http://cms.colum.edu/prague_summer/ At Columbia College Chicago, we’re serious about our “hands-on, minds-on” approach to higher education. We like to say the city is our classroom, and our students learn from the creative professionals producing the culture of our time. This summer, a group of students crossed beyond the borders and boundaries of Chicago with the Prague Summer Abroad Program. The lives, works, and inspiration of some of Europe’s most important writers are inseparable from the city itself, including Kafka, Hacek, Capek, Meyrink, and Kundera. Students of diverse backgrounds absorbed themselves into the literary and cultural traditions of the Czech Republic, experiencing them firsthand, all the while garnering experience to color and shape their emerging voices. Read on for their blog entries and photos that let us share in their experiences… en Copyright 2009 Tue, 28 Jul 2009 16:13:34 -0600 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss I don’t believe that I have ever met people like this. I don’t mean the people themselves, though they are unique and wonderful. I am referring to how we have met each other and gotten to know each other. Share so many meals, so many walks, so many nights together—both out and about or just in a room, on a balcony—and you have to know them. A few people were familiar with each other, but I don’t know if anyone knew another person all that well before this experience. Maybe I only say that because after this experience, after learning about people so intimately, the way that we used to know another person in this group seems trivial. Maybe I’m more so just speaking for myself and projecting myself into others. Whatever. Deal with it. Focus, Matt. What are you saying? I’m saying that we had to actively look for common ground. We are all writers and we share some interests, but that does not mean conversation and understanding will fall into our laps. I think we’ve all put some effort into connecting with each other. At dinners, one can be sure that a set of questions will be asked of the entire table. A question that comes from pure curiosity, pure desire to connect, to learn more about each other. To understand something new about you and you and you and you and you and me. And you can expect genuine, thoughtful answers. “If you had to be of another race/ethnicity/heritage across time, what would it be?” Renee would be ancient Egyptian. “What is your greatest fear?” For Kody, it’s spiders. “How many stories have you written that you can look at and say ‘Yes, I am proud of that. That is good.’?” Taylor and I, in our drunkenness at the start of this trip, gave ourselves “Three to five.” Personally, I’m not sure my number is that high, anymore. “When do you know that this is a girl that is worth a relationship?” We’ve traveled together. There may be no greater, quicker, truer way of seeing someone for what they are than when traveling with them. We quote each other more than we quote ourselves. We’ve made movies together. We’ve written together. Spent nights scattered across room 53 bent over each other’s manuscripts. Been caught in the rain. I know these people like I would never know them had we met and stayed in Chicago. I know these guys in ways I probably don’t know some of my closest friends. And you know what, that may be one of the best things to come out of this trip. I love you. I won’t miss you. I’ll be seeing you all. http://cms.colum.edu/prague_summer/2009/07/coda_for_expectations_1.php http://cms.colum.edu/prague_summer/2009/07/coda_for_expectations_1.php Matt David Tue, 28 Jul 2009 16:13:34 -0600 I drank hot red wine with cloves in it the evening it rained all day. I saw lightening light up the Vltava River and the houses in the hills at night. I learned that drinking three shots of espresso is not the same as drinking three cups of coffee. This is actually a very bad idea. I went rafting in the Vltava River and laid down in the current while the water pulled my legs. I thanked Mark Davidov for translating food labels at the grocery store for me. I saw the prison cell of Gavrilo Princip and the dark drip stains on the wall. I compared languages with a group of travelers; and was humbled from their disappointment when they couldn’t fully express something in my language. I forgot the sound of my cell phone and welcomed that relief. I learned how to use things sparingly and saw the benefits. I saw a shopkeeper thank a garbage collector with two cans of beer. I stopped to listen to a group of Korean tourists circle around a guitar player while singing in an outdoor terrace overlooking the Elbe. I can live without Cliff Bars! I saw a Cathedral in Dresden with the roof torn off from the World War II bombing. I learned that Budapest drivers do not take stop signs, pedestrians, or speed limits seriously. I saw a prison’s brick wall with small holes pierced through it and large chunks missing from a firing squad. I found that I am terrible at pantomiming head aches to Czech drug store cashiers. I found that as tired as I was, I could not close my eyes during road trips. I toasted champagne with two Hungarian newlyweds. I wrote more in 5 weeks than I have in 5 months. I found, on several occasions, that the weather here is perfect. And the breeze smells like lake water and wheat. I found that last minute traveling is not for the uptight. I got lost in a park and found a zoo. I met an older woman in Budapest who apologized for the death of Michael Jackson. I said that it was alright; and no, I don’t think his doctor did it. I found that “a little spicy” in Thai restaurants here translates into “tear evoking” for Americans. I saw the buildings and palaces of Budapest and thought of my father. I learned the different accents of British territories from two English girls in a bathroom line. I smelled campfires in a park nearby and thought of Northern Michigan. I found that when I thought about home; I never thought of a place. ]]> http://cms.colum.edu/prague_summer/2009/07/things_that_happened.php http://cms.colum.edu/prague_summer/2009/07/things_that_happened.php Renee Zambo Tue, 21 Jul 2009 16:10:08 -0600 Flips, twists, dips and always swaying, always descending. One page of my printed draft that I was not able to stomp on and hold in place, tumbled in the wind off the balcony. All I could do was watch as it seemed to be descending endlessly. I know that is cliché. As it was in the air, I had time to check the other pages, learn which one I was watching drift away. It was the last page of the story. The page with the probing questions and jotted half-answers. On the back was the stanza for a poem I started here in Prague, the first poem I’ve tried to write in at least a year. This particular stanza had been eluding me, each stab at it deflecting off the ribs instead of cutting straight through. But I had found the stanza earlier that day in a windowsill and scratched it down hastily before it blew out the window and away. For a moment—maybe more than a moment, now that I think about it, but it’s hard to be sure, time was acting strangely as I watched the page fall—I wanted some way to reach out and snatch it, bring it back to me so that I could hold on to it. But as it continued down that desire diminished, then disappeared. Watching the paper flip and hang and flutter was beautiful. I know that is cliché. Plus, I realized it may land on the hotel’s deck, or maybe more accurately, hotel’s basement’s roof, but such a statement sounds ridiculous, even as I write it. If it landed there I could ask Janna, the receptionist, to retrieve it for me. Then I could have my draft and the notes back, the fleeting last stanza. As it got lower, my eyes seeing the courtyard in a new light and at different angles and levels, the page began to tease me. Would it fall in someone’s yard, or stay within the confines of the hotel’s walls? At this juncture there was certainly no fear. No, not quite. Nor would I say there was even a sense of worry. Now it was simple curiosity speckled with wonder. In watching it fall away, I knew I was gaining something I had been hoping to find. Losing something doesn’t matter. You can hold on to what’s important within yourself. So when the page of paper landed in the grass among the brush in the yard next door, I smiled knowing that it is down there and I am up here and we are still together. (I feel like that may be a lyric to a song I hardly remember.) The page landed on its face, the stanza staring up, and remained in the yard for a few days. I would look down at it out on the balcony smoking a cigarette, enjoying the air and sun and sky, and smile. I like to imagine the Czech family finally finding it in their yard, confused how it got there, not understanding what’s on it. I like to imagine that the page means nothing. It allows me some lightness, to feel released and a little more free. Like that page of paper, I’m most comfortable tumbling in the air with the wind, most at home, wherever I happen to be. http://cms.colum.edu/prague_summer/2009/07/lost_page_1.php http://cms.colum.edu/prague_summer/2009/07/lost_page_1.php Matt David Mon, 20 Jul 2009 13:56:58 -0600 During a five dollar a minute phone conversation with my father the other night, I asked him if he had heard of Terezín, an eighteenth century fortress town turned into a prison/ghetto/concentration camp by the Nazis and just a short drive outside of Prague. He replied, “Of course I’ve heard of terrorism.” I laughed and corrected him, but once the conversation was over, I began to think: How far off from terrorism were the atrocities that occurred on the grounds of Terezín? Ever since our group left that town, I’ve had this strange weight in my brain knowing that what I saw was not a recreation. It was the home of tens of thousands of very real people, forced into terrible and unimaginably inhumane conditions for the extent of the entire Second World War. And for many, it was their final resting place. Growing up, I had seen the documentaries, listened to numerous interviews, and even heard Eli Weisel speak at the Fox Theatre in Saint Louis on surviving the Holocaust. But until Terezín, until I stepped foot onto the grounds myself and walked through the ghetto and stood inside those walls, the Holocaust was something terrible that happened far away in a foreign land. Being there made everything real for me, and by the end of the tour, I was emotionally exhausted and barely able to function. We weren’t five minutes away from the town before big black storm clouds crawled across the sky and put a downpour on the countryside. It was about this time I began to think to myself: Who has the right to write a Holocaust story? Poet Stephen Dunn wrote in his creative essay, “Truth: A Memoir,” that stories which are not our own can easily be appropriated and subsequently altered as if they were. Essentially, that is the way of many fiction writers, but where do you draw the line? The world lost more than ten million people during the Holocaust. If a fictionalized account of a life in a concentration camp or a ghetto was released, how much credibility would readers give to it? The subject matter is most often reserved for non-fiction and memoirs told by survivors and close relatives of those who did not make it. I am not Jewish, I took no part in the tragedies of World War II, and neither did any of my family members; we were happily settled in America. So what right do I have to approach a Holocaust story? Isn’t the real thing compelling enough? I am aware that material of such sensitive nature is the easiest to get wrong, but I would like to use my writing as a way of paying respect. And the only way to ever truly answer my own questions is to gather up my courage (and my research) and try. http://cms.colum.edu/prague_summer/2009/07/terezin.php http://cms.colum.edu/prague_summer/2009/07/terezin.php Kody Montgomery Fri, 10 Jul 2009 12:34:16 -0600 “Please, you like your room cleaning?” Olina asks me when I answer her ring at my door. She’s a lovely woman, born and raised in the Ukraine but now living and working in Prague. We’ve known one another now for more than three years, since I first stayed at Residence 4 B & B while teaching in the Fiction Writing Department’s summer session in Prague. That first year, my co-teacher, Philip Hartigan, and I were the only real residents in the brand new building—gutted and renovated out of an old apartment block from another century, a warren of nearly identical rooms painted white and decorated tastefully (but not extravagantly) with a version of Czech Ikea furniture and mass-produced, colorful prints. The following summer, we moved the students here as well, and Residence 4 has become a summer home away from home for those who take the Prague sessions, and especially for us, the faculty who have had the opportunity to return to Prague more than once. Olina stands inside my doorway and looks around, “Patricia,” she says, only in her accent, affected by having lived in various places in the world, it comes out Patreetzia. Very exotic; it makes me feel sophisticated for some reason. Olina looks around the room and pushes back her blond bangs from her forehead. “My Patricia, never—” and she makes a sweeping gesture with her hands that I understand to mean that I don’t make much of a mess, that she has little to clean in my room. I laugh. “Thank you,” I say. I’ve been working on the dining table, my computer open and a few tentative lines of a chapter I’m trying to figure out staring out like a dare from the white background of the screen. I am grateful for this interruption. “Me, no,” Olina says, and points to the computer and makes little movements with her fingers like she’s typing. “No learn,” she says. Olina speaks words in at least five different languages. She speaks Russian (Ukrainian, she points out,) enough Czech to navigate her life in this country, a bit of Italian and a little less of German, and a very few phrases in English. I don’t really speak any of those languages but English and a very small tourist sampling of Italian, German, and Czech, so our dialogue is usually carried out through hand waving, pointing, and babbling whatever words in whatever language come to us. Today, though, we take our conversation to a new level. She points to my notebook and makes a gesture as though she were writing. I give her a pen and open the book to a clean page. There she draws a stick figure and points to me, “Patricia,” she says. “a,” (“and” in Czech,) she draws another stick figure, taller than the one she drew for me. I say the name of my husband, and she repeats it with delight. They know one another, too, from past sessions, but this time he couldn’t come along. I tell her this. She pouts and then we move on to other things. We share our ages and birthdates, compliment one another on how terrific we look for 45 (her), and 50 (me), and I find files on my computer to show her pictures of my running in a half-marathon and then photos of my nephew and his son, a beautiful baby boy, and of my nephew’s wife, who is also from the Ukraine. This shared history makes Olina smile some more, her face open and glowing. We draw some more parts of the conversation, open my Czech phrase book to find new words (both of us squinting without our reading glasses,) and point to various things in the room to clarify what we want to say, to heighten things, to reach a common understanding. And I can’t help but think about my students as we do this. I hope that in the quickly passing five weeks they will be here, they each have the chance to talk with someone in just this way. Because while we spend our afternoons in the classroom (a converted hotel room on the ground floor that looks out on the Prague street) studying stories, their various elements, and their myriad of structures, the lessons must not stop there. As storytellers and fiction writers, we are learning to communicate effectively, to spin narratives that will connect writers with readers, others with ourselves. Being in a country where language is just one of the things that is different from our everyday American experience, we rely on the narrative to help give meaning and clarity to what we witness. We tell stories over breakfast about last night’s escapades; we write meandering emails home that express our wonder; we make up things in our head to explain what we see as we walk this not-yet-familiar city’s streets that we don’t—at first—understand. Already the students are beginning to recognize and to take part in this continuous, evolving global narrative. There’s Matt, who was struck by the quick sketches he saw in Terezin, those made by prisoners interred there during World War II, and how despite their being not much more than line drawings, they captured the desperate stories of those who drew them. And Katie, who traveled three other countries on her way here but still has fallen so completely for this city that she has begun to write love letters to Prague, giving words to an emotion she is only starting to figure out. And Kody, who never lets an opportunity pass to ask a waitress, a bartender, or anyone who might be willing, to give him new words—Czech words he will practice as they are told to him, repeating them over and over again, spelling them, trying them out whenever he can. The Czechs seem to appreciate his effort. And in this way he broadens not just his vocabulary, but also his sphere of connections and his horizons. Olina and I have been talking for nearly half-an-hour. It is time for her to leave, to move on to the other rooms where she thinks the students might still be sleeping. She calls them “bambinos,” and she says it with grinning affection, with tenderness. She is a mother herself after all, something I just learned during our conversation. We say “Ciao” to one another as she goes, and I turn back to my computer, to the sentences that still don’t seem to want to let me in. I look at the open page in my notebook, at the drawings and numbers and other doodles we’ve made there. I close my laptop, but leave the notebook open; I throw some things into my bag, and head out the door, knowing that—today at least—what I am looking for (words, sentences, story) will not be found in my freshly cleaned room. http://cms.colum.edu/prague_summer/2009/07/olina.php http://cms.colum.edu/prague_summer/2009/07/olina.php Patricia Ann McNair Tue, 07 Jul 2009 10:21:21 -0600 Four days after I should have walked off a plane into Prague International I walked off a plane into Prague International. The details are complex-- involving a sudden trip to Chicago, my mother and brother putting our house on the market, a lost passport, a lost birth certificate, a lost social security card, money scamming "expedite" services, a money scamming re-booking, a broken iPhone, another sudden trip to Chicago and a hell of a lot of money. You can imagine, after going through losing your political identity—and all other forms of identification the strange sensation of traveling. It’s almost like being a ghost, incognito. I positively love it. With no cell phone, no occupation and almost nothing you must do the absolute freedom to write and live in a foreign country is exhilarating. For some inexplicable “x factor” taking classes over here has been terrifying. At Columbia I had settled into a groove of either dominating my classes, or at least being comfortable enough to partake without second thought; by the end of last semester I was frankly done with it. Over here, for some reason—the teachers are from Columbia, the students are from Columbia, the class is a Columbia class—I have the same anxiety and anticipation I had when I first came to the college. From first impressions and in a word the Republic in which the Czechs live in is refreshing. It’s refreshing to see a city not drowning in tourist traps—these places that are more Disneyland versions of themselves than an actual country. Prague is a living breathing entity, where graffiti is just as valued as art, there are as many statues as people, where you can’t always speak English and get away with it, in short, a place where I would be any day of my life. As Dostoevsky would say, “there are intentional cities and there are unintentional cities.” To me, Chicago, with her perfectly square grid system, zoned city parks and sculpture, wide open spaces and absolute flatness is the worst and most contemptible kind of intentional city. While Prague, a gem of an undulating urban sprawl comes to life at you from behind every winding hill, every basement hideaway and surprise window. I’ve had to come in to the country practically backwards, making up for lost time in class as well as working toward something new all the time. I juggle this with spending time with my friend Andrew who is only in town for the first five days. Not ideal, sure. I’ve often seen my roommate writing diligently while I’m on my way out on the town—to bars, museums, Kutna Hora. I should be working hard and everybody’s working harder than me. That being said I was indescribably disappointed when I heard how my peers spent their first free time here; going to an American hostel, making friends with a bartender there who was also American. Were it my first day (and it was, a few days ago) I would be everywhere, a Kafkan madman talking to strangers, getting lost, inebriated beyond recognition, going in to every place with a light on and people inside, rejoicing in the wind that a new place gives you; not just in Praha 7 but all over the map. They want to do everything as a group—go to new places in Prague and talk amongst themselves. I’ve made a point on numerous occasions now to duck out. My insatiable search for the insider spot, no guidebook fodder, has driven me mad in seeing it happen. Just the other night I was in Praha 3 on the west side for just this reason. Everything seemed to be closed and in act of desperation I joked to Andrew, “We should follow some Czech people to see where they go.” God bless him for having the balls to actually do it. We ended up in a neighborhood tavern; quaint, close and warm with spirits, old friends and laughter. We had a few beers and within no time I struck up a conversation with some girls at the table next to us. They turned out to be Swedish, so my plan failed on that level. But just the conversation and sort of hatching from this shell of comfort I had previously been in was like a rebirth, my best night thus far. So this, being here, has been a struggle. I’ve been trying so hard, already incognito, to uninvent the everyday I know and be somewhere new and at the same time uninvent this “notion” of myself. I’ve spared nothing, no whim, no impulse, or goal. I wouldn’t say that there is a plan. My mother always says to me “You push the limit… You push the limit and you don’t know when to stop.” Maybe I’ll make a note of it and I’ll go through every day in this place exploding with the new and the unexplored with a little mental disclaimer hovering in my vision DO NOT TOUCH. DO NOT SEE. DO NOT LISTEN. DO NOT KISS. DO NOT TAKE. DO NOT DO. DO NOT SMILE. DO NOT EXPERIENCE. A long time ago I saw one of those cheesy motivational posters, I wish now that I had bought it. You know how they take a core value and offer some profound and breathtaking description, well this one was: RISK: A ship in the harbor is safe, but that’s not what ships were made for. Let’s go see what ships were made for. http://cms.colum.edu/prague_summer/2009/07/late.php http://cms.colum.edu/prague_summer/2009/07/late.php Taylor Cowan Mon, 06 Jul 2009 14:53:36 -0600 I always imagined my 21st birthday to kick off somewhere in Chicago. I would take my first steps into that forbidden world of a bar to wild applause. I would receive handshakes, congratulations for having made it so far, the bartender would hand me free drinks all night and every time I took a sip, more applause. Maybe silver confetti in the shape of martini glasses would fall from the sky. You see, I missed a lot of keystones in American Coming of Age Culture. I didn’t go to prom, or graduation. In fact, I picked up my diploma four weeks after the fact from a little, curly haired woman somewhere in the depths of my school. She had an awful cold and hacked all over my most sacred document before handing it to me with a sniffled, “congratulations.” For my eighteenth birthday my parents would be pleased to know I didn’t buy porn or cigarettes. I suppose I always assumed I would make it up on my 21st birthday; it was a fabulous thing to say I was going to have it in Prague. In America, especially Chicago, it’s almost impossible to walk into a bar under 21 unless you have a very good fake, it’s always just a bit stressful trying to pick up drinks for a party, and how many readings had I missed because the establishment they were held at was off-limits to minors? I didn’t want to take 21 shots at midnight or anything, I just wanted the world to open up to me. The thing about Prague is, the drinking age is 18. Though I wasn’t going to reach 21 for a week, suddenly I was still able to go out to bars with the rest of my 21 year old companions. For a week, I had not felt left behind, or too young. For a week I was already accepted into the world of glass bottles filled with dark and light liquid stacked against walls, and bartenders bringing me what I asked for without a second thought. For a week, I was privy to those secret conversations I always believed people had in bars that made each of them understand the other perfectly. When I turned 21, we went out in celebration. We drank at dinner, and then went to a pub or two, and needless to say there were no free drinks, the bartenders did not care that in America I may have been a big deal that night. It was just another birthday, more anticlimactic maybe, than others might have been, but still, ordinary. It wasn’t just that 21 isn’t a big year here in Prague, it’s more that I had already grown up. Before I got to Prague, 21 meant adulthood, maturity, grace, maybe not being afraid of the dark, and knowing which way to turn at each cobblestoned corner. My last week as a 20 year old, I flew across the world to live in a foreign country, began to learn the basics of a different language, saw a concentration camp, the effects of a country controlled by communism, beautiful architecture I never dreamed I would see in person; towering spires, a castle, buildings where artists and geniuses lived and worked and laughed and drank together. If my last week as a 20 year old could give me all that, just one night when I happened to turn 21 could not possibly compare. I still may not always be graceful or confident or mature. I am secretly still afraid of the dark and you couldn’t pay me to find my way easily around this city, but though there isn’t any confetti and applause, I have a map and will read it carefully to find my way. http://cms.colum.edu/prague_summer/2009/07/a_birthday_in_prague.php http://cms.colum.edu/prague_summer/2009/07/a_birthday_in_prague.php Laura Fisher Mon, 06 Jul 2009 12:28:28 -0600 The questions: What do I expect? What do I hope for? What do I want? What makes any of these questions different? To answer the last, little distinguishes one from the other, but in the subtlety is importance, and this kind of understanding is something I hope to sharpen and hone. I suppose that dovetails nicely into the most obvious expectations I have: to read a lot, write a lot, and learn a lot. I’ve had this journal for (roughly) a year and it is not full. Sure, it has not been the only journal my pen has touched, but that is still generally inexcusable for someone schooled to be a writer. I expect to be writing in one of my new journals by the time I am traveling at the very latest. With me are books, I forget how many exactly. I will read them all cover to cover (except perhaps for the Kafka Diaries, but we shall see). I will learn a lot from everyone—teachers and students—but far and away learn the most from Europe itself. I hope, and expect, to learn how to make quick friends. I’ve been getting better at it since being in the city, but this experience will be near impossible to get through without this skill. I expect to begin treating my journal like a lover. I will spend great hours with my iPod, though not too many, and not when I am actually somewhere, only between places, as I hope to hear a country, learn its voices and noises. I hope to share the music on my iPod, because, well, I’ve always loved sharing music. I expect to hear new music. I expect to truly gain perspective on my relationships, namely with my best friends/other friends. I will begin to understand how one can at once be thoroughly unimportant and truly essential. In this regard, I refer to this notion in a worldly, maybe even cosmic sense, though I am aware it trickles down past that. I assume I’ll drink much great beer. I hope not to blackout. I will not live behind a camera lens, but I look forward to expressing myself through that medium once again. I expect to learn basic phrases for each country I am in, but especially in Prague. I assume I will offend, both accidentally and intentionally. I will learn toasts in all languages, but focus on Irish ones. I will worry about my grandparents, but only in the night and in between the lines on the page. I expect honesty. I expect many games of Sincerity, which entails many lies being told. I will definitely smile. I doubt I will cry. I will miss home less than I expect to, and I already think I’ll miss it very little. I will play guitar, hopefully in each country. I will forget things I would rather remember, though I hope it’s not too much. I will not get enough sleep and truly be glad for it. I will lose something, and then learn it doesn’t matter. I will be richer, better, fuller by the end of this in a way that I cannot begin to guess, but am looking forward to with such great hope. http://cms.colum.edu/prague_summer/2009/06/expectations.php http://cms.colum.edu/prague_summer/2009/06/expectations.php Matt David Tue, 30 Jun 2009 11:32:11 -0600 I've been waiting for someone to ask me a question. On Wednesday, I took the number 17 tram to the Jiráskovo náměstí stop, within spitting distance of the right bank of the Vlatava River, and made my way along the river walk to see a photo exhibition my friend Jara put together with a handful of her classmates. I stood with Jara on the river walk, listened to student DJs, watched families of swans swim along the edge of the river, traded swigs out of a bottle of cheap French wine, and enjoyed the honeycomb-tinted darkness that covers Prague before dark... Until one of her peers finally asked it. "Wait-- you don't like beer?" He asked, cocking his head and looking at my eyes. "I just can't" I replied. "Then why are you in Prague??" He said, and giggled loudly to himself, half-covering his mouth. "I know. I know." I said, "But... really, why not?" I have travelled thousands of miles to a city renowned for its delicious $1 'pivo' (beer) and I'm not even drinking it. I haven't even tried it. I know that McDonald's sells it--so does our neighborhood KFC. But I can't tell anyone how it tastes. I have a health condition that mimics the symptoms of a handful of other auto-immune disorders, including Celiac's disease, so I can't eat gluten. Or beer. Or whiskey. However, even within a city in which wheat flour seems to be more prominently thrown into dishes than salt is, I have succeeded at becoming as healthy as I can manage, even without a kitchen. Many pharmacies--such as DM-- and organic, health food stores-- such as Country Life-- carry products that claim to be "Bezlepkovy," the Czech phrase for gluten-free. In addition, Diana Svět Oříšků, aka Diana International Food, carries quite a bit of bread. The first time I walked into Diana, I immediately noticed the large "Bezlepkovy" sign in the glass display case of their breads, "no wheat" logos on most of the bread packaging. And I sort of wanted to the whole room to be stuck in a giant musical theatre vortex, in which I'd jump up onto the counter, swing madly around the brass pole on top of it and sing and the whole counter staff behind me would raise up their arms and sing things during the chorus like, "YES SHE'S GOT IT!.. It don't got gluten!" "Bezlepkovy?" I asked the woman behind the counter, pointing at one of the packages of bread. "Ano! Bezlepkovy!" She replied, nodding, and the grin I got after walking into the store grew about a foot and a half. According to the Advisory for Celiacs in Prague, "Gluten can be anywhere, in bread, cornflakes, dairy products, ketchups ... It is the ideal carrier of taste and smell." Yet, a self-made dictionary of food-related words in my journal and a growing awareness of Celiac-friendly places in the city in my head, I'm sure I'll be fine. http://cms.colum.edu/prague_summer/2009/06/bezlepkovy.php http://cms.colum.edu/prague_summer/2009/06/bezlepkovy.php Dakota Sexton Mon, 15 Jun 2009 14:01:07 -0600 I’ve gotten used to the hammering outside my bedroom window, and the screeching buzz of a saw blade, as they rehab the building across the street. I’m used to breakfast of bread and cheese and Jogabella yogurt and orange drink – wearily used to it. I just added hot chocolate to my breakfast diet, not so much because I enjoy it (it’s not very good) but because I needed a little variety. I may even succumb to cereal by the end of my stay here even though I hate cereal and I hate milk (and the milk here is room temperature and most likely from a box and smells funny), but I can only handle so much monotony. I’m used to strange flavors of yogurt – like banana and kiwi and green grape and hazelnut. Green grape was a very bad idea, but kiwi is quite delicious. Hazelnut is actually Nutella flavor, I think, and it’s amazing. Speaking of Nutella, I’m getting used to seeing that everywhere. It’s really popular here – every corner store has it, usually in more than one size jar. Peanut butter, not so much. I had some sent from home, which has been an absolute life saver. Apparently you can find peanut butter here, but it requires some dedicated searching. I’m used to sleeping in a tiny room with a tiny bed. I actually sleep really well. If I hadn’t gotten here early enough to have my own room, I would be used to sleeping next to a stranger by now. I’m used to sharing an apartment that is smaller than my old one bedroom with two other people who I didn’t know three weeks ago. I’ve gotten used to every roof having scalloped red tiles. And the world looking like a goddamn fairytale all the time, with castles and architecture straight out of art history books and huge rambling parks everywhere. I’m used to having a bidet in my bathroom. And used to never having enough toilet paper because they expect us to use the bidet to clean our butts off. I’m used to being surrounded by the same 10 people all the time. I need time away from the group to keep some sort of a grip on my sanity, but I miss them when I’m away for very long. I’m used to breathtaking runs – to discovering something new every time I leave the hotel in running shoes. Not in a way that it’s second nature or taken for granted, but in a way that I expect it, crave it, need it. Need it like I used to need cigarettes, and find it more satisfying that a Marlboro Red ever was even on its best day. I’m almost used to not having a phone. Although I still feel a little naked without it. I keep my keys in that pocket now, where my phone used to live, and that helps a lot. I still see beautiful or hilarious things and have the urge to text my sister or my best friend, but my arm has stopped flinching to reach for my phone. I miss the calendar and the calculator in my phone. I’m realizing how bad I’ve become at math now that I don’t have a calculator at my fingertips at all times. But I don’t miss talking on the phone. At all. I’m completely used to that not being part of my life. Most surprisingly, I’m also used to writing to top 40 pop dance hits blasting through my headphones. I’m using my Chicago roommate’s laptop while I’m here. She has vastly different taste in music than me, but I need something to drown out the construction noise and my Prague roommates when I’m trying to work. So I write to Lady Gaga, Akon, Beyoncé, T-Pain, Britney Spears, Kanye West, and Rihanna. Of course, this requires chair-dancing while I write. It’s a part of my new writing process. I find that the typing motion actually works in quite well as a dance move and helps propel the writing forward. I’m used to giving a friendly smile to people I pass on the street and getting no response, because Czech people are very to themselves. They don’t smile and they don’t say hello; definitely not in passing, and often not in forced interactions. I’m used to beer being cheaper than soda or water. There is no such thing as free water at restaurants here. So, if you’re thirsty, just get a beer. I’m used to every meal at every restaurant being drowned in grease and/or deep fried. As a vegetarian, I am used to my options being less than creative variations on fried cheese on a bun or fried cheese in a salad. I’m used to not being able to read labels. I’m used to not being distracted or annoyed by other people’s conversations because I can’t understand them. I’m used to being quiet because I can’t communicate other than to say “please” and “thank you” and “English?” and “yes” and “no.” I’m used to the hilarity of poor English and bad translations. I find myself laughing pretty constantly here, which is delightful. I think I could get used to this. http://cms.colum.edu/prague_summer/2009/06/getting_used_to_prague.php http://cms.colum.edu/prague_summer/2009/06/getting_used_to_prague.php Sooz Main Tue, 09 Jun 2009 09:46:17 -0600 6:39 am Frankfurt International Airport There’s nothing like travel and sleep deprivation to make you feel like a crazy person. I’m trying to read but it’s hard to get the letters to hold still long enough to focus on them, not to mention what has become the tedious process of comprehension. I took a few photographs; wide eye gawking in awe at morning’s first light, shadow people scurrying to their gates. German sounds menacing, which, of course, doesn’t help the impression I have that the security officers faces’ are a tiny verge away from melting, morphing, swooping down on me. Perhaps it’s my body’s fierce desire to be in a bed somewhere – horizontal – for several hours. Perhaps it’s the mood and the madness of Gustav Meyrink’s The Golem seeping into my brain where reality is grotesque and nonsensical. Ordinarily I would find this offensive, but my brain is humming, farting along with a tired ache and I haven’t the will to resist anything. For me, excitement about reaching a foreign destination, or maybe any destination for that matter, boils down to exhausted anticipation of wild panicky demand for long awaited rest. http://cms.colum.edu/prague_summer/2009/05/the_effects_of_crossing_the_at.php http://cms.colum.edu/prague_summer/2009/05/the_effects_of_crossing_the_at.php Sooz Main Sat, 23 May 2009 09:39:46 -0600