Czechmate

Today an old woman got on the bus and as I stood up quickly to let her sit down I saw a girl across the aisle do the same thing. I had already made eye contact with the woman, so she took my seat. I was a bit disturbed by how competetive and eventually triumphant I felt. This “altruism” might become an addiction if I’m not careful. I could write a whole novel about the things that happen on the bus. Sometime, remind me to tell you about my favorite bus driver, who, I realized today (for you Carleton people), looks exactly like Glen Perry. Weird.

I just got home from a 4-hour study session in a teahouse. It was strangely effective, and I can’t stop thinking about all of these topics. The most annoying question, which is unfortunately one of the focuses of our program (which maybe explains why it’s annoying now), is “What is Central Europe?” I suppose that before the program, I had never really thought about it- I think I could barely tell you which countries were in Central Europe- but by now it had become an extremely loaded term for me. We were out one night with a Czech guy and we asked him how he would define CE. He said, “Any place where you can get apple strudl.” It sounds stupid, but that’s one of the more accurate definitions you could probably give. As a cultural term (“Eastern Europe” is usually used as its political counterpart- it’s equally difficult to pin down), I find CE pretty arbitrary. The countries included (usually Austria, Germany, Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and others, but it really fluxuates) don’t really have that much in common, and since evidence of globalization (another tired topic) is everywhere, unique culture is hard to find anymore. In fact, I would argue that CE is losing its validity by the second, so use it now while it’s still semi-correct.

I could probably write a whole novel on globalization, but I wouldn’t want to because it’s boring and it’s been done. It has surprised me, however, how “modern” the Czech Republic is in the commercialized sense. I think I came in with some pretty romantic notions about how it would be simpler, more honest, less subject to consumerism, etc, and while that’s still the case in some ways, it’s absolutely false as far as STUFF goes. Like I said, I went to IKEA with Elena on Sunday and it was scary how familiar and huge it was. TESCO is all over the place- it’s like a combination of a Walmart and a Target and has everything you’d ever need- and it’s always packed. I’ll admit, I’ve gone there several times myself because it’s convenient and it really is cheaper. Currently, Tesco doesn’t have any of the problems that cause controversy about businesses like Walmart, but I wouldn’t be shocked if those catch up soon, too. While I’ve found a few things that are completely “Czech”, you have to look. The weirdest part for me right now is to hear my host family or other Czechs talk about these places. My host mom was proud of how big IKEA was (she thought I wouldn’t have seen anything like it before, since my hometown is so small compared to Prague), and she went on and on about how good its food court is. She gets excited about window displays and cheap little Christmas things that I feel rather cynical about. I guess that’s not completely fair; I went into a mall the other day that was full of fake evergreen branches and Christmas lights, and I’ll admit I felt a thrill.

Another big element in the CE/globalization question is the EU, which again I hadn’t thought about too much before. I think that the EU will speed up globalization, at least in Europe, pretty considerably (maybe that’s obvious), and it seems like there are some clear benefits that will come with it, as well. For example, the EU has strict rules about humanitarian laws in its countries. This is especially interesting to me, since my project is on Roma education, and the Roma should be one of the main beneficiaries of the EU aid in the CR. So far, however, any money given for the Roma from the EU has gone straight into the pockets of Czech politicians, and the CR keeps making promises to change racist laws, practices, etc, but not delivering on those. It will be really interesting to see how the EU deals with this. I have no idea what the process is, though I’ve been told that the EU has brought 4 complaints against the CR already for this. I’m not doing a very good job of explaining, and the situation is really too big to talk about in one paragraph (or even a whole post!) anyway, but this is an issue in other EU countries, as well. Italy, for example, is currently trying to expel all of its Romany Roma from the river areas. This seems silly and I don’t usually do things like this, but I’m so very involved in this right now and the link just got forwarded to me, so if you can, take some time to type your name into http://www.romanetwork.org/protest2.htm. I would also encourage you to research the situation more, but heck, I barely have time for that, so ask me sometime and I’ll ramble on about it. I’ll probably be talking more specifically (and, we can hope, coherently) about the Roma in the CR when I start my project (Monday!).

Ach jo, I don’t know if this is even worth posting, it’s so all-over. My thoughts are pretty jumpy, and I would do well to remember that the quality of my writing is inversely proportional to the number of parentheses (and commas) I use. I know it’s hard to follow, and I apologize for that. All of this is so complex that it’s better to hae a conversation about it if you’re truly interested. But I’m putting it up anyway, if only so that I can revise it (extensively) later.

My dinner tonight: homemade garlic soup with homemade croutons, then what Elena called “Spanish bird” which was some meat (pork?) wrapped around a mixture of 2 types of sausage, hardboiled eggs (because clearly we weren’t getting enough protein), and a very minimal amount of something green that I’m hoping was a vegetable but I think was a pickle (does that count?), creating a roll about four inches in diameter. This was placed on top of rice and of course served with a side of normal-sized potato dumplings.