Friday, February 29, 2008

i love brussel sprouts and other europe revelations

living in europe has caused me to do a lot of things i never considered before. for instance, drinking tea when one is not sick. drinking alone (not tea.) using applicator-less tampons.

i've become a lot more lax in the frequency of taking showers; chances are, if you've skipped one you are still nowhere near as redolent as the better part of the czech population riding the metro on that given day.

today for lunch at school we had "kureci maso" or if you're anglophilic, "chicken meat," rice with veggies mixed in and some sort of gravy sauce. as i was picking through my rice, i saw it: and i panicked. a brussel sprout.

i have never in my life eaten a brussel sprout; in fact, it is the only food i've have been cultured to fear. that's a lie, there's two: brussel sprouts and liver and onions. everyone i've ever met who has had these two foods finds them disgusting. my dad hated brussel sprouts, so we never had them at home, and after i "grew up" it never occurred to me to try them because i was sure i'd hate them.

apparently i was all worked up for nothing because they taste exactly as they look: like tiny balls of lettuce.

i was wondering today what changes my friends at home might notice after not having seen me for almost a year. i don't think i've changed much, but i probably have. maybe i will be out of touch with pittsburgh when i return.

you know, beyond smelling a little funky and having a newfound love for ostracized vegetables.

Sunday, February 24, 2008

got nothing to do today but smile

i had quite a biting rant prepared on becoming legally employed in the EU (which i'm certain will resurface at some point, probably this week when lucka finds yet another way to delay my application for a work permit), but i suddenly find myself devoid of all negative feeling.

this sunday afternoon, february 23, 2008, it is 61 degrees farenheit in prague, which almost certainly has to be a lie - i would put it at at least 70 degrees. it's by far the warmest and most pleasant day i can remember since i've been here. almost immediately upon our arrival in september it was cold, chilly and rainy everyday and it only got colder.

it hasn't exactly been a cold winter, but it's been cold enough. (apparently, this october and november were colder on average than december and january were. one of my students told me this and i can't really be bothered to look it up; just take my word that its more or less true). the two times i can actually remember thinking "boy it is fucking cold" were the week leading up to and surrounding christmas, and last week.

otherwise it's been positively balmy.

i was on my way to use the internet at jama. i made it a few blocks down krizikova and realized i had left our windows open and thought it might be prudent, given the robbery a few weeks back, to close them. on my way i figured, why not try the internet in the park?

which has led to the greatest idea i've had in weeks, though not really revolutionary -- get a beer at the potraviny and use the internet in the park. lovely!

i don't think i've been in a better mood in weeks. there are kids rollerblading, people are out on balconies. i walked over to the park on the other side of our apartment building to give the internet a whirl there, and on my way back i almost said out loud "FUCK i'm hot." in a sweatshirt. it's wonderful.

this is my favorite day of the year. almost no one is in a bad mood on the first really warm day. march is probably going to end up being a bitch, but today (and this week at least), you can get a beer, drink it outside (no open container laws! what a utopia the czech republic is) and not really be mad or upset about anything. wonderful.

and meanwhile, it's 15 degrees and snowy in pittsburgh! haha.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

if you want a show, just let me know and i'll sing in your ear again*

you know what's embarassing? crying on an airport shuttle bus. because there's no way to hide it, really. shuttles are always crowded and the seats are arranged in such a way that you are forced to face your copassengers. so no matter what you do, they know you are crying. and crying people (especially crying people that are alone) don't do anything but make everyone else SUPER uncomfortable.

and they were probably all thinking, "seriously? who ACTUALLY cries at the airport?" then they look around to see if there are movie cameras and they've somehow unknowingly stumbled onto the set of a romantic comedy.

at least i made it out of the terminal. right? that would have been worse.

i don't really ever cry, so when i do i have no idea how to handle it. i suppose first i try to decide why exactly i'm crying. it's not because he's gone because that has happened before. maybe it's because last time, in the back of my mind, i knew i would see him again, and maybe this time i don't know that.

actually i think i was crying because life is just not fair. which sounds horribly childish. that is a lesson i have supposedly learned before, but maybe i hadn't.

it's not fair that i cannot legally work in europe. it's not fair that i spent an entire night trying to think of a way that i could but came up with nothing. it's not fair that relationships have to be decided by arbitrary things like geography. it's not fair that something like that makes it over before it starts. it's not fair that, because of airport security, you can no longer run to the gate to stop someone from boarding a plane. it's not fair that doing that probably wouldn't work anyway.

it's not fair that i couldn't think of something to say that could fix it.

and it's not fair that maybe that thing is not what he wanted anyway. it's not fair that the nonexistant fix-all might not actually fix all.

maybe i'm naive but i didn't think it worked this way. but maybe it does, and maybe that's the lesson.

so i was sitting in a seat, freezing, tired, hoping my phone would vibrate (but it didn't), crying like a child with a child's excuse for it. life's not fair.

i don't know how to conclude this, except to say that after i decided what i was crying about, i tried to think of something else in order to stop. there was a couple across the way who had just arrived from ireland and the woman had the most beautiful accent. so i listened for a while. but it just made it worse. somehow, listening to this woman say "wednesday" made me cry even more.

i wish i had an accent. life's not fair.



*this title is a line from "the drugs don't work," by the verve.

Sunday, February 17, 2008

a short note about lists and my inability to properly utilize them

my memory is slipping. lately i'll think of something good, maybe an idea for a blog or some place i want to travel, or i'll stumble on a word while i'm reading that i want to look up*, and i'll say to myself - i won't forget this one. how hard can it possibly be to remember that i want to look up "abseiling?"

pretty tough, apparently, because i just had to refer to notes to remember it. and that happens all the time now. if i don't write something down, it's even money that it'll be lost forever within 5-7 minutes. then it will occur to me later -- not what i wanted to remember, but in the form of that nervous, empty feeling you get when you realize you forgot something. then, usually, more energy than is proportional to the importance of the forgotten fact is used trying to remember it.

so i've resorted to making lists. my plan was to have several lists that are constantly updated, so i'll have one for "travel destinations" and one for "words to look up," another for "books i want to read," and maybe "blog ideas so nick stops whining about it not having been updated in a week."

the thing is, i'm crap at making lists! i get performance anxiety or something, i don't know, but when i sit down to write down all the things i've thought of, i suddenly can't remember them. then i end up with a list that is two items long or that ends up a lot more disappointing in quality than what i imagined it would be. (if you saw my "europe 2008 goals" list on the facebook you'll know what i mean.)

for instance, i wanted to start a list of "things i would like to see." obviously there are many but when i sat to write the list, all i could come up with was "space shuttle launch." (but, good one, right?).

i am also attempting to write for a friend a sort of "pittsburgh travel guide." i didn't know where to start really so i began making lists, neighborhood by neighborhood, of all the places i think someone visiting pittsburgh for the first time should see. now, pittsburgh is a place i like to think i know a good deal about, having lived there for 23 years. lord knows i can talk about it for hours. but when i sat to write this list, i got nowhere. all the places sounded lame and stupid, and it was rather short.

AND, even if i do get a successful list written, i don't use it! last week i made a shopping list of things i needed at tesco's (unnecessary possessive) and forgot to bring it. then, instead of going to tesco, i went to billa -- only to end up buying just ONE of the things on my list. fittingly i can't remember what else was on it now, but i walked out of the billa that day with only a bag of five ridiculously overpriced disposable pink razors.

i did make one quite good list today that i intend on using, and it is "blog ideas." however, my memory is already failing me on just what i meant by some of the list items. it is:

collections - ppl
itunes shuffle
immigrant (just one? and what about him/her?)
british eng.
the woods (rather unspecific!)
dealbreakers (okay i remember EXACTLY what i want to say about this one, actually)

and that was only about an hour ago. let's see what survives the night.




*my dictionary is being held hostage, and last night i found out USED, by drew and sergio! specifically "oh, i've been carrying it around in my bag. it's crap though. it's missing words."

Saturday, February 09, 2008

in holland*, everyone is an expert in paintings and tulips

prague is getting boring. not the city, i suppose (i love it here), but it's just falling into routine. maybe its the time of year or just the current state of my jobs, life, lack of hobbies, etc., but i feel like i'm entering a rut.

on the bright side, there's a light at the end of the tunnel. (what a terrible mixed metaphor)...lori, anna, debs and i are going to amsterdam for the weekend of march 14-16. this will be my first big trip since i've been in europe, which is pathetic and exciting all at once. i don't know what there's to do in amsterdam (other than the obvious, which we will be doing... use your imagination.)

i've decided that enough is enough, i'm going to start spending my money on travelling instead of whatever dumb shit i find to blow my paycheck on here in prague.

we're also pretty certainly going to dublin in june to see radiohead. the tickets are 53 pounds (i can't even make the pound symbol on my computer, thats how expensive they are). how do people in GB live? i have never spent that much on a concert, ever. i don't know if this is what you usually pay but JEEZ. that's around $120. out of control. however, i like radiohead, i want to see dublin, and this is a good excuse to waste that money, i suppose.

(however, i decided recently that i HATE going to concerts. it's always crowded and you don't get anywhere close to the stage. the opening bands are usually crap, unless you get lucky. and the band never plays the songs that everyone wants to hear, they play the songs from whichever album they're promoting, usually the newest. no one wants to hear that crap. so you stand there, barely able to see the band, getting bumped into by obnoxious teenagers, listening to songs you don't even want to hear. lame. dear radiohead, please play high and dry and will be forgiven.)

all other proceeds leftover from the next few months paychecks will be going to the "summer 2008 travelling fund." my educational obligations at both schools are over at the end of june. i want to ride on the trans-siberian railroad, hopefully to beijing (and coincidentally, the olympics will be there this summer... i wonder if that'll coincide?) i was originally planning to fly back to the states from there and be done with my year abroad, but now i'm not so sure.

in a perfect world, i'd like to travel for the two months remaining in the summer (july and august); then, either start a job in a new country (italy? i hope i hope i hope) or go home. i don't know if this is financially possible. i guess we'll see what falls off the truck.

i had this feeling that i needed to see as much as possible in my year in prague, but i suppose thats not true. i was dead set on only being here a year, but i'm not anymore. i'll have plenty of time to get where i want to go - no sense squishing it into 6 months. however, i'm still tired of wasting my weekends not doing much else other than reading, laying around, taking naps and cleaning.




*i thought amsterdam was in the netherlands, and i never realized until i was corrected yesterday that the netherlands and holland are the same place. although, not really - holland is a province IN the netherlands. but for 24 hours, i thought my 16 years of education had failed me at the most basic geography.
also, the title of this blog is from the book "the fall" by albert camus and hopefully i didn't remember it wrong.

Friday, February 08, 2008

adventures at tesco

first of all, i guess tesco is an english company, right? so i was perusing deb's copy of "notes from a small island," by bill bryson, which i had already read but discovered that she had a different copy of which included a glossary of words that might be unfamiliar to a speaker of american english. for example, i learned that a "cornet" is an ice cream cone. but anyway, i saw tesco in the glossary. obviously i knew what it was because they are all over prague. however, in bryson's glossary it was listed as "Tesco's." that leads me to wonder - do certain dialects of british english feature the unnecessary addition of a posessive? or was it just a mistake on bryson's part? because i thought this was a characteristic of western pennsylvanian american english. almost everyone, especially older citizens of the area, add the "'s" to the proper names of certain stores, bars, etc. for instance the drugstore chain "Eckerd's" or "Buckhead's" instead of buckhead saloon. i will have to do some research on this.

ANYWAY, it amazes me how easily tesco can successfully manipulate consumers. as i was walking from the entrance to the toiletries area, i noticed a display in the middle of the main aisle. the "middle of the aisle," in case you didn't know, is the place where they put the most worthless items on sale. the good sales -- you have to search for those. they remain hidden deep in the aisles of their respective items.

this week's sale was for random household items -- tools and the like. bungee cords, wrenches, huge rolls of packing tape, scissors. that kind of shit. things you don't realize you need until they're right in front of your face for 30% off. i even found myself slowing down... yeah, maybe i do need 24 AAA batteries. but what would i ever do with that many batteries? i don't have the luxury of owning many battery-powered items. i noticed a lady finely inspecting a yellow, plastic flashlight. someone else carrying an armful of clear tape. things they all probably didn't need until they unsuspectingly stumbled on this sale display.

why does this work so well? and why are the things i need not displayed so prominently? just once i'd like to walk into tesco and see facewash! bubble-wrap lined mailing envelopes! paper towels! right in front of me. (where the HELL are the paper towels in the narodni trida tesco anyway? they're not with the household cleaning supplies, and not with the toilet paper. WTF.)

instead i spent a half an hour combing the shelves to ensure i didn't put foot cream on my face.

Monday, February 04, 2008

superbowl

THE PATRIOTS LOST THE SUPERBOWL. there is a god.

i don't have anything else to say.

(PS. i only write about football and trams. sorry. i have a good one for tomorrow...)

Sunday, February 03, 2008

random thoughts, tramspotting part 2

first off, the superbowl is going to be boring.

i hope the giants can pull something out. if they don't, it'll be the most boring superbowl and the most boring NFL season in recent history. also, i really intensely dislike the patriots (if you haven't picked up on that yet).

enough.

i don't know how, but the arrival times of trams are scheduled in just such a way so as to encourage excessive eating. espcially sunday nights. you get there, you've got about 13-16 minutes because you just missed the last 24. so you're standing around, and it's kinda cold, and the natural thought process is... there's a perfectly good KFC down the block, i've got all this time... it'd be a shame not to take advantage, right? then you end up with a bag full of greasy chicken and fries and sub-par coleslaw* that you weren't even hungry for in the first place. but it wastes the time.

they also conveniently placed a sausage stand right near the main night tram stop in wenceslas square. cunning business sense.

also, i've been considering when it is appropriate to run for the tram/metro.
(it's always okay to run for a bus. they are unpredictable.)

i'd say the following:
ALWAYS run for the 24. it's like the haley's comet of trams.
NEVER run for the metro on the red line. especially in the morning. seriously, if you can't be 45 seconds later than you already are... you either work for a despot or you're life is in shambles.
IF you can hear the metro coming, it's okay to run for it.

at the Urxova stop near my house, i consider it worth running if i'm about a block back from the main street. based on my calculations involving speed and wind resistance, and amount of time it takes the tram to approach the stop and for all passengers to board and deboard, i can usually make it from there. any farther back is just heartbreaking... you want to run, but you know you won't make it.

as you can see, i'm rather giddy with the situation of having a stellar public transport system.

*oddly, all the McDonald's in Prague are far superior in quality to those in the States, but the KFC's are dismal. the food is terrible. it was some of the worst coleslaw i've had too, by the way. my little personal plastic bowl serving had to have contained an entire clove of garlic.

Friday, February 01, 2008

the dangling conversation

so, i just spent some time backreading lori's blog (a life in the present, link to the right). among her excellent entries was one, an echo of her blog's title, that focused on her fear that she is wasting away the present by looking too hard at the future. i, and i think a lot of other people in my demographic, have spent of time recently (yesterday, the last few weeks, months, years) trying to answer two questions:

a. what am i doing now? and
b. what am i doing next?
-(and as a subquestion to b, how will what i'm doing now help me do what i want to do next?)

i wrote recently about not knowing what i want to do next and being quite happy about it, which is still true. it's really refreshing not to have to think about everything as interconnected steps to achieve some greater goal. i also don't really have a reason for a. either. at first i was here because it might look good on a graduate school application. also because i wanted to try something different, i suppose i felt that i had wrung pittsburgh dry.

those are not really true anymore. i still want to go to grad school, but for what? who knows. and being here for five months has made me realize i'm not really tired of pittsburgh; on the contrary, i love it even more. prague is just a different place; teaching is just something to make money so i can be happy, here, and when i'm not happy anymore, i'll leave. i'll go back home or i'll go to washington dc or i'll go somewhere else. why i'm there, and how being there will factor into what i want to do next, won't really matter.

i suppose i'm here because i can, i've been given the opportunity, and that's it. i'm lucky to have had the resources to pick up and move to a new country, i was lucky get an education and to be raised to expect these sorts of priveleges, not just to hope for them. whenever i think about missing home, or not wanting to be here, or wondering why i came in the first place, i just think about my mom. when she left me at the security line at pittsburgh international she started crying harder than i've ever seen and told me "i'm so proud of you." i haven't done anything particularly impressive in my life, but i know she's proud because i've done things that she was never given the opportunity to do, or maybe things that she never thought she could do (even though she probably could).

obviously, i don't know what it was like to be her, growing up, but i'd imagine she was caught in between what women were supposed to do in the past, and what they can do now. she finished high school and lived with her parents until she met and married my father, when she moved into his ("their") home. she had children and was a stay at home mom until that could no longer pay the bills. she didn't get to go to college, she didn't get to have an apartment and live on her own. she's barely been out of pennsylvania, let alone abroad; i don't even think she has a passport. i think it's a typical case of wanting more for your children than you had for yourself, though i think my mom was intensely lucky. she is in love with someone who loves her, she is one of the most loving and compassionate people i know. i can't really think of the right words to describe her.

so when i want to complain about not knowing what to do with my life, i think about my mom and that she is proud of me for just being here. which is something that, when i think about it, makes it a lot easier for me to "just be here."

which was quite a long way to lead me to the title of this blog, which is "the dangling conversation." it is a simon and garfunkel song, but it is also the would-be name of a restaurant i'd like to open someday, theoretically in pittsburgh but i'm open. i don't know exactly what i want it to be, yet, but i pick up things as i go; i want it to be a decoupage of things i've seen from places i've been. it started with crossword puzzle placemats on the tables. i think i want to decorate it with maps. i have one sandwich name so far, "the stinkin' lincoln." it involves onions. also, i "borrow" ideas, such as the way the bathrooms are decorated in meduza. there are old tiles from the floor to halfway up the wall; then an uneven frieze of jewels and seashells in some sort of cement or putty or something. anyway, at some point i'll put all these things into this perfect little place, the dangling conversation.

i used to think i needed to do something really "great," like be a famous writer or a scholar or something, and that owning a restaurant in pittsburgh was not that. however, i think i was wrong, and i think thats why i've spent a lot of my formative/adult years unhappy. i've been searching for my thing to be "great" at, and i've been frustrated because i'm not finding it. but i think i could be happy with the dangling conversation, or just being here in prague not really doing anything. which, and this might sound terrible -- is somewhat of a relief.