Chapter 3: things to do around Prague

I've gotten somewhat settled into my routine. I wake up sometime around 8:30 or 9:00, get dressed, spend 20 minutes eating our little breakfast (it takes effort to spread butter and jam!), get my things together and catch the metro or a tram. Then I spend time in studio, often it gets swallowed into the whirlpool of things to do on my laptop, (including updating this!), and things to do to prepare for classes. I'll attend the class or two I have that day, spend some more time on my computer. 3 days of the week I eat in studio from groceries purchased earlier in the week (i.e. - one small PB&J, one small turkey or ham sandwich, a few chips or a cereal bar, water or juice) the other 2 days we'll go out to lunch with people. We'll stay in studio after classes until sometime around dinnertime, (by the way, do you say dinner or supper? I say both, but apparently one is more particularly southern than the other) when people will wander out to find a restaurant, sometimes all together, usually in smaller groups. Sometimes we'll come back to studio afterwards, sometimes not. Sometimes people go out for drinks, particularly later in the week (and I may join if it's not really late and there's not other things to do, and get a fanta and feel somewhat like radar, but man, fantas are good here). And then shower and reading or homework and bed and we start over.

This is not hard-set by any means, but a pretty average day. But today, after listening to people talk about not wanting to waste our time here, and taking advantage of the fact that we're in PRAGUE! I've started thinking about what I want to see of Prague, and considering my time here is limited, where and what and how I'll see and do and be. So I've started working on a list. I started out with the must-see parks on this website's list (our site, Letna park is not on their list by the way... don't worry, it will be, you just wait for this library to get built and see what happens around it and it's going to be right up there after Prague Castle, the Charles Bridge, and Old Town Square). There's a botanical gardens, a franciscan rose garden, and a more natural preserve thingy on the western side of Prague. I continued reading on this touristy site about top places to see, going through some of the churches, and one of them really excited me. At St. Nicholas Cathedral, right on Old Town Square about 3 minutes from our studio, they have concerts every night beginning March 31. It costs about 12.50 for a student ticket bought ahead of time, and what really excites me, being still somewhat of a classical music nerd, is the schedule around Easter, the week that it starts. On Maundy Thursday, it says: a capella choir, Ave verum: O. di Lasso, G.P. Palestrina. On Good Friday it says: chamber orchestra, J. Haydn: 7 Last Words of Our Saviour on the Cross. On Easter Sunday, there will be a choir singing J. Haydn: St. Nicholas Mass (which is of course appropriate being in St. Nicholas Cathedral). And on Easter Monday there will be a vocalist,, a trumpeter, and an organist playing works by Mozart and Handel. (You can learn more about it on the website: http://www.psalterium.cz/en/start_en.php). Did I mention the organ is the one Mozart played when he lived in Prague? So anyway, that kind of excited me, I know it's not going to be the absolute best performance anywhere, I mean, it'll be $12, but it's still pretty cool. I think. If you have any thoughts on which of those concerts I should choose to attend, feel free to put in your two cents. I've only 40 days to decide!

My goal now, is if there's some free time between classes, is to try to wander someplace new at least once during the week and more during the weekend. We'll see how it goes. But the anticipation is half of the excitement of going a new place, and by simply wandering and getting lost I'd never learn or find even half of the cool places that I would like to. Well, I'm off to dinner. It's that end of the routine. I'll be back on tomorrow morning, 9:30ish Prague time. Hope everyone's having a good Mardi Gras!

photo! and thoughts on czech.

cesky krumlov castle, originally uploaded by jumu556.

See I've uploaded a good 6 photos from the Cesky Krumlov (that's chesky for those of you who can't see there's a hacek implied above that c). Speaking of haceks (there should be one above that c in the word hacek too, it means the c is pronounced like the english "ch", while normally a plain c is pronounces like "ts" like the word noc, or night) Anyway, speaking of haceks, our Czech class is going well. It's a complicated language in different ways from how english is complicated. We've learned the nominative and accusative cases, and are currently expanding our verb vocabulary. I still can't actually communicate with anyone who doesn't speak english, except to say, as I learned from Pimsleur's Czech audio course, "Nerozumim."

An older man said something to me in the park, pointing at my camera, and after I responded "nerozumim" he kind of shook his head and said back, "nerozumis" or, "you don't understand." So, technically, I understood that he understood that I don't understand. But I do wish I could've communicated a little better.

I can understand a word every now and then overheard from the conversations in the metro. Like on the escalator, I heard a girl say to the guy she was with (presumably boyfriend) "Znas?" Meaning, "You know??" I have no idea what he knew, but I know it must be an object because you use "znam" when the thing you know is an object and "vim" when the thing you know is a clause. (the example our teacher gave was if you said "I know her boyfriend" you would use znam, but if you said "I know where her boyfriend lives" you would use vim) Sounds fun, doesn't it?

another weekend, another city.

I've returned from another weekend trip - to Cesky Krumlov. It's a little medieval town/city in southern Bohemia that's still very much as it was in the middle ages, tiny cobblestone streets and bears in the moat and all. Well, the bears aren't quite in the moat, more like in a trench that goes in front of the main gate and there are nice little iron fences to keep people from feeding the bears. They looked rather satisfied with their breakfast of bread and fruit placed on a rock near the bridge. Kind of slow and bumbly.

Cesky Krumlov is actually the filming location for that oh so lovely horror movie Hostel. I don't intend to ever watch it, (or really any horror/gore movie at all), but it's still an interesting fact, and it may give you the idea of the windy narrow medieval streets that cars still manage to drive down, most of the time. I'll post a photo or two once I get them up onto flickr.

We were pretty lucky, the weather was cool but beautiful saturday, and given that it's February, it was fairly empty compared to the hordes of tourists that arrive during the summer. The hostel that we stayed in was almost a hobbit-hole, the door was low and stooped and arched, and it had a big carved wooden dragon curled around the door's window.

Part of the beauty of Cesky Krumlov is that the Vltava river winds its way in and out and around the city center and castle, the same river that ends up going through Prague and then later into Germany as the Elbe. The water added a whole different layer of connections between the parts of the city and the rolling mountains that surround it. It reminds you as you walk by a passageway down to the river and hear a burst of the roaring gurgling water, that before ancient beautiful buildings rose around cobblestone streets, the river winds through and flows on. I also learned, walking though there, that it's pretty much useless to try to replicate that city somewhere else. It might look the same, but it wouldn't feel the same; it wouldn't mean the same thing. What makes Cesky Krumlov what it is is the layers of earth water stone bricks iron stucco tiles paint time and the lives of its people, from the first group to the infants being pushed around in strollers over the cobblestone. It's more than just tilty old buildings leaning over narrow cobbles with souvenir shops sticking out every window. Sorry disney, you'll have to try a little harder.

night time in Market Square, Krakow

night time in Market Square, Krakow4, originally uploaded by jumu556.

So I'm back from Poland, it was a lot of fun. Well worth the time and $120 that it cost me.

Friday night, after wandering from the train station with little else but a "gut feeling" of direction (and enough wits to know we should follow the flow of people), we visited a pub called "Middle Earth" down in a basement off of Market Square. We all went in mainly because Allison and I had read about it in our Easyjet booklet on the flight to Prague and figured being able to say "I went to Middle Earth last night" would be cool. I'm not sure I'd have stayed there as long as we did though, it unfortunately reeked of cigarette smoke, as did everything I had worn there for days afterwards.

Saturday, after eating breakfast for two hours in our (very very nice) hostel (while waiting for the rest of our crew to wake up after their late night), we wandered around the square a little, and then Allison and I decided to go to Wieliczka salt mines. More on my prodding because I'd seen a discovery channel show on it and never thought I'd actually get there. It was very touristy, but it's fun to be a tourist every once in a while. Plus it was astounding what amateur working miners had carved into this mine. There were chambers and chambers, each one named after someone, with sculptures and lots of chapels, including one particularly majestic one, I may post a picture of it, but they'll all definitely be up on flickr.

Sunday we (Allison and I) had another long breakfast, with the same company as the day before of a German and a Flemish guy who were also being tourists for the weekend. They were friendly and provided good conversation while waiting for everyone to wake up. We ended up doing our last hour of wandering (before we had to catch our train at 12:30) with them, since they wanted to go see the castle, too. It was really warm, sunday, I didn't need the insulating layer of my coat at all as we were walking around. It seems the cold weather has abandoned us for NC, are we a jinx on cold weather?

The train back to Prague was not direct, as Friday's trip was. We in fact had 3 trains. Number one was a local Polish one (very slow, stopping at every little bit of sidewalk we passed). The next one that crossed over into the Czech republic was nicer and somewhat faster, of the same level as the train we took friday, with individual compartments for 6 people with the little sliding doors. And then a final "high speed" train set up like an airplane, with rows of (first class airplane level) seats and automatic window shades. That one still probably didn't go faster than 45 or 50 mph, but it only stopped twice before arriving in Prague. Allison and I had already been warned by the German guy who had studied in Poland that semester that Polish "high speed" trains seemed even slower than the slow trains in Germany and the Netherlands, so we weren't expecting bullet speed.

So I'm really glad I went, it was better than I think I expected, and really different from Prague. And I got some good nighttime shots of Market Square, as you can see. If anyone's thinking of visiting Krakow anytime soon, let me know and I'll give you the link to Mama's Hostel, it was very nice and clean and friendly, nicer even than where we stay now in Prague. All except for some chunky milk I poured on my corn flakes the first morning. But that can be forgiven, if I exert myself to be generous.

Poland? Poland!

So we're going to Krakow this weekend, train leaves at 2:05 (or 14:05) and it is currently 11:54, so I'll post something when I get back. We've got some ideas of what to see on our 1.5 day trip, but who knows. It's supposed to be lightly snowy and cold, which is the same as here in Prague, so it's not like we'd be escaping any weather one way or the other. Poland's not the first place on my list of top places to visit, but hey, they're going, it'll cost me around $150, maybe a little more, and when will I get another chance? So wish me luck, I'm looking forward to the train ride! (maybe not all 7 hours of it, though).

top of deathly tall soviet escalator

top of deathly tall soviet escalator2, originally uploaded by jumu556.

this thing has a 200 foot difference in elevation from top to bottom. And I get to ride it every day. It's at our stop, Jiriho z Podebrad. (yeer-zhee-oh zpoe-dyeh-brad)