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"

-

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!" ♥

-

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.

I'm no good at titling my posts.

Czech word of the day: neperlivá
Meaning: non-carbonated. (It might seem random, but trust me, you do not want to end up with carbonated water. Happened to me once. You think, "I don't know what this label says, but they can't screw up water, can they?" Oh, but they can. They most certainly can.)
Pronunciation: "ne-pair-lee-va"

-

They say that when a person moves to a foreign country, they go through stages of culture shock. At the beginning, everything seems new and exciting and intriguing, but after a while, homesickness starts to set in and the differences between cultures can leave one feeling isolated.

I've always been skeptical of the idea of "stages" of culture shock. I think these things come in waves. A wave of isolation when the tram drops you off in a part of the city you've never seen before and you can't find the next bus stop or ask anyone where it is, followed by a wave of appreciation when you spot a sign written in Czech and realize that you actually know what it says. I've felt that isolation before - just trying to find my way from Prague to Brno without knowing a word of Czech was pretty frustrating - but yesterday was the first time it really hit me.

They also say that most expatriates reach a point where they start to hate everything about the foreign country they're in. I've only been here a week, so maybe it's too soon to judge, but I don't think I'll reach that point. I've always been someone who appreciates the little things in life, and if nothing else, the sky here is just as blue and the stars just as shiny as they are back home. Last night I looked up and saw the Big Dipper, just like at home, and I realized that no one is ever really as far from home as they might feel. Earth is a really small place, and all the variations that sometimes seem so big are really just details.

Anyway, enough soliloquizing. Today I feel much better. I returned to my dorm last night to find a new refrigerator waiting for me. At UWG, it takes the maintenance staff weeks just to change a lightbulb. I should let UWG know how spectacularly they're being outdone by a post-Communist country.

It's definitely getting warmer now. No idea if it'll stay this way, but today it's warm enough that I only need to wear one coat instead of three.

I also talked to Ms. Kameníková today. I told her how much I adore her and how sad I was to be moved to another class. I felt it was important that she know what she meant to me as a teacher. I saw to it that I was put in the "advanced" Czech class for students who already speak a Slavic language. I'll be the only American in there, but I only have one semester to study Czech, so I want to learn as much as possible.

And now I come to a dilemma.

I don't have another class until 6 tonight, which means that I find myself in downtown Brno with four hours to kill. What ever shall I do?

Study? Nah. Shopping? You bet.

My first slightly emo entry

Czech word of the day: zmrzlina
Meaning: ice cream
Pronunciation: "zm-rz-lee-na"

-

I woke up yesterday morning and could barely open my eyes, it was so bright. I looked out the window and it took me a few seconds to realize that the sun was actually out! It was the first time I've seen blue sky since coming to Brno. Today the weather was the same. The snow is slowly, slowly melting. I can see the ground for the first time. I had no idea there was grass below my balcony.

Unfortunately, sunlight seems to bring bad luck in Brno. Today was by far the worst day I've had since coming here. For one thing, I've come down with something. I've been coughing like crazy all weekend and today I can barely talk. Then this morning the repairman told my roommate and me in very limited English that our refrigerator is "kaput" and we should buy a new one. I have no idea how hard it will be to get the university to replace our refrigerator, but my guess is very.

Worse, my laptop's internet connection stopped working yesterday and I can't figure out why. I'm typing this right now from the university computer lab on a Czech keyboard, which slows my typing down by half. I'll post a picture of a Czech keyboard when my internet gets fixed. Suffice it to say that the Y and Z keys are switched and the punctuation marks are all in different places. I spend a lot of time backspacing.

There were some other things that sucked about today, including the checkout ladies at Tesco who turn hostile when I can't understand what they're saying and the fact that Czechs don't seem too interested in helping people whose grocery bags rip and whose purchases go spilling into the street.

But the absolute worst thing that could possibly happen to me, short of losing my passport or my laptop, happened to me today.

I lost my beloved Czech teacher.

I've been planning to do a separate post solely devoted to how much I adore her and her class, but I haven't gotten around to it. And today I find out that they're moving her to a more advanced class and I'll get a new teacher. Now, I am a serious student, and as such, good teachers are my partners. We have a symbiotic relationship. I'm a good student to them, and they're good teachers to me. Unfortunately, many professors don't hold up their end of the bargain, but I am fiercely loyal to those who do. So when I lose a professor I have grown attached to, I take it very, very badly.

My Czech professor, Ms. Kameníková, has already officially entered into the elite pantheon of Mindy's Favorite Teachers - the fastest ever entry into that prestigious group. That record was previously held by Sr. Ortiz, a Spanish teacher at the University of West Georgia, whom I liked from the first day of class when he told us that his nickname was "Little Hitler" and that most of us would fail his class. However, he didn't officially enter the pantheon until the next class, when he walked into a suddenly half-empty classroom and revealed that he's really just a sassy Puerto Rican teddy bear. But I adored Ms. Kameníková from the very first class, when she walked in all soft-spoken and sweet, lulled the class into a false sense of security, and then started us off with cold, hard grammar. It was a beautiful thing.

I cannot express how heartbroken I am to lose her as a teacher. I expected her class to be the highlight of my semester, and while I'm sure I'll still enjoy my Czech class, it won't be the same without her. I've lost professors I loved before - I'm still trying to figure out a way to get to take another class with Sr. Ortiz - but never after only a week. Maybe it seems sentimental and melodramatic to get upset over a change in professors, but for a girl in a foreign country where there are few people that she knows - heck, few people that she can even communicate with - each familiar face contributes to a fragile sense of security, and to remove one is like cutting one of the threads of a spider's web.

After today's events, I feel slightly adrift.

What I Did Today

Today I went to Tesco, which is the Czech equivalent of Walmart. Tesco has three floors, but there are no escalators in the store, so you have to pay for what you want on one floor before exiting the store and taking the escalator to another floor. There's also a fourth floor that consists of storage and the bathroom, which costs 4 crowns to use. There's also no toilet tissue in the stalls. When you walk into the bathroom, you have to pay the lady on staff, get as much toilet paper as you need from the roll on the wall, and then go into the stall.

Some notes about Tesco: You can tell what people eat the most of by which food sections are biggest. For instance, in Walmart there's always a huge cheese section and a pretty small alcohol section. The opposite is true at Tesco. A whole section of Tesco the size of the fruits & vegetables section at Walmart is devoted to alcohol. Meanwhile, the cheese selection is pitiful. I couldn't even find any cheddar, and I only found one kind of shredded cheese.

The bread section is also huge, as they share the French love of fresh bread here. They have all different kinds of bread sitting out in the open air like vegetables. You just get a bag and pick up as much bread as you want. The traditional Czech bread seems to be the most popular. It's kind of croissant-shaped and one little loaf costs less than a crown. (I don't know how you're supposed to pay .90 crowns, as I haven't seen any coins worth less than 1 crown. Maybe they round up.) I've become somewhat addicted to this bread because it's good, cheap, easy to carry around and it makes a great snack, or breakfast, or side item with whatever meal I manage to scrape together. I bought like ten loaves of it today at Tesco.

Other things they don't carry a lot of at Tesco: floss, . They don't have tomato sauce, period, only tomato paste. I'm going to have to look elsewhere if I want to make spaghetti.

Things they do have a lot of: American DVDs dubbed in Czech, American bestseller books in Czech, and American hair products. I was shocked by the hair care section - almost all the products were American brands like Garnier, and the bottles were almost all in English. The DVD section is also full of American influence. I found Blades of Glory and both National Treasure movies dubbed in Czech and subtitled in a whole bunch of languages, including Slovenian, Russian, and Slovak. I think I'll buy that before I leave. I also found The Lord of the Rings in Czech, which I am totally going to buy.

There are actually tons of bookstores here. There's literally a bookstore on every block. The main square has two of them. And none of them are international chain stores, either. Some of them might be franchises, but there are no Borders or Books-a-Millions. It's really cool.

The worst part of shopping at Tesco, though, is that you have to bag your own items. The checkout lady just scans the items for you and you do all the bagging yourself. The Czechs are good at it but I'm not, so I'm trying to pay for my purchases while bagging my own groceries. The checkout lady won't wait for you, either. She'll just start scanning the next person's items and throwing them in with the stuff that you haven't bagged yet. It's rough.

I also managed to order a hamburger today in Czech. What I managed to say was, "Hamburger. Ketchup. Mayonnaise. That's all." But the guy at the hamburgery understood me and gave me exactly what I wanted. It wasn't a hamburger like we think of though - the meat was different, almost like soy or something. I don't know. It was weird, but it smelled good and I was hungry, so I ate it. I also discovered a street vendor today who sells what looks like rotisserie chicken. I'm not sure what it is exactly but you can buy the whole chicken, or half a chicken, or 1/4 of a chicken, so I'm going to try there sometime soon.

Tomorrow the school is taking us on a trip to visit Macocha caverns and a brewery. Classes start on Monday.

Look for a post soon about my Czech class. I've been waxing lyrical to all my fellow students about it and they're getting sick of it, so it's time I poured my enthusiasm into a blog!

Observations, Part I

Czech word of the day: čtvrtek
Meaning: Thursday
Pronunciation: ch-t-v-r-t-ek

-

I've been here a week now and I've barely had time to sleep, let alone catch everybody up on what's going on! But I keep seeing things and thinking, "Ooh, I need to tell the folks back home about this!" I'm afraid I'm going to forget everything before I get around to telling you guys, so I'm starting this blog to write all my observations about life in Brno.

I'm not sure what to call this blog. Calling it a "travel blog" seems pretentious, as I won't be doing much actual traveling while I'm here in the Czech Republic. I can barely find my way around Brno. I got lost twice today, actually. Luckily I know a few landmarks around the city. The other exchange students say that if you follow the tram tracks you'll eventually end up somewhere, but I don't trust that advice because the trams also go out into the suburbs and I don't want to end up there! I'll have to write a whole separate entry on the public transportation system here, but that's a task for another day.

Here are my first observations from living in a foreign country.

1. Snow

In Georgia it rarely snows, and when it does, the snow always melts too quickly for it to get dirty. Here, there's snow on the ground all the time. It hasn't snowed since I've been here, but Brno still looks like this:

The ground and rooftops are still covered with snow. There are icicles that have been hanging there since before I got here. You have to be careful walking down the sidewalk because huge chunks of snow could tumble off the roofs above you at any moment. It just doesn't get warm enough here for the snow to melt, so it stays piled up beside the roads and on the roofs, accumulating footprints and dirt. Especially dirt. The main streets in the city are lined with snow that's nearly black from foot traffic and whatever nasty stuff cars cough into the air.

This is not asphalt. This is dirty snow.

You can see in the snow the path people take up the steps.

Today was the first day that the temperature rose above freezing, so the snow started slowly melting today. The city was saturated with water - in the air, on the streets, on the walls of buildings. The floors of the city trams were covered with mud. Walking down the sidewalk was especially hazardous because water was dripping from every roof. There were city workers shoveling snow off the rooftops. They cordoned off the sidewalk below and shoveled the snow into big piles on the ground.

Despite all this cold, I haven't had much of a problem keeping warm. I guess I mentally prepared myself for it. I've actually been grateful for the cold, because the refrigerator in my dorm room doesn't work and my roommate and I can just leave our food out on the balcony to keep it cold. In Georgia ants would find the food no matter how cold it was, but here I haven't seen a single insect.

2. Diversity, or lack thereof

I haven't seen a single black person here. It's funny and kind of sad - when you stick out in a group of people you notice instantly, but when you're in a group where everyone else looks like you, you don't immediately notice the absence of people who are different. It takes a while to realize that everywhere you look, everybody looks the same. Of course, if I weren't white I'm sure I'd have noticed right away.

Most nations in Europe are pretty ethnically homogeneous compared to America, especially Central and Eastern European nations like the Czech Republic. Here you've got your Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Germans, and Russians - all white people. There are also Vietnamese and Roma minorities, but the vast majority is white. So people here aren't particularly used to seeing non-white people, and a few exchange students here have had a hard time. One guy from Mexico got cursed out in the street by an elderly Czech man who overheard him speaking Spanish.

On the bright side, there are exchange students here from all over the place. I've met people from Poland, Spain, Mexico, Brazil, Turkey, Bosnia, Canada, Britain, Lithuania, Estonia, Germany, France, and Japan. Students from the same country tend to cluster together speaking their native language, so when we all get together you can hear about seven languages being spoken all at once - plus the local Czechs speaking Czech and Slovaks speaking Slovak. My building is full of French people who tape French flags to their doors and hang around smoking in the hallways in a very French-like manner. Sadly, Turkey, Bosnia, and Brazil are represented by only one student each, so those poor students don't have the pleasure of speaking their native language with anyone. The default language for communication among all of us is English, so we native English speakers are lucky.

3. Language

Everything here is in Czech, obviously, but it's not too hard to find English. Most street signs are in both languages, as are the signs for the shops that particularly want to attract tourists. (Disconcertingly, the signs for sex shops are all in English. I don't know what that says about English speakers.)

Found this place today, but didn't have time to go in. I'll visit there soon. My Slovak friend here says that country music is quite popular in the Czech Republic.

The first things you see when you walk out of the main train station in Brno are strip/gambling clubs and a KFC. The people taking the orders at KFC speak English, which made me wonder how many fast food employees in America speak a foreign language. It's humbling to realize what an effort people in this far-away country make to learn a language that we in America take for granted as our native tongue. It makes me want to try harder to speak their language with them, because they work hard to speak mine. The vast majority of the American students here aren't bothering to learn much Czech, and some even complain when Czechs don't understand English. I don't understand how you can be so arrogant as to expect people in a foreign country to accommodate your language. This is their country. They have the right to speak their language here. Jeez.

Today I went to KFC and ordered in Czech. The register girl wound up speaking English to me anyway, but at least I tried. One difference that stood out to me: if you ask for potatoes at KFC here, they'll ask whether you mean mashed potatoes or French fries, or even just give you fries. "French fries" doesn't seem to be much understood here.

4. Little things

KFC difference #2: They don't have crispy chicken here, just original, and the mashed potatoes and gravy taste different. The gravy is thinner. At home I would complain if there was no crispy chicken, but here I'm grateful just to have fried chicken - or anything American, for that matter. There's a McDonald's here too and a "hamburgery," or hamburger stand, but I haven't tried them yet. I hear the McDonald's staff also speaks English.

Cokes are everywhere here, but they cost about the same as at home. There's a Czech drink that's kind of like Coke, and it tastes really weird. It's almost indescribable - it's like Coke plus root beer, with a hint of buttermilk? I can't decide whether I like it or not.

Now on to less food-related things.

This is a toilet flush button. Not all toilets here have buttons like this, but many of the newer ones do. There are actually two buttons, one bigger and one smaller. I don't know why. Pushing either button will make the toilet flush.

This is a wall heater. There's one in almost every room here, and they all look like this. There was even one in my hotel room in Prague and I couldn't figure out what it was, so I left it alone. I also couldn't figure out where the heater was. I didn't put two-and-two together for a few days.

This is a light switch. It's about the size of my palm. Some of the light switches here are smaller, but they're almost all designed like this. I've only seen one up-and-down switch like the ones in America, and it's not a light switch, but the power switch to the hot plate in our dorm room.

This is a Czech power outlet. It's got two round holes and one round pin, and I have to have a special adapter to plug in my electronics. I like the outlets here, though. They look like faces.

-


That's all I have time for tonight. I'll leave you with this image of a jacket some Czech guy was wearing on the tram this morning.