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.