So, first of all, pardon my absence. I kind of just took a five-day
hiatus. I’m sure you managed to fill your days just fine without reading my
blog. Alas, vacations don’t last forever and I have some catching up to do.
A brief run down of my weekend and week up to this point –
Saturday I went to Kutna Hora, a wealthy city in the middle ages due to its
silver deposits, and then went to Karlovy Lazne, the largest club in Central
Europe. Sunday was a rehabilitation day as I recovered from a long day on Saturday
before finally getting up and about for a picnic with Sarah along the river for
dinner. Yesterday, Monday, was pretty routine – more Czech intensive, though
when that was done, I cooked myself a miniature feast before going out to see a
truly bizarre faux documentary called “The Greatest Czech.” Today was yet more
Czech class followed by an expo of some extracurricular activities that are
available to us as students this semester. Read on for some more details.
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| It may be early, but I have my camera. |
To go to Kutna Hora, we had to wake up and meet at a bus
station thirty minutes away at an ungodly hour, 8:45. Being the responsible
young man I am (see here for details: Proof
of my maturity), I went to sleep early Friday night and sacrificed a night
at the clubs to insure that I wouldn’t miss the trip. I love to dance, it’s
true, but there’s something about buildings that are 600 years old that is just
so compelling to me.
Kutna Hora is about an hour and a half from Prague by bus,
so we had some time to kill on the ride over. I had brought my iPod with me so,
I plugged in and shared a headphone with Meghan, who sat with me, and began my
version of the lecture for the popular Madison class, Black Music. I even
offered a quiz every three minutes (following a song), by asking Meghan a few
brief questions about what she’d just listened to. It was quickly apparent that
my quizzes were unsolicited (apparently Meghan didn’t realize she’d signed up
for my class), so I discontinued them and we listened to classic beats in
peace.
A view of the cathedral of Kutna Hora greeted us immediately
upon our arrival in the city, replete with flowers and flying buttresses; the
cathedral was as impressive as any in Prague (as, we learned later, was the
city’s intention). After a quick tour of the cathedral and a few fun facts
(like that statues inside that look life size – because of their distance from
the ground – are in fact 3 ½ meters tall) we moved on to the silver mines and
the town’s museum.
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| Kutna Hora Cathedral |
The museum was pretty cool, kind of typical, though they did
have a large granary type building, which was used to bring the silver ore to
the surface, that was open to walk in. A lot of the students went down into the
mines to see the conditions a miner faced on a daily basis (except they brought
flashlights). I think of myself as pretty brave, but I have a few fears in
life, they include, but are not limited to: heights, confined spaces, dark
spaces, and rejection. Caves, which qualify for multiple, are not places to
which I like to volunteer my fragile psyche. So, I sat on the sidelines with a
few other scaredy-cats and waited comfortably in the sun while the rest of the
group trudged through cramped, damp spaces just to say they did. I should
mention that I have done the cave thing before, so it’s not that I have never
experienced these sensations, only that I didn’t want to do so again.
When the rest of the group finally returned, it was time for
lunch. Yum. We went to a traditional beer garden for a hearty Czech meal (sans
alcohol for me) before going to the Bone Church!
The Bone Church was crazy, disturbing, unique and quite
frankly creepy. This is a church in which someone thought it would be a good
idea to decorate with human bones. The result is a chandelier composed of every
bone in a human body, arrangements of bones in the shape of crests, and huge
pyramids of skulls and other bones. According to Wikipedia, somewhere between
40 and 70,000 people’s bones reside within the church.
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| The Bone Crest |
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| Kids in the Bone Church |
--Bus ride back to Prague = (uncomfortable) nap time--
Saturday night, after watching the Badgers roll to a win
over San Jose State, I went out to dinner with Meghan, Anita, and Devin. I had
already cooked for myself around five, so I wasn’t particularly hungry, but
never one to turn down a meal, I accompanied them. We were going to go to the
Vietnamese restaurant on our street, but it had just closed so we found a
pizzeria and split two pizzas and a bottle of wine between the four of us.
Then we went to Karlovy Lanze! This is the biggest club in
central Europe and consequently a huge tourist attraction (trap). Not only is
it one of the only clubs I’ve been to that has a cover charge even for women,
but also the beers are three to four times as expensive as in other places.
That’s okay though, I didn’t go to the club to drink. I went to dance. I don’t
know how the club manages it, but every floor was full. I mean sure, some, like
the “Black Music” floor (which is what Czech’s apparently call Hip-Hop and
R&B) had more people crammed onto the dance floor than the Oldies floor,
but we still had a ton of fun during our sojourn on the oldies floor with
friends like ABBA and Frankie Valli to entertain us.
After dancing for several hours and souring my clothes with
sweat, we called it a night and tried our luck with the night tram. After a
slight miscue (Devin took us to the wrong stop), I asked a lonely Russian
student if she could help us find our way home. Happy for the company on her
walk, she obliged and helped us navigate the streets of Prague and locate our
tram stop.
--Fast forward to 7 PM Sunday--
My friend Sarah has invited me to have dinner with her along
the river so I’m trying to get my act together and meet her at the tram stop
before heading over to the river together.
I failed. First I went to the wrong stop, then I went the
wrong direction, but fortunately, Sarah is understanding and didn’t seem to
mind that I had kept her waiting for nearly ten minutes.
We found a nice little wall in a park on which to spread out
our food. The wall was in a park, which I think is called Slovansky Ostrov, but
just a block or two from the National Theater. Sarah brought a full spread and
it was delicious. We had bread and cheese, tomatoes, raspberries, pistachios,
Nutella for dessert and a bottle of wine (which we barely touched in the end).
Everything about the meal was enjoyable. We had good food,
pleasant weather and great company. I’d only spoken with Sarah a few times
before, so having a few hours to ourselves I definitely got to know her a bit
better. We talked about a whole range of subjects from her anxiety of finding
work to how she hates to be late to things. The conversation was organic and
never felt forced. We embraced the lulls (something I always struggle with) and
just looked out on the river until conversation picked back up naturally. We
stayed at the river for a little over two hours before heading back.
At this point, this post is getting quite long, and I’ve
already been told I’m verbose, so I’ll try to be more concise moving forward
(besides, hearing about Czech class really isn’t that interesting).
--Monday Evening--
One of the extra curricular groups that I’ve signed up for
this semester is Art and Film. So far it’s been some movie screenings and I
missed the first one, but yesterday, Hanka invited us to attend a screening of The Greatest Czechs. It’s a weird movie.
The basic premise is that a director who cannot get funding for a movie he
wants to make is instead induced to make a movie about Czech world record
holders (Guiness type records – so, the smallest motorcycle, the strongest man,
etc.). The film follows him and his crew around as they shoot the movie all
across the country.
Quite honestly, the best part of the movie came before the
opening credits when the theater alerted us to their popcorn free culture
through this add: Popcorn
Free Culture.
After the movie, Meghan invited a few of us out to dinner to
meet her friend Nicka from Switzerland who is in town for a few days. We found
a small pub near the theater and settled in for some light conversation. I
didn’t want to eat (I had cooked myself dinner before the movie) and I didn’t
really want to drink a beer, so I ordered ice cream. I don’t know where I
picked up this tendency, but when I don’t know what I want (the options all
looked good), I ask the server what their favorite dish is. Some waiters try to
be diplomatic and say they’re all good, but last night, I found a winner and
she pointed to a dish with three scoops of ice cream, whipped cream (Hi Garson)
and Pirouettes. It was a-mazing.
-- Tuesday’s Czech Class--
Side note: I apologize in advance for the negative tone of
the following few paragraphs.
While I really wish that I could honestly say that everyone
on this trip is my best friend that just wouldn’t be true. One such kid is in
my Czech class. He seems to get along just fine with plenty of people, so I
know it’s something about our personalities that just doesn’t mesh, but almost
immediately it was clear that this great friendship wasn’t going to blossom
between us.
You know that old social convention when someone says
something self-deprecating you mitigate it, even if you cannot deny it (i.e.
“Oh my, I am SO fat!” is followed by “Oh that’s not true, besides, who wants to
be a twig.” – sorry, that’s the first example I could think of)? I don’t know
if this kid missed that lesson in etiquette school, but the other day I confessed
that I wasn’t very good at Czech (not a stretch of the imagination) and used
some colorful language to really hammer in my point. Well, instead of
dismissing my comments as a joke, he responds, “Yeah, you’re terrible.”
Cool, really cool. I know you don’t me that well yet buddy,
but that’s not exactly a good way to get there. It’s one thing to agree with
someone (“Yeah, you’re not great.”), but something completely different to
leave absolutely no doubt on your opinion. I should also comment that this kid
isn’t great at the language, he just has a head start because he took a few
years of Latin and has worked with declensions. Prick.
Anyway, the reason I’m bringing him up today rather then
last week when he actually made those comments is because he insulted our
teacher today. Insult me, fine, I’ll get over it, but don’t insult someone who
is there solely for your benefit. Don’t blame it on her that you stayed out too
late and can barely function for class.
One of our exercises was to arrange dialogue in the proper
order and match them with their corresponding pictures. Nothing was in order
(even though this kid claimed they were) and when he discovered his mistake all
he could say was how stupid everything was: how stupid the book was, how stupid
the exercise was, how stupid the teacher was for assigning it.
I just grit my teeth and tried to ignore him, and for the
rest of the lesson, I tried to participate even more. Not only did it give him
fewer opportunities to complain (though with my numerous mistakes I’m sure he
was just thinking about how terrible I was), but also I think it helped me. Who
know that frustration could be such a motivating factor to learn a language?
--Extracurricular Expo--
I promised a few details on the extracurricular expo, so
before I sign off, I’ll just get to that.
CIEE does a really amazing job at offering a ton of
different ways to get to know the city through different groups and interest
groups. Today wasn’t the interet groups, but different activities that we can
participate in to get to know the city (and the surrounding area). Some of the
activities that I looked into today are, in no particular order, yoga, walking tours,
Chabad services for Yom Kippur, and some optional trips that the program offers
to Vienna and, hopefully, Krakow.
And with that, I have to go study for my quiz tomorrow!
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