Utíkal Pryč, Nevěděl Kam

   I haven't really quite felt the kind of culture shock I was expecting. Perhaps it's because everything is glorious here. The weather is glorious, clear and warm. The grass and the leaves on the trees are a rich emerald green. Flowers are in abundance. The sky stretches for forever, cloud-castles in the sky. The mountains, snow-capped, gleam in the distance. The clutch fits neatly in my hand, and I sing along to Ready Kirken with my arm out the window. The pillows are soft, the bed is enormous, the shower is hot and the water pressure is high. There's so much space – my entire apartment would fit into the kitchen here. There is a dryer. There is ice. The coffee is gorgeous. My family is awesome. My friends are awesome. My hometown is awesome. I can speak to people and they understand me, and I understand them, and that little stab of anxiety that presaged an attempt to communicate in Czech is now absent from my life. There are, of course, new anxieties to take its place, as I re-enter society and resume my role as a responsible adult, but it feels good to finally be able to take up the reins of my authentic life again.

   People ask me how it was, living in the Czech Republic, and I struggle with an answer. It is not a straightforward question. It was difficult. It was rewarding. It was an experience that is and, I think, will remain very difficult to communicate in any coherent way. I think I am a better and a stronger person for having done it, almost in the sense of one who conquers a tremendous mountain, fords a great river, and I'm sure that I will be nostalgic for aspects of that life as the novelty of America and Americana fades. For now, though, I'm simply happy to be home.

"We take our fetters with us; our freedom is not total: we still turn our gaze towards the things we have left behind; our imagination is full of them."
-Michel de Montaigne," On Solitude"

Almdudler und Abenteuer

  The air is cool and admittedly slightly tinged by exhaust, though when the slight breeze kicks up it simply smells like spring. A sixth floor balcony overlooking Vienna was not exactly what I was expecting from the Stepanushaus, one of the cheapest hotels in the city. It's good to have a moment to sit and collect oneself. Transitions are always hard, and the stress has certainly not been reduced by the extended nature of the thing. I managed to get more or less everything done that I wanted to do for the moveout. It was a nice change to not have to burn the apartment down to the bedrock and then scour the rubble with bleach, making a desert for the sake of a rent deposit. Nor was I expecting Luboš to go so far as to pay me for the exercise bike I was leaving, especially since I was perfectly happy to let him have it for nothing. In any case the extra cash is welcome and will completely cover my hostel bill in Prague. It's an odd feeling, carrying around ten thousand crowns in cash. Especially when I arrived in Vienna, since yesterday I didn't make it to an ATM and thus had over four hundred Euros-equivalent and I couldn't buy an ice cream cone. This has, meanwhile, been remedied. The trip was something of a trial, largely because of the need to haul around a sixty-five pound bag of assorted stuff and nonsense as well as my overstuffed backpack. The frame of the bag is already starting to go, though if my last one is any indication, it will continue to work (after a fashion) for a period which may last years. It cost me fifteen dollars, though, so I am well-satisfied with my investment.

   Vienna has treated me well so far. The trip in was, as noted, somewhat annoying but one can hardly blame the city for that. The hotel is quite nice, better than my usual run, the Kriegsarchiv visit went as planned and was actually fairly useful, though I hit quite a bit of stuff that I had already found in other places. Anna and Veronika and I went out to a Czech pub here with one of Anna's friends from Prague, who was not only American, and not only from Colorado, but actually from Fort Collins. The world produces odd coincidences sometimes. I did end up sleeping for twelve and a half hours, but I felt much better today and hopefully I can keep that going.  I should probably also add that it's kind of amazing if you think about it that I'm just doing some work on my laptop on a balcony in Vienna. Not bad for a small-town boy from flyover country! To which I will happily return in a little under two weeks.

Zejtra Mám

So it's been an eternity. It seems that I have tapped out Ostrava almost completely. Ironically, though, that fits with the theme of things. The sands in the hourglasses are dwindling. Tesco had a fifty percent off sale on luggage, so I picked up not one but two superduffels, so I can finally retire the broken shell of a bag I've relied on for so long. The Vítkovice archive has been drained virtually to the dregs, with only three files standing between me and completion.

After a busy few weeks in the intermediate era, I've mostly returned to a solitary life of asceticism. It's not a remarkably fulfilling life, exactly, but I have at least gone back and completed the entire run of Scrubs, fallen slightly in love with Sarah Chalke, and (finally) begun my forays into How I Met Your Mother. Admittedly, it's something of a strange timing question to finally begin at the tail end of my stay in East-Central Europe, but I'm a slow learner. It's only been a few episodes, I've yet to make the conceptual shift from Willow to Lily, but I'm optimistic. Clearly I've lost all of my interesting stories in the past month. Next step, talking about the weather. I've even picked up decaf coffee, I've become all that I ever hated. At least I still have a balcony. For a little while longer.

“Outside it, in the scene of his actual life, he moved with a growing sense of unreality and insufficiency, blundering against familiar prejudices and traditional points of view as an absent-minded man goes on bumping into the furniture of his own room. Absent--that was what he was: so absent from everything most densely real and near to those about him that it sometimes startled him to find they still imagined he was there.”

-Edith Wharton

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!  

Cisářství mraků

Winter has summarily arrived in Northern Moravia. It's considerably below freezing outside and there's several feet of snow on the ground. Every morning when my radio alarm wakes me up, it does so by listing exactly how many degrees below freezing it's going to be today, and the only thing that still lets me get out of bed is that I can't convert celsius to fahrenheit before coffee. It is, though, kind of amusing in some ways. Primarily that now instead of pushing children in strollers children are pulled on sleds. Down the sidewalk. And nobody thinks it's at all weird. Also a plus are the arrival of the Christmas markets, which I adore on principle. Though actually the only one I've seen so far is Opava's, since I walk through it to get to the Regional Archive where I started working at this week. They have three kinds of punč, French, Viennese, and domácí, which means more or less from around here. I think I may start getting a cup after I get out of the archive for the day, something to keep me warm until the bus shows up.

Thanksgiving was last weekend, and so in lieu of my previous plan of eating a turkey sandwich and being sad (since turkey sandwiches are impossible to find in Ostrava) I went to Prague for the Fulbright Thanksgiving meeting, where I had a joyous reunion with my fellow grantees, or at least the ones that don't live here. I guess seeing Rachel and JoEllen was also joyous, but reunion might be somewhat of a misnomer after a separation of only twelve hours. The dinner was surprisingly Thanksgivingish, the evening was pleasantly scattered, and I got a chance to buy several new books, most of which I have now read. Another year to wait for the final book in the Wheel of Time series. The Pendolino was nice (the fancy train!) and fast, but lacked power outlets for my laptop. My battery did last long enough for me to watch Tropic Thunder, which I thought was quite entertaining. It distracted me from worrying about my passport, though thankfully the worries were groundless. I also got the chance to see Luise again, which was pretty awesome! Though sadly brief. Um. That's about it these days. I should start thinking about what to do for Christmas, it's coming up quick. Maybe I'll buy a little tree this week.

Z Ostravského Pekla

Monday, November 8^th, 1:40 PM

  So today it seems like I've been using my skull to hold old rags instead of to think with. Maybe it's the gloomy rain and cloud cover, but I tried to shampoo with my shaving cream, almost put coffee instead of milk in my cereal this morning, totally missed my tram stop, and forgot to take my coat off before going into the archive. Forgot to bring my headphones too, so the silence is deafening. I doublechecked, though, and I did put on pants before I left the house. So there's that. All my muscles are pretty sore as well. Quite a weekend, but not one calculated for restful recuperation.

  I went out to Frýdek-Místek to see Rachel again, which always improves a week. Highlights included delicious homemade pad thai, considerable quantities of coffee, Czech bowling, and Jazz club including a (probably unintentional) mélange of The Battle Hymn of the Republic and The Saints Go Marching In. All of the patrons joined in on the singalong for the 'Glory, Glory Hallelujah!' refrains, which was unexpected slash hilarious.

  Yesterday was pretty uneventful during the day, as I was pretty beat. JoEllen and I did end up meeting up with Martin and his roommate Petr at the VŠB and going out for a few beers to the student club there. A few games of foosball and a few hours of occasionally hilarious conversation ensued. Martin is deadly at foosball, as a side note. But I didn't get to sleep until one in the morning, contributing to my current delapidated state. Oh, Mondays. Well, back to Duch Času.

Vienna

Friday, October 29^th, 10:20 PM

  JoEllen and I are sitting on the last leg of our train ride back to Ostrava, in a surprisingly chilly though otherwise relatively comfortable R train, about halfway between Brno and Ostrava. We decided that, since Thursday was a state holiday in the Czech Republic (commemorating the declaration of independence from the Habsburg Monarchy) and neither of us have anything on Fridays, that we'd have a short vacation in Vienna, which isn't terribly far away from Ostrava (about three hours, usually). We headed out Wednesday around fiveish, since I had class (though as it happened I completely spaced that we were meeting at the library instead of the classroom, so I didn't manage to make it regardless), and got into Vienna at about 8:30 that night. Veronika and Anna met us at the station, which was awesome. JoEllen took off to go get settled at her couchsurfing place, and Veronika, Anna, and I went back to Anna's place, where I was staying, and took down half of the handle of Becherovka Lemond I had brought as a thank-you gift and watched videos of some of the performances from the summer school and then some silly you-tube videos, including Arnold Schwarzenegger's 150 best quotes and a Ukrainian Army recruiting ad. Thursday I met up with JoEllen and Ida from Denmark who was also staying at this couchsurfing Mecca and we had coffee at the Loos-Bar then went to Schönbrunn, where we spent quite a lot of time walking around the enormous grounds. Afterwards we visited the Hofburg, saw the Staatsoper, walked around the city center for a bit, then went and met up with Veronika and Anna to go visit a Czech pub near Veronika's place, at which hilarity ensued. Today we had lunch at the Wirtschaftsüniversität, where they go to school (best cafeteria ever.) then we headed over to the Albertina, where there were two big exhibitions (one on Michaelangelo and one on Picasso). Afterwards we just wandered around the city for a while, got some coffee (Kaffee mit Schlag!) and then decided to head home, since our hosts had to head out for the weekend and Vienna is no place to have to pay for housing on a Czech salary. Overall it was quite a nice trip, though we're both terribly exhausted and looking forward to spending a day or two at home doing nothing in particular. It was actually quite cool to be back in an authentically big city, none of which exist in the Czech Republic. It also felt quite homelike to me, since I could actually understand everything that was going on, instead of my usual 50-70% in Ostrava.

  Luboš brought me a clothes cabinet before I left, but disassembled. Thankfully he didn't conscript me to put the thing together, but said he'd come back and do it Thursday, so I'll have something new waiting for me when I get home. It's entirely possible that he'll also have rearranged my room, which seems to happen on a relatively regular schedule of about once every two weeks, but I don't suppose I'll care that much, since I'm not particularly attached to any particular furniture arrangement. I finally caved and bought an exercise bike, which got delivered Wednesday morning, so I'll put that together this weekend. Pseudo-home gym more or less complete! Well, we're approaching the station, so I'll wrap it up. 

Matrace a Hrad

Saturday, October 9^th, 11:47 PM

   Yesterday was full of acquisitions. In the morning, Luboš bustled in while I was in the shower and set up shop in the kitchen. I was a little curious as to who was romping around my apartment while I was in the shower, but I thought it was probably him and I was right. At any rate, he came finally bearing a mattress! A 'new' and 'quality' mattress, which here means that it's okay. I haven't quite gotten used to it – it's at kind of a strange height, and feels slightly rickety, which can be a little nerve-wracking. It is, though, a significant step up from the bizarre couch pull-out arrangement that had previously served. Hopefully I will begin to sleep better from this point on.

   After that whole to-do, JoEllen and I went on an extended shopping trip wandering around the center and buying various things. I got a movie, some bowls, an oven mitt, the first two books of the Eragon series, because they're gigantic and I'd heard good things (they only had book one in German, though, which is probably good in that it will last considerably longer and the idea was to have something to read on my commute) and Good Soldier Švejk, because it's about time I actually sat down and read the whole thing, and I finally caved and got a copy of Civilization V. I was going to look into acquiring some weights, but the store that sells them is by a stop that the tram apparently only stops at going in one direction. Oops. Still missing – shower curtain, shower mat, wallet. Then we got delicious, delicious Döners and watched a movie. Today we met up and headed over to Opava, just down the railroad tracks, to visit Alex Bednar, another one of the Fulbright teaching assistants. Opava has a lot of character – my favorites were probably the bird statues and the moving beast. There are two large bronze statues of birds, facing one another, in a park, but one of them will move its head seemingly to track you, which is somewhat unsettling even with forewarning. There's also a sculpture of some kind of semi-animal form which is migratory, e.g. at various points during the year a crew will move it somewhere else. Then we headed over to Hradec nad Moravici, the small bedroom community in which he lives, and walked up the mountain to visit the awesome castle there. Probably the best castle I've seen so far. It was a pretty sweet castle. Then we stopped for ice cream and I got the 'Castle Sundae' – less immense than expected, but actually really really good. I think I may try to enjoy more ice cream before winter really arrives and takes all the fun out of it. There remains a bowl full of lamb in my refrigerator, for as far as I can tell no particular reason, but I'm sure some use can be found for it. Anyway, it's late and I'm tired, so I'm going to go acclimate myself to my new mattress!

Až Dneska

Thursday, October 7^th, 7:02 PM

  My mind is worn out. Dr. Popelka invited me to visit a couple of courses this afternoon at the Univerity, so I spent about four hours trying to comprehend spoken academic Czech. It went better for the first course than the second – it was about the development of nationalities in the Czech lands, and the professor was a character. She was also quite apologetic about her lack of a perfect knowledge of my language, which seems to occur quite often here. In some ways, it's very strange – it never seems to occur to them that I ought be the one apologizing for being here in the Czech Republic and not knowing the language well enough. In any case, it was at the least a good language exercise, and I was actually surprised at how much I grasped. I'm definitely still at the 'passive consumption' stage of learning, but improvement is improvement.

  I'm beginning to think that my bed is mythical. It's been three weeks, and it remains floating tantalizingly just beyond tomorrow. I would be more upset about this if I didn't have something to sleep on, but I would much prefer to be sleeping on a real bed or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof. I think it would help me get up in the morning to get a good night's sleep and thus not feel like I'd gotten beaten with a bag full of oranges in the night.

  The archives are going all right. The commute is a little irritating – it's about forty minutes by tram, which would be fine if I had something to occupy my time. Ironically, though, I have nothing to read. Perhaps I ought patronize a bookstore tomorrow. I'm particularly excited about my copy of Lingaea Lexikon, which lets me instantly translate most anything without an internet connection. If I hadn't lost track of Antonio, I'd write him a thank-you note for hooking me up with it. I think it'll save me an incredible amount of time over the course of the year.

  It seems like I'm settling in a little bit more, which one would perhaps expect. I still spend most of my time inside my own head, but just getting out and doing things generates its own momentum, and there are a few good people around to spend time with. Movies have taken on a much more considerable value in my life than usual – I've actually watched several movies by myself, and a number of others with company. Recent acquisitions include Rudé Horko, perhaps better known to the Anglophone world as Red Heat, starring Schwarzenegger and John Belushi. For two dollars. It was a steal. The discount movie market here is actually really compelling – I wish we had it's like in the States. JoEllen hadn't seen Eurotrip, which I immediately understood to be the travesty that it was, and we have since corrected that lack. I myself saw Robin Hood: Men in Tights for the first time courtesy of Rachel. It may be that when I conclude this I'll pop something else in for a spin. Like I said, my mind is mush at this point. But hey, since the Archive is closed on Fridays, it's the weekend now! Nothing compared to Rachel's weekend, but three days should be enough for me. Udržím balce!

Kde Domov Můj

Sunday, September 19^th, 10:24 PM

   I'm finally home! As I type this I'm sitting in an armchair in my room listening to Nohavica and the hum of the washing machine making my clothes clean and fresh and new. It's a relatively small apartment but quite a big room, with wood floors and a balcony, and it's mine! There's even a gas stove, about which I can't wait to tell David in loving detail. I'm only half-unpacked and stuff is everywhere, but I'm thrilled to have a place to call home.

   It's been an interesting weekend. I arrived in Ostrava from Prague on Friday, met up with Misa, went out with him and Petr to one of the local pubs, and drank burčák and watched folk dancers perform in the corner of the pub. Burčák, recommended to me by the devilishly handsome and blazingly intelligent Andrew Burgard, is basically new wine fresh from the pressings, and it's quite the thing in Moravia this time of year. The height of the season is apparently just barely past, but it is delicious, so I imagine I shall consume some more before the season is laid to rest. Yesterday, Misa's family went out all day to celebrate his dad's birthday, so I spent essentially the whole day getting things in order – I've found a gym, found the archive, the public transport center, the Foreign Police office, wrote some stuff, played some Puzzle Quest. Tomorrow I'll get to carry out my dastardly plans to take care of things, but it shouldn't be that difficult.

   Today we did a walking tour of Poruba, which is the area in Ostrava in which I live, then Misa took me to his favorite čajovna, or tea house, where I had a delicious strong dark tea infused with cardomom and several other things which I didn't understand. It's a fascinating little place, built into the ground and guarded by a thick mediaeval door with iron viewing visor. Purchases are calculated in fifteen crown increments (about 75 cents) by taking away iron coins from a roll of them given out to each customer, each coin worth fifteen crowns. At the end, you present your roll, they check to see how many are missing, and thus is one charged. Somewhat byzantine, but certainly full of character. After that, the big move! Contracts were signed, bags were lugged, a big wad of cash was handed over in exchange for a duly filled-out receipt (for Czechs are thankfully an orderly people) and now I'm happy and I'm home and life is good.