let me Czech...

Since November 2006, I...

• saw 20-lb carps clubbed to death on street corners with rubber mallets and then handed to paying customers for Christmas eve dinner.
• had homemade firecrackers that make m-80s look like snap pops thrown at my feet.
• explained the subtle difference between "like" and "as" to foreigners at great length. ("But why not you say, "he is healthy like horse?")
• sat in the cheering section of a raucous Czech hockey game and learned the most popular chant, which has proved to be a valuable phrase here: "Jedno Pivo Prosim!" ("I'd like one beer please!")
• ate pizza in Venice.
• ate moose in Bergen.
• ate horse in Ljubljana.
• saw the sun set over the Adriatic in Piran, sister city of Indianapolis
• went to a restaurant that Charlemagne once ate at, in the year 805.
• pissed off a barista at a cafe in Vienna, the coffee capital of Europe, by ordering "just a coffee. Whatever kind."
• sat shotgun in a Mercedes that did 230km/h on the Autobahn.
• blew up balloons for a nine-year old's birthday party, in Norway.
• touched Mozart's piano.
• saw Dresden, the most impressively rebuilt city the world.
• stayed in a hostel that was formerly an Olympic dorm. (If you didn't know, I'm a huge Olympics dork.)
• successfully argued that "Walking in Memphis" was recorded by Mark Cohn, not Bruce Springsteen, placing "The MacDaddy", a team of three Irish students and myself, second in a bar trivia contest at a pub called Billy Limericks in Innsbruck.
• was told by Tighe, one of said Irish students, in a voice identical to Brad Pitt's from Snatch, that Indianapolis will "bepayinafortuneferdwightfreeny."
• got exactly one-half of my face sunburnt at the summit of Hafelekar, in the Austrian Alps.
• evened out the other side in Salzburg.
• helped a Brazilian guy ice skate for the first time.
• stared at The Kiss by Gustav Klimt.
• got caught in a soccer fan rally that was "dispersed" by Austrian soldiers.
• sang "Que Sera Sera" with 1500 Bavarians dressed in Leiderhosen and Dirndls at Starkbierfest, the Easter version of Oktoberfest.
• took a "roman" shvitz in the thermals springs of Baden Baden.
• saw the blood and gore stained uniform of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whose assassination started WWI.
• nearly incurred the wrath of Allah referring to Samir, a new friend from Bosnia as "Serbian."
• smiled as the only colts fan in a bar with 50 bears fans during Super Bowl XLI.

But other than that, not much has gone on....

We're number two. The USA gets a silver medal. And never have I been more thankful to hear such news. Our country's foreign policy being what it is, and George Bush being regarded as a devil in so much graffiti here in Europe, I arrived here on full alert to defend and attack the United States when appropriate in my conversations here with locals. I even made sure that I fully understood the mid-term election results, a political sea-change that ALL of Europe noticed (even if it took a backseat to the Lost season opener in some American media outlets.) BUT, we Yankees are not hated as much as I thought, at least in Prague. The number one most despised country in the capital city of the Czech Republic is jolly old England. But the Praguers, especially those in the tourism trade, find them a necessary evil. That is because for the past few years, the highest contingent of tourists coming to Prague is the British, mostly for the reason that several airlines offer the two-hour flight at dirt cheap rates. This combined with weakness of the Czech Koruna to the British Pound, and the fact that bars here are opened substantially later than pubs on the Isle has made Prague the de facto destination for British stag, or bachelor, parties. They are everywhere. You can hear them barreling down the streets at 4 am, screaming soccer chants, and you can't miss seeing them, as British bachelors enjoy donning horrible tacky "uniforms," shirts that designate the best man or the groom, along with their names and crude slogans. The British seemingly have no taste when it comes leisure wear, and so souvenir shops in the Old Town do brisk business, hawking such cheesy, Panama City circa 1988-style shirts like "My brother went to Prague and all I got was the lousy T-shirt" and "Prague Absinthe Tour 2006!" These roving packs of Anglo-animals are hated so much by the locals, that many Hospadas and Pivnices (Czech-style Pubs) display signs that read "NO STAGS!" And so, at least a dozen British and Irish-style pubs have set up shop in Prague, offering expensive beers (that are still cheaper than the outrageously pricey potables in London), full English and Irish breakfasts and grumpy bilingual bartenders. I personally have not stepped foot in one of these dubious dens, and have been warned by several locals to stay away at all costs.

But maintaining a low, American profile, in this city is hard as Czechs, like most continental Europeans, have extreme trouble discerning the accents and vocabulary of British English versus American English. (Something my fellow American teachers have trouble sympathizing with, that is, until I ask them to point out the phonological differences between Bavarian German and Austrian German.) When asked where I am from, my standard reply of "Indiana, in America" is consistently met with a gleeful "Oh! You're not British!" This may be the only time in my life that I curse the Celtic features of my disposition that have been handed down with such ruthless purity from my Irish ancestors. At this moment, I would kill for a thin face, blond hair and a foot less height. Then again, they don't much care for the Germans here either.

Over a prohibitively expensive dinner at a multi-level McDonalds in Wenceslas Square ($10 for a Big Mac, my ass?), Radim, a private student I taught during my training helped me clear up a literary misnomer I've been under an assumption for all my life. Radim is a likeable 23-year-old Economics student who has lived his whole life with his parents in the fashionable Prague suburb of Vinohrady, except for one summer a few years ago when he worked at a water park in the Wisconsin Dells selling, "how do you call it? The chocolate, ummm?what is the, uh FUDGE! We sold chocolate fudge!"

(I asked what made him choose Wisconsin for his only trip, so far, to America. "When the work study company asked me if I would to work in a water park, I thought of Florida or California, not the dairy part of the country." This reminds of the story why Wolfgang Puck chose Indianapolis as his first American city to move to in the 1970s. He thought of the Indianapolis 500 and pictured our fair city as the stateside equivalent to Monte Carlo.)

We were discussing famous Czech novels, including Jaroslav Hasek's dense and apparently hysterical WWI comedy epic, The Good Solider Svejk, which I have been recently threatening to buy at one of the ex-pat bookstores. Radim told me that it's a very funny book, part of which he remembers reading in school, but he wasn't so sure if the humor would translate into English. I asked him to name some other staples of literature that were compulsory in his Czech classrooms. He named a few authors that I had never heard of before I asked him about Shakespeare. He nodded his head with comprehension and replied, "I know about Shakespeare, but I never have read any of his work or anything."

That's when the realization hit me that Shakespeare's plays, for all their groundbreaking narrative techniques and legendary characters, are only truly appreciated only in their original form. They are the archetype for only one language's literature. Plus, much as Dante's Inferno lacks the poetic punch in English compared to Italian, the rhyming schemes and pacing of the verse is what truly makes the Bard's work so meaningful. Work meant to be seen and heard on stage, not read, and certainly not read in another language. "He's very popular in English writing, yes?" Radim asked me. I told him that many scholars believe he is the touchstone of modern language. I also mentioned that he invented 1500 words for our language. "Really? Like what?" He asked with enthusiasm (Mcnuggets or not, this was still a language lesson.) I tried to think back to classes at Bishop Chatard and Butler before conceding that I didn't know one. If you care at all, like I apparently do, here's a list of them

, including such now-necessaries as torture, undress and rival. I'm not sure, however, if William Shakespeare coined the phrase "chocolate fudge." However, If my memory serves me right, there was a famous saltwater taffy scene in Twelfth Night.

It's been insanely busy here at school during the times that I have been able use the internet. BUT, I had to relate to you guys a conversation I had this morning with a fellow teacher here named Amanda, who is in her 30s and is from Holland. This is the god's honest truth, I tell ya!

A: Good morning everyone, Happy St. Nicklaus Day!
T: Amanda, you're from Holland right?
A: Yeah, Utrecht.
T: What does St. Nicklaus look like in Holland?
A: Well, he's really, really tall and has a long beard and is about 300 years old.
T: Does he come from the north pole?
A: No he comes from Spain. Every year, he arrives by boat, it's on TV and everything.
T: Does he come alone?
A: No, he has a couple of black friends that come with him.
T: How many?
A: Oh, you know, like a group or something.
T: And why is he famous?
A: I'm not sure, but I do know he used to be the Bishop of Turkey.
T: And does he kidnap the children?
AYeah, if kids are bad, he puts them in a bag and takes them back to Spain.
T: Thank you Amanda, Happy St. Nicklaus Day.

Ok, we have to get this started at some point. Here are some notes and thoughts about the great country of the Czech Republic (formerly Czechoslovakia, formerly the Hapsburg Empire, formerly the Holy Roman Empire, formerly Bohemia/Moravia.)

I live in the same complex where my school is located, in an apartment which is located on the top floor of an office building. It's a little odd, and I don't have a shower (only a bath), but it's much closer to the school than the apartments where many of the other students are living, which is about a mile away and up a steep hill. The area, called Vysocanska, is probably three or four miles from downtown and is semi-industrial and quite depressing in my opinion. Luckily, there is a subway stop just a few blocks away. It's only about 12 minutes or so to get right to the heart of downtown.

I am extremely busy during the week. I have already taught three classes, including one last Thursday that I was evaluated on. The two teachers are British and are very demanding. The teacher who conducted my evaluation, and who also runs the school, told me that I gave one of the better first lessons he has seen in a while, specifically impressed with my ability to not use complicated English around the students. We do lots of peer evaluations, and it's shocking how many people don't realize that are saying things like "Okay, what I'd like to do if I could is to get you guys to flip your sheets around" instead of Students, turn your paper over." We are teaching all levels of English, including elementary, which is no more challenging than the intermediate students, just different. I also have to each private lessons. My student is a teenager named Radim ("just call me 'Rad'"), who is at the advanced level. He is very nice and said he was going to show me around more of downtown. Our lessons begin next week.

We also get four lessons in Czech, primarily to show us how to teach the beginner level of English, and so we can feel what it's like to learn a new language. The language is actually easy from a grammar, pronunciation standpoint. There are no articles, few tenses and there are rarely exceptions to rules. However, the words are based on slavic words, so the vocabulary is what makes it an incredibly difficult language to learn. However, I can say

"Prosim mas, deset deka syr, deset deka shunke, yedim rohlik."

which means "can I have ten decagrams of cheese and ham on a roll please?" I was really proud of using that one at the sandwich shop today!

They have a letter that is completely unique to the Czech language, it's an "r" with a semi-circle about it (Ř). It is pronounced like the "sure" in "measure" (so like "zhuer") but with a roll of the tongue. It's unbelievably hard, and my request for mustard, "Horchice." is commonly met with laughter. The famous composer Antonin Dvorak has this "r" in his name, which is why we commonly pronounce his name "Da-vor-szak"

The other teacher/students are nice people. Most are right out of college, though there are a few people in their 30s and older. I could tell right away that several of them assumed this would be a real cakewalk and just a big excuse to drink Absinthe and avoid getting a job in the states. We all learned quite quick that this is not the case. I've only been out once or twice since I've been here, and have used most of my free time to walk around and take pictures.

Prague is the perfect place for the sort of experience I was hoping to have in Europe. It's a large city, but certainly not too big. The subway is clean and very easy to navigate (just three lines). Most of the points of interest are located downtown, along the Vltava River. Prices are very affordable, especially in Europe. This is a direct result of not being on the Euro. They are talking about switching over, but most people, especially those involved with tourism are protesting this fervently. I hear that hotels are expensive (or along the same lines as other cities) but food and drink are very cheap as are tours and shows (which I can't wait to experience. Prague is a huge classical music and theatre town). I think it is the best "walking city" I have been to so far in Europe.

There are tourist arrows everywhere that the government paid a lot of money to install around downtown several years ago. They made a mistake and forgot to have them made into English. So all the point of interest signs are in Czech! It's pretty funny, and I actually prefer it this way, it makes you feel like you really accomplished something when you actually find where you wanted to go.

Vaclavske Namesti (Wenceslas Square), which is sort of the Prague Times Square. Lots of restaurants and high-end shopping. Everything is Prague is Vaclav something or other, including the last two presidents as well as the traditional hot dog. This is because of King Wenceslas (think of the song, though apparently he wasn't so good) who is also the patron saint of Prague. He's the man on the horse in the statue. The name is pronounced "Vawt-slav"

My favorite English sign I have seen so far. To me, it's the epitome of confidence without arrogance.

The square is located in Nove Mesto (New Town), a part of downtown that is "new," or at least it was when they laid it out in the 18th century. This is a typical street in the very dense Nove Mesto.

Stare Mesto (Old Town) is the late medieval section of town (14th Century or so). It's a little touristy, but not as bad the parts of Sorrento that we saw in Italy. Starometske Namesti (Old Town Square) is my favorite place in all of Prague that I've seen so far. To the right of the hall is a small park with trees. This was the only section of Prague bombed during the war. From what I understand, it was accidentally bombed by the allies. They never rebuilt anything on the ground. Some people say it's so everyone can see that they got their licks to during the war too. (The lack of damage to the city is something the citizens feel very guilty about, but not the tourists!).

The Orloj, or Astronomical Clock, which was built around the same time and is on the tower. It tells time in several ways and displays the position of the sun, moon, and the astrological sign we are in. There is a whole mechanical display that happens each hour that I have yet to see (you can people gathering up in the next picture to watch it). Across from the Town Hall is the huge Tyn Church, where mathematician Tyco Brahe and his tin nose are buried.

As much as I like to eat, I didn't have a chance to enjoy any Czech food until this past weekend. I went sightseeing with some of the guys from the program and we stopped in a traditional Czech pub for dinner. I had the most typical dish in the whole country, Pork Leg with Sauerkraut and Dumplings. Unbelievably delicious. But I'm sure I'll get tired of it at some point. Thankfully, there is a KFC on just about every corner. Seriously. It's almost as popular as McDonalds.

These are some guys that I have hung out with a few times. It's funny, for having such a reputation as producing the best beer in the world, The Czech Republic's two most beloved beers are Pilsner Urquell and Budvar, both of which are available in the States. But it honestly tastes so much better from the taps here for some reason. And the $1 a half-liter price doesn't hurt either.

The Across the Vltava River is the Hrad (Castle). It's the other big historic district. It's not a castle in the traditional sense, but a collection of governmental and religious buildings that were added onto over years and years. The St. Vitus Cathedral is the focal point of the Hrad (and of Prague). It was begun in 1344, and after a few snags, was finally finished in 1929!

The view of the rest of the castle city from the cathedral.

The Hrad is connected to Old Town by, in my opinion, the most breathtaking landmark in Prague, The Karluv Most (Charles Bridge). It was built in the 1300s and is the longest medieval bridge in Europe. There are bands and artists and merchants, as well as ancient statues of famous kings and saints along the walkway. I can't get enough of walking on this bridge after dark, it's absolutely stunning.

Well, those are the big points of interest. Like I said, I've only got to go out and explore just two or three times. I miss home very much but am incredibly grateful for this opportunity and am truly making the most of it.