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.