Sunday 27 September 2009

The Robin Hood of Machova

Once again, I have to apologize for my lack of updates, especially to those who visit this blog as a means of procrastination. The internet here has been constantly shitting the bed this week, so it’s been difficult to fit blogging in when I’m more focused on checking my email and looking up class readings on Wikipedia. Right now, I’ve spent about an hour trying to upload a single photo album on facebook because the internet keeps dying halfway through. Oh, the things my tuition dollars do for me.

Brief stories from Cesky Krumlov, the quaint little village where NYU sent us for the weekend:
  • I absolutely could not focus on the castle tour. I don’t know what it was, and I think everyone thought that I was high, but I couldn’t stop laughing at just about anything that anyone said. At any given time, the scene on the tour was the group standing around the tour guide listening to her information and me doubled over in a corner laughing hysterically to myself. I managed to spread the insanity to the rest of the group, so by the end of the tour, we were probably the most obnoxious bunch of kids ever. Weeeeeeeeeee
  • I saw people wandering around at like 10 in the morning on Saturday wearing traditional clothing, drinking beer, and eating sausages. I have so much to learn from these people.
  • Our inability to be serious on tours continued into the brewery, where Nolan kept singing “I gotta golden tiiiiicket, I gotta golden tiiickeeeet!” and everyone else quoted Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Our tour guide was possibly the most nervous man on the face of the planet, and he prefaced everything he said with “I can say.” There were no free samples at the end :((((
  • This was my first experience of staying in a hostel, and it is exactly what people tell you it is- a bunch of beds in a room. It’s kind of like summer camp, except it’s a little sketchier. Thank god we were only there for one night, though, because the snoring was exceptional. There were 8 guys in my room, and at any given point during the night, at least 4 were snoring their heads off. I’m not talking about a little congestion coming through in their breathing. All together, it sounded like the shredder from FernGully in stereo sound. Terrific.
  • Not only did our waitress at lunch bring us expensive bottled water when we asked for tap (free), but she charged me for the take-out box for my leftovers. That's the last time I order water in a restaurant- why pay two bucks for a water when you can pay half that for a beer? This is how alcohol dependence starts. Sneaky sneaky, you slippery Czech woman. She was very friendly and smiley, so I should’ve known that something was up. We were eating outside, and at one point she even offered us blankets because it was getting a little chilly. We said no, which is good because looking back on it I’m pretty sure she would’ve charged us for those too. I’ve got to stop looking like a silly Americski.

In other news, Machova is completely out of control. Over the last couple weeks, people are getting food stolen left and right. It started on the second floor, where apparently people would go grocery shopping, come back, and within an hour all their shit would be gone. One time, this alleged thief stole soup out of the pot as some girl was making it when she walked away for a second. This thievery has spread to the other floors- on mine, Sean had a frozen pizza stolen and someone stole my lunch meat (expired, thank you very much. I hope you got food poisoning you fucker) and my butter. The RAs and the building manager had a meeting the other day and decided to put locks on some of the fridges and are threatening suspension if they catch the person.

There are some theories floating around- it's mainly the first floor, so some think that it's drunk people who come home late at night with a serious case of the drunchies and hit up the first floor they find. Nolan and I have our own theory- it's everyone. Obviously it started with someone, but by this point, especially considering the volume of stuff that has been taken, everyone is just stealing everything to get back at whoever took their shit.I'm waiting to go grocery shopping until all this blows over. It's interesting to think how this got started, though. I can see being lazy and cheap enough to like take a little butter from someone else for your morning toast, but to out and out steal something? Nolan had an entire liter of milk stolen, and I can't imagine that the thief was thinking "Hey, it's ok, he'll never even know!" Plus, you'd probably be getting fat if you were stealing everyone's food and eating it by yourself. Talk about an eating disorder. The following is what I think the thief, if he or she is acting alone, would look like. Decide for yourself:


The latest and greatest food thief story happened on Wednesday night, when one of the thieves was making a grilled cheese with stolen ingredients at like 2 in the morning. Well, they thought they heard someone coming into the kitchen, and obviously they didn't want to get caught, so they put the grilled cheese on a plate, ran out the door, and threw it down the stairs! The girls on that floor woke up to find a shattered plate on the landing with the still intact and still hot grilled cheese sandwich on it. It's like, what kind of a reaction is that? WHY would you throw it down the fucking stairs? It's like I'm living in another dimension, that's how crazy some of these people are. They had to be under the influence of something. Now I think all this is hilarious, but the people in charge are putting on their serious pants and getting all bent out of shape about it. We got back from Cesky Krumlov to find an email from the director of the program saying that whoever is stealing food better stop or else! Dun dun dunnnnnnnn.

Tuesday 22 September 2009

Weekend Warriors

I apologize for the lack of updates once again, although this time I have an excuse. HA! Read on to find out...

Thursday night, as I mentioned before, was our first European football (soccer for all you Američané out there) game. It wasn't as over-the-top insane as I thought it would be, but it was still a lot of fun. I learned two things:

1. I know jack shit about the rules of football (it can end in a tie? that's lame).
2. Non-alcoholic beer tastes similar enough to regular beer that you don't notice the difference until you're three pints in and you don't feel any different.

I exaggerate. It might have had a little alcohol in it, but the general consensus between all of us was that they watered it down to the point of no effect so that people don't get as insane as they do in places like Spain and England. You have no idea how disappointing it is to wait in line for like half an hour, hand over 5 bucks, and not end up at least a little tipsy. Jak smutné. After the game, a small contingent of us, determined to get drunk, bounced around from bar to bar for a while before we ended up back at Beer Factory, only this time we were literally the only people there. If you've never danced around like an idiot in an empty club to "Soul Bossa Nova," I HIGHLY recommend it. Success all around.

Fast forward to Saturday. Saturday was Damon's 21st birthday, and while that is like the smallest of deals here in Praha, we decided to go all out and get hammered anyways. Now, I had woken up around 2 in the afternoon on Saturday and was already dealing with a cold, so I hadn't eaten anything. Kush and I went out for happy hour, had a few beers, came back, went out with everyone else, had more beers, went to a bar, had more, stopped at a grocery store on the way home, and had some more. Grand total? 10 beers (5 liters), on a mostly empty stomach. Needless to say, Sunday was the worst day of my life. The night was fun, though. We made some older Czech friends, and one of them kept wandering over to our table and taking our picture randomly. Apparently at the next bar people went to there were some friendly Czechs buying them drinks. I dont' know where these people hide, but I have not met a Czech person who looked like they wanted to buy me a drink. Now I'm telling you all this because I want you to LEARN from my mistakes. Nevermind the hangover, I don't even want to think about how many calories I consumed. Tsk tsk. I'm hitting the gym hardcore this week (I'm just playin witchu justin).

I spent most of Sunday in bed recovering, venturing out only to book fall break and take a walk with Kush. With the exception of not being able to eat anything and drinking water and orange juice like it was my job, it was actually pretty nice. I got a jump on watching Entourage and writing a little survival guide for my parents so they don't offend as many people as I did when I first arrived. But blogging my misery was the last thing on my mind, which is my excuse. Bahaha.

Fall break is planned and paid for (by yours truly, thank you very much), and my bank account is unhappy. I'm OK with it. Lisa and I (and possibly Kush) are heading to London for a day and a night, then Istanbul for 4 days, meeting up with everyone else in Athens for two, Rome for two, and then Venice or Copenhagen. Why Copenhagen on Halloween? That's why. I'm so excited, but I'm not going to bore you by translating that feeling into words. Just know that I'm aware how fortunate I am that I get the chance to do something like this.

Nolan's parents came into town this weekend, the first in what I believe is a month straight of parents visiting every weekend. They were incredibly nice and took us all for drinks, which is something I could get used to. GOD I'm going to have such a hard time going back to New York and paying $5 for a beer. It's kind of a problem.

Check back in a few days for a less summative post. I know it can be tedious to read "Today I did this and then I did this and then we drank this and then this HILARIOUS THING happened," so I promise to fill the next post with hilarious rants. Or maybe you like the stories? Whatever. I learn from the best.

This song just came up in my iTunes. You're welcome.

Thursday 17 September 2009

The Birds and the Bees

After I admonished Holley for going a week without posting to her blog, I realized that I hadn't posted anything since that fateful trip back from Vienna. Whoops.

The title of this post is not a reference to sex, but to actual birds and bees, of which Prague has plenty. Being from the backwoods of Connecticut (yes, Connecticut isn't all Lacoste shirts and boat shoes), I'm used to nature. Hell, I revel in it. But when I came to Prague, I didn't expect there to be so many bees hanging around. On my five minute walk to the metro every morning, there's a pretty good chance I'm going to get bothered by at least one of those little tyrants. Alexis and Damon are downright terrified of bees and have run down the sidewalk to escape a potential sting at least one time apiece. I try to put on the tough-guy act and pretend like I'm not scared, but I'll bug out if one lands on my face. I mean, can you imagine? Ugh. Here's hoping that the first frost kills them all, but if they can fly all the way up to our terrace on the roof, we're dealing with monsters here.

The pigeons are also a little out of control. Less than 48 hours after arriving here in Praha, I was almost pooped on by one of them. Maybe the fates were with me that day, or maybe God finally decided to pay back that karma I earned by picking up a $20 on the street and giving it back to the guy who dropped it, but the poo missed my head by about an inch, grazed my arm, and landed right next to my shoe. I was told by several people that this was good luck, and I'm gonna have to call bullshit on that. I've lived in New York for two years and on the shore for the other 18, and I've never once had a bird poop on me. I'm more annoyed with them than anything else, but Damon fears them. Apparently he walked out onto the terrace after dark one time and was surprised by a flock of pigeons flying at his face, which must've been terrifying. I fed pigeons once when I was in Puerto Rico, and let me tell you, they are not to be messed with.

This week was mostly uneventful. I'm trying to head to the gym regularly because I don't want to come back to the states looking pregnant, and with the amount of beer I consume, it's a very real possibility. On Monday, NYU threw us a welcoming party, which I thought was strange considering we've been here for two weeks. The food was DELICIOUS... way better than any catered event back in New York. And, of course, they had beer and wine, and I must've started at least 10 conversations with "Isn't it great how they serve us alcohol at an official school function?" Smooth is my middle name.

Alexis just made me Thai peanut noodles and ginger chicken for dinner. Yum. Moving on.

People continue to rage every single night, and I don't understand where they get the energy for that. I'm down for a couple of beers and maybe a glass of wine, but I need at least two days off from getting crazy and partying. I see lots of these people during they day, and 9 out of 10 times they're stumbling around asking people to put them out of their misery. I know how we Americans love things in excess, but there's got to be a point where these people can't sustain that lifestyle anymore. I should really turn this into an anthropological case study... oh wait, I'm not in Gallatin. I need to take classes to get credit for things!

I wish I could tell you that I'm traveling somewhere exotic and crazy this weekend (read: Transylvania? Check back in November for that trip), but it's Damon's birthday and I'm a good friend. But I'm sure that this weekend will be brimming with crazy Praha adventures, so I'm not disappointed at all. In fact, in a couple of hours we're headed to our first European football game. If we can't eke out some good stories from that, then I'm not sure we even deserve to be here.

Sunday 13 September 2009

Props to Columbus

Note: Sorry, this is a long one. I promise I'll tone it down in the future!

What a weekend! Aditi, Alexis, and I arrived in Vienna on Friday and eventually made our way to my cousin Kathy’s apartment. Let me tell you, traveling around in a city that you haven’t even seen a map of is incredibly disorienting. I literally had no idea where I was at any given time until Sunday.

The adventures started as soon as we got to Kathy’s place. She lives on the fifth floor of her building, so being lazy and carrying heavy backpacks, the three of us decided to pile into the closet-sized elevator while Kathy took the stairs. Well, this is a ghetto-fabulous elevator and there’s no interior door, so there’s nothing between you and the moving wall of the elevator shaft. Being a five year old, I decided to reach out and touch the moving wall. Big mistake. An alarm sounded an the elevator jerked to a halt between floors. We were frozen in panic when Kathy’s voice floated like the voice of God from somewhere in the building: “Push five again!” So we push five, and the elevator starts moving, but as soon as we get between four and five, the elevator jerks to a halt again. Well, the floors aren’t very thick, and the exterior elevator door has a glass panel in it, so we could see a little bit of the fourth and fifth floors. While we’re standing around unsure of what to do, we see Kathy’s head appear in the little window at our feet. “Huh,” she says, almost amusedly. A split second later, a pair of legs shows up on the fifth floor, and whoever those legs belonged to was very angry with us. So there we are, four and a half floors off the ground in a freaking closet, being yelled at in German and trying to follow Kathy’s instructions.

But it doesn’t stop there. Oh no. Kathy suggests that we press other floors, and every time it stops halfway between whatever we press and the floor below it. Alexis decided that we should press the ground floor, because logically, you can’t go through the ground. Great idea! So we press the button, head down, reach the ground floor, and watch helplessly as the lobby disappears above our heads. Finally, the elevator reaches some kind of bottom, and there’s a door, but beyond the door is nothing but blackness. Alexis said something along the lines of how she didn’t want to go out there because it looked like hell, but Aditi was brave and opened the door. It was literally the blackest darkness you could imagine, but we managed to find a light switch using our cell phones. Turns out we were in some sort of storage cellar that Alexis rightly compared to a Nazi bunker. Welcome to Vienna!

Friday night was really fun- we went to a beer garden (because we haven’t done enough of that already) in some awesome amusement park. Delicious, delicious food. I had seen this thing called “pork knuckle” on menus in Prague, but it sounded too gross to order on my own. Boy, was I wrong. It’s this massive pork drumstick, deep friend in awesomeness. There was other food involved, but hey, I really don’t remember much beyond the knuckle. There’s even a picture of me gnawing on the bone willingly. I’m not ashamed.

On Saturday we did all the touristy things- cathedrals, Habsburg palaces, and plazas, oh my! In my quest to drink my way through Europe, I’ve decided to have a traditional beverage in every country that I visit. In Austria, that would be Radler- half beer, half lemonade. It sounds disgusting, but trust me, it’s probably the most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted. I normally hate extra flavors in drinks- coffee, tea, and especially beer. But it’s just this incredible combination of sweet, bitter, and tart all at the same time. As I write this, a half-empty six pack of Radlers is sitting between Alexis and me on the bus, and we intend to educate Machova about the wonders of mixing beer and lemonade.

We met up with our friend Nolan, who was also visiting Vienna this weekend, at an Australian bar where Kathy was meeting a friend of hers. We were sitting around the downstairs bar, enjoying our Radlers, when suddenly “Wonderwall” came on the stereo. I had no idea that this song was so popular with the Central European crowd, but the entire bar just busted out singing. True, there were a fair number of ex-pats there, but there were definitely a lot of people who didn’t speak English and were simply making sounds similar to the actual words. But hey, I do the same thing when I’m singing along and I don’t know the actual words, so fair is fair.

We met up with Kathy’s boyfriend Jim that night and he made me buy a cheese-filled sausage from a stand. I did not regret it.

On Sunday morning Jim made us all crepes. It was so nice having an apartment to stay in instead of crashing in a hostel- I can’t thank Kathy and Jim enough for taking us in like that! After a fattening breakfast, we rented some bikes for a Euro apiece and biked around the historic area in Vienna. We only had an hour to kill because we were going to a wine festival in the afternoon, but it was so worth it. Europe is so bike friendly and the bike path took us past some of the most beautiful buildings in town. We returned the bikes and managed to get back to Kathy’s place on the tram all by ourselves! We’re such good travelers.

Sunday afternoon was magnificent. We met up with some of Kathy’s friends from work and headed out into the Austrian countryside for a wine festival. Kathy works at the UN, so her friends are all international and really, really cool. The wine festival was in this tiny, historic town full of family-owned vineyards. You paid 9 Euro for a glass and got to drink as much wine as you wanted. The food was “authentic” Austrian cuisine, and while I’m gung-ho about drinking in the local culture, I don’t really want to eat some of the stuff that people consume in Europe. But Kathy’s friends had other plans. One of them handed me a piece of bread with some sort of meat on it, and when I asked what it was, she said “If you like meat, you’re good to go.” So I ate it, and it was pretty good. I asked what it was again and went in for a second bite. “Blood sausage!” she said with a laugh. Yuck. Somehow, it didn’t taste as good after I learned what it was.

Even though I call myself a “beer guy,” I’m starting to really appreciate a good glass of wine. Dad, you must be so proud. The wine was really, really good, and Jim made sure we drank as much as possible since we had to leave early to catch our bus back to Prague. When it was time to go, we said our goodbyes at the festival and the three musketeers braved the train system (no English translations… damnit!), figured out where the bus stop was back in Vienna, and headed home. Oh, and remember the guy who smelled like a stink bomb on the ride to Vienna? Well, he’s back, and this time he’s sitting next to Nolan. Poor kid is dying up there.

Closing story: Less than a minute after we departed Vienna, I decided to bust open a Radler. I’d never had a bottled one before, so I smelled it before I took a sip to make sure it wasn’t gross artificial. It smelled like plain beer, and Alexis suggested that maybe the lemonade settled to the bottom and I should shake it up. Well, it was already open, so I did what I thought was the next best thing and put my thumb over the opening and tipped it over a la Corona with lime. Bad, bad, bad move. As soon as it was tipped over, I felt the pressure increasing on my thumb and a little bit shot out onto my arm. I immediately flipped it back over and tried to slowly let some of the pressure out. Instead of that happening, a stream of beer shot out across the aisle and hit the woman sitting across from me IN THE FACE. She proceeded to yell at me in Czech and called me a stupid American. Alexis was practically dying with laughter the entire time, but I was too shocked by how quickly everything went to shit that I couldn’t really speak for about five minutes. Go me!

Saturday 12 September 2009

Beer, Fans, and Political Dissension

NOTE: I wrote this post on the bus to Vienna yesterday, but the Wi-Fi crapped out before I had a chance to publish it. Check back on Monday for stories from Vienna (trust me, there are some good ones)!

Well, I survived my first week of classes in Praha. Overall, things went really well and I think I've finally settled on a schedule. I think. Despite my goal of settling down now that classes have begun, I still went out a lot this week. I think once I start to have homework, it'll be a different story. I did feel lame staying in on Wednesday night, which is THE party night here in Praha, but I had a 9 AM class with Jan Urban and I didn't feel like being hungover for it. Plus, thanks to my new tabletop fan and a little help from Dr. Procter and Nurse Gamble, I had a full night's sleep for this first time since coming here. WOOOO.

Buying the fan was a little adventure. I need white noise to sleep, and when I went into the local electronic store to get a fan, I was gretting with "How can I help you?" in close to perfect English. OK, I'm thinking, this'll be easy. So I ask for a fan, and he nods vigorously and disappears into the back. He comes out five minutes later with three blow dryers in his arms and says "Fan!" I tried to tell him that no, those are in fact NOT fans, but he didn't understand my pantomime version of wind. Eventually the manager came over and told me to go to this other place that sells home electronics. So I follow his vague instructions ("It's about... ahhh... two streets up? Maybe three. Then take left, go 200 meters down. I think yes it is there. Maybe right.") and find this other place, which is a miracle because it is literally a one room shop with no signs outside.

So I go inside and exchange "Dobry dens" with the old woman behind the counter. She's smiling, which is unusual for Czech people. Then I say "Anglicky?" (Engligh?), because I do not know how to say fan in Czech. Instantly, she stops smiling and says "No." in the most serious way possible. Awesome. I managed to buy a fan through pointing and grunting, but it really woke me up to the fact that I'm relying on English too much. Nolan let me steal a copy of his "Learn Czech" CD, so I'm going to start listening to that.

Let's talk about Jan Urban. I took his class, Modern Dissent, on Holley's strong (read: she threatened me) recommendation, and let it be known that I am so glad I listened to her. The man is a god. He's got this Indiana Jones vibe to him that is just so cool. Why? Oh, I don't know, maybe because he was a founding member of the revolutionary party that overthrew the communist regime in 1989. Maybe because he's written books exposing the corruption of the current Czech government. Maybe because in our first class, he had to take a phone call, and when he got off he turned to us and said "It's fun dealing with blackmail." He told us on the first day that life as a dissenter was nothing like the movies and we should just forget about Hollywood, but somehow I can't help but expect that at some point and assassin is going to crash through the window in the middle of class and they're going to have an epic fight. I can dream, can't I?

The second class was even more intense than the first. For those who don't know, the Czech Republic is in a state of political turmoil right now. The President, Vaclav Klaus, thinks that the constitutional court has too much power and is trying to seriously curb their authority. Elections are this fall, so many people think this is a power play to try to stay in office. Anyways, Jan is friends with the attorney who is attempting to expose the President's motives, and he was set to argue the case on Thursday. Well, he had been getting death threats this week, so Jan was harboring him. So we're sitting in class on Thursday when his phone rings. He picked it up, had a conversation in Czech, and then hung up. He then proceeded to tell us that someone had just tried to run his friend off the road as he was driving to the courthouse. Crazy, right?!?

It's weird to think that this kind of stuff still happens. I know there are those who think that the US government is like this, taking out political opponents with subterfuge and sabotage, but you're never this close to it. It's all well and good to joke about assassins interrupting class, but this was god damn real life. Watching the color just drain from his face as his friend told him what happened was a huge reality check for us. He was a little teary-eyed after that, and who could blame him? I mean, here we are, 20 years after his tireless efforts helped overthrow the Communist regime, and shit like that is still going on in a supposedly democratic government.

Well, as serious as that was, it didn't stop us from going out last night. We started at Pivovarsky Dum, this AMAZING microbrewery that I think has the best beer in Prague. After 2 or 3 or 4 beers there, we managed to talk our way into Beer Factory without paying the cover charge. Beer Factory is my new favorite place. It's a club and a bar, but the coolest part is that all the tables have beer taps in the middle and they keep track of how much beer you drink via a computer. But they also have a running tally on a big wall screen of which tables have drunk the most. It's like a carnival game for adults, although I'm hardly one of those.

And now, as I write this, I'm sitting on a bus headed to Vienna for the weekend. The Czech countryside is beautiful by the way. There's a guy sitting three rows up from me who smells so bad it's making my eyes water. Oh, Europe. Alexis, Aditi and I are staying with my cousin Kathy who lives in Vienna and works at the UN. It promises to be a fun time, filled with gelato, apfelstrudel, and wine. Plus, it'll be nice having a fun someone there who speaks the language to guide us around.

Tuesday 8 September 2009

Curb Your Dog

Bah. So I stepped in dog shit yesterday for the first time, which is surprising considering how much of it is all over the sidewalks. But I didn't realize it until I got to class, and when I propped my foot up on my other knee, the smell just hit me. I apologize to anyone who was in that class.

On Sunday we took a scenic dinner cruise along the Vltava River, which was lovely. The food was pretty bad and the beer was a little expensive (it's both sad and impressive that I now consider anything above $1.50 a pint expensive), but the views of Old Town were pretty incredible. We went under the Charles Bridge, which is beautiful and almost 700 years old. But when we turned around to go back under, BOOM. We hit the damn bridge. It was pretty intense. The captain went underneath the bridge at an angle, and since it was a really long boat, the back end smacked into one of the bridge supports. I was carrying two plates of food at the time walking along the side and I almost fell off the boat. Apparently everyone in the basement thought we were sinking. So the crew was running around, looking to see if there was any damage, yadda yadda yadda, when BOOM. WE HIT THE BRIDGE AGAIN. When the back end bounced off of the one pillar, it swung around and hit the other. Needless to say we were the most photographed boat by people on the bridge that day.

After that fun and excitment, we all climbed a mountain and had a beer. Literally. There are these cliffs north of Old Town across the river, and some wise people turned the property on top into a beer garden. Amazing views of the city. Kush, Kurt, and I got separated from everyone else and had to find our own way home. Kush, a self-professed human GPS, lived up to his reputation and got us there. Props.

Monday was the first day of classes. For some reason, most of my classes are on the 5th of the Academic Center. It's a walk-up. Fuck me. But classes went really well; I can already tell I'm going to love Radio News, what with my deep, resonant radio voice. Pshyeah, whatever. Reporting the Arts seemed interesting, and 60% of the grade is attendance. Whoops, can't skip that one. I don't mind though, the professor is really cool. He used to be the guitarist for Plastic People of the Universe, which is kind of a big deal here in the Czech Republic. Now he's in a Velvet Underground cover band, so rock on. I might drop Czech Art and Architecture because the guy is a bit of a prick and made it clear that if you have a class before or after it (I have both on Thursday), you won't be able to come on some of the excursions and therefore will get nothing out of the class. One kid asked about leaving early from excursions, and he said that if you'll do that you'll miss the concluding point and therefore not understand anything. It's like, hello, we're just going to a bunch of churches and looking at pretty paintings. I don't need you and your condescending "concluding point" to understand what I'm looking at. But I need this course to fulfill my expressive cultures requirement back in New York, so I'm pretty stuck.

I can honestly say, though, that the weirdest thing about classes here is hearing horses trotting around outside on the cobblestones. You're just like, whoa, what century am I in again?

The laundry machines here only take 20 crown coins, of which I had none today, so I went around asking people for change. That was fun. The only other time I've tried to do that it failed spectacularly. I was coming back from the gym, and upon realizing that I left my metro pass at home, I went to buy a ticket. But all I had was a 50 crown bill, and the machines only take coins. So I went into a nearby mall, walked up to the juice stand where I had literally just bought an orange juice and they speak english and asked for a coin. "No," she said with a laugh. Fuck. It took me like 10 minutes to find someone who would give me change. So, with that my mind, I was not looking forward to this. I learned the word for twenty in Czech class, and since I figured any sentence that I could cobble together from a dictionary would be wrong, I just found the word for coin and went around to local shops holding two 10 coins up and asking "Dvacet mince? Prosim?" (Literally: "Twenty coin? Please?) I must've looked like a crazy person. But the nice lady at the Chinese restaurant took pity on the Amerikan and his attempt at Czech, so she gave me the coins. The laundry machines here suck, but hopefully I'll have enough.

Booking travel plans now. It sucks because between last semester and this one, 4 discount airlines have gone out of business. FOUR. So it's going to be a little pricey. I'll do what I can, because I am not leaving Europe until my little list of places is all checked off.

Sunday 6 September 2009

Everybody's working for the weekend

So today wraps up my first full weekend in Praha. From the top:

Let's talk about Friday morning. For some sick, sick reason, signups for NYU's sponsored trips this semester were posted at 8 AM on Friday. Why. I want to know who was in charge of that super decision. It's like the administrators here are playing some sort of sadistic game to see how early they can force a bunch of hung-over college kids to wake up. Rumors had been flying around that people were planning on getting there a half hour early, so we all roused ourselves at 6:30 IN THE GODDAMN MORNING. So unpleasant. But we signed up for the trips we wanted, so it was worth it. I guess.

We all went out to breakfast afterwards. I have to admit, for a quiche prepared in a mock French bistro in a former communist country, it wasn't half bad. The fresh squeezed orange juice was outrageous, though. Alex had like 30 glasses because she thought she was getting sick and wanted to OD on Vitamin C. Anyways, I skipped my last Czech class to get back at NYU for making me get up at the crack of dawn. It was so nice- I went back to Machova, took a shower, watched a little TV. The best part was that the dorm was completely empty, so there were no loud idiots in the stairwell and no one blasting Tupac (I support both those things, just not in the morning). It's a nice preview of what my Mondays are going to be like, since I don't have class until 3:30.

A bunch of us took a guided tour of Prague Castle in the afternoon. It was absolutely gorgeous. The pictures on facebook speak for themselves, so I don't need to tell you again how amazing the sights were. But I just did. Whatever. Our tour guide was actually an NYU professor who just does these tours for fun.

One thing I didn't realize about Czech people is how many of them absolutely hate the direction their country has gone. When we walked past Madeline Albright's place of birth, she told us that Madeline was offered the presidency of the Czech Republic, but turned it down because she didn't want to live here. Then she turned to me and muttered "I don't know why anyone would want to come here from America. It's so much better there. This place is awful." WHOA. As Frankie says, relax. When we got to the castle, I asked her if the president still lived there. "Unfortunately," she replied. But this isn't like when people used to hate on George Bush because, as my anthropology professor once said, he's "a stumblebum retard." This is old school Central European dissension brewing. Scary stuff.

We also amused ourselves on the tour by trying to take the ugliest candid photos of each other. We're so mature.

Friday night was incredible. We started at this place called Pivovarsky Dum, which according to Holley means "Beer House." It lived up to its name, let's make that clear. Nolan, Kush, Damon and I split 2 Giraffes, which are giant 4 liter towers of beer, and in typical college kid fashion, we decided to race. It was a hard-fought battle, but Damon and I lost by about half a pint. And the beer? It was their house-brewed dark and light mixed beer, the best I've had so far. Plus, the menu had a section titled "Little things that go well with beer." I think every menu should have that. Kate, Alex, and Emily all had a shot of Absinth, which I don't have the balls to do yet. After Pivovarsky closed, we went to this place called Cheers for more drinks. Apparently we have no self-control.

So now we're all pretty toasted, and by that point, all we wanted to do was find a club and go nuts. Well Friday is not a big club night in Prague (why? I don't know), so after a while we found this hidden club underneath a place called Retro cafe. There was a bouncer at the door, but he let us in. It was so much fun, jumping around like an idiot to crazy techno music with a beer in my hand. There was a buffet with food layed out at one end of the room, but when Lisa decided she was hungry, we were all kicked out. Why? Because apparently we crashed some Czech girl's birthday party. On the way out the door I met a group of drunk Slovaks and they taught me a Slovak song. So cool.

Saturday night was equally memorable. Kush, Damon, Nolan, and I had tickets to the Czech Philharmonic's Opening Gala event, so we got all dressed up and went. Let me tell you, there's something about walking down an ancient cobblestone street in a fine suit that makes you feel like royalty. Try it, you'll know what I'm talking about. The Philharmonic was incredible. I'd never been to a professional orchestra in an old-school concert hall, and it was a sight to behold. There was a red carpet, fancy hors d'oeuvres, people dressed to a T. Classy as shit. The concert hall was breathtaking. It had this golden atmosphere to it that I can't even begin to describe.

Side note: During intermission, Damon and I went outside and saw a group of four NYU students dressed in hipster jeans and hoodies passing around a flask and making rum and cokes. Things like that make me so angry. How were you raised that you think it's OK to dress like that when you're going to see one of the world's best orchestras perform their opening concert? It's just disrespectful. And why do you feel the need to sneak this flask in? You can't go two hours without a drink? They were selling beers for a buck-fifty inside for Chrissake! You're not seeing your friend's shitty band in a basement in Williamsburg, so don't fucking act like it. Sometimes, I really hate being an NYU student.

Afterwards we went to this place called U sudu. Everyone knows it as Cave Bar, though, because it's actually this network of tunnels and cellars that's like 2 stories underground. It's the craziest place! You definitely feel that you're underground, but it's not uncomfortable or anything. They have this amazing stuff, I think it's called barcek, that tastes like apple cider but has way more alcohol in it than beer. Now usually I'm not into the fruity drinks, but this stuff was fantastic. And since you can't taste the alcohol (no really, you can't. Not like when people say you can't taste it but really it's just very faint. You cannot taste any alcohol in this), you don't realize how drunk you're getting until it's too late.

But the bar was a really great place to meet people. I met a guy from France who works in Prague. When I asked him about Paris he said it was dirty and that I should go to Poland instead. Interesting. When we were outside at one point, a German couple came up to us and said that their hostel locked them out and what should they do. I recommended they go inside and have a beer, and they did. Gotta love Prague. We all jammed into two cabs home, and I'm pretty sure we got ripped off.

On a down note, an ATM ate my friend Sara's debit card. She argued with the Euronet service guy on the phone for a while and all they'll do is extract the card and send it back to America. In three weeks. Definitely not using that ATM again.

Thursday 3 September 2009

Dobrý den! Jak vám mohu pomoci?

Before I get into this post, I'd like to point out that while I created this blog to keep my friends updated on my crazy Prague life, I'm also going to use it to try my hand at some travel writing. So if some posts are less entertaining and more long-winded, I apologize in advance. But that's for another day.

I've been taking Czech classes this week. It's a good idea for NYU to make us take a crash course in Czech since there's no language requirement, but at the same time, how effective can a crash course be if you're learning one of the world's hardest languages? Tomorrow is the last day, and really the only thing that has improved is my grasp on the number 4. Holley, you know what I'm talking about. Čtyři. The little arrow over the C gives it a "tsh" sound, and for some stupid reason, the arrow over the r gives it an "ersh" sound. Sounds simple, right? No. Nothing in this language is simple. I know how to say simple things like "please" and "thank you" and "beer," but we haven't learned any verbs or sentence structure. Hmmm. Maybe my Amerikan tongue just isn't designed to make such crazy sounds.

Other that the classes, we've been filling our time with exploring and drinking. I bought my metro pass, but the picture I had to use was taken when my hair and beard were really long. And since I have darker skin than all the Czechs, I look like a roma in the picture. I had it checked by a policeman a few hours after he got it, and the look he shot me when he saw my picture was not a friendly one. But other than that, the metro is really easy to figure out and surprisingly clean. You can't eat or drink on the platform, as I found out when a Czech woman yelled at me while I was enjoying a croissant down there this morning. My friend Aditi had a similar experience with a nectarine yesterday. Touchy touchy.

I ventured into Old Town Square for the first time today and I really can't wait for tourist season to be over. It was like Times Square but 700 years old and full of people wearing Renaissance clothing. There was a madrigal playing from one of the food stands and it was really obnoxious. I just went to see what the fuss was about; I didn't expect to be surrounded by Robin Hood and his Men in Tights. And while I love this place, some of the streets are pretty smelly. For some reason, the street right outside the NYU center smells like garbage. And, in typical European fashion, deodorant isn't flying off the shelves in Tesco.

On the positive side, my Czech teacher pointed out the cheapest restaurants near the NYU Center, so I can continue to not cook my own meals. It's funny- everything is really, really cheap here, but you'd be surprised how fast you burn through money. You spend spend spend because it looks like monopoly money and you don't realize that there's, you know, VALUES and EXCHANGE RATES that come into play. Whatever. I don't plan on returning to New York with much money. You know, you can't take it with you.

Pictures of Prague will probably be up on facebook tomorrow!