Things I won't be seeing anymore

It's beginning to dawn on me that I don't really have anytime left here. That soon I won't be just wandering through this every day.

There once was a house in Petrov.

Just down the way from my place, towards the Foreign Police, there's a place where a house once stood. It's nothing now, but there are a couple things there.

Pride of the 'hood, give it a name.


"Bicycle races are headed your way, so get ready for those beauties, oh yeah...."

Ye Olde Stadium

FC Brno was once the city's well-respected football team. Brno still has a football team, but it's not really that respected. Really, I went to a match and thought, "If I'd grown up in Europe I would've had a shot a being a pro football player." Yeah, they're not that great. What remains from the halcyon days of Brno football is the stadium. Disused and fallen into disrepair, here it is.


I'm told that once upon a time thousands of fans would pack the place screaming and chanting and stomping. It would've been glorious. The last match there was 7 years ago. When I first saw it last fall there were trees taller than me growing in the stands. When I got there early this year someone had been out with a chipper to get rid of the biggest shrubbery. Rumor has it that it's going to be torn down and replaced with a new one. There are stirrings of anger about that in some quarters of the city. It is still a beloved place. After all, it's still got a bit of magic left in it.

Shiva & Friends

This is at the Pekarska tram stop where I live. The black and white shape is actually a map of central Brno. The main station is at the bottom. The two open spaces are Zelný trh and náměstí Svobody. Click for detail.

Lineup for Fishes

This is a section from a legal wall that supports a tram overpass. I'm not too handy with the Photoshoppery, so there are a few goofs.



I particularly like the red-pink-red section on the left. Click this for a download of detailed/actual size. Warning: it's about 5 mb.

Love your friends.

I laughed hard when I saw this, it made me think of the Swamp House. Wheat-pasted paper, under a bridge on the west side of town. It's about 2 meters x 4 meters. Links here, which is why I found Divide & Kreate, who is awesome. One of my fav's is TNT the Pain Away, an AC/DC + Peaches mashup.

Petrov at sunset.

This is the backside of the Petrov Cathedral, taken from just below Špilberk Castle at sunset. I live below that park.

Bigg Boss

This is a quickie, cuz it's a busy day here. (Woo to three lessons and a meeting and doing tomorrow's work with today's.)

This guy showed up on a tram. Haven't seen anything else quite like it around town (and there are a lot more, which you will soon be seeing). It's da Bigg Boss!

Kobližná Street

Daytime hustle and bustle.
Brno nightlife.

This is the street that I walk up and down between my school and nam. Svobody every day. Mapped

Anti human zone!!

This is one of my favorite pieces here in Brno. It's a piece of plywood glued to the wall. And it's outside one of the ubiquitous sex shops.

Cool building at Masná

I go by this building several times a week. I get off the tram here to go to a company where I have four different classes. It's on the south east side of the city, on Cejl Street. The tram stop is Masná.

Mandragora

Křenová 10, Mapped
Tel.: 608 632 436
M-F 1pm -?Midnight?
Sa 4pm - ?Midnight?
www.putykamandragora.info

Beer: Svijany (ležák 11, speciální 13, tmavé speciální 13 [dark], and Kvasničák nefiltrované 13) @ 21-25 kc.

Feel: This place is on the border of what passes for a 'bad neighborhood' here. (Brown-skinned people be here!) The place is very low key, and somewhat plain, but there is leather furniture to chill in near the bar. The staff and clientèle are younger and/or grungier than most of Brno that I frequent (closer to Seattle average). Seems to be a music place, too. There's a raised section at the end of the hall and concert photos march around the room. A bit loud and a bit smoky on a normal Saturday.


Pros: Good selection of quality Svijany (mind the tall-glassed nefiltrované, it packs a punch). There's a small selection of cold bar snacks, including some blue-ish cheese and utopenec (sausage drowned in vinegar and raw onions). The staff is friendly, remarkably efficient (read: western-style service) and will quickly find someone to speak English with you. Foosball and micro-foos (see last picture). Decent website (no English, but clear layout).

Cons: A bit on the spartan side, dogs do run about, and headed towards a sketchy 'hood.



Overall: Good for just hanging out with nice beer and chill people. Great prices.

Directions: From hlavní nádraží - walk down and to the right, under the bridge, and straight across the street. Pub is 15 meters ahead on the right. By tram - take the 8, 10, 13 to Vlkhá and walk towards hlavní nádraží. Pub is about 15 meters ahead on the left.

Mini-foos!

The House of the Four Idiots

Mapped
This is a building on námĕstí Svobody that is known as The House of the Four Idiots, Dům u čtyř mamlasů in Czech. It was built for one “of Brno's richest nineteenth-century Jewish industrialists.” p358, The Rough Guide to the Czech & Slovak Republics

Now it's just one of a warren of commercial buildings, like everything else on náměstí Svobody.

I am become Shiva, Destroyer of Worlds

This is taken just a few steps from my school. They're unusual, even for Brno's surprisingly vibrant little street art scene. They're ceramic tile and not the only ones out there...

With apologies to my adoring public...

Sorry for the unexplained and significant hiatus. Life was rough for awhile there and I didn't really have time/energy/focus enough to keep the blog going. I've told one or two of you that I don't really like short posts mixed in with giant ones (like I tend to have), but we've found a loophole: photos. I've finally gotten a decent camera here (Thanks, Mom & Dad!), so I can now document the wondrous, glorious, banal existence that is life in Brno. Expect lots of old buildings and graffiti. I've also decided to start reviewing some of the bars/pubs that I find myself frequenting, as well as the beer that is served there. I think we can expect at least one review, one graffiti, and one old building per week. Probably an actual written post as well, but no promises.

To those of you who wrote encouraging me to keep going, thank you. Especially, those of you that I haven't written back to yet.

I finally got a new house. It's part of a shared flat on Kopečna street, just downhill from the Cathedral. I'm in Stare Brno, i.e. Old Brno, the most ancient part of town. This puts me a five minute walk from the main train station and a fifteen minute walk from work, because I have to climb up and over.

This is the view from my front door.

This is taken from the top of those steps in the first picture. Yes, that is a sculpture on the grass roof, which tops my landlords' apartment. My window is the one on the left with the bars.

this is four pages.....just so you know

I did not get out of the city this weekend. I did have an adventure of a different sort. If, as Joe says, 'the whole family has their eyes on what you're doing,' this may not be the best thing for me to post and all of you to read. But it was fun. And I prefer to be truthful.....

=========

I'm sitting down to write this at 3:30 in the afternoon. I am very, very drunk. I'm not saying this because I'm falling over or ill or incoherent. It's a statement of fact. I stopped drinking roughly twelve hours ago. Since then I came home, I wisely decided to brush my teeth, and then I slept for nine hours. When I woke up my first thought was, “Mmmmm. That was a nice sleep.” As I rolled over, my second thought was “Whoa-! I am still completely drunk!” I got up and discovered that I am perfectly fine, could walk a straight line, just totally unable to operate motor vehicles or heavy machinery.

The reason for this debauched state is my TEFL instructor Denis [den-y], not as an assignment of blame or him pouring alcohol down my throat, but he was the one who had a bright idea to have the TEFLer happy hour. We finished early-ish on Friday. Veronica had to leave because the farmhouse she lives in is somewhere around the backside of nowhere in direction of Praha. Mark was thinking of going, but his wife got out of woke early and is soon to return to Britain, so he left for dinner with her. That left Denis and me. Let me emphasize this: there was a 6 foot, 220 pound, Ukrainian man who spent years in the army and many more in Eastern Europe and short, skinny, “I haven't drunk more than one beer at a time for more than a month” me.

First stop is a pawn shop around the corner from school. He says “Hey I've been wanting to check this place out,” and we duck into this little shop. From the outside it kinda looks like it sells shiny, flashy, loud things for cars. But inside it looks like a very clean, under-supplied fence operation. There's a few stereos, some other electronics, a bunch of cell phones, some frou-frou Halmark-style crap in glass cases, and then the consumables. Lots of stuff has been falling off the back of the truck on the way to the drug store. Lots of American brands of deodorant, shaving cream, soap, and other things of that nature were taking up several full shelves. Expensive car wheels line the cabinet tops. Very odd looking, but it's the cheapest I've seen any phone since I got here, so I'll probably go back.

We wander down the main drag to Svoboda [Freedom] Square. It'ss a nice afternoon after a cool week with lots of rain, there are lots of people around: school kids, families, tourists, couples. Doesn't feel crowded though. There are some really incredible old buildings around, some a few that've been restored, others that are shedding their outer layers of paint and white wash like bad stucco. There are some egregiously modern elements, the McDonald's in one corner, the Omega building that's composed of giant glass blocks that stick out or hang back from the front of the building. Everything is jammed right up against everything else, so it always feels sort of busy. There are benches and cafe tables with umbrellas scattered around the edges of the square. We made for the Italian place run by some Croatians at the south end of the square. According to Denis it's best to just avoid local food completely. From my lunches around school, I see the sense in this. Czech food really is fairly simple and not too creative. Calzone for him, lasagna for me, and some ice cream afterwards.

Pilsner Urquell really does deserve its reputation. It's a lighter beer that they bring to you by the half liter, toped with a thick, creamy head and just as golden and not quite clear as those back-lit beer commercials at home make you think beer ought to be. It's very smooth, feeling pretty light on the tongue, with some hops in the aftertaste. Around the fourth one I was told that it's also a 10 or 12 percent beer, two or three times stronger than the standard commercial fare back home. I was shocked. The reason I even asked about the subject in the first place was that I was feeling remarkably little 'buzz' like I ought to after a liter and a half, I was just very relaxed. Starobrno is the local version, Pilsner being from further north. I don't like it as much, it's more bitter, but the Czechs really do deserve their reputation as brewmasters.

Christoph and Ahmet showed up after awhile. Christoph is Polish, but he and Denis have some friend in common back in the Ukraine. Ahmet is from Tunisia. He's rather typical of the young Arabs I've met (all men, by the way): on the surface very self-confident, especially with regards to a professed past full of women and partying, underneath more insecure and maybe less experienced than he'd lead you to believe. Very friendly and talkative, opinionated, and in Ahmet's case, completely on the make. I took to calling him 'Horndog' before the night was out. Both Ahmet and Chris work for IBM and have been here less than two months. Ahmet was quick to tell me that I could easily work for IBM just being an English speaker of reasonable intelligence, no Czech or computer background required. I said that sounded sort of insane and he chuckled while telling me that they had people in the 'French division' that could only say “Bonjour. Comme ce va?” It was getting quite dark and another IBMer was due to arrive soon, so we wandered to meet him. He's a Bulgarian named Greorgi (gree-or-ge).

We find a bar/cafe that's open for the next hour, until midnight. I liked Greorgi the most of all the people I met that night. His English is quite good, especially in terms of the normal difficulties Slavic speakers tend to have (not using articles, lousy use of plurals), even though he doesn't seem to think so. Maybe he does have some difficulties, but he had the most natural usage and could tell stories with out those weird pauses or stretched out pronunciations that happen when people speak in languages that they didn't grow up with. He told me that he was supposed to come to the States for school, but 9-11 happened and he went to Germany instead. At one point we were talking about the presence of Mexicans at home and the sorts of jobs they normally have and he told me that he lived that sort of life in Germany. Even though he was there legally as a full-time student, he could only get a few small scholarships. The remaining cost was something like four times what his parents made for an entire year in Bulgaria. He knew how to wash dishes. He also chain smokes Galiouse cigarettes (I don't think I spelled that right.)

At midnight we head to the Livingstone. One thing Europe has figured out how to do is integrate their clubs and discos with normal commercial and living spaces. I suppose it helps that most of them are buried in basements or in mall-style buildings with three foot concrete walls, but you never know there's a club there until you see the sign or someone entering/exiting. There are no lights leaking on to the street, no loud music as the door opens, no obnoxious people obviously going in or out. The streets usually feel empty, but when you walk inside, it's packed. They tell me the Livingstone is a college bar (between Masaryk U. and a few other schools there are probably 70,000 students here during the year) and it does feel that way. Pretty dark, but brighter yellow lights where there are some. There's a tiny dance floor to the left as you walk in. Strike that. Every dance floor I've seen over here is cramped and small by American standards, so it was a dance floor. It's loud and young is a very casual manner. More foreigners than usual, too. Probably the most t-shirt & jeans types I've seen since I got here. I'm not counting the ones that are obviously straight off the rack at designer boutiques, but thinking of the relaxed and not putting on plumage variety of people here. The soundtrack is mostly popular American rock from the late '90's. Greenday, Rage Against The Machine, and Cypress Hill were all there, interspersed with some European stuff that also seemed to be in the same 'popular and older' vein. We grab a table in the side-room. There are beat-up wooden tables with no finish or they're merely so old it doesn't make any difference. The seats in this corner are all wooden and faux-African folk art. Denis sits in my favorite: a cupped hand with tapered fingers in dark stain. There's some debate, but Denis and Greorgi disappear and return with a full bottle of Absolut vodka, a can of Redbull, a pint carton of OJ, and some glasses. Good times continue to roll. Ahmet is vacillating between gregarious and being moody over some ex who's sent him a text message. When he's feeling funny he's telling everyone that he's Israeli. Seems to be some kind of running gag. Chris has rolled his eyes at it a couple times and is rather quiet otherwise. After somebody's trip to the dance floor they return with Bruno.

Bruno is from Yakima or somewhere thereabouts. Went to UPS for school and has been out here doing TEFL for the last year and some. Says he works for a school called TLC and that they could definitely hook me up with a job. I think more job offers should be made while partying. Somewhere around here RATM's “Now Ya Do What They Told Ya!” comes on and I feel the need to jump around and throw my hands in the air on the dance floor. It's very funny to me, the Europeans treat everything as dance music of mild intensity. Russian pop-electronica, punk rock, whatever, they're all just kinda out there moving a little to the beat. I think the thrashing Americans that showed up for the Rage song weirded a few of them out.

A few of the guys are sitting with Bruno and his friends against the near wall when I get back. There's a tall, skinny, dark haired guy sitting alone at our table. I wind up talking to him. He calls himself Patrick and says he's Iranian. I have trouble hearing this and ask “Persian?” to confirm it. He's delighted, with intensely emotional eyes and sort of quavery aspect about him. I ask him if his name's really Patrick and he says no, it's Payirm. That's not really it, but it started with a P, also having a Y and an M. It's not hard to say but it's hard to remember, I've forgotten it by the time he leaves two minutes later, saying something about a girl. Bruno has about ten people at his table, I meet Paully, a Brit, and Lenka, who also speaks English, and 'Harry,' who doesn't. He does, however, smile and nod while not saying anything. I address several comments to him before Bruno clues me in to his lingual status.

The bottle of vodka has been killed. The decision is made that it's time to leave as one of the boys grabs me and we head for the exit. Ahmet has been drinking fast. He'd caught up with Denis and I before we left the square. Most of us are through the door before the bouncers stop Ahmet, who is still drinking from a screwdriver. He says 'ok, ok' and goes to pound the rest of his drink. The bouncers aren't happy but don't seem to mind until he takes one step down. (There are people piling up behind us and I think he didn't want to block traffic.) The bouncer nearest him grabs the glass from his mouth. He tries to follow it, gets off balance, and the other bouncer firmly seats him on the step. As he begins to protest we hustle him into the street.

The following scene is a circus of typical nature. We get Ahmet about half a block before he realizes that he really needs to go back and either tell the bouncers off or finish his drink. I can't tell which and he frustratedly tells us that he cannot explain it in English. There is something said that's stereotypically whining and chest-beating with an Arabic accent. Greorgi and I are the ones in his face while Chris hangs back and Denis brings up the rear with a very serious look on his face. Ahmet breaks left and makes a run towards the bar. I run after him, he jets past Denis, who's feet slip out from under him. After five seconds Ahmet decides that maybe he doesn't want to go back to the bar and faces us, the crowd pounding pel-mel down on top of him. We propel him to the square in the following hubbub. There are more protestations and frustrations and Ahmet is entreated to lead us to a place called Mandarin. He does, but the bouncer can either see he's too drunk or just doesn't like the Arab look, so we can't get in. This sets of a further wave of frustration and recrimination. Greorgi and I try to speak sense with him but he argues everything. Doesn't want to find another bar, doesn't want to walk home, doesn't want to get a taxi. Doesn't like the way he's being treated or talked to. All of a sudden he throws up his hands, walks to a taxi that's sitting at the corner, climbs in and leaves. Greorgi's a little upset, but I'm glad to see him gone and Chris seems to feel a little relieved too.

I enjoy drinking with Chicagoans. It doesn't matter how old they are or what level of Chicago accent they have under normal circumstances. When they get altered they revert to whatever they sound like at home. And it's hysterical. Denis takes Greorgi to task for still thinking he needs to do something. Denis sounds like a cross between a wise-guy and a weasel. “Let 'im go, hee not 'ere, den he's not har problum.” This goes on for about two minutes. I can't even begin to imitate this in my own voice.

The Mandarin is every clichéd European club from the movies. There's a bar upstairs with high vaulted ceilings, down a creepy set of grimy tile steps is what was probably a wine cellar. It's still bare stone and concrete, but now there are little raised daises and a long plexiglass bar that looks it ought to light up. The light is red and dim and doesn't seem to come from anywhere in particular. The people inside are all dressed in clothes that are probably very expensive but just look trashy. There are shaved heads, gold chains, and attitude galore. The soundtrack is loud, electronic, and occasionally there's singing, not in English. Greorgi and Christoph fit right in. I've got long hair, wear glasses, and the wrong clothes. Denis is the best. He's pale, has a shaved head, and is kind of chubby. He's wearing cargo shorts and a Hawaiian shirt. He also dances with the very loud attitude of “I do not give one single flying fuck about what you think of me.” We're there for a while. It's too loud to talk and there's nobody I'd really care to meet. Dancing and drinking are about all that's on the menu. We leave the place, less crowded, but still in full swing, a little before five in the morning.

I grab the first tram heading towards my house. Having been up since about six am the day before and drinking more than I have since I don't know when, I nod off. I wake up near the outskirts of the city. I realize this because I look up and the hills are right on top of me and I don't recognize the street at all. I hop off and catch one headed back in a few minutes later. It's a different line this far out and goes back in a different direction. I wind up back at the train station, about five blocks from Mandarin, at roughly 6 o'clock. I get on the number 6 headed the right direction. I wake up to someone yelling at me in Czech. He's probably been yelling at me for a couple minutes because he seems irritated. I blink at him and realize he's the driver (the only reason I can tell is that he's stepped out of the compartment at the front of the tram) and this seems to be the end of the line. Even if I ever get Czech down as a language I'm going to have a hard time with the emotional nuances. Even anger sounds very different here. I got out, went to the other side of the street and caught the next line back in. The sun is fully up by now. Rather irritated with myself for falling asleep twice and getting a cramp in my neck, I resolve not to do it again. The tram crosses the right line near the main park downtown, so I get off there and get on the next one in the right direction. It's Saturday, but there are still a lot of people on the move. Some of them are old, some young, but I don't see anyone else in my condition. I yawn and get off at my stop, trudging home. I brush my teeth, grab some water and hit the sack.

I'm here. Feeling pretty well, but not really looking forward to sobering up. At least I'm not hung over.

skool daze (try and fit yer heads around that you vowelless slavic speakers!)

School has started and will finish at the end of the month. We'll see what happens from there. Sorry I haven't written more and to more of you directly, but I get just a sliver of internet access at school (dial-up shared between 3 people on lunch/midday breaks), so you get these big scattershot messages. Will attempt to get individual missives going, no promises. Howevah!, if you write me I will write you.

School is.....strange. There's only three of us: me, Mark, and Veronica (Ronnie). He's a late 30's/early 40's Lononder who's nervous and friendly. She's an older, very quiet reform school teacher from Australia/South Africa. They both have Czech significant others that they're living with here and are looking for a quick entre into local employment. Neither of them speak much, if any, Czech despite being in the country for at least 6 months. We're together for 8-10 hours a day, going over the basic structures of the English language and the best ways to teach it from the ground up. We're using the Direct Communicative method if that means anything to all of you. Basically, more talking and use, less formal grammar and writing. Can be highly frustrating to try and drop all the words and phrases of any complexity from your vocabulary. It's all still sort of a mish-mash, learning different bits of different grammar points, technique, and switching between idiot-simple English and more technical jargon as we demonstrate then break down different things. (Aside: phrasal verbs are the spice of language. Without things like break down, speed up, and knock out, which we are not allowed to use, you sound very sterile.) We've observed 4 different classes of Czechs and those poor sops get to have us teach them things on a rotating basis for the next month. We're being eased into it these first two weeks, then it's trial by fire (<---another phrase I can't use.)

We have two teachers for the being a teacher part of classes: Alissa and Denis (den-e, not den-nis). Technically she's from Iowa, but she's spent so much time in Europe teaching this stuff (she's defending her M.A. thesis this week, in Poland) that she sounds like a well traveled Brit and has lost touch with the colloquial part of the language. Very pleasant and knowledgable, but spacey and disorganized. Denis is a very good teacher, quite willing to expose you to the tough stuff, let you thrash, and then give you the specific tools to get through it. He's ex-Army, a Chicago southsider, and the son of Ukranian immigrants. Speaks Ukranian, Russian, Polish, and enough Czech. A funny guy, large and loud, somewhat conservative, but I haven't figured out if he's just angry or from the Rush Limbaugh crowd. He's been doing this for seven years and has quite a few stories to illustrate things with. I'm glad he does most of the teaching. There are three Czech staff at the school. Marcela (martz-ela), the secretary, Magda, who picked me up, is also the marketing director, and there's Regina (hard g there), the director who will be teaching us Czech from now on. The bulk of the school and its classified-type staff are in China. One of our reference texts was printed over there and has an entire introduction in Chinese. We're not the only outfit here in Brno, I've wandered by the Berlitz Academy and one or two other places. All sorts of posters around for English classes. That bodes well for job prospects. I think.

I mentioned in my last post that Brno was sleepy. I'm willing to confirm that and emphasize it. There are all the basics, actually more of them, cuz it's a walking scale city. You can go anywhere and run into a corner grocery, a tobacco/booze stand, or a newsagent. Also full of herna bars, which are gambling dens, slots mostly, open 24-7. There's at least one on every block towards the center of town. However, there's a distinct lack of night ANYTHING. Even the bar culture seems pretty minimal, especially for the country with the highest per capita beer consumption on Earth. Nearly nothing is open after six or seven, and when I asked Magda (a native of the city) about nightlife she had to search her head for anywhere to go, only coming up with a singular ubiquitous disotheque meatmarket. The guidebooks I've got with me are hopeful, so we'll see if I can scare anything up tonight.

The time change is still messing with me. From Seattle to the end of Paris I slept a few hours, was awake for a while, slept a few more, and repeated. The 10 hour days at school keep me from napping and getting back on schedule. Was so tired on Thursday that I fell asleep at 6 when we got off early. The Czechs have two days off for 1) the celebration of the coming of Christianity to the Czech Lands, and 2) something to do with Jan Hus, hint: think Hussites. I woke up at midnight on Thurs. Couldn't go back to sleep until 8 am then I slept until 7:30. Of course I was awake most of the night after that. Still working on this normal schedule thing. The really painful thing is that I have lived the entire week on instant coffee. You can get espresso in some places and there are chi-chi coffee spots downtown, but none of the small markets sell anything but powdered crud. It is miserable stuff because it's either not strong enough to do anything or makes you want to puke, both during and after drinking. You guys at TJ's know I'm not picky about my coffee, but damn, real beans are at the top of my list for shopping today. Food in general is decent but plain, mostly of the carbs meat cheese variety. I ordered a 'salad with chicken' the other day (off the english menu, which I was surprised to find). There were tomato wedges and bell peppers in it, good start, yes? The rest of the salad was cold pasta and a light cream sauce with hot chicken pieces. Seems about par for the course.

I'm kind of lonely, having no one my age to talk to (I had really hoped for some collegiate comeraderie from classes), but it does keep me from being distracted. Maybe I'll meet some people today while I'm out. If nothing else I'm planning to get out of town and see some countryside next weekend.

Oh yeah, what's this crap I hear about El Presidente pardoning Scooter Libby? It's like a bad SNL skit come to life. Blargh!

man, all the menus and buttons are in czech....

I'm arrived safe and sound in Brno. I have most of a house to myself in a sleepy little part of Kralovo Pole in the central northwest part of the city. It's got a full kitchen and is well furnished, much better than I'd hoped for. Everything is just slightly different, if it's not entirely strange. The gas-powered water heater is wedged against the ceiling in the bathroom and the shower is one of those hold-by-hand-on-a-long-flexy-hose sort. The decor is mostly European grandmother with some very nice second hand furniture and a few touches of Fremont artiste. My room is all baby blue with white desk, cabinets, and bed clothes. There are fake flowers in a vase and early 1990's curtains in blue-purple-mauve squares with odd glyph-like designs on 'em. The main room is very old style posh, very dim and dark and lots of wood. Well-kept classy dining table and very detailed carving on the console in one corner. Piano, small couch, soft carpets, and a six foot tall very boxy/efficient wood stove. Then there are copies (in English, last guest maybe?) of the Economist and, hanging above the classical guitar, a painting of a gray mustached man with big glasses who is naked except for a very strategically placed tie with bright colors and polka dots. Lots of little art touches like that throughout the house. The reason that I've got the place to myself is that the other two students this session (out of a possible eight) have arranged for other accomodations.
The city (what I've seen of it in the two miles between the train station and here) is very quiet and built quite low. Most things like they've been here for a while, were modestly built to begin with, but have been lovingly taken care of. It's quite clean, there's no trash or litter laying around, and the only things open at nine on Saturday night, including the corner stores and pizzerias, are a couple bars and pubs. It's almost entirely apartments and town-houses, with businesses underneath in some spots, but the middle of most blocks is still back yards or gardens, I think. However, there are entire blocks that have a couple buildings and fenced off gravel parking lots and entire buildings look vacant. There are lots of trees and buses and there's a trolley system. The corner store was a very pleasant little affair, there were some fuits and vegetables and soft drinks I could grab up front, but everything else in the store (toiletries, meat, cheese, bread, staples, alcohol) was a point and ask affair. Made me VERY glad that I wrote a shopping list in Czech before I left the house. Everything, some basic bathroom stuff and a couple days of food, instant coffee (mmm-yum!), cost 340 crowns, which is about 12 bucks. I'm told that the Mexican restaurant can give you a super-nice pricey meal for 250 crowns. Yeah, they have a Mexican restaurant in the neighborhood. Magda, one of my three teachers and the 'TEFL nanny,' told me when she picked me up from the train that all the Americans seem a little happier or relax a little when they hear that those guys are there. I stick out here. It's either the army green satchel or my shaggy hair, but lots of locals start to stare as soon as they see me.
The trip from Paris was probably the easiest, most pain free travel I've ever had. I had to wait in line at the metro station because I don't have a card with a French chip in it, but I got a regional train ticket for 8 euros, hopped it, made one transfer, and was at the airport in a half hour. Charles de Gaulle is a sprawling affair with tons of wasted space, plus they only have these short little spots for people to form lines in, no back and forths with guide ropes, so you wind-up with traffic squeezing between the wall and the end of a line that's only twenty people deep. However, they are pretty efficient. Air France has kick ass plane food by the way. It's cold and meant to be served that way. Fancy little bread, some sort of semi-sweet cooked vegetable medly with a soft-boiled egg, and a slice of chocolate ganache filled pie crust. Easily the best plane food I've encountered. Landed in Vienna, went to the 10 euro train that takes you straight into the metro, which had a video of buying tickets from their machines with English subtitles. Caught a train to the next station, bought a train ticket to Brno for 23 euros, and called Magda from a payphone there with a simple phone card (they just print it on your receipt when you buy it!). Hopped the train with the help of a Slovak? man who was surprised and a little amazed that a young American was headed to Brno. It took an hour and a half through the rolling countryside of wheat fields, scrub forest, with the occasional giant modern windmill, in the compartment I had to myself, whose very efficient/not very cold air conditioning was entirely voided by the door that wouldn't stay shut, and I arrived in Brno where I was met and whisked through town to my accomodation. The parts of the city I've seen put me strongly in mind of some small towns that I've driven through in southeast Pennsylvania.
These guys are in the same time zone as Paris (nine hours plus to PST) which means that it get full dark before 10 and dawn at 5 am here. My sleep schedule was a little bit every six or eight hours in Paris, so it's still totally off kilter. I got up to write this when I couldn't go back to sleep with the light coming in my window. I spent most of yesterday sleeping in and looking over Czech and class stuff plus getting a little bit unpacked. I have a few extra pieces of ephemera, but my giant backpack and 65 pound suitcase were definitely not too much stuff. If anything I will soon need to make a few purchases. First class is at nine and I have to go to the cash machine next to the school and withdraw the 9300 crowns I owe for rent before that (because euros are not used, regardless of the full entry into the EU in 2 years). There's not phone here and absolutely no wireless networks when I fire up my machine (though that might be due to the stone/cement construction styles around here), so when you get this I'll have hooked up to the net at school or found a netcafe somewhere. Things are intimidating here, but they look a lot better now that it's full light and I've my first cup of kavaa Jihlavanka. More news of Paris and my first leg in the next missive. Gotta go.