Well, our epic trip to Prague is over. We all returned to Dulles International last night (although some of our luggage apparently did not) and went our separate ways. Sure, we all did a lot of serious learning and work, but lest we forget the more ridiculous parts of the trip, I’ve compiled the master list of quotes from the GSJC ‘09. Names have been omitted to protect the reputations and gainful employment of everyone, but you know who you are. Without further ado:
- “Don’t be scientific. Sometimes you just need to light things on fire. One time I lit a piece of fried chicken on fire.”
- On Czech cuisine: “The meat flows like a river.”
- “We just juice things.”
- “It looks like a horrible poodle accident.”
- “This is the most real that unreal is.”
- ” … because it’s like you’re facing something that’s too big to wrap yourself around.” “What, like a really fat girl?”
- “You can sing the song. Just don’t touch the wing.”
- “I need you to be zen. You’re messing up my chai [sic].”
- “Why solve a problem when you can belligerize it?”
- “I’m saving myself for tonight.”
- “How does ‘Golden Scissors’ remind you of a strip club?” “You know, like … cutting loose. [Picks up cell phone] Oh hey, mom!” Continue reading this entry »
Live from Heathrow, I gleefully just bought a Diet Coke and fresh fruit and used English in public. Y’all, I do not know if I could stand being in a foregin country for more than 10 days. That could derive from my sickness, but my rare illnesses tend to foreshadow agony and despair. Exhibit A: The first two times I went to UVA, I probably had a fever, and look what a bullet I have dodged by not going there.
Anyway, these are a few of my favorite shots from Prague containing a. people, and b. were either shot from the hip, or were hot reflexes at work.
I was trying to get a shot of…her from the front, but my Rebel decided that was the opportune moment to Error 99 me into woe, so I whipped around once the street cleared out, next to this French guy with a DSLR and got the mannequin and this couple. Mystery: Where is the guy who dragged the mannequin out there?
As our time here winds down, there are still a few unanswered questions. Here are my top five things I’d like answered sooner rather than later:
1.) Czech dog training: This is the only place I’ve ever been where dogs are constantly unleashed and yet completely obedient. Seriously– they walk, calmly and rationally(or as rationally as any poodle can be), next to their owners. With no leash. If I tried that with my dog, she’d run faster than Ussain Bolt in the opposite direction.Without stopping. Is there special Czech dog training? Specific breeds? And more importantly, where can I get one?
2.) Czech male fashion: Man-pris. Mullets. Tall socks with shorts. It’s a cross between a Billy-Ray Cyrus music video and a retirement home. Of course, there are your tragically hip Czech dudes with their skinny-leg suits, but for every one of them there is some guy on the tram with a mohawk-mullet (yes, I said “mohawk mullet”) and jorts. I think the UN should get involved.
3.) PDAs: I’ve seen more make-out sessions than one would during the season premiere of The Real World. This would make more sense if it were at a bar, but this is during early morning rush hour. I have theories as to the reasoning for this phenomenon, but generally I try to pretend it’s not happening.
4.) Czech bar music: Think of a cross between 2003 MTV and Europop. Then add more Shakira, a touch of Lady Gaga, and a dash of dance hall. We watched Vh1 Europe during lunch yesterday and were disturbed but oddly transfixed. One final note: very little rap. Thankfully, your friends Jane, Casey and CJ have been remedying the situation by referencing Jay-Z, T.I., and Lupe Fiasco every fourteen seconds.
5.) The Niceness: Look, I’m not good with tourists. In Ann Arbor, I’m either ignoring them or attempting to intentionally confuse them. Not so in Prague– people seem remarkably willing to help us, despite the language barrier. Who knew Central Europe could be so friendly?
I promised reporting from the frontlines of awkward situations, and like Joe Namath or John the Baptist, I have delivered. Unbelievably, it was not a porkchop and potato dumpling lodged behind my larynx, it is strep throat.
Josh and I went to the huge Fakultni Nemocnice Motol (Hospital Motol) that’s part new, and part old ghetto Soviet. No joke:
On the other side behind us, the windows actually opened all the way. Josh was like “I’ve never seen windows like that at a hospital, it’s like they’re inviting people to jump out.” This side of the building also offered what we assume is Czech wheelchair accessibility:
So, sorry about not really posting photographs as frequently as I’d hoped. Here are some photos of some of the speakers we’ve heard and of some of the places we’ve been.
President Obama's gift to President Havel
CJ taking notes in President Havel's offices
Jan Marian, Executive Director of the International Association of Civic Belarus - "Perspectives of Civil Society in Belarus"
Oldrich Cerny, Executive Director of PSSI - "Integration of the Czech Republic into Western Security Structures"
Jiri Schneider, Program Director of PSSI - "Czech Relations with EU, NATO"
Charles Blaha, Political and Economic Counselor at the United States Embassy - "Czech-EU-American Relations"
Radek Spicar, Head of External Communication for Skoda Auto - "Czech Business Climate"
Jan Urban, Professor of Journalism at NYU Prague - "Journalism in Central and Eastern Europe"
Tomas Pojar, First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic - "Czech Foreign Policy and US-Czech Relations: The Czech Perspective"
Dinah Spritzer, American Journalist based in Prague - "Life as a Foreign Correspondent"
GSJC Tours the Czech Senate
This isn’t the tranniest thing we’ve seen this week…but maybe second place.
From our tour last Sunday, in Old Town Square:
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| From GSJC |
And while I’m at it, an homage to two of the most beautiful things I’ve seen in Prague so far:
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| From GSJC |
1) Plums marinated in plum liqueur and wrapped in bacon.
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| From GSJC |
2) Budvar Dark.
Both, perhaps not coincidentally, from U Medvidku.
As an American visiting the Czech Republic for the first time, I pretty much took for granted that I would be able to just generally have the privileges that we have back in the States. Sure, I know that Czechoslovakia was a Communist regime for over 40 years, but they so successfully established a parliamentary democracy and a free-market economy in just 20 years, I never really thought about the oppression that was the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic.
It was not until yesterday, when we had the opportunity to listen to Jan Urban, a journalism professor from NYU in Prague, that I finally began to understand just what life in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic was like. Having lived under the Communist regime, Mr. Urban knew just how oppressive the system was, noting several times that there was absolutely no way around the system. The state was the Communist Party, and it controlled everything. The Czechoslovak Socialist Republic was by far the most centralized of the Eastern Soviet bloc countries, partially because the industrial nature of the country had a well-organized labor movement that provided the foundation necessary to support a Communist regime.
One of the most telling examples Mr Urban gave was that of parents trying to send their children to school. Although children did receive primary education - for what it was worth - children’s ability to attend college, and even high school, was dependent on their parents’ political loyalty and nothing else. Simply put, children were hostages of the parents. The Party knew that parents would not risk their children’s education by doing anything that would seem to go against the Communist Party. People knew that they basically only had one chance to resist because that would most likely be their last, as they would be punished either through their children, prison, or worse.
So, I wrote this at 5:30 am here in Prague, raving to the Europop (but also, because they do not discriminate here, “Let’s Here It for the Boy” and Usher) blasting in the hotel lobby, because I potentially have strep throat and actually visibly wince when I swallow. Actually, lies, it is likely the Czech porkchop I have lodged in my throat.
Yesterday, however, we visited the Jewish Quarter, which Jane has already discussed part of, and I will defer to her excellent post there. But courtesy the Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, which I recently read, the trip got to be less a traipse around the set of Prince Caspian. Somehow, the fictional fact that Michael Chabon wrote Joe Kavalier living and escaping from Prague while the rest of his family died either in the ghetto or attempting escape themselves, provided me with a lot of context. So, yes, fake people’s lives make Prague less fake for me.
Anyway! We visited the Spanish Synagogue (built in the 1860s in the Moorish style — i.e. it looks like a Mosque with extremely intricate patterns, very rich, dark greens, reds, and golds) and the Old-New Synagogue which was built in the mid-1200s. Which means IT IS OLD. Also, old, the Old Jewish Cemetery:
Today we visited the “Jewish Quarter”, the location of one of the oldest synagogues in the world and the Jewish Museum. The Quarter also contains the Pinkas Synogogue. Walking through that synogogue is one of the most difficult things I have done in a very long time.
We have graffiti in the United States, some places more than others. In general, however, the graffiti is usually just “C.M. loves B.J.” or an obscenity, basically nothing that means anything to anyone besides the graffitist. These scrawled words and pictures usually just ruin whatever they were written on and are just a general distraction. One of the first things I noticed when we took our first walk around Prague was the copious amount of graffiti, scrawled on everything from lamposts to benches to tram cars. Although the graffiti here is just as unattractive as that in the States, some of that graffiti is actually making a political point.
On an initial walk around the city, one of the most interesting pieces of graffiti was “antifa” spray painted several times in a row along a wall. Antifa is translated as antifascist. Another was “fight state” scrawled across the side wall of an older building. Finally on a jersey barrier on the Charles Bridge, “Kosovo is Serbia” is spray painted in bold letters.
Seeing these examples of popular public protest, even though they were just some words scrawled in spray paint, really made me think about the reality of life in Czechoslovakia under the former Communist regime. Although some are obviously not from before the Velvet Revolution, they all still speak of an underground protest movement, a political activism that people expressed the only way they could. To me, that hits home much harder than just seeing a memorial or reading about the Czechoslovakian Communism.
