still alive, still travelling.

its been a month since i last wrote. simply unacceptable. its been difficult to find a desktop...that will be the excuse i stick with. that said, i have a lot of people/places/things to recount.

last i left off, i had just arrived in prague. i met my uncle jim (he prefers to be called james now) at hlavni nadrazi train station on a tuesday evening around 7pm. he looked just the same as always, except with a few more wrinkles around the eyes, maybe. we greeted jovially, as old family members do, and concluded that it had to have been at least five, maybe six years since we'd last seen each other. i could tell he was excited to have me in 'his town'. we took the metro and a tram back to his apartment on sumavska and luzicka in vinohrady, prague 2. his place was nearly new, a one bedroom with a quaint kitchen and generous living room with a nice window facing the street. it was quiet and comfortable. i scoped out the fridge, as i generally tend to do when entering a new living space (sometimes its awkward) and it was totally empty save for a jar of pickles and two big bottles of pilsner urquell. i had been harboring a gnawing desire for this delightfully crisp brew while in berlin but had successfully kept it at bay until this very moment. when in prague.

jim and i toasted with the czech cheers, "nazdravi", to celebrate our first mini-family reunion abroad. we went out for roast duck (his favorite) at an incredibly authentic czech restaurant (which i ended up returning to two more times) called U Medvidku. I had the grilled duck breast with orange and rosemary sauce and lightly fried potato slices- delicious- along with beer in a gigantic mug overflowing with foam. could not have been a better culinary introduction to prague- though it kind of plateaued here. it made me think of the first scene in beauty and the beast, where the barman is pouring beers for gaston and all his friends and they're singing and foam is flying everywhere...that was the feeling of this place. light and jovial, but underground and rustic. after dinner we moseyed around stare mesto, which means 'old town' in czech, and had a few beers in another underground pub. everyone was smoking, beer was flowing, people were smiling- but quietly, conversations stayed private. there was an air of modest pride about the czechs, but with a variably amiable, generally unemotional approach to public interaction (and maybe life in general). this was prague as i found and left it.

i spent the next day at the doppler school where jim works as an english teacher. he informed me the night before that i'd be waking up at 7am and accompanying him, and given the easygoing, do-whatever-you-want approach he generally maintains, i figured he really wanted me to go. so i went along. he was like a kid showing his parents around his elementary school for the first time. i think i met every single person we walked past- his introduction went something like, "hey, uzbek! this is my NIECE, Lizzy. she's my BROTHer's DAUGHter. yeah, that's right- NIECE." and i would smile and nod and shake hands. it was really magical. i bought some fruit from a market down the street, apparently paid way too much for raspberries, and hung out in the office he shared with two other teachers. i spaced out on the internet and wrote my most recent blog post which is far from recent now.

Over the next few days, i saw and experienced what life is like for my good old uncle. it was pretty low-key, really. something his girlfriend, Blanka, laments openly. She wishes he would work harder doing something more profitable. It seems to be an ongoing struggle between them. Blanka is a feisty, petite Czech woman who deserves a paragraph all her own. She and Jim have been together for nearly ten years, though they now live separately because they don't always get along. She lives just down the street from him, in a cozy little two-bedroom flat with a nice kitchen and terrace. She does the cooking for the two of them most every night (I think I was the first person to use the stove and oven in his apartment since he moved in) and she's quite good at it, according to Jim. I had breakfast there one morning and my eggs were quite tasty. She and I spent many a rainy afternoon sitting on her couch, chatting, and ended up forming a really nice friendship by the end of my two week stint. We would talk for hours- I was allotted fifteen minutes out of each hour to state my thoughts and opinions- (kidding) and we got to know each other pretty well. It was nice to have a feminine presence amisdt what eventually turned out to be a male dominated experience in Prague.

I also hung out with my great friend Josef Jachym, whom I know from a farm I wwoofed on in Maui two years ago. I emailed him when i got to Prague and his response went something like, "It is not possible!!!!I am so happy !!!You have to call me for my phone 737 173 406 you can call me anytime.Pleas ,pleas call me very soon .If you want to meet with me so we will meet in Vancel squer at horse.Pleas give me phone number your uncel. I will take care about you here your old dog Joseph"

Needless to say, the guy is a riot, and probably one of the kindest people I have ever met. He made sure to "take care about me" pretty constantly during my stay. For example, on the day we met up, he greeted me with a red rose and a cell phone, complete with a SIM card, which I later realized was for the purpose of checking in on me daily, sometimes twice a day. He would call around 9am and then again sometimes at 8pm to ask me how I was enjoying Prague- he was always reminding me to "enjoy every moment"- and it was during these conversations that we would make plans to "go for dance" together and partake in related events. We cruised down the river one afternoon in a paddleboat, and ventured to a club one night near Wenceslas Square that played 80s and 90s videos on huge projected screens (namely ABBA, for which Josef actively demonstrated his enthusiasm). He doesn't drink at all, and consumed only water during our multiple clubgoings, though he often appeared one of the more inebriated attendees. Go figure. He referred to me only as "my queen", and regularly reminded me of his status as "your slave". I felt as though our frienship had really come full-circle.

Jim left for Scotland with the Doppler kids on my last weekend in Prague, so I had the place to myself. I watched a lot of Al Jazeera and BBC World while eating dinner or drinking tea, as the majority of channels were in German and I hate German, no offense to my German friends. It was unbelievably exciting. I could speak for hours on the flotilla conflict in Gaza and the oil spill in the Gulf. Sometimes, in the morning, I would do aerobic exercises to the dance radio stations and MTV Germany because they played Rihanna. I spent a lot of time on my own.

I hung out basically every day in a hostel just down the road from Jim's place called Czech Inn. Cute, huh? It was far more like a five-star hotel than a hostel, though- super modern with a full bar and kitchen and cheap beer, very kind people and some hip travelers, primarily Americans. (I haven't mentioned how cheap Prague was but basically I could have either a full meal or five pints of beer for about $4. It ruled.) I met a lot of people at Czech Inn, which was convenient for me as I was otherwise alone. My friend Kelly Shea and her sister Caroline came to Prague on the last weekend I was there, and the three of us had an awesome time together. (They stayed at the Czech Inn and can vouch for its upscale offerings). I saved a few tourist things to do with them, like Prague Castle and Petrin Tower, kind of a mini-Eiffel at the top of the super steep and very lovely Petrin Park. On our way up to the tower we were bombarded by a breast cancer march going the other direction, and fatefully forced to get drunk on white wine on tap for 50 cents a glass. Given that getting drunk normally involves meeting other drunk people and getting drunker together, we buddied up with three American guys on a very structured bus tour through Europe, and spent the rest of the evening with them. The next day we visited Vysehrad, a park-cemetary-church-park at the top of a huge hill overlooking the city, which was beautiful. The weather became summery just as Kelly and Caroline arrived, and it was sweltering all weekend. The morning they left, I was eating breakfast at the Inn and met a cool Canadian guy named Ian (look up his work at ianspriggs.com) who was all about art and looking at it, so for the next two days we did a tour of the city's museums, culminating with the deceivingly massive modern & contemporary collection at the National Gallery in Holesovice. After a solid three hour tour, we went to an amazing beer garden in Letna Park that had a spectacular panoramic view of Prague, and got free beer because of a promotional youtube thing that involved red bouncy balls. Clearly my focus was on the free beer. We concluded that it was the coolest place in Prague, as it combined the city's best two features: it's breathtaking cityscape and the excellent beer.

Leaving Prague was a wild scramble, as many exits have been on this trip, but the irony was that the day before I left, I knew I'd be on trains for ten hours to get to Bolzano, Italy and stay with Marcus' friend Pauline, so I went to the grocery store with my last $20 and stocked up on goodies, made myself a sandwich and packed fruit and raisins, and even hard-boiled eggs. I finished packing at 6pm. God, was I prepared. I had to be at the train station at 8:30am, so I planned to go to sleep around 11. I wanted to buy a book before I left, though, so I went to a place called Shakespeare's Cafe around the corner from Czech Inn, because I knew they had a little english bookstore in the back of the bar. I walked in, and the bartender told me that I couldn't look at any books because there was a film screening on, but that I could check it out (czech it out). I dipped into the library in the back and it turned out to be a documentary on 9/11 in english. whaat? I stuck around. Learned some more suspicious stuff in addition to what I already knew. When it was over, I realized this was a political group that had get-togethers on the looming state of what they called 'the new world order'. they welcomed me enthusiastically. i began to search for my book, but then they invited me for a beer, and 20 minutes turned into 2 hours of conversation with a riled-up group of six or seven men and women, self-proclaimed intellectuals, between 25 and 40. we ended up sharing some spliffs and talking more. eventually i dove back into the library to get what i came for, but in my newly charged state of mind, the book seemed to choose me. I picked up foucault's ethics and did not put it down. i tried to look at other books, really i did. but i kept picking it up again. i decided to buy it. i looked at the price, which was 455 korunas, or about $22. this deterred me greatly. i put it down again and tried to look for something else. i opened it again to the contents. it was a compilation of all of foucault's major writings from the 60s to 90s. it was just too good to let go. I knew I could get it cheaper in the states which killed me but I needed it, now. So after unsuccessfully trying to haggle with the bartender who spoke no english at all, this book was the most expensive thing I bought in Prague. But he felt bad for not giving it to me cheaper so he gave me a free beer. It was one I hadn't yet tried- the name escapes me now which makes this pointless to recount- but by God it might be one of the best beers I've ever had. I couldn't believe I had been missing out on it the entire time. The other best one I had though was Kozel, a dark lager that was a bit sweet and very smooth.

I ended up heading home at 2am and waking up at 7:30 a little foggier that I'd planned, but after some running and sweating in the heat I made it to my train. It was completely packed, so much so that a group of american guys who got there after me had to sit in the hallway for the six hour ride to Munich. bummer. I got lucky, I was in a compartment with three super cool Canadian girls and the most amazing older couple from New Zealand who had been all over the world. They had incredible stories to tell, we shared great conversations between the six of us and bonded pretty hard. That is until the air conditioning went out and we all passed out from heat exhaustion. really, we did. slept for the last hour like sweaty kittens in a cardboard box. ugh. i got to munich with 14 minutes to catch my next train to Bolzano. I grabbed some water and a cup of pineapple and booked it for the platform. I was back on the euro now and it already hurt. this train was equally packed, but this time i wasn't as lucky with my fellow riders. i had a quiet guy and girl my age, a female train attendant, and a young Austrian father with his two-year old daughter in the throes of terrible twos. within the first thirty seconds of sitting down, just following the cordial greeting (which is normally followed by complete silence and keeping to oneself), she went straight for the pineapple i was enjoying, as in the piece on my fork that was entering my mouth. of course, her dad stopped her, with a very embarassed 'entschuldigung', as she began to scream hysterically. i was like oh, god. four hours of this and i may actually die. i turned the other cheek and attempted to read her a children's book, successfully calming her down for a minute. however, she had not lost interest in my pineapple, which she continued to reach for. i granted her some, pacifying her momentarily with a hearty chunk which she nearly choked on. oops. this exchange was sweet and endearing until she began climbing all over me, refusing to let go of the soiled baby wipe in her hand which she held on to like a security blanket as it periodically swiped my face and mouth. i was over it. as they got up to go to the bathroom, i quickly ventured into the nearest open seat in another compartment, trying to be as un-obvious as possible, with the excuse that i was giving them more room. i mean, they needed it. i felt kind of bad until later, as i heard her continued to scream, now down the hall, muffled by my ipod and comfortable half-slumber. it was then that i became overjoyed with my decision. the conclusion naturally followed that i am not yet ready for children.


i will end for the night, so i can get up at 7am and discover my job for the day. bolzano/florence/rome post tomorrow. then the farm where i am now. buona notte...