"Zlatovlásko, miluji tě."

Czech words of the day: "Máma" and "táta"
Meaning: "Mom" and "dad"
Pronunciation: "Mama" and "tata" (pretty darn simple, eh?)

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I know, it's been forever since I posted! A lot's been going on. At the beginning of May I took a trip to Slovenia, but that deserves a post of its own, so in this entry I'm just going to update you guys on some more recent stuff and I'll circle back around to the Slovenia trip.

So, first a little context: My classes are all over now, but here you schedule your final exams with the professor, you have all summer to take them, and if you fail an exam you can retake it once. I've taken all of my exams except for two, and I'll be finished with those by July. I'm going to stay in Brno until July 30, have a few days in London, and then go home on the 4th of August. Until then, I'm going to do a little traveling (I'm definitely going to France and to Bosnia), but mostly I'll be working with the Roma (Gypsies) here in Brno.

The Roma are an often discriminated-against ethnic minority in most of Europe, where countries tend to be ethnically homogeneous and the few minorities that exist mostly have white skin. (For instance, the Czech Republic is 95% Czech and all but about .28% of minority people are white - Germans, Hungarians, Poles, etc. The Roma migrated centuries ago from India, so they are dark-skinned and they have historically been treated badly, often even sub-human, for this.)

The Roma here live mostly in poverty in the most rundown district of the city. Like impoverished minorities in ghettos around the world, they have problems with drugs, teen pregnancy, and crime. Despite this, the Roma quarter is my favorite part of Brno. I never feel endangered there. Whereas Czechs are conservative in public, even stuffy, and hard to open up and get to know, the Roma are open, outgoing and bold, and wear their hearts on their sleeves. They tend to hang out on the streets talking and playing. They're unabashedly curious about foreigners and they're not put off by the old "I don't speak Czech" line like Czechs are; they just work harder to be understood.

There's a museum of Roma culture in the quarter that tries to also be a sort of advocacy group for the Roma of Brno and offers cultural events, after school programs, English and Roma language lessons, and stuff like that. I volunteer every Wednesday afternoon at the museum helping run an art workshop for the children in the district. It offers the kids something constructive to do instead of hanging out on the street and gives them a chance to learn some English, too. These kids are already bilingual in the Roma language and Czech, but they only know a few English words, so communicating with them is a challenge - but that's part of the fun. I learn more Czech in an hour from them than I did in a week of Czech classes, I think.

They're really amazing kids. They're super curious and confident. There's not a shy kid among them. They're so proud when they learn English words, and they're extremely loving. They think I'm super awesome because I'm from America, which is like a mythical paradise to them. They adore my hair and they've nicknamed me "Zlatovláska," which means "Golden Hair" and is the name of a Czech fairytale princess. Some of them actually address me as "Zlatovláska" instead of "Mindy," lol. Soon I'm going to start teaching English lessons to them as well. So that's how I'm going to spend my summer, and I'm really excited about it!

One of the little Roma girls. Her name is Erika and, like the others, she's really obsessed with my Blackberry. She took a bunch of pictures of me, and then she wanted a picture of herself carrying my pocketbook.

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In the time since I last posted, Brno has gotten really, really beautiful. The difference is astounding. When I got here everything was pure white, and now everything is bright green with occasional splashes of wildflowers. Central European weather is absolutely crazy, though! It rains at least a few days out of every week, but very schizophrenically. It'll be completely sunny one minute, then rain and thunder and lightning for 30 minutes, then be sunny again, and so on.

It's like the weather is more passionate here than at home. Even storm clouds look angrier, like bruises. I love to just stand on my balcony and watch the weather, like a performance. The other day there was a huge rainbow suspended in the air right outside my window, a full rainbow with both ends touching the ground. And because the Czech Republic is way farther north than Georgia, there are more hours of sunlight here in the summer. The sun doesn't fully go down until 10 P.M. and it starts to come up again at 3 A.M. People start to get out and about around 5 A.M., and by 6 A.M. people are playing outside in the sunshine. It's MADNESS!

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For the past two weeks Brno has been host to a really big event called Ignis Brunensis. Basically it's a fireworks competition. Every three days or so for the past two weeks there would be a fireworks display at the lake in Brno. This year fireworks companies from Slovakia, Germany and France competed (Slovakia won) and two Czech companies also did exhibitions. Now I know that we Americans (particularly we Southerners) hold fireworks near and dear to our hearts. They remind us of big 4th of July displays and smaller, more dangerous ones in our backyards later that night. So I really, really hate to say it, but I think Europeans do fireworks better than we do. At least, better than any American display I've ever seen - and that includes Disney World. The Ignis Brunensis displays could only be described as art. I saw about ten kinds of fireworks I'd never even seen before. And each display was synchronized with music that was broadcast on the radio for people to listen to while watching the fireworks. Thousands of people showed up each night.

There was also a carnival set up by the lake with probably half as many rides as the Perry Fair, a few games and a billion food and drink stands (about a quarter of which were beer stands, naturally). The rides were almost all exactly like the ones at the Fair, except for a few that I wasn't familiar with. One was just a cage that you climbed in and the ride worker would start swinging you back and forth until you gained enough momentum to go in circles for a bit. My absolute favorite ride of all time, The Claw, was there (here's a picture of one) and a Bosnian friend went on it with me. There was also a tiny roller coaster like fairs always have, except this one had a loop! I'd never seen a portable roller coaster with a freaking loop before, so of course I had to ride it. One thing about the carnival was that, unlike anywhere I've ever seen in America, you paid per individual ride, so for instance, I paid 40 crowns or so to ride The Claw once.

I also discovered a few yummy Czech treats at the carnival, most notably minikoblížky, or "mini doughnuts," the Czech equivalent of funnel cakes.


They're essentially small doughnuts covered in powdered sugar or something else sweet. I got mine mine with chocolate syrup and they tasted, well, like chocolate-covered funnel cakes. I got a box of them every time I went to the lake, heh.

My favorite display was last night's, though, because my friends and I watched it from literally right in front of the place they were being shot from - as close as the police would let us get. I could see (over the heads of the people in front of me) the fireworks take off, and they exploded literally right above my head. Obviously, it was really freaking loud and at one point it was so bright I had to close my eyes, but oh my gosh! I don't think I'll ever be satisfied watching fireworks from far away again. Close up, it was so overwhelming and too beautiful for words. You could see each individual spark, like glitter in the sky. I can't even describe it, but it was awesome.

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But that wasn't the only awesome thing that happened yesterday. Brno's city council recently passed a law prohibiting begging for money in the city - and, quite stupidly, that law applies to buskers (musicians playing on the street for money) as well. So today there was a giant protest in support of Brno's buskers. Basically everybody in Brno who knew how to play a musical instrument gathered at one of the main streets and occupied the city for the whole afternoon. People would just sit on the sidewalk, pull out a guitar, and start playing. Some people came in groups to play together, and some formed groups spontaneously.

Brno is home to a prestigious music college, so the students were out in full force, bringing all their instruments with them and playing their favorite kinds of music in the street. So there were all kinds of music - classical, Gypsy jazz, American rock, traditional Slavic folk songs, reggae, African music - even a Czech version of "Don't Worry, Be Happy" - and all sorts of instruments. There were two guys playing digideroos, a girl who could play two woodwind instruments at once, and a couple with kazoos who went around spontaneously joining in on other people's performances, as well as numerous people with accordions, harmonicas, and drums of all sizes. It was a really defiantly joyful atmosphere, and maybe it did some good; apparently the city council has announced that there will be specific "music points" around the city where buskers can perform unmolested.

I still feel bad for the city's homeless beggars, though. They're much less obtrusive than American beggars to begin with. I've never seen a beggar here actually ask for money; they tend to just sit there quietly. I can't imagine that the council is banning them because they've annoying people. I guess it's because they "make the city look bad" or something, which is a dumb and inhumane thing to say, in my opinion. (Loophole: If I were a beggar, I'd just go to one of those music points and start singing.)

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Finally, the best news I've gotten in all my time in Brno: there's a Burger King here now! Unfortunately it's at a huge shopping complex in the suburbs a good 30 minutes by public transport from my dorm, so I haven't been there yet. But when I go, I'm going to buy like 10 burgers and just keep them in my freezer. ♥

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I'm sorry this post has been heavy on text and light on pictures, but I promise the Slovenia post will contain more than enough pictures to make up for it. Until then, here's a funny "spot the English word" picture of an actual, serious billboard at a mall in Brno:

One of these words is not like the others...

Oh, and this:

Even Czechs know that Heinz is the best ketchup. (It means essentially the same thing as "Bon appetit!")

I will come back here; bring me back when I'm old.

Czech phrase of the day: Velikonoce
Meaning: Easter
Pronunciation: "Vel-eek-o-no-tseh"

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It's been a long time, huh?

I've had a very busy two or three weeks, what can I say? But fear not: I've got a full report for you.

First things first. Two weekends ago I went to Bratislava with a group of friends (two Slovenians, one Croatian, and one Bosnian, if you were wondering). Bratislava is the capital of Slovakia, which was, as I'm sure you've figured out, the other half of Czechoslovakia. Bratislava doesn't seem very much like the capital of a state, much less a country, as it's very small - small enough to see all in one day on foot. It's got a castle (which unfortunately is currently closed for renovations), some cool bridges, and a really nice central area with lots of cool shops and cafes. It's one of those charming Eastern European cities that I've fallen so much in love with, with narrow, winding cobblestone streets and crooked, centuries-old buildings all haphazardly arranged at odd angles. Oh, and it had a pretty awesome museum of weaponry with medieval armor and swords and stuff. If the Zombie Apocalypse comes while I'm here, I'm raiding that place for supplies first.

Bratislava also lies right on the Danube River, which flows through the middle of the city. You may have heard of the song "Blue Danube;" well, I can tell you that the Danube is no longer blue. It is brown, and the brown water, combined with the waterside atmosphere of Bratislava - wind, squawking of water birds, etc. - reminded me so much of coastal Georgia that I had to keep reminding myself where I was. Bratislava was also the first time I've ever used euros, which required a mental leap after getting so used to Czech crowns. Using euros is like using dollars if everything were more expensive and the most common denominations were $1 and $2 coins instead of bills. Since then I've had the opportunity to use euros extensively and I don't like them. I don't like using primarily coins, and euros require a huge mental shift from crowns. I see a shirt for 30 euros and I think, "That's a great price!" until I remember that it's euros, not crowns. 30 crowns is less than $2, but 30 euros is more like $37. The only exception is euro bills, which I love because they're really, really pretty and shiny.

Bratislava was especially nice because the Easter celebrations were in full swing. Easter is a really, really big deal here, although in a region made up mostly of atheists, it's more of a cultural holiday than a religious one. Eastern European people have a bunch of really romantically rustic traditions based on pagan practices. Easter Sunday itself isn't much of a big deal, but Easter celebrations begin several weeks before Easter and culminate on Easter Monday, which is the really big deal. When I went to Bratislava, there was a big Easter fair set up in the main square with traditional Slovak food, arts and crafts, and folk music. The Brno Easter fair only got set up last week, but it was essentially the same as Bratislava's: lots of traditional food and people running around in traditional Czech clothing (like this). But from about three weeks before Easter there were people setting up lone stands on side streets selling homemade traditional crafts and such. Hand-painted eggs were everywhere.

My favorite was the guy who stood for three weeks in front of the main train station in Brno selling pomlázka. The pomlázka is a whip made from braided willow branches and decorated with ribbons. The tradition is that, prior to Easter Monday, all the boys and men go out and collect willow branches and braid their own pomlázka. Then, on Easter Monday, they use their pomlázka to whip the women and girls.

Yes, for Easter the boys get to whip the girls.

Wait - it gets better.

Once a girl has been whipped, she is supposed to reward the guy who whipped her with a decorated egg or a shot of alcohol. In some places the girls get to retaliate by dousing the boys with water, but it seems that in this region, the tradition is rather the opposite: in addition to whipping the girls, the boys get to throw water on them, too.

The old pagan tradition is that whipping a girl with a pomlázka transfers the willow branches' youth and vigor to the girl, and will keep her young and beautiful all year. Unfortunately, I didn't get to witness this tradition because I was on an eight-hour train ride from Berlin on Easter Monday (I'll get to that later), but I heard a lot about it. Easter is a public holiday here, so most of the students here went home for the weekend and took part in this tradition. When I asked my English class to tell me about it, all the girls in my class said they'd gotten whipped and most of the boys had plaited a pomlázka and done some whipping. Don't worry - the girls said it doesn't hurt. I was envisioning scenes of mass chaos with girls running frantically away from hordes of whip-happy young men, but apparently the boys tend to stick to girls they know, family and friends. My roommate spent the holiday in one of the tiny villages that are so common in the countryside here, and she had to give her permission to the boys before they would whip her. So it's not nearly as barbaric as it first sounds. =)

This is one of the reasons I love Eastern Europe more than anywhere else: though in most respects it's part of the modern world, fully developed technologically, economically, governmentally, etc., it's not nearly as commercial as "Western" countries. It retains a lot of its old cultural identity, which is sometimes very weird but always very beautiful and romantic. I think in the US we imagine these places where people still live in tiny villages and frolic in green fields in traditional dress, and while they don't exist exactly as we imagine them, they do exist in the mentality of the people here, who do still live in tiny villages and hand-paint eggs and hold to pagan celebrations. It's all very beautiful and completely unthinkable in America, where the only tradition often seems to be, "What do we buy for this holiday?"

By the way, I told my English class that I should import the whipping tradition to the US. The girls would be horrified that they were expected to endure a whipping, but the American guys would love it like nothing else, I'm sure.

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Now for the reason I didn't get the pleasure of being whipped myself.

Last Thursday (hey, that's the name of this blog!) one of my absolute favorite musicians, Laura Marling, had a concert in Berlin. I wasn't planning on visiting Germany, but I knew I couldn't pass up this chance to see Laura Marling, and I figured if I were going to go to Berlin, I might as well stay all weekend. So early Thursday morning I skipped my classes and took an 8-hour train ride to Berlin. Just before the train arrived, I noticed an American guy standing on the platform talking to a Czech guy. I'm not normally one to initiate conversations with strangers - or anyone, really - but spring was in the air and I was thinking about how nice Georgia must be at this time of the year, and that touch of nostalgia for home made me talk to the American guy. Turned out he was in Brno on business and on his way to Prague. When the train arrived he asked to ride in a compartment with me, and when it turned out I'd have to pay to upgrade to a first-class ticket, he paid to upgrade my ticket all the way to Berlin so I could keep him company on the way to Prague. He was super nice and it turned out he was in the music business, so we had a lot to talk about. It was lovely to talk to a fellow American besides the students here - plus I got a comfy first-class seat out of the deal. I guess Mom was wrong when she always told me not to talk to strangers!

From Prague, the five-hour journey to Berlin was interesting because the countryside is so beautiful. When you head north to Germany you run into mountains with sheer cliffs, with tiny villages carved into the side and castles perched on top. Much of the train track follows a river valley cut straight through the mountains, and it's all very green and lush and beautiful. Things do look more modern and generally nicer as soon as you step over the German border, but in my opinion the Czech side is more quaint and beautiful.

In any case, when I got to Berlin, I made a beeline for the first Burger King I saw, then went to my hostel. Hostels, for those of you not aware, are very, very cheap lodgings for travelers on a budget. They're everywhere in Europe, and I wish we had them in the United States, because they're very nice. They're nothing like the ratty motels that provide cheap lodging in America. Hostels are generally very clean and well-ordered. The reason they're cheap is that everything in a hostel is communal: the bathrooms, showers and kitchen are typically shared with everyone else in the hostel (although there are separate girls' and boys' bathrooms and showers) and you usually sleep in a dormitory with about 5-7 other people, much like summer camp. You also generally have to pay extra for extra things, like towels, soap and shampoo. On the other hand, they often provide free breakfast and internet access. So if you don't mind having roommates and bringing your own soap & shampoo, you can sleep in a clean, comfortable, safe place in one of the top tourist cities in the world for about $18 per night.

I stayed at one of the top-rated hostels in Berlin because it was the closest to the concert venue. It was a beautiful old townhouse with four floors. The first floor consisted of the help desk and a large living room-like area for people to just hang out, and the other three floors held dormitories. I stayed in a room with five Greek 20-somethings who had randomly decided to spend the Easter weekend in Berlin. They were super nice - in fact, when they left in the wee hours of Sunday morning to catch their plane back to Greece, one of them left roses on my bed to say goodbye. It was so sweet.


But back to Thursday. After I settled into the hostel, I went to the nightclub where the concert was held. I met this cool German guy who was likewise a huge Laura Marling fan; he and I were the first people to arrive, so we chatted for a while until the doors opened. The concert was awesome; there were no chairs and no backstage, just a low stage in a one-room club, so the audience crowded around the stage and the musicians had to squeeze through us to get to the stage. That meant that Laura Marling brushed right past me, and the whole time she was close enough for me to touch. The performance was simply amazing. She's younger than me, but she writes all her own songs and picks the guitar and sings like someone twice as old, and her lyrics are so eerily mature that I can't imagine how she's even close to me in age. Anyway, enough fangirling; suffice it to say that it was probably the second-best concert I've ever been to. And I made a new German friend that night - who, by the way, recorded most of the concert and put it on YouTube. If you search YouTube for "Laura Marling Privatclub," his videos of the concert will pop up.

The next day, Friday, I went on a tour of Berlin to make sure I got in all the must-see stuff. Here are some of the awesome things I saw:

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. It's essentially a whole city block filled with huge cement blocks of varying height. It looks like just a bunch of blocks, but when you start to walk among them, the ground beneath your feet undulates and dips, so that the farthest blocks you can see in this picture are actually ridiculously tall. As you walk further into the memorial, the blocks get so tall that light can't penetrate them and you quickly lose all sense of direction and proportion. It starts to feel like a maze you'll never find your way out of. I think it's a fitting memorial to perhaps the most senseless, irrational acts in recorded history.

A surviving part of the Berlin Wall. As you can see, it's taken a beating.

Another part of the same stretch of the Wall. Notice that it's now protected by a fence.

The Brandenburg Gate

The courtyard in front of the New Museum and the art museum, two of the museums on Berlin's "Museum Island," which is literally an island in the middle of the river Spree where there are like five museums all clustered together. That big bluish building you see on the left is a cathedral.

Some random guy fishing in the Spree on Museum Island. He actually caught a fish, too.

The Hotel Adlon, better known as the "Michael Jackson baby-dangling hotel." Yeah, it's that one.

The Berlin TV Tower, built by the Soviets to transmit TV (and propaganda) signals to East Germany. There's an old story that the Communist government wasn't too happy when, after meticulously destroying all crosses and crucifixes displayed in public, it turned out that the light reflected from the top of the TV Tower makes the sign of a cross on the ball part of the Tower. You can see it in the picture if you look hard.

The American embassy in Berlin - the first American embassy I've seen in Europe that wasn't surrounded by a huge, impenetrable fence.

Just one example of the awesome artwork painted on buildings literally all over Berlin.

I also saw the Reichstag (the German parliament building), Checkpoint Charlie (the major checkpoint in the former Wall), the Checkpoint Charlie museum (which documents all the clever ways people escaped from East Germany), the East Side Gallery (the longest existing stretch of the Berlin Wall, which is now one big space for artwork by artists around the world), and the memorial to the thousands of books burned by the Nazis, which consists of an underground room beneath one of the main squares in the city. The room is inaccessible and only viewable through a plexiglass slab in the ground, and the only things in the room are a series of empty bookshelves big enough to hold all the books that the Nazis burned. It's pretty eerie and chilling to look at.

I spent Saturday mostly just walking around exploring the city and its shops. My hostel was in what used to be East Berlin in a district known for two things: Turkish immigrants and punk/alternative culture. The entire district is basically a mix of Turks and punks with mohawks. It was pretty awesome (particularly because the German language drives me crazy and I prefer to be surrounded by Turkish speakers than German speakers). The district has the most epic graffiti and street art I've ever seen and a ton of awesome ethnic restaurants. I found this little Turkish chicken restaurant that made the most delicious non-fried chicken I've ever had in my life (and it was better than most fried chicken I've ever had, too). I ate there two nights in a row and I was so, so very sad to leave it behind.

Speaking of food, besides the chicken, the Burger King and the youthful, energetic spirit of the city, I found two other reasons to love Berlin: 1. They sell sunflower seeds there, which I haven't found in the Czech Republic. Apparently sunflower seeds are popular with the huge number of Turkish immigrants in Germany. 2. They sell Snicker's Crunchers there! That was the only candy bar I've ever really loved, and they stopped selling them in the US years ago, but they still sell them in Germany! When I laid eyes on one, I immediately bought all the ones the store had, so I wound up bringing about 40 candy bars back to Brno with me. But it was so worth it: when I took the first bite of one, I nearly cried.

I meant to spend Sunday morning hitting up as many of Berlin's flea markets as possible - it has about a billion flea markets - and go to the museums in the evening, but the museums sold out before I could get tickets, so I wound up shopping all day - and yes, spending lots of money (for the first time since I got here, actually). But as usual here, the vast majority of the money was spent on my family. I never realized how irrevocably tied to them I was until this weekend. The whole time it was like they were right there with me, in my head, so when I saw something one of them would want, I just had to buy it as if I were buying it for myself. For instance, I saw a T-shirt that I knew Misty would just have to have if she were there, and I couldn't not get it for her. The same with my dad. He might have more restraint than I did when making purchases on his behalf, but if he were here to see all the awesome antiques that are just sitting around, he probably wouldn't. I got him some awesome stuff he's gonna love. I also finally found my mom's birthday present, so I dropped a bit of money on that - but she's gonna have to wait for it.

In all, despite my disdain for the German language, I loved Berlin. It was a lovely city and I would like to go back someday to see the museums and hit up the flea markets I missed. =)

I'm sure I've forgotten to include some things, but I've been typing this for like 3 hours now, so I'm going to take a break now, lol.

As for what's next: who knows? I'm gonna use this weekend to catch up on some practical things, and next weekend I'm hanging out with a Czech friend, but I hope to organize a trip to Krakow, Poland with a couple of friends, and there's talk of going to a few other places as well. If nothing happens, I'll just have to make another trip by myself. At least now we know I can do it. =)

from the mountains, to the prairies, to the oceans white with foam

Czech word of the day: Tak
Meaning: "So." If you want to sound like a real Czech person, start every other sentence with "tak," and murmur it to yourself occasionally while thinking.
Pronunciation: "Tahk"

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The weather this week in Brno has been absolutely crazy. Last weekend it snowed and stuck. On Monday, there were snow flurries on and off all day long - even when the sky was devoid of clouds.

Literally. The sky was sunny and blue and there was snow falling. Central European weather patterns are the weirdest.

And then today the high was about 60 degrees Fahrenheit. It was actually too warm for the sweater I'm wearing.

The people here are funny about weather, though. They seem to think, "It's winter, so I'm going to bundle up," no matter what the weather outside is actually like. Today I was sweating in my sweater and people were running around with heavy coats on like it was freezing. They're just used to living in a warm climate; wearing warm clothes is second nature to them.

I, on the other hand, come from a warm climate, where we generally wear the smallest amount of clothing that we can possibly get away with. Here, that means seizing every opportunity to wear T-shirts and slip-ons rather than sweaters and boots.

Apparently, that makes me a little odd.

Everybody here - not just Czechs, but all the other Europeans - think I'm really, really weird for kicking off my shoes whenever possible. And, okay, even at home, I draw attention for going barefoot more often than average. But at home people at least understand the impulse to go barefoot, and people regularly slip their shoes off when sitting down.

But here, when the first thing I do before sitting down anywhere is kick my shoes off, I get weird looks from people - not just at places you'd expect, like a restaurant or on a park bench outside, but also in class, in the computer lab, even when cozying up in someone's basement to watch a movie. (On the latter occasion, a Slovenian guy told me I was "Very weird girl.")

Today it was so warm out that I slipped my shoes off while I sat on a park bench reading for about an hour. At one point an old Czech lady came up to me, giggling, and tried to tell me something. When I told her I didn't speak Czech, she giggled again and said something else in Czech, pointed at my feet, and walked away.

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I'm also considered weird here because of the way I eat. In the southern U.S., we eat pretty much everything with our hands, but here they actually make use of dining utensils. They're very dainty with everything they eat, even fried chicken. At KFC here they give you one napkin - ONE, for all that greasy chicken! - and most people eat their chicken with a fork, which I cannot bring myself to do.

Each Wednesday, the students from one country give a presentation over their native country - history, interesting facts and places, famous people, etc. They also prepare a few traditional dishes from their home country.

Last night was the United States' presentation. There were sloppy joes, cheese dip & nachos, peanut butter cups (which don't exist here!), and sweet tea. Oh my God, I thought I had died and gone back to the South. It smelled a little weird but it tasted like a family reunion. I literally jumped over five rows of chairs to scramble to the front of the pack and claim a cup of sweet tea before they were all gone, and I drank it all in one go. I don't know which of my fellow Americans made it, but I was grateful.

The reactions to the American food were amusing, though. Sweet tea is completely foreign to everybody else here; I got everything from "I'm not sure how I feel about it" to "I could not deal with that stuff" to "How do you make it?" (The answer to the latter is, of course, "Make tea normally, then dump a bunch of sugar in!") These dainty eaters didn't know what to do with sloppy joes (we call them that for a reason), and most of them had never tasted peanut butter cups before - which is kind of crazy, if you think about it. Try for a moment to imagine a world without Reese's. See what I mean?

The presentation itself was a hit, too. It was basically a parody of American stereotypes, including obesity (a Science Channel clip about how the US is the fattest country in the world), ignorance (the Miss Teen South Carolina "like, such as" video), arrogance (clips from Talladega Nights), commercialism, and, of course, politics (several choice Family Guy clips), interspersed with helpful definitions of American slang such as "aiight," "off the chain," and "pwned."

The Talladega Nights clips got the biggest laughs, though, because most of the audience hadn't seen that movie. People especially liked the scene in which Ricky Bobby is asked by Sacha Baron Cohen's effeminate Frenchman to describe what America has given to the world, and his responses are "Chinese food, pizza, and chimichangas."

The video also consisted of a few quintessential American songs, including Miley Cyrus' "Party in the USA" - which everybody in the room knew the words to - and that most American of songs, Toby Keith's "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue."

By the end, I felt equal parts embarrassed and nostalgic. Oh, America. ♥

Having said that, I've now been here in the Czech Republic for a month. It's begun to dawn on me how little time I have left. In no time I've become comfortable here, and now that it's getting warm, I don't think I'll ever want to leave.

If only I could import American food, American TV, and my loved ones here, I think I'd be content to stay forever.

Today was another decisive diplomatic victory for the Russian Federation...

Czech word of the day: Today we actually have a phrase: "Miluju tě."
Meaning: "I love you."
Pronunciation:: "Mee-loo-yoo tye"

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Sure enough, it snowed again in Brno, both yesterday and last night. This morning I left my dorm at 7 A.M. to go to the first session of my model United Nations course. My dorm is situated on a huge hill, and the city hadn't spread salt on the roads yet at 7 A.M., so I slipped on the icy snow and fell on my butt - not once, but twice. Some people saw me and inquired whether I was okay, but of course, I couldn't answer them, because I can't speak Czech.

The UN simulation was awesome, though. The topic was an imaginary outbreak of violence between Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo, and I got to represent Russia - the dream of every UN simulation participant, since Russia gets very antagonistic over the issue of Kosovo and, of course, has the power to veto any United Nations resolution it disagrees with. Russia and the United States are always the most fun countries to play in any UN simulation, because you get to throw your weight around and make other countries agree with you. Russia is also my personal favorite because I have a soft spot for Russia, the big, bad bully of the international system. When you're playing Russia, no threat or demand is too outrageous.

So my partner and I met yesterday and drew up a list of Russian demands, and we included them in our opening speech to the UN Security Council this morning. The United States, of course, had a diametrically opposed proposition, but my partner and I essentially threatened to veto the resolution every time someone proposed something Russia would have disagreed with, and in the end, we got pretty much exactly the resolution that we wanted.

I also wrote the entire introductory preamble to the resolution by myself, and all the countries accepted it in its entirety, which I was extremely proud of.

In all, the simulation took about five hours and it was loads of fun. I was the only native English speaker in the room, so the chairperson (the professor) kept having to ask me to speak more slowly, but on the other hand, I made sure that the resolution had perfect grammar. =D

I'm really excited for the next simulation, even though I will probably be assigned a small country this time, having already represented a veto power. But that's the beauty of UN simulations: you never know what might happen. Most of today's resolution was drafted by Uganda!

I went to Prague and all I got was 3 Burger King burgers for future consumption.

Czech word of the day: kočka
Meaning: cat
Pronunciation: "koch-ka"

And a bonus word for the dog lovers out there:

Czech bonus word of the day: pes
Meaning: dog
Pronunciation: "pes," just like it looks.

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I was right. It did get colder here. It's back in the low 30's in Brno, it's supposed to snow later this week, and this weekend in Prague was the coldest I've ever been in my life. It snowed huge snowflakes, and it was beautiful, but for most of the time I couldn't feel my fingers.

Prague was beautiful, absolutely gorgeous, with tons of awesome sights and historical buildings, but honestly? I prefer Brno. The entire city center of Prague is so full of historical sights that it's become a giant tourist trap. There will be a big, majestic, centuries-old tower in the square, but the entire square is made up of overpriced souvenir shops that all sell the exact same commercialized nonsense: T-shirts with "I ♥ Prague" and "funny" slogans about getting drunk, Russian nesting dolls (Russian! Not even Czech!), and the worst: furry hats and shirts with KGB logos on them, making light of a tragic era that my generation's parents suffered through in the Czech Republic and that was only ended in 1989 through courageous protests in that very square, now full of drunk, rowdy tourists.

And, of course, none of the shops are owned by actual Czechs. It's sad, actually, and hard to imagine that none of that stuff was there in 1989. The second the Iron Curtain fell, foreign businessmen swooped in and made a killing off this country, bought Prague and turned it into a money machine by pandering to tourists' ideas about the place. "The tourists want to see communism, but there's no communism left! No matter, we can still sell souvenirs of nonexistent communism in the stores! The tourists will never know the difference; after all, communism was just furry Russian hats and KGB jokes, right?"

There's a hilarious irony in there somewhere, but there's also - ironically - the very circumstances that gave rise to communist thought in the first place. Because, while Prague today isn't capitalism at its worst, it's nothing for capitalists to be proud of, either. It's made it nearly impossible to enjoy the history of the place, to contemplate all the life-changing events that occurred there. Prague doesn't feel like a real city. There are American restaurants and English signs everywhere, and all the people you meet are tourists, not Czechs. I'm not convinced that anyone actually lives there. I think the entire population might be made up of tourists and those who live off of tourists.

Brno isn't as exciting or as beautiful (though it could be argued that it's just as historical as Prague), and there's not as much going on here - and Lord knows I miss my American food - but Brno feels like a city. I like hearing Czech spoken on the streets and not being able to find a sign in English and being surrounded by old Czech ladies who lean on canes and but still feel young enough to walk everywhere and refuse to take a seat on the tram. Prague was nice to visit, but I'm glad I got sent to study here instead.

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My English class Wednesday went pretty well. A lot of people came, both Czech and foreign students who want to improve their English. We just talked a little bit on Wednesday, but I'm trying to come up with some ideas for activities we can do this Wednesday. So if you have any ideas for fun ways to practice English, let me know!

My only class tomorrow starts at 6 P.M., so I think I'll use the first part of the day to visit some shops around Brno that I haven't gotten around to yet. I've almost got my package of gifts for my parents and sisters put together. It's gonna be really good. I've hardly bought anything for myself here except food. Almost all my money goes towards gifts for my family.

I haven't caught the Oscars yet. I'm trying to download them, but it's gonna take a while, so nobody spoil me, please. =)

Mám dárek pro mou sestru!

Czech word of the day: dĕkuji
Meaning: "thank you"
Pronunciation: "dyek-wee"

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It's crazy how quickly the weather is changing here. Today the high was almost 50 degrees. It was so warm that I didn't even wear my big winter coat and I wore flats instead of boots for the first time. It felt so good to wear normal shoes again! The snow's all gone now, and it's hard to imagine it coming back, but the forecast is already calling for more snow later this week.

They're having a world film festival here, so tomorrow I'm going to go see two movies, one Iranian and one Georgian. I was able to order the tickets online and choose which seat I wanted, which is really cool, and the tickets were only about $4 apiece! That's crazy! The theater is conveniently located near KFC, so I'll probably treat myself to fried chicken tomorrow between movies. I miss my car, but it's nice to live in a city where I don't really need it for once!

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Kutná Hora was pretty awesome. All the museums and touristy stuff were closed because there aren't many tourists in February, but we visited two cathedrals from the Middle Ages, and I got to see the ossuary that I mentioned in the last post, which was really cool. I took too many pictures to post here, so they're all collected on Flickr here.

The train ride to Kutná Hora itself was really interesting. I got to see a lot of the countryside. It's crazy - every single town we passed had an old gothic cathedral. Every single one. I mentioned this to my Czech guide, and she said, "Well, these buildings aren't really that old. Go to Rome. Those buildings are old." I said, yes, that's true, but buildings from the Middle Ages are still ridiculously old to me. There's nothing even close to that old in the United States.

I'll be spending next weekend in Prague with the International Students Club, so I'll take lots of pictures there, too.

I also saw a drunken bar fight, and rode on a train with a guy who was too drunk to sit up straight, let alone walk. (He got kicked off the train after two stops for not paying the fare.)

Speaking of drunk guys, the guy behind me in line at the supermarket today collapsed in a drunken stupor. It's amusing how unconcerned people here are when a drunk person falls over. The lady at the checkout counter barely looked at the guy on the floor. Everybody just kind of watched him until he managed to stand up and wander out, leaving his would-be purchases on the counter.

I think I'm going to do all my grocery shopping at that supermarket from now on rather than at Tesco. I hate going to Tesco. The workers there always seem miserable, and they let it be known that my not speaking Czech is just one more inconvenience for them.

The place I went today is a smaller supermarket just down the street called Albert. People there are so much nicer. The lady that checked me out today just smiled when I told her I didn't speak Czech, and she understood me when I asked in English for a bag. Albert is more expensive than Tesco in the same way that Walmart's always cheaper than everywhere else, and Albert's bread is less fresh than Tesco's, but Albert is closer to my dorm and, more importantly, I don't feel like an inconvenience to anybody when I shop there.

There are things I haven't been able to find here, though. Things from home that I'm running out of include sunflower seeds, Crunch bars, and Cheetos. I've already run out of salt & vinegar potato chips, which is a flavor they don't have here. They do have flavors like ham and paprika, but I'll pass on those.

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And now, a little bragging.

I'm owning my Czech class, despite the fact that it's meant for more advanced students. Score one for the linguaphile. At this point I've studied so many languages that there's hardly a grammatical concept that I'm not at least a little bit familiar with. I got all my questions right today in class, and I've already completed Wednesday's homework.

Grammar just makes so much sense to me. It's all rules-based: if A, then B. If the noun is masculine inanimate, it retains its form in the accusative case, but if it's masculine animate, add -a at the end of hard nouns and -e at the end of soft nouns. Easy. It's a formula. It's the way math is supposed to be, all simple logic, but unlike math, grammar actually makes sense. Equations are just numbers; they don't mean anything. But words mean something. Words matter. If I get an abstract equation wrong, nothing happens. But if I mess up a grammatical formula, I create a whole different meaning.

And yet people think math is more important than grammar. Pfft.

Anyway.

I'm about to put my love of grammar to good use. I've volunteered to teach an English class to local Czech students once a week. I have no idea how to teach anything, but I'm probably going to have to spend a couple of years teaching English abroad to get into a top master's program in my field, so this'll be good experience.

My first class is Wednesday night. Wish me luck!

We're neither pure, nor wise, nor good. We'll do the best we know.

Czech word of the day: prosím
Meaning: "please" or "you're welcome." Salespeople and people at checkout counters greet you with "Prosím," so it's also the Czech equivalent of "May I help you?"
Pronunciation: "pro-seem"

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I finally got the internet in my dorm room back! Hopefully it will stay this time.

I realize I never reported back about the trip to Macocha Caverns and the Černá Hora brewery, so I'll do that now.

The caverns were beautiful. The first part looks pretty much just like all the other caverns in places like Tennessee and Virginia, but then we came to an underground river and we got in a boat that took us through the rest of the caves. The water temperature was about 2 degrees Celsius, and in places the river was 100 meters deep. It was so cool. I wanted to swim in it. The crowning glory of the caverns is the Macocha Abyss, which is a huge sinkhole with the river flowing through the bottom. We came out of the caves into the bottom of the abyss and looked up. It was an awesome sight. I wish I had some photos to post, but the fee to take pictures was 30 crowns, and I could buy 30 pieces of Czech bread for that amount, so no thanks.

The brewery was less than awesome. Everything was metal and rubber tubing. It struck me as basically a chemical plant. They just take hops and malt (which stink, by the way), mix them with water, and let them sit in huge, metal vats for months while they ferment and become even more foul-smelling. Foam collects on the surface of the beer and hardens to a brown crust. It was pretty disgusting, and it solidified my resolve never to try beer. After the tour we ate Czech dumplings at the brewery restaurant and they let us try several different kinds of beer. I was one of about 3 people who refused the beer, so they brought me something else to drink. I have no idea what it was, but it smelled weird, so I was wary about trying it - I guess I was afraid they would slip me beer anyway in hopes of getting me hooked - but it turned out to be some kind of soft drink. I liked it, but I still don't know what it was, so I guess I'll be sticking with Coca-Cola.

Czech dumplings, by the way, are served with just about every traditional Czech meal, but they're not your average dumplings. They're more like spongy bread.

See the bread at the top of the plate? It's not. It's Czech dumplings.

Tomorrow I'm going to Kutná Hora, a medieval town complete with a crypt full of thousands of dead people's bones artistically arranged to form decorations. I'll take pictures if I can, but there are already plenty of pictures of the place here. It looks awesome!

In other news, I seem to be getting over whatever bug I caught, and it looks like I'll be able to catch up quickly in my new Czech class.

I also finally tried eating at McDonald's this week. There are three McDonald's in Brno that I've found so far. I usually wouldn't go near the place at home, but it's cheap and they speak English there, so it's an easy meal when I'm in the city center. It's substantially different from home, though. The menus here (and this goes for KFC as well) are much simpler than at home. There aren't as many combinations available. At home, you walk into McDonald's and tell them all the little specifics you'd like, and you get angry when they don't provide the order exactly to your specifications. Here, they keep several different choices pre-made - cheeseburgers, hamburgers with the works, chicken strips, the basics - and you order one of these basic meals, and they provide it for you in about five seconds.

So when I walked into McDonald's and asked for two hamburgers with ketchup, mustard, and mayonnaise and nothing else, it blew the girl's mind. She asked, "Without meat?" I had to explain to her that I still wanted meat, I just didn't want any of the usual extras like onions or pickles. It took her forever to enter it into the register, and it took twice as long for the order to arrive - alas, without mayonnaise, but it was good enough.

KFC's quicker on the uptake, but they still have problems connecting the English phrases and the items I want. I have to order in English because if I try it in Czech first, they'll ask me questions like "For here or takeaway?" in Czech, and I'll have to tell them I don't speak Czech and we'll just wind up speaking English anyway. But I can't ask for mashed potatoes or they'll hear "potatoes" and give me fries. I have to use the Czech word, "kaše." And they're still not quite sure which part of the chicken the "breast" is, so I have to clarify using the Czech word, "prsa." (Googling "prsa" is, incidentally, also a good way to find Czech pornsites.)

And speaking of Czech-English miscommunications, I've discovered another one. The Czech word for "yes" is "ano" (which is already funny because it means "anus" in Spanish). But Czechs often shorten it to just "'no," which, as you can imagine, can be quite confusing for English speakers - especially when the Czech person knows you're an English speaker, and you're not sure whether they're answering you in English or in Czech!

I usually try to keep to myself in public, but when a Czech person randomly tries to start up a conversation with me, it can be interesting to see their reactions when they find out I can't understand them. Some just dismiss me and turn away, but others laugh or even try to keep talking to me anyway. One old man chuckled and joked, "Špatná" ("Bad").

The other day a kind old lady started talking to me at the tram stop, and when I told her I didn't speak Czech, she laughed and started trying to think of something I'd understand. She spluttered a little bit, trying to think of some English words, until I finally said, "Dobrý den!" which means "Good day." She laughed again and replied, "Dobrý den!" When we got on the tram, she sat down beside an old man and started talking to him, and even though it was in Czech, I could tell she was saying, "I just started talking to this girl at the tram stop and it turned out she couldn't even understand a word I was saying!" She was one of the good ones, somebody who was very good-natured about the language barrier and didn't stop trying to exchange morning greetings with me just because I couldn't understand her. For every person who ignores me, there's somebody who keeps trying, or laughs, or smiles and says something that I can't understand but in a tone that says, "Ah well, good day anyway!" ♥

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It was only a matter of time before I started titling my posts with song lyrics. It's easier. This one's a line from the operetta Candide, which has inexplicably been stuck in my head for days.