going back in time (literally and figuratively)

I haven't updated in quite some time and many travels have ensued since then, so here goes--

My last days in Praha were too short but wonderful; I went back to Petrin and finally got to go up the the pseudo Eiffel tower and into the mirror labyrinth, and also finally went to the castle and saw some of its innards. I got to bake vanocka, the Czech braided Christmas bread studded with raisins and almonds--DELICIOUS. My host family made me a good-bye party, which was very sweet. They baked my absolute favorite, palacinky with tvaroh (pancakes with cottage cheese and also marmalade) and we exchanged holiday gifts and all played cards together. I miss them already.

I flew to England rather early on a Sunday morning and proceeded to take a very nice coach bus to OXFORD where I was met by my dear friend Gwen who is studying at Wadham (one of the colleges at Oxford) for the year. We went back to her flat, a very lovely flat, where we met another dear friend Sarah. The next day I got a grand tour of the city (village? town?) of Oxford, which is old and beautiful. First was the Botanical Gardens, which are enchanted and make you feel like you're in The Secret Garden. We went into Wadham to see the grounds and the cathedral and the "lingering tree," a tree you are not allowed to linger under, so naturally everyone does. I walked around the Bodleian Library, had a cream tea, went into St. Mary's cathedral and explored Blackwell's Booksellers. For dinner it had to be something quintessentially British, so we went to the kebab place. (Yes, kebab places have truly supplanted fish and chips as Britain's late-night food of choice.)

The next day another dear friend, Abby, arrived from Manchester and we did some more exploring of the town, mostly going to Christchurch college, the inspiration for Alice in Wonderland as well as Hogwarts, and stopped at the Wadham pub, the King's Arms. The day was finished off with a bang with high tea, which involves scones, clotted cream, jam, cucumber sandwiches, cake, and of course, tea. Tres elegante. Alas, I had to leave early the next morning, but I would definitely like to go back to England someday and explore more...London, Canterbury, Stonehenge, York...

I went back to California for a short few days and am now in lush and tropical Kauai with the family. I'll be back in California in time for New Year's. Next semester: the Middle East!

konec

the last blog entry from the Czech Republic...short but sweet....

Germany was wonderful, I was in Goselhuring, Spauding, Regensburg and Nuremburg, all part of Bavaria, and saw many Christkindlmarkts (Christmas markets) and amazing cathedrals and cemetaries and explored the Nazi heritage of Nuremburg.

The independent study project is over and it went well, including the presentation...

We just got back from "Czech Switzerland" in northern Bohemia where I played with kittens and explored the Sudetenland and rode a horse.

Emotions are twisting and turning.

I will be in England on Monday, California on Thursday, and Hawaii on Sunday.

prace a hra

Finally done with my paper! Huzzah! Now, onlz the presentation to go next Tuesday...I hope that goes all right...I'm off for Germany later today so more on that afterwards...

But it was not all work and no play. On Monday I went to the National Museum with Tom and truly, it was all a National Museum is supposed to be. The building is absolutely opulent and stuffed to the gills with busts of old dead men, pseudo-Greek pillars, chandeliers, gorgeous murals and well tiled floors. Score ten points for Narodni Muzeum. Then, it to make it even better, it is truly a proper Olde Naturale Historie Museum because it has 4 rooms filled with absolutely nothing except cases and cases and cases of minerals, gems and crystals. FANTASTIC. We spent maybe forty minutes perusing the minerals and arguing about which minerals are the superior ones. THEN there is the zoology display with cases and cases of expertly taxidermied animals posed in the most ferocious and/or adorable positions one can imagine AND there is a dead whale skeleton hanging from the ceiling AND a dead MAMMOTH HEAD MOUNTED ON THE WALL. PLUS a buffalo. DEAD. YES. Then there is the Ye Olde Anciente Slavs and Celtics display, title my own, with tons of bronzeware and pottery and cult figures and Olde Toys and random artifacts from Greece and Italy strewn around for good measure. There is also a ridiculously awesome paleontological display that consists of jazillions of fossils crammed together in glass cases. YES. I LOVE THE NARODNI MUZEUM. And best of all, Czech museums all feature security people dressed in dapper suits who INSIST you follow an exact route of museum viewing and sometimes they will just start giving you the lowdown in Czech and you just have to say "Yo, yo, dekujeme, uh huh, vyborně."

I also went to the Zbraslav Asian art museum which was great and a Beethoven string quartet concert in an old monastery.

How can I leave this country? Sigh...

český znamký, židovský v praze, miminko, hudba, lanovka a vietnamska

I have been rather delighted with the weather lately. Cold and crisp! The project is progressing steadily as I´ve now begun work on the paper. Hopefully it will turn out well.

Christmas fever, aka "Vanoce" has hit the country. On December 5 there is St. Mikulas (sp?) Day where an angel, a devil and St. Mikulas visit each child and ask them if they have been good or bad so I'm pretty excited to witness this. Obviously, I have been good. Musicians are preparing the music for the midnight Mass and there are Christmas markets around Old Town, selling mostly kitschy stuff BUT also roasted chestnuts, which are pretty great. All sorts of yummy smells are in the air from mulled wine to Christmas bread with raisins and cinnamon and though there is definitely commercialism it is far less pronounced than American Christmas commercialism.

On Thursday I had several notable adventures, the first of which was a trip to the Postovni Muzeum which is the museum of postal history in the Czech Republic. Iťs housed in a former mill/mansion with paintings on the wall by Josef Navratil, so definitely a beautiful building on its own accord. The official librarian there was thrilled that someone was at the museum, especially a young person, so I got a personal tour of the entire museum, all in Czech. I was, however, pleasantly surprised to realize how much of it I actually did understand. Czech stamps are mighty classy, by the way.

Then I went to Chabad of Prague to pick up my free chanukia, candles and dreidel, because Chanukah is creeping up quickly. They had a nice facility and also a preschool for little kids run in English and Hebrew and naturally the rabbi and his wife knew all the Bay Area Chabad people, so there you have it, small world. There is even a giant chanukia lighting in front of the Rudolfinum next week.

Finally that night there was the baptism for my host cousin Nela, the one born on my birthday. All the extended family showed up at the church where the priest baptized her and then we all had wine and medovnik at the parish house and I played with 2-year-old Emma, who is learning her numbers and makes me super happy because not only is she ridiculously adorable, we are also at a similar linguistic level of Czech, so we understand each other very well.

Yesterday I went up to the castle and saw one of the big cathedrals there and will have to go back next week to get the full tour, because it's sort of crazy I've been in Prague this long and haven't toured the castle, and then went to Petrin where unfortunately the pseudo Eiffel tower was closed but I got to take the lanovka, the funicular railway, back down the hill. And tonight, after working on the paper, a piano concert at the Rudolfinum and maybe ice skating tomorrow (and more working).

Be well.

velky snih a pili jsme pro becher

What a weekend it has been. After two successful interviews v patek it was off to Prebuz, a former mining town near the German border (the German name is Frehbuss). It was a lengthy trip due to several car accidents that continuously rerouted traffic, but eventually we arrived. Aaaand...it was snowing. Following a dinner cooked by Dedecek, a toast with Fernet, and a blissfully peaceful sleep we awoke to blankets of pure white magic surrounding our chata. Snidane (that's breakfast) was filled with bread and honey and cheese and marmalade washed down with tea we shoveled some snow and put up a fence around the hedges out in front so the hares wouldn't eat them. Then it was time for a walk. We walked past the old school that hasn't been used in decades and a building where you could see the old German words peeling off of the front facade. Snow was glistening all over the evergreens and the fir trees and the air smelled so fresh as we walked past the old church, still used once a year by Germans who come back to the Czech Republic for a mass.

(I should probably stop and explain a quick history lesson. During World War II, Germany invaded Czechoslovakia and made it into a "Protektorat." The Sudetenland became part of Germany, where most of the German minority had lived in Bohemia. After World War II, President Benes issued a special decree expelling Germans from Czechoslovakia and essentially stipulated in his decrees it was okay to kill Germans or take German property. During the years of Communism, many Czechs bought properties in the former German Sudetenland villages for their country homes, but most of the villages are much emptier and sometimes even abandoned than pre-World War II. There has been a lot of soul-searching done throughout the past decades by Czechs and Germans and now relations are fine, but you can't ever escape history, and it seeps throughout central Europe.)

We went into the Prebuz cemetary for a while and then walked into the forested area, part of the Czech-Bavarian geopark, to look for the old remnants of the mines. At the top of the hill the view was beautiful and we wandered through some of the former mineshafts and threw snowballs (and in my case, munched on some snow). Then we journeyed to the only business in Prebuz, the local hospoda, or pub if you will, where we met the biggest character in the area, a talkative alcoholic named Pepik. Back at the chata following lunch/dinner, uncle Michael and Dedecek ("Grandpa") played some tunes on the accordion and washboard. I tried my best to sing along in Czech to the few tunes that I knew ("John Brown's Body," "Drunken Sailor" and "Yellow Submarine"). Kaca, Stepan, Honza and I went back to the hospoda for some pivo and Fernet and had another wacky encounter with Pepik, who refused to believe I was an American and told me that the Czech police were very helpful.

The next morning after cleaning up Honza and I set off for Karlovy Vary ("Karlsbad" in German, the Californian city of Carlsbad is named for it). Karlovy Vary is full of opulent buildings, Russians, hot oplatky (yummy spa wafers), slightly kitschy cafes, and above all, the odd-tasting spa waters which you drink in a special cup called a becher. So naturally I had to try the waters with my new becher. I'm not going to lie, they're warm and funky-tasting, and do strange things to your digestive organs, but apparently they're extremely healthy and full of minerals, so who knows, maybe I am healed of all ills. We also got to see the Russian Orthodox church which was gorgeous. A rather amazing weekend and I'm sad it is over.

There are photos, too. They are here:

http://slc.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2014264&l=f929b&id=28601169

xin xao

the weather has been crazy lately--very cold and rainy and snowing...

i've been mostly working this week on my independent study project with the Vietnamese community. Having realized that my work at Vietnamese market places is tricky due to language barriers (most of the people my age working there have come very recently from Vietnam and don't speak English or sometimes, much Czech, and I definitely don't speak Vietnamese) I'm going to be trying to interview people directly from universities. Today I have an interview with Chris Nguyen, who came to the Czech Republic from Vietnam in the early 80's to study sculpture and Tibetan Buddhism and now runs "Maly Buddha," a pan-Asian restaurant near the castle. He is trilingual and a very interesting person and may have connections to other people for me to speak with as well. i've been reading a bunch of books about vietnamese history and culture and trying to pick up a few key Vietnamese phrases here and there.

i went to a Swedish jazz concert at the Lucerna music bar on wednesday night in the building that Vaclav Havel's grandfather built. it was the Esbjorn Svensson Trio and they were great.

i can't recommend the puppet films of Jiri Trnka enough. rent one of his movies if you can. they are seriously magical.

sometimes i get stereotypes of americans thrown into my face and it's nice when i can prove them to be wrong, like no, actually not all americans are ignorant of world events and history and geography, and we have problems just like everybody else, and we're not always "superficially polite" but rather sometimes GENUINELY polite.

my host mother said "you've lost weight, it must be my kitchen," and of course she was joking, but i don't know, the Czech lifestyle is pretty healthy (i mean unless you are hitting the pubs every night and eating lots of smazeny syr) with lots of grains and a lot less preservatives/packaged food and walking everywhere.

Czech music I would recommend:
Gothart
V+W (oldies but goodies)
Yellow Sisters
Jiri Korn (ridiculous but hilarious)
Plastic People of the Universe (a necessity)
Mordors Gang

sprechen sie deutsch?

So I got back from Dresden late last night and it was snowing!! (Snih)
But.
Anyways.

Germany was fantastic. It rained the whole time, but it was fine. I stayed with some German friends of my Czech friend. They're in medical school and just the nicest people with a gorgeous apartment. They were having a soiree that night so I got to talk to lots of German people around my age about life and politics and everything else and eat delicious vegetarian chilli and have German beer and bread (mmmm). There were even some little babies around that belonged to some of their friends that were totally into the music.

The next morning, after a great organic (here they call it "bio) breakfast, Honza, Michael, Tina, Katarina and a few other German friends plus a baby set out for the zentrum (center) of Germany. It was fun to hear the Saxon accent which is made fun of by many other Germans. Even the buses were stereotypically German--clean, timely and efficient. Dresden is an interesting city because it was pretty much destroyed by firebombing during World War II. Therefore, a lot of the old buildings are in the process of being reconstructed to look as they did previous to being destroyed. We went into the Frauenkirche, another church (Catholic) and also a Lutheran church whose names I don't remember that had just been completely rebuilt. The Frauenkirche was a little odd because it just looked too new and they used rather pastel colors to do the frescoes. I also saw the famous fresco of the 12 dukes of Dresden, also reconstructed and painted on china from a village nearby.The city was getting ready for its Christmas fair, where apparently all the storekeepers dress up in medieval costume...maybe I'll go back for that! We ended the day at a cafe sipping coffee and hot chocolate and gnawing away on cake...

drak

This weekend I got to fly a kite...drak. I went to the top of a hill on Smichov where lots of other people were gathered flying their draku, and the sky was foggy and white, and the drak flew till it got caught in some bramblebushes, and all the trees were so red and yellow and brown and green (cervene, zlate, zeleny).
I ate at a vegetarian Indian buffet restaurant and drank at Meduza, filled with smoke and lively chatter.
I drank Kofola for the first time, the Czech answer to Coke. It's sort of spicy and full of caffeine and you can buy it at cafes on tap, like beer. Kofola was created during Communism when Coke was hard to come buy and was created with surplus caffeine gleaned from the production of instant coffee.
I also made palacinky with tvaroh (cottage cheese) and povidla (prune preserves). Mmmmmmmmm.
My host family, except for Petr, just came back from Rome. I wonder if they ran into the pope?
I have been meeting with the person who will be my advisor for my independent study project. Her name is Petra Mullerova and she is a professor of Vietnamese studies. Extremely intense and smart.
The Vietnamese are the third largest minority population in the Czech Republic, having arrived during the 70s and 80s for several reasons. More on this topic later, as it will be consuming me for the next several weeks.
This week: three exams and two projects due. Ouch. Domaci ukol.

minuly tyden

some excerpts from my life as of late:

I saw the most intense Czech film ever, Skritek. Elves, a slaughterhouse, marijuana plants, nosy neighbors, a supermarket and absolutely no dialogue. Crazy and sad but amazing. Go see it.

I went to a Halloween party given by the Danhelovis' family friends, who have an American father. They set up a haunted path in the woods and at the end of the path there was a graveyard where they hid candy for the kids to find.

I found out that I am now at the Czech speaking level of a 2 year old, so my host cousin Emma and I understood each other perfectly. She also taught me some words for colors.

What is Central Europe? I may never know.

I ate french toast at Kava Kava Kava, one of the few places in the Czech Republic that serves peanut butter and maple syrup.

My host mother bought me an avocado. Isn't that just the sweetest thing?

I like discussing American elections and campaigns with all my Czech acquaintances.

I am going to Germany, specifically Dresden, in 2 weeks. Needless to say, I am excited.

I am studying the Vietnamese immigrant community in the CZ for my study project. I!ll keep you posted.

last of krakow and also zilina

The morning after, the group went to the Bunkier, which is one of the few contemporary art spaces in Krakow. There were 2 exhibitons going on: one of an artist from Albania about fleeing the country that consisted of various video pieces, and the World Press Photo exhibition, which is a surefire way to make yourself depressed about the state of the world. Following lunch I tried out the Krakow arachaeology museum, which was a strange combination of dioramas of ancient Poland and a random assortment of ancient Egyptian mummies. I also tried to go to a museum that showcased an 15th century cult group that worshipped a silver chicken (seriously) but it was closed for repairs. Sigh. I did a lot of walking through a beautiful park that runs through the center of Krakow, though, which was great.



For our last morning in Krakow I went to the old Jewish district, Kazimierz. I say old because there definitely aren't any Jews there anymore, or for that matter, in most of Poland. Kazimierz is now a large tourist attraction--half of it is filled with trendy pubs and clubs and the other half is basically a Jewish theme park without the Jews. This all sounds very negative, I'm sure, and Kazimierz is beautiful, but the whole sense of it is just rather depressing when you see restaurants with names like "Alef" or "Rubenstein" and contrast it with the anti Semitism that is still strong in Poland today. It's a little weird, and probably the reason why I never felt totally great about Krakow or all of Poland.

The next morning we went on another 5 hour bus ride, back to Slovakia to visit the city of Zilina. Our penzion was kind of creepy and the proprietor bailed out on us and said we could only stay there for a night. While our academic director pondered this dilemma, we ate traditional Slovak food at a restaurant that looked like a place Daniel Boone would have eaten at--animal pelts, log cabin, fake guns. I had ovoce knedliky, which are fruit dumplings. Day two in Zilina: we went to Stanica, the objective for our visit. Stanica is a train station that is simultaneously an art space. It has a gallery and a space for kids' workshops and a beautiful theater. We got to help out by doing various chores. I raked leaves and it was a blast. That night we saw an amazing dance performance in the Stanica theater with music by Godspeed You Black Emperor. (I didn't sleep too well due to a disco party being held in our hotel that night, but oh well.) Áfter some mishaps the following morning I eventually found the train station and it was snowing! Beautiful! And now back to Praha.

more of the regional trip

Our second day in Bratislava, I went to the Bratislava castle, which is not very attractive (it was mostly reconstructed in the 1950s, actually), but there was beautiful weather, and I got to witness the Slovak national dish, halusky--it's gnocchi covered in sheep cheese and bacon. Intense, no? But the Slovaks love it. That night I got to see a wonderful modern dance performance at A4 involving witch-like costumes, pseudo-strangulation, and blips and beeps. (Modern dance is always a little hard to describe. I should probably post my review here sometime.)

The next day we got on a five hour bus ride to Krakow in Poland, where we got to stay in a pretty swanky hotel. I ate traditional Polish barley soup, but really, traditional eastern and central European cuisine, let me tell ya, they are all about the potatoes and the bread and the meat and the onions...yes. We went to Nowa Huta the next morning to see the community theater. What is Nowa Huta, you may ask? It was a "Socialist paradise" suburb of Krakow built in the 1950s, which means that it's a huge group of massive concrete panelak. A neighborhood of identical apartment buildings, if you will. Now it's pretty run-down and considered a sort of "bad neighborhood," which it really isn't, just kind of unattractive and industrial-looking. Anyways, this community theater is objectively trying to bring the people of Nowa Huta together--old and young, Roma and Polish. (Speaking of Roma, we have been learning a lot about them. More on that later, I think.)

I learned that everything in Krakow closes really early. The only thing that was open after our late lunch was a Japanese museum, which turned out not to be a Japanese museum because it was apparently getting repossessed by the Polish government or something. So instead, they had a display of art from Java. Hmmm.

So, feeling a little confused, Tom and I went to see Wawel Castle, the big castle in Krakow. Of course, everything there was closed, but the castle was very beautiful and provided some great views of the city. There is a legend in Wawel Castle that a dragon called Smok lived there and ate young maidens till some brave Polish warrior slaughtered him and everybody celebrated. I mean, who doesn't love a dragon story? Krakow is really into Smok. You can buy stuffed dragons everywhere there. Afterwards we got Indian food, which is always really funny in central Europe because all the waitresses are obviously very Slavic but wear saris and bindis as if they are Indian. I also went to some interesting pubs, including one called the "Tram Bar," where the menu is the tram line of Krakow and every stop on the tram line is a different beverage. A thing I find hilarious about many pubs in this part of the world is they tend to play American music, but the weirdest variety imaginable. They'll start playing Celine Dion and then a grunge song and then a rap song and then suddenly a central European techno song. It's a little crazy, but you just have to go with the flow. After visiting the pubs we wandered the streets of the old town and found a weird cathedral that looked like Haunted Mansion from Disneyland. (Maybe an inspiration?)

Don't worry. More to come soon, yet again.

finally updating!

Last Thursday, we took a field trip to Josefov, the Jewish quarter of Prague, where I saw the old Jewish cemetary (where the creator of the Golem is buried) and various synagogues that were ancient and beautiful. Kind of depressing though, because most of the people who used all these synagogues were all killed, as is the case with all the Jewish sections of the Central European cities we see.

Then on Friday we left for Bratislava, the capital city of Slovakia. It was a five hour train ride and it's always a thrill to get a new stamp on your passport. We arrived at Chez David, a pseudo-Jewish themed penzion, got a brief tour of the centrum, and went to dinner with a group of Slovak students in a cellar hospoda. The next day Tom and I hiked up a tall hill to see the incredibly ostentatious Soviet war memorial and cemetary, which had a great view of the city and its castle. Later that day the entire group went to A4, an "alternative" art space in Bratislava, to make arts and crafts out of used computer parts. I definitely am not artistically gifted when it comes to handicrafts. I got a lot of glue on myself, which was fun. Three of us met with a man who runs an NGO for the Roma population--very enlightening---and then we went back to A4 for a "retro party" where people watched old Communist music videos from the 70's and 80's. I will try and post links to some of these videos, because they're hysterical.

To be continued!

this and that

...on Monday, we had an SIT birthday celebration at the Alchymista (the cukrarna next door to school). We had an entire medovnik to ourselves and I got to drink yerba mate and also received a stuffed goat that looks....well, you'd have to see it for yourself.

...on Wednesday night, I saw a one-man performance at the Archa that involved puppets, trampolines, beer, acrobatics, candy, dance and video. I followed this with a visit to Cross Club, the most surrealistic place possibly ever--it is filled with spinning gears and sculptures and looks like the interior of a Disneyland ride.

...on Thursday, Tom and I went to Zoo Praha. It was pretty great. The best part of it was the Indonesian Jungle, where we innocently stood in a dark tunnel looking at nocturnal creatures when suddenly---whizz! We saw and heard something fly past our heads. Slightly terrified, we walked a little further when we realized there were bats just flying around the exhibition not even inches from our heads. The strange thing about the zoo compared to American zoos was that all the walls in the various habitats were very, very low; anyone could hypothetically have reached and grabbed an animal and picked it up. I even got a shirt that says in Czech that I am an anteater. Later that night we had a discussion and debate with Czech students and one of the members of the Plastic People of the Universe (look them up on Wikipedia---they're very important in Czech history).

cesky krumlov and a czech birthday

Cesky Krumlov was marked by a delicious arrival at a pub that was built into the castle ramparts. We ate in a small cozy room with wooden benches and stone walls while bagpipe and Indian pop music played quietly through muted speakers and had an absolute feast. The next morning I went to the cathedral, a marionette museum and a great English-language bookstore where I bought some Flannery O'Connor. It was freezing cold, but we all went to tour the restored Baroque theater (one of two in the entire world) and the Krumlov castle, which was also amazing. Throughout the day the St. Wenceslaus (Vaclav) Fair was being held, which involved lots of arts and crafts booths, people dressed in medieval costume, folk dance, and Czech street fair food. Cesky Krumlov may be touristy, but it's gorgeous. I'd recommend going there.

My birthday celebration was kicked off with my arrival to the Danhelovis’ (my host family) house in a small Sudetenland village called Zderaz. On the way to Zderaz from Prague my host mother, Kristyna, gave a vague explanation of how Zderaz used to be a German village but the Germans “had to leave” after World War II. I didn’t ask any further questions because I got the sense it was an uncomfortable topic, however, I would be interested to know the full story behind Zderaz and how the Danhelovi family acquired the house.The moment I arrived at the house I was immediately presented with a cake that my host sister Anna had made for me --it was a very unusual cake made from jello, mandarin oranges and vanilla wafers and was delicious.

Every member of the immediate family, extended family and family friends kissed me on each cheek and wished me happy birthday in Czech and then sang “Happy Birthday” in English. Though I had been told ahead of time to expect this, it was still a little bit unnerving to receive kisses from some of the guests who were absolute strangers (definitely not the American “norm”), yet it did make me feel like I was truly part of a large and warm extended family. The Danhelovis presented me with a CD by a Czech group called Gothart and a calendar of Prague. After a dinner of knedliky and mushroom sauce we all moved to the family room, which had a beautifully painted ceiling (painted by a French man) that was 100 years old and in excellent condition because, according to Kristyna, the house wasn’t used much for long periods of time. This family room also had a fireplace and a piano and was extremely cozy.

One of Kristyna’s father’s friends played the accordion and Kristyna’s brother-in-law Pavel, who is in a band, played the piano and they all sang Czech songs that sounded to me like songs one would sing in a hospoda. I was plied with lots of vino and pivo and after a while I got drowsy, feeling like I was in some kind of strange surrealist dream, surrounded by all these people speaking Czech in a warm room…but I digress.

The next morning I woke up to a long, relaxed breakfast, where we all sat in the equally cozy kitchen and drank cup after cup of caj and ate lots of toasted chleb. Around noon everyone gradually began to move outdoors to the yard and Kristyna came out of the house and announced that her sister Gabriela had given birth to a baby girl, Nela. We all gathered in a circle and everybody but me sang a congratulatory song and then I was plied with even more alcohol, this time slivovice. I ended up spending a lot of my time with one of the cousins, Stefan, who is four. We bonded over the broken bathroom door because we were both trying to fix it.

It was actually quite nice to spend time with a Czech person where there really was no language barrier; because Stefan was so young, he was very content just to have someone to play with and he led me around by the hand and talked to me in Czech. We drew pictures and he showed me all his favorite toys and where all the bikes and the apple trees were and it made me feel good to be able to make somebody happy. I even learned some Czech from him, like “shneck” (snail) and “velka sestra” (big sister). My host brother Ondrej very kindly gave me a tour of the grounds in his best English, showing me where the cow pastures were and where the horses and sheep used to be kept. (Ondrej always makes me happy because he is always trying to communicate with me, even if he doesn’t know the right words, and is always friendly and sweet and funny; he’s a terrific kid.) I also talked with one of the family friends, Karel, who spoke eleven (!) languages—Czech, Hungarian, Slovak, Bulgarian, English, Slovenian, and a few others I don’t remember. I have been continually impressed by how many languages many people in the Czech Republic can speak, even if it is rather broken.

After a late lunch I went with the Danhelovis, who stopped in a larger village to go to Mass while I received some phone calls from my family back home and ordered jedna horka cokoladu from a highly attractive waiter at U Zlate Slepice (I promised myself I would remember the name of the kavarna because of the waiter). Following Mass we all drove to the hospital in Prague to visit Gabriela and baby Nela. The hospital was in a building so beautiful it seemed odd there would be, of all things, a hospital inside. I am so accustomed to seeing white, sterile, ugly hospital buildings that it just felt unreal to have a hospital amidst great beauty. I was also surprised that there were no sanitary regulations about all of us going inside to see a newborn baby, unlike back home where they are quite strict about sanitation inside hospitals. I’m not sure how to explain this sort of cultural difference; perhaps it is because I am coming from an overly sanitized environment in general (i.e., air fresheners, highly toxic cleaning powders, Windex). We didn’t wash our hands or anything like that and there was even another woman and her newborn in the same room as Gabriela, and baby Nela was passed around to everyone for kisses. She was small and had a large tuft of dark hair on her scalp and was sleeping peacefully and it was an unusual and remarkable birthday that was literally a birth day.

part dva (two)

(It's my birthday today. More on that later-)

I'd rather not spend too much time commenting on the negative aspects of Slavonice, but I must mention an instance where our contact person gave us a very vague "trail" to follow and we ended up wandering through haystacks and dirt roads and flat fields of the Sudetenland, encountering a group of local boys at one point and truly understand the phrase "no man's land." On Wednesday we visited Telc, another UNESCO city, which was quite pretty but it was a day full of rain and therefore a lot of sitting in cafes drinking videnska kava.

The other girl and I left Slavonice on Thursday, which was quite an endeavor. We had initially planned to take a bus straight to Budejovice, but Czech-style, it never showed up. There was another English-speaking traveler--an architect from Portugal--waiting for the same bus, and we ended up going with her to the Telc train station where we proceeded to travel for six hours on five different trains to get to Budejovice. I didn't think it was humanly possible to take so many trains in one day, but there you have it, and definitely a full view of the southern Czech countryside.

Finally we arrived in Budejovice and met up with another student who had also traveled there early and proceeded to have a veritable feast at an Indian restaurant. We had to specifically ask for spicy food because they usually cater to the Czech (read: bland) palate and it was delicious--mattar paneer, naan and kulfi made it a good night except maybe for the rain.

The next day in the early afternoon the three of us went to the Budweiser brewery for a tour (not American Budweiser, which is pretty awful, but the real Czech stuff) which was very interesting and smelled like bread and was full of free samples. I even ran into some Israelis and, ridiculously excited, talked to them in Hebrew.

Anyways, I'm twenty, and it's time for me to go to bed and continue blogging later.

regional homestay, part jedna (one)

I'm writing this in Cesky Krumlov (I'll get to that later) but I just spent almost a week in a small town called Slavonice on the border of Austria. Slavonice is famous for its well-preserved 16th century architecture and "sgraffito" (frescos on the sides of buildings) and has a bit of an artists' community from artists who moved there after the fall of Communism. Most of the other people there come from families who were border guards during Communism. I was with one other girl from the program and we stayed in a hotel because our contact person, who was ostensibly supposed to host us, didn't. (She was a pretty awful contact. We had lots of miscommunications with her.)

We did have a few interesting and lovely adventures while there. My favorite was probably the day we crossed the border and went to Austria, to a village called Fratres. I found a sign that said "Museum Humanes" so we went there. It was an old Baroque house run by a tall, gangly, frizzy-haired man named Peter, who was clearly a superhero. He was a political scientist who had traveled around the world and collected the most beautiful pieces of ancient art I had ever seen--from China, India, the Middle East, and central Europe. Peter spoke eloquently to us about his museum and it was obvious how passionate he was about his views on art and humanity. Later that night we went to a Czech rock concert, which was quite an experience. There was everyone there from an 8-year-old girl to a 70-something-year-old man. Lots of people were dreadlocked and trenchcoated and the room was pungent with cigarette smoke. One thing I'll say about central Europe, my lungs will probably never be the same.

Another really positive experience we had was on Monday with a ceramics artists named Tereza Kuhnova. We got to go to her big yellow house, which also happened to be her studio. She talked about her work and showed us around and explained the process of making stoneware and raku pottery. Later, she taught us how to throw a basic object on the pottery wheels and we got to try it. Eventually I got the gist of it, but I didn't end up making anything because I would always make it too thin at the last moment. Oh, well. I drank hot mulled wine later and felt a little better about my lack of ceramics skills.

There were quite a few negative experiences in Slavonice, but I'll get to that in the next entry. I'm going to go watch another folk dance performance in the Cesky Krumlov main square. Be well.

So, before this entry begins, I have photos:

http://slc.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2012698&id=28601169

Last weekend I was able to paddleboat down the Vltava river with Meghan from SLC, see a free performance by a Turkish band with Niko from the Bay Area while eating 25-crown (that's about a dollar) palačinky, and attend a Czech Catholic Sunday service. I was also able to experience the joys of the Czech pasttime of gathering houby (mushrooms) with my host family on a lovely Sunday in the forest. They showed me which kind of houby are good to eat, the ones that are poisonous, and that ones that just aren't tasty. The ideal fresh houby are moist and have a yellow, smooth underside. Ones with polka dots are automatically bad. We brought them back to the apartment and cooked them in a delicious sauce and ate them with knedliký (flour dumplings). I also got to drink a lot of burčák, the first pressing of grapes from Moravia to be made into wine. It's yellow and resembles egg liqueur. It's not bad, but real wine is better, to be honest.

We've been learning about Communist sanctioned and non-sanctioned art as of late. We watched a movie about censorship (it was banned back in the day) and watched a Communist-era newsreel and listened to Communist-sanctioned pop music from the 80's. On Monday we discussed Kafka's book America at a café, and I hadmy first Czech language test (first test I've taken since high school--yay Sarah Lawrence!) and I think it went okay. I also acquired Harry Potter in Czech. I collect Harry Potter in different languages and now besides Czech, I have it in French, Spanish, Japanese, Portuguese, Hebrew, and Hungarian. Today a famous performance artist named Tomaš Ruller came into class today and showed us examples of his art and in a few hours we're going to Cafe Imperial and then to see a play by a Slovak group. A strange thing about Cafe Imperial, apparently, is that they keep a bowl of stale donuts at the counter and you can pay 1000 crowns to throw the donuts at fellow customers. It's a strange country.

On Friday I'm leaving for the week because all of us are getting sent around the country for regional stays. I'll be with one other girl and we'll be in Slavonice, a Sudetenland village right on the Austrian border. Then on next Thursday we meet up with the group in Ceske Budejoviče, where we'll travel again to Ceský Krumlov to see the famous castle and the St. Wenceslas Fair and finally get back to Prague on Saturday. More to come on all that.

Here are the things I miss the most about the United States:
-FRUIT. Specifically fresh avocados. I'd give anything for a Haas avocado.
-DIVERSITY IN ALL WAYS. It's a very homogenous country, and that's hard to adjust to. There's still a strong sense of xenophobia and racism.
-THE OCEAN. Enough said.
-SMILING. People don't smile at you in the streets. I feel awkward sometimes when I smile now.

ja jsem studentka

On Thursday we went to Praszky hrad (Prague castle) to see an exhibition by a Czech Cubist painter and sculptor, Emil Filla. I didn't like all of his work but I liked a few pictures in particular. That night, my host family had the mother's two sisters, their husbands and all the kids over--it was a full house and a lot of fun. Families are very close-knit here and the family is of utmost importance. In some ways it dates back to the Communist era because you really couldn't trust everybody, but you could always trust the family.

Yesterday was my favorite day in the Czech Republic so far. After Czech language lessons in the morning, we drove two hours to a village in South Bohemia called Horazdovice to visit the Art Mill. The Art Mill is a 500-year-old mill and farm that is now an organic farm, art gallery and summer arts camp run by an American artist named Barbara Benish and her Czech husband Petr Kalny, who's an architect. They live there with their two daughters Gabriela and Natalya and a slew of horses, rabbits (they eat them), chickens, a goat (they milk it) and my friend from Sarah Lawrence, Annie Rudnik (she just graduated) is living there and working as Barbara's assistant. It was really great to see her. She's assisting Barbara and getting to create her own visual art and dance pieces as well.

Barbara, Annie and her daughters served us a delicious lunch made with food they grow on the farm and we played with their dogs Flicka and Lady. Afterwards, Barbara showed us around the Art Mill. We saw her galleries and her working space and the rest of the farm. She does a lot of interesting work, often inspired by Albrecht Durer and the Book of Revelations and her hometown of Newport Beach, California. It was beautiful and idyllic. I'm sure I idealized the Mill a lot, but it was pretty magical. Speaking of magical, we then went to the village of Techonice and saw a local production of Maly princ (The Little Prince) in a theater that was a converted barn. I indulged in Indian dal soup and medovnik, a mindblowing Czech honey cake.

I feel like the more and more I travel, the more familiar every person and every town and every building seems. I can't tell how I feel about the nomad lifestyle. Is it for me? I'm not sure.

Some thoughts

-Palacinky are thin Czech crepes filled with cottage cheese and marmalade. They are rich and sweet without being overly sweet, and I like them, a whole lot.

-My host brother and sister, Annicka and Ondrej and I, made felt pillows and filled with them with hops (chmel) and sewed them up on a Communist-era machine.

-Last night our group saw a theater/dance piece performed by a Slovak group inside a dance club called the Roxy. It involved a trumpet, drums, a suitcase, singing, shouting, and contact improv.

-Today we watched a movie about a Czech work camp.

-The most popular names in Czech seem to be Jiri, Vladimir, Jana, Hana, Jaromir and Lida. In Czech, I'm "Noemi".

-The sun came out today, and on Friday we're journeying to an organic farm and seeing "The Little Prince" performed in Czech.

-I have a phone number. Ask me about it.

a czech week

A few nights ago myself and a group of others got very lost late at night looking for a restaurant in the Hradcanska (castle) district. It took hours to find the restaurant, but we found beauty everywhere, including an overlook view of all of Prague. All the castle grounds looked like fairyland.

Yesterday we had our "drop off" to complete missions in Prague. The four people in my group went to a Soviet-era metro station, a dimly lit basement creperie with a vegan (!) waitress, the Narodni gallerie (National Gallery) where we gaped at Miro, Picasso, Schiele, Klimt and a lot of Czech artists I was unfamiliar with. The museum is in a former Communist-era mall and all the security guards smile at you and try to get you interact with the art. (Smiling is rare here. You have to "earn" your smiles.) Then it was off to the park where we played on an old Communist-era playground with a Sputnik slide.

Last night I met my homestay "mother," Kristyna, at a party for all the homestay families. She is the most lovely person; very smart, open-minded, funny, easygoing. Her children are Anna (12) and Ondrej (10), but she said Ondrej prefers to be called Andrew because it is more "worldly" than Ondrej. They live in an apartment flat, but they also have a cottage out in the countryside where they go on most weekends, so I will get to go and meet all the extended family as well. Nicely enough, Kristyna is vegetarian, so it's a non-issue, AND I will get to learn how to make Czech poppy-seed cake, which I think is rather exciting.

I get picked up in an hour to go out to lunch with the family.

I miss all of you.

an entry, in all actuality

Came into the Czech Republic with the nipping cold, continued thusly. Currently staying in "Pensions House," and we all ate at the pub last night, where I learned the word strapacky. (Strah-PAHTCH-kee)--cheese covered gnocchi. Praha food is heavy and rich and portions are large; beer (pivo) comes in glasses as big as my head, wine is vino and it's prosim (please) all the time. "Pivo, prosim." Cobblestones line the ground. Tourists in stilettos seem to have a difficult time of it. The facade on every building is decadent and covered in statues and gold and filigree and the beauty is so overwhelming and the Czechs are elegant in their scarves and coats, waving cigarettes around, smirking at the British men there for stag parties --strip clubs and cheap booze. The orloj , the astronomical clock in the center of Wenceslas Square, "performs" every hour, and I tried Algerian coffee and talked about global warming with a Czech professor of womens' rights--she doesn't believe in it...

I am in Praha...it is full of alchemy, tastes like butter and coffee and sugar, smells like smoke filled pubs...
more to come.