Řiše Snů

Monday, Jan. 10^th, 11:07 AM

  So apparently the Regional Archive is closed today. Unfortunately, I only found this out when the door didn't open in Opava, and I'm supposed to meet Alex here for dinner, so I have some six hours or so to kill at this point. Luckily I have my laptop and several books, so I can not only keep myself entertained but also even be productive. The kavarna advertises free wi-fi, and they have indeed a wi-fi network, but it doesn't seem to want to work for me, sadly. I'd be more vigorous about troubleshooting, but it's probably better for my productivity that I don't have internet. That's why I talked myself out of keeping the mobile broadband stick I started out with, at any rate.

  So, stories! It's been quite some time since I've updated, and I've collected some good ones. The Czech christmas traditions here are quite interesting, I think. JoEllen and I made a friend at the Vysoká Škola Baňská a while back, and he invited us to a Christmas party with some of his friends, so we got to experience the whole suite of traditions. For dinner he fried up a seemingly gigantic carp, which is the traditional Christmas dish here, and we each got a heaping helping of Czech potato salad to go with it. Tradition has it that taking a scale from the carp and keeping it in your wallet will ensure that your wallet will remain full for the next year, so we all got fish scales as well. Mine is still in my wallet, as it happens, though I think it's too early to tell whether or not it's going to work. It's been fine so far, at any rate! So then we all got apples to cut in half width-wise, as it's another sign of good luck if a star appears in the apple core. In terms of prophesying it's quite feel-good mumbo-jumbo, since unless your apple is a genetic freak you're going to get a star, but naetheless the more good luck the better. Next up were the walnut boats. Everybody made little boats out of walnut shells and birthday candles, and then we lit the candles and put all the boats into a bucket. Some of the boats were more extravagant than others (Martin's had four shells, six candles, and a pirate flag, suitable for an engineer), and the patterns described by the boats once in the water purportedly foretell how close relationships are going to be in the new year. Last but not least was the lead casting. Some lead wires, a soldering iron, and the previously mentioned bucket combined to allow us all to cast some molten lead in random shapes, and said shapes, like tea leaves, would tell you your fate. Mine turned out to look quite similar to Edvard Munch's “The Scream”, which doesn't seem like a terribly good sign, but I tell myself that I just don't know how to properly interpret Czech leadcasting.

  The Drs. Popelka also invited me out to a Christmas party, except this one was with their squaredancing club. Yes, you read that right. It was, in fact, a square dancing club. With bolo ties, western shirts, ruffled skirts, dosidos, the works. Apparently it's actually quite popular here, and they were quite good, insofar as I'm capable of judging such things. I told them that nobody would ever believe that I was at a square dancing party in northern Moravia, and they laughed and laughed. There was also a lot of homemade food, gingerbread, cakes, pastries, and so on, and at the end we all played some games, and we all sang a number of Christmas carols and everybody got a little present (even me! I got some nice candles.) It was a little awkward, in the way that everything is awkward in the Czech Republic, but it was really nice to be able to participate in real Czech society instead of the sort of expat-flavored blend which is more typical of my rootless life.

  For New Year's the handsome and shockingly talented Andrew Burgard was hosting a get-together in Brno, so I went down there with Rachel and our new friend Youri on NYE. Both my and Andrew's phones were out of credit, so it was a little awkward getting in touch, but once I found his place things were fine. (As an aside, I've noticed that literally the only time my phone runs out of either credit or battery power is when I'm on a trip outside of Ostrava. Very inconvenient.) So I met some awesome people, drank some interesting things (we finally managed to make French 75s, so named after the French Schneider-Creusot 75mm artillery piece so popular during the First World War), ate guacamole for the first time in something like six months, experienced a lot of fireworks, a lot of dancing, and then Youri stole a glitter-covered star from the club we were at to fulfill our quota of celebratory hijinks. The hangover wasn't even too bad, surprisingly enough, even though I woke up four and a half hours before anybody else did.

  Getting back into the daily grind has been okay, really. In a somewhat annoying move, though, the Czech school year has a sort of January intermission for final exams from the previous semester, so the new semester doesn't start for another month. I picked up a JoEllen-recommended Czech book to help bridge the gap (Krok za krokem, the sequal to Lida Hora's Czech Step by Step) and it's been pretty good so far. In fact, I may even crack it open now, to help pass the time! Št'astný nový rok každemu z vás přeju!