Patience is a virtue I do not have, and the Czech Repubic is determined to expose that weakness. Whenever a tram is a few minutes late, I find myself checking my watch repeatedly, pacing back and forth to re-examine the schedule, craning my neck to look down the road. Everyone else stands there perfectly content to wait, probably happy to have a minute to do nothing. Now I am starting to try to contact people for my final project, and I’m finding that people certainly don’t operate on the same schedule that I do. I sent out emails three days ago, and I have gotten zero replies. When I email people in the US (professors, etc.) for similar things, I get responses usually within the hour, but certainly within 24. It’s killing me. I think the problem is that I often equate patience with apathy, but that’s a story for another day.
One funny thing I forgot to tell about my return to Prague after Bratislava/Krakow. When I was back at the house that night, Elena was still really upset with Simon (she tends to over-dramatize stuff, as do I, and I think that’s why I am able to be patient with her), and I was trying to tell her about hiking in Slovakia, but she clearly wasn’t listening very closely. Finally she burst out with; “Until now I thought Americans were fat and lazy and watched TV all day! Now you are hiking and someone else in my own house is always on the computer!” Imagine that said in an Elena voice, very passionately. She actually got a little teary-eyed. I gulped quickly, found an excuse to leave, ran upstairs and laughed.
I know I promised to talk about other things, but first I would like to mention a little more about public transportation that I don’t think I’ve brought up yet. I think about it a lot because it usually occupies at least an hour of my day. The system in the Czech Republic has many many unwritten rules that must be followed carefully if you don’t want to get some nasty looks:
1. Silence is golden. If you are old or meet a close friend, you are allowed to converse quietly, but if anyone hears what you are saying, especially if you are speaking English, they start making it very obvious (through nice passive-aggressive throat-clearing or subtle head-shaking) that you are out of line. The other day a girl answered her cell phone and I thought that there was going to be an uprising. This rule is more flexible during rush hours or on night trams, when some commotion is permissable.
2. 2 is my favorite: If an elderly person gets on and doesn’t have a place to sit, and you are not an elderly person, you get up and give them your seat immediately, cheerfully, and automatically, with a nice gesture that they should sit and a quiet, polite “Prosim.” The person then refuses your offer while simultaneously sitting down, then thanks you, and you stand for the rest of the trip. For people like me, it’s almost not worth sitting down in the first place, because 90% of the time I have to get up again, but the people whom I give my seat to are usually so kind about it (they actually smile at you) that I sit down just for the sheer pleasure of getting up for someone.
3. There will be a baby stroller on the tram/bus. It will take up half of the standing space and cause a big commotion. You will not be bothered by any of this, and instead you will help as much as possible (really just adding to the commotion) and smile at the baby. This rule isn’t set in stone. In fact, I developed it myself just this morning, but since then it’s been true every time. But seriously, there’s always a mom with a stroller, and it’s always a huge ordeal as everyone rushes to get out of her way/help her lift up the stroller. Sometimes I think that if I were the mom I would be annoyed to have so much help, but I guess it’s nice, too. I guess that there’s currently a “baby boom” in the Czech Republic, which isn’t saying much because the population has actually been declining for the past few years. They’ve been going to great lengths to encourage reproduction (offering money, mostly), and it’s finally working somewhat. Another interesting issue on that topic is that of maternity leave. Mothers get up to four years of maternity leave, and they can keep taking it if they keep having children, so some students’ host mothers have been on maternity leave for over ten years. Apparently it’s actually a problem, because mothers feel pressured to take the full time off even if they want to go back to work. I can talk more about it later if you’re interested.
4. Stay out of the way. This usually means sitting in the window seat at first, making sure to leave the seat next to you open for someone else. You would never ever put a bag down next to you. The problem for me occurs when I’m standing. Between my backpack and my clear noviceness when it comes to the bus/tram/metro, I’m always blocking someone’s path to or from the door. If someone is in your way, it is fair game to push them aside, so I get shoved a lot. It’s never mean, but I can’t say I like it, and I need to figure out how to avoid this.
5. Lines are sacred unless you don’t want them to be. Usually by the time my bus comes, we have a good line of about 20 or so people going. The people in the line are very protective of their spot, and very respectful of those around them. However, there are always some lurkers standing away from the curb who were too good for the line and try to sidle in somewhere. I let them, but then the people behind me in line get mad at me. It’s all very confusing.
6. DON’T FORGET TO PUSH THE BUTTON. Sometimes, the doors open automatically at each stop. Sometimes, they don’t, and you have to push this blinking button to make them open. If you are inside, and for some dreaded reason you forget to push the button (you are of course standing right by the door when your stop comes; there is no excuse for not being ready to get off, that doesn’t even count as a rule it’s so obvious), the people on the outside immediately lose all respect for you and angrily punch their outside button and come flowing on without allowing you the requisite space to get off. It’s horrible. Worse is when someone else on the inside reaches around you to push the button for you, and gives you a LOOK. Every teacher should be able to give that look. But I can’t do it, because I always forget to push the button.
I had to get those out. I promise this weekend I will talk about food. Speaking of, Elena hasn’t seen me eat yet tonight, so she’s insisting that I come and get something. Zitra.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Central Europalooza, Part 2
Okay, when we last met I was telling you how much I loved Krakow. Now I will tell you what I did there. The first morning we all made a pilgrimage out to a sort of suburb to see another highly anticipated alternative art space. This one was also pretty cool. The suburb was called Nowa Huta, and it was a Soviet Communist settlement with all block-style apartment complexes built to be the model of a perfect community (where everyone worked in factories) to counteract Krakow’s intellectual mass. Now, it’s generally pretty run-down, and has high levels of unemployment and social problems. The art space was in a re-made factory/warehouse, and was used mostly as theaters/performance spaces. The people who run the theater (who we talked to for a long time, and went out with the next night) do a lot of work to get the entire community involved by doing surveys to see what the people around there would like to see and basically pulling people off the street to act in their plays. Then the people living in Nowa Huta come to see the plays because they star their friends or feature true stories about their community. Neato. In the afternoon, another girl and I managed to find our way to a salt mine just outside the city. This included several encounters with very eccentric characters, but I will save those stories for another time. It was neat for me to be in a mine in general, since I’ve never seen the inside of one, though the 380 steps down to the first (closest to the top) level were a bit intimidating. Our tour guide was hilarious and really really into salt. He kept dropping stories about times he visited mines in other countries or went into a closed part of the mine with an owner. It was hilarious. He also kept making jokes about the fact that he got a hard-hat and we didn’t, which I didn’t find as funny. Anyway, the mine has been operating for hundreds of years, and it’s HUGE. They still have to mine salt today in order to keep it safe for tours. The neatest part was that throughout the mine there are these statues carved in the salt. They are very intricate, and range from statues of saints to important people who visited the mine to little dwarf-miners. The statues were all carved by actual miners who were temporarily hired to do that instead of mining. Occasionally there would be a gigantic area where they found a bit salt deposit, and these “rooms” were made into chapels. The one we saw was amazing and so so beautiful. It had chandeliers made out of salt and “The Last Supper” carved into the wall and a huge statue of Pope John Paul II. I’ll put up pictures eventually. The other highlight of the mine was coming across a few brine lakes, which were creeeeeepy and cool. The “water” is so saturated with salt that you can practically walk on it, and people have died after falling in because they can’t get either up or down in the water. That night we hung out at an amazing café for a bit, then went to dinner and eventually bed.
The rest of my time in Poland, which was really only a day and a half I guess, consisted of some museums, another alternative art space (this one a museum built over an old bunker), and wandering around the river, the Jewish Quarter, and the main square. Of these, the last was by far the most interesting for me. Although it was really touristy, in my opinion Krakow’s main square was amazing. It was surrounded by old buildings and churches and in the center is a big long building called the main market full of little stands with cutesy souvenirs. By far my favorite part was outside, though, where you could sit on a bench or a statue and watch all of the other people or one of the many many performers. My favorites of these included accordian players, a bunch of teenagers breakdancing, a guy playing the water glasses, people using ropes to make huge bubbles, a guy doing spraypaint art, etc. The weather was gorgeous, which helped a lot, too.
The other best part of Krakow was when we joined the people from the Nowa Huta theater to see live music one night. One of the bands featured a harmonica player, if that gives you any indication of how cool it was. I ended up talking a lot to this one Polish guy who plays soccer for the Polish soccer team. It was pretty cool. He was shocked when I told him that I played. The other funny phenomenon was that throughout the night everyone kept making allusions to the fact that I was Polish (which I’m not). For example, if I said that I liked the music, they would say, „That’s because of your Polish blood.“ When I said that I didn’t have any Polish blood, they were, again, shocked (there was a lot of that going around), and insisted that I look very very Polish. This question of what I „look like“ came up frequently on the trip. I had many people tell me I look very Polish, many others assume that I’m British, a few who insisted that I was Irish, and one who suspected that I was Czech but decided I couldn’t be because I look „exactly like the lead singer from the band Portishead“ who is British. I think it’s pretty funny because I just look like me.
In Bratislava, people generally thought I looked Czech. Bratislava was our first stop on the whole trip, and we got there by train. It’s a very small city, but the capitol of Slovakia, so it was fairly nice, as well. It also had a lot of good museums (I, as you can maybe tell, am quickly becoming unenthused about museums) and very nice European buildings. It took maybe an hour tops to walk around the whole city, so we did that multiple times, of course stopping copiously to také in the sights. I had two favorite parts of Bratislava. The first was the hot chocolate. I’m not sure why Bratislava’s hot chocolate was so attractive for us, because you can get the same thing in Prague, but for some reason we just went hot chocolate crazy. Maybe it’s because on the first day someone pointed out a cafe that had 60 unique flavors, I guess you can’t blame us for being intrigued. Like in the CR, the hot chocolate in Bratislava is an appetizer, a meal, and dessert all in one. By that I mean that it is huge and thick. There were a few times when I could barely finish, which should tell you something. It’s practically just melted solid chocolate, but thicker. The other best part was a weird statue obsession. Every half block or so there was another random statue. Again, I will put up pictures, but for example, there was a metal man sticking his head out of a window holding a clock or a guy waving his hat. The best was a man peeking out of a manhole (Tim, I thought of you). Other highlights…hmm. Well, the Danube flows through Bratislava, so that was neat. I know I’m forgetting things, I have notes somewhere, but Elena is calling me for dinner, and I would like to try to eat.
Coming soon: Things I forgot to say about Slovakia and Poland, More on FOOD, A special segment on the language, and Ode to my Bed
The rest of my time in Poland, which was really only a day and a half I guess, consisted of some museums, another alternative art space (this one a museum built over an old bunker), and wandering around the river, the Jewish Quarter, and the main square. Of these, the last was by far the most interesting for me. Although it was really touristy, in my opinion Krakow’s main square was amazing. It was surrounded by old buildings and churches and in the center is a big long building called the main market full of little stands with cutesy souvenirs. By far my favorite part was outside, though, where you could sit on a bench or a statue and watch all of the other people or one of the many many performers. My favorites of these included accordian players, a bunch of teenagers breakdancing, a guy playing the water glasses, people using ropes to make huge bubbles, a guy doing spraypaint art, etc. The weather was gorgeous, which helped a lot, too.
The other best part of Krakow was when we joined the people from the Nowa Huta theater to see live music one night. One of the bands featured a harmonica player, if that gives you any indication of how cool it was. I ended up talking a lot to this one Polish guy who plays soccer for the Polish soccer team. It was pretty cool. He was shocked when I told him that I played. The other funny phenomenon was that throughout the night everyone kept making allusions to the fact that I was Polish (which I’m not). For example, if I said that I liked the music, they would say, „That’s because of your Polish blood.“ When I said that I didn’t have any Polish blood, they were, again, shocked (there was a lot of that going around), and insisted that I look very very Polish. This question of what I „look like“ came up frequently on the trip. I had many people tell me I look very Polish, many others assume that I’m British, a few who insisted that I was Irish, and one who suspected that I was Czech but decided I couldn’t be because I look „exactly like the lead singer from the band Portishead“ who is British. I think it’s pretty funny because I just look like me.
In Bratislava, people generally thought I looked Czech. Bratislava was our first stop on the whole trip, and we got there by train. It’s a very small city, but the capitol of Slovakia, so it was fairly nice, as well. It also had a lot of good museums (I, as you can maybe tell, am quickly becoming unenthused about museums) and very nice European buildings. It took maybe an hour tops to walk around the whole city, so we did that multiple times, of course stopping copiously to také in the sights. I had two favorite parts of Bratislava. The first was the hot chocolate. I’m not sure why Bratislava’s hot chocolate was so attractive for us, because you can get the same thing in Prague, but for some reason we just went hot chocolate crazy. Maybe it’s because on the first day someone pointed out a cafe that had 60 unique flavors, I guess you can’t blame us for being intrigued. Like in the CR, the hot chocolate in Bratislava is an appetizer, a meal, and dessert all in one. By that I mean that it is huge and thick. There were a few times when I could barely finish, which should tell you something. It’s practically just melted solid chocolate, but thicker. The other best part was a weird statue obsession. Every half block or so there was another random statue. Again, I will put up pictures, but for example, there was a metal man sticking his head out of a window holding a clock or a guy waving his hat. The best was a man peeking out of a manhole (Tim, I thought of you). Other highlights…hmm. Well, the Danube flows through Bratislava, so that was neat. I know I’m forgetting things, I have notes somewhere, but Elena is calling me for dinner, and I would like to try to eat.
Coming soon: Things I forgot to say about Slovakia and Poland, More on FOOD, A special segment on the language, and Ode to my Bed
Monday, October 22, 2007
Central Europalooza, Part I
First, THANK YOU all for your emails. I’ve received a ton lately, and I can’t tell you enough how much they mean to me. I plan to reply to them all, but I figured to be fair I’d do the blog thing first.
I’m back in Prague and confused about where the last week went. You probably are more clueless than I, so I’ll tell you what I know. I think I will do it backwards, however, because that makes the most sense to me right now.
After a 5-hour train ride, I got into back Prague at 10pm last (Sunday) night. As the train pulled in, characteristically 10 minutes late, I frantically begged one of my companions to stop laughing at my height and help me get my bag down from the overhead racks while simultaneously Elena called me to find out where I was and I realized that I had told her the wrong train station (When you see Hl, do you think Holosovice or Hlavni Nadrazi? That’s what I thought) and she said, “Jesus, Claire. We will have to meet you at the bus stop” and in my frantic state I left my scarf on the blazing hot train (this is the second scarf I’ve lost in a week) and thought that Prague has a terrific sense of humor. When I got in the car, Jan, Elena, and Simon were all there, and I apologized profusely before realizing that I was only a minor annoyance that night, not the biggest problem. Apparently Simon has been skipping school and forging his parents’ signatures on excuse notes and according to Elena is “trying to get kicked out of school because he is lazy.” So they discussed that in Czech and I tried desperately to not fall asleep in the backseat. Then bed, and today back to school, and here I am.
It’s a small miracle that I stayed awake for so long, because despite a well-deserved 13 hours of sleep on Saturday night, Sunday tuckered me out with its persistant goal of reminding me of the trials and triumphs of travelling. My three companions and I woke to see the sun rising over the mountains to peek into our little room in an isolated Slovak chalet. We rolled out of bed, packed up our bags, and decided to go on one last hike. We were rewarded for this effort when we found a hidden chapel built into a rock on the side of the mountain and a path that didn’t get our shoes muddy. We then dutifully reported to the bus stop, very concious that our very expensive train tickets necessitated getting back to Zilina by 4pm. When the bus was officially twenty minutes late, we started getting suspicious. Sure enough, the bus times are different on Sunday, and the next one wasn’t coming for us for three hours (reported the receptionist who did a terrible job of hiding her amusement). There followed 30 seconds of silence, until one of us suggested walking, and the rest, elated by the excessive hours of sleep the night before and woozy from lack of food (we were boycotting the chalet restaurant because we spent way too much money there the day before), agreed enthusiastically. Armed with Snickers bars from the vending machine, we strapped on our overloaded backpacks and set out on our 6km trek. Actually, it was extremely pleasant; the scenery was beautiful, it only took a little over an hour, and most cars gave us ample room as they swerved by us.
When we got to the main town, Terchova, we beelined to a grocery store just in time to see them lock the doors (they closed at 12; it was 12:05) and ignore our knocks. All of the restaurants were closed, so we trudged to the bus stop and looked hopefully at the bus schedule, which we could not interpret for anything. We asked several people near us, but either our Czech was bad or their understanding of the public transportation was worse, because nobody seemed to know. We only had to wait 40 minutes, though, and then we had a pleasant hour-long ride back to Zilina. When we got there, we practically ran the half mile to Tesco, where we ignored every rule about not shopping when hungry and the looks we got from skinny Slovaks and stocked up on food for pretty much the whole week. Between us there were; two full loaves of bread, nine rolls, two packages of sandwich meat, three separate types of cheese, two containers of yogurt, one container of cottage cheese, almonds, soy nuts, coconut shavings, three bars of chocolate, one package of bad cookies, one package of crackers, one big bag of bacon-flavored chips, five dobre ranos (more on these in a later entry), two peppers, seven apples, six bananas, three oranges, a grapefruit, a bag of green beans, a bag of pumpkin seeds, and I’m probably forgetting a lot. I only listed this because consuming all of this was our sole occupation for about four of the five hours on the train. People kept watching in awe as we pulled more and more food out of our bags.
The day before began with a bus ride in the opposite direction from Zilina to Vratna, but that ride was much more remarkable because it included our view of the first snow of the year! In Zilina it was snowing lightly but not sticking, but as we got further into the mountains (the Mala Fatras- they are small, but gorgeous) it snowed harder and stayed around, until we arrived in Vratna and there was about two inches of snow covering all of the trees and the ground on the mountains (I am not lying, it was so so gorgeous and as soon as I find my camera cord there will be pictures to prove it). Luckily, the air felt snow-warm (if you know what I mean), so we weren’t too cold as we set off for our first hike. We went for about two hours, with a pause to build some small snowmen and a creepy encounter with some other hikers who warned us about bears, then went back to the hotel for lunch. After lunch we went out again for the rest of the day, and after finding the muddiest/snowiest path, made it pretty deep into the mountainy woods, and pretty high up some mountains, as well. It was a perfect day, and it ended with a huge dinner at the same restaurant. We were all exhausted by this time, so we all did some homework/postcard writing and we were ready for bed by 8. This quiet was briefly interrupted by someone in an abominable snowman mascot suit knocking on our door (apparently it was a hotel employee—they were bored and the boss was gone?), which provided some good laughs, and then we slept.
It’s not just the hiking that tired us out; we all only got about 3 hours of sleep the night before. That’s because in Zilina there are some very very strange hotels. First, you should know that Zilina is a small city in Slovakia with not very much going for it. It was pretty much destroyed over the course of communism, etc, and has never recovered. It’s by far the least touristy place we’ve been, and was overall, ugly. We went there for two reasons. The first was to see the reality of some non-tourist towns in Central Europe, the second to visit yet another “alternative art space”- one of Sarah’s (my director’s) favorite attractions (to be fair, they fit in well with the theme of our program, but they’re not really my thing). This one was actually pretty neat. It’s called Stanice (meaning “station”), and it still functions as a main train station. However, they’ve also made it over into a coffeeshop, art gallery, garden, park, theater, and community center. They hold many classes there, particularily for children to do art, and almost every night they have some kind of performance. Many people in the community helped to make it over, and people visit from all over to offer their help. We actually spent the afternoon working in the garden raking leaves, mulching, and planting, which might sound arduous but was much-needed work for us, and it was a pleasant time and a gorgeous afternoon. It was nice to feel useful for a change. We saw a dance performance that night which was pretty extraordinary, even by my skeptical standards.
But the hotels were another story. The first night we stayed in the place Sarah usually has her students stay, but they had recently started renting out the second floor and it currently housed the strangest heat massage/dance therapy sessions I’ve ever seen. Anytime anyone from our group walked past and spied in we heard another strange detail. It might have been a cult. Because of this and the fact that they randomly cancelled our reservation for the second night, we moved to one of the only other hotels in Zilina, which was paired with a casino and had pictures that looked very much like porn on the walls. It was decent until girls in prom dresses showed up and started going into the large “ballroom”, where they were apparently entertained by a DJ until 3am, and I’m not joking. Therefore, we were also entertained by the same DJ, only we were in our rooms. Now it’s hilarious, because they played an eclectic mix of everything from Akon to the entire Grease medley, some in Czech and some in English.
***Interlude: It’s Monday night as I’m writing this. On my way home from school today I started feeling queasy, and since I’ve gotten to the house I have thrown up. A lot. I know that’s a gross thing to know about me, but this is ridiculous. I can’t figure out why Prague and my body don’t get along better.****
In Zilina I also had a particularily frustrating restaurant experience. We would tell the waitress what we wanted, and she would repeat back something different:
Claire: Prosim, dam si maly sopsky salat.
Waitress: Velky vegetarian pizza?
Claire: No, maly sopsky salat. (pointing at menu)
Waitress: Ehh....velky gretzky salat?
Claire: No...a small sopsky salad, please.
Waitress: Pizza?
Claire: Ne. Maly sopsky salat, prosim.
Waitress: Velke gretzky salat.
Claire: Sure.
The best experience was when my friend had a similar conversation with the same waitress trying to say that she wanted her water non-carbonated. We said this several different ways in Czech, pointed to the menu, and tried in English. It ended with the waitress saying, “You want bubbles?” My friend saying, “Yes, whatever” and in the end the waitress brought water without bubbles. It was so funny. Also, after we got our food we didn’t have any silverware, so we asked the waitress for some. There were four of us there, and she brought us two forks and two knives.
This was a trend in Slovakia. I’ll get to the full Bratislava story in a bit, but the waitresses there were absolutely RUDE. At one point I got something that was nothing like what I ordered. When she brought it I said, “Umm...this isn’t what I ordered. I said I wanted a chocolate milkshake.” The waitress told me I was lying, then shrugged and walked away. It’s funny now, but it was pretty annoying at the time. I think it’s a combination of them not having as many tourists (and thus not having the patience for us) with just a general lower expectation for service like that. It’s such a change from the US, and I’m surprised how startling it is for me.
But between Zilina and Bratislava there was KRAKOW. Let me first say that I never thought I would go to Poland in my life. I imagined it grey and dirty and foggy, full of poor people who were always crying. Well, not only did I go to Poland but I LOVED it and I realized that those thoughts were very, very wrong. On the van ride (the very long van ride) to Poland, I felt more and more excited and happy as I watched the hills get bigger as the sun set over Slovakia. We spotted several old, crumbling castles randomly nestled into the sides of hills. The second we crossed the Polish border, however, there were no more castles, and though it was dark, I felt right at home. All I could see were random houses or bars by the side of the road with Christmas lights on them. It was darling. On our ride out of Poland, it was light, and I realized that I had missed even better sights; cows by the side of the road, smoke coming out of every chimney, beautiful hilly farmland. It was all very picturesque, but none of it prepared me for KRAKOW.
Now, Prague and I have had a tumultuous relationship. We like each other for the most part, but Prague has made it very clear that I am on its turf, and I have to constantly be looking for small ways to get closer to it and earn its affection. Krakow is different. The moment I arrived, it told a joke, I laughed, and we were fast friends. Within the hour, we were holding hands, sharing secrets, and we were even comfortable being quiet together. Krakow just embraced me, and I loved it right back. I can’t quite put my finger on why- it was just in the whole atmosphere of the place. Anyway, I’ll tell you what I did there.
Perhaps I set Krakow up for success when I woke up early to go for a sunrise run the first morning there. I set out from the hotel on a park path, and I didn’t know it then, but as I stayed in that block-wide park I ran around the whole main quarters of the city. So, on my way, I saw about half of Krakow’s most beautiful sights, including several magnificent churches, the gigantic castle, and some gorgeous old museums, all in their best morning light. It was a perfect fall morning with frosty air and leaves of every color and sun sun sun, and the park was ideal; wide cobblestone pathways, many benches, even more trees, pretzel vendors, pigeons, and people on their way to work. These people were one of the first signals that Krakow would be different. They actually made eye contact with me, and a few even smiled. I had no idea how much I was missing that in Prague, and it made me downright jolly.
Hmm..I’m feeling like some sleep might do me good, and I want to do Krakow/Bratislava justice, so I’ll end for today, but I’ll post this so you know I’m back. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll finish the story of my trip, because I still have so many other things to write about! Take care, and again thanks for the emails.
I’m back in Prague and confused about where the last week went. You probably are more clueless than I, so I’ll tell you what I know. I think I will do it backwards, however, because that makes the most sense to me right now.
After a 5-hour train ride, I got into back Prague at 10pm last (Sunday) night. As the train pulled in, characteristically 10 minutes late, I frantically begged one of my companions to stop laughing at my height and help me get my bag down from the overhead racks while simultaneously Elena called me to find out where I was and I realized that I had told her the wrong train station (When you see Hl, do you think Holosovice or Hlavni Nadrazi? That’s what I thought) and she said, “Jesus, Claire. We will have to meet you at the bus stop” and in my frantic state I left my scarf on the blazing hot train (this is the second scarf I’ve lost in a week) and thought that Prague has a terrific sense of humor. When I got in the car, Jan, Elena, and Simon were all there, and I apologized profusely before realizing that I was only a minor annoyance that night, not the biggest problem. Apparently Simon has been skipping school and forging his parents’ signatures on excuse notes and according to Elena is “trying to get kicked out of school because he is lazy.” So they discussed that in Czech and I tried desperately to not fall asleep in the backseat. Then bed, and today back to school, and here I am.
It’s a small miracle that I stayed awake for so long, because despite a well-deserved 13 hours of sleep on Saturday night, Sunday tuckered me out with its persistant goal of reminding me of the trials and triumphs of travelling. My three companions and I woke to see the sun rising over the mountains to peek into our little room in an isolated Slovak chalet. We rolled out of bed, packed up our bags, and decided to go on one last hike. We were rewarded for this effort when we found a hidden chapel built into a rock on the side of the mountain and a path that didn’t get our shoes muddy. We then dutifully reported to the bus stop, very concious that our very expensive train tickets necessitated getting back to Zilina by 4pm. When the bus was officially twenty minutes late, we started getting suspicious. Sure enough, the bus times are different on Sunday, and the next one wasn’t coming for us for three hours (reported the receptionist who did a terrible job of hiding her amusement). There followed 30 seconds of silence, until one of us suggested walking, and the rest, elated by the excessive hours of sleep the night before and woozy from lack of food (we were boycotting the chalet restaurant because we spent way too much money there the day before), agreed enthusiastically. Armed with Snickers bars from the vending machine, we strapped on our overloaded backpacks and set out on our 6km trek. Actually, it was extremely pleasant; the scenery was beautiful, it only took a little over an hour, and most cars gave us ample room as they swerved by us.
When we got to the main town, Terchova, we beelined to a grocery store just in time to see them lock the doors (they closed at 12; it was 12:05) and ignore our knocks. All of the restaurants were closed, so we trudged to the bus stop and looked hopefully at the bus schedule, which we could not interpret for anything. We asked several people near us, but either our Czech was bad or their understanding of the public transportation was worse, because nobody seemed to know. We only had to wait 40 minutes, though, and then we had a pleasant hour-long ride back to Zilina. When we got there, we practically ran the half mile to Tesco, where we ignored every rule about not shopping when hungry and the looks we got from skinny Slovaks and stocked up on food for pretty much the whole week. Between us there were; two full loaves of bread, nine rolls, two packages of sandwich meat, three separate types of cheese, two containers of yogurt, one container of cottage cheese, almonds, soy nuts, coconut shavings, three bars of chocolate, one package of bad cookies, one package of crackers, one big bag of bacon-flavored chips, five dobre ranos (more on these in a later entry), two peppers, seven apples, six bananas, three oranges, a grapefruit, a bag of green beans, a bag of pumpkin seeds, and I’m probably forgetting a lot. I only listed this because consuming all of this was our sole occupation for about four of the five hours on the train. People kept watching in awe as we pulled more and more food out of our bags.
The day before began with a bus ride in the opposite direction from Zilina to Vratna, but that ride was much more remarkable because it included our view of the first snow of the year! In Zilina it was snowing lightly but not sticking, but as we got further into the mountains (the Mala Fatras- they are small, but gorgeous) it snowed harder and stayed around, until we arrived in Vratna and there was about two inches of snow covering all of the trees and the ground on the mountains (I am not lying, it was so so gorgeous and as soon as I find my camera cord there will be pictures to prove it). Luckily, the air felt snow-warm (if you know what I mean), so we weren’t too cold as we set off for our first hike. We went for about two hours, with a pause to build some small snowmen and a creepy encounter with some other hikers who warned us about bears, then went back to the hotel for lunch. After lunch we went out again for the rest of the day, and after finding the muddiest/snowiest path, made it pretty deep into the mountainy woods, and pretty high up some mountains, as well. It was a perfect day, and it ended with a huge dinner at the same restaurant. We were all exhausted by this time, so we all did some homework/postcard writing and we were ready for bed by 8. This quiet was briefly interrupted by someone in an abominable snowman mascot suit knocking on our door (apparently it was a hotel employee—they were bored and the boss was gone?), which provided some good laughs, and then we slept.
It’s not just the hiking that tired us out; we all only got about 3 hours of sleep the night before. That’s because in Zilina there are some very very strange hotels. First, you should know that Zilina is a small city in Slovakia with not very much going for it. It was pretty much destroyed over the course of communism, etc, and has never recovered. It’s by far the least touristy place we’ve been, and was overall, ugly. We went there for two reasons. The first was to see the reality of some non-tourist towns in Central Europe, the second to visit yet another “alternative art space”- one of Sarah’s (my director’s) favorite attractions (to be fair, they fit in well with the theme of our program, but they’re not really my thing). This one was actually pretty neat. It’s called Stanice (meaning “station”), and it still functions as a main train station. However, they’ve also made it over into a coffeeshop, art gallery, garden, park, theater, and community center. They hold many classes there, particularily for children to do art, and almost every night they have some kind of performance. Many people in the community helped to make it over, and people visit from all over to offer their help. We actually spent the afternoon working in the garden raking leaves, mulching, and planting, which might sound arduous but was much-needed work for us, and it was a pleasant time and a gorgeous afternoon. It was nice to feel useful for a change. We saw a dance performance that night which was pretty extraordinary, even by my skeptical standards.
But the hotels were another story. The first night we stayed in the place Sarah usually has her students stay, but they had recently started renting out the second floor and it currently housed the strangest heat massage/dance therapy sessions I’ve ever seen. Anytime anyone from our group walked past and spied in we heard another strange detail. It might have been a cult. Because of this and the fact that they randomly cancelled our reservation for the second night, we moved to one of the only other hotels in Zilina, which was paired with a casino and had pictures that looked very much like porn on the walls. It was decent until girls in prom dresses showed up and started going into the large “ballroom”, where they were apparently entertained by a DJ until 3am, and I’m not joking. Therefore, we were also entertained by the same DJ, only we were in our rooms. Now it’s hilarious, because they played an eclectic mix of everything from Akon to the entire Grease medley, some in Czech and some in English.
***Interlude: It’s Monday night as I’m writing this. On my way home from school today I started feeling queasy, and since I’ve gotten to the house I have thrown up. A lot. I know that’s a gross thing to know about me, but this is ridiculous. I can’t figure out why Prague and my body don’t get along better.****
In Zilina I also had a particularily frustrating restaurant experience. We would tell the waitress what we wanted, and she would repeat back something different:
Claire: Prosim, dam si maly sopsky salat.
Waitress: Velky vegetarian pizza?
Claire: No, maly sopsky salat. (pointing at menu)
Waitress: Ehh....velky gretzky salat?
Claire: No...a small sopsky salad, please.
Waitress: Pizza?
Claire: Ne. Maly sopsky salat, prosim.
Waitress: Velke gretzky salat.
Claire: Sure.
The best experience was when my friend had a similar conversation with the same waitress trying to say that she wanted her water non-carbonated. We said this several different ways in Czech, pointed to the menu, and tried in English. It ended with the waitress saying, “You want bubbles?” My friend saying, “Yes, whatever” and in the end the waitress brought water without bubbles. It was so funny. Also, after we got our food we didn’t have any silverware, so we asked the waitress for some. There were four of us there, and she brought us two forks and two knives.
This was a trend in Slovakia. I’ll get to the full Bratislava story in a bit, but the waitresses there were absolutely RUDE. At one point I got something that was nothing like what I ordered. When she brought it I said, “Umm...this isn’t what I ordered. I said I wanted a chocolate milkshake.” The waitress told me I was lying, then shrugged and walked away. It’s funny now, but it was pretty annoying at the time. I think it’s a combination of them not having as many tourists (and thus not having the patience for us) with just a general lower expectation for service like that. It’s such a change from the US, and I’m surprised how startling it is for me.
But between Zilina and Bratislava there was KRAKOW. Let me first say that I never thought I would go to Poland in my life. I imagined it grey and dirty and foggy, full of poor people who were always crying. Well, not only did I go to Poland but I LOVED it and I realized that those thoughts were very, very wrong. On the van ride (the very long van ride) to Poland, I felt more and more excited and happy as I watched the hills get bigger as the sun set over Slovakia. We spotted several old, crumbling castles randomly nestled into the sides of hills. The second we crossed the Polish border, however, there were no more castles, and though it was dark, I felt right at home. All I could see were random houses or bars by the side of the road with Christmas lights on them. It was darling. On our ride out of Poland, it was light, and I realized that I had missed even better sights; cows by the side of the road, smoke coming out of every chimney, beautiful hilly farmland. It was all very picturesque, but none of it prepared me for KRAKOW.
Now, Prague and I have had a tumultuous relationship. We like each other for the most part, but Prague has made it very clear that I am on its turf, and I have to constantly be looking for small ways to get closer to it and earn its affection. Krakow is different. The moment I arrived, it told a joke, I laughed, and we were fast friends. Within the hour, we were holding hands, sharing secrets, and we were even comfortable being quiet together. Krakow just embraced me, and I loved it right back. I can’t quite put my finger on why- it was just in the whole atmosphere of the place. Anyway, I’ll tell you what I did there.
Perhaps I set Krakow up for success when I woke up early to go for a sunrise run the first morning there. I set out from the hotel on a park path, and I didn’t know it then, but as I stayed in that block-wide park I ran around the whole main quarters of the city. So, on my way, I saw about half of Krakow’s most beautiful sights, including several magnificent churches, the gigantic castle, and some gorgeous old museums, all in their best morning light. It was a perfect fall morning with frosty air and leaves of every color and sun sun sun, and the park was ideal; wide cobblestone pathways, many benches, even more trees, pretzel vendors, pigeons, and people on their way to work. These people were one of the first signals that Krakow would be different. They actually made eye contact with me, and a few even smiled. I had no idea how much I was missing that in Prague, and it made me downright jolly.
Hmm..I’m feeling like some sleep might do me good, and I want to do Krakow/Bratislava justice, so I’ll end for today, but I’ll post this so you know I’m back. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll finish the story of my trip, because I still have so many other things to write about! Take care, and again thanks for the emails.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Although I might like it for one afternoon, I don't want to live on the moon
I miss chocolate chip cookies. In the past week or so, thinking about them has become sort of an obsession for me. You just can’t find them here. They don’t even sell chocolate chips. The worst part is that there’s not even a suitable replacement, for there are no real cookies anywhere. Gingerbread-type cookies are popular, and if I see another wafer cookie I might explode, but nothing good and doughy. Yesterday in the grocery store I saw a package of chocolate chip cookies similar to the Chips Ahoy brand (you know, really processed, hard, not even a real cookie), and they were called “American cookies.” I got teary-eyed. I think that when I return from my next trip (we leave Friday for Slovakia and Poland), I’m going to have to shove Elena out of the kitchen for a bit and see if I can produce anything to satisfy my intense cravings.
Monday I went to the doctor. It was pretty nerve-wracking for me, to be honest. I never realized how intimidating a doctor’s office could be in a foreign place. Everyone there spoke English, but it was clearly a second language for all of them, and that alone was unsettling. I keep thinking about people in America who don’t speak English, and I have a newfound compassion for them. I find that everyday here is just a little more stressful, and even simple things are a little bit harder, because of the language barrier- and I’m lucky, because probably over half of the people here speak at least some English. I can’t even imagine being somewhere that nobody recognized my language- it would be incredibly, incredibly hard.
Anyway, the doctor was pretty typical. The only semi-strange thing that happened was that he said, “Now the nurse wil take a drop of your blood to measure the inflammatory levels in your body.” I have no clue how you measure inflammatory levels, or what that even means, but the nurse did it in about two minutes and apparently mine are fine. In fact, the conclusion was that I’ll live and I just need to get over it. He is doing a “few tests” and I’ll hear back for sure today, but I’m feeling a lot better except for a cold, so no worries there. Oh, I almost forgot-- one of the most surreal parts of the whole experience was when I looked down and noticed that the doctor was wearing socks with slippers in the doctors' office, and all of the nurses were, as well. This shoe thing is a little extreme, if you ask me.
Monday night I went to my first Czech birthday party, and immediately after I began to seek out more Czech friends so that I could attend more birthdays. It was for my older host-brother and was held at his girlfriend’s parents’ house. It was only my host family, but that made 12 of us. The house itself was absolutely incredible- it might actually be my dream house. It wasn’t huge, but everything in it was really nice and cozy, it was decorated beautifully, and the fireplace extended into a whole wall of bookcases again. The soccer game was on TV when we got there, so it almost felt like being in America :). There was SO MUCH FOOD, and we managed to eat a good portion of it. There were no less than five different types of meat on the table- two just sliced and ready to be eated plain, and two in dishes. We had delicious stuffed peppers again, and the best gulash I’ve tasted yet. They asked if I wanted salad, which turned out (to my dismay) to be my choice of two heaping pasta salads with thick sauces. I cannot understand how they eat so so much. For desert there was melon, a huge cheese plate, and two different types of cake. Throughout the night, I was also forced to consume two glasses of wine, three glasses of water, and two cups of tea. I don’t think I will ever eat again in my life. It’s so nice to be around a family, but it’s also tough to see them all enjoying being together, since I’m not able to be a part of that. Also, they spoke in Czech most of the time, and it’s almost more frustrating now that I know some of the words, because I’ll understand little snippets but not nearly enough to make any sense of it, and by the time I figure one thing out they’re on to the next thing. One of my host brothers sat next to me and tried to translate/fill me in occasionally, but it wasn’t like I could contribute. But overall it was a fun night.
Monday I went to the doctor. It was pretty nerve-wracking for me, to be honest. I never realized how intimidating a doctor’s office could be in a foreign place. Everyone there spoke English, but it was clearly a second language for all of them, and that alone was unsettling. I keep thinking about people in America who don’t speak English, and I have a newfound compassion for them. I find that everyday here is just a little more stressful, and even simple things are a little bit harder, because of the language barrier- and I’m lucky, because probably over half of the people here speak at least some English. I can’t even imagine being somewhere that nobody recognized my language- it would be incredibly, incredibly hard.
Anyway, the doctor was pretty typical. The only semi-strange thing that happened was that he said, “Now the nurse wil take a drop of your blood to measure the inflammatory levels in your body.” I have no clue how you measure inflammatory levels, or what that even means, but the nurse did it in about two minutes and apparently mine are fine. In fact, the conclusion was that I’ll live and I just need to get over it. He is doing a “few tests” and I’ll hear back for sure today, but I’m feeling a lot better except for a cold, so no worries there. Oh, I almost forgot-- one of the most surreal parts of the whole experience was when I looked down and noticed that the doctor was wearing socks with slippers in the doctors' office, and all of the nurses were, as well. This shoe thing is a little extreme, if you ask me.
Monday night I went to my first Czech birthday party, and immediately after I began to seek out more Czech friends so that I could attend more birthdays. It was for my older host-brother and was held at his girlfriend’s parents’ house. It was only my host family, but that made 12 of us. The house itself was absolutely incredible- it might actually be my dream house. It wasn’t huge, but everything in it was really nice and cozy, it was decorated beautifully, and the fireplace extended into a whole wall of bookcases again. The soccer game was on TV when we got there, so it almost felt like being in America :). There was SO MUCH FOOD, and we managed to eat a good portion of it. There were no less than five different types of meat on the table- two just sliced and ready to be eated plain, and two in dishes. We had delicious stuffed peppers again, and the best gulash I’ve tasted yet. They asked if I wanted salad, which turned out (to my dismay) to be my choice of two heaping pasta salads with thick sauces. I cannot understand how they eat so so much. For desert there was melon, a huge cheese plate, and two different types of cake. Throughout the night, I was also forced to consume two glasses of wine, three glasses of water, and two cups of tea. I don’t think I will ever eat again in my life. It’s so nice to be around a family, but it’s also tough to see them all enjoying being together, since I’m not able to be a part of that. Also, they spoke in Czech most of the time, and it’s almost more frustrating now that I know some of the words, because I’ll understand little snippets but not nearly enough to make any sense of it, and by the time I figure one thing out they’re on to the next thing. One of my host brothers sat next to me and tried to translate/fill me in occasionally, but it wasn’t like I could contribute. But overall it was a fun night.
Sunday, October 7, 2007
Claire as a Tourist: Take One
Today I intended to go to the opening of David Cerny’s new gallery/exhibit (he’s a Modern sculptor who I’ll talk more about if/when I actually go to said exhibit- hopefully later this week), and in doing so catch a Plastic People of the Universe Concert (If you don’t know the story behind the Plastic People or their connection with Czech history, you should really look it up, it’s quite fascinating). I didn’t end up doing either of those things, and I’m a bit nervous that I’ll regret not seeing the PPU, but I had a really great day anyway.
I started out at Vysehrad and the surrounding park. Vysehrad was the site of the first castle in Prague, but all that remains are some pretty impressive walls that make you wonder what force could have possibly destroyed them. Now the inside of the walls is mostly a large park. It was a gorgeous autumn day, and I was really enjoying just walking around, but sure enough there was some Medieval festival going on so I was also treated to seeing people dressed as knights in full armour walking down the path next to me. Vysehrad is also the site of a pretty significant-sized and beautifully-painted church, which I peeked into (I was too cheap to pay the ten-koruna fee for students, which would be about 50 cents. I got the jist of it anyway, and maybe when my family comes I can make them pay for me J ), and bordering the church, this phenomenal graveyard. It’s so hard to describe the graveyards around here; they cram in graves so close to one another that you worry a bit about whether there’s actually room for the bodies in such narrow sections. Furthermore, the headstones aren’t like ours, they’re all HUGE monolithic masterpieces. Each headstone is for an entire family, so I guess it makes sense, but it’s still unbelievable. I’m assuming that family members are buried on top of one another, and maybe when you know that you feel so guilty about squashing great-grandpa for eternity that you spring for the expensive stone. I took some pictures, which might give you a better idea. Though there were a lot of people there, I was the only one taking pictures, so I’m not sure that it’s actually legal for me to have them, and I’ll admit I felt a little disrespectful, but nobody told me to stop and you have to see this. Anyway, this graveyard housed some pretty impressive figures, like Dvorak and Jan Neruda, so that was neat to see. I tried to look for a family name I recognized, but there were too many to see all of them (and many were hidden behind rows of others), and anyway I don’t think flashy is our family’s style, anyway. I did, however, find a Vesely, for those of you from SP.
The rest of the day maybe isn’t as exciting for you to hear about. I’m finally getting oriented and realizing how easy it is to walk everywhere (sorry Tim, but get ready to move on your vacation). I bought a new hair dryer, since after about 6 years my trusty old one decided that four weeks of working with a voltage converter was enough and officially retired. I also bought a voice recorder (I need one for interviewing for my final project) and the guy promised me that it would work, so now you’re all witnesses to that. I found a new café, and finally read in a park, which I’ve been meaning to do this whole time. I also walked by the river and saw Charles Bridge at night for the first time.
Sorry, this entry’s more for me so that I can remember what I did. I’ve been a little spacey all day because of this cold, as well. I know I keep promising this, but expect better updates soon.
I started out at Vysehrad and the surrounding park. Vysehrad was the site of the first castle in Prague, but all that remains are some pretty impressive walls that make you wonder what force could have possibly destroyed them. Now the inside of the walls is mostly a large park. It was a gorgeous autumn day, and I was really enjoying just walking around, but sure enough there was some Medieval festival going on so I was also treated to seeing people dressed as knights in full armour walking down the path next to me. Vysehrad is also the site of a pretty significant-sized and beautifully-painted church, which I peeked into (I was too cheap to pay the ten-koruna fee for students, which would be about 50 cents. I got the jist of it anyway, and maybe when my family comes I can make them pay for me J ), and bordering the church, this phenomenal graveyard. It’s so hard to describe the graveyards around here; they cram in graves so close to one another that you worry a bit about whether there’s actually room for the bodies in such narrow sections. Furthermore, the headstones aren’t like ours, they’re all HUGE monolithic masterpieces. Each headstone is for an entire family, so I guess it makes sense, but it’s still unbelievable. I’m assuming that family members are buried on top of one another, and maybe when you know that you feel so guilty about squashing great-grandpa for eternity that you spring for the expensive stone. I took some pictures, which might give you a better idea. Though there were a lot of people there, I was the only one taking pictures, so I’m not sure that it’s actually legal for me to have them, and I’ll admit I felt a little disrespectful, but nobody told me to stop and you have to see this. Anyway, this graveyard housed some pretty impressive figures, like Dvorak and Jan Neruda, so that was neat to see. I tried to look for a family name I recognized, but there were too many to see all of them (and many were hidden behind rows of others), and anyway I don’t think flashy is our family’s style, anyway. I did, however, find a Vesely, for those of you from SP.
The rest of the day maybe isn’t as exciting for you to hear about. I’m finally getting oriented and realizing how easy it is to walk everywhere (sorry Tim, but get ready to move on your vacation). I bought a new hair dryer, since after about 6 years my trusty old one decided that four weeks of working with a voltage converter was enough and officially retired. I also bought a voice recorder (I need one for interviewing for my final project) and the guy promised me that it would work, so now you’re all witnesses to that. I found a new café, and finally read in a park, which I’ve been meaning to do this whole time. I also walked by the river and saw Charles Bridge at night for the first time.
Sorry, this entry’s more for me so that I can remember what I did. I’ve been a little spacey all day because of this cold, as well. I know I keep promising this, but expect better updates soon.
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