5 Things I Will Miss About Prague

5) Orange Fanta: But Allison you say, isn't there Orange Fanta in America? Yes, but it's a different kind of orange. The American Fanta is more like a traditional orange drink, which doesn't taste much like orange. The orange Fanta over here tastes more like and actual orange. And there aren't the stupid "Wanta Fanta" commercials here.

4) The Daily Routine: By which I mean the routes I take and what I see when I'm traveling to studio. There's the pastry shop near the hostel where I've had to get breakfast a couple of times, the workers repairing the sidewalks, the super-fast communist escalators, the National Museum at the top of Wenceslas square, and the open air market that is half a block away from studio.

3) The Prague Castle: Mainly because how often do you get to say you live in the city that has the largest castle complex in the whole of Europe?

2) Spring: As has been said about NC weather, we have four seasons: Summer, still summer, winter, and almost summer. We get about a week of Spring if we are lucky. However, it is actually Spring here. The weather the past couple of days has been beautiful - warm, sunny, and most everything is blooming. Yesterday Julie and I went to Petrin Hill to take dusk pictures. The weather was cool, the cherry trees and lilac shrubs were in full bloom, and somewhere in the park someone was playing light jazz on a saxophone. It was very relaxing - quite a nice bookend to the day.

1) Public Transportation: Why number one you may ask? Because I can get from the hostel to studio in the mornings in 30 minutes. Because I can go to a movie on a Friday night and know that there is a tram that will arrive at 12:27 am that will drop me off a block away from home. Because of all the people you get to see. Because I can go to the outskirts of Prague on a metro line or a bus, and because I haven't had to buy gas for 3 months. I will certainly miss it.

There are probably others, but I can't think of them at the moment. I just know that I am glad I came to study here.

Picture for Now, List Later

This is me at Divoka Sarka (sounds like shark-a) on top of a big rock. I thought this picture was pretty cool.

5 Things I Won't Miss About Prague

5) The Crowds at the Astronomical Clock - Don't get me wrong, the clock in Old Town Square is very nice. If you go into the tower you get a wonderful view of the city. Every hour the clock does a little "performance" when little models of Christ and the 12 apostles come outside the clock and then circle back in. It's cute, but not all that impressive. Yet every time I've been out to Old Town Square, there is always a huge crowd of people that can start 30 minutes before the hour. It makes getting to destinations like lunch or the Easter Markets difficult.

4) The Poodles in our Hostel - There are some good dogs in our hostel. The poodles are not in that category. They yap very shrilly and like to do so at 6:30 in the morning. Other resentment stems from the workers at the front desk, who call the dogs and whistle at them when the dogs are four feet away and refuse to move.

3) Having to Continuously Watch the Sidewalk - On the subject of dogs, the streets and sidewalks of Prague tend to have reminders that dogs walk them as well as their owners. We always have to be aware of where we are stepping in order not to land in "good luck" as it's come to be called.

2) A Certain Class I Have on Wednesday Afternoons - I don't want to go into too much detail, but I will be super glad when it is over.

1) The Dang Curtains in the Room - There is a particular curtain in our hostel room that does not like to move. In order to close the curtains at night, you have to grab the whole thing and jerk forcefully. There is always a feeling that it is going to be ripped off the runner and that I'm going to end up with 2 meters of fabric in my hands. Julie will attest to this annoyance as well.


There. Tune in next time for things I will miss about Prague.

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter to you all :) I decorated the eggs in this picture last Tuesday, and the sheep I thought was cute and bought this week. I figured he's kinda spring-ish.

The only thing I missed about this Easter was sunrise service back home. We always have it at the old church near the cemetery which is next to a cow pasture. The cows often come up and join the service. There's nothing like hearing the resurrection story and when the preacher pauses you hear a very calm "moo" from 50 feet away as if the cow is saying "amen."

Procrastination Queen

Since the beginning of the semester, I have unofficially reserved Fridays as "buffer days" between bouts of being productive. In other words, I don't do much relating to school work. Yesterday the big events of the day were watching an episode of "Jeeves and Wooster," visiting the Easter markets, buying a trdlo ("grilled" pastry with almonds and sugar), and seeing a movie called Vratne Lahve which literally translated is something like "returned bottles," but instead has been given the English title Empties. While the English name is not the best, it was a very enjoyable film. I like my Fridays, it gives a nice break and helps preserve my sanity.

Sadly, the feelings of not wanting to do work can spill over from Friday into Saturday, as is the case this weekend. I think this is best evidenced by the update to the blog instead of being productive. As I'm typing, my base map is sitting beside me with all the notes I've written on it of what needs to change. It's not a pretty sight. Maybe if I remind myself that I get to color with my pretty markers and pencils I'll be able to sit myself down and focus.

Trains to Berlin

Over Palm Sunday weekend our studio traveled to Berlin via railroad. We were blessed with beautiful spring weather - I was able to wear short sleeves, outside! We did a lot of walking, visiting the Sony Center at Potsdamer Platz, the Jewish Museum, Invaliden park, two churches, and various other sites. I saw this bust of Einstein near the Sony Center. He was made entirely of Legos, and his eyes moved. How awesome is that?

Anyway, it was a good trip. On the train ride back to Prague, I was listening to my iPod on shuffle while reading this book called Wanderlust, which is about the history of walking, traveling by foot, and so forth. The song "Walk Like a Man" came on, which I thought was sort of funny, then the following songs played:

"I'm on My Way"
"Hey Jude" (a decoy song)
"Gimme Three Steps"
"On My Feet Again"

I told this to Julie and we concluded that Apple must have the technology to read people's thoughts. I think the iPod realized that I was catching on to its motives and then didn't play a song about walking again for the rest of the trip. I suppose that iBigBrother will be the wave of the future.

Sunny Side Up

We had truly gorgeous weather today - mid 50s and sunny. It was a good day to walk around in outside, which I did since our site is Letna park. I saw a guy who had a wind sail attached to a skateboard and he was riding around on one of the parking lots. It looked like he was having a good time.

Easter is in a couple of weeks and all of Prague is ready. Markets are set up in Old Town Square, Wenceslas Square, and Andel plaza. There are lots of pretty painted eggs for sale, which I may have to look into purchasing. When I was wandering around Wenceslas Square today, I smelled fried pastries and meat on the grill. It was all I could do to resist buying something as I had already had lunch today.

The picture to the right is the "Easter Tree" in Wenceslas Square. I hope those eggs are hollow, because if they fall I bet they could do some damage.

Only a Picture Today, Folks

This thing is a beehive. No kidding.

The Coldest Bathroom in the World

The coldest bathroom in the world exists in our studio. I freeze every time I go in there. It almost makes me want to buy a space heater for the bathroom, but there is no place to plug in one.
It also doesn't help that we've had a batch of cold weather this week (appropriate for the start of Spring, I think). There is even a chance for snow not once, but twice this week. Some parts of the Czech Republic have already had 10cm of snow this week.

Not much else has been going on, although last Wednesday I went to the opera and saw Madame Butterfly. It was in Italian, the subtitles were in Czech, and I didn't understand much of what was being sung. I was able to read the summary of the story beforehand, so I wasn't completely lost. I made up my own lyrics for the songs, most of them being, "Pinkerton is a man whose parents aren't married" (substitute words for yourself).

Buzz Buzz

"Buzz" just might be one of my favorite onomatopoeias, right along with "thwack" and "foont," the latter being the sound a Nerf ball or arrow makes when shooting out of a Nerf gun. Buzz, however, is the topic at hand as I am taking Bees & Beekeeping this semester. Today we saw the inside of a beekeeping supply store where you can buy smokers, hives, frames, and face protection gear (one of which could double as a fencing mask).

Bees are interesting little creatures; probably one of the most remarkable things about them is that while they "dance" to communicate to the rest of the hive the location of pollen and nectar sources, they used the position of the sun as a marker. If the bee's head is up (relative to the hive, I suppose), then the food sources are in the direction of the sun, usually south. According to some people, bees can even calculate the sun's position on overcast days and when it's on the other side of the world. It is slightly less impressive if you think of it this way:

Alan Davies: Why is so remarkable that they know where they live?
Stephen Fry: Because they only have 950,00 neurons as opposed to our 10 billion neurons in our brains.
Alan Davies: But they've only got one thing to remember: where they live.
- "Q.I."

Germany, the Netherlands, and Thoughts on the English Language

Greetings from Germany! At the moment I am using a German keyboard, and not all the letters are in the same place. The spot where normally the letter 'y' is for me the letter 'z' is, so if you see me referring to the mountains in Germanz, it's not a new country, it's just because I didn't catch my typing mistakes.

So anyway, Spring Break '07 had a couple of things in common with Spring Break '06, in that there was a lot of walking and hiking involved. The main difference was that '06 was in North Carolina and Virginia and '07 was in two different countries - Germany and the Netherlands. I took my shortest plane flight yet to get to Dortmand (about an hour - I only got to listen to three songs on the iPod before we were told to prepare for landing and to shut off all electronic equipment), and Julie's friend Jens met us at the airport. It was our first car ride since we left the States in January. I refuse to count the van ride from the airport in Prague to our hostel the first night.

We traveled to the Netherlands on Thursday (I get to cross another country off the list of places I've visited), and we went to Burger's Zoo. It was in some respects like the North Carolina Zoo in Asheboro, or at least the indoor parts were like the Aviary and the African Pavillion. They even had a section for the Sonora Desert, so I got to see some familiar faces. We walked around the city the zoo was near afterwards which had a pretty lively street scene. There was a guy playing guitar on the street singing the song 'Torn' from a couple of years ago, and I prefered his version to the original. On Friday and Saturday we hiked in the German countryside and saw the Rhine and some castle ruins that were really fun to climb. Needless to say, this has all left me very tired and not looking forward to waking up at 6:30 to get to the airport in time tomorrow morning.

I think being in countries where you don't speak the native language, or when people are asking you what you call things in English makes you more aware of the idiosyncrasies of the English language. For example, when I was standing on the bus at the Prague airport, I realized that we say get on a bus, or on a plan, or on a train, but get in a car. In reality, you are getting inside all of those modes of transportation, but you never say 'I'm getting in a plane.' I was relating these thoughts to Julie and she informed me that I should find some better way to spend my time, or at least keep such thoughts to myself.

"Spring" Cleaning

While it is not officially Spring (and won't be until March 21), the weather has been fairly kind to us as of late. It was a bit messier today, but I wasn't outside all that much. This I blame on cleaning out my dang school email account. I have had the bad habit of letting things accumulate over the semesters, and I'm pretty sure I still have stuff from my freshman year (not a good sign). Much of today was spent on deleting what was worthless, saving what was amusing in word documents, and sending articulate, important emails to prospective employers for this summer (at least, that's what I've been telling myself). The sad thing is, it's not done yet.

Being the next to last day of February, I say, Holy Cow. I've been here over a month, and it seems to have gone by really quickly. Next week is Spring Break (off to Germany!), and then I'm sure I'll turn around and the next thing I know it will be April 23rd and I'll be flying home to NC. As my friends Gnarls Barkley might say, that's crazy.

I'm Glad I'm Not in Bulgaria: Reflections Upon the Nod

While I am taking the Czech language course and am learning a lot, there are still plenty of times when I get confused or thrown off track by the native Czech speakers (it is after all, their language, not mine). This is where the importance of body language kicks in to the conversation. I have found two expressions that help out a lot.

1) The Blank Stare

I know the phrase for "I don't understand," which is "Nerozumim." However, in such cases when I get confused, my brain goes into a state of shock and I can't always remember it straight away. The blank stare conveys to the native Czech speaker that I have no earthly idea what they just said. Let's look at an example from yesterday's lunch:

Waiter (in Czech): Hello. What would you like to order?
Me (in Czech): The chicken with pineapple, please.
Waiter (in Czech): Something something something blah blah blah monkeys.
Me: *blank stare*

2) The Emphatic Nod

Now the nod is also very important. It allows for me to say yes to something if I'm only partially sure I understood what is going on. Let's look at the conversation from lunch again:

(after blank stare)
Waiter (in English): Do you speak English?
Me: *emphatic nod* Yes!
Waiter (in English): Rice or french fries?
Me: Rice.

Nodding helps out a lot. However, apparently the nod is not universal. According to my professor, in Bulgaria, what I think of as nodding (a vertical pivot of the head) means no, and what I think of as shaking my head (horizontal pivot) means yes.

I'm glad I'm not studying in Bulgaria.

Nothing to do with Prague, but...

...this is my new dream gift.

Kykyryky

"Kykyryky" is the Czech version of "Cock-a-doodle-do." Technically there should be an accent mark above the last y, but I haven't quite figured out how to insert it.

Last Sunday I was able to attend the International Church of Prague. I heard about it because I've kept in contact with people from my county who are also living in Prague. The service was a lot like churches I've attended in Raleigh, and we even sang some of the same songs.
I was even able to talk to the family from my county, and their daughter told me it was "nice to hear (my) southern voice." I'm looking forward to going back next week. It seemed like there were several nations represented in that one room, which was really cool.

While it has been unseasonably warm here, it looks as if a cool front is moving in this week and the highs of the day will be in the negative degrees Celsius soon (which isn't too bad for Fahrenheit, the low 30s upper 20s, but that is still pretty cold). Luckily I came more prepared for that type of weather instead of the warm weather, so I don't think I'll freeze.

The picture above is part of the old fortification of the city that was supposed to keep invaders out and the citizens in. At least, I think it was. I can tell you for sure that there was some crazy grade change on that slope and you would not want to trip and fall.

The Plague

Happy Belated Valentines Day!

In the spirit of winter, I seem to have come down with the plague. Both studios have been sick, so I think that it was inevitable that I would catch whatever it is going around. At least it's not the "walking death" sickness that one of our classmates got. He didn't leave the hostel for two days.

This weekend we will actually be in Prague, and the tentative plan is to get lots of rest and possibly see some parts of the city that we haven't seen before. There's a lot of it out there to explore.

Cesky Krumlov

I needn't have worried about anything in Cesky Krumlov. Yes, the streets are dark and spooky at night, but you can see from above, it's spectacular during the day. That would be the castle in the background, which is awesome because it has a moat with bears in it. Apparently back in the day they were used as protection for the castle instead of water encircling it. Nowadays, the bears are just an attraction but they are really well fed, so they are quite fat and fuzzy.

"It's Thursday but Dwight thinks it’s Friday so…keep that going." - "The Office"

Since Thursdays are the last days we meet for classes during the week, they might as well be Fridays. However, this Friday the landscape studio is heading out to Cesky Krumlov, a town in the southern Czech Republic. It is a town of some notoriety, as the film Hostel was made there. And guess what we'll be staying in - a hostel! I have fortunately never seen the movie, since I am a wimp when it comes to horror films. I will try to fill my thoughts with bunnies and flowers as opposed to sick psychopaths that torture backpackers throughout Europe.

And then I found $5... in the middle of Poland

I find it only fitting that my first real entry of my time in Prague is in fact about my weekend trip to Poland. I and my fellow landscape students went to Krakow, and we had a great time. We went to a bar called "Middle Earth," if for nothing else but to say, "I went to middle earth last weekend." It was decorated like a hobbit hole, and the only downside was that I walked out of there smelling like a cigarette factory on fire. Not pleasant.
Julie and I took a tour of the salt mines of Krakow, which were pretty amazing. They were huge man-made caverns constructed just from removing huge blocks of rock salt from the earth.
Julie and I also decided that any sentence got better just from adding "in the middle of Poland." For example, I'm riding a bus... in the middle of Poland. I'm lost... in the middle of Poland. "In the middle of the Czech Republic" just doesn't roll off the tongue as easily.

While staying at Mama's Hostel (which I highly recommend, if you ever decide to visit Krakow) we met a couple of European students while eating breakfast who provided us with good conversation. Allow me to share some quotes from the weekend:

(after drinking questionable water from the Polish sink)
Will: I can't die. The guy at border patrol is expecting to see me tomorrow and I don't want to disappoint him.

(on transportation)
Stajn: You should take a plane. They're better.
Me: So says the aerospace engineer.
Stajn: Well, I have to look out for myself.

(on a.m. vs. p.m.)
Feich: I can remember the difference between a.m. and p.m. because p.m. is the one that I am awake for.

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