I'm in Rome! Soon to be in Germany, soon to be in Thailand. Then back to Seattle.
Now you know where I are.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Hard Times
The last few weeks have been really awesome, but finding the time to relate these various happenings has been difficult. I just got back from Berlin and basically found my new favorite city. Berlin is so fucking cool and I want to live there. The people are nice and look effortlessly hip, the culture is diverse, the art scene is super active, the shopping is great and the nightlife of course is amazing. I almost didn't make it due to some stomach issues I've been having; I actually went to the hospital the day before leaving for Berlin and was diagnosed with inflamed bowels. The doctor advised me to stay in Prague for the weekend and I basically burst into tears in the examination room. Taking pity, he instead said I could go but to see a doctor immediately if my stomach got worse. Thank god, because staying home alone in Prague would have killed me faster than the inflamed bowels for sure. Also, our apartment somehow lost power in the bathroom and kitchen (probably a blown fuse), so we have no hot water and no light in the kitchen, although our fridge still works oddly enough.
So...the inconsistent internet access has really killed the idea of this blog all together, and I'm close to giving up. Is anyone even reading?
It seems pointless to recap things chronologically, but I can tag a pretty good list of stuff that's been awesome about my stay Prague so far (and other travels):
- Our neighborhood. I love living outside the city center. It's cheaper, less touristy and quiet.
- Going to the Karlovy Vary Film Festival! It was kind of a last minute decision that worked out amazingly well! I saw 4 films and spent time in a sweet-ass part of the Czech Republic. Too bad I missed Robert Deniro.
- Going to my first live show in Europe at Klub 007 Strahov, thanks to my classmate Duncan. Ghengis Tron, you rock my socks. We ran into the band later at a pub called U Sudu and hung out with them for a good chunk of the night.
- Bonaqua sparkling citron water. I'm in love, now and forever more.
- Eating gelato at least once a day. Yummy!
- The Prague Food Festival! Delicious, delicious food eaten by the riverside. It definitely marked the "honeymoon period" of my trip.
- Meeting cool French people and dancing until 6 a.m. at Chateau Rouge, a decidedly touristy kind of bar I ended up at for a classmate's birthday bash. Leaving a bar with the sun already up feels odd for sure, and very disorienting.
- Going to Berlin!! Loved everything about the city except for the fact that the Euro is kicking the dollar's ass. "Death By Pop" at the Bang Bang Club was hands down the best night of dancing I've had in Europe. Also, seeing another show in Europe was pretty awesome. The bands were somewhat mediocre (The Gecko from the UK, and Trashmonkeys from Germany), but the experience was priceless.
- Finally being inside an H&M after hearing all the hoopla about the place. Can't wait to go to the ones that are opening in Seattle!
- Seeing the bone church in Kutna Hora. Well, it's not made of bones, but it's decorated on the inside with bones (bone chandelier in the middle of the church, coat of arms made out of bones on the walls, etc.). Creepy shit.
I really wanted to post more picture on the blog, but there are so many that I'll just have to make like 10 facebook albums. Here are a few from the very beginning of my trip:
First place I stayed at in Prague, and the best pun I've encountered yet in this city :) All other hostels will pale in comparison.
These apparently exist all the way here in Prague too. I definitely did a double take walking past this.
The looooooong escalator ride down to the underground metro. Vertigo inducing for sure.
Metro!
Graffiti on the front door of my apartment building. Apparently the inhabitants are insane and suppliers of both caviar and horror. Excellent.
Shot of my neighborhood. Very quaint.
So...the inconsistent internet access has really killed the idea of this blog all together, and I'm close to giving up. Is anyone even reading?
It seems pointless to recap things chronologically, but I can tag a pretty good list of stuff that's been awesome about my stay Prague so far (and other travels):
- Our neighborhood. I love living outside the city center. It's cheaper, less touristy and quiet.
- Going to the Karlovy Vary Film Festival! It was kind of a last minute decision that worked out amazingly well! I saw 4 films and spent time in a sweet-ass part of the Czech Republic. Too bad I missed Robert Deniro.
- Going to my first live show in Europe at Klub 007 Strahov, thanks to my classmate Duncan. Ghengis Tron, you rock my socks. We ran into the band later at a pub called U Sudu and hung out with them for a good chunk of the night.
- Bonaqua sparkling citron water. I'm in love, now and forever more.
- Eating gelato at least once a day. Yummy!
- The Prague Food Festival! Delicious, delicious food eaten by the riverside. It definitely marked the "honeymoon period" of my trip.
- Meeting cool French people and dancing until 6 a.m. at Chateau Rouge, a decidedly touristy kind of bar I ended up at for a classmate's birthday bash. Leaving a bar with the sun already up feels odd for sure, and very disorienting.
- Going to Berlin!! Loved everything about the city except for the fact that the Euro is kicking the dollar's ass. "Death By Pop" at the Bang Bang Club was hands down the best night of dancing I've had in Europe. Also, seeing another show in Europe was pretty awesome. The bands were somewhat mediocre (The Gecko from the UK, and Trashmonkeys from Germany), but the experience was priceless.
- Finally being inside an H&M after hearing all the hoopla about the place. Can't wait to go to the ones that are opening in Seattle!
- Seeing the bone church in Kutna Hora. Well, it's not made of bones, but it's decorated on the inside with bones (bone chandelier in the middle of the church, coat of arms made out of bones on the walls, etc.). Creepy shit.
I really wanted to post more picture on the blog, but there are so many that I'll just have to make like 10 facebook albums. Here are a few from the very beginning of my trip:
First place I stayed at in Prague, and the best pun I've encountered yet in this city :) All other hostels will pale in comparison.
These apparently exist all the way here in Prague too. I definitely did a double take walking past this.
The looooooong escalator ride down to the underground metro. Vertigo inducing for sure.
Metro!
Graffiti on the front door of my apartment building. Apparently the inhabitants are insane and suppliers of both caviar and horror. Excellent.
Shot of my neighborhood. Very quaint.
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Dobry Den, Seattle
It's been about two weeks since I landed in Prague, and I feel like I'm finally getting my bearings. I've moved into my apartment, which is a bit outside the city center. It's a super residential area with lots of families, (supposedly) many expats, and dogs everywhere. The dog to human ratio in Prague is apparently one to one, and I've seen just about every breed of dog ever created at this point. I share my flat with two roommates, both UW students (there are 6 kids from Whitman College in our program too) and both girls that I get along with amazingly well. I can't say the same for a lot of the other roommate combinations, and I'm eternally grateful that my 8 weeks in Prague will be drama free on the home front.
So the program that I'm a part of through CHID focuses on history, political science and literature of the Czech Republic, although much of history and political science will often talk about the surrounding countries and their interactions around WWI and WWII. There are 21 students, six of them from Whitman College. There's this weird dynamic between the UW and Whitman kids; I've become friends with most of the Whitties, but in the beginning I thought, "We seem like such slackers compared to the Whitman kids, they must think we're all stupid." Although that feeling has subsided, I think it's still active among some of the other UW kids. In all honestly, it's probably a non-issue as long as you're getting your shit done. But even that is hard to do if you also want to get to know the city more. That's probably the biggest complaint I have about this program: the courses are really interesting, but there's simply too much work to do. Part of the point of studying abroad is to immerse yourself in a foreign city, and that's been difficult with the amount of reading and papers we have. In total, we have 9 papers to write (from 3 to 7 pages in length) and two projects (one of which is already done).
I wanted to start this blog sooner, but the curriculum of my program has been surprisingly rigorous; this week I have a political science paper about the role of political elites in Central European socialist regimes. I suck at any non-literature/cinema studies papers, so this should be good fun. As I'm sitting in the internet cafe by my apartment, everyone else in the program (except myself and my roommate Laura) are peddling through Southern Bohemia on an 80 mile bike trip. I (smartly, so to speak) declined to participate in lieu of finishing my thesis. But since we had such a heavy load of homework to do (finished a book, read half of another book, still have 3 articles to read), I ended up doing that instead; plus I caught up on some much needed sleep. Not sure how much of this the bikers got to finish over the weekend.
Aside from school, I've been able to do some fun local stuff as well. I visited the Prague Castle, which has a beautiful cathedral and an amazing aerial view of the city. I also went to a couple football games shown on these jumbotron screens in Old Town Square, a touristy area of Prague. Our classroom is in the middle of Wenceslas Square, a historic area where lots of protests have taken place but is now more of a shopping district; there's an H&M and a Sephora within a couple blocks of our building. The coolest bar I've gone to by far is called U Sudu. It's apparently a well known place to purchase pot, but it's got the most intense labyrinthian, cave-like atmosphere I've ever seen. You can easily get lost in all the different rooms, walking down stairs and encountering numerous locked doors. It reminds me a bit of "From Dusk Till Dawn," where there's this distinct feeling that if you get locked in one of the rooms everyone will turn out to be vampires and try to devour you.
This coming weekend, I'm planning a trip to Karlovy Vary to attend the city's film festival. It's a couple hours outside of Prague, so it won't be too expensive. About six of us are committed to going so far. We just have to work out the hotel situation and train tickets tomorrow. I'm super pumped to see "Bathory," a film about the Blood Countess Elizabeth Bathory that was filmed by a Czech director.
So...since I have a paper to write I'll cut things short here. I'll try to update before the weekend and add some pictures too :)
So the program that I'm a part of through CHID focuses on history, political science and literature of the Czech Republic, although much of history and political science will often talk about the surrounding countries and their interactions around WWI and WWII. There are 21 students, six of them from Whitman College. There's this weird dynamic between the UW and Whitman kids; I've become friends with most of the Whitties, but in the beginning I thought, "We seem like such slackers compared to the Whitman kids, they must think we're all stupid." Although that feeling has subsided, I think it's still active among some of the other UW kids. In all honestly, it's probably a non-issue as long as you're getting your shit done. But even that is hard to do if you also want to get to know the city more. That's probably the biggest complaint I have about this program: the courses are really interesting, but there's simply too much work to do. Part of the point of studying abroad is to immerse yourself in a foreign city, and that's been difficult with the amount of reading and papers we have. In total, we have 9 papers to write (from 3 to 7 pages in length) and two projects (one of which is already done).
I wanted to start this blog sooner, but the curriculum of my program has been surprisingly rigorous; this week I have a political science paper about the role of political elites in Central European socialist regimes. I suck at any non-literature/cinema studies papers, so this should be good fun. As I'm sitting in the internet cafe by my apartment, everyone else in the program (except myself and my roommate Laura) are peddling through Southern Bohemia on an 80 mile bike trip. I (smartly, so to speak) declined to participate in lieu of finishing my thesis. But since we had such a heavy load of homework to do (finished a book, read half of another book, still have 3 articles to read), I ended up doing that instead; plus I caught up on some much needed sleep. Not sure how much of this the bikers got to finish over the weekend.
Aside from school, I've been able to do some fun local stuff as well. I visited the Prague Castle, which has a beautiful cathedral and an amazing aerial view of the city. I also went to a couple football games shown on these jumbotron screens in Old Town Square, a touristy area of Prague. Our classroom is in the middle of Wenceslas Square, a historic area where lots of protests have taken place but is now more of a shopping district; there's an H&M and a Sephora within a couple blocks of our building. The coolest bar I've gone to by far is called U Sudu. It's apparently a well known place to purchase pot, but it's got the most intense labyrinthian, cave-like atmosphere I've ever seen. You can easily get lost in all the different rooms, walking down stairs and encountering numerous locked doors. It reminds me a bit of "From Dusk Till Dawn," where there's this distinct feeling that if you get locked in one of the rooms everyone will turn out to be vampires and try to devour you.
This coming weekend, I'm planning a trip to Karlovy Vary to attend the city's film festival. It's a couple hours outside of Prague, so it won't be too expensive. About six of us are committed to going so far. We just have to work out the hotel situation and train tickets tomorrow. I'm super pumped to see "Bathory," a film about the Blood Countess Elizabeth Bathory that was filmed by a Czech director.
So...since I have a paper to write I'll cut things short here. I'll try to update before the weekend and add some pictures too :)
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