Thursday, September 29, 2005

Oh yeah

I forgot to mention that I updated my food blog over the weekend. It's complete as of that post.

Wednesday, September 28, 2005

A cemetery, photos, and a movie

My short love affair with beer is over. I went shopping for pants over the weekend and suddenly nothing fits. (Okay, so this isn't unusual in itself--long torso/short legs don't make for an easy shopping experience.) It's clear that the body prototype here is long, super-skinny legs. Sorry, but I'm 5'4", on a good day, and I have thighs and a butt, and though I'm not heavy, I've never previously experienced squeezing myself into, supposedly, size 6 jeans only to find that they don't remotely fit. So, on the off chance that this is due to my sudden beer intake, we've amicably parted ways. On a positive note, red wine is thrilled to have me back. Actually, the only interesting part of this story is that I walked around the Olsšany Cemetery, the largest in Prague, as a tourist taking photos, etc. before going into the adjacent mall to buy a shirt. That's a terribly inauthentic and voyeuristic thing to do, but at least no one was trying to profit off of my cemetery visit.

I've cleaned up the photo situation by adding links to the photo albums, of the various places I've been recently, in the sidebar. I'll update it periodically. For some reason, Yahoo! Photos doesn't import vertical photos correctly and there isn't a way to fix it, that I've found anyway.

Last night, I watched this crazy Czech communist dark comedy/musical called Kour. Oddly, one of the main characters seemed to be a more flamboyant precursor to Napolean in Napolean Dynamite. This isn't likely, but I find the thought amusing.

Saturday, September 24, 2005

From vernacular to modern architecture

This last week was all about the countryside. On Monday, we visited an open air museum located about an hour from Prague by bus. It was a mini-village with mannequin inhabitants in ancient buildings from different periods. Some of the structures had been moved there from their original towns to preserve them. Heavy timber, whitewash stucco, tiny punched windows, stone walkways, and eyebrow dormers dominated.

On Tuesday, we set off on the train for an extended stay in the countryside. Half of our group, I wasn't one of them, stayed in this cottage in Dolni Lisna. Technically, my group was in Horni Lisna (Upper Lisna) a beautiful quarter-mile walk uphill from there. We gathered firewood from the forest to roast meat over an outside grill (metal grate spanning two rocks). I didn't eat, but I like campfire. It wasn't that rustic, we had showers and toilets and kitchens with electric stoves. There were even televisions.

Friday, a bus took us into Brno. We stopped at a famous crematorium, and we were told its name and the architect's name, but we were there for literally ten minutes, and couldn't go inside, so I have no idea who or what it was, but I wasn't impressed with the outside. In the afternoon, we went to the Tugendhat House by Mies van der Rohe. It was incredible, but mostly for the front room (the one where the windows roll down, electrically, like in a car. This was built in 1929!) and the entrance hallway. The front room, with the marble separator and the little hot house on the side could be a studio apartment for me. I would live right there in the sunshine, looking out over the garden, lounging in a Barcelona chair. The entrance hallway has ten or eleven-foot dark-wood doors, diffuse light from a curved frosted-glass wall, which makes the chrome railings and hardware glow, and beige travertine floors. The effect is extremely difficult to reproduce in photographs or renderings. I have not liked Mies previously and the scale of the house is overdone, but those two rooms plus the bathroom with a mirror wall and clerestory windows, would make a cozy residence.

Sunday, September 18, 2005

Bars and museums

It's already getting cold here. Today's high is 57 degrees, despite brilliant sunshine.

Thursday night, a group of us tried to go to a bar, that's near the TV tower, called Palac Akropolis. (The TV Tower has TV-faced baby statues crawling up its sides. It's creepy.) The Akropolis bar was full and the music hall was packed with a performance already in progress. (Very strange music and a woman in flowing white slowly twirling in place.) So we ended up at a bowling alley around the block with communist-era documentaries on TV. If only the sound had been on and in English.

Yesterday, I went up to Vysehrad, a castle complex on top of a bluff. The cemetery is simply the most beautiful in the world. I don't even need to see all of the others to state that. Each grave is a planter garden, some with giant ferns, some with annuals, some overrun with ivy. This is exactly how it should be. I want to be California poppies and a bonsai jacaranda tree.

Walking around the perimeter of the complex, on top of the old fortifications, there is yet another stunning view of the city and the river. This won't get old.

Also, this week I visited the Mucha Museum and the National Museum. Disappointingly, the former had mostly mass-produced items from the original printings, but very few original drawings or sketches. The latter has extensive geological and zoological specimens, from preserved anacondas to a single one-cubic-foot salt crystal. That was a fascinating two hours.

Monday, September 12, 2005

From here on it'll be intense.

That's a cheesy way to post pictures, but for now, I give up waiting until I can find a cleaner solution.

Classes started today, finally. Well, technically, they started yesterday with a trip to an exhibit about the Vienna Secession at the Municipal House, an incredible Art Nouveau building.

In the evening, we went to see Prague Big Band led by a Czech jazz pianist cum composer named Milan Svoboda at the Reduta Jazz Club, which has the distinction of being the location for the Two Presidents Jam Session (Bill Clinton on sax, but while both Vaclav Havel and Vaclav Klaus were present, I don't know who the second jamming president is.) PBB, a 16 member combo crammed onto a non-existant stage (complete with baby grand!), rocked. All but two "tyoons," as he called them, were composed by Svoboda.

I also tried Becherovka, a cinnamony, spicy liquor only available in the Czech Republic. I'll have to sneak some of it back with me 'cause it's good.

Today, we went to see the giant model of Prague in the Town Hall Tower. We also went to the top of the tower for the view. It's in a better location to see the heart of Old Town and it's higher than the Powder Tower, so there's more to see.

Friday, September 09, 2005

Hey, hey the gang's all here.

My luxurious 5 bed room that I had to myself is now crammed with my studio mates and their luggage. This is merely temporary, owing to the hotel overbooking promised rooms. Needless to say, there is already tension and class hasn't started yet.

Thanks to SkypeOut, I and everyone one else will be able to call any phone in the U.S. for about $0.024 a minute from the lab computer or our laptops. This is a welcome development because most of my family doesn't have broadband nor is familiar enough with their computers to download and install Skype. It may mean some odd hours in studio, but, oh wait, that's normal.

Yesterday in Tesco, I heard some American girls yelling at each other across the store in housewares and decided to check it out. They were buying hangers and pillows, so I asked, "What program are you with?" The girl glanced at me over her shoulder as she walked away and said, "NYU." That was it. No, "Hey, you're American? What program are you with?" Not even polite conversation. She couldn't have dismissed me quicker.

I have heard that this is not uncommon for the NYU kids. They act as though they're still in L.A. or Houston or where ever, yelling across packed trams as if the intermediate people don't exist or don't understand English. (I would like to think New Yorkers wouldn't act like that.)

Last night, M. and I did B 52 shots at a restaurant. These had a twist: First the Grand Marnier was replaced with Absinth. Second, they were on fire. We sucked them down with straws. I am having too much fun here.

Tuesday, September 06, 2005

Ferengis, fear of heights, free internet

Greetings from the constant party at Hostel Elf where English is the only language, in all it's variations. Brits, Irish, Kiwis, Ozzys, Yanks, Canuks, we're all one big happy family. Thankfully, I'm not staying here, but visiting A. at home, who I met in the train station this morning. Don't worry, he's perfectly harmless, and quite nice, here on his own on "holiday" from Surrey, England in Prague. Crossing the Charles Bridge at sunset we met one of his dormmates, a girl from Auckland, and we walked through the Little Quarter before crossing back into Old Town.

A. and I went up into the Powder Gate this afternoon, which has a great view of the city from within Old Town. This was a bit of a challenge for him because of his problem with heights, but he made it through like a trooper.

In other news, I did my laundry today at the laundromat with signed publicity stills of Rob Schneider and some guy with Ferengi makeup who doesn't appear on Deep Space 9 cast lists online. What does it say about these guys that they not only carry crappy publicity stills with them, but that they leave signed ones at laundromats in Prague? Whatever it takes for free laundry, huh?

Monday, September 05, 2005

It's gorgeous.

I thought I would be so European and take advantage of the little washbasins provided in the shower room to do my laundry. I went to the drug store and bought rubber gloves, a plastic clothes line, and Czech soap. Half-way through scrubbing my socks, Brunhilda walks in and says, horrified, "Scuse me, please, no wash." I don't know her real name, but Brunhilda speaks very little English, which is fine for the typical Czech person--I don't expect everyone to speak English--but for someone who works in a hotel, it's necessary. She's tense. Perpetually stressed out and snappish. Breakfast is from 8am to 10am. If I'm there still eating at 10:10am she will tell me to leave, in Czech but I get the idea.

Not able to explain to me why "no wash" or where I may be able to wash she ran and got the desk clerk. The two returned very agitated. He brought a brochure for an internet laundry place ("The first in Europe, perhaps the world!") that charges 70 crowns to wash and 70 crowns to dry per load. (That's about $6 for one load.) *sigh* Do I want to bother with that? Will I try to secretly wash individual pieces in the shower room after hours when Brunhilda is finally off for the night? (I think she works 12 hour days every day.) I bought a hot water pot today and I want to hide it when they come to clean my room incase they tell me that it's contraband.

I still don't know what the pair of floor level washbasins are for. It seemed so logical: one for washing, one for rinsing. I was so proud of the clothes line, too. I'll have to hang wet clothes in the closet to dry and hope that they don't look in there.

Yesterday, I rode the trams to get a better understanding of the city. The 10 ends across the river in the hills amid a city of ten-story apartment blocks with flat, humorless facades and clothes draping the balconies. There is lawn between the buildings, but not enough to make Le Corbusier happy, thank god. For a Sunday afternoon, it was surprisingly deserted considering the 10,000 people who probably live there. On the opposite end of the 10, closer to where I live, it rattles and bumps its way between the walled halves of the quarter-mile-long cemetary that I saw from the new mall.

The 9, which I took from that desolate suburbia, also goes by a cemetary, but this one is darker and lies under a lake of green creepers, with only a monument here or there visible above it. Later, it moves through stone canyons, the bases tagged first by shop keepers and then by graffiti artists. The upper walls are pilastered, pedimented windows. And across the river, it climbs through San Francisco-style neighborhoods rolling over the hills.

The 17, despite what the maps say, terminates at Holesivice, an old train station whose forecourt, bordered by an iron fence, reminded me of a fairground out of season. A used car lot across the street sat on a tiny plot of land at the side of an overpass ramp. I was glad to board the next tram that came along.

This was the 12. South of the city, the railway turns into a gracefully curved ramp high above the trees and houses below. Looking back, I could see the river, the city, and the green hills everywhere else. It was like a (thankfully) tame rollercoaster path or monorail track complete with new color-coded glass and steel stations from which I could see nice apartment buildings.

Today, I went to Petrin Park. (The couple at that link seem to have taken the same route I did, which means they likely had a copy of the DK Eyewitness guide.) At the end of the route I stumbled upon the Strahov library, which the German kids I hung out with the other night had told me about. It's beautiful on it's own, but I wanted to look through the books, which is not allowed, of course. They also had some strange taxidermy displays, mostly of fish.

Saturday, September 03, 2005

Not very exciting.

So now I am intimately familiar with my hotel room. I had a fever/head cold yesterday and unfortunately the fastest remedy I know of is to force myself to stay in bed and drink fluids. A sickness lasts one day instead of a week this way, but it means one massive day of feeling crappy and bored.

When I could concentrate, I read The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. This is one of those books I should have read in high school and didn't get to. I had no idea that it's mostly an architectural critique. There are about six pages where he convicingly spells out architecture's decline as caused by the rise of the printing press. He wrote this 175 years ago and it seems right.

I still felt weak today, so I didn't do much. I found a four-story mall one metro station away up Vinohradska. It could be any mall anywhere, except that the view from the juice stand is an ancient cemetary. And in the pet store they have a pair of South American primates for sale (that picture isn't mine, but it's similar to what they looked like). There, I finally got my shoes resoled. When traveling, I had room for only two pairs of shoes one of which had to be shower shoes. (This was the best decision I made, bar none. To think of the horrors I would have suffered through otherwise... *shiver*) The miles and miles walked in my Eccos resulted in large cracks and exposed undersole, so stepping on even slightly damp pavement meant wet socks for several hours. Not pleasant.

It's a little scary when I start going on about minutia like this. "And then at 9:33pm I went into the dining room to watch satelite tv, but it was all in German." Ugh.

Thursday, September 01, 2005

Wow. I live here now.

And I don´t speak a word of Czech.

The train from Amsterdam was great. My neck started hurting (from straining to look out the window in the same direction all day) about Bavaria. Apparently all of Northern Europe looks like the Willamette Valley, but the houses are more gingerbread than whitebread.

In Wolfsburg, Germany the train went by the Volkswagen plant and I got to see the car elevator towers that I used as a precedent in a studio project. In Berlin the train passed the Reichstag and a score of other interesting buildings that I didn´t know. The Dresden Hauptbahnhof (train station) is an old iron-framed structure with a new fabric roof, a perfect use if ever there was one.

From Berlin to Prague, I shared a cabin with a middle-aged Dutch couple on their way to spend four days in a rented apartment. Today, I saw them again inside St. Vitus Cathedral up at Prague Castle. (That site has information. This one has pictures, including a not great one of the Mucha window, my favorite part.) We kept bumping into each other all over the complex.

For 175 krowns (about 7.50 dollars), the student rate, I had full access to everything: St. Vitus´south tower and crypt, the old royal palace, St. George;s Basilica, the Powder Tower, the National Gallery, and Golden Lane, which would have been my favorite if one of the little houses had been furnished as a house instead of their all being shops.

At breakfast this morning, I accidently ran into D., the program coordinator for NC State;s Prague Institute. As it turns out all of the contact information I had been given was wrong, so this was lucky. P., my studio professor is here as well. So now I´ve seen the studio space and it;s quite nice. It will double in size at some point over the next year, too, as we take over the other side of the building. The best feature of its location is the serious tea room downstairs. And I was worried about not finding good tea in Prague. Silly me.

And lastly, the joke about beer being cheaper than water isn´t a joke. Last night I had a full half liter from Tesco (grocery store) for 11 cents US. 11 cents. I don´t like beer, but so far everything here has been drinkable. Strong and drinkable. My first night I had a glass of wine, sitting outside on the street at a tapas bar, for 16 krowns (68 cents). I will get used to this.