A collection of rambling summaries

I've decided that ten days between posts is too long if I want to paint an accurate portrait of my time here, but unfortunately (or fortunately), I find myself too busy to post more regularly. In any event, I'll take this opportunity to update.

I feel like these past ten days have been much more centered around becoming more acclimated with classes and with the other kids on my program than it was around exploring Prague. Most of our classes are pretty early in the morning, so we didn't really venture out much late at night in hopes of being at least somewhat alive for our first classes. The one exception was Monday night, when I went out in the neighborhood with Rob and Mirek because our 8:30 am politics class was cancelled (our professor got stuck in Romania). I think we might have gone to some bar in the square, but we ended up sitting at a bar about two blocks from our apartment. The place was playing VH1 classic, American Pie by Don Mclean was on when we sat down, and it was kind of fun to just sit and talk and listen to music over a few beers.

On Wednesday night, pretty much everyone on the program went out to two bars, as organized by one of the Czech buddies (Ludek). One was this cool sort of mexican place across the river, and the second was somewhere closer to Wenceslas. Mirek had a friend over, named Kuba (short for Jakub), and he was super nice, and the language barrier was kind of enternaining as he spoke very little English. It really is a cool experience trying to communicate with someone who speaks so little English (and I clearly have not quite perfected my Czech), but by the end of the night I think I could safely say that we had become friends. He has a little bit of a bromance going with Mirek (mom and dad-- a bromance is when two straight dudes act like they could be involved) , it was really cute. *** highlight, "he told me my kunda was the best"***

On Thursday, a portion of us went back to this club, Lucerna, to see a cuban band play. It was realllly fun, they were great! They only spoke to the crowd in spanish, which I didn't expect. Anyway, the girl who suggested we go for the show, Eliska, got their CD, so now I have their music.

The next friday was sort of hectic. Alice and I went over to Steph and Lani's to plan for our trip to Greece, I think we were pretty much successful. Mirek called while we were over there to inform us that CET was requiring us to go with him to the National library to get our library cards, which cut into my plan to go see the John Lennon wall with Kelley, but I'm sure we'll have another chance. Then, Kelley and Mirek and I walked across the river on a bridge to the right of Charles Bridge when facing the river, and we passed this beautiful opera house and a building Mirek thought was like a Law school, which was also architecturally sublime. We sat for coffee and then headed back, with just enough time to change and rest before services. Then we headed down to the Spanish Synagogue, and sat for the service. It was pretty secular, men and women weren't separated. The prayer books also were written in english, czech, hebrew, and had english transliterations. the rabbi conducted the service in english, czech, and hebrew. One would imagine this whole ordeal to take a long time, but, it really didn't. I swear the rabbi was on crack. We sped through the prayers so fast I thought that our rabbi might secretly be involved in some competition-- first rabbi to finish first wins a free trip to israel. No complaints, though. We got back home in time for me to make dinner and relax before prepping for what turned out to be a relatively eventful night. We had a bunch of people over and were gonna pregame and go out. What ended up happening was that Alice got belligerent and decided to fight with Steph as we were walking towards Old Town Square, and when I went to try and calm down the aggravating party, she went sort of bat crazy on me. Basically she was being really insecure about Steph and I getting really close with one another but blew everything way out of proportion and was just generally annoying. There was lots of crying and she pushed or hit Steph, I'm not really sure how it went down. Not pleasant, pretty much ruined our nights, and Steph and Lani and I ended up wanting to go home. I called Mirek to come get us (he was at a dinner thing with his brother and sister-in-law and other friends), and I felt bad for calling him later because I probably could have walked back on my own, but he said that I should stop apologizing so I have.

Anyway, the next morning I woke up and was feeling much less vengeful as I had been feeling the previous night. Alice doesn't remember anything, and Steph and I have decided to not fill her in on the content of the fight because we think that that will make it seem like her arguments have merit and/or are worth discussing when in reality they're stupid and don't need to be talked about. So we've dropped it, and are pretty much not going to let Alice get that drunk again, now that we've seen the repercussions. Plus, she feels really bad about it. Anyway, Saturday morning I went out for coffee and breakfast with Kelley at Cafe Faux Pas, this really adorable (and quite reasonable) coffee shop one block up from my apartment (with really yummy crepes!). Then I met up with Steph and Lani later to do some exploring. We found this cute little restaurant and had a full fledged conversation in czech with our waitress! ("Good Morning!" "How Are You?" "What is your name?" "I am from New York!" etc.). We were pretty pleased with ourselves. ***highlight, "What, you've never played that game?, and the water....*** Later in the day, we were supposed to go to a soccer game. We met up with the rest of CET and arrived at an empty stadium. The tickets were for the following day. The following day we were leaving for an overnight trip to Cesky Krumlov. Jiri promises that we'll catch another game later in the semester. Hopefully, that will work out, I was really excited!

On to Cesky Krumlov. It's this little town about 31/2 hours away from Praha. It has a beautiful castle, which we got a great tour of from our guide, Bryce, a 40-something ex-floridian who came backpacking to Prague 20 years ago, at which point he decided that he "liked it here", so he settled down. Prague was too big of a city for him, though, so he switched his residence to Cesky Krumlov 15 years ago. It's a little insane, but he ended up being a really cool guy, very nice, extremely informative and clearly passionate about this place. Plus, he led us to a nice place to buy wine and bought himself a bottle, which he finished with a group of us on the Bridge. The town sort of felt like a disney land resort, and was entirely catered towards tourists, but it was a nice place to walk around. On sunday, we had an interesting dining experience. I went with alice, Lani, Mirek, and Ludek to get lunch. We sat at this one place and were treated extremely by the waitress, even though we had been communicating with her in czech (through Ludek). She didn't have the patience for us and stormed off several times as we tried to order. So, we left. we ended up at this empty place, and I got a traditional czech dish (much to the surprise of my czech companions), but it was really good (roast beef and dumplings in a cream sauce)! Then to make up for bringing us cold fries, the owner brought us a free desert, it was pancakes with a raspberry reduction sauce, and was literally AMAZING. Alice and Lani and I licked the plate clean. Ludek told her how much we liked it, so she brought us another plate. for free. It was pretty fantastic. Then we met up with CET and Bryce again to learn more about the town's history. Afterward, I ended up hanging out with a few of my friends and a bunch of the CET Film kids on the bridge (with our wine) and spent the rest of the night with them, I'm really glad we had the chance to meet them and will hopefully see them more while we're all in Prague. We ate at a restaurant as organized by CET. Bryce whipped out a guitar froms omewhere and started singing American Pie (I guess everyone gets nostalgic sometimes), and then we danced to music by a gyspy band that had been playing for a while, before proceeding with some friends to a bar, before proceeding home. All in all, Cesky was a pretty good time, and was definitely relaxing.

On our way home from Cesky Krumlov, we stopped in a brand new museum, called the Museum of the Iron Curtain, which just opened this summer. It's extremely close to the Austiran border (as in, I could see clearly into Austria. without my glasses. because they've clearly been lost in the mail), and the museum building used to be used for military operations. We were the museum's first ever english speaking group, but luckily, our tourguide was fluent in english. He showed us a bunch of old artifacts, then brought us to a room to explain the history of the Iron curtain, and showed us a few maps, photographs, and videos. It was very interesting and I'm really glad that we stopped there.

That sums it all up. Back to classes now, and am looking forward to going grocery shopping today so that I can prepare a good dinner tonight. My Nationalism class is pretty fantastic, we had an intense gyspsy-white czech debate today between Mirka and Eliska. The prof is very intellectual and kind of always sounds stoned (but I'm sure he's not....), and has long hippie hair and can talk for ages but it's usually relatively thought provoking.

*note. highlights are funny things that happened that I don't want to forget, but if you're reading this you won't get it. basically a giant inside joke with myself, 'cause I'm baller.

Na schledanou


alice, me, kelley, in Wenceslas Square



pretty prague street



the group, wine drinking (or posing) on the bridge


Cesky Krumlov

Rozumite Anglicky?

I've completed my week of intensive czech classes, and have concluded that the phrase "rozumite anglicky (do you speak english)?" will be steadily relied upon as my stay here continues. There have been small triumphs though. Last week, I could ask in czech "how much does it cost?", but was dumb to the answer. But I know the numbers now, though a few of them are only discernible from one another by paying close attention to the number of syllables in each word, so, the probability of me getting it right is depressingly low. But with practice and carefully tuned in ears, I'm relatively confident that I'll be able to get by. I can do some other very basic things in czech now, so, yay for progress. Plus, my "czech buddy" is back, and he tends to go where I go, so i've got a built in czech english dictionary by my side most of the time. I should pay him for his translation services. And also, a LOT of people speak English. and pointing, the universal language, has proved to be very useful. So basically, depsite the language barrier, my lack of czech language skills doesn't seem like it will render me too helpless here.

This week was also busy, in addition to my intensive czech classes all morning, I've had two days of tours plus one day with some shabbat requirements. On Tuesday, we took a tour of Prague and it was, unfortunately, really bad. It was our tourguides first tour ever, and he was really nervous, which exacerbated his trouble with translating into English. That fact, on its own, wouldn't have been too terrible if he had interesting insights and shared with us cool facts about the history, but he didn't. Jiri was on our tour and he basically took over after about a half an hour to share with us what he knew about Prague. We went back up to the castle which was still breathtakingly beautiful, and saw a few new things (like the monastary where the monks used to make profit by making wine).

On Thursday, the Jewish Studies kids met back at CET at 2:00 for a tour of the Jewish Quarter. That tour was immeasurably better than the Tuesday one. Our guide spoke perfect english and was very knowledgable. We went into the Old New Synagouge, which is the Europe's oldest active Synagouge. Then we went to the Spanish Synagagoue, named not because it has Sephardic influence or has a Spanish congregation, but because the architecture of the building is int he Moorish style. The synnagogue has an exhibit upstairs which was interesting, had information about how Czech jews used to live both before and after WWII. We also walked through the very old Jewish cemetery. Next, we checked out the Jewish Museum. It had lots of old artifacts that were confiscated by the Nazis but kept stored and perfectly labeled. I read an interesting plaque there which discuessed hot the 1st Jewish privlidges in Czech Lands were granted in 1255-1262. The sovereign of that time found inspiration in the 1244 Charter of Duke Friedrich II, for Austrian Jews. I also learned fromt eh tourguide about Jewish lastnames. He taught us that for taxation purposes, jews were forced to get "proper" surnames (instead of simply being "Firstname/Son Of Father's Firstname, aka, Yehoshua/ben Avraham"). The people issuing names had to issue like, a thousand a day, so they stopped being creative and started naming people after places (hence lots of Berg's and Stein's and Hirsch's) or after characteristics, or, people could pay to be given a good name, hence Goldberg and Silverstein, etc). Finally, we walked into a synnagouge. the names of Czech people who died in the Holocaust were inscribed on all the walls, in each room, ceiling to floor. From speakers, a man sang the names of the deceased in a somber melody which I first mistook for solemn prayer. Next, I walked through the "Art in Extreme situations" exhibit, full of artwork from the Children of Terezin, many or all of whom died there. It was beautiful and sad.

And then it was friday. My class went on a field trip through the Old Town Square with our beyond awesome Czech teacher (also named Jiri. There are, I swear, a thousand Jiri's here). Then we hung out at a Franz Kafka cafe before going to the JCC for lunch, which was really awful, followed by an hour long lecture from David, the Jewish Youth Coordinator who likes to impersonate Ali G and Borat. (When I saw him earlier that day with my friend Mike, we were like "hey David", to which he responded, without hesitation "yo whattup my niggaz" in true Ali G form, but with a slight czech accent. Doesn't sound quite the same coming from him. Anyway, his "short talk" was torturously long and I kinda fell asleep while my classmates played games on their phones. On our way back, good friend Steph got pickpotted on a crowded metro, which sucked. She's the second person on our program to have gotten pickpotted within this first week. Oh well. We were back at the Old New Synagouge at 8 for shabbat. Us girls had the privilege of sitting behind a wall with a tiny window in it through which one could theoretically watch the service, but which realistically it was impossible to hear or see anything through. So we sat until the end of services.

Then, we came back home to celebrate Mirek's 23rd Birthday! He bought himself a cake (we were planning to make him one, but he beat us to it). It's a traditional Czech Honey Cake and it's amazing. Then we started drinking, went out to a bar, and ended up at an 80's club with most of the remainder of CET. it was a fun night.

Yesterday, Saturday, was also fun. We hung around the apt untill around 3, when we met up with some of the girlies to walk around the mall. Then we came back to the apt to make dinner. Afterwards, I went with Mirek to watch the Czech national football team play Slovakia. They tied 2-2, and Mirek says that that means that there's almost no chance that CZR will make it to the World Cup. To drown his sorrows, I invited him out with me (and also, I needeed someone to help me with directions). We went back to a bar we had stopped in the previous night to meet up with a throng of CET people. It was a LOT of fun. We met a group of British/Australian/Irish/Canadian guys all there as part of a bachelor party. They bought a few of us a bunch of drinks and were just generally interesting and cool to chill with. Then the CET group left, and we went to McDonalds, I have no idea why or whose idea that was, but I got fries and it pretty much hit the spot.

Today, the plan is to do laundry, go grocery shopping, find the John Lennon wall, and study czech. Wooohoo.

Below are a few pictures.


Roomates


Roomates and our matching pj's


Mirek big pimpin' on his birthday