Litomerice, etc.

As I mentioned in the previous post, it has not been the easiest of weeks, but thanks to friends in Prague, Facebook chat, and Skype, it’s at least been manageable. There's just no good answer for why these things happen, and there's no perfect way to deal with them. And, I think it might actually help things to jump back into this blogging business full force, so here we go..

Wednesday was everyone’s favorite day, WTCD! We went to Vysehrad and learned everything there is to know about Vysehrad from Pavel. I’d already been to the site twice because it’s such a beautiful area- once with Rhee-Soo and Kyra on a daytrip and once with Hannah when she visited. However, this time, we actually learned about what we were seeing, so it was totally fine that it was my third time there. Plus, the views from Vysehrad never get old. Some fun facts: Vysehrad is a castle that was originally founded in the 10^th century, although I think the oldest remaining structures/visible building foundations are from the 12^th Century. There’s no formal “castle” buildings to visit there, but there’s ramparts, and Romanesque-style rotunda of St. Martin (built in like the 11^th century or something. Crazy), and the Basilica of St Peter and St Paul. I like this particular church because there’s a lot of color inside, all over the place. Although the church as it currently stands is not as old as come of the others I’ve seen since coming abroad (due to the many times it’s been rebuilt), I thought that the gold-flecked patterns of flowers that climbed up the columns and onto the ceiling were nice touches. The artwork in the interior sets this church apart from others I’ve seen.

Another thing that Vysehrad has going for it is an epic playground made almost entirely out of wood in the style of a fortress. There are even walls with mini ladders at a shallow incline that you can use to “scale” the castle walls. All around the playground are wooden sculpture references to the Prague foundation myths. I totally thought they were Vikings the first two times I visited, so I was slightly disappointed when I found out this particular detail. Oh well. Makes a more sense.

We also sat in the grass and listened to some music from a composition inspired by the founding of Vysehrad. It was lovely, and would have been more fun if it hadn’t been about 50 degrees and absurdly windy on WTCD. It was actually so cold by around 4:45 that Pavel let us go early. Wednesday evening was Lisa’s birthday!!! (21 on the 21^st!)  so we celebrated at a fun pub across the river.

Thursday after Czech class, Renee and I picked up our favorite pasta take-out from Grosseto’s (http://www.grosseto.cz/vinohrady/listek/menu.htm number 72), and it did not disappoint. Then Renee ran off to Egypt for the weekend, and I went back to the apartment and took what was a not-quite-long-enough nap before hanging out with friends.

Yesterday was great. We took a CERGE trip to a town called Litomerice (I never put the Czech symbols on this blog because it requires copying and pasting, but fyi, it’s not really pronounced how it looks). Some highlights:

1)     There’s an extensive underground tunnel system that was put in place, and it stretches for three kilometers and three stories under the town.

2)      Karel Macha, a famous Czech poet, died there, and Litomerice had his body for a while. However, the body was moved to the Vysehrad Cemetery (which I saw on WTCD) when the Germans occupied this area of the Czech Republic in WWII (Litomerice is part of the Sudetenland, so it was given to Germany by France and the UK).

3)     We had lunch at a restaurant that is made up entirely of old cellar rooms from the extensive network mentioned above. The restaurant owner gave us a short tour of about 300 meters of tunnel. Pretty cool

4)     We had an American tour guide from California, and he was great. He used the word “like” more than just about anyone I’ve ever met. Example: “The Hussites laid, like, siege to the town.”

5)     Anna, one of the ladies who helps run the CERGE program (she did awesome things like get our Visas okayed by the foreign police, etc. etc.) grew up in a castle near Litomerice, because her parents took care of it. SO, she has a key. We went to the castle, which was beautiful, and she showed us around. I’ve never met anyone who grew up in a castle before. Sort of jealous.

6)     The last thing we did was go to a wine tasting. I’m a big fan of wine tastings.

When we got back to Prague, we went to Lemon Leaf, then came home and chilled. Annnnd yesterday was ALSO a very special day because it was Nitra’s BIRTHDAY!!!!! Big 18, so now she can buy cigarettes to feed that smoking habit (kidding kidding :-P). We got to Skype and catch up for a while, which was simply lovely, and we will celebrate her birthday properly in.. six weeks?! Yikes. Time flies. But at least I’ll have a giant Macado’s sunday with Nitra to look forward to upon my return :-) Yay for sisters.

20 April, 2010

The original plan, Sunday night after returning from Berlin, was to use my relatively free Monday to write a recap of last week and then spend about 500 pages talking about Berlin (how awesome it is, how much I want to go back, how I (not-so-)secretly wish I were German, etc. etc.). However, I got some shocking and very sad news on Monday morning, and I just don’t think this is going to happen. I’ve got a lot of pictures from Berlin/WTCD and stuff that I’ll post on Facebook, and maybe Berlin will find its way into a future entry.

I’m going to be totally honest here: I’m just not that good at dealing with or writing about life’s curveballs, and if this were an internal struggle, then I would probably leave it off of the blog. The thing is, though, that what happened to my friends on Sunday evening in Farmville is still very much a part of my life in Prague, so I don’t think it’s out of line to say a few words.

If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you already know what happened Sunday evening, but in case you don’t, a friend from my graduating high school class drowned in a lake when his canoe flipped. One of my friends who was in the canoe with him tried to save him, but he couldn’t pull him to shore and nearly drowned himself in the process. He’s still in the hospital. Multiple friends of mine witnessed the scene, but the canoe was far enough out on the lake that they were helpless to do anything.

It is the utter tragedy of the situation and the pain I feel for friends of mine who were closest to Donte that have taken the strongest hold of my mind and heart. If I could drive to Farmville and be with my friends right now, I would be there in an instant. In situations like this one, though, when I’m away from the community, I think that the only real option I have in Prague is to just stay focused as much as possible on my daily routine and stay distracted. Yesterday afternoon, after the initial shock of it all had started to subside a little, I went in to my internship, and today I’m going to class and everything as usual. I’ve talked with friends from home via Facebook chat (a means of communication that we all agree is less-than-ideal but better than nothing at all) and filled up spare time with walks, music, and mindless  but distracting games on sporcle.

This is not the first time in recent months that tragedy has hit Farmville, but tragedy is something that one cannot ever get used to; to the contrary, the more frequently these things happen, the more terrible each sequential event is. Although I saw him frequently when home from Richmond, I was not a close friend of Donte’s; however, we had many close mutual friends who will suffer from his absence deeply and for a very long time. He will be very much missed by all those who knew him, and never forgotten. 

And here we go, life's waiting to begin

Once again, many things have happened since I last updated. Phew. However, unlike the last update, this one is being started at 11am, not 1am. That’s very good news for me. 

Disclaimer: the following summary will in no way do the Budapest trip justice. I had an amazing, amazing, time, and met some really wonderful people. A complete play-by-play is pointless, especially since some of the best moments of the trip are simply too difficult to capture in a blog entry.. However, I’ll do my best.

We left at 7am from Prague, which meant that I was up at an ungodly hour to get ready and get to the bus station. However, I had my own seat on the bus, so I got to listen to music the whole way up and even sleep a little bit. This was fine by me, because I didn’t know many people on the trip very well at this point, and initiating coherent conversation at early hours of the morning is not my strong suite. Especially when I haven’t had coffee (and no one in their right mind has a large cup of coffee immediately preceding a 7 hour bus ride with one bathroom break). Anyway, the bus also had a DVD player, so I watched The Proposal in what I think was dubbed Hungarian with English subtitles. Interesting. Sandra Bullock acting, without Sandra Bullock’s voice.  It was a really cute movie, though, and I’ll watch it again in English sometime soon.

When we got to Budapest, I had my first near-panic attack in the metro station when we paused to get money at the ATM/currency exchange desk and my debit card was nowhere to be found. I didn’t tell anyone, because the only thing worse than freaking out about something like a debit card missing is having 25 other people who you don’t know very well freaking out, too. Therefore, I freaked out silently by a wall and went through my bags (looking, undoubtedly, like a crazy person to anyone who glanced over). After giving up, I decided to exchange all $20 worth of Czech koruna that I had for Hungarian Florins so that I could at least do basic things like get a metro pass. I figured that I must have lost the card when we stopped at the Bratislava bus station for a break. I took out my phone to break the news to my dad and figure out how to get a new card/wire money over, and, as I dialed, I heard plastic hit the ground. My debit card. On the ground. From the sky (well, probably from some unchecked corner of my jacket). After thanking a higher power, I heard dad answer the phone. I told him that I had been calling to tell him that I had lost my debit card, but that literally as I was calling him it had fallen from the sky, and he, therefore, didn’t need to do anything because it turned out that nothing was lost. I than assured him that I had not been drinking, and that the card really had fallen out of nowhere. Even though international calls are absurdly expensive, we stayed on the line a few more seconds because this situation was just too typical. If you know either my dad, or me, or both of us, then you know that an Eastby can’t ever leave the house once, because we always forget something important, and that we are about ten times more likely than anyone else to lose something crucial, like a debit card (or an entire wallet. Twice in one month. Cough Dad cough). Anyway, I was in a great mood after this fiasco, because it’s hard to beat the high of losing your debit card in a foreign country (while you’re currently living in a different foreign country) and then finding it, unscathed, minutes later (I say HARD to beat, but not impossible. I unfortunately found this out three days later..).

We all went to the hostel, which was in a great central location, and then I headed out with a bunch of other people to look around. First, we got drinks and Achim got a whole pizza at a restaurant near the hostel. Then we wandered around the city for a bit (my sightseeing form of preference). After seeing some probably important sites that we should have read up on before leaving for Budapest (and swearing that we’d wikipedia them when we got back to the hostel), a few of us went to Pizza Hut for dinner. A side note- Pizza Hut in Europe is not your seedy local Farmville sketch venue. It’s got a palpable upscale pizzeria vibe. Totally serious. I was/still am totally confused by this. I’m not even sure they serve the normal Pizza Hut pizza there. I ordered a pizza with pesto and tomato (which was only ok, BUT I would bet serious money that some of the people who work at the Farmville Pizza Hut don’t even have any idea what “pesto” is). Then, we went back to the hostel, got changed, and went to a sweet dance club down the street a few blocks called Morrison’s. Fun times.

Saturday, we had the whole day pretty much open for sightseeing, so that’s what we did. We walked along the river, saw some large buildings, monuments, a park and a fountain and a very large (I think Soviet) monument, St. Stephen’s Basilica (+1 for me! I actually knew that one), and some other stuff. When we got back to the hostel, Mark and I (well, actually it was just Mark, but I looked on) looked up all the important looking stuff on wikipedia and in a guidebook that was laying on a table in the common room. We felt a little better about ourselves after that. Then, the whole group went to the castle. It was a beautiful day, and the views from the castle were breathtaking. I also had some really good “lemonade”, which was some sort of citrus juice mixed with sparkling water.  Kyra came in from Prague around 8pm (she had to come meet us a day late because her friend from home and sister were visiting her in Prague), and then we all went on a boat cruise/dinner on the Danube. Super touristy, but it was still fun. We went out to a pub for a little while after, but they closed really early, so we just came back and called it a night.

Sunday, we got up and went to the House of Terror, which is simultaneously not at all a misnomer, and a complete misnomer at the same time. To me, the “House of Terror” sounds analogous to a “Medieval Torture Instruments” museum or something of the like: a museum that probably probably has morbid/disturbing/etc. exhibits, but nothing especially emotion inducing. However, this is not at all the case in Budapest’s House of Terror. It is a museum of exhibits related to the fascist and communist dictatorial regimes in Hungary. That’s, of course, a detail I would have known had I done my homework before going to Budapest. The House of Terror is actually located in the building where many of the atrocities were committed, and going through the exhibit was a deeply sad and chilling experience.

Following the House of Terror, we got an excellent lunch at this place called the Mensa, and then we went to one of the thermal spas across the river for a couple hours. Then, we went to dinner at an Italian restaurant, hung out at the hostel, and went to the most creatively decorated bar, where Kyra and I took pictures in a bathtub that had been turned into seating. Very interesting. Oh, also, I tried the Dreyer beer in Budapest. Pilsner for the win. Just saying.

Monday, it was raining, so we spent the morning in a café (where I tried Irish coffee for the first and last time. Not exactly gross, but also not at all my favorite drink ever), then moved on to a gyro restaurant for lunch. Everyone was really beat, so taking a slow day was perfect.

I had hands-down the worst experience I’ve had since I got to Prague RIGHT before we left. It went something like this:

1. It was raining
2. That morning, I accidentally set my bag down in a large puddle of water at the hostel, and it soaked through and got everything else wet.
3. I rescued my passport, and a few other important things and put them in dry places.
4. I stuffed all of my stuff into the backpack and the wet bag, because I had to put things somewhere. I figured that I would put stuff at the bottom of the wet bag to keep other things dry.
5. We got to the bus, and were asked to produce our passports.
6. You can probably see where this is going.
7. I couldn’t find my passport.
8. I tore through all of my stuff, most of which was already at least sort of damp because of the puddle earlier, and had to set it on the wet sidewalk.
9. I had emptied my bags like 3 times with no luck, and this time, the freaking out was not exactly well contained (although there was no crying. I’m pretty good about that)
10. I checked the only pocket I hadn’t yet checked, since I would never have ever put my passport there, usually.
11. It was there. In my exhausted state that morning, I had decided that the random pocket would be a good place to keep my passport dry.

So then I got on the bus and sat, sort sat in a state of wet relief, but mostly in state of bitter recognition that I am an Eastby, and that these occurrences will only get more frequent with age (I love you, dad! haha). On the way back I listened to a lot of One Republic and Blink, with some country tunes thrown in. I also watched The Hangover in Hungarian. Now THAT was something else. I couldn’t help wondering whether the “reTARD” scene was really as funny in Hungarian as it is in English. I also watched a cheesy movie with Minnesota accents that made me want to be in the Midwest now (even though they overplayed the cultural stereotypes to a sickening degree). If I don’t get to see the family this year for the 4^th, I will be one very sad camper.

Tuesday, my Aunt Solvei and Uncle Peter, who live in Lithuania, were in Prague for a conference, so I met up with them in the afternoon for a few hours! It was great, especially since I hadn’t seen them since I was like 15 years old. We went to Café Louvre for lunch, always a win, then walked along the river and got some coffee at Mama Coffee. I’d never been there, but I’ll definitely go back. Plus, it’s fair trade.

During the rest of Tuesday and all day Wednesday, I did what no one in our apartment had yet attempted: I cleaned. Like really cleaned. I swept, and scrubbed, and mopped and picked up. It was great. I was totally beat from Budapest, so it was wonderful. I was the only person in the apartment, because CERGE had their spring break all week (so everyone else was gone), so I played loud music, too, and it was wonderful.

Hannah got here Wednesday night at around 10, and we made the fastest turnaround EVER to get to the PM bar downtown for the Russia vs. USA presentation battle with Renee. We missed the actual presentations because we got a little lost on the way (primarily my fault, since I did the worst job ever of getting directions), but that was ok because Russia won, anyway. We got to the bar and met up with Mark, Nathalie, Achim, and Lisa, and it was a lovely time.

Wednesday, Hannah and I chilled in the morning, grabbed a late lunch, and then meandered over to the Lennon wall. After lots of photos, we went back to Namesti Miru, and met up with Renee for dinner at Lemon Leaf Thai restaurant. Always SO. GOOD. Hannah had a Skype interview at 8:15, after which we initially had every intention of going to 80s/90s night at Lucerna dance club. However, when I slept from 9pm to 1am by accident, we decided not to. Hahaha. Oops.  It was just as well, though, because I think the down time was probably good for both of us, and we got a fairly early start the next day. I took Hannah to Radost for lunch, and then we went to Old Town Square, wandered around the Jewish quarter and the river, and took the metro to Vysehrad. There were stunning views from Vysehrad, accentuated by the new spring green everywhere and the sunny sky. We headed back to Wenceslas Square around 4 and drank pivos by the statue before meeting up with some of Hannah’s Colby College friends at 5 for dinner. It was really fun to meet people from her school- since she goes to school in Maine, none of her Virginia friends have ever made it up to visit yet. We had fun, and I’m determined to get there next year. It’ll be a priority. We all got traditional Czech food at Ferdinanda’s, and then Hannah and I rushed back to my apartment so she could catch her 7:30 taxi to the airport. Sad. BUT the good news about this goodbye was that we’ll see each other in less than one month when we visit Katie in Ireland!!!! Can’t wait.

Farmville to Prague: KEAE & HPB <3

Colby people!

Yesterday, I did errands in the early afternoon. I bought cleaning supplies for the apartment, some CDs so I can burn mixes, and most importantly, a new $25 adapter. UGH. Because I couldn’t leave Budapest without leaving SOMETHING behind. I have a feeling that my adapter escaped from me when I tore through my stuff for the passport. No matter. I’ll take passport over adapter.

In the evening, Renee and I met up with Mark, Achim, Nathalie, Lisa, and a few other people at Murphy’s pub in Mala Strana and had pivos. Lovely night.

In other news, I’m now signed up for a river rafting trip in mid-May and four-day trip to SALZBURG at the end of April!!!!! Sound of Music, anyone? I’m incredibly excited. Also in other news, I just joined this German Facebook site, and there’s a link on the site to some sort of music video player. It plays a mix of American and German songs, and it’s quite nice. A change from my iTunes, anyway.