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?