Hope you didn't blink, I'm already back from Berlin

Well, the trips just keep getting better. Berlin, as many post-communist cities and countries are, is a city of lots of contradictions. The difference, though, is the way Berlin has absorbed a lot of those contradictions, making them an integral part of the city (and I guess that comes with the territory in a city that was literally a living contradiction for the majority of the past 100 years). It's such a cool, cosmopolitan city (Jonas said that for the past 20 years it's been called 'the construction site of Europe.' You can see why). And I realized after I got there, I felt this interesting sort of connection with the city, an excitement to explore it and get more familiar with it, knowing that my grandfather had spent a bunch of time here at war's end.

Our hostel was located in East Berlin, in an area that's become notable as of late because of an influx of artists moving there to take advantage of the low-cost housing in dilapidated Socialist housing projects. So we were in the area with a lot of nightlife and community, which was really neat.

We arrived around midnight on Friday evening after leaving a traffic-clogged (clagued?) Prague at about 5pm, and I just had to take a least a short walk and grab a drink somewhere or I'd have felt like I wasted the night. So me and a few others headed to an area recommended by the receptionist, where we found some sweet bars with outdoor seating (Europe in warm weather is a completely different place, by the way! Everything's outside, it's wonderful). I was amazed, as we were walking - in Prague, the night streets are crowded with people speaking Italian. But here, everyone was speaking German!

Saturday, we took a morning city tour with a guide from Michigan doing his grad work in Berlin, studying post-communist cities. And what a city it is! We headed first to Checkpoint Charlie, one of three places in divided Germany to cross from East to West, and got to see one of the many remaining fragments of the wall (of course I was humming Pink Floyd, did you have to ask?). It's unbelievable. I've heard so much about the terrors of the communist regime, but to see the physical remains of something so irrational (but so rational), and in the middle of a city that has emerged as a rival to New York, Paris, and London...it just re-contextualizes this whole utopian experiment. The best streets in the city are bisected by cobblestones marking where the wall stood.

Lest we forget, however, that Berlin was also the capital during WWII (damn, this place had a rough century, huh?). We walked through the Berlin Holocaust memorial, and I think it's one of the most effective I've seen (pictures coming soon). The afternoon was spent in a museum, after which I headed down to the Technical Museum for an exhibit on the history of technology and games (not as cool as it sounds, but I got to figure out the metro all by myself!).

And then, of course, the evening. We began at the Reichstag, the seat of German parliament, where we watched the sun set from the huge glass dome on top (does anyone else find it incredible/slightly concerning that it's so easy to gain access to important governmental buildings in Europe? Maybe it's just my American fear talking...).

Then, I went with a bunch of other people on a Berlin pub crawl (oh, I really am in college). On the way (and it was a LONG way. This city is bigger than Paris!), me and my friend Caitlin found ourselves a doner kebab that just might have been the culinary highlight of my trip (I ate terribly this weekend, but for cheap). The crawl brought us to pubs of all shapes and sizes, including one that made us all feel like we were on The OC, complete with sand, and one playing really loud drum 'n' bass music complemented by a badly played trumpet.

And may I take a moment to say, yes JC, it's official - I only really like Czech beer.

Stephanie put me in charge of making sure she got home, which I was reluctant to do, but we managed it. We spent over an hour taking public transportation (for 2.10Euro) and walking back to our hostel, after consulting multiple drunken Berliners who all gave us different directions in different languages (honestly, I'm getting really good at deciphering bad directions). All this, only to return to the hostel and discover all of our friends already sleeping in their beds after having taken a cab for a whopping 4Euro. She was a little mad at me. But I got her home!

Sunday (which is today. Wow that seems strange) I slowly regained consciousness for our 9:30am check out time, tried to ignore the overflowing backed up drain in our shower and toilet, and we headed out to the Pergamon Museum, home to some of the most incredible relics from antiquity I've ever seen (I took a million pictures). Then it was back on the bus to head towards home, with a two hour stop in Dresden during which we all took pictures of buildings that may or may not have had some sort of significance. Dresden is a really interesting city if only by nature of it looking so old, but being SO new (remember? It was leveled in WWII). We all felt like we were in Disneyland a little bit.

Arriving in Prague, as always was like a breath of fresh air. And that, my friends, is the whirlwind tour through my nearly instantaneous visit to Berlin. However short that time was, though, Berlin joins the very short list of European cities (with Prague and Amsterdam) where I could honestly see myself living at some point. I love cities with a kind of 'edge,' if you can't tell (my dad pointed that out to me) and Berlin has so much edge, in fact, that I think it might have hurt me - I think I'm getting sick, AGAIN. I guess that's what comes with little to no sleep every night...

Note: Tuesday, I'll post pictures if it's the last thing I do.

A fantastic dinner conversation

Dinner tonight was awesome. Food was great, of course, but conversation!

First, Vaclav talked about his night last night, where two female friends of his got very drunk and started making out, then asked Vaclav to be their...um...he asks, "How do you call a man who owns bitches?"

Then, we talked about my parents' visit (in a month). Mom and dad want to take the Jančařikovi out to a nice dinner to thank them for hosting me, of course, so I suggested we go to Kampa Park, a very nice restaurant, expensive for Prague but normal for its status. This seemed fine, but I became aware of Tomaš not really approving. He gets uncomfortable in restaurants like that, Vaclav and Zuzana explained. They spent a few minutes trying to explain why, but Tomas was getting more and more frustrated, feeling like they weren't representing his views fairly.

So he got up and tried himself, and I finally understood. In his words, he can't go to a place like that and pay that much for a meal without thinking of all the meals it could have bought someone more deserving. He grabbed a dictionary and looked up the word he was trying to use, then asked me if I thought he was stingy with his family, with his house, and of course I said no, because he certainly isn't. A place like that seems really wasteful to him, he explained with lots of hand gestures (for a minute I thought he might accidentally hit Zuzana) and a raised tone of voice. Vaclav explained that for a special occasion, it's ok to go somewhere like that. But still, Tomas stuck by his opinion of being economical, environmental (we never waste water or electricity here), and generally conscious of using too much of anything.

Well, there you have it. Tonight, I pinpointed the major difference in culture between Americans and Czechs, the one to which all other differences can be related. For my family, going to a nice (read: expensive) restaurant for a special occasion is second nature -- we celebrate by consuming more than normal. But this is not a very consumerist-oriented society (yet). They've only started to get that kind of Western influence since 1989. So, as Tomas explained, go somewhere with a nice view, have a beer or a coffee, and that is more valuable than going to a nice restaurant.

I've been trying to find a way to best explain to all you readers how the effects of Communism and totalitarianism are still very visible here, and I think this is a perfect example. Of course! We can't go to Kampa Park, that's the restaurant for Westerners visiting Prague; the average Czech probably wouldn't set foot in it unless he or she was working there. So instead, we'll go to a nice restaurant on Petřin hill, where you can eat outside in nice weather and get the unarguably best views of Prague. That will be a celebration.

Self-meditation, all the time

Thursday was yet another beautiful day here. It's beginning to feel like spring already, complete with some girls venturing to wear flip-flops again. That's probably sounds insane to those of you in the Midwest right now.

So my producing class was, as always, ridiculously awesome, and the Contemporary Culture class that followed was just as good. Afterwards, I bought my ticket to Sperm Festival, which I'll be attending with Paige and Maggie, and maybe even all those people from dinner the other night. It should be a ridiculous evening.

Spent some time at the Museum of Communism, too, which I was supposed to do with my friend Mona, but couldn't get a hold of her. The place is pretty interesting, famously located above a McDonald's and next to a casino and started by an American business man who thought he could make a buck off the idea. They have some neat artifacts there, and I learned some interesting things. Like, for instance, since groceries were hard to find (to say the least), when stores got shipments the workers would save some items for people who they knew would pay them more. Butchers started to trade their meat, which they received once a month, for other goods, so a kind of barter economy was born. On top of that, something I thought was really strange was the Czech system for foreign currency during communism. Foreign money couldn't be exchanged for Korunas (Czech currency), only for a new currency (the name escapes me now...). This new currency was actually worth EIGHT TIMES as much as normal currency - so women would whore themselves out to Germans or Americans, take their foreign money and exchange it, then sell their exchanged money on the black market at an 8x profit.

On my way out, I bought a postcard and a red candle in the shape of Lenin's head. Such kitsch!

Speaking of things that are more valuable because they're tough to find, I got this email from my mother yesterday:

"So-Dad doesn't want me to tell you this-but- I got a Wii !!!!!!...as we speak, Dad is connecting it up downstairs. Will let you know how it goes!"

Jealousy ensues!

I also had the chance this week to start looking at classes for summer school, and was slightly enraged to find out that one class I have to take starts May 16, only four days after this program ends. So it looks like I'll be coming home much earlier than expected, and won't get the chance to travel much, if at all, after the program ends. It's kinda made me feel foolish for being in this play, since I probably won't get the chance to see everything I wanted to, but at the same time I think I've managed to organize all my remaining free weekends well enough that I'll get to see a bunch. I think things are really going to change once I can travel more; right now, after the play I've scheduled trips four weekends in a row, and I don't plan on leaving it at that.

Today has been relaxing, as all days have been lately. Czech class, followed by lunch at a place I've been meaning to find for a month - an American-owned, Chipotle-style burrito restaurant. Wow. I didn't realize how much I missed Mexican food. I took my time, savoring the burrito, spanish rice, and refried beans while reading this week's Prague Post (really, a great, intellectually written newspaper).

I think this week has been a time for me to really see why I'm in Europe for a semester. Of course I'm experiencing another culture, and that's one huge part of this whole deal. But in talking to some of those people at dinner on Wednesday, I was realizing how nice it would be to be able to spend a year here - long enough to not have to worry about what happens when you get home, to really disconnect. (I'm doing fairly well in that respect, I think, but all the same...)

Anyhow, I had intended to make this semester my time to try to relax for once in my life and see what happens. I kinda talked about this already this week, so I'll suffice it to say for now that my nights out with people from my program (which are fun-filled and more frequent lately, at Scott's shrewd suggestion) and my large amount of free time for reading, thinking, listening to music, looking at Centuries-old sites, museum browsing, and talking to my constantly interesting host family...they've all combined to start giving me a much better sense of...stuff, to be exact. So there you have it.

I'm gonna try to find a decent torrent of this week's LOST episode. Then I have a pillow fight to attend to.