The Circus is in town.....

There's some sort of hoopla going on in nam. Svobody this week. There's a stage set-up and a dealership has parked Fords -- FORDS!!, not even Skodas -- next to it. I was waiting around after the lesson last night and a smaller group was setting up, some sort of camper-sized velvet big top. I almost left, but then they started playing Tom Waites and obscenely macabre British polkas through the loudspeakers. Spanish folk guitar followed and beautiful young women danced with old men who cast aside their canes. I waited.

There was a shadow play with children zooming around and houses and abstract geometry. Then a pair of scissors appeared, cutting a literal window where there had only been a shadow of one the moment before and the Trio peered out from inside. In a moment they burst through the paper: sad scabby clowns whose looks had been inspired by The Dark Crystal, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and Six String Samurai. They were squawking and cawing like crows and pranced around with great vigor. They danced and threw sawdust into the crowd. Soon a very Hensonian ringmaster appeared in red velvet with glasses and a whip, delighting in lording it over the clowns. There were occasional appearances by ballerina figures who wore masks that looked like little Gray Men, straight out of the X-Files. There was a yellow figure in plain costume that bore a leonine mask and a Coyote cum Loki aspect, snidely taking the piss out of the Ringmaster by turning him around and depriving him of his whip. The littlest ballerina was constantly at odds with the Ringmaster, unable to perform on her unicycle or with the spinning hoops.

The Trio eventually picked a teenage girl out of the crowd and taped her feet to the unicycle. (It's like Devin's new track bike, the pedals are connected directly to the wheel.) They delighted in dragging her around in front of the crowd in a ridiculous waltz. They made a great show of trying to give her purse and headphones to various members of the crowd. I thought she must have been a plant and in on the deal. However, I shouted "Twenty!" in Czech at the clown when he was in front of me (twenty crowns for a prop and a good memory is good, yeah?) and wound up with the purse in my hands. Then I saw the very embarrassed girl fighting her way back through the crowd to get to me and the clown heckled & cawed until she took it from me.

The Ringmaster eventually brought out an ogre of gigantic Norse looks, chained on either side by one of the clowns. Of course it was sad and terrible and the beast rebelled against his captors. The Ringmaster made a good show of it, throwing down his whip and doing battle with his bare hands, but he was hopelessly out classed. When the monster had him in a death grip, the alien headed little ballerina scurried out and snapped up the whip. She wielded it fearsomely and set the ogre cowering, once he'd dropped the Ringmaster. Even the Ringmaster was made to back away by the little girl cracking the whip. But once she'd scared them both, she carefully set the lash down and took the ogre by the hand, leading him off.

The leonine trickster made one final Faustian appearance. A figure in leotard, with a faceless blue orb for a head, was dragged out and man handled by two of the clowns. They poked and prodded it with poles, making it dance and dodge. Eventually she too rebelled and the Trickster entered the scene, sending the two louts away. He began to dance with her in earnest, and clothed her in a flouncy gauze skirt and red boa. There was fierce passion and tenderness in their movements. Eventually he left her standing, bewildered on stage. But she heedlessly ran to him when a lone arm beckoned from backstage.

Truly some of the most fun I've had in a long while.

Not dead yet, I swear.

Been running around this week, actually doing some things. Unfortunately that takes time away from the glowing screen and I'm feeling a little stupid for spending as much money as I have (since I'm still technically unemployed).

Update: One company, Slůně, doesn't have their fall schedule, yet , but is asking me to do some substitutions for them. Yes at the moment (plus they're paying me my asking price!). I've got my demo lesson with MKM tonite. FINALLY. The general lack of normal classes has put a crimp in get official approval from those guys, but I've already done some individual lessons for them. There's some sort of fest/music thing going on in nam. Svobody all week. Last night there was a circus from Russia, a little one, quite good. Costumes inspired by Jim Henson and Tim Burton. More later.

Conspiracies!

The lesson went very well, she was roughly my age and had been studying English for 15 years by her count. Basically just wanted someone to speak with and to teach her new vocabulary. I had no proper idea going in (the previous teacher had left no notes), we started with some getting to know you questions, which I only had a handful of corrections for, and moved onto some entertainment articles I'd printed off the BBC and AP wire. I actually had way more material than I needed. This was a relief.

So what do Americans hear when people get drunk? 9-11 conspiracy theories. In Krakow I got tag teamed by a couple of Brits, Amed actually did this sober (he and I had the most coherent and lengthy discussion of this topic), and Zlatan decided that we really, really needed to discuss the possibility that Osama bin Laden does not exist the other morning at the gyro shack. (Both of my boys are Muslim, I think this makes a bit of a difference, but then again the Brits were citing chapter and verse from the 9-11 Commission Report.)

The general thrust of things is that United States government did the deed. In some theories the government was explicitly involved, in others Osama bin Laden is a complete fiction, and sometimes the act was perpetrated by something like the Illuminati or the Trilateral Commission. I will be the first to admit that there are things we do not know and may never know about 9-11 and that the government was covering its ass and pulling weird maneuvers from five minutes after the first plane hit. However, I don't see a compelling argument for an organized conspiracy in this. I know nothing about the physics of the Towers coming down or why Tower #7 came down, too. I have given up hope of finding an authoritative source on either. It seems that everyone with a theory has an agenda. I do know that lots and lots of mistakes were made by the intelligence community. I do know that what has happened since has benefited the Neo-Cons (former advocates of the New World Order) and the new military industrial complex (Halliburton, KBR, Blackwell, and hundreds of other 'contractors' that are doing for the military what we no longer believe is cost-effective for the DoD to do for itself). What I think basically comes down to this: if you apply Occam's Razor, then you find very little that cannot be explained by normal levels of American incompetence/laziness and real-politik avariciousness. Is it simpler to say that a vast, vast conspiracy was carried out by our government that killed 3000 Americans and remained secret in spite of it being investigate by a congressional committee whose report became a BEST SELLER, or that fewer than two dozen men were able to use a great deal of cunning and money to exploit the holes in a broken system and carry out a horrendous act? I'm in favor of the later. I suppose it's possible, maybe even plausible, to say that some agency or group 'ran' bin Laden or the group of terrorists, but the ideas that the government purposely did not scramble fighter jets that morning in September or actually planted explosives at strategic points within the World Trade Center is fairly ludicrous to me.

I think there are a number of things that go into the prevalence of these theories. For one thing it's far easier to say that the people 'in control' let this happen than to acknowledge that there are terrible and chaotic forces at work in the world, which defy the control of anyone but themselves. I think this is similar to the Vietnam era theory that 'we would have won if the government had let us.' Another thing is that Osama bin Laden was once a CIA financed 'freedom fighter.' Al-Qaeda may have been the invention of some intelligence officer in need of good memo material, does anybody know who is supposed to be in charge of this 'Network' or who remembers hearing about it before 9-11? Even if it was I'm quite willing to believe in the existence of a number of Islamic terrorists who were linked by common beliefs that found connections through old Afghanistan buddies and leveraged this through modern telecommunications technology. It doesn't help that we've been playing political games with people's lives in the Middle East for a century and that Arabs see themselves as a being continually shat upon by the U.S. A final note: the CIA, NSA, FBI, etc, etc, have something of a vested interest in the myth of their near magical prowess. This is fed by ridiculous action movies, which are often the only knowledge of America that foreigners, even some educated ones, receive. To counter this impression I have three things: MK-Ultra (failed mind-war program), Castro is still alive (we can't assassinate the dictator next door?), and Iran-Contra (even successful conspiracies are brought down by there being too many loose ends).

Sorry, didn't exactly mean to rant there, but I had a little to get off my chest. One does occasionally run into nutty things that you can't exactly argue through in one sitting, especially through a language barrier.

It's like last Friday again. At noon it was 80 degrees in the apartment. At four thirty there were cool winds and thunder rolling steady across the sky. At four thirty five it began to rain. When I left the lesson at 6:30 it was a real gutter washer. The kind where your umbrella, despite the general lack of winds, will only keep you dry down to your elbows. It feels really good. The air is cleaner, washed and ionized. And warm rain is still something of a novelty to me.

Found two new net cafes and a couple other interesting spots when I was wandering around looking for the lesson. It was right between nam. Svobody and Moravske nam., places that I've walked through a dozen times already. Amazing how your feet can move you from spot to spot so often, but you don't really know a place until you search for something in it.

In reference to an older post: 25000 crowns is about $1250 dollars (20 to 1 conversion) and about what one could/should earn per month to live comfortably here. (That's pre-tax, assuming legal employment.) Comfortably being rent, food, transportation, phone, professional attire/supplies, enough to live it up once or twice a month, and some to put away against the weeks and months of skinny pickin's. 25000 is about 109 hours/month at 230 crowns/hour (the starting pay MKM quoted me). Sam and Denis both seem to think that I'm worth about 300 crwn/hr in the current market.

Brewery, Yugoslavians, and Races

Have a paid lesson at a place called MKM today, and a demo lesson with them tomorrow. Also had a call back from Slůně, looks like that interview will be Wednesday. Sam's told me that he's not going to be working past the end of the month and that he'd be happy to hook me up with English Studio, who he's been going through, and that he'd probably be able to tell them “this guy could take over my classes.” Opportunities, eh?

Went out with Ahmed the other day and met a bunch of, how shall we say...., former Yugoslavians. Zlatan and two others are from Sarajevo and a few from other points, but I didn't get exactly where, French and Serbian (or whatever it was) seemed to be a little more popular, being as how I was the only native English speaker in the group. However, they were a good bunch a guys. Czechs are a very rule abiding people, they generally don't jaywalk, things are done by the book for the most part, people stand in lines, and they wait their turn. Much like Germans, I'm told. Which is why it was greatly amusing to watch Zlatan and friends pull out a small baggie and Zig Zags and roll a joint in the middle of nám. Svobody, which translates to Freedom Square. Met them again early on Saturday morning when they had a couple Frenchmen in tow. But I'm getting a little ahead of myself.

After running around in all sorts of heat last (in long clothes) week I was happy to throw on a pair of shorts and go hang out. However, in the space of five hours on Friday it went from 34 degrees to about 17 with cold wind and serious looking clouds that just started to drop their water as I met Alissa at the train station at 6. We went to the Starobrno brewery which is almost directly south of the castle Špilburk and hung out with Sam and Marketa. I had the first dark draft beer since I've been in county and it was gooooood. Don't get me wrong, even the blond stuff is great around here, but I do like my beer at least on the redder side of things. It was crowded inside and a little crazy outside. There's been some sort of motorcycle Grande Prix going on, I think somebody told me it was the “500cc world championships.” So there have been loads of drunken fans wandering the streets. Many of them have a predilection for lighting off blasting caps or quarter sticks of dynamite in the street. Many of them, in the brewery at least, are British and also loud yobs to boot. Turns out that in nicer restaurants in the Czech Republic, which the indoor part of Starobrno is, won't let you order side dishes without ordering a main dish and that you only get one side per entree, plus some entrees are ineligible for certain sorts of sides. I just wanted some french fries, and got told no (Marketa had to translate), so Alissa tried to order my fries, her side, and a soup. We got told no again (that one per rule). Finally Allissa decided that she'd get pasta and order my fries. The waiter just decided to take that order. Marketa said that normally wouldn't fly, however Sam chimed in here that if Marketa hadn't been with us we probably all could have ordered whatever we wanted because the rest of us spoke no Czech. Anyway we had a good time hanging out. Talked about the glories of Skype and using it to call American tech support for things instead of trying to deal with Czech call centers. It seems they get very confused when you give them a phone number with more than ten digits.

It was Chris's birthday (the Polish guy from IBM), so I went to meet that crowd next. Caught up with them at restaurant. Turns out that there's some Polish honor thing that you're supposed to pay on your birthday, so Chris immediately took half the bill for himself. I just don't get it. We wound up at some tropical themed club where I got to pay the American fee at the door (2.5 times the normal cover). Have to say that clubs aren't too much better here in Brno than they are at home. Too loud, too crowded, too much attitude. I'll take the bar scene any day. People drifted off as the night wore on. Ahmed and I were the only ones left and we went in search of another place to be, wound up meeting Zlatan and the French guys as we were getting gyros across from Charlie's Hat. (A note here: if you have even a little cabbage every day or every other day it begins to make you smell. It's really lousy to wake up with the smell of smoke in your hair and the sour tang of cabbage leaking from your every pore.) At this point all the clubs we went to weren't letting people in or were asking for lots of money. I suppose it didn't help that we didn't have any native Czech speakers in the group.

We wound up at another gyro joint, Ahmed and I being the only ones who had eaten. Longs talks about politics, in French, ensued. I couldn't follow most of it. One of the guys, Michael, was flabbergasted that I could even try and teach people my language without knowing theirs. I tried to explain the building block theory, that you start with really basic things like concrete nouns and easily modeled verbs, but he was pretty dubious. On a completely different note: if you see a black person here, odds are good that they speak English. There are very few non-white people here, hell hardly any non-Slavs. Like Coupeville I can count the number of black people on my fingers and toes. I've seen people from French-speaking Africa and from the Caribbean. English seems to be the common tongue.

Next time I'll tell you guys what theories you get to hear when drunken people learn that you're an American.

Job search Brno

The Brno job search is on a much smaller scale than the Krakov one, just 8 schools on my list, and 6 of them within walking distance of the main square. Also, bearing much more fruit. Several have already said they're looking for teachers and I've got a paid individual lesson and a demonstration lesson on set-up for early next week. One place is willing to pay me about 25000 crowns a month, but several other schools have been low-balling me with rates of less than 200 crowns an hour. Still waiting on responses from a couple others.

Oh, question for the masses: it's standard to do a demonstration lesson for your potential employers, especially with a lack of employment history. I've had one person who's done this for many years advise me to demand a fee for the demo lesson, even if it's a low rate. The reasoning being that you put effort and time into your appearance there, sometimes passing up or rearranging other job search duties, thus deserving compensation, as well as establishing the idea you're negotiating from a position of strength (discouraging them from trying to pull a fast one farther down the line). What do you guys think of that idea?

A couple schools are just outside the touristy part of town in the southwest, just off Vlhka Street. I got kinda lost looking for them, so I saw a part of town that I didn't know about before. It's a little bit isolated from the central part of the city because of the way the trams run and the placement of a couple high traffic streets. There's still some light industrial kinda stuff going on, car shops, factory buildings, building material wholesalers. Cheaper, shoddier looking versions of businesses you see elsewhere, too. When things get old and neglected at home they get overgrown, green, a little grungy. When things get old and neglected here they get gritty. Chunks of facade fall off, exposing old masonry. There's more dust and dirt around the buildings, there's actually garbage to be found in the basement window wells and busted doorways. Turns out this is also the gypsy part of town. You start to see lots of kids just hanging out. There are people just sitting on the front stoop or at a table and chairs arranged on the sidewalk. Some of them have worn or dirty clothing, something that's not normal here, but mostly you can tell they're gypsies because they all look like Mexicans or Indians (the American kind). The area definitely has that lower income, socially outcast vibe to it. There are signs of gentrification, too. Some buildings have been recently re-plastered and repainted, with shiny nameplates for the businesses inside and intercom-buzzers required for entry. Some frou-frou businesses starting to pop up, too: boutique furniture showrooms and dance schools.

It's really hot again, 35 degrees today. Pulled a mad dogs and Englishmen in the gypsy part of town. When I got home and changed out of my clothes I had big, white salt deposits around the waist of my pants. Makes me glad I chopped off all my hair the other day.

Have I mentioned the pervasiveness of herna bars here? Gambling, slot machines, is legal and you'd think it was big business. You can't go more than a block or two on any busy or central street without seeing a “herna bar non-stop!” sign. (They are literally open 24 hours a day.) I haven't been in any except for Salvatore's, a small one that's also got some internet computers in the back, but the machines play these amazingly irritating sound effects and use lots of lights. They kinda remind me of pinball machines. Some are really big, glitzy affairs, others seem like nice, low-key, little bars that have just got some machines pushed over in the corner.

Travel.

Alissa had to be back to Brno before me for teaching so I had the house to myself for a few days and got to take the train back alone. Following the pattern of my travels here so far (wonderfully easy or nails-on-chalkboard painful) it was a long day. I missed my 7am train so closely that I got to watch it pull out of the station. I took my ticket to the window and explained my situation, asking for the next train to Brno, which I thought was @ 11:45. The woman told me I was going to take a circuitous route to Wratslaw (Poland), Hranice (Czech Republic), and then on to Brno, leaving in half an hour. Great! I said. So I get on the train, the conductor checks my ticket (which is a handwritten form, instead of the usual machine one) and tries to ask me what I'm doing on this train, which was eventually headed to Berlin. I told him I was getting off earlier and which stops I was taking after that, but he looked very concerned and told me that I needed to get out at Katovice and take the Polonia train from platform 1. We went round for a couple minutes, but I finally got the message.

So I get out and wait for the train. When it arrives I talk to their conductor and ask (sort of) if this is the train to Polonia. He gives me the “you foreign idiot” look with surprise and says no. (I find out later that there's an express train named Polonia, just like the town.) It's about quarter to 10 now. So I go to the ticket office, wait in line for a few minutes, jockeying with all the Poles who line up sideways, and get told to go downstairs to the other office (nothing is labeled in English). I do the same thing, waiting twenty minutes, and get told to go to the other window. I do and finally get a ticket agent who speaks some English, but I'm at the wrong window again. So I wait a few minutes in the other line, and kowtowing with my “I don't know any Polish, do you speak English?” in terrible Czech for the fourth time that morning I get to tell her with hand signals and a map what happened. She gives me the “idiot foreigner” look with a little bit of pity and eventually makes me understand that the next train to Brno goes through Ostrava and doesn't get there until 2:30. Great. So I wait for 4 hours, and at the appointed time on the right platform a train pulls in. There's no conductor so I end up pointing at the train and quizzing the passengers “Wien Sudbahnhof?” (Vienna – Main Station?). A kind Austrian family that's debarking says no that's where they're going. So we wait, and wait some more. The platform is filling up and people are beginning to look antsy. There's some announcements in Polish and one of the Austrians is able to pick 'late' out of it. There's some other Americans on the platform, and I eventually overhear a German sounding nun taking pity on them saying that the train has been delayed an hour. Great. So I wind up hanging out with Pete and Greg and Lynn, who'd each graduated just graduated from college. We all compared notes and talked about where we'd been around here. (Her – Southern Czech bike trip, Prague, and Kraków. The boys – Northern Czech Republic, Prague, Germany, Kraków, heading back to Czech Republic.) Was nice to hang out with some people my own age for a while. More hustle on the platform with 15 minutes to go, we gotta move to another one. When the train still hasn't shown up at the appointed hour, there's another announcement and it's back to the first platform. We keep waiting. A train pulls up under a ticker that says it's bound for a Polish town, but everyone jumps on so we Americans follow suit and are rewarded with our own compartment, something of a coup.

Pete and Greg are both from Baltimore and we know lots of places in common from my time at American. Lynn is from New York, went to Ann Arbor for dance, and Greg is a stage tech, so they actually knew some people and institutions too. We whiled a couple hours away playing cards and killing the last of a bottle of absinthe the boys had. Much merriment and relaxation. Lynn admitted that she doesn't trust herself or Europe enough to drink when traveling alone so she'd been sober for a month. The boys, in comparison, had been going through their digital cameras and finding pictures that neither one of them remembered taking. Unfortunately my stop was first and I had to jump off in a hurry.

My phone had enough juice for the arrive at midday trip I'd planned, but by 5:30 when I got to Ostrava it had totally run out and I had to sneak behind the soda machines to recharge and answer the 'Where the heck are you?' texts from Denis and Alissa. Had a minor heart attack when I looked at the non-daylight savings clock, telling me I'd have to wait until 8:30 for my next train, but fortunately the computerized signboard had the correct time and I only had to wait an hour for my train, which was quiet, unless you count the guy who came by four times asking for cigarettes. Looked like he stepped out of the '80's on Whidbey Island. Wrinkles acid washed into his jeans, a denim jacket, missing at least one tooth, greasy blond hair, and a weatherbeaten tan. But my train got there at 9, 14 hours on the road later, and Alissa met me to take the bag of her stuff I'd brought down. I went to the Boland Half-way House for English Speakers in Brno, proprietor Denis J. Smith. We went out for a couple drinks at Charlie's Hat (Chaplin, that is) and I crashed for a good 12 hours.

Kraków

Kraków is cool. I really like this town, despite its cranky old people and the fact that I was hit by a ketchup covered roll as soon as I stepped off the train. Damn kids. (Like most European languages, their w sounds like v to us, so the town name is actually said “crack-of.”)
The train trip up from Brno had two changes and was blissfully easy once Alissa taught me how to read the boards announcing arrivals and departures. We had a Northern Irish med student named Shane on our 2nd and 3rd legs, delightful fellow who's been doing some volunteer work on his summer break. Got to discuss the British taking the troops out with him. I love trains, they're great for people and for relaxing while watching the landscape. The vegetation and terrain looked like what you see out the window of the Boston – NYC trains lots of locust trees and shrubby green plants, but the buildings and people stuff were more like south Jersey or back road Pennsylvania, all weatherbeaten concrete and broken glass with graffiti.

We avoided the main train station and got off towards the outskirts of town. Things this far out feel kind of sprawling and disconnected. Big blocks of apartments shoot up out of the ground at somewhat regular intervals. They don't look particularly bad or old, I think most are newer, and they've even got pastel color schemes in a regulated, housing development kind of way. There are a few decaying low-rise structures and lots of fairly empty flat ground here. There are lots of medium sized trees and sometimes gardens or old houses taking up a whole block. There are old ramshackle traces of things that were, like funky fences and bad paving and plain aging concrete walls, right alongside signs of progress, parking lots and alleys with neatly placed factory made concrete paving stones, the nicely kept trolley ways with fences, trimmed trees, and flat even gravel that lead right into new construction.

The blue and white buses are roaring fumey affairs with doors that clatter open and closed like you'd lose a hand if it were in the way, bought second hand from Italy I'm told. Streets don't have a grid and can curve or juke sideways as they please, so you wind up with forking intersections and loops radiating from the town center. The old city walls have been removed, but there's a green park ring there now with the old town immediately inside. It's beautiful, having been recently renovated and revitalized. Most streets are closed to cars and paved with those factory stones so the streets are smooth. The buildings are old and authentic, some with plain fronts and others spouting little architectural flourishes like cherubs or scrollwork on supporting beams. There are throngs of people everywhere, luxuriating in the balmy cosmopolitan atmosphere. The stores vary from tourist trinkets to furniture boutiques to designer clothing stores with a healthy smattering of pubs and kebab stands and other restaurants. Then you get to the Rennik, the main market square. It's huge, easily four football fields put together, lined all around with café tables sheltering beneath umbrellas. The crowds thicken here, but they aren't claustrophobic. In the center, looking like an imposing castle with buttresses and sinuous arches holding up turrets and ramparts, is the Cloth Buying Hall, which is only about four stories but stretches most of the length of the square. A long passage takes up most of the fist floor where they sell tourist trinkets from stalls now. Alissa tells me that four years ago only one side of the square had café tables, things closed at three on the weekend, and you could barely find someone who spoke English. Today the beggars will speak to you in five languages and the Cloth Hall is hosting a wine tasting with live chamber music in the midst of the sellers hawking their wares at ten o'clock on Thursday.

There are innumerable themes and variations tucked away in odd corners. Cathedrals off the Little Renick, Roosters is the Polish version of Hooters, Tribecca Coffee is a highbrow Starbucks clone (with posters in English) that's hooked into the cool jazz café with cartoony and eclectic paintings on the walls. There are underground pubs where you can see an old man in a beige suit waiting at the top of the steps with a young woman and exchange a ticket for the money when her date arrives. Overpriced Irish pubs host the English speaking expats, while all the young foreigners flock to booming brightly colored dance clubs. Bars and dance halls fill converted apartments in what were originally burghers houses. There's a summery feel to the city and it's wonderful to bask in the glow of all this polyglot hum and self-satisfied capitalism, the locals and the tourists each happy with their end of the bargain.

Alissa showed me the English language bookstore near the university, Massolit. Tres cool. Would be a modest but high quality place at home, but here it's like a treasure trove. Comparably priced, too. Lots of the prices are the same in absolute terms as the bookstores back home. Alissa mentioned that books are subject to the Value Added Tax in the EU, which I don't really understand, but in many instances works out to something like 20% of sticker price. But it's a cool place. They have American style brownies and a few tables and copies of the Atlantic, the New York Review of Books, some other English screeds, and a gigantic stack of old copies of the Onion.

The oldest university in Europe is Charles University in Prague. The second is Jagiellonian University in Kraków. Alissa tells me that Charles was founded as or quickly became a forward thinking/heretic-friendly institution while Jagiellonian is the reactionary version and has traditionally been something of a wellspring or shelter for conservative thought. Much like Poland itself, I guess.

Saw the Simpsons movie while I was here. In English, with Polish subtitles, a very odd experience. The average age of the audience was something like 20, and they got most of the language jokes, but a lot of the visual puns missed them. Homer bouncing back and forth between a large rock and a bar called “The Hard Place” was a non-starter. And when they went through Seattle by train in the movie, I thought it was Toronto. Good fun though, well worth watching.

Back in Czech Republic.

Hi guys! I realize that I've been out of touch for awhile, sorry. Short version of everything: finished the course, graduated if you will, spent a week in Poland, looking for work and hanging out, now back in Brno. Job prospects are still on the horizon. People here can take a month off in August and most managerial types seem to. Still waiting on lots of responses. Staying with Denis in Brno. Not sure what happens next.