Jiri’s switch from alcohol to green tea has certainly affected his sleeping, however with the money he saves from abstaining, he has been able to buy some fairly exotic teas. As it is strange for a man to brag about his tea collection, I was pretty curious as to what made his so great. This all led to Jiri inviting the five of us (Nell, Pat, Lindsey, Alex and I) over to his house in Ladvi for a tea party on Friday afternoon.
It has been a long time (never) since I’ve been invited anywhere for a tea party. I was not entirely sure about the etiquette of visiting a Czech house, let alone tea parties. As a result, I decided to take up any suggestion that Jiri had. Upon meeting him at the metro station, taking a bus a few stops, and walking to his neat little house on the edge of the city, Jiri offered the use of any one of his many pairs of slippers. Sticking to the plan, I accepted a warm plaid pair. The other’s politely declined and offered to take off their shoes, when Jiri assured us that the only reason to do so would be if, “you have shit on them.” Meaning dog shit.
This raises an important point about Prague, and most European cities for that matter. As so much of Prague is cobblestoned, and really the only green areas are a few flower boxes and the parks and squares that dot the city, there is a phenomenal amount of dog shit just lying on the sidewalks. There were times, especially in Florida, where cleaning up after Olive on a jog seemed like such a nuisance, especially since I would then have to jog carrying the waste of a 70 LB dog for three blocks before finding an available receptacle. Now that I’ve seen the alternative, I will gladly jog those three blocks with a bag full of, well, no need to be crude.
Anyways, back to the tea party. So, Jiri welcomed us into his home. His counter was full of vases that were packed with spent tealeaves. I figured it was just an odd decoration choice, but Jiri told me that he was saving them for compost. Our tour was limited the first floor (or the 0th floor here) which featured, among those things you find in most houses, a collection of drums, guitars, amps, and more than enough hats to go around. When he led us to a cozy sectional wrapped around a coffee table, I was sporting an Aussie bucket hat and Lindsey was in a beret.
Jiri brought teas out one pot at a time, insisting that we pour small glasses so that it didn’t get cold. I am sure there is a specific tea-tasting procedure: swirl, smell, swirl, taste, gurgle, whatever. There’s certain things you do when you taste wine, but my palette is not nearly sophisticated enough to distinguish much beyond “I like” and “I don’t like.” Tea was similar, however stacking them up side by side allowed for me to taste and smell the differences between early and late harvest Darjeeling. After Darjeeling and Oolong, we moved onto simple green tea. After nearly six or seven healthy pots of tea, a borderline-unhealthy over-caffination, Jiri invited us to play with his instruments. I strummed a few things on the guitar, and Jiri quickly joined in on his “Fun Box” (Jiri, if you read this, what is that thing really called?), which is shaped like a small stool that you, in fact, sit on and pound the sides of. This all led to a brief jam session between two people with too much tea in their system, wearing flannel slippers and hats.
As we left, the day still strangely bright, I was struck by how strange things can be here without my even noticing.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Monday, November 17, 2008
Vs. The Post Office
Two packages, identical in size shape, weight and destination take off from St. Joseph, MI. One reaches the Caledonian School and is picked up. The other is held at the post office. That’s Czech bureaucracy.
The drizzly, gray Thursday after Kutna Hora, the successful TEFL students seeking jobs piled into a humid little classroom to hear a twenty minute speech from one of the academic directors about how there were not enough jobs to go around. Citing a slowing world economy, terrorism, oil prices, and the threats posed to us by a possible invasion from Neptune (just look at it there, waiting and scheming), the AD then asked for several volunteers to agree to a later start date in exchange for a small (and I mean small) stipend. Lindsey was sitting a few seats away from me, and given the nature of the decision, I’d have wanted to talk it over, maybe sleep on it, but as it was presented, we didn’t have the time or privacy for a proper discussion. As a result, we held them to our original job guarantee, only to have the volunteers convince the school to grant them not only a stipend, but to cover their rent for November.
On one hand, it’s nice to have our jobs figured out, a steady paycheck, and the chance to build a rapport with our students before the Christmas holidays. On the other, we missed out on a week or two we could have spent traveling.
After arranging our schedules, picking up some of our textbooks, and cursing both the academic and scheduling offices of the Caledonian School, Lindsey and I took the tram up to the Prague 5 Post Office to pick up the package that didn’t make the last leg of the journey. I was worried, before this, that going to the post office would be a throw-back to the Neanderthal era, and that we would literally have to hit people with clubs to get any sort of assistance. The Czechs, probably as a result of the Soviet occupation, have installed machines in their post offices that dispense numbers. In order to obtain a number, you must press one of the several buttons that describe the different reasons one may go to an eastern European post office. Unfortunately, our Czech was limited to “Pivo, prosim” and thus we selected blindly. Lindsey, ever resourceful, however, compared our summons to the post office to the various options and obtained a second number. One of our numbers was in the 200s, and one was in the 700s. We watched as an electronic sign called various numbers up in a completely random order. Number 520 would be followed immediately by number 3. We went as soon as one of our numbers was called.
The woman at the window was less than jovial, and despite my explaining (in Czech) that we didn’t speak the language, had some moral objection to gesturing. We stood in front of her, frozen in confusion, as she summoned the next random number, who turned out to be a somewhat-bilingual woman who told us to try upstairs.
Upstairs turned out to be a hallway of closed doors. We tried the first one, and after handing over our documentation, pointing, and gesturing, it turned out we were in the right room. The woman handed us another form and, by way of pointing, told us to go to the office down the hall where something, hopefully, would happen.
The second office was lined with teller-like windows, and my first approach to an open window was turned back by a scowl, a dismissive wave of a hand, and a few Czech words that I’d rather not, for decency’s sake, translate. We then sat in the chairs of the empty “waiting area” of the office for the sour cog in the fine post office machine to sweeten. After a few minutes, he motioned me forward and stamped our document several times. He then explained, by means of pointing, that we were to return to the first office.
Upon our return with our stamped form, we were finally given our package. And as we left, both of us were trying hard not to think about how we’d just spent over an hour taking a form from one room to another room to get it stamped, and then returning it to its origin. You’d think they’d have a guy for that.
But that’s Czech bureaucracy. On one hand it’s stringent, ludicrously inefficient. There’s a love affair with rules, documents, passports (you need one to rent a movie!), and lunch-time closures. You would be hard-pressed to find a Czech, let alone an expat, that would tell you anything good about the officialdom in this country. And yet, if you are equally as severe, if your desperation matches their rigidity, it is susceptible. It’s kind of like playing a game of chicken. You may get arrested, interrogated, and deported, or you might get your package from home or a stipend AND your rent paid. It all depends on who blinks first.
The drizzly, gray Thursday after Kutna Hora, the successful TEFL students seeking jobs piled into a humid little classroom to hear a twenty minute speech from one of the academic directors about how there were not enough jobs to go around. Citing a slowing world economy, terrorism, oil prices, and the threats posed to us by a possible invasion from Neptune (just look at it there, waiting and scheming), the AD then asked for several volunteers to agree to a later start date in exchange for a small (and I mean small) stipend. Lindsey was sitting a few seats away from me, and given the nature of the decision, I’d have wanted to talk it over, maybe sleep on it, but as it was presented, we didn’t have the time or privacy for a proper discussion. As a result, we held them to our original job guarantee, only to have the volunteers convince the school to grant them not only a stipend, but to cover their rent for November.
On one hand, it’s nice to have our jobs figured out, a steady paycheck, and the chance to build a rapport with our students before the Christmas holidays. On the other, we missed out on a week or two we could have spent traveling.
After arranging our schedules, picking up some of our textbooks, and cursing both the academic and scheduling offices of the Caledonian School, Lindsey and I took the tram up to the Prague 5 Post Office to pick up the package that didn’t make the last leg of the journey. I was worried, before this, that going to the post office would be a throw-back to the Neanderthal era, and that we would literally have to hit people with clubs to get any sort of assistance. The Czechs, probably as a result of the Soviet occupation, have installed machines in their post offices that dispense numbers. In order to obtain a number, you must press one of the several buttons that describe the different reasons one may go to an eastern European post office. Unfortunately, our Czech was limited to “Pivo, prosim” and thus we selected blindly. Lindsey, ever resourceful, however, compared our summons to the post office to the various options and obtained a second number. One of our numbers was in the 200s, and one was in the 700s. We watched as an electronic sign called various numbers up in a completely random order. Number 520 would be followed immediately by number 3. We went as soon as one of our numbers was called.
The woman at the window was less than jovial, and despite my explaining (in Czech) that we didn’t speak the language, had some moral objection to gesturing. We stood in front of her, frozen in confusion, as she summoned the next random number, who turned out to be a somewhat-bilingual woman who told us to try upstairs.
Upstairs turned out to be a hallway of closed doors. We tried the first one, and after handing over our documentation, pointing, and gesturing, it turned out we were in the right room. The woman handed us another form and, by way of pointing, told us to go to the office down the hall where something, hopefully, would happen.
The second office was lined with teller-like windows, and my first approach to an open window was turned back by a scowl, a dismissive wave of a hand, and a few Czech words that I’d rather not, for decency’s sake, translate. We then sat in the chairs of the empty “waiting area” of the office for the sour cog in the fine post office machine to sweeten. After a few minutes, he motioned me forward and stamped our document several times. He then explained, by means of pointing, that we were to return to the first office.
Upon our return with our stamped form, we were finally given our package. And as we left, both of us were trying hard not to think about how we’d just spent over an hour taking a form from one room to another room to get it stamped, and then returning it to its origin. You’d think they’d have a guy for that.
But that’s Czech bureaucracy. On one hand it’s stringent, ludicrously inefficient. There’s a love affair with rules, documents, passports (you need one to rent a movie!), and lunch-time closures. You would be hard-pressed to find a Czech, let alone an expat, that would tell you anything good about the officialdom in this country. And yet, if you are equally as severe, if your desperation matches their rigidity, it is susceptible. It’s kind of like playing a game of chicken. You may get arrested, interrogated, and deported, or you might get your package from home or a stipend AND your rent paid. It all depends on who blinks first.
Saturday, November 15, 2008
October 14: The Conquests of the Jelly Explorers
This story is impossible without Jiři, so I think as a prologue I should introduce him. Jiři, my first Czech friend here, was a fellow TEFL student. I first met him when we decided to meet, sight unseen, our classmates at a statue in Old Town. He was able to guide us to a few smaller, but interesting pubs, although he has given up alcohol and cigarettes, totally obliterating the base of the Czech food pyramid. On one hand, Jiři is a 35 year-old former software and systems analyst and carries himself with the pragmatism and maturity you’d expect from anyone who has ever had the title “analyst”. On the other hand, Jiři is a FORMER analyst, and thus has an imaginative sense of humor. That is how we got our name, The Jelly Explorers. But we’ll get to that in a second.
With Lindsey and I fighting both a virus and the indignation at having to spend our week off in bed, we agreed to go on a day trip to the Czech town, Kutna Hora. We met, after some minor miscommunications, our fellow explorers at Masarykovo Nadraži. In all, it was Lindsey, myself, Alex (the roommate), our friend Liz from CA, and Jiři. With a Czech-speaking guide, buying tickets was pretty easy, since we didn’t have to do it, however he assured us that simply stating your destination is often enough (maybe stating your destination coupled with a “please”).
Our train was brand new, brightly-lit, and since we had coach-class tickets, we had to walk through four empty cars, through these Star Trek-style airlocks between each, and into another empty one identical to the first four, which Jiři assured us was coach-class. Upon sitting down, Jiři informed us that he brought some recording equipment so that he could create English podcasts for some of his future classes. Now, when I say recording equipment, there was of course a small mp3 recorder (two actually), a large microphone, and an apparatus that Jiři called his ambient mic system. The AMS was actually two small clip-on mics fastened to a pair of sunglasses behind the ears, which Jiři wore for a little while during our conversations. People walked by, and eager for more people to record, Jiři would start a conversation. While most of them stayed to chat for a bit, they seemed a little uneasy speaking to this cyborg of a man with microphones coming out of his ears and wearing sunglasses on a cloudy day.
Not long into the trip, Jiři decided that we needed a team name for the podcast, something, he thought, to do with explorers. Having made a joke a few days before about how drinking beer from big mugs seems more “jolly”, someone suggested “The Jolly Expolorers”. This was misheard by our friend to be “The Jelly Explorers” to which he gave some serious thought. “We travel the world,” he said, “tasting all of the various jellies, and making sure they are safe for human consumption.” Thus, The Jelly Explorers were born. We were each designated positions, The Butter, The Toast, The Head Jelly, etc. and took turns addressing the podcast. At one point, when Jiři removed his sandwich from his bag for a snack only to find that it had fallen apart, we created a module to teach the words death (of my sandwich), tragedy, sandwich down, and cremation in my stomach acids.
Our path from the train station in Kutna Hora took us past rows of communist blocks, painted in bright colors that have corroded so that the buildings are a sickly combination of pastel and bone. We stopped at a café to reload on caffeine and Tylenol before striking out to the Kostnice Ossuary in Sedlec. For those of you who haven’t heard of it, and I’m guessing that’s most of you, the Ossuary goes by the name of The Bone Church in most tourist pamphlets. It is dubbed thusly as it is a medieval chapel that was built on a cemetery. Over the years, as real estate became a bit more restrictive, many of the dead, nearly all peasant plague victims (the wealthy could afford to keep their plots) were dug up and their bones were moved into the crypt. The Czechs, sitting with all these bones, decided (why not?) to decorate the church with them. The result is this tiny chapel dressed in the bones of nearly 40,000 plague victims. In four chambers are pyramids of femurs and humeruses (sp.?) about the size of small busses. Each pyramid has a small tunnel filled with skulls. Along the walls are arrangements of ribs and carpals, and even a coat of arms constructed completely of bones. The centerpiece, however, was four six-foot tall candelabras made of skulls surrounding a giant chandelier made from every bone of the human body.
Now, having been to Terezin, and going to the holocaust museum there, which featured photographs, crayon drawings, clothing, glasses, and various relics of Czech Jews that died in the holocaust, I was bracing from something hauntingly emotional. And yet, these bones were long dead, shuffled, arranged, rearranged, so that any remnant of humanity was something only distantly recognized. For the most part, it was difficult, at times, to even see them as bones as they seemed more like crude stones. It was almost comical, between the misspellings in the visitors guide, the violent symbolism in the coat of arms (which featured a raven pecking a man to death), the way that that the pyramids looked as if they were stolen from the set of the new Indiana Jones movie. However, after a little while, things started to set in. I think it was the chandelier, held to the ceiling by four taut chains of jawbones pulled wide open like screams. It all sort of hit at the same time for us, staring up at the chandelier, and all of a sudden what was funny was not anymore. And the bones, to me, started to take on more meaning. They were vindication of what Milan Kundera would call “fear of becoming a corpse”. They were symbols of the one-sided history of conquest in middle ages of the rich over the poor. We all agreed to leave pretty quickly.
We spent the rest of the day wandering the medieval cobblestones of Kutna Hora’s city center. Alleyways funneled into bright squares circled by ancient mini-palaces and giant cathedrals. Thanks to Jiři, we made our way to some of the better local restaurants, and a park lined by quaint houses that I are a few steps above living in a shack. And climbing the steep ridge up to the Cathedral of St. Barbara, we could peek down into the back gardens of these houses, where grapevines, apple trees, and rows of tilled garden basked in the glow of the trees that line the valley of Kutna Hora changing at the height of autumn.
After our climb to St. Barb’s, we took a few panoramic pictures and peeked inside. That was when Lindsey and I ran out of steam, or perhaps in light of our fevers it’s appropriate to say we became full of steam. Either way, after a day of bones, walking, and eating at strange Czech pubs, we were ready to head home. Fittingly, the bus dropped us at the train station just in time for a mad dash to the platform. We were on the train for literally seconds before it started moving. Our trip home featured a few more podcasts by The Jelly Explorers, however, we mostly stared out of the window at the Czech countryside marked by rolling hills, bright trees, and decayed train stations that predate even the occupation by Austria-Hungary. And so we parted ways with our fellow explorers (except Alex) and returned home.
With Lindsey and I fighting both a virus and the indignation at having to spend our week off in bed, we agreed to go on a day trip to the Czech town, Kutna Hora. We met, after some minor miscommunications, our fellow explorers at Masarykovo Nadraži. In all, it was Lindsey, myself, Alex (the roommate), our friend Liz from CA, and Jiři. With a Czech-speaking guide, buying tickets was pretty easy, since we didn’t have to do it, however he assured us that simply stating your destination is often enough (maybe stating your destination coupled with a “please”).
Our train was brand new, brightly-lit, and since we had coach-class tickets, we had to walk through four empty cars, through these Star Trek-style airlocks between each, and into another empty one identical to the first four, which Jiři assured us was coach-class. Upon sitting down, Jiři informed us that he brought some recording equipment so that he could create English podcasts for some of his future classes. Now, when I say recording equipment, there was of course a small mp3 recorder (two actually), a large microphone, and an apparatus that Jiři called his ambient mic system. The AMS was actually two small clip-on mics fastened to a pair of sunglasses behind the ears, which Jiři wore for a little while during our conversations. People walked by, and eager for more people to record, Jiři would start a conversation. While most of them stayed to chat for a bit, they seemed a little uneasy speaking to this cyborg of a man with microphones coming out of his ears and wearing sunglasses on a cloudy day.
Not long into the trip, Jiři decided that we needed a team name for the podcast, something, he thought, to do with explorers. Having made a joke a few days before about how drinking beer from big mugs seems more “jolly”, someone suggested “The Jolly Expolorers”. This was misheard by our friend to be “The Jelly Explorers” to which he gave some serious thought. “We travel the world,” he said, “tasting all of the various jellies, and making sure they are safe for human consumption.” Thus, The Jelly Explorers were born. We were each designated positions, The Butter, The Toast, The Head Jelly, etc. and took turns addressing the podcast. At one point, when Jiři removed his sandwich from his bag for a snack only to find that it had fallen apart, we created a module to teach the words death (of my sandwich), tragedy, sandwich down, and cremation in my stomach acids.
Our path from the train station in Kutna Hora took us past rows of communist blocks, painted in bright colors that have corroded so that the buildings are a sickly combination of pastel and bone. We stopped at a café to reload on caffeine and Tylenol before striking out to the Kostnice Ossuary in Sedlec. For those of you who haven’t heard of it, and I’m guessing that’s most of you, the Ossuary goes by the name of The Bone Church in most tourist pamphlets. It is dubbed thusly as it is a medieval chapel that was built on a cemetery. Over the years, as real estate became a bit more restrictive, many of the dead, nearly all peasant plague victims (the wealthy could afford to keep their plots) were dug up and their bones were moved into the crypt. The Czechs, sitting with all these bones, decided (why not?) to decorate the church with them. The result is this tiny chapel dressed in the bones of nearly 40,000 plague victims. In four chambers are pyramids of femurs and humeruses (sp.?) about the size of small busses. Each pyramid has a small tunnel filled with skulls. Along the walls are arrangements of ribs and carpals, and even a coat of arms constructed completely of bones. The centerpiece, however, was four six-foot tall candelabras made of skulls surrounding a giant chandelier made from every bone of the human body.
Now, having been to Terezin, and going to the holocaust museum there, which featured photographs, crayon drawings, clothing, glasses, and various relics of Czech Jews that died in the holocaust, I was bracing from something hauntingly emotional. And yet, these bones were long dead, shuffled, arranged, rearranged, so that any remnant of humanity was something only distantly recognized. For the most part, it was difficult, at times, to even see them as bones as they seemed more like crude stones. It was almost comical, between the misspellings in the visitors guide, the violent symbolism in the coat of arms (which featured a raven pecking a man to death), the way that that the pyramids looked as if they were stolen from the set of the new Indiana Jones movie. However, after a little while, things started to set in. I think it was the chandelier, held to the ceiling by four taut chains of jawbones pulled wide open like screams. It all sort of hit at the same time for us, staring up at the chandelier, and all of a sudden what was funny was not anymore. And the bones, to me, started to take on more meaning. They were vindication of what Milan Kundera would call “fear of becoming a corpse”. They were symbols of the one-sided history of conquest in middle ages of the rich over the poor. We all agreed to leave pretty quickly.
We spent the rest of the day wandering the medieval cobblestones of Kutna Hora’s city center. Alleyways funneled into bright squares circled by ancient mini-palaces and giant cathedrals. Thanks to Jiři, we made our way to some of the better local restaurants, and a park lined by quaint houses that I are a few steps above living in a shack. And climbing the steep ridge up to the Cathedral of St. Barbara, we could peek down into the back gardens of these houses, where grapevines, apple trees, and rows of tilled garden basked in the glow of the trees that line the valley of Kutna Hora changing at the height of autumn.
After our climb to St. Barb’s, we took a few panoramic pictures and peeked inside. That was when Lindsey and I ran out of steam, or perhaps in light of our fevers it’s appropriate to say we became full of steam. Either way, after a day of bones, walking, and eating at strange Czech pubs, we were ready to head home. Fittingly, the bus dropped us at the train station just in time for a mad dash to the platform. We were on the train for literally seconds before it started moving. Our trip home featured a few more podcasts by The Jelly Explorers, however, we mostly stared out of the window at the Czech countryside marked by rolling hills, bright trees, and decayed train stations that predate even the occupation by Austria-Hungary. And so we parted ways with our fellow explorers (except Alex) and returned home.
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