First notes of Prague

The people of Prague seem to be a delightfully sullen group. They brood with a hardened history and strong emotion – and you gotta love it!

Maybe it’s a holdover from the whole communist past thing, but Czechs seem to have a penchant for hard-work and hard-knocks – as epitomized (as I recently found out) by a wash-and-dry laundry process that consumes no less than four hours of your precious time!

AND - dog owners don't pick up their dog's poopsies. Instead, city workers walk around with a specialized vacuum. It does not do a very good job of cleaning it up. It sort of gets frozen to the cobblestone.

I live in the Osadni dorm in the Holesovice side of town. On my flight to Prague from London Heathrow, I sat next to a woman from Prague who now lives the life of a celebrated academic in the field of psychology at Oxford. When I told her that I would be staying in Holevice, she responded that it was a not-so-good neighborhood. And with my proper assessment of the ‘hood, I would liken it to Gotham City's Narrows of Batman Begins.

No worries because I am loving these working-class surroundings. Smoke stacks and all. The accommodations are very mod and spacious and I will tell more at another time.

I went out to a jazz club that boasted its visits from BB King. I loved the saxophonist (off picture, to the left) the most because his paunch and touristy shirt from New Orleans told me that this was a fellow who could just as well be a dad from Wisconsin. Music is so universal.

(Thanks to Julia Zangwill for the above picture)

I’ve also been privileged to watch a puppet show. It was total pure genius – involving a children’s tent as a turtle shell, irreverent biblical references to the expulsion of Adam and Eve, and the inescapable hilarity of a squirrel. The players of the puppet show were students from the prestigious Prague Theatre Academy and they later played a Balkan-inspired concert.

The people of Prague are a fun-loving bunch indeed.

Tour of Prague Castle

The above is Charles University - the school with which NYU has a so-called partnership and the oldest university in Europe!

Our tour guide had attended Charles University for American studies I believe. Quite radical for her time. She actually was a class-mate of that university student who burned himself in protest of the communists - I forgot his name.

The above picture is somewhat out of place but I saw it nonetheless. It is a figure that marks the place of the observatory of Johannes Kepler and Tycho Brahe!!!

Note: This shall be informative and long but you can admire the pretty pictures all the same.

I went on a tour of the Prague castle area.

At the strike of 14:00, I heard the bells in the tower behind me ring. The building is called the Loreta for it is named after the place in Italy where the Virgin Mary is believed to originate. The church now serves as a jewelry museum. The buildings in the area are designed in the elaborate baroque style to the bankruptcy of their owners. The rich of the middle ages apparently never heard of investment spending and drank a few too many pivos.

This is case-in-point of the excessiveness of baroque.

Another building in the area (not pictured) was a prison/torture camp for captured Americans and British soldiers during the Second World War. Their keep was a complete secret to the surrounding people as necessary for the propaganda to be correct.

This is the gravesite of an innocent boy who was shot in May 1945, after Berlin was liberated and Hitler had already committed suicide. The fanatics who killed this young fellow were hell-bent on re-creating their new Nazi regime in Prague. They were so extreme that they actually conducted their racist psuedo-science at Charles University. There is a joke about what you could trust about the newspapers of these intense times: the only thing you can trust is the date.

Here is the building where apparently the best beer in Prague can be found.

Here is the house of where former US Secretary of State Madeline Albright had lived during her early years as daughter of a diplomat. It is a few blocks from the Republic’s castle. For a long time during her life, Albright did not even know she was a Jew.

The above is what I would like to call the Royal Foyer of Prague Castle. It is so grand that it is indeed outdoors.

Here are some fierce statues that greet you upon entering the castle. The complex is still used today but not by royalty - but as the Czech Republic's chief executive offices.

These are some of the seemingly useless, for-show soldiers. They guarded the gates but we freely walked pass them. A few of us took pictures as they stood at the gates, stoicly, like the ones at Buckingham Palace. I refrained from such mischief because I didn't want to embarrass them nor myself.

The kind fellow pictured above, on the other hand, enjoys embarrassing himself.

We looked out at what is called Little Prague, I believe. And I took a picture of this gentleman, a real artist!!!! And he was sitting over a wall that goes down maybe hundreds of feet! Hardcore! Do you see that neatly kept mound with beautiful snow on it? Above the houses? Well, that's your American tax dollars at work. It is the sprawling gardens of the American Embassy and it rivals the Czech national gardens in beauty. Take that, Czech land!!!! Boo-yah.

Gardens.

Now it is time to visit the Czech National Cathedral.

It is also known as the St Vitus' Cathedral.

Look at the wonderful jambs and the pointed typanum! What a display of artistry! The wonders of gothic architecture.

The glories of gothicism's shine upon the people of God!!

Look at the flying buttresses! They.are.flying!!!!

View down the nave. Everything is so awe-inspiring! Gothicism knows how to do God right.

The above is the emblem of Prague. The two-tailed lion at the top represents Bohemia; the checkered eagle represents Moravia; The black and white one represents the borderland with Poland, Silesia.

Here I make a farce out of the dear local culture.

Just outside of the cathedral is the former quarters of the imperial governors, who were kept above the lowliness of the people. Long story short, protestants hated them and threw them out of the these windows. These windows have a history of having people thrown out of them - thus coining the word "defenestration." Three times this has happened and each triggering a war. It is said that Prague is the start and the end of all wars in Europe.

Washington DC Fellows' Summit

I was accepted to be a Young People For fellow with People for the American Way.

The Young People For Summit in DC was amazing! There were 120 other fellows from colleges all over the country and each had a unique passion. They were all such driven people—driven to actually give a care about the world and would do almost anything to make it better. We weren’t meeting to bash Bush or blame America first as some may contend; we were there to stand up for our ideas and to learn the ways to make them real.

We attended training sessions on issues such as faith and values, environmental justice, and public education. Did you know that average starting wage for a teacher in South Dakota is $18,000? There also were skill building workshops like coalition building and messaging. Markos Moukitsas of dailykos.com spoke on the first night of countering the right with aggressive movement building. And that's what we were here to do.

There also were many young elected officials like the Honorable Andrew Gillum, a Florida State student who ran for office during his senior year of college. He was elected to the Tallahassee City Commission with 52% of the vote in a 5 way race. They helped us with understanding that politics is not reserved for the old.


I felt like an adorable freshman all over again. We were all so eager to know one another’s story—handshakes, hugs, and kisses—not just to make friends but to restore fairness and decency in the world with progressive ideals. There was a certain trust that preceded every handshake unlike anything I had felt in a long time.

Dupont Circle area exploring.

College life indeed is good.

If you have any ideas to make America work again, let us know.

(Thanks to Joe O'Shea for many of the pictures of my antics.)

Home of the Blues, Birthplace of Rock and Roll

I spent my time in Memphis, TN before leaving for Washington, DC for a summit, and Prague for study abroad. It was just me and my Grandma mostly. This has been probably the most fun I've had with Grandma ever!

We started mornings with her morning pool aerobics class and I asked the teacher how my grandmother was doing. “She’s doing good.”

We've had disco dance-parties with such hits as "Ring My Bell" "I'm Coming Out," and "I Love the Nightlife!"Grandma is sooo much fun! She knows how to boogie!!!!

We've had lunch at the Piccadilly; how much more southern could you get? Crunchy breaded catfish, sweet potatoes, jalapeño corn bread, cabbage…well, I talk about food too much.

We finally made our way downtown to the Peabody. It was incredibly dead. On a whim grandma said, “Want to see a movie?” And so we did. And I highly suggest that if you haven’t seen King Kong yet, then you must RIGHT NOW! And be prepared to cry MORE than you did at Brokeback Mountain!!!!!!! Grandma got scared at some times and was ready to leave---isn’t she cute!!!! All in all, King Kong was love.

And then she let me drive around downtown and there was not too much to see but it made me feel like I am from some place important to American culture. And then I think I came back home and had Corky’s bbq ribs for dinner. Delicious!

Other highlights include flattening pennies on the rail road tracks and jumping on the bed.