Sunday, December 23, 2012

Being home


I might be putting the cart before the horse here, but I’m not going to do a summary of my study abroad experience. At least not until I readjust to being home a little bit. But people keep asking me what its like being home, so I figured I’d describe it while it’s still.. you know, weird.
First, Colorado is beautiful… in the mountains. Where I am fortunately enough to (kind of) live. Don’t get me wrong, the foothills where my folks live is pretty when everything isn’t yellow and dead. And it’s so open! Try to imagine the contrast of going from a densely packed and colorful urban environment where you couldn’t throw a rock without hitting another human being, to a wide open mostly yellow landscape where the only other people around are your family members and neighbors, whom you can easily avoid. Then, apartments in Prague are about the size of my living room, and the sheer size of my house is kind of overwhelming. So much so, actually, that once I got back I kind of hid in my room. I wonder if Prague turned me agoraphobic, because seriously, the intense amount of space is freaking me out. And other things in the house, which is really the only place I’ve been so far, are kind of messing with me, too. For instance, I can’t just smack the light switch, I have to actively switch it. There’s too much water in toilets, and the handles are on the actual toilet instead of the wall behind it.
The next big thing that’s messing with me is how expensive the food is, and how flippantly my family will just order it. Tonight for dinner we got Noodles, and it was because cooking was inconvenient. We filled out an order online, everyone made a thousand customizations to their food (no mushrooms, extra spicy, etc), then my mom drove 10 minutes there and back to get it with my grandpa. The closest to that I got in Prague was walking a block down the street, picking up a big bowl of pho and going back. I can’t really imagine what going to the grocery store is going to be like.
I sound like I’m complaining (and I kind of am), but I will admit there are things I missed. My dogs, for one. Also, the fat one recently was diagnosed with a thyroid problem and put on pills (something I called over the summer, thank you very much) so she’s now more cuddly and interested in what I’m doing. Attentive service from waiters I missed, because they have to kiss ass for your tip or they don’t eat. Part of that is also massive drinks and free refills (the altitude is dehydrating me something fierce). And as much as I bitch, I missed my family. In three months my sister had to have grown three inches, my brother finally has a license and a car, my dad is sporting a pedo-stache that makes him look like he offers candy to kids on their way home from school, and my mom painted the house banana yellow. But nothing’s changed. My brother still curls his hands up against his chest when he’s annoyed by something we’re doing. My sister still bends over backwards for attention. And the only conversation I have with my father is affectionate antagonism (see: pedo-stache). Although he did ask this morning when I was in the basement doodling how I was adjusting, which was nice. Of course, my mom is still my mom, equal parts caregiver and smartass. She simultaneous made me tea and told me to grow a set, then gave me a sleeping pill and told me to shut my damn brain off and sleep.
I’d still rather be in Prague. But if I can’t be there, it’s good to be home.

Monday, November 26, 2012

Lightning or Magnets?


It’s been a while since I sat down and wrote much of anything worth while or worth reading. Mostly just cataloging what’s been happening to me, and while it absorbs most of my energy to think about these things, they are neither new nor unique in the spectrum of human emotion. And while I’m not entirely certain that anything I put on this page, or the page after, or the many pages that will most likely follow will break the pattern of my own literary monotony, I’m in the mood to write something with a little more depth than a description of Austrian food or the ins and outs of not speaking the language in the country you’re currently living in. I think what I would rather talk about are those sudden and electric connections we feel with the right people at the right time.
I’m not entirely certain where I stand on the big questions like God and the afterlife, and while I certainly believe there is something larger and greater than ourselves, I don’t think for the life of me I could describe it, much less name it. If I tried, I think it would be one of those things where everyone reading it would say, “Yes, that’s what I believe too!” and then insist that I am Christian, or Buddhist, or Hindu, or Jewish, or Panthesist, or Agnostic or any other religious affiliation I might run into, and I just haven’t realized it until now. And quite frankly, I think I would disagree with all of them on the principle that if I have no desire to name (and thus pigeon hole – the act of description is by its very nature exclusive more than inclusive­) my mostly unformed beliefs, I would prefer it if they respected that and left well enough alone. After all, I don’t listen to a Hindu describe his beliefs and insist he’s actually Jewish or what have you. But in addition to a vague belief that the greatest good and greatest evil really stem from our inherent humanity rather than a big white bearded man or something below the surface of the earth with too many arms, I do believe there are things in this life that are supposed to happen to us, and most usually other people are the instruments through which those things happen.
From my own life, just in the last fourish years, I have a quick string of examples. My freshman year I went to Gonzaga University where I was bullied by a small little girl who was enabled by a handful of people too scared to stop her (myself included, sadly), and if that hadn’t happened I wouldn’t have wanted to transfer schools, which led me to DU. If I hadn’t been at DU, I wouldn’t have taken a Russian class which inevitably led me to two of my best friends who have taught me that I am interesting and charming, sometimes despite my own best efforts, not to mention the other myriad of fascinating people I spent two years studying with. I also wouldn’t have met Alexa, who in addition to being another of my best friends, has taught me that we get to choose the way we look at life and that makes all the difference. I also wouldn’t have ended up living with four strangers, two of whom became my Ambiguously Gay Duo, who have taught me to occasionally pull the stick out of my own ass and have fun. If I hadn’t been living in that neighborhood, I wouldn’t have found an extra family in the Brainerds, especially Claire. And most importantly (in this moment, at least) I wouldn’t have ended up in Prague, where I have flourished. In the short time I’ve been here, I’ve learned not to dig my feet in over things I haven’t given a chance yet, I’ve learned to let people in more easily, and most importantly I’ve learned to stop hating myself and rather to love the person I am and the person I have the capacity to become. And I could certainly pinpoint those changes on a particular person, the same way I’ve attributed growth to Robert, Tyler, Alexa, Garret, and Alex, but I think to do so would make him blush. But this leads me to what I actually wanted to talk about.
Do you ever wonder if the people in this life that end up being most important to us are coincidences? Or do you think that certain souls will pull at each other over time and space the same way strong enough magnets pull at each other no matter what you put between them? The pragmatist in me wants to say it’s the first one – of all the millions of people on this earth, and the thousands you meet in only a year, much less your whole life, its statistically inevitable that you will find a handful of people who will have irreversible effects on you, for good and for ill. But the romanticist in me just cannot accept that. I just can’t, especially given what’s happened – who’s happened – to me in Prague. And what about those people who change you irreversibly and then slip out of your life forever? Less like magnets and more like lightning, but even that’s a bad metaphor because lightning is random and how can something like being bullied into a happier life be random? How can a connection so intense and instantaneous that you felt it after an hour – an hour!–  be random? There are people in my life who have had such a steadfast influence in my life, it’s easy to say they aren’t random presences – my mother, for one; Lizzy, for another. There are newer people - Robert, Tyler, Alexa, Garret, Alex, just to use pre-established examples – who came into my life slowly enough that I can still probably assert they weren’t random either. But even with these two groups – new and old – I will accept arguments that they are random. They are, truthfully, the fruits of a seemingly random string of events. Any change in my mother’s life, and who’s to say I would have been born to her, or born at all. I wouldn’t have met Lizzy if we hadn’t been grocery shopping in the wrong store, and I still don’t know why we were there instead of our local grocery chain. I’ve already gone over the weird singularity that brought me to meet the five above, which never would have happened if I’d had the stones to stand up to a small school bully, or if someone else had called her on her bullshit. But this Prague thing… logically, it has to be random. There are whole different continents I could be studying on, and even on this continent there are thousands of cities I could be in instead, and then in this city there are other schools and programs I could have chosen. And that’s just on my side, just think about all the thousand different choices the particular person I’m talking about could have made that would have changed where and who he is now. It certainly wouldn’t be fair to think of him as a static entity when I’m not one myself. This whole thing has to be the cosmic result of a million little things randomly lining up. But… no. How do you statistically explain away any of this: I never considered anywhere but Europe, and I was going to go to Glasgow but at the last minute I had an overwhelming conviction that I belonged in Prague. How do you explain away that if he had literally any other job than the one he does, we would have never met, and it wasn’t even a job he initially wanted. How do you explain two people having an hour long conversation and getting the other so stuck in their heads that the next time they spoke it was almost electric? How can any of that be random?
I don’t know. I just do not know. I want to say it’s random, and I’m not sure why, but I just cannot bring myself to do that. Honestly, I can’t stop wondering if the reality of the whole thing is that I cannot possibly comprehend the way two souls can end up on a collision course, and just like no one knew what would happen at the Large Hadron Collider but it didn’t stop them from trying, I have no idea how this particular reaction is going to end either. But at no point in this whole thing have I ever been scared of imploding into a black hole, and if you know me, you know I am terrified of that exact thing happening almost constantly.
The last thing I would end this incredibly personal rant on how little I understand anything on is a quote by Elizabeth Gilbert, which I love even though she’s responsible for the estrogen filled zit that is Eat, Pray, Love. “A true soul mate is probably the most important person you’ll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake… Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave. A soul mate’s purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, and make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life.”

Monday, November 19, 2012

A small list of my favorite memories

Oh Jesus, trying to write a long blog post on a Czech keyboard is breaking my brain right now. The Zs are switched with the Ys and none of the punctuation is in the right spot. But anyhow, I have an hour to kill between classes on Mondays which I typically fill with running across the square for lunch, but I'm STILL full from my trip to Austria (every woman in the country felt obligated to feed me) so I'm skipping lunch and a killing time on the internet. So I figured I'd compose a small list of my favorite memories cause I'm also feeling a little morose today. These all, obviously, have stories behind them, but I doubt I'll go into much detail. Unless you ask. Also, these are in no special order.

My 20th Birthday - Even if I am less than fond of the person he became and the things that resulting person did, me and the ex used to get along quite swimmingly. And one of my fondest memories in the last couple years is walking together through an art exhibit of Italian painters from the 15-17 centuries while he explained painting techniques to me.

The Prague Botanical Gardens - I am not making a strong case for my happiness being independent of the men I'm seeing, am I? Oh well. I have done and seen a lot of really cool stuff here, and I could make a massive list of those experiences a mile long and still have to leave shit out. But by far my favorite day was the one I spent at the Botanical Gardens with a certain Czech local because it had all my favorite things and still managed to transcend the sum of its parts. We slept in, had a small lunch of his mom's bad ass cooking, I got to see something breathtakingly beautiful, and most of all we talked about anything and everything. I love that, just being with someone so completely that you lose grasp of time.

Saint Patrick's Day - This past St Patty's one of our roommates threw a small party, and I am not normally a party person. But after the guests left, it turned into me and Nick slow dancing around the living room and cuddling with Claire. That moment, listening to Billie Holiday while Nick spun me around the wood floors and Claire watched was a great moment of sunshine in what was otherwise a very shitty quarter for me. And the next morning hung over Chinese and basketball with Alex rounded it all out perfectly.

My grandma's waffles - My maternal grandma passed away when I was 15, and the fact that I didn't know her better is one of my greatest regrets. I'm told I'm a lot like her, in certain aspects. My grandma was a hard, angry woman with a lot of unresolved hurt in her life. But she was also fiercely loyal, giving, and protective. I kind of picture my grandma like an old cranky pit bull, and heaven help anyone who threatened her loved ones. And she was an amazing cook, and as kids we would have run over hot coals for grandma's waffles in the morning. So she'd make us a trade: she would make waffles in the morning if we spent the night at her house. I will, until the day I die, remember with absolute clarity sitting at grandma's kitchen table in the late morning sunlight eating waffles off her brown earthenware plates doused in syrup that came out of a oft- refilled Scrooge McDuck bottle.

Oh frack, class time. This list is by no means complete, fyi.

Monday, November 5, 2012

London


What a crazy trip. And yet, not the craziest trip I’ve taken in the last six months. Anyhow, I went to London.
I think the only person who reads my blog that would appreciate the difference between 11-year-old Cydney and 21-year-old Cydney is Lizzy. Or my mom, but I don’t think she reads this because I tell her most everything as it happens. Anyway, I was an awkward kid at 11, and as awkward kids are wont to be, I was poorly dressed, lacked social skils, and read at a level far and above anything demanded of a fifth grader. I think I read all three volumes of The Lord of the Rings in about three months, which becomes more impressive when you remember that a) Tolkien, much as I love him, did not write that book for kids and thus it's pretty dense and b) at this age I was still reading bedtime stories with my parents, but at this age I would read to them as much as they read to me, and they were actual novels. My dad and I were working on Harry Potter if I remember correctly, and I’m pretty sure my mom and I were slogging through Little Women. Plus whatever I was reading for school, that’s four books I was juggling. Being the voracious little reader I was (a trait I’m sad I’ve lost, and blame the internet), I ran into most of the classics pretty quickly and it quickly turned me into an Anglophile, as American literature bored me. So I’ve wanted to go to England, specifically London, for ten years. That’s little less than half my very short, mostly uneventful and still somehow strange, lifespan. So when I started budgeting for Prague (ha!) the one major trip I wanted to take, regardless of cost (ha…) was to go to London. Well, about half way through October, I had no reason to stay in Prague for any given weekend anymore, I was in a bad mood (always cured by massive purchases), and I found out one of my favorite bands was playing in London on Halloween. The decision was clinched – I booked tickets for a five day trip (really four, I’m spending all of Sunday in the Geneva airport. Side note: I can now say I’ve slept on a hard wooden bench under my coat like a hobo), a little later (last weekend) I booked a hotel since I was traveling alone and hostels give me the hebbie jebbies even when I’m with people, and tada! I was going to London.
So Wednesday I took a ridiculously easy midterm, Sara dropped me off at the bus stop (“Be safe, eat well, take lots of pictures!”) after class, and I spent literally 12 hours traveling. I flew into London City Airport, and my hotel was by Heathrow, so by train it would have taken me at least 2 hours to get there. It took longer because fuck trains and tubes and metros and subways and any other variation of underground public transport, and I got lost and had to backtrack a good ways. I flew in on Wednesday specifically for the Katzenjammer (apparently that’s German for caterwauling), but the doors opened at 7, and I didn’t even get to my hotel until 7:45. I was ready to give up, but Jeff (kid I worked with over the summer, is studying abroad in London) was gently insistent and had already bought the tickets, so I dumped my stuff and jumped back on the tube. Fuck the tube. Fuck it. We got to the concert venue just as they were taking the stage, and then it didn’t matter that I’d been traveling for half a day. It was amazing. The lungs on all four of those women, and just how talented of musicians they are! God, it was great. I also got a signed t-shirt, which I am wearing right now in the Geneva airport, looking for all the world like I snuck into the airport because it’s warm and I’m homeless. I have plans tonight, no way am I showing up looking like this.
Thursday was probably my least favorite day, only because I spent a lot of time waiting and being surrounded by obnoxious British kids. I went to the Museum of London, which would have been cool if it was not so damn kid friendly. And me being me, I insisted on walking through the whole damn thing. It’s also in the London banking area, and I walked around there for a bit. Nothing but grey suits and scowls as far as the eye could see, and just people watching it became very clear to me that this is not the kind of life style I actually want to lead. Don’t get me wrong, I like nice things, specifically nice food, but if the cost of that is suits and scowls, I’ll take a pass. And I say this is my least favorite day, but that’s misleading, I think. It was still awesome because I was in fucking London. And the museum was still very cool, just a little loud for my taste. The coolest thing, by far, that I saw Thursday was The Rain Room by rAndom International at the Barbary Art Museum. I waited in line for an hour and a half, and spent maybe fifteen minutes in there. But it was still really cool. The room is called The Curve because it’s a large, single room that curves so when you walk in you don’t actually see the instillation. You can hear it, the sound of falling rain, and smell it, that wet concrete smell, and certainly feel the temperature drop, and you can even see the silhouettes of people waiting to play in it lit against the wall in front of you. What “it” is, though, is the best part, and when you round the bend, your breath stops for a minute. Hanging from the ceiling is an 8’x15’ board that is raining in the middle of the room. And people are standing underneath, perfectly dry. The way it works is that there are 3D MoCap cameras tracking everyone inside the rain rectangle, and as you walk and move the rain stops directly above. It gave me, at least, a pretty wide radius, and I found that by stretching my arm in one direction and my leg in the other as far as I could, I could cut the rain in half, spanning the whole eight feet. Oh, and the whole thing is lit by a single flood light. It makes it easy to see the rain, except in people’s shadows, which plays some funny tricks with how you perceive the rain looks. If you look at some people’s shadows just right, it looks like the rain is bending. Also, it’s a pain in the ass to take pictures of because of that strobe light. I took a video, but I don’t know if that works better. Also, I got rained on because I walked out to grab my bag and then back in, and someone had already replaced me. I think the cameras can only track about 15 people, and I made 16 or so. I got AMAZING Korean food (I love Czech food, I do, but I miss other types of food beyond Czech, Italian, and Thai), and back on the tube.
Friday was my favorite, but again that’s a silly distinction. I went to Camden Town, which I had never heard of before but googled it on a recommendation. So how do I describe it? Have you ever been to a really massive farmers market? It’s like that, but instead of fresh produce and beeswax soap or whatever the hell else, it’s the kind of stuff you’d find in a Hot Topic, and also a Forever 21, and also a flea market, and most of it’s made by hand, and most of it’s weird, and all of it’s AWESOME. I just hemorrhaged cash because I wanted everything. I think I spent over $250, but I intentionally didn’t track it. What did I get… A pair of white tights with glitter paisleys over the ankles and lines down the back of the thigh, a frumpy grandma sweater with a malformed skull and crossbones that reads “live fast, die young” which is HILARIOUS if you know me, a couple charm bracelets that are just colored string and small bronze star charms, loose leaf tea for Max and Sara, and a dress that I more or less have to pour myself into and won’t be able to wear when I stop walking five miles a day. Then I popped over to Piccadilly Circus to meet Jeff for dinner, and while I was waiting I bough myself a tin of Golden Syrup for home (I have a caramel recipe that calls for it, I’M SO EXCITED) and saw an anime store. I stuck my head in out of curiosity, and what should they be selling but Naruto themed cosplay contacts, specifically sharingun contacts. If you don’t know what that is, I’m not going to explain it. But it’s nerdier than it sounds, and it sounds nerdy as shit. I had to buy a pair for the Czech gentleman (we patched things up last week), I can’t wait to see the look on his face when I give them to him. And I’m pretty sure I got the ones that look like his favorite character. So Jeff arrived, and led me down a very nice street to a very nice courtyard to a very nice restaurant. We split a bottle of Bordeaux, I had butternut squash soup, he had mussels, then I had braised beef on papradelle pasta, he had steak, we got presseco with dessert, I had crème brule, he had sticky pudding. It was a nice night. So anyway, that was Friday.
Saturday started unpleasant because you know who told me he’s leaving me (again). I can’t really stop him. I can be mad at him, and I probably will be when I come down from my London high, but if I learned anything this summer, it’s that at some point kicking and screaming doesn’t get you want you want. I’m sad, I really am, because I really like him. And it’s hard not to think that this is a reflection of me somehow. Maybe if I was better I’d be worth fighting for. But that’s not a healthy way to think, and even as much hope as I threw into him, maybe it was always just a fantasy anyway. I hope he misses me.
Anyhow, this is all the long culmination of a very pensive day walking around London. I walked through Green Park and past Buckingham Palace, chain smoking a pack of Luckies and listening to Ray Charles because I’m more beatnik than hipster, I got lunch at a nice restaurant and watched foot traffic out the window, I went to the Tate Modern and spent a while being pensive in a Surrealist exhibit (including covering the map I bought with my crazy illegible scrawl), read in a Starbucks, and then saw Twelfth Night at the Apollo in Piccadilly Circus. It was actually just ok, which is mildly disappointing considering I went specifically because Stephen Fry played Malvolio. I love Shakespeare, specifically the interpretive Shakespeare I run into at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. The last production of Twelfth Night I saw was there, and it was a riot from start to finish. This wasn’t even a little interpretive, it was historical. All the actors were men, and the men playing the women often resorted to high pitched shrieking for laughs. And they were so focused on keeping their voices high that their lines were very flat. Stephen Fry was his usual dry self, and I don’t think that necessarily lends itself to Malvolio because it’s just such an over the top role. Also, it wasn’t visually exciting because everyone wore black and white except for The Fool, and the stage was a uniform light wood color. The actor who played Sir Toby stole the show for me, with The Fool and Mary coming in close second. And something in me shifted during the play so I stopped being “What’s wrong with me that I keep getting left for other women? Why am I the one who has to foot the bill for the happiness of the men I love?” to being “Fuck it. There’s nothing I can do about it anyway, no point getting too worked up.” We’ll see how long it lasts, I’m sure it’s just a high from being in London.
So I got back to the hotel (fuck the tube) and skyped Mom and Dad while I packed, then facebooked Sara for a bit, and got maybe two hours of sleep before I had to be up. I look like a hobo. I made my flight just fine, though the Underground office wasn’t open so I have 10 pounds sitting on an Oyster card I can’t get back. Oh well. I slept from the instant I got to my seat on the plane to the moment we hit the tarmac in Geneva, where I promptly found the non-denominational and totally empty chapel and slept for another hour on the hard wooden bench, got lunch, bought chocolate (I’m in Switzerland, it’d be wrong not to), and now I’m sitting on the plane about to start our decent into Prague. I’ve got to rush back, change because I look like a hobo, and then I’m getting dinner and possibly a movie.
Bonus Observations:
I wear an awful lot of black and grimace a lot on public transportation. No wonder no one wants to make eyecontact with me.
It's funny, I didn't realize how much I missed being hit on until it happened Friday when the waiter was blatantly hitting on me.
Thank god for tube signs and announcements being in clearly enunciated English. I missed that.

Thursday, November 1, 2012

Berlin


Wrote this last Sunday, just posting it now.

Oh where shall I start? Berlin. I shall start in Berlin. Forgive the dramatic opening – I just finished role-playing a violent, spatula related death via text message.
So we went to Berlin this weekend. But this weekend actually starts Thursday night. See, I done made friends here in this city. Oh god who would have seen that coming?! There’s the Czech man-creature, obviously, but there’s a girl in my program name Sara who is not like the others. Which is to say I find her interesting, engaging, and she’s smarter than me. She’s also the second person I’ve said that about here, the first being you-know-who and the third being her boyfriend Max. I hate being the dumbest one in any given group, but its passive, "this is actually awesome and I don’t know what I’m talking about" kind of hate. It’s like saying I hate hot showers because they feel too good. I mean, if I had to choose between being the smartest in a group and the dumbest, I would pick “dumbest” any day of the week. Any how, Sara and Max: Sara is a history student at CU, and Max a fine arts photography student in Pittsburg (I think). Sara is here with the program, and she picked Prague because you can’t throw a rock in this city without hitting something old. Max isn’t studying, but came with her because he wanted to spend a semester abroad anyway. The two rented a small little apartment in a basement in Wenceslas, and have up to this point been each other’s main (only?) source of company. Well, Sara and I have a class together Mondays and Wednesdays, and we began talking that way, which is when I figured out hey! She’s a smartie! We spent most of the spa towns trip hanging out with each other, plus Martin and Anthony, and by the end I’d pretty much decided “yup, you’re interesting and that’s a valuable thing here.” Two Thursdays ago, Sara, Max, and I got an early dinner and spent most of the evening walking and talking and interacting and generally behaving like well spoken individuals. The following Sunday we got tea, and then dinner, and then a movie, and then hung out in their apartment with the addition of another person. We did it again this most recent Thursday, but instead of spending that much money, I cooked dinner, Max made a salad, and they all stayed at my place until I finally had to kick them out at 1:45 in the morning because I was falling asleep and Sara and I had to be on a bus to Berlin at 7:30 am.
The bus ride to Berlin was unpleasant, because I was exhausted and couldn’t really fall asleep comfortably. And because I was tired, hungry, and dingy feeling, I wasn’t in the best of moods. So my first reaction, once we got inside the city itself, was “I don’t like it here, I want to go home.” Home, in this scenario, being Prague. It’s interesting, I think, that I’ve started conceptualizing Prague as home. I mean, I did something similar at Gonzaga when things were still fun and hunky dory, but as soon as things got bad it was a nice little slice of hell and home became my parents’ place again. So maybe I’m thinking of Prague as home because everything has been great so far with the exception of two long weeks that weren’t really ok. I’m trying not to let this convince me that I belong in Prague, because if I let myself think that way, leaving is going to be even harder and I’m going to push to come back and maybe that isn’t such a bad thing but I need more time to think about that. Anyway, Berlin is awfully new. It feels very young, and as a person who is 80 at heart, I don’t especially like that. And of course the structure itself is “young” or really just new. I mean, I’m not surprised, as far as I know, the city was basically flattened in ’45 and had to be rebuilt, and I think the Berliners never got out of the mindset “we can build it bigger, we can build it newer” because all the buildings are incredibly new. I think I can count on one hand how many buildings I saw that looked like they were built between the end of WWII and maybe the late 90s. Daniella was saying that every time she comes to Berlin it looks different because nothing stays up for long. Compared to Prague where it’s almost bizarre to see a building built in the last ten years, it’s weird. And because of how new everything is, it felt very much like a German LA to me. Everything is new, there are wide streets everywhere which are full of cars, and even though the buildings are big, they’re spread out. I went for a walk Sunday morning and found streets tucked away from the main thoroughfare are quaint, and in some cases even beautiful in the brisk October air and in the light of a late Sunday morning. But I don’t think I’d go back. Not when there are so many other places I’d rather go.
Friday once we got into the city, we took an incredibly brief tour around and then headed back for the hotel. I took a shower to scald my skin off, then Sara and I got dinner. It was a shock to my system to have to pay $20 for a meal again, instead of $6. And then we headed back to the hotel and did nothing. We were both exhausted and a little cranky and neither of us are really inclined to involve ourselves in “night life” anyway. Sara was out by 8:30, I think I was gone an hour later.
Saturday we went with the program to a museum about East Berlin under the Soviets, which was a hoot. Nothing better than mocking failed regimes over the remains of their crumbled empire. Next was another history museum, which was free because it was celebrating 25 years of being open. We spent maybe an hour and a half, two hours in an exhibit covering German history from basically 400 AD to 1914 (I think. It looked like it started WWI, though). Now, I’m the kind of person who takes their sweet ass time going through an exhibit because I feel COMPELLED to look at and appreciate everything. I think it’s something I picked up from going to art museums with Uncle Roger, because if he’s going to spend an hour in front of a painting, god knows there’s really no use in rushing yourself. At first, out of the corner of my eye I could see Sara ping ponging between displays like a kid in a candy store. It’s a funny image in my mind’s eye, me plodding along at a pretty consistence pace and Sara running from one thing to another and then back again. There was a point where I caught her in front of a portrait of one person or another, and she was so wide eyed and excited that she looked like she was going to bust, and then she just threw her scarf of her face and shouted “I’m so overwhelmed!” It was pretty funny. After about an hour, she got bored, as did the rest of our party, and while I would have liked to stay there and finish the exhibit the way it deserved, everyone else wanted to leave. It felt blasphemous to rush through the exhibit like that, and I at least made them walk the whole thing instead of cutting out half way through.
After that we rounded the corner to the Holocaust memorial, which if you don’t know it is about half a city block covered in huge concrete slabs whose only variation is height, which gives the general impression of a wave. Like someone put grey legos on a sheet, and shook, and this is the moment before they all flew off. The first couple are maybe knee height, but as you walk further in, the blocks eventually double your height, maybe hitting 12ft at their highest. Walking through it alone is a little surreal, because everything is grey and its pretty disorienting, and your only point of reference is where you think you saw other people walking. I’m not sure how that related to the Holocaust, but it certainly invites introspection.
There was lunch, and then we decided to find one of the standing sections of the Berlin Wall. Up to this point, Sara had been making all the decisions and generally leading us in the right direction. Of course, up to this point we’d been moving on one axis – East to West – along the main street. I think she reoriented her brain to think of east and west as north and south, and when she was looking at the map to get us to the Berlin Wall, she was going to have us walking 90° in the wrong direction. I don’t know where it came from, but as long as you don’t stick me underground (or really in any vehicle I'm not driving), I pretty much always have a good sense of where I am in relation to other things. For Prague that means I have little islands around the metro stops I use where I’m fairly familiar with what’s around, and when I have nothing better to do I ride the trams to fill in the foggy areas and connect my little islands. Except for in the middle of the Old Town Square because the streets are too narrow and there’s no fucking logic. Anyway, in Berlin because we’d done nothing but walk and drive, I was able to look at the map and mostly figure out where it was. Emily’s got some pretty funny pictures of me trying to explain to Sara that East was actually behind us and we needed to go south a little bit, and as I lose my patience my arm gestures get bigger. Finally she capitulated and I played Magellan for our little group. There’s also a picture of me holding the map upside down. In my defense, we were walking south and I was trying to visualize if we needed to turn left or right.
We got to the wall, took some pictures, acted like assholes, walked back the direction we came to see the parliament building, and headed back to the hotel, which involved using the Metro, which I am still not good at figuring out in Prague, much less Berlin. We also decided, while dicking around on the platform, that our whole day had more or less been an indie film – nothing really important happened, it was a character study full of strange but entertaining interactions between strange people – and Sara dubbed it Walking While Swimming. Back to the hotel, then dinner, and then back to the hotel again. Sara and I scalded our skin off in the shower (again), then climbed into bed and started reading. We stayed up talking about boys and school, which for us meant a feminist discussion of who should pay for the check, and how disillusioned we are with our classmates lack of intellectual hunger. Also trading first impressions of each other, which made me giggle. I didn’t have a strong reaction to her, I just automatically lumped her in with Sabrina and Emily as “quiet, nerdy, shy, maybe a little awkward.” Of course now that I know her, the only one of those that’s true is “nerdy.” She said her first impression of me was “hipster girl from DU” which made me laugh. I mean, it’s not necessarily untrue, I am a hipster, but I like to think that I’m the proto-hipster because I liked all this crap before it was cool to be uncool, and I will continue to like it afterwards. Although bright red skinny jeans, matching lipstick, short ass hair and eyebrow piercings don’t really help my case.
Sunday we slept in, though I had a horrible nightmare where I was tossed down a cobblestone street Aztec style. Hard to sleep much after that. We had breakfast, and I went for a walk and waxed pensive. Always something nice, and I’ve yet to find anything that brings me quite as much peace as plugging my headphones in and wandering no where in particular. I don’t recall what was bothering me in detail, only I know I was feeling… uneasy. I wish I could remember what about. I think it might have something to do with Berlin being the most “American” experience I’ve had since getting to Europe, and it was disquieting to think that as profound a time I am having, in the grand scheme of things, it is impermanent. I hate that. But it’s hard to stay upset on a beautiful Sunday afternoon walking around neighborhoods that look like they belong on a postcard.
We piled back on the bus, with a short, maybe hour, stop in Potsdam where the Allies split up Germany and Berlin. Sara, of course, was as pleased as you can imagine. Also, a funny thing happened on the way out of Potsdam. We were driving through a neighborhood full of these beautiful, old houses like the ones in the Wash Park area at home, and I found myself imagining taking care of one of those houses, and what my kitchen would be like, and if we’d have a tree house or a swing set in the back for the kids, and hosting Christmas dinners and my someone special do the dishes afterwards and how very well I think I’d sleep at night if that was my reality. And then I realized I’d been thinking that way all weekend. German kids must be cuter than Czech kids, because every time I saw a family I starting thinking about the places I’d like to vacation with my kids. JESUS CHRIST I JUST WROTE THAT SENTENCE. My kids. Oh my god, what is in the water there that this is something I’m actually thinking about with anything other than horror?! But I think it’s the Europe thing. Specifically, I think it’s the Prague thing. The emphasis on things instead of people making you happy is so far and away removed from the American idea of purchasing happiness, that its become very easy to put my happiness in terms of the relationships around me. Also, since to spend time with my friends I have to talk to them instead of go out and get dinner or what have you, I’ve been getting closer to a select few. I think it might have something to do with that, with a shift in what’s important to me. I think it might also have something to do with the fact that these classes are so under stimulating that I’m not getting any sort of satisfaction from them, which is kind of a projection of my career.

Saturday, October 13, 2012

Prague 10/13 - Break ups and Auschwitz


Edited to be a little more tactful. Much good may it do me.

I have had a shitty fucking week.
I’m sorry, I shouldn’t swear. But it’s fucking true.
Let’s start Monday (so technically it’s a shitty fucking 6 days at this point). Monday I got in a fight with my mother that basically boiled down to her telling me that if I don’t get a job that uses my degree, it’s spitting in my parent’s face and I should “just drop out now” if that’s what I plan on doing. So there goes teaching English in a foreign country while I figure out what to do with myself.
Tuesday night I made the stupid STUPID mistake of confronting the guy I was seeing about why he’s been acting distant. Two weeks ago I had a meltdown that was triggered by stalking exes on facebook (always a bright idea) and stuck my foot in my mouth by telling him about it. The real issue is that I have a very low sense of my own self-worth. He fixated on me still being hung up on Lord Douchface (the ex who ate up five years of my life). We hashed that out, but he was being weird afterwards. I thought it was just because of me being an idiot, and it seemed to go away by the weekend. Last Sunday we had a very nice day, but then come Monday again he was being distant. Combined with some things he said Monday and Tuesday, I started getting the impression that something was rotten in Denmark. I confronted him about it, and got a very bad answer. Or, you know, maybe too good of an answer, because I got waaaaaay more than I bargained for. The fight lasted three hours and mostly ended with “we need to talk about this in person.”
Well, Wednesday night we did just that. Without going into detail (which I am sure I will do later), the conversation ended with the decision to reevaluate how we (really, he) felt on Monday after a weekend apart. So I stormed off in a huff, and even though he said he’d made a mistake about 90 minutes later, the damage was done.
Thursday I bought a ticket and whisked myself away with my roommates to Krakow… to see Auschwitz. Thursday itself was uneventful, though exhausting because I was dealing with the whole “dumped again” thing and then also trains aren’t super easy to sleep on. Helpful for introspection, meditation, and sorting out your thoughts a little better. Sleep, though, not so much.
Friday morning we got into Krakow at like 7 am, and walked across town to the hostel we stayed at. After putting our luggage away and sitting like zombies for a bit, we went to Auschwitz. Holy cow. I’m going to try to capture the experience, because it was not good, but it certainly left a mark. And it’s hard to stay mad at much of anything after something like that.
Call it a morbid curiosity with history’s darker side, but I was already pretty familiar with the history of Auschwitz – I did a report on Dr. Mengele in the 8th grade that made a pretty big impact and more or less satisfied any need to know more about mass exterminations. But you can read about it all you want, you can watch documentaries until your eyes bleed, but nothing is quite like actually seeing it. When we first arrived, I was really rather shocked by how pretty it was. That sound wrong – it does and I know it – but that was my first impression. It was a sunny autumn day, and the grounds are covered in huge, beautiful trees with full foliage and well kept grass, particularly in the front. There’s a thriving sparrow community picking at cigarette butts and dropped crumbs, and the courtyard in front of the museum is full of people speaking in a variety of languages. It could have been any other historical museum. The tour eventually started, and in order to facilitate huge groups without shouting, they have you put on a pair of headphones connected to a radio receiver. Your tour guide speaks softly into a microphone, which transmits to your receiver through the whole tour. The effect is strange. Because of the padding on the headphones, everything beyond your own thoughts becomes muffled and loses a certain quality – it’s like a dream where you can’t quite hear what’s happening, though you know its happening all the same. And as they speak – a woman in our case – your perception of reality becomes reduced to her voice and the room you are walking through. The barracks – buildings? Cells? – where prisoners were kept have been converted into museum buildings. You walk through the grounds, which are beautiful, even if calling them that is sick, and into the individual “blocks.” The first one is about the collection of whole Jewish communities, where they came from, how they were taken, and so on. In here, it really didn’t feel real yet. There was reverence, and a little anger that it happened. But still the clinical examination of any other museum. I could have been looking at Greek pots. It wasn’t truly until the second or third building that my horror stopped being a respectful affectation. There is a whole room of human hair cut off the heads of Jewish women after being gassed. We walked in the room, and even though I knew it would be there, I jumped away from the glass as if there were hands reaching for me to pull me somewhere horrid. I stayed in that room the longest of anyone in our group – I couldn’t get closer than a foot to the glass. After that, I could feel my soul numb. What other reaction could I have? Details of the mass exterminations on an industrial scale seemed to slide over me like oil, leaving me filthy but unaffected otherwise. Each new fact – which was not really new, except for the reality of them I was suddenly confronted with – had less and less impact, until I thought the worst was over. It wasn’t. We went into a room showing large portraits of Mengele’s victims. The first one was of a two year old girl. I couldn’t tear my eyes off, and began crying. Crying silently, tears falling down my face without disturbing anyone. But again, I stayed in that room the longest, just staring at this little girl. I could feel the numbness being pulled away like an old scab, exposing something raw. We went through a building where Jewish prisoners were tourtured, and the scab kept pulling. But in the courtyard of that building…
They called it the execution wall, and against it now is a slate monument, adorned with candles and flowers. No one got close. Up against that wall, my mind superimposed all the faces I’d seen in photographs. I felt like I was staring at ghosts. Only not ghosts, as I didn’t feel anything like a presence in the way people describe ghosts. More… memories. Like the fabric of time was thin right there, and I was seeing these people the moment after, the moment their suffering was over, and right before they were allowed to leave. I didn’t cry – not physically. But my inner monologue, which resembles this blog very closely in that it is coherent, complicated, and constant, clarified and condensed into one single phrase. “I am so sorry.” Over and over and over. And it wasn’t an empathy thing. I have no idea how I could ever empathize with what happened in that camp. It was an apology.
From there we made our way, almost directly, to the gas chambers and crematorium. There was only a brief moment of clarity when I was able to distinguish between empathy and apology in front of that wall, and then all I could think was actually a scream. Inside I was screaming “No no no no no no nonononono NO NO NO NO NO NO NONONONONONONONO.” I couldn’t stop! I couldn’t be coherent! I couldn’t think anything but oh god, no, over and over again. Maybe I wouldn’t go in. But my feet pulled me forward of their own accord – and that is not a literary cliché, it was almost like an out of body experience – and I was suddenly in a dark room lit only by squares where the poison was dropped in from above. And the pleas of “no” stopped, and turned once more into “Oh, I am so sorry. We didn’t mean it!” We, as if I was there. As if I was responsible somehow.
And I kind of believe I was. In the clarity of my own horror, distinctions between “me” and “them” and “then” and “now” stopped existing, and all that was real was the death and the pain and the horror that had passed through that place. Passed through, but was no longer there. I felt, even in that room, a great cosmic sadness. But also forgiveness. Not for me, because I wasn’t at a point where I could feel it, but that those who had lived – and died – in that place had forgiven it. I felt like the hurt carried in that place was not the souls it happened to, but the horror of those left behind.
I felt physically incapable of speaking after that. I wasn’t the only one, though perhaps for me it lasted longer. Between Auschwitz I and II – Birkenau, I think I said less than ten words.
Now, a lot of people don’t realize that Auschwitz had three camps by the end of the Holocaust. There was the first, where the main museum stands, which was a converted Polish army barracks and base. There was the second, Birkenau, which was swamp land converted into a site of industrial murder, and a third called Monowitz, a labor camp. I could be wrong, but if I heard right, Birkenau was where the majority of Jewish prisoners were exterminated during the Holocaust. If you can, google it. There’s a giant brick arch the trains would pass through, and running up the length of the camp are two parallel train tracks. In the middle is a gravel walk, where “selections” took place. Those chosen for the camps were separated, and those chosen for the chambers were marched up the gravel walk to the two main gas chambers, and two make-shift chambers in the woods. The tour starts at the gate, and walks the length of this gravel road. At this point, though I’d regained most of my cognitive functions, the only way to describe what I was feeling was “My soul hurts.” And it did. It felt like someone had taken a crowbar to my soul’s midriff and I was spiritually doubled over, trying to catch my breath. Walking up this gravel way where the fate was decided of millions of people, I lost it. When I cry, there is always a watershed moment where I make a conscious decision to let it out. That didn’t happen this time. One moment I was walking, the next I was surrounded by a group of strangers, sobbing openly. There were no words, which never happens to me. Just crying. Just sobs shaking my frame gently, and warm tears, and an ache so deep in my soul I thought it was permanent.
At the end of this path lies the Holocaust memorial. The memorial itself looks like rubble until you examine it, and then deliberate shapes begin to appear. I couldn’t grasp much meaning beyond that. There are also plaques in 22 languages. I don’t remember what they say. But at the English one, someone had placed five votive candles. Only one was still burning. I crouched, ignoring that I was blocking the view of a bunch of strangers, and pulled a box of matches I’d swiped from a bar out of my purse, and relit the four votives not burning. I wish I could have done more.
Off to the side of the memorial lie the ruins of the gas chamber #2. The Nazis blew it up when the Soviets started closing in, and all that remain are the underground foundations and two sets of slumped over floors. Though I knew what they were, they were… beautiful. God, I feel awful for using that word here, again, but it’s the only way I can describe them. The stone is so grey it’s almost black, and its mostly covered in lichen. Small plants have taken root on the less vertical sections, and the whole thing is surrounded by trees that let the light soften as it streams down to the forest floor. It was cathartic to see nature so indifferent to the cruelty of humanity. The impermanence of everything that happened there was made real for me by the plants taking over the ruins of a mass extermination chamber. The forgiveness of the deceased I’d felt fleetingly in the crematorium maybe an hour earlier felt real – felt almost solid, like something floating in the air – looking at this place.
We saw other things – latrines, barracks, the remains of barbed wire fences – but the raw, aching torment began to fade. And in its place…
Well, it’s hard to be mad at anyone in the wake of this kind of experience. It’s hard to feel much of anything, but a big plate of pierogies, a kind Polish restaurant owner who pulls out the homemade plum vodka when he hears what you did that day, a hot shower, and roommates who just went through the same thing (though I think I might have had the most intense reaction of the four of us) will bring back a sense of normalcy.
Combined with what happened Friday and a long time on the train to think today (about ten hours), I think I have a better idea of what I feel about the Czech boy. He's not blameless, certainly, but I handled it badly. But more than that, I think this might have been my fault. I said when all of this was starting, that I wasn’t scared of letting him in. Because of that, I fell too hard, too fast, and too intensely. Whatever he might say to the contrary, I think I scared him off. Which sucks, because apparently the only two modes I have are “fuck off” and “Ermahgerd I love you so much,” and no middle ground. But that’s something I’ll have to work on. Next time. So really, next year. You know, the fact that it took heartbreak for Prague to start feeling like a real place and not some fever dream is probably very indicative of the kind of person I am. Oh well, I suppose. Best not to dwell on it.

Thursday, October 4, 2012

Prague 10/4 - Ruminating on the futility of my own plans


This whole Europe thing is making me really introspective, specifically about what I want.
Allow me to start from the beginning. I have always, always had a “when I grow up” plan. That’s pretty normal as a little kid, and I wanted to be the typical little kid things – artist, movie star, princess, etc. I think, for most kids, that it stays normal to have a general idea of what you’d like to do, though it remains vague, up through middle school. I know very few high schoolers who know what they want to do, I know (if possible) fewer college kids who know what they want to do (though they’ve all gotten better at bullshitting an answer), and I know an infinitesimal amount of adults who are doing what they “wanted to do when they were younger.” Except my mom, but she’s awesome. And also a different story. Me, though, I have always had the “when I grow up” nailed down, and in detail. When I was in middle school, it was go to Oxford, come back, and write the next GREAT AMERICAN (fantasy) NOVEL. Cue dramatic music. In high school, it was go to Columbia (school, not country), get a degree in Journalism, work for The New York Times, and win a Pulitzer. Senior of high school and freshman year of college, it was become Nick Naylor in Thank You for Smoking, which for those of you who haven’t seen that movie, means be a really awesome and amoral lobbyist/PR rep. Those of you who know me also know that none of this planning ever made me happy. I hated middle school, I hated high school marginally less, and my freshman year was a nice little slice of hell I sometimes think I’m still recovering from.
So I ended up at DU. Which really kind of felt like getting sent back to the last checkpoint in Diablo III – I got to keep the experience and the stuff, but all the progress I’d made in the game was reset. I was no more than 30 minutes away from where I grew up at a university that had stopped offering the specific program (Strategic Communication) I had transferred for. I wasn’t really sure anymore what I was shooting for. And in that limbo of not really knowing what I wanted to do, I took an economics course, and I loved it. Loved it! Which is really not something you hear people say about Introductory Micro and Macro Economic Theory.
Segway for a short story: that winter my father and I went skiing. Now, the day I came home and announced to my father I was declaring a double major in Economics on top of my major in Communications, I swear a marching band went through our living room waving “She’ll get a job!” banners. He was ecstatic! So that day one rather chilly December, he asked what I want to do “with this economics degree.” Not “this double major” or any other mention of communications, which is still my first love of the two. I really had no clue – not a shot in the dark at which way I wanted to go with it – and rather than say that and get a lecture on what was otherwise a very nice day with a man I do not typically get along with, I said, “Chairman of the Fed sounds fun.” I was being flippant – he didn’t hear it. My dad latched onto banking, and it wasn’t until this spring that he realized I didn’t mean it.
Which really brings us back into the narrative (narrative-like string of words might be more accurate). I’d declared a double major in Economics and Communications with a minor in Russian, which I have more or less stuck too the last two and a half years (that long?!) I’ve been at DU. And I have never been dissatisfied with it. The following winter after declaring the Econ major, I took a “Rhetoric of Social Movements” class that was far and away the most fun I’d had in school, ever. And I am a giant nerd, I love learning ANYTHING, even if its just how to clean the coffee grounds out of the latte machine at work, so that really says something. And as I progressed in Economics, I realized very quickly that I hated the numbers, but loved the theory. So my major has really developed into Theoretical Political Economics and Rhetoric with a minor in A Language I Have To Go Out Of My Way To Use. Tell me that wouldn’t look fantastic on a resume. And while I kind of stuck with the banking thing for lack of a better idea, the real answer to “What do you want to be when you grow up?” had really just become “I have no fucking clue.” I got an internship as a recruiter, and as fun as that was, it made it pretty evident that maybe the shit I’d told myself I wanted, I actually didn’t want.
So cue Spring Quarter 2012. I took a Rhetorical Criticism class with Dr. Foust, the professor who I’d taken the previous rhetoric class with, at her request and also because I love rhetoric the way I think potheads love peanut butter. And that was the class that clinched it for me – if academia is where I am well and truly happy, stimulated, and fulfilled, why would I leave? The plan now: GET A PHD FROM CARNEGIE MELLON IN ECONOMIC RHETORIC, THEN TEACH THE SOCKS OFF THE NEXT GENERATION OF SHIT HEAD COLLEGE STUDENTS WHO HAVE NO FUCKING CLUE WHAT THEY WANT TO DO WHEN THEY GROW UP, EITHER.
Oh yeah, baby, I’m back.
But here’s the thing about plans that keeps me up at night. They are, by their very nature, stupid. I mean, my parents are a good example of this. My mom’s motto is “Just wing it” and she told me over the summer that it took her a very long time to learn to let go of being in control and just let whatever happens, happen. My mom is my role model and my hero, and I don’t think I can ever be a 10th of the amazing, kind, caring, loving person she is. But I know I don’t want the same things as her, so would that kind of philosophy work for me? I mean, my mom wanted a career, so she got one, and then she wanted kids and to be a phenomenal mom, so she had them and she is. What else is left to plan? My dad, on the other hand, lives and dies by “fail to plan, plan to fail.” My mom mellowed him out over the years, but I think I get my devotion to planning from my father. He always knows what’s up, and even when he doesn’t, he fakes it well enough to fool me. And god knows I do not want to end up like my father – overworked, under appreciated, and terrified of change or anything I don’t understand or challenges my perception of reality. So how, precisely, do I balance that? Planning too rigidly is stupid – I think every culture has an expression similar to “Man plans, God laughs.” But without something to shoot for, life feels meaningless.
A final thought on this, before I wrap up. I’m pretty sure I know what I want – Dr. Cydney Trapp, PhD in Economic Rhetoric from Carnegie Mellon, age 33, unmarried but in a committed relationship, no kids but two adorable dogs (English Mastiff and Standard Poodle), employed teaching somewhere with a major airport so I can go home to see my parents with ease, access to good skiing, and the possibility for all that to change. I could bend on where the PhD comes from – Yale and Cornell both have very good Rhetoric departments, in addition to good Economic programs. Realistically, I don’t know if I’ll get a doctorate before my 33rd birthday, though it’s a fun goal to shoot for. I’m perfectly flexible on dog breeds. And I hate to put it in writing, but if the right person came along, I could probably bend on the marriage/kids thing, too. But I don’t know what the interterm between then and now is going to look like. I’m thinking specifically of the 3-5 years after I finish my undergrad this spring (knock on wood). I decided a while ago that I would go back to school after a break, even before I decided what for. I thought before I got here I’d go back to the company I had the internship with. They’re almost always hiring, I have friends there, it’s a great company to work for because a) they care about their employees and b) they aren’t in the business of screwing people over, regardless of who their client is. But now… oh my dad is going to kill me, but what about traveling? Or living in a different country? What about not getting a “real job” that ties me in one place doing one thing and instead getting a job that lets me do “what I want” while I figure out what the hell that means? There exists a very real possibility/opportunity to come back to Prague and teach English. I could do the same thing in other cities, though Prague has romanced my (metaphorical) pants off pretty thoroughly.
What about that?

Sunday, September 23, 2012

Prague 9/23


I’ve been in this city for 24 days, which is kind of freaking me out. It’s already gone so fast, I don’t want the rest of the trip to move at this break neck speed. I want these four months to last as long as the build up did, but god knows it won’t feel that way. This summer was a long, slow, miserable eternity. This semester is going to be a blissful eye blink. It’s not fair, I’m trying not to dwell on it.
I’m also hesitant to say I’ve developed a routine, as the first two weeks were spent going to class 5 days a week, and now I have class 3 days a week, and even that’s really sporatic. We have a wicked amount of free time, which I’m terrified I might be squandering. You know, I was so proud of myself for throwing out my fears, moving to a new city, etc and now I’ve just found something else to worry about – how little time I have and how I’m not using it right. Anyway, I’m not supposed to be dwelling on that. But even despite not having a solid routine yet, there are certain things that are pretty consistent.
Days when I have class in the morning, I wake up an hour and a half before I need to be there, which gives me ample time to get dressed and duck into one of the potravinies (that’s my bastardized English plural of a word that I’m pretty sure is already plural in Czech) where I’ll grab a couple apples or peaches to snack on throughout the day. I found out that eating on the metros isn’t allowed, which explains some of the funny looks I was getting, but I usually have enough time with my walk and being there a little early to inhale at least one piece of fruit. Having a couple apples stashed away in my purse gives me something to snack on when I’m walking around, too, which saves me from the abundance of pastries in the tourist areas and also tides me over between meals. I’ve always been one of those people who snacks between meals and then eats small portions at dinner or lunch, and after the last 9 months of stomach problems, the habit’s been reinforced. Though the amazing Czech food is doing its damnedest to break me of that. After class there’re really two things I do, and they aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive. There’s been a lot of hanging out with the guy I started seeing, in fact every day but Tuesday and Thursday because he has a prior commitment those evenings. We usually eat dinner together, either out because we’ve been doing something in the center or at his place – I like to cook, though his mother’s leftovers far outshine anything I’ve been able to make. Ever. Including the turkey for last year’s Christmas party. If the day’s been busy or full, we just go back to his place for video games, TV, and a prodigious amount of cuddles. Days when I haven’t done anything in particular, I like to go out and do something touristy, with or without him. In the last week, I went to the Museum of Young Art, Charles Bridge, there was a hike with the program to Czech Switzerland (don’t ask, I can’t get a straight answer why it’s called that despite being firmly couched inside Czech borders) where parts of the Narnia films were shot, and spent a couple hours in the Botanical Gardens.
Sundays tend to be “Cydney Days,” which I like. Don’t get me wrong, I love every moment with that certain individual, but it’s impractical to live in each other’s pockets, I don’t want to stifle his social life, and I can still value my alone time despite being pretty infatuated with him. Last Sunday I slept in, got lunch with my roommates, and then spent the afternoon reading a comic in a park. I almost read the thing cover to cover, and only quit when I couldn’t feel my fingers anymore. And then I just moved to a quaint little café where I had coffee and cake for dinner, and they didn’t play any music younger than 1952. This Sunday (today) I caught up on my internet, Skyped home, and then ran a short errand. I had to replace my headphones, which was done simply enough at a Datart (it appears to be like a Czech Best Buy). I was starving, though, and found a cute little Czech restaurant with no English on their menu that was tucked into the bottom of a building around the corner from the Tesco. I don’t speak much Czech, but I apparently know enough to politely order in restaurants. Which I will never stop getting a kick out of. I read a good chunk of my comic book, then got gelato down the street (like a fat ass) whilst walking around doing a little window shopping. I want to continue my gift giving, but everything in the really touristy areas seems too manufactured to have much value. I popped home, was walked through how to turn on the heater in our place, and have spent the evening reading. It’s been pleasant.
I’ve mentioned on facebook and in conversations that the food here is amazing, but I really ought to go into more detail. The food here is amazing. Everything just tastes so much better, I don’t even understand why! There are a couple things here I develop serious cravings for, and I better learn how to make them before I leave, because there’s not exactly a huge demand for Czech food in the grand old US of A. So my favorite is, far and away, svičková (read “svitch-co-va”) which is marinated beef in a sweet and savory cream sauce served with cranberries, whipped cream, and these badass things called knedliky that are sort of like dumplings but not in a way most Americans think of them. Knedliky are slices of a really dense sweet tasting bread that sops up sauce like a boss, and they also come with guláš (read like in English, “goulash“) which is also pretty bomb, if you get it from the right places. After that, I love the  smažený sýr (read “smazhenee seer”) which is probably the best culinary idea anyone has ever had after “lets wrap this fish in some rice.” Someone, somewhere, may he be languishing in the presence of a couple fat angels in heaven right now, looked at a chunk of cheese and said “You know what this needs? It needs to be fried.” Seriously. They take a block of cheese, usually cut into wedges, batter and fry it, then serve boiled potatoes doused in butter on the side. Have you heard anything better in your life. Fried cheese. Guys. FRIED CHEESE. It’s great. And it’s a really meal. No one looks at you funny when you say “I would like battered and friend dairy for dinner with a side of starch” here. It’s amazing. This alone makes me never want to leave. There are other things that are pretty awesome – in fact, I don’t think I could go through the list of all the great things I’ve had here. The only mediocre thing I’ve had is the pizza, and there’s a place right below us that does a pretty good impression of American pizza. Oh, and the pastries. Oh my god, anything sweet and sugary here is to die for. There are these great things that I can’t remember the name of that’s basically sweet dough wrapped around a fatass wooden dowel, baked over hot coals, and then dunked in cinnamon sugar. There are crepes every which way, and you can’t throw a rock without hitting fresh bread. And there’s a farmers market at the park right next to our building every Wednesday, so after class I can go get a giant bowl of hot potato gratin, chase it with fresh goat milk, and top all that off with a pastry full of baked apples. I have found mouth-heaven.
Bonus Observations:
  • My hair is getting way too long
  • I am not doing any of the course work, and I'm finding it very hard to care
  • Holy frack, I'm dating a Czech guy. Didn't exactly see that one coming.

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Prague, 9/11 - In Which I Get Lost in a Strange City


Man, I feel icky. I was going to say “like a flaming ball of poop” but “flaming” implies there’s violence or a burning sensation to how I feel, which isn’t the case. And “ball” implies shape, which also is not true. So I feel like regular, run of the mill shit.
And no, I’m not hung over. I figure I’ve got about a month before the “coming from 6,000 feet above sea level” bonus to my drinking wears off. There’s a video game reference in there I could make pretty easily. So as long as I don’t drink the cheap shit, I’m good. It’s a fun – if expensive – party trick. Nope, I feel like crap because I either have a really intense cold, a cold that is turning into a sinus infection, or some previously unknown nose AIDS. I can’t get my nose to stop running, I’m tired, sore, and I just generally feel icky. At home I’d curl up in my large and comfy bed, get dinner from Noodles, steal a dog to cuddle, and pop in a movie. Here, the bed I have would really only sleep the Slender Man comfortably, and only if he didn’t move too much. Not to mention I think it’s just a slab of concrete with a mattress topper. There’s obviously no Noodles and Co here, and while I could make my own, I don’t wanna. And my dogs are in the states. I think I miss my puppies the most, especially Gus. I can pop in a movie, I guess, but it’s not the same without the other factors in my magical “get better by tomorrow” equation. And I can’t take a hot shower to clear out my nose because the water doesn’t get hot and the shower faucet is not attached to our wall. Someone explain that one to me.
But I had a pretty cool night last night, and I ought to put it down on paper (or virtual paper) in spite of my headache and stuffy nose and general disdain for everything right now that isn’t cuddles and soup.
So a girl in the program, Heather, told me about a concert she was thinking about going to, and I looked up the band. I liked their sound, and I’d been in the city about ten days and still hadn’t tasted the local night life. There are only so many nights I can be a fuddy duddy before I need to go act my age. I invited a kid from the program, Anthony, and a certain local who isn’t really supposed to be hanging out with the students. We spent maybe an hour before the show, which wasn’t very full, talking about various stuff, including beard growth, which I couldn’t really weigh in on. I don’t understand the male fascination with beards, but oh well. The show started, and while the openers took a while for their set to get good, I was digging it. The boys wanted to leave after the first set, though, and we dipped out and headed for a bar that some other kids from the program were hanging out at. This bar, and I don’t remember the name and don’t care to look it up, is a wine bar underground. The whole thing is a couple levels under the street and the walls are stone, like you’re in a cave. Don’t know if it’s literally carved out of the bedrock or if they brought the stone in for decoration, and again don’t care enough to look it up. We found the students, hung out for a couple hours for more nerdy discussions, and consumed a very tasty though very potent wine. There’s a Czech word for it that I think I can pronounce but no way can I spell for this stuff. It’s a still-fermenting apple wine, I guess they only have it about a month out of the year, and it’s deceptively delicious which proved unfortunate for at least one in our party. There’s a reason I drink straight whiskey – you know exactly what you’re getting yourself into. It’s hard to get accidentally plastered with straight whiskey. Though I will admit to having a large glass of the stuff. I also have to admit to monopolizing the local's attention because let’s be honest here.
Anyway, left the bar because it was getting too loud to talk a little before midnight. Our options were catch the last metro home, or just steer into the skid and keep on going. We were going to some bar in a gated park, but I guess they started closing it at midnight in April, so we couldn’t get there. This is the same bar, apparently, where the local has “celebrated” all his break ups, which lead to a discussion about whether we’d rather be broken up with or do the breaking up. Given the events of this summer, I’m going with option B for the rest of forever, but that’s kind of a depressing story – actually it’s an awful story. Side bar, for a moment, though. I found when we were touring Prague Castle and my inner mantra turned into “Lord Doucheface would love this place” that the overwhelming and toxic rage has mostly just turned into passive sadness. Not a super fun development, but probably a more healthy one. Anyway, since we couldn’t hit the break up bar, we went to a park that apparently translates to Lover’s Hill. The view was stunning, and though there was some cloud cover and a lot of light pollution, I was still able to make out two constellations. Virgo and the swan (nope, still don’t care enough to look it up), if I’m not mistaken. We stayed for about two hours, during which my physical state basically degraded into “shivering, sniffling mess” which I clearly haven’t kicked yet. The tea is helping, though I still want a backrub and some cuddles. But I was having such a fun time talking with the present company that I would have happily stayed on that hill all night. And those of you who know I’m anal about how much sleep I get and am generally a wuss about being cold will get what a big deal that was.
It was almost two by the time Anthony decided he ought to head back, so we left the park and jumped our respective trams. Anthony was headed the opposite direction, so he got on a different tram than me and the local, where we had one last opportunity to talk. I had to catch a different tram, though, and I took the wrong tram in the wrong direction.
I’d looked up earlier that evening which trams would take me home (the underground stops running about midnight, which bugs the ever living shit out of me), and I thought I knew where I was going. I did not. So I got on the tram, and spent maybe fifteen minutes trying to figure out if it was the right tram, or even going in the right direction, which led to a lot of pacing trying to stare at the maps on the walls. After a handful of stops, I finally just asked two Czech girls who looked my age and had been watching my march up and down the tram with increasing curiosity if they spoke English. They spoke enough to communicate that I was headed the opposite direction of where I needed to go, and gave me the number of a taxi company that spoke English. I jumped off at the next stop, after hurriedly thanking them for their help in what I think was the most sincere manner I’ve mustered EVER, and called myself a cab. As luck would have it, sitting at the tram stop was a very nice little old lady who spoke enough English and Russian, that combined with my extremely rudimentary Czech, we were able to have a conversation. Which I’m going to put in the hotly contested “No. 2” spot on my list of favorite things to happen that night. Not telling you “No. 1” because I’m a jerk. Bwahaha. Anyway, this little lady was from a town in the Czech Republic I didn’t recognize, she’d traveled to Moscow while the USSR was still in place, she studied Economics, and she loved classical music. The taxi company sent me a text in Czech telling me they were there while a black cab pulled to the end of the block we were at, and the very nice Czech lady informed me that was my cab. I got home without any more excitement, and though I was in bed by 2:30, I don’t think I fell asleep until maybe 6 AM just because my brain wouldn’t turn off digesting everything that had happened. So I got maybe two hours of sleep, which I’m sure contributed to how I feel right now. Namely like I need to curl up somewhere dark and warm and wait for the end of the world. I’m being dramatic, but dang it I feel icky.
So time to get real. Who knows if this’ll go on the blog. But I joke a lot that my two biggest fears are “Failure and Snakes.” There’s stories behind both of those. But I think that after those two, “Not Being in Control” and “Being Vulnerable” are sharing the bronze medal in my psychosis Olympics. Yes, I hate snakes that much. But last night I was most certainly not in control, and pretty vulnerable. And it all turned out fine. Better than fine, actually. I don’t know if it’s something in the water, or if for the first time I can remember, I’m starting to make some personal growth in a very positive direction. I didn’t even realize it until about 5 in the morning today, but by relinquishing control and putting myself in a vulnerable spot (not just talking the tram escapade here) I think I tripped and stumbled, completely devoid of grace or poise, into having the most fun I have had in a long time, making a connection with another human being unlike any I’ve made in the last five years, had an interesting conversation on a bench with a stranger, and realizing that I am not as set in my ways as I previously thought.
Overall, the night gets an A+, though apparently the price is feeling like lukewarm death. Still worth it.
Bonus observations:
·      The cops here wear combat boots and it makes them look way more intimidating than American cops.
·      I think I might look more Czech than I’m giving myself credit for.