Teaser

I'm home (!) and planning to write a superentry including details from Christmas dinner, lists about my semester, and stories from all of my travels with Tim.

You've probably already guessed, correctly, that I survived, so that's not much of a cliffhanger, but nobody knows about my brother...

One last Whoo-hoo...

Oh my goodness I have had an action-packed couple of days. Wednesday I went to the Joseph Lada (gosh I think that’s right but I don’t have the energy to look up his name right now) exhibit. He’s an artist who did almost cartoon-like images, including illustrating The Good Soldier Svejk, which is extremely famous. My friend’s host sister played a big part in putting the exhibit together, so we got free tickets. It was good to see. That night I also went to a concert in the Rostoky castle. It featured a violinist, pianist, and bassist who played absolutely beautiful music. I really needed that relaxation. The concert was organized as part of the push towards community multicultural education, and we were supposed to be learning about Asian cultures. At the end we got a little refreshment tray with a piece of sushi on one side and a chicken finger on the other.

Thursday brings me to the meatier part of my story. During the day things were pretty unremarkable except for the sudden appearance of the carp-selling men. On almost every corner there now is a table flanked by around three tubs about 4 feet in diameter and 3 feet deep. These tubs are FULL of live carp (I have pictures). When someone comes along and requests a carp, then men reach in, pull one out, kill it, and proceed to scale it, remove the swim bladder and other internal organs (I didn’t get close enough to find out exactly which were kept and which were left), and finally bag it up. This is all done on a visibly bloody and presumably dirty table right outside on any streetcorner, usually with bare hands. Elena and Jan just bought ours this morning. Only three days ‘til Christmas dinner!

Thursday night I was lucky to get to go to the Monkey Business concert. You might remember that my host brother-in-law is the lead singer for this (famous in the CR) band, and they were finally performing in Prague. The concert was in Lucerna in this huge room with three levels of balconies. Simon and I were on the first floor, which was all standing room, and we got there early enough to be right next to the part of the stage that came out into the crowd. The show was really fun; the band was all in weird costumes and always joking, Elaine-style dancing abounded. The music is in English, very pop, almost 70s-sounding. I can’t say it’s my favorite, but they’re very talented and the show had really high energy. It was really high-energy. It was so strange to me to see someone who was just eating dinner with us at the house three days ago onstage with thousands of adoring fans screaming at him. He saw Simon and I and gave Simon a high-five and grabbed my hand, so I felt very special. (To give you some idea of his fame- he’s appeared in movies, etc and the band is quite popular- I’m going to go ahead and call him the Justin Timberlake of the Czech Republic. Maybe that’s too far, but the point is he’s a big deal.) At one point he grabbed a violin and started playing it and Simon said, “Hey, that’s my old violin.” It was all very surreal.

After the concert we got to go to the “afterparty” with my host-sister, Karolina (the lead singer’s wife). I wasn’t aware of this option before it came up, but how do you say no to an afterparty, especially when you’ve never been to one before? We had to go through two rounds of security (more than it takes to go to Slovakia!) before we got into the backstage area. There, we were greeted with food, tables, people talking...and that’s about it. I was a bit crushed, admittedly. Where was the sex? The drugs? Fabulous people doing scandalous things? I did meet the lyricist for the band, who spoke English of course. He wasn’t that interesting, to be honest, but I felt like I was rubbing elbows with some fairly important people. it turns out this was only the preafterparty. We were then ushered up to the club section of Lucerna where the band had its own balcony reserved. Here things were quite a bit more exciting, with dancing, drinking, and a lot of people who were probably more interesting if you spoke better Czech. I wasn’t drinking, and at this point that put me at least three drinks behind the next soberist person there (this was the beginning of the night, mind you. These people could drink a lot). It ended up being quite fun, and I had a really good time. We finally were kicked out around 3:30 in the morning (gasp, I know), and stopped to get greasy food from some vendors on the street before stumbling into another, far sketchier bar. By 5 everyone was exhausted (This is not the lifestyle for me- I was sleepy by about 11 and half-sleeping since about 2). The bus to Rostoky starts running again at 5, so I tried to convince them that I just wanted to go home, explaining that I slept better when I was someplace familiar and that I’d rather not go to sleep just to have to wake up and move. This was solidly regected as a terrible plan, and I felt obliged to listen to them, since they had been paying for food/drinks all night, were famous, let me come to their party, spoke to me in English, and actually lived in the city and spoke the language. I ended up going with Simon to my host brother’s house and falling asleep at around 6.

And thus begins the most surreal morning of my life. Simon went to school at 8:30, which woke me up. I couldn’t fall back asleep, so I decided to finally go back to the house, but when I tried to leave, I couldn’t open the door. Please don’t make fun of me. There were several knobs and I tried every possible combination- literally 15 minutes of attempts- but couldn’t do it. I decided to try to sleep until someone else woke up, but by 10 no one had moved and I was very awake. I gave the door one last tug but it was stubborn. I knocked on the door of a room where I assumed I would find my older host brother and/or his girlfriend. Hearing nothing, I cracked it open and saw a girl who I didn’t know sit up in bed and a dog who was with her get up and come over to be pet by me. The girl looked about my age and was clearly even more confused that I was. “Nemuzu...open the door” I tried to explain. She finally understood and battled the door herself, but she had no more success than I. We ended up calling my host brother’s girlfriend, who after trying to give us instructions over the phone told us that she was coming home in a half hour anyway. (If you’re confused about this story, good, because that’s exactly how I felt while these events were happening.) The girl looked at me and we tried to talk but quickly discovered that she didn’t know any English and I didn’t know nearly enough Czech. She offered, “Coffee? Tea? Cigarette?” and I accepted the tea. She then asked, “I am hungry?” and I answered no, hoping that she wasn’t. We went back into the room she had been sleeping in and watched the movie “The Santa Claus” dubbed in Czech.

My host brother arrived at the house and had no trouble getting in from outside. It turns out the girl was their friend. I didn’t ask too many more questions because things were already confused enough. I got back to the house at about 12 and took a much-needed shower. I’m not a napper, even after a 2-hour sleep night, so I headed back into Prague to do some last Christmas errands. Mid-afternoon, I stopped at a heralded creperie/cafe to get some food. As I was eating, a guy entered and I recognized him as the student who had been with the famous author I met and then stood up. It was one of those very awkward “should I say something?” situations, and I (being who I am) of course decided to keep quiet. As I was leaving, however, he said, “Hey, are you American? I mean, of course you are American, but...”. Since this query was more awkward than anything I could say (and also a bit ego-deflating), I admitted that yes, I was this certain American and I remembered him from Kabinet (the café where we had met). We talked for awhile and he said that neither he nor my famous author had been able to keep our date, but that they had wondered about me often in the past month (!!!!!) and were hoping that I didn’t think they were rude. I told him that I hadn’t made it, either, and had the same concern. He insisted that I write down his number and call the next time I’m in Prague (even if it’s not for five years) so that we can reunite and I can tell the famous author what I thought of the Hrabal book.

Excited by that, I went to the train station and waited in line for over and hour to buy tickets for my family. On the metro to Tesco, I was accosted by one of the transportation patrol ticket-checker men. Now, the entire time I’ve been here I’ve had a school-purchased three-month pass, so I never had to worry about any tickets. I had a vague notion that my pass had expired on Monday, but I hadn’t let this thought fully enter the “knowing” section of my brain. This fact did not escape the ticket-checker, the heartless, scheming, terrible ticket-checker. He called over a fellow marshal and as they exchanged a cruel grin my heart sank. They asked where I was from. They asked for my passport (of course I didn’t have my passport with me!). Then one said in a threatening voice, “Well, what will we do? You have no ticket, you have no money, you have no passport...” “I HAVE MONEY” I almost screamed. I ended up paying 500 crowns, which is about $25. From the glance that passed between the men I’m fairly certain they will pocket at least half of that, but it could have been worse. The worst part is that I had just bought tickets for when my family is here, and this was literally the second to last time I was going to use the transportation without a ticket. Cruel, cruel world.

Last story: I made my way to TESCO (like a Super-Walmart or Super-Target) for tissue paper. Earlier in the week I bought gift bags, but they didn’t have tissue paper. There was still no tissue paper. I went to another TESCO and found no tissue paper. Finally the last store I tried had tissue paper, but only lavendar or seafoam green (not exactly complementary to my bright red giftbags) and only in packs of 2 sheets of tissue paper. Who in their right mind only needs 2 sheets of tissue paper?!?! This is very common, I can’t tell you how many times Elena has been looking for something only to find that the store is out. She complains, but she also expects it. I tell you this story because it proves I’m not a true Czech- a true Czech would have gone in search of tissue paper, been exasperated at the lack of tissue paper, complained about there being no tissue paper, but then come home with the knowledge that they had stocked up on tissue paper last Christmas and there was no real problem. I, on the other hand, cannot yet plan this far in advance. But I’m learning...

Okay, this is really long and probably fairly convoluted and hard to read- I’m still recovering from the lack of sleep two nights ago. My family comes tomorrow (!!!!!!!) and I can’t wait. I probably won’t update this for over two weeks, and I’m not sure what I’ll do as far as this blog when I’m back in the states. Suggestions?

525,600 Minutes

I’ve been so good about writing lately that I’m making myself keep it up, but I’ll admit I don’t have the will to organize, so some scattered items:

- It is COLD in this house. So cold that I’ve been going to bed earlier and earlier because under my comforter is the only guaranteed non-shiver location. The house doesn’t have central heating, so we have to keep all of the doors closed, and in the hallway/staircase, which isn’t heated at all, I imagine that it’s colder than it is outside. Of course this isn’t true, but it’s close, and that cold creeps into all of the rooms. This is true of all of the Czech houses I’ve heard of- one of my friends confessed she spends her evenings hugging the heater- but it’s still not pleasant. In addition, the heating in the kitchen, which used to be the warmest room in the house, recently broke, so now the other rooms downstairs must try to compensate, and my haven is gone. It’s survivable, of course, but I don’t think I’m exaggerating too much when I say it is very very cold.

- Today I saw maybe the most harrowing thing I’ve seen since I’ve been in Prague; I watched a taxi cut over the tram tracks and get plowed into by the tram. Prague has quite the reputation for crazy traffic, and according to Simon accidents dominate the news every night, but this was my first sighting. The passenger popped out of the taxi right away, but I never saw the driver emerge. The accident meant that my tram’s path was blocked, and I decided to switch to the metro rather than wait to see the outcome.

- Today also brought me perhaps the most beautiful Prague sight yet: the view from Petrin Hill. I view Petrin an average of 8 times a day, but I had not yet made my way to the top. I decided to forego the draw of the famous cable car and trek up by foot- a choice I don’t regret. Petrin is crowed by a miniature version of the Eiffel Tower, in a somewhat humorous and certainly meager gesture by Praguers eager to see themselves as part of Eastern Europe. I again chose to stay on ground and watch the sunset from the paths which weave through the park. It was the first sunny day in a long time, which meant that my evening was beautiful.

- Last night Elena asked if I wanted to learn how to make Cabbage soup. Of course I did, so I watched and even got to stir. I think I can replicate it fairly easily. The key step, she explained, is boiling the cabbage separately first to “remove the bad water so it does not make you fart.” That’s a paraphrase, not an exact quote, but I think I came close. It did make some very good soup. I then hung around to see if she would let me help with anything else. She had premade dough for gingerbread cookies (only 1/3 of the amout she usually makes, she said, though we still produced well over 300 cookies), and she was rolling them out, cutting them, and then baking. I hoped to be able to flourish a cookie cutter, but was judged not yet fit for that job. I did, however, get to brush egg over the cookies as they came out of the oven to make them shiny, which was more fun anyway. Elena was not pleased with the resulting cookies, but assured me it was not my fault- she had used a different recipe than usual. I find this hard to believe, since I have not so much as heard the word recipe spoken since I came to Prague, but at least it takes me off the hook.

- I think I keep forgetting to tell two stories about Czechs which have greatly endeared them to me (have I already written about these? If so, sorry). Both were told to me during my history lessons and both involve their resistance to outside rule. The first is that during the previews to movies, when the screen played either Nazi or Communist rhetoric, everyone in the movie theater would whistle so as to not hear the message. The second is that in 1969 when the Soviets re-invaded Prague, the Praguers did not put up any physical barriers but they did take down all of the street signs. Prague is hard enough to navigate with full labeling, so it makes me chuckle to think of the tanks getting lost on their way to Staromeska namesti. Prague to this day is notoriously difficult to traverse, and while the signs for public transport are informative, they are also very small and usually hidden. I like to think of the Czechs protecting their city from tourists (and me, I guess) in the same way they guarded it against the Communists.

Weekend Update

My new favorite Czech word is “drb”. It means “gossip”, but I like it better for its phonetics than for its meaning. I haven’t had much “drb” in my head lately- though our group has certainly supplied plenty, there’s something about the end that makes the silly stories that came between much less important.

On Saturday I spent the day with my fellow students, most of whom flew out this morning. We hit our favorite café/pub, Krasny Straty (It means “beautiful losses”, and I was actually there two distint times Saturday alone), but ended up at a new place, a pub called Mlyn (mill) on Kampa, the island between Malostrana and the river. It was a pleasant night and a fitting goodbye. I’m sounding sentimental now, but I really don’t feel that sad. The few good friends I’ve made here I expect to see again- it’s more the end of the experience that’s getting to me.

Sunday was a stark contrast to Saturday as it was a day of domesticity. I was “helping” Elena prepare for a party that night, which meant that I performed small jobs and then waited patiently for her to find something else that I couldn’t screw up. I did get to see her prepare poppyseed, which is a first for me. We put it through a mincer, and though I couldn’t tell the difference between pre- and post- mince poppyseed, it was apparently much smaller and better. The quantity of poppyseed in the house right now is enormous, and I’m curious to see in what form we eat it. Elena had me eat a plain spoonfull, and I guess it was good, though I can’t imagine eating it like that all of the time. We also made about a billion of these marshmallow-like things. We sqeezed the batter out of a bag (I felt like the Target cake lady) onto cookie sheets and then baked them, and they are delicious, though I don’t know what they are.
The actual party began at 5. It was partially a Christmas party but mostly a surprise celebration for Elena’s 90 year old aunt, Verunka. Verunka, or Vera, herself was a tiny woman but very strong-willed. Everyone kept telling me she was in a bad mood, but I couldn’t tell myself. Apparently she was a specialist in Oriental culture. Three of her friends were here, and they all had studied some part of “The West”—one was an expert on India, one on China, etc. I bet they were having phenomenal conversations, and I would have loved to hear the Czech perspective on the culture, but alas I heard only Czech. It was hard to focus on anything, actually, because there were about 20 people in the house, which is a lot for this house, all trying to sqeeze around the table to eat, etc. It was really overwhelming. At first I was understanding a lot but I soon grew tired and couldn’t listen as carefully anymore. We ate a ton, of course- two pasta dishes, something I would call cabbage-tomato soup, and two cakes- one with strawberry and bananas, the other with pineapple. Otherwise, the night was pretty unremarkable. I can't wait for a family gathering that includes my real family!

Closing Time

On Tuesday night after everyone finished presenting, we had a big farewell party for all of our host families, advisors, etc. It was more fun than I expected, but I was exhausted and got back to the house at like 11. Simon ended up staying afterwards with some of the people from the program, which is cool. After I got back I talked to my mom on Skype and did some emailing, then went to bed.

The next day my fellow students and I left for a retreat in a northern region of the Czech Republic called Ceske Svycarsko, or Czech Switzerland. More on that in a bit. That night, I saw that I had a message on my phone from Elena. It read (and I quote exactly), “Claire are you ok? I heard desperate cry from your room on my way to bed last night. Why? Can I do something for you? Was Simon reason of sad? Big hug. E.” I of course could not figure out what she was talking about. I might have exclaimed or something while talking to my mom, but certainly I did not utter any sound worthy of the description “desperate cry”. I texted her back saying that I was fine and didn’t know what she heard but thanks for the concern, to which she replied, “Ok. Just tell me if problem will sometimes appear. Maybe homesick. Take care.” I have no idea what any of that is about, but I thought the whole situation was pretty amusing, and again, it’s nice to know that someone cares, even if they are hallucinating things to be worried about.

In any case, the day we left was pretty terrible, weather-wise, and because of the rain and the low-30s temperature, we didn’t have any of the snow I was hoping for, even in the mountains. These mountains, which I would classify more as large hills, were gorgeous nonetheless, and the drive up through huge pine trees, small rivers, and winding roads bordered by idyllic little cottages was amazing. Our pension was also adorable- everything was wood, yet it was fairly modern. There was a pub downstairs where we spent a lot of time and a lounge where we played a lot of games. I didn’t do much on Wednesday, but on Thursday I went for a long hike with a few friends. We basically climed a mountain and ended up at a pretty famous rock formation which looks like a gateway or a bridge. (Pictures are coming, I promise.) It was a great afternoon which ended with a quick jump across the German border, since we suddenly found ourselves right on it.

That night, we had a big end-of-the-program (most students leave on Monday, and this was our last organized activity) feast which featured goose, dumplings, saurkraut, pickled cabbage, and wine, all of which was delicious. Then I was the star of a mini graduation ceremony which they organized to celebrate my completion of college. It was really cute, and I appreciate their congratulations. I donned a paper hat and received a delightful Czech diploma and a fortune teller which predicts my future. Though it was sweet, I was a bit embarrassed, so to my delight it was a short event, followed by a nostalgic slideshow of pictures from our time on the program. It was a little sappy for my taste, but I have found myself feeling pretty sad lately when I realize that the semester is already over (perhaps I did let out a desperate cry...? Naw...).

Today we wandered around the tiny town we were in. I’ll have to show you pictures, but for now just know that all of the cottages were adorable, old, and looked very German. It was strange to see so much German writing, too- almost as much as Czech. It gave the German forth of my blood a pleasurable tingle. The town looked extremely deserted, probably because most of the houses were Czech families’ weekend cottages, but also just because everything is so old and half run-down.

It did start snowing as we were leaving, though by the time we got to Prague we were treated by a gorgeous sunset and there was no snow in sight. On my walk up the hill back to the house, I noticed a sudden influx of Christmas lights in the neighborhood. By this I mean that about every third house now has a single strand of lights displayed outside. Sometimes it is around a window, sometimes decorating a tree, but there is never more than one strand per house. Though the effect can’t compare to the spectacles of US Christmas lights, the modest twinkling somehow seemed much more Christmassy tonight. It’s going to be hard to leave.