another adventure. we had to sit on the ground by the wc for a few hours. schyler fell asleep on my arm and rhys ate a banana. ben showed us his chest hair and likened himself to don juan demarco. i stared at my journal and tried to write, but was too full of the emptiness to get out anything more than "berlin is a void."

i feel like i'm healing now, though, because prague is the magic land. eddie from austin is visiting, and he's just such a delight to have around. rhys made the best pasta sauce i've ever consumed. i ate a whole jar of nutella. we have no hot water so i didn't shower for almost a week and then i finally just took a cold shower. the ghosts upstairs have quieted down a little.

we just went on another walking tour with zdenek, who is like our mr. miyagi. we crossed the charles bridge and saw where st. nepomuco (i have no idea how you spell that) was thrown off. we saw a statue of the saint who became sainted because he killed his son and then was murdered in a monastary. we saw where the heads of 27 rebels were put on display for years. we saw the statue of the man sticking his hand up a girl's skirt (to represent human sinning). we saw the john lennon wall. but the highlight of it all was the church with the crazy baby jesus who owns more gowns than scarlet o'hara. there was an exhibit of his collection of bejeweled gowns. it was insane. there's no other word. then the priest at the church noticed our group and wanted to give us gifts. what he gave us! each of us received an original piece of african artwork made of butterfly wings glued to look like tropical birds. it is one of the most beautiful things i now own, and a gift from a kind priest in a crazy church in prague.

things are going pretty alright right now. rhys seems to be really getting into living here in prague. i think berlin was good for both of us in this way. even though we had a good weekend, we were happy to get home! eddie is fun to have around. i've received some pretty valentine's day gifts from will, which made me blush terribly. i think i am not going to be able to find a job. but maybe that'll be fine. i am happy to be here.

okay. over and out.

Gulu Gulu

2005-02-24T16:23:00.000+01:00

Before I came to Prague, I was convinced it would be easy to find a job. A couple of months before we left, Nicole talked to her friend Eddie, who said he found a waiter job within a week after moving to Prague. My sixth day in Prague, I thought, well, tomorrow I will have a job. Thats what happened to Eddie, after all. A day went by, however, and no job. Three more weeks went by, at which point I should have had four jobs, but still, no job. Then Eddie comes and stays at our place this week, and after a couple of days, he has already found me a (possible) waiter job.

Its at Cafe Gulu Gulu, a French Italian restaurant in old town, about a five minute walk from our apartment. I stopped by yesterday and immediately had an interview. They were looking for someone who speaks English and has experience as a waiter. Knowing Czech, French, Italian, Spanish, and German is helpful but not necessary. In the interview, I was able to drop a little French for the owners, which made them like me slightly more. My English was good enough for them, and I lied about having experience as a waiter. They gave me a menu to stúdy and told me to come in today for an audition.

I was pretty nervous last night and this morning. Handing out plates to customers at Casa de Luz could hardly be called waitering experience. I just never thought of myself as a possible waiter before, so I figured it wasnt in me. Sometimes I have this irrational fear (redundant since there is nothing to be afraid of, and so all fear is inherently irrational) that I can never learn any new skills, and can never do a job that I havent already done before. Even the prospect of cooking at Angelicas Kitchen, a restaurant not at all unlike Casa de Luz (Rachel and I even baked some desserts from their cookbook while volunteering at Casa), seems like something Ill never be able adapt to, since its new. The only thing that gave me hope today was Nicoles golden amulet, which she let me borrow for good luck.

I was at Gulu Gulu today from 11:30 until 3, and about half way through, I felt elated, knowing that I could be a real life waiter. It was so easy! All you have to do is seat the customer, give them menus, put their orders in a computer, take their food out to them, and then take their money and give them change. Granted today wasnt busy, and I had a relatively short shift (normally waiters are there straight from 10 am until 11 pm), but I was really happy at how naturally it came to me.

The arts editor for the Austin Chronicle once wrote a one act play about waiters complaining about annoying customers who tip badly. But at Gulu Gulu, the customers are really nice, and they arent even supposed to tip, so I would have nothing to complain about. Or write about, though I dont think I would ever want to write a play to complain about a job, even if I were a waiter who was badly tipped.

I used to look at waiters and think, "How do they do that??" Well, now I know! I even got a free cheeseless pizza to boot! (get the pun? pizza is considered Italian food, and Italy is shaped like a boot.) The only downside is that I wont know for a week if I have the job, so I have to keep looking. What if I get to be a waiter, though? I just wont be able to believe it. Me, a waiter!

Brown slush

2005-02-23T23:14:00.000+01:00

Nobody told me that snow could go this bad. Actually Jon Foy did. I still stand by snow, however, and my memories from yesterday are my evidence. Last night I spotted five more snowmen, and two police officers, a man and a woman, spinning around, laughing, and holding each other, giddily in love. Eddie, Nicoles friend who is staying with us for a couple of weeks, saw someone throw a snowball at the back of a police officers head in Old Town Square. The cop and his partner turned around, and the snowball fight of the century began. For my part, I tried to throw a snowball at a statue of Jesus Christ suffering on the cross on Charles Bridge. You cant fight City Hall though, and even though the statue was just a couple of feet away, I missed wildly. I took this to mean that I shouldnt be throwing snowballs at a defenseless Jesus.

Snow

2005-02-22T16:35:00.000+01:00

Ive never been happier in Prague than I have been the last two days. Maybe it was the despair and vast emptiness of Berlin (Nicole and I will blog more about Berlin later), which proved to us that Prague is home and we should never ever leave, but probably its the snow. Yes, it snowed in Berlin, as Nicoles ankle warned us it would, but not like this. Berlin was cold and the ground was hard and uneven, and I still have a slight limp from walking around there.

Its not cold in Prague, at all. It has to be around 60 degrees fareinheit here. But its snowing none the less, just because Prague knows its supposed to snow. Its snowing here more than ever, not a blizzard or anything, just slow and steady, and it keeps building up on the ground, layer after layer. After layer. Nicole will have more to say about that, BTW. Adults are running around like little children who have never seen snow before. Dont people here have to work? Some little kids threw a snowball at me and laughed. I was too distracted and ignored them, but if that happens again, Ill throw a snowball right back. Ive seen two snowmen so far, one in the middle of old town square, and a tiny one on a bench. Wish I had a way to put photos in this library computer.

The thing that makes me really happy, though, is wandering around the streets alone at night, just thinking about stuff, and taking notes. I am going to do that just about every day now, I think, or at least every day its snowing. There are hardly any people on the streets at night. Its just empty and beautiful and dark and snowy.

I emailed my friend Nick, who I think works at two magazines in Stockholm, and he said I could visit him in Sweden. I would probably go in May, after our time is up. Nick is pretty much the last friend I have from my pre Austin days, and I havent seen him in a long time, so I am really excited about that. I really hope Sweden still gets snow in May.

"Language barriers are just that," some guy was telling me when I said it was hard to find a job without speaking Czech. "A barrier."

2005-02-22T03:32:00.000+01:00

When I worked at Casa de Luz, and one of the cooks who didnt speak English needed me to do something, they would say something in Spanish that was meaningless to me, while they pointed at something, which, coupled with my experience of generally what happened in the kitchen, told me exactly what I needed to do. Thats why I never bothered to learn Spanish. Maybe I should have learned anyway, so I could have understood what the Guatamalan cooks were laughing about all the time, but I liked having the responsibility of conversation off of me, so I could just daydream.

Yesterday, Nicole and five of our friends got back from a weekend trip in Berlin. At the train station, there was a recorded voice that was ceaselessly speaking to everyone in German. This must have been very important information, since the voice over the loudspeaker never let out so much as a giggle, but whatever it was saying, we didnt appear to need. We got where we needed to go anyway. In line for a crazy German dance club that I opted out of last minute, some German guys tugged on the flaps from my hat that cover my ears and, while laughing, said some things in German to me. "I only speak Czech and English" I told them. Of course they missed my joke and heard "I only speak English," which is the truth anyway. "Surprise, surprise" they mocked back. Then they started making fun of me in German. I couldnt understand what they were saying, so I just shrugged. Im happy and back in Prague (home again after a strange weekend in that alien world!), so what they were saying cant have been all that vital.

Today the train on the way back from the American Express office (attention travelers, do not get travelers checks!) was fairly packed. I sat on the end of the bench, next to a woman in a puffy white coat with light brown hair, lots of makeup, and a face that some would consider fairly attractive. Someone sat down next to her, shoving her against me. She turned her face, putting it pretty much in my face, and said something in Czech. Of course I had no clue what it was, but I did the only possible thing she could want from me in that situation. I slid down the last half inch that remained between me and the end of the bench. This satisfied her. By the time the train stopped next, Id lost track of whether that was my stop or the next stop was. After the doors had been opened for a while, the voice from the speaker on the ceiling intoned, "Stara Mestka," I bolted upright and walked out the door. The woman in the puffy coat must have thought it was weird that it took me so long to realize that I was at my stop, but it didnt matter. She was out of my life forever.

Today, while checking my coat and bag with the lunch lady like coat lady, she handed my bag back to me in refusal. I looked at my bag, saw the only thing that could be wrong, and brushed the snow off of it. She then happily hung it along with my coat.

Im fairly certain Ill never learn Czech.

What I like about being in foreign countries is that I can daydream all the time. Reading Kundera (just finished the joke which was in some ways even better than the unbearable lightness of being) is making me think all novelistlike. Today there was a large old man in front of me on the escalator, and I noticed that his coat was too big for him. That seems like a detail that a novelist would attach a lot of significance to. Pretty pointless, though. Ugh. Tomorrow, I need to put my daydreaming on pause and write up a "CV."

quickly

2005-02-18T23:42:00.000+01:00

we are at a hostel in berlin. it is rhys, darling, kelli, schuiller (pronounced skylar), ronen, ben, and myself. today we saw the berlin wall and also a stanley kubrick museum. we are going out later tonight. okay i have to go.

2005-02-17T18:43:00.000+01:00

I didnt find the Brothers Karamazov. I knew it was too good to be true. It was in Prague 6, way beyond the end of the Metro Line. I got remarkably close, finding Robin Oil, a landmark I saw on the Mapy.cz map, but then I found myself walking on a highway with nothing promising in sight. I went home glorifying the play to myself. It had to be pretty much the best thing ever. Im sure of this now. I wonder what the Grand Inquisition scene was going to be like. Probably like nothing human eyes have ever witnessed. I bet they would have used dry ice or a smoke machine to make it all mysterious. I could have been a changed man, if only Id left a little earlier!

And then today, I was supposed to have that 3:00 job interview. It was at Cafe Louvre, just a block away from Tesco, the everything store that is about 15-20 minutes from our apartment by walking, even shorter by tram. I left the apartment around 2:15, just to make sure I would get there early. I got on the first tram I saw, figuring that just about everything goes to Tesco, and that if for some reason that one didnt, I would just get off and walk to rest of the way. Well, it didnt, go I got off at a weird stop, and walked, sure that just about every road led to Tesco. Really, its impossible not to find the place even when you arent trying to go there. Ive been there 20 times and have never had a problem finding it. And yet, this time, when it really counted, when people were waiting for me, and might have a job for me, I couldnt find it. I jumped on another random tram and got even more lost. At 3:10, I was still wandering. I sent Natalia an apologetic text message, and was ready to go home and jump out my window, this time for real. I was pretty sure that I no longer deserved to live. On the other hand, with the snow and everything, the jump wouldnt be fatal. At worst, I would be paralyzed. At best, I would hardly be injured and would feel like my bruised bum was punishment enough and I could move on.

Then, miraculously, as one is bound to do after walking around Prague for long enough, I found Tesco. Went around the corner to Cafe Louvre and I was 25 minutes late. Amazingly Natalia had waited for me, and I actually managed to make a good impression on her and the manager of the restaurant to be.

Librayz closing. GOing to berlin with Nicole this weekend

Brothers on the horizon

2005-02-16T18:35:00.000+01:00

Tomorrow I have a job interview, with an Italian restaurant that does not yet exist. The woman on the phone sounded French, and was very direct and demanding. So far Ive managed not to let her down. I am meeting her tomorrow at 3 at Le Louvre. The cafe, not the museum. Hearing French here is comforting, even though I dont really know it at all. Its at least more familiar.

Im off to see The Brothers Karamazov in Czech. The play, not the book. This could be the most miserable experience of my life. It will probably inspire me to turn inward and do a lot of thinking at least.

The weather is here, wish you were beautiful

2005-02-16T01:02:00.000+01:00

I stole the subject from the Mr. T Experience.

The weather is perfect. Its snowing, and its not even cold! I almost didnt wear a coat, because its warm enough and so I wouldnt have to deal with the coat ladies, but it always gets colder here. For some reason, the mornings are warmer than the afternoons. It stopped snowing for now, but at least there is snow on the ground again.

Snow is typical of the layers here in Prague. There is snow, but then you dig past that, and you are at cobblestone. Then, did past that, and youll probably find yourself in a centuries old synagogue. Keep digging, and you will find yourself in the core of the earth, which is very much like the Charles Bridge, the philosophical core of Prague. Keep digging and you will find yourself in Australia, just like all the Australian expats who find themselves here. Layers, man. Prague is all about layers.

Okay, that was my poor imitation of Nicoles brilliant entry about the layers in Prague. Shes been here for less than a month, and already she can articulate this city better than most of the people whove lived here all their lives, Kundera included. They probably speak Czech better and know how to get around, but they dont know Prague like Nicole. Man, that was easily the second best entry here on Prague Blague. The first would definitely have to be Nicoles "PS" about how great I am to live with. Here I am writing about soccer playing Chimpanzees who drink beer, and Nicole is laying out the very essence of Prague while dashing off emails and reading Kundera and having symbolic sex dreams and learning ballroom dancing all at once! Shes a talent, that one.

So now I am going to try to be all sophisticated too, and write about the opera, that thing I went to after writing my last entry. I got all dressed up in a full suit and tie (thanks to Thift City and Nicoles grandpa), though my shoes had to be my tattered New Balances, since I must have decided that dress shoes would take up too much precious cargo. What a sight I was in the library before the opera! Half the people here had never seen anyone look half-way decent. They must have thought I was some sort of alien.

I got in for free, thanks to Nicoles program. Hannah and Kelly and all them signed up and then skipped out, leaving all these extra tickets for me and the students who didnt sign up. And boy, am I glad I got in for free! I mean, it was great. It was operatic and beautiful, and how art should truly be, it made me smarter and more cultured, and all that. But now I see why everone hates opera. It truly is boring. I know, I know, boredom is a state of mind, and its always your own fault if you are ever bored. But that doesnt give you an excuse to be as boring as you want and then place the blame on everyone else if they want to leave. Being boring is not a virtue in itself, even if it has positive consequences, like forcing people to turn inside their minds for entertainment, and think new thoughts, and have ideas, and so on. I definitely thought a lot during this opera, so for that I thank it.

This opera was Dvoržaks Rusalka, based on the Hans Christian Anderson tale that inspired The Little Mermaid. And now this is my first problem with opera. It is supposed to be adult and mature, yet it is almost always based on a kids story or a childish myth, and has nothing to do with adult problems, or real tragedies. Operatic singing is very passionate and expressive, but its wasted if its about how the moon is out over the ocean, or how poor pale Rusalka is doomed because she wants to be a human and she is destined to be a sea nymph. Just like in kids stories, the characters here fall in love right away for no reason, and out of love for no reason too. This was explained more than shown. Like Roger Ebert has said about many movies, Rusalka talked about what was going to happen, it happened just as talked about, and then they talked about what happened. Which makes me wonder why Žednek felt compelled to tell us the entire plot beforehand. The opera itself tells us the entire plot in the beginning!

The only other opera I saw was based on Hansel and Gretel, called Babes in the Woods. Another kids story presented in a format that only adults are patient and silly enough to tolerate. I feel like operas could be good. I like listening to Verdi, actually, so maybe those are actually about something real. I feel like the form has potential, but I kept comparing Rusalka to Rhys-Joe productions past and future, and in every way it came up short. The blocking was horrible. There were minutes at a time where one person would be on stage alone, hardly moving. There were also minutes at a time when the same line of dialogue would stay on the screen ("Alas, Alas, Alas, poor, pale Rusalka!"), which makes me think maybe the translation was bad. The music was fine to listen to, but it wasnt enough. Maybe the form is too suffucating. Then again, I saw The Magic Flute with Joe, and I guess that was an opera, even though it was good.

I started reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being last night. Everyone is in love with this friggin book, and I want to see what all the screaming is about. Back in the fall of 2001, I gave it a shot, but even though its really short and easy to read, I lost interest. I thought there was too much sex. I wanted more Russian tanks and less romance. Later I talked to this guy (Nathan Aloysius) who said that he had read the book before he ever got in a serious relationship, and didnt get it at all. Then, äfter hed gone out with Sara Rimensnyder, he tried again, and loved it.

Now, Ive never gone out with Sara Rimensnyder, but she is a good friend of mine, even though she never responds to my emails. Also, I have some experience with serious relationships now, I am in Prague where the novel is set, Nicole has a copy I can read for free, and she loved it, so I was pretty much primed to like it. Im on about page 80 now. Even though its about 2 fifths plot and 3 fifths author explaining the essence of the characters and of life, its pretty riveting. Now this book could be a good opera.

I really dont understand what I didnt like about it before. Guess I just thought that Tomas was out of his mind with all his philandering, and I didnt care what happened to him or his wife and lovers. Old never been in a relationship before me would have hated to admit it, but maybe I had a few things to learn about life before I could understand this short double spaced huge type book. Who knows, maybe Id even appreciate Brothers Karamazov better if I read it again. I tried to get Hannah to buy that one from an English language bookstore, hoping she would hate it and let me borrow it, but no luck. At least Ill get to read all of Nicoles Kundera and Kafka books.

This time in Prague is enough to kind of make me want to be a student again. Nicole made the good point that I could take correspondance classes to finish my degree, which had never even occurred to me before (Id heard that at UT you have to take your last couple of semesters there, but maybe thats wrong). Im really bad in structured classrooms, but Im pretty good at self-paced classes. Actually, the best was the winter semester I took at Richland College. That packed an entire semester of class into three weeks. You were only supposed to take one class because it was so intensive, but I took two, and then all I had time to do was go to class and do homework. It was Dallas, so there werent too many distractions anyway.

But you all want to hear about Prague. Its dark out now, which is unfortunate. I need to start waking up earlier. Now that my pillows are against the wall, I can sleep again, but I do too much of that. Expats.cz and Prague.tv have no jobs to speak of. I looked up a bunch of hostels, since they might hire someone who only speaks English and has no skills. Ill try that tomorrow. I wish I knew whether or not I am going to find a job here, because if I am not, I dont want to waste time looking. I mentioned the phrase "Bohužel, nemluvim Česky," and she thought it was hilarious that I was taught to say "unfortunately I dont speak Czech," instead of just "I dont speak Czech." Now that I speak perfect Czech, the point is moot now. Tomorrow, Im afraid Ill have to miss the naked drawing class to go to the Brothers Karamazov play. I am currently loving living with Nicole. Turns out my brother may not be able to come to Prague, which is horribly dissapointing. The walk back from the opera last night was very idyllic, with swans, and snow, and castles and bridges. I made Nicole about 20 pounds of potato salad, which I wont touch, because Im afraid white potatoes are what made me sick. I need to go shopping and start cooking creatively again. I think I might be kicked off the computer soon. Three cheers for Prague!

Quick update

2005-02-14T18:22:00.000+01:00

Only have one minute before I have to leave to go to an opera with Nicole, but I wanted to give a quick update, since I dont know when Ill be at the internet next.

Marie lives in a very beautiful area in prague. Walking around her neighborhood, I saw some of the best sights to be seen here. People playing football, dogs running in a forest, gorgeous houses on hills, etc.

I have to go to the dorm soon and make a point of not using the internet just to prove to Hannah that I wasnt going over there just to use her internet. The fact that I need to do this shows, however, that that was the reason I was going over there! I do like hanging out with them, however.

One last point on Czech culture, and why I was originally against it. I have this photograph on the wall in mÿ room of a chimpanzee dressed like a soccer player, leaning against the goal, and drinking a beer. Yuval said this was typical Czech humor. That juvenile piece of garbage was typical Czech humor?? What a place!

p.s.

2005-02-14T16:10:00.000+01:00

i'm currently loving living with rhys.

layered histories

2005-02-14T14:44:00.000+01:00

i'm going to have a go at writing another real entry.

there is a sign in the metro for an exhibit called 'layered histories' that is supposedly on our street, although i've not yet seen it. i've been thinking about that exhibit title though. i think that, if i were called upon to sum up prague in two words, 'layered histories' would probably be the two words i would choose.

an example: one of the many ancient synangogues within a few blocks of my home is called the old-new synagogue. the story of it's name is simple. a long time ago (i don't remember exactly when) when the jewish population of prague was looking for a place to build a new synagogue, they decided upon one location for which they would need to level a small hill. they leveled the hill and were surprised to find the foundation of an older synagogue. they simply used the old ruins as the foundation for their new place of worship. thus, the old-new synagogue.

and i feel that the story of this one building somewhat represents the story of prague. it is just layers upon layers of histories, cultures, dynasties and regimes.

almost every czech person i've spoken with for any length of time has mentioned something about architecture. at first i thought it was coincidence. then i thought it was some strange national preoccupation. and then i realized that OF COURSE everyone is preoccupied with architectual periods and styles here. every building fits into one of several of these periods. the architecture of almost any building in central prague, like the building of the old-new synagogue, tells the story of it's construction. who built it? when? why? what is unique about it? what is uniform? sometimes the buildings that seem the most beautiful are precisely those buildings that 'typify the style of the period.' i'm always disappointed when my favorite buildings are typical. and i'm always amazed too. a typical prague building can outshine a thousand austin houses and offices. i couldn't even begin to describe the extraordinary prague structures.

several of the buildings here are layered. 'to your right you will see a baroque palace, but you will notice that some of the paint has been peeled away to reveal the historical etchings of the renaissance period.' or 'this was built during the gothic period, but the interior has been redone in the baroque style. etc.

the streets are layered. old town square, for instance, has several cellar restaurants. the reason that the cellars are used is that these rooms used to be street levels, but due to excessive flooding, the streets were piled higher and higher with cobble stones, and now they are several feet above their original position.

jan palach square. this is the square where the university is located. it used to be a square dedicated to the red army and communism. there was a large star formed from red flowers in the center of it. now it is named after jan palach, a student at charles university, who, to protest the occupation of czechoslovakia after the warsaw pact, burned himself alive in wenceslas square in january, 1969. since his death, several other young people have immolated themselves in acts of protest.

the metronome. visible from jan palach square (and from several places in prague) is a giant metronome on the top of a hillside. the metronome sits on a stone foundation that was originally built to support an imposing statue of josef stalin. the metronome is there to tell us about the rhythms of time. good bad good bad good bad.

layered histories. rhythms. the old foundation doesn't go away, but something new is put on top of it.

if you look at the prague skyline, your eyes will be drawn to several structures. first, the prague castle. the prague castle! then, the churches. the later they were built, the taller they are. and then, visible from almost anywhere in the city is the TV tower. it is a huge, ugly structure. and impractical. TV towers have an umbrella effect, so everyone under the tower had no television. so why'd they build it so big?

well, the communists were none too fond of christianity. neither were they fond of the pride in the czech national culture. the TV tower, taller than any other structure in prague, visible from anywhere in town, is/was an ironic symbol of the triumph of technology over history and over religion, as evidenced by the now assymetrical skyline.

more on communism in later entries, i'm sure.

the culture here is also layered. it would have to be. if you look at a map (an activity i've been frequently engaging in, now that i bought a european map, although it is all in czech!), you will notice that prague is in the geographical center of europe. it has basically been a dumping ground for all cultures moving in from the east, west, north, and south. it is totally surrounded. there has been a succession of ruling dynasties/regimes here that came from other places. for a long time, german was the language of the elite, and the language of the university. look at kafka- undeniably a czech writer, but he wrote in german.

i read the entire 'unbearable lightness of being' this weekend. i loved it. i want to absorb it and to understand every word. i don't think i would've understood any of it before i came here. it is a prague book, i think. it calls to mind the words of one of my favorite professors 'private lives, public crucibles.' it is about being individuals in a historical world. it is about a small cast of characters struggling to remain small enough to hide or becoming big enough to fight in the context of the crushing weight of communism. in it, prague sucks people in.

two of the characters escape to switzerland. one of them returns, the other knows she won't be able to come back to switzerland, so he follows her back in to prague. now they are both stuck. another character leaves and stays out; she is homeless for the rest of her life.

i guess what i'm trying to say is that the books resonates with me because i'm here and trying as hard as i can to understand what being here means. something about prague- the beauty, the geography, the history, seems to suck everything in and expel very little. hitler came to prague, and instead of destroying the jewish cemetery and all the synagogues, he decided that they would be monuments to a deceased race. maybe this was his reasoning, or maybe he looked around and realized that you can't pull things (cultures, ideas, buildings, histories) away from prague, because they would be made to heavy by the overwhelming gravity of the place.

maybe?

what am i doing here? i've been thinking about this a lot. how do i fit in here? i feel like i should be floating around the place in ballgowns and ridiculous, ornate hairstyles. i spend time in ex-pat hangouts. places i thought i would scorn, but where i feel comforted. it is easy to look to someone next to you at the bar and just speak to them in english. it feels good. it is hard to ask the shopkeeper if they have any zinc. it feels bad.

i took a class on the literature of colonialism last semester and was always annoyed at the characters who stayed in the protective circle of european functions and clubs. so why do i go to expat bars and restaurants? i went to the library and asked how i might go about using the internet without my internet card (i'd forgotten it at home). although the library lady told me she spoke english, she started yelling "your english is too hard for me. i have things to do. i have things to do." and then she said some words in angry czech and walked away. i was so sad and frustrated that i just went home and stayed there.

i've been recognizing unpleasant reactions to the czech people in myself. i feel cautious of them. i feel totally enamored with them. i want to know why they are who they are. but i should probably just see them as people, as individual and different as americans are to each other.

but i can't blame the library lady for yelling at me or the people here for not wanting to help me or speak to me. they all live in a culture that's been repeatedly invaded, if not literally (the austrian empire, nazism, communism), then figuratively. you can't see a mcdonald's disgracing the beautiful squares of the czech republic without your stomach turning. at least i can't.

i am a stranger here. i am an invader. i am an outsider, and an american. but i've been coming to terms with it. i'm not tired anymore. i've paused. and i feel better.

some friends of mine met goldie hawn and kurt russell. the same people also met ll cool j and hung out with his body guards all night at their apartment. this is another part of prague i haven't really figured out how to find. right now i'm focusing on the histories. i mean, ll cool j fits into this city of layered histories as much as the tv tower or even little tiny invader me. but right now i'm not going to try to do it all at once, like i thought i was supposed to. i'm staying here for months. i have time to sleep, and spend a pleasant night reading books with rhys, and write a blog entry (finally!), and have crazy ass dreams. i've been having crazy dreams.

yeah, so i guess i'll stop for now. i want to write about my current romantic situation, as it is almost as frustrating to me as not knowing czech. but i've been writing for a while. i'll leave you with one dream. it was very pretty, and ultimately pretty funny too.

so there were two glaciers and in between them a tiny valley with a still, clear blue pool. things were being thrown into the pool and then they were turning into silver spikes. i thought "i'm practically rich!" but then also, "what on earth would i do with so much silver in a valley between glaciers?" so i left them there to be pretty. it was very pretty. so i just thought i'd mention it to my parents when i was talking to them on the phone because i'd just woken up from this pretty dream and hadn't thought about it or what it meant. they both went "hmmmmm" and then mom said, "maybe you need to find a boyfriend."

ha. or maybe one just needs to come here. we can ballroom dance together, because zdenek's been teaching us.

tonight we're going to the opera.

finally!!!!!

2005-02-14T14:32:00.000+01:00

i am currently glutting myself on internet. oh yes. the study abroad office is open. i'm consuming the information superhighway like rhys's tohum tahini potato salad or his hummus, both of which i am addicted to. i am checking myspace and friendster. i'm even reading bulletins. i'm responding to people's emails. it feels so good.

i'm also feeling better in real life. it started on saturday when my friend ginny called. i cheered right up. then we went out to a 'make-out party' where none of us made out, but had lots of fun dancing, which was our initial plan. the next day i woke up and stayed in bed all day. i read 'the unbearable lightness of being.' i finished it. i couldn't put it down. i went to sleep early and slept late and feel better than i have in weeks.

okay one disorganized thought and then i'll write an organized entry.

the language: i felt like i was learning pretty rapidly in my intensive language course. i felt like i had a better grip on the language even than most of my classmates and i felt empowered. then the class ended and i feel like giving up. there were a few refrains in the class that the teacher repeated over and over. when i'm walking around town and hear people speaking in czech, it sounds practically like gibberish. but then i will hear one of the classroom refrains. it sounds probably like one of those american guitar riffs that rhys would hear in those czech songs. it sounds like cliches. it sounds like the charlie brown teacher talking "blah blah blah" and punctuated by simple cliches "blah blah see spot run blah blah the interesting book. the hot water. blah blah. the cold weather. blah"

One entrance to the info superhighway shut forever... another opens, but for who knows how long?

2005-02-13T23:44:00.000+01:00

It appears to be raining and snowing at the same time. Prague just can't make up its mind about anything. I'm just glad I'm inside. I would be soaked to the bone if I were outside taking in the Prague experience. Can see a little bit of it out the window, though. Marie and her "partner" (a guy) are taking me on a walk later, with an umbrella. We are going up one hill to look at other hills. It sounds nice.

Apologies to Yuval, who reads this blog like a fiend, and seemed to take my comments about my Czech culture confusion personally. Well, I did say that Yuval was more into Czech traditions than Czech people, so perhaps that's why. That wasn't a snipe, Yuval, for real. What I meant was this... Dude, Yuval, you made me buy a non-alcoholic beer because you said it would be too weird to not drink a beer with dinner in the Czech Republic. Clearly I'm bound to think this was an oppressive, inferior culture that deserved their Soviet occupation. That Jan guy who set himself on fire, and Milos Foreman, were the only real resistence to the Soviets, I thought. Everyone else was too busy getting drunk at dinner to care about human rights and dignity, I thought. This place is like a communist regime, now, it seemed. Velvet Revolution, I questioned. I'd like to see it! You have to drink beer to eat dinner here? You can drink non-alcoholic beer "for your own personal reasons" but you can't opt out of beer entirely? Marx would be in totalitarian heaven! The Czech people are born slaves to a fermented grain! Sure, macrobiotically, beer may be better than a banana, but who cares? Free to choose, that's what I say! I was ready to change my flight and high-tail it out of here, lest I melt into this rank, intoxicated pot. Later I realized that it's not that strict here, and that's what my comment was about. Maybe I shouldn't have been name dropping. And for that, Yuval, I apologize. I was really intrigued to learn all of that horrible stuff about the Czech traditions, and I had a good time with you, Yuval, for real! I still think of some of the stories you told me, like about the German spy who was in London and said "Yaah?" when tapped on the shoulder. Where did you learn all of this stuff? Seriously, you're like an encyclopedia. It's great!

Okay, now that Yuval is apologized to...

Internet is tricky here. In Austin, I had the UT computer labs, and then my own personal computer in Rachel's loft at Royal. Here I have internet cafes, where I usually can't concentrate because of the sound of money flapping as it flies from my pockets. There's Nicole's study abroad program office, which is usually full of distracting people and has weird hours. Now there is the library, where you have an hour a day, depending on how many people are signed up. There used to be the dorms, but the last time I used the internet there, Hannah drunkenly accused me of using the internet before saying hi to everyone, grabbed my arm, pulled me out of the chair, dragged me across the floor out of her room, and slammed the door. Since then we've patched our tattered friendship, but I will probably never use the internet there again. However, Marie, from Austin, invited me to her apartment for internet today, and that's where I am now. Again, though, the internet comes at a price. Like at the dorms and AIFS, socializing is required. I mean, it's nice. She made me bread with hummus, and gave me carrots and pickles. But I can't just sit here working on stuff un-interrupted. That is a fantasy in Prague.

Last night I had the sort of experience you're supposed to have, if you want to claim that you've "been to Prague." Nicole's friend Anna's boyfriend was in town, and Nicole said that everyone was meeting at this place called Architectu cafe at 7:00. I got out of the library at 7:00, and went straight there, sure that I was going to be embarrasingly late when I arrived at 7:10. The restaurant was, like many of the expats hangs here, in a stoney basement but really fancy like. I looked around and no Nicole and friends. So I went outside to wander around and wait.

Architectu was in a sort of courtyard in Old Town, which was strangely deserted for 7:10 at night. The ground was cobblestone, like in most of Prague, and the Architectu building itself seemed very old fashioned, like an old tailor's shop. There was just a dim light coming from the first floor, throwing the ol' four rectangled window shadow on the ground, adding to the old fashioned look. The roof was pointed, and next to it was a church with a huge steeple. I heard a little bit of Dvorjak playing in the background, for which I gave my imagination mad cred. Turns out, though, the music wasn't in my imagination. I should have known better, this being Prague and all. It was coming from another building in the courtyard, across from Architectu. It had a huge window. I looked inside, but that part of the building was completely dark. I went to the classic wooden door, and that's where the music was coming from. I tried to open it, but it was locked. A song ended, and there was a lot of applause. Obviously it was a live concert, and I'd probably have walked on stage if I'd managed to force the door open. Many thanks to macrobiotics and my wasting muscles!

From the doorway I could watch Architectu to see if Nicole and everyone got there. So I sat, leaned against the door, and listened to the rest of the concert, staring at the clouds, the steeple, the shadow from the window, and this wooden walkway that went from the concert building to Architectu. The whole time I was very self-conscious about how this was a very Prague experience, and how I was going to write a blog entry about it to prove I didn't just sit around the apartment all day. I even took notes on the experience to make sure I remembered the details of the beauty, and all the profound insights I was having. I tried to think of interesting things I could say about clouds and old buildings. I was having a Prague moment, but as usual, I was out of the moment, trying to think of ways to exploit the moment later for praise about what a good observant person I am, and how only I know how to truly live.

Someone on a walking tour with us the day before said, "I would love to be in Prague hundreds of years ago. But I guess it would look the same. And that's the beauty of it!" She also complained that she could never go back to the states now that she's been here and seen how civilizations should be organized. I guess I could say something like that, but that would be completely out of character. Honestly, at first I thought the old historical buildings were too trying too hard to be all old and historical. "Functional U.S. buildings are tons better," I thought. "Can't wait to get back to the states where there's a place for everything and everything has its place!" I was offended that hardly any of the buildings here serve their original purpose. It's absurd to see this really old building and look at the window to see this woman at a computer. There should be a dragon in there torturing people on racks in a dungeon! Half of the front of the Tyn Church, this gorgeous gothic castle in old town, is surrounded by shops, like a protective moat! (the tour, revealed, however, that these tourist gift shop buildings have been around since the late 1800s!)

Now, though, I'm starting to appreciate how old this city is, and how it's wonderful that even a common public library has all this amazing architecture to explore. I started to come to terms with it last night while listening to Dvorjak on this cobblestone street looking at the clouds and steeple. Those people inside listening to the concert are suckers, I thought. This is how the music was intended to be experienced. With the sky as your ceiling! At least, that's what I'll write in my blog, I figured, because it makes me look like I'm into beauty, and have a greater understanding of art than most people. Later, when the concert was over, I went to the entrance, and saw that the concert looked free. Then I felt like the sucker. God, I could have just walked in and sat in an actual chair like a human being, and instead I was just hunched against a door, straining to hear. But seriously, imagine it, readers. Me, hunched, taking notes in my notepad, alone, pensive, staring at the clouds in Prague while passionate strings played. If there were any flies on the wall watching that scene of the real me, surely they are all in love now. What an artist I am! So tortured and unique!

Nicole and her friends eventually showed up, an hour late. Sure, I had to wait around for an hour, but I wasn't complaining. "I just saw the real Prague, guys. What have you been up to?" "Oh, nuthin'." Hah! Who here squeezes as much as he can out of life? You, Rhys. You.

More facts about life here

2005-02-13T03:35:00.000+01:00

I forgot some stuff about Prague...

Old Town square is even more beautiful when it is overcast. Its been overcast lately, so walking around has been quite nice. I think Im losing the farmers tan I got and could never quite lose after driving to Los Angeles without air conditioning.

The Irish have apparently won some big game. There was a lot of cheering coming from "Irish Pub." I tried to go inside to see what it was all about. There was a "football" game on, and people were watching it. It was too crowded, so I had to leave. Plus, I dont look at all Irish so I felt endangered.

I wear my glasses a lot more here. Not because my vision is worse or anything. I just want to get my moneys worth from this place.

There is a play version of The Brothers Karamazov here somewhere. I desperately want to see it. Nicole refuses because its in Czech, and says it would be depressing to not understand the words. But Mel Gibson wanted to put out The Passion without subtitles for some reason or another, and I feel like Brothers K is dramatic enough, like the Bible, to get the gist from the action on stage. It being in Czech is definitely a minus, and the amusement of seeing it in another language probably wears thin after a while, but this is my favorite book. Plus, I watch low quality Czech TV here, and dont feel alienated or bored by it. "One of the best ways to avoid homesickness is to engage yourself in the culture." Actually thats a quote from Nicole. Im not trying to use that to convince her to come to Brothers K. I just think it was a good point that applied here.

I have a radio in my room. So far the Czech music Ive listened to has been very good. Its kind of like Magnetic Fields (the albums, not them live) mixed with In Flight Movie and Sgt. and Nurse. Not really, but sometimes I catch a famous american guitar riff amongst all the Czech strumming. Nicole made the point that the Czech language doesnt lend itself too well to balads. Its hard to sing about love when you just sound like "ýřšáěýřáé tčáééřz spatyz!"

Did you know Prague was bombed by the allies during WWII?? They thought it was Dresden and bombed it for three minutes before they realized. Maybe it was advanced punishment for getting taken over by the Soviets later. But still. Bombing the Faust house was NOT NECESSARY, guys. Everyone talks about how fantastic WWII was, and how holy the allies were, but not me man. If Id accidentally come here in a time machine instead of a plane and ended up in Prague in 1945, I could be dead right now, and the US airforce would be to blame. But seriously, good we got Hitler and all that. Need I go on a rant talking about how evil Hitler is? I will if I need to. Its definitely worth repeating. I only have 5 minutes left at the library, though, four actually, and I dont know how many original things I can say about Hitler. Ill just leave it at this. Goes without saying how evil Hitler is. I wish hed never existed.

Im using the internet at the library. Its a dollar a month, and you can sign up for one hour sessions. Im confused about the rules. They have signed me up for three sessions today, but later told me you can only sign up for one "per book." Also, a lot of people stay in place after the hour is up, so they must know something we dont. I have a feeling the hours pass faster for us internet users, than the people who assign us to the internet. Another thing... this is not just a typical library. Its an ancient building. Walking around the deserted second floor seemed like going back in time. There are old faded religious murals on the walls, and cracks and decay. Look out the windows and you see statues of saints with spikes on their heads, not because they were martyrs, but to keep away the birds and the Slovaks. Theres also a bathroom upstairs. You have to turn in your coat and bag just to come into the library, and for that purpose are the grizzly looking coat and hat ladies. They get pissed if you throw a monkeywrench into the system. Once, I gave them my coat but then realized that my notebook was in it and I needed it. So I asked for my coat back, took out the notebook, and then gave my coat and bag back to them. Oh my god. You should have been there. They said some pretty awful things to me in that language of theirs. The guy next to me was Czech and he laughed. Too afraid to look me in the eyes when he laughed, but he laughed nonetheless. They took my bag and coat back very reluctantly. And then today, when I left earlier, the especially mean looking one (who actually is the slightly nicer one) pointed to my bag and asked me something in Czech. I nodded, because she seemed to be talking about my bag, but then she gave me an umbrella with all of my stuff. I tried to leave without the umbrella, but then she yelled after me. I kept saying "ne" and shaking my head, but she kept yelling until I left. Again someone laughed at me. People are always laughing at us here. But its cool. Im happy, guys.