All That Is Solid Melts Into Air....

...to steal a title from Zach, that (I think) he took from Marx.

So, for those of you who haven't been following the roommate drama, let me catch you up: I'm sharing a flat with Cynthia, a Brazilian girl who isn't exactly conversational in English, and Ahmed, a Tunisian nutjob. Our landlord, Jiri is a Czech obstetrician who lives downstairs, but our rental contract is ACTUALLY with Cynthia's absent husband, Jarrik, who has the true contact with Jiři. Technically even Cynthia is subletting. Still with me? Even if you are, you may not be in a moment.

Due to some personality conflict BS, money problems, landlord not doing what he said he would, and a general desire not to be there on Cynthia's part, Jarrik told Jiři that he would be dissolving the contract. The governing clause in the contract states that notice must be given 2 months prior to departure, starting from the 1st of the month following the month in which the tenant gives notice. Therefore, Jarrik's Oct. 26th notice means that the count starts on Nov. 1st, which means that the contract officially dissolves on the 31st of December.

I found out about this the same day, thanks to a chance encounter with Jiři. I texted Jarrik, simply saying I needed to talk and what would be a good time to call. No response. Ahmed didn't know thing one. Jiři was rather surprised that we didn't know. Sunday morning, after several attempts to contact Jarrik, some of which Cynthia answered, we got an email from him. Very simple text stating that the contract would soon be ending, that everything would proceed as normal until then, and then Ahmed and I could renegotiate with Jiři if we so desired. No explanation, no reasoning, nada. Ahmed and I both were more than a little upset with his communication techniques, regardless of the fucking outcome.

Several factors are running through my mind at this point: I don't enjoy living with Ahmed, he's a pain and he tires me out. He pulls lots of shenanigans of the unfunny variety. I don't like Jiři, he's congenial but lazy and doesn't do what he says he will. I don't like the apartment enough to deal with either of those factors for much longer. Ahmed has made noises about solidarity and loyalty. (Does not hold water, despite the occasional twinge of guilt my thoughts are inspiring.)

I get to work on Monday and find out several more relevant factors: Maria & Gray have had lots of problems and Gray is moving out to find a place of her own. (Gray is just as crazy as Ahmed, albeit in a different manner. Not even thinking of moving in with her.) Emma is moving in with Maria because the landlord has told the school that he wants Emma & Kat out of the flat that had been rented for them. The school's plan was to move Emma & Kat into a crappy apartment on the edge of town that, rightfully, neither of them wants. Kat is attempting to move in with a guy we all know named Garith. There is much social twittering and upheaval, as well. I confided some qualms about ditching Ahmed to Brian, who quickly put the matter to rest by counter-confiding that he'd been really creeped out by Ahmed after a five minute conversation in a crowded bar.

Current thinking: I have already paid November's rent and I'll have to pay December's by the 15th of the month. My deposit on the apartment is one month's share of rent plus 1000 crowns (the plus equals several hours wages and odds are good that it will be eaten by misc. fees like Internet and adjusted utility payments). If I can get a place with Kat and Garith I'm contemplating pulling a disappearing act with all my possessions and just moving in with them, provided I can do it prior to paying December rent. Peace of mind and lesser level of bullshit seem worth the potential hit to karma points. I don't feel any particular loyalty to anyone involved in my living situation.

Authenticity

It's been a pretty good week. Several quickly prepared lessons went off rather well, as did some planned ones that I wasn't so sure about. It's still tiring and time-consuming and frustrating, but it's getting easier and I'm starting to really like some of my students. Plus I'm getting to the point where sometimes they recharge me and I actually leave a lesson feeling happier and more energetic than when I went in. This feels good.

It's been quite the international fun fest of activities lately. Last Saturday I watched the Ukraine-Scotland qualifying match for the championships with a bunch of the other teachers and Scots and Irish in a pub called Henry VIII. Wednesday it was the Czech Republic vs. Germany with a Dutch guy, Andre from Louisiana, Lilly-Anne, and a couple Czechs. CR scored a total coup with a final tally of 3-0. The crowd went nuts. Lilly-Anne moaned and nursed her beer 'cuz Scotland had just been knocked out, 2-0, by GEORGIA. That's like the Cubs trouncing the Yankees.

Friday I hung out with a bunch of teachers from school and a bunch of IBMers in a Greek place. Nationality roll call: 2 Bulgarians, 1 Tunisian (roommate), 1 Welshman, 1 Russo-Amer-Israeli, 2 standard Czechs, moi, 1 Greek-aligned Czech, and 1 Greek-aligned English girl. Was fun, lots of laughter, eventually a couple of Greek dancing lessons.

Last night I had a very Authentic Experience. Ahmed, Chris, and I had been out for coffee and dinner when we wound up at Desert. It's literally a hole in the ground, walking down into a basement bar, which you go further down into to sit at a table. Very cool, college bar atmosphere. It was 10ish and there was a Scot/Irish birthday party going on, but they'd sequestered themselves in the back and were already pretty cross-eyed. Wound up with Anthony from Australia and his friend Phil. They went to high school together, but Phil is Czech and his family left when he was a kid. Upshot is that he has a Czech birth certificate and has to get a visa to teach English 80 kilometers from where he was born. Was cool, there aren't too many people I can hang with who feel like people I would know back home. Anthony and Phil do. We played foosball, Anthony and I kicked tail three games in a row. (A first for me.) Went back to where we were, wedged into a large corner table sort of overlapping this group of Czechs who'd spread out from a 2 seater next door. Not very communicative types either. At about 1:30 Anthony & Phil caught the bus, leaving Chris, me, and Ahmed. Some Viking proportioned Czech hipster girl showed a few minutes later, started talking to Chris and I mentally titled her “The World's Most Stoned Human Being.” Was amusing for about 5 minutes and it took her another 5 minutes to muddle through a conversation and decide she needed a pipe.

An aside here: I really like Chris (real name: Krzysztof). He's about 28, very quiet and thinks before he speaks. He's a project manager for IBM, a couple rungs higher than Ahmed and most of the others I know. Goes out sometimes, stays in others, is often the only sober one b/c he has to drive home (another anomalous quality). He's got a very good vibe, which it took me a while to catch onto. I mean he's obviously a very good boy in some ways and disapproves of some things his friends do, but he's very non-judgmental and can be really funny and intense when you finally get him speaking. Plus he was a long-haired stoner about 10 years ago, while he's a somewhat suave clean-looking office type now. This deviation will be slightly important in a few moments.

About this point someone decided to start talking to the Czechs who'd been there all night and who finally seemed enthused about talking back. However, they understood only a little English and our Czech was, collectively, even smaller. So we pidgined for a couple minutes and were laughing at each other whenever someone tried a whole sentence. Then this blond-dreaded kefiyah wearing Czech girl named Hana showed up and her English was pretty good. So an actual conversation started where we all introduced ourselves and learned what people did. There was English speaking Hana, who's some sort of flunking education major. Alishka, who's a ?travel agent? A couple who we'd been referring to as Hollywood and Longhair all night. Hana the other teaching major, who the boys had collectively admired from across the way. A guy who worked at the bar.

The great thing about being an English speaker is that most everyone knows some, even if they think they don't, especially young people. Once someone who can translate shows up, everyone starts to gabble back and forth, sometimes speaking directly, sometimes using the intermediary, sometimes just checking and referencing to find the right language. You get to hear everything at least twice. And everyone is saying silly things, so nobody else cares about looking stupid, which they did 5 minutes ago. Add some normal hormones plus a few beers and you have yourselves a party. Which we did. We shut down Desert and wandered over to a place sort of called 'Blue' below my school.

It was great, we were all pretty toasted or getting there fast and everyone was in that happy-fun place. So there was much discussion of differences between Czech life and American life and lots of how-what-who talk that meandered between actual discussion and explanation needed for something that was just said. Hana 2 was very cutely tipsy and obviously eying Chris. A nice bartender and one of the barbacks from Desert joined after a little. Eventually we decided we had to go, but not before getting invited to Hana1's birthday next week and Hana2's phone number for Chris. I'm occasionally embarrassed to be seen in public with Ahmed, but he does make me look good by comparison. Chris, however, has a very good people vibe and I was glad that he'd decided to stick around rather than go home and study like he'd threatened to earlier.

In all it was probably the most satisfying, unstructured, random, and 'real' feeling experience I've had with the people who actually live here. Despite not waking up 'til early afternoon, having thunderous beer farts, and smelling like cigarettes mixed with mold, I'm rather cheery this afternoon.

This is picture heavy.

St. Stephan's is very impressive. There's awesome stained glass and two giant organs. (the kind with keyboards even!)


This palace was once home to the Austro-Hungarian Emperors.


The streets all look like this. Very clean and quite historic.


We all wanted to live in one of these places.


Imagine five acres of food vendors from all over the world. Piles of mushrooms bigger than your fist, Middle Eastern delicacies, fresh spices, local wines. It's awesome.



Next door there's a flea market of comparable size. Even gramma's gramophone is for sale here. There were people who specialized in furs, photos, small steel instruments, and all the normal who knows what they'll have types.


Cat-Brian-me-Emma. Tim took the picture.


Cat takes nice pictures provided you sneak up on her. In other words, 'Park!'


This is a church. It has a giant reflecting pool on the other side of those palms.


This is the Reisenrad. Those boxes are about 20 feet long.


Vienna looking east.


And we finish with Vienna to the west.

While life yet remains in these fingers.....

...... I will drink beer and occasionally type. Huzzah! Another school week down. This makes nearly three full weeks and I guess about that long since I've updated ye olde blog.

Short synopsis (pun intended): Teaching classes is both remarkably easy and freakishly difficult. I can spend hours staring at a set of two or three pages asking myself how to teach it, throw something together in less than an hour, hoping and praying that it doesn't blow up in my face, and have my heart pounding the whole way through. On the other hand I have different classes where I basically show up, chat, help them with some grammar and vocabulary, then make them do a worksheet and call it a day. Mind you I often do both of these styles in one day. The difference is often dependent, somewhat surprisingly, on which textbook I'm using. A well crafted, or at least highly modular, text can make a lesson breezy, while a tightly intertwined piece of garbage means that I have to recreate everything in the lesson in a different form that actually encourages student learning as opposed to “slot A into tab B” grammarianism.

The other teachers are great. The Directors of Studies are Pamela (in-school courses, Chicagoan) and Pavla (companies, Czech). There's a “loud, short, crazy Scottish woman” named Lily-Anne who's teaching a Business English Teachers' course and constitutes the majority of the smokers' klatch. Cynthia, of serendipitous Seattle connection, Joe (cool), and Chris (quiet, Czech wife who speaks like a Minnesotan) are the only other Americans. There's old Nick from England, also Tim, Emma, Maria, and Charles repping the Isles. Cat is from Ireland but has spent something like the length of time I've been alive teaching in China, Portugal, and who knows where. Brian is, likewise, English, but spent a fair amount of time in Japan. Anthony is from Australia. Gray is from Israel. Except for Cynthia, Nick, and Charles everyone is younger or acts it well enough that I had to think about it. Pretty fun, varied from nerdy to partying, everyone down to have a good time. With a few notable exceptions the Czech teachers are cool, but tend to keep more to themselves, I think partly because of language.

I went to Vienna the other weekend with Tim, Cat, Brian, and Emma. We had a three day weekend for St. Wencelas day so we decided to take a quickie down south. Got up far too early in the morning, 5:00, to catch a 7:00 bus that took a little over two hours in the craziest downpour that I've seen since I got here. Very cushy, I recommend Student Agency to anyone. Arrival in Vienna required Euro bank withdrawals (we got to look at all the pretty money) and some planning as the rain let up. We toured St. Stephan's cathedral, which is totally awe inspiring. Wandered round the outside of the Imperial Palace, former Austro-Hungarian Empire dontcha know. Saw the Leopold Museum, mostly Egon Schiele and Klimt with many of their Austrian contemporaries, I recommend Kolomon Moser. Very cool stuff, some of them were smoking opium or drinking absinthe or something. There were some definite psychedelic paintings after 1910. Went to the hostel, round the corner for goulash, napped some. Went out to see old town and get coffee. Ended the night at funky little 'jazz' cafe (no performers, just classics and bohemian music on the stereo) with dark Pollack stuff on the walls and aging hippies working bar. Tumbled into bed, had splendid breakfast in hostel. Went to the food market, which was like a football field sized Pikes Place, where everyone has a permanent structure to sell from. Very exotic and worldly. Right next door was the Vienna flea market, bigger than the food. Had brunch and coffee at a chill place with a big deck. Laid in the sun for an hour in a park on the river. Walked up to a giant ferris wheel that predates WWII, got an awesome view of the city, then hoped a bus back to Brno. Photos and details coming soon.

Note: I'd always wanted to smack those people who prattle about “X City” in Europe, but there is an incredible vibe to Vienna that I can't really describe. It definitely has a lot going for it. I like it better than Paris, I think. So yeah, no inspired prattling, but I dig, man. I dig.