Hanne

15 June 2009: Prague

“Thirteen sleeps ago I was in Prague. There were lots of old buildings. I saw a bridge and an opera and our guide kept telling us about a man called Kafka. One day I had pancakes. They were yum.” *Insert crude hand-drawn picture of house/ bridge/ dinosaur here*

That is about the extent of my linguistic abilities right now, my brain feels like it has been run over by a truck after two full days of intensive text analysis in German. At ten to five last night we were handed out a text on Marxist literary theory and asked to summarize it into five main points. At 5pm. WTF?! But Prague was really neat. So I will try to start again and employ some more sophisticated narrative techniques.

“It was a dark and stormy night….” Ok, it was actually 6am and the sky was blue, but you get the idea. It was atmospheric. Excitement had won out in the battle with sleep and we caught the bus from Freiburg to Prague at 7am. Freiburg to Prague (or ‘Prag’ in German, ‘Praha’ in Czech) is actually is actually quite a long way, so we made a few stops, paid our 50 cents at each petrol station in order to pee and discovered some interesting vending machines in the ladies loos. 3 euros and you could buy a mini-vibrator, just in case the scenery just wasn’t doing it for you. Then at 5pm or so we arrived in Prague.

The trip was organized by the International Office at Freiburg uni and because they are trying to promote connections with other universities in their network it was heavily subsided. Still, we were all super impressed by the level of accommodation when we arrived at our hotel. This was no backpackers, it was a very swish establishment with white bedding, ensuites, mini soaps and shampoos and a bowl of fresh fruit in the foyer. There were three of us staying in my room and because my name was first on the list I was responsible for keeping the room in a reasonable condition. That was probably just as well as I am not the tidiest of people and tend to have ‘clothes explosions’ even when I have only two outfits in my bag. So having my name down meant I had to concentrate on combating the entropy that usually reigns supreme wherever I unpack. Good. Accommodation sorted. Then we went out to dinner…

Our group leader was a woman from the Czech Republic who is currently doing work for her PhD in Freiburg. She chose our hotel and also the restaurants we were to eat at and she was super popular amongst us all! The first night we ate at a café that Kafka and Einstein used to visit and I ordered a tortilla stuffed with curried vegetables – typical Czech cuisine! (Tui anyone? Actually, the Czech beer from that area is Budweiser and tastes quite good). The new went for a trip to Tescos because Holly was really excited. She loves Tescos. I think the other students who came along thought it was a bit strange how exciting we found the supermarket…

We were staying very close to the Old City centre and in the square was a church with the most ornate Dracula-spires. At night you expect to see the swish of a cape at any moment. Actually Kafka used to live in a house with an outlook in to the church and you can recognise it in a few of his stories. Have you noticed that the name ‘Kafka’ has popped up a lot? We heard about him all the time, he lived in a lot of different houses and ate at a lot of restaurants. It became a bit of a joke, ‘did Kafka do that/ go there too?’, but I actually found it interesting, being a literature geek and studying Germanistik and all. On Thursday I went to an installation about his life and work and that was really neat, they used sound effects and video as well as written texts and exhibits. In one part you went through a maze of giant filing cabinets and could listen on a telephone to someone reading Kafka’s stories aloud.

Actually, by the end of the trip I was feeling like a real Grandma! We went to see ‘The Marriage of Figaro’ on Thursday night and it was amazing. The opera house was so ornately decorated and the costumes were luscious. I think it probably helped that I knew the music, having played it in Orchestra in High School, but I was most impressed by it all. Most of the others looked as if the experience of being ‘cultured’ had pained them rather a lot so we went in search of a pub to enjoy a drop of Czech beer before we left.

Other things did happen in between arriving and leaving, though! For example we visited a church that was decorated with human bones. Thousands and thousands of human bones, you would not believe how beautiful an arrangement of hip joints and knee caps could be. The bones came from victims of the black death in the 13th Century or so. They had been buried in the graveyard of this church at Kutna Hora because the land had been consecrated with some sacred soil. Then it happened that the people needed to reclaim some land from the cemetery so they dug up the bones and used them to make a giant chandelier, a coat of arms, four giant piles of thigh bones and various other decorations. That was cool. And in the afternoon we went down an old silver mine, dressed up in hard hats and white overcoats. The coins used to be minted right next door, after the silver was dragged up from the bowels of the earth. Down down down we went, but only into the first layer of the mines complex because the others were all flooded. It wasn’t as impressive as the caves I have seen in NZ and Australia, but then these tunnels were man-made. And centuries old! So that was still neat. When we all turned off out torches it was pitch black, like a monsters film. You could not see a thing. At some points the passages were also incredibly narrow. Just as well the people used to be smaller!

There was more thing about Prague that was awesome. The breakfasts in our hotel. You could have muesli and yoghurt and danishes and fruit and bread and lettuce and egg and coffee… everything possible. It was so exciting, even when I was on the early shift and had to be at breakfast at 6.30am! I think I should come home and train as a chef or something, all the meals have been the things I remember the most! Actually I miss having a family here to cook for… that is something I am really looking forward to when I come home, sitting down with everyone at mealtimes to eat and chat and generally catch up. I am sure we will have a lot to catch up about!

That was about all for Prague, apart from the markets (I bought some awesome gifts there) and the potato soup, which definitely deserves a mention. Oh, and pretty much every street had a store advertising ‘absinthe’ and ‘cannabis vodka’. WTF? Apparently there are a lot of American Students who come to Prague as tourists because the beer is cheap. We kept seeing them on these ‘pub crawl’ tours, where you pay 15 euros and get ‘two free beers’ as you wander from bar to bar. David, our friend from the USA, was quite embarrassed whenever we met them in the city. He made sure he talked only German to us!

Hopefully exams are grinding along, and remember, it is only six more sleeps until the shortest day. Which means that in seven more sleeps summer will be on its way again! Keep safe and Tschüß,

Hanne