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.