New dorms

Ahoj.

We moved into the new dorms today, which are right in the heart of downtown Prague and about two blocks away from the CIEE study center, as well as the historic Vysehrad cemetary. My room is huge and really, really nice. Extremely high ceilings, at least 14 feet high, three easy chairs, a coffee table, two desks, a sink but no bathroom and no internet in the rooms. But it§s still pretty incredible location. The temp dorms were in the less historic, more Soviet=influenced area of Prague, lots of gray blocky buildings with uniform window sizes. Here, I look out my window and see a street lined with pubs and Art=Noveau architecture. I§ll take and post some pictures.

Yesterday we visited Old Town square. There§s a huge astrological clock there, which has moving figures every hour on the hour. There§s also a couple large cathedrals and a huge statue of Jan Hus, the Czech Martin Luther. It was unfortunately really crowded with tourists and souvenir sellers and the like, but that§s to be expected on a nice Sunday afternoon.

I also started intensive Czech today. Ben§s in my class, and it doesn§t seem like it will be too difficult.

Photos and more

I've posted a bunch of photos at praguerock.shutterfly.com

These are primarily my "tourist" photos of St. Wenceslas Square and Wallenstein Palace & Garden. Wallenstein Palace is the current seat of the Czech parliament and senate, and it's a really awesome courtyard with manicured bushes and peacocks running around and weirdly violent/quasi-sexual statues.

St. Wenceslas Square is the major tourist attraction in Prague with lots of shopping and over-priced restaurants and pickpockets. A statue of St. Vaclav (Wenceslas in English and the inspiration for the popular Christmas song) is at the far end of the square, and behind it is the National Museum, which was sort of an attempt in the nineteenth century to will a Czech identity into existence by collecting together random pieces of Czech culture.

There are also some pictures of my temporary dorm which is pretty meager. The toilet is especially strange--there's a flat surface with very little water and then a steep incline into a hole. So you end up crapping onto a plate which then requires massive water force to wipe it clean. Luckily, the attendants clean the bathroom everyday.

At the risk of making this post too long, I'll also describe last night. A bunch of us from the dorm went to a restaurant that is a blatant attempt to highjack a foreigner's idea of what an Austrian beer garden would be, including an accordionist and a Soldier Svejk theme--Soldier Svejk is a popular character from Czech literature. He is a good-natured ineffectual servant of the Austrian army. The book includes a lot of cartoons that adorned the walls of this place. It was fun but definitely for the tourists, not the locals.

I had boarsteaks--boar schnitzel, actually. Boar is a pretty tough meat, not too bad really, but kind of unimpressive. Like a chewier steakburger.

Later we walked around by the river, catching part of a Gypsy funk band concert and then walking across the highly popular Charles Bridge, where we heard a small ragtime outfit. Pretty nice, all around.

They have calling cards here that you can buy and swipe. I'll call you
when I'm free. Right now we're doing orientation, but I should have
some time soon. Last night we went to a local restaurant-pub and then
I slept about 12 hours. Ben and I ended up being in the airport for
over 24 hours.

We tried to stay in this airport hotel called FBA, which the woman at the information desk told us about, but it didn't seem to actually exist because we couldn't find anyone else who had even heard of it.

We move into the new dorms on Monday, which i also when we start the intensive Czech course. Today we were escorted to a tram to take us to the CIEE study center, but a few of us missed the tram. The tram operator seemed to have a vendetta against us or something; he closed the door right in our faces. So we had to get to the CIEE study center on our own, which we did. It was kind of nice in a way because we got
to see a lot of downtown Prague that way.

The study center is located right in the middle of Vysehrad, which used to be an old fortress. It's also the sight of Vysehrad cemetary, which is the national cemetary where Czech heroes are buried: people like the composer Antonin Dvorak and the first post-Communism president Vaclav Havel. It's literally about twenty feet from where I take classes.

Airport Blues [Insert pun on the word "terminal" here]

So Ben and I have been in Prague for about 11 hours now--all of it spent at Ruznye airport. We've staked out a little hovel in the corner of the benches in Terminal 1 (I'll post pictures later, somewhere). Since it would be about $100 to get a hotel room for the night, which is like 3 billion crowns or something--give or take, I don't have the exchange rate totally worked out yet. Also, they don't seem to see the benefit of pay phones here--or at least I haven't found any at the airport. Vut a country!

But I did just find this WiFi network, which is nice--especially since I payed $4 (350,000,000 crowns) for a bottle of orange juice just so I could use the computers in the internet cafe upstairs. Speaking of drinks, I had my first Czech beer (the ubiquitous Pilsner Urquell) with dinner. I was not overly impressed, but it was in a can, so maybe that's the reason it didn't bowl me over--I don't know.

The flights actually went by pretty quickly (Time flies, har har ugh). They showed She's the Man on the flight from Memphis to Amsterdam but I opted out. Amanda Bines is hilarious, and so is cross-dressing. I don't know what I was thinking.

Mostly, we've kept sane by doing New York Times crossword puzzles, some of which are bug-ass hard. Damn you, Will Shortz!

Well, that's my first post on this thing. I don't know how often I'll do this, but it's easier than e-mailing all of you individually.