Central Europe Part II

Saturday: the Punkva caves and Brno

In the morning we headed off to the Punkva caves outside of Brno. Going through the caves was awesome, especially when we came to an outside area at the bottom of a huge ravine – we walked out and this intense church music was playing. It was over the top, but at the same time it was absolutely perfect – the view was incredible and there were even birds chirping. Ironically, it’s apparently a popular place for people to commit suicide.

We also got to go on a boat ride through the caves, which was a little nervewracking because we had to duck quite a few times to avoid hitting our heads on rocks, but still really cool.

After coming back from the Punkva caves, we trekked up to Špilberk Castle in Brno. By that time the castle was pretty much closing so we didn’t see too much except some bells that chime a song on every hour.

Sunday: Lednice, Valtice, and Mikulov

We left Brno Sunday morning and headed off to two towns called Lednice and Valtice. To be honest, I couldn’t tell you which was which at this point. I know we saw a castle or two, and it was at this point that we all realized we never want to see another castle again in our lives. There was also a minaret, which was a big tower that we walked up that had great views. We stopped at one random castle-type thing where we had coffee, and had no idea why, until we found out that it was a castle that once was right on the border between Czechoslovakia and Austria. It isn’t anymore, of course, but the stop was worth it because we found a playground!!

The highlight of Sunday – and probably the whole trip – was our wine tasting dinner in Mikulov. It was a private dinner held in this little restaurant/wine cellar owned by some 50-something Czech guy. He didn’t speak English, but he told us about the wine and customs and made jokes and Jiri translated. Dinner was pork and potatoes, and it was delicious, of course, and then it was followed up by potato pancakes, which were also great.

I’m actually not a big fan of wine, but the wine tasting was awesome. We were seated at two big tables, each one with a carafe of white and a carafe of red, and they were refillable. Normally you start off with white, so we had two carafes of white and then moved on to the red. Lucky me was sitting next to Jiri, who is the worst Czech in the universe. He started “feeling“ the wine after ONE GLASS. Also, he told his adorable girlfriend Merka that she’s getting fat. BAD MOVE, JIRI.

After eating we went into the actual wine cellar for the actual wine tasting. I think we tried four whites and four reds, but some of the red ones ended up being gross, in my opinion. The last thing we drank was this hazelnut stuff and it was nasty, I gave my glass to someone else. To get the wine out of the barrels, the restaurant owner would take this big blown glass tube and suck on it and the wine would fill up in this dome at the top of the tube. Overall…awesome.

Central Europe Part I

The reason I haven’t updated in so long is not (only) because I’m lazy: from October 18 to October 26, the Central European Studies students all went on a trip around Central Europe: Brno and various small towns in Moravia, Slovakia, and Austria.

Thursday: Třebíč and Moravský Krumlov

Thursday we left Prague on a minibus and first went to a town called Třebíč. In Třebíč is a basilica on the UNESCO World Heritage list. It was somewhat small but very beautiful, and unfortunately we weren’t allowed to take pictures inside. We also saw a synagogue there.

After Třebíč we went to Moravský Krumlov to see Alfons Mucha’s Slav Epic. Alfons Mucha is probably the world’s most famous Czech artist, and you probably know his work even if you don’t know his name. Here's his Wikipedia entry. His greatest achievement was the Slav Epic, which consists of 20 paintings showing important scenes in the history of the Slavic people. What’s really impressive about the series is that the paintings are all HUGE. The reason they’re housed in Moravský Krumlov, which is essentially in the middle of nowhere, is that they’re too big to be housed in Prague – they’re in a castle in Moravský Krumlov. I don’t know the exact measurements but I’d say most of the paintings are at least 12 ft by 12 ft. The one pictured here was my favorite.

The Slav Epic was one of my favorite parts of the whole trip. The paintings are very detailed, and it was really interesting to hear descriptions of what everything in them meant. My only problem was that the paintings were set up in the order that Mucha painted them, rather than in chronological order. That made it somewhat difficult to get a sense of the progression of history as it should be.

Friday: Brno and Kroměříž

After spending the night in Brno, we went to the Museum of Roma Culture in the city. The museum seemed like it was pretty interesting, but unfortunately the entire thing was in Czech and we couldn’t understand any of the exhibits. We had an English-speaking tour guide take us around and talk about the Roma a bit, but it was fairly dull.

That afternoon we went to Kroměříž, another little town with a castle. The castle itself was pretty cool, but what really made the outing awesome was that our tour guide was a drunk 50-something Czech woman. Not only did she smell like booze, but she told us that we could wear protective shoe covers (to protect the old floors) “if we wanted to“ and that we could take pictures even though they’re “not really allowed.“ An example of her behavior: the first room we entered had a pool table behind the rope that kept us from touching all the furniture. She hopped over the rope, picked up the pool cue, and started using it to point to things all around the room. Another example: when we entered the gigantic ballroom, she said it was good for singing, and proceeded to sing us part of an opera. And she was good, too.

After the castle tour we went to the royal gardens. Because it’s fall, most of the plants were dead or dying, which made it eerie and cool. This is a picture of the gardens when they're actually in bloom.

That night a few of us decided to check out what Brno’s nightlife had to offer. We walked into town and found a club called Two Faces, and it was hilarious. It wasn’t a gay bar, but there were two guys constantly up on the speakers dancing and pulling one another’s shirts up, and at one point the DJ put on Bryan Adams‘ “Summer of 69“ and told everyone to “go crazy.“

Cristen navštívila Prahu!

NOTE: This should have been posted about a week and a half ago, but I went on my 8-day trip to Moravia, Slovakia and Austria and didn't get the chance. Also, Blogger is such a pain in the ass for some reason about uploading pictures, so I only managed to get one in here.

Cristen came to visit me this past weekend all the way from Brussels, Belgium! It was an awesome weekend. We hit my favorite clubs – Futurum and Cross Club – as well as much of the sightseeing attractions that I’ve neglected so far. Living here, it’s very easy to become complacent with all the interesting things surrounding me.

Saturday we originally planned to go see the castle…but that was shot down when we didn’t wake up until noon. Instead we wandered around the city, walked across the Charles Bridge and along the river and then back to Staré Mesto. We ate lunch at Kavarna Slavia, which is a café where the intellectual/artist types of Prague used to hang out (it’s right across from the National Theater). Now it’s a huge, busy tourist restaurant with little selection and poor service. I wasn’t a fan.

After lunch we met up with Brandon and walked around the Jewish quarter (Josefov) a bit. Josefov is kind of strange – there are basically a half-dozen synagogues amidst the most expensive shops in Prague. We didn’t actually go into the synagogues, because in order to do so you must buy a ticket that costs around $25; we were there too late to be able to see all of them, anyway. Then we had dinner at Pizzeria Grosseto, an Italian restaurant near my house whose normally delicious pizza was not up to standard for some reason that night.

Sunday was a much more successful day. We got up “early“ (aka at 10 am) and hopped on the tram to go see Prague Castle. First we went through the Royal Gardens, which were very nice. There’s a small area where they keep some birds of prey, and it was sad to see the birds sitting on little posts with cords around their legs so they couldn’t fly away. Then we went to St. Vitus Cathedral. It was the most touristy cathedral I’ve seen – they actually had numbered signs up at different parts of the nave so that you could read about it in your guide, and there was a woman waving people past the tomb of St. Vitus because they took too long standing around taking pictures.

After St. Vitus we walked to the Senate Gardens, which were also pretty cool with big hedges and a lot of interesting statues. There was also the Grotto, which is a fake dripstone wall with creepy monster faces, snakes, and other animals hidden in it.

Our final stop was Petrin Hill. We took the funicular up to the top of the hill, which has an awesome view of the city. There we went to the Mirror Maze, which was built for an exhibition back in the beginning of the 20th century. It was fun to walk through but a little short…until we came to the room with wiggly mirrors. Brandon was exactly the right height so that his head looked HUMONGOUS while the rest of him was midget-sized. It was, quite frankly, amazing.

But the apex of Cristen’s visit was definitely the Black Light Theater show we saw Sunday night. I can’t really describe it as anything other than a 90-minute-long what-the-fuck moment. There was an alien swallowed up by swiss cheese. There were flying geometric shapes. There were birds, and Egyptians with tin cookie sheets, and a butterfly, and pillowcase creatures that bit one another. I still can’t decide if I’m glad I went or not. The only thing I’m certain of in life now is that I am VERY glad I wasn’t high when I saw that. Holy shit.

Anyway, we went to bed around 11…and woke up at 4 am so Cristen could take a taxi to the airport for her 7 am flight. I was very sad to see her go. So sad that one might call me a saaaaaaad octopus.

Mám rada jidlo!

When my dad arrived in Prague, he commented on how everyone was thin. It’s true, in general - those who do have some extra around the middle are almost never under the age of 35. He then said, “Well, it’s because they have smaller portions and all.” And that is where he was completely wrong, as he soon learned. It’s either an active lifestyle, good genes, or something in the water keeping these people thin, because the portions in Prague are NOT small, and the food is NOT healthy by anyone’s standards.

Czech people loooove to fry things. The Czech word for “fried” is “smaženy“, and it appears approximately 47 times on any given restaurant menu. There is smaženy syr (fried cheese), smaženy vepřove (fried pork), smaženy pstruh (fried trout), smaženy kuřeci (fried chicken)…the list goes on and on. None of these dishes are served with a vegetable, save the “garnish“, which consists of a few slices of cucumber and tomato. You can order a vegetable side dish, but it’s not very popular – you’re more likely to order hranolky (french fries).

The only vegetable that is truly popular is the potato. They serve potato everything here. French fries, potato pancakes, potato dumplings. Again, it goes on and on. At one meal I was served potato soup with potato dumplings and trout. It was extremely tasty, but when you’re washing it all down with beer it’s hard not to think about the fact that the only reason your jeans aren’t feeling tighter is because you can’t dry them in a dryer.

Nonetheless, the food here is quite good. And cheap. I haven’t been able to find a place to get decent-looking burgers yet, but I’m holding out hope. Finally, desserts tend to be amazing. Many of them involve fruit, like hot raspberries with vanilla ice cream, or crepes with peaches and blueberries. The bakery in the metro has a yummy jablkový závin (apple tart) that I sometimes get on my way to class in the morning.

The only thing I’m still searching for is good hamburgers (already mentioned) and good Asian food! I’ve eaten in two Chinese restaurants so far and they ran the scale from so-so to pretty-damn-bad. Luckily there are a few cheap ones mentioned in my Prague guidebook so I’ll be checking those out in the near future.

Šla jsem na koncert streda noc.

Last night I went to a concert at Palac Akropolis – the Black Sufis from Gujarat India. More on them later. First, Akropolis – it’s not too far from my apartment and I went there for the first time about a week and a half ago. The night I was there it was fairly empty, only a few people were dancing…overall it wasn’t too interesting. We did meet some Australians, and I talked about music and dancing for a while with one of them (he did not like pop music, but he “didn’t mind Justin.” YEAH!) Some of my friends went there before with their Czech roommate, Petr, who DJs there on occasion, and supposedly that time there were lots more people, most of whom had dreadlocks. So maybe that will give you an idea of the place.

Anyway, before the concert we had dinner at the attached restaurant (also called Palac Akropolis…I believe the club might actually be called Klub Akropolis.) Dinner was very good. I had fried trout with vegetables, and there actually were real vegetables! I ate carrots for the first time in months. It wasn’t expensive, either, only 120 crowns. I’d eat there again.

The concert started at 8 pm. The Black Sufis from Gujarat India are “a tribal Sufi community of East African origin which came to India eight centuries ago. They carried with them their exceptionally rich musical tradition and kept it alive and flourishing through the generations, unknown to the rest of the world.” There were eleven men total, and they started out the show in a semicircle on the stage, each with an instrument and microphone. They were all dressed in white, with white caps. It’s kind of hard to describe the music, but it was all acoustic drums, maracas, bongos, and some kind of large bent stick with a string that they would hit with the end of a maraca. During this part there was singing and a little bit of individual dancing.

Then there was an intermission, after which the really cool part started. The men all came back out dressed in traditional outfits with face paint and headdresses. Now they were really dancing. So were some people in the audience, which was hilarious in and of itself. The most impressive part of the performance was when two guys threw coconuts up in the air and broke them on their heads. I have no idea how one goes about thickening your skull enough to break a freaking coconut…I couldn’t even break one open with a hammer when someone brought one to my house two summers ago.

Overall it was quite cool and I’m glad I went, because I normally don’t go out of my way to attend these types of things. I should really do it more often.

Tenhle víkend, jel jsem do Rome.

I am not a good blogger.

Now that I've got that aside, I went to Rome this past weekend and visited Katherine! Flying there was the first time I've actually been alone on an airplane. I was somewhat nervous because although I've been on probably a hundred planes by now, attempting to get through all the buses and check-ins and security by myself seemed daunting in a country where I barely speak any of the language. Luckily, though, (and I guess obviously) everything was in both Czech and English and it was very easy.

Last time I went to Italy, I thought I liked Rome better than Florence. Florence is kind of a city of art, which I have close to zero interest in. I was there for several days, which were fun, but also full of art museums. Not my thing. We only spent a day in Rome, though, and Emily gave a superspeed tour in which we saw the Vatican, the Sistine Chapel, the Colosseum, the Forum, the Trevi Fountain, and the Spanish Steps. Basically...everything there is to see. I found all of these things much more interesting than paintings, so I declared that Rome was cooler than Florence.

Now that I've spent more time there, I guess I do still think Rome is cooler. The sights there are still more interesting. However, now that I got to take in the city more, I think Florence is a lot nicer. Rome is dirty. And huge. Everywhere we went I felt like we were walking forever, and then we'd have to take a bus, and then a tram, and then walk some more. I don't recall ever taking public transportation in Florence.

Not to sound like I'm complaining though, because it was an awesome, relaxing weekend. We saw St. Peter's Basilica and the Tomb of the Popes, where Katherine had an awkward Catholic moment, and the Castle Sant'Angelo, which I had never even heard of but which was pretty cool.

Also, we went to the Hard Rock Cafe Rome! Feel free to mock me, but I needed a damn hamburger, and it was damn good. I think this brings my total of Hard Rock Cafes visited to somewhere around 8. That's kind of sad.

Anyway, the bad (?) thing about the weekend was that I started to miss Prague. I even ended up ordering Pilsner when we went to a beer bar (and it cost €5...kill me.) If I miss Prague when I'm only gone for 3 days, what happens when I actually have to move back to the States?