'Round the Table

Last night, I met up with some friends from school, and also made a few new friends.  We met at Česká, which is, along with the train station, the main convergence of public transportation in Brno.  There's a clock on the corner of Česká, so it's typical for people from Brno to say to each other, "Sejdem se na České pod hodinama?"  Let's meet a Česká under the clock.  We went out to a pub, where we sat chatting for a few hours.  It was a great time, but very odd.  Why was it so odd?

This was the outline of our table:

      Russia      Israel      Azerbaijan
Russia                                Macedonia
          Russia           USA

It's a strange feeling to be sitting with such diverse countries in the middle of the Czech Republic, chatting away in Czech.  Let me clarify a little bit, too.  All three Russians currently live in the heart of Siberia, not far from Kazakhstan.  Technically, they're from Asia.  One of them was even born in a city in Russia close to Mongolia, on a near equal longitude with Beijing.  Another was born in Yekaterinburg (where the last tsar of Russia was shot), then lived in Kazakhstan, and now lives in Siberia.  The Israeli was born in Russia, not too far from the Ukraine, then moved to Israel.  If you're not sure, Macedonia is a small country right above Greece, which has a fascinating history.  Alexander the Great, for example, was Macedonian, not Greek, which causes disputes between the countries to this day.  Azerbaijan, however, might be the one that's stumping you.  Some say it's Europe, others the Middle East.  It's a small country, sharing borders with Russia, Georgia, Armenia, and Iran, with a coast on the Caspian Sea.  It was also once a Soviet Satellite State, and is predominantly a Muslim country.  Later, we were joined by two girls from Estonia, up in the north of Europe, across the Baltic Sea from Finland, sharing borders with Russia and Latvia.

We eventually headed out into the city, and went to a club.  There, we met up with a friend from the Ukraine, as well as several Poles, our resident Belgian, and some of the Slovenes (from Slovenia, the small country bordering Austria to the south).

It's been a very exciting, interesting, and eye-opening experience so far here in Brno.  When I was living in Graz, Austria, I spent time mostly with Europeans, but from the major countries of Europe, the ones you hear about most often in the news and in school.  Here in Brno, it's been very different.  I study with kids from the countries you don't hear about, the ones who come from places with very recent wars, if not ever present wars.  All in all, it's a very eye-opening experience, and teaches you as an American to sit down, shut up, and realize how much of a "normal" life you've really had.

Я не понимаю!

Greetings from chilly, rainy Europe.  You're probably curious about the title of this entry.  It's Russian, and that's the Cyrillic alphabet, the alphabet used by Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Belorussian, Serbian, and a few other languages.  In our alphabet, the Latin alphabet, it would be written something like this: Ya nye panimayu!  In Russian, it means, "I don't understand!"  You'll see why...

This week's been pretty busy, but rewarding no less.  Last Friday, I took off from Brno in the morning with my ever-present sidekick, Libor, and we headed north to his home village, Linhartice.  I'd chosen this weekend to go visit, because there's a Czech band that I really like (named UDG, if you're interested in Czech music) who had a concert in Moravská Třebová, the city next to Linhartice.  We didn't end up going to the concert, it was on the expensive side and Libor said the club it was in was one of the skummier places in Třebová.  Instead, I had a nice, relaxing weekend.  We just hung out around his house.  I should say, at least, that I mostly hung out.  He's finishing his master's degree in February, so is working 'round the clock on his master's thesis, which is designing an entire badminton hall.  I pretty much just hung out, napped, read my book, did some homework, played with Lenka (his 9-year-old sister), and enjoyed being in a house, not in an apartment with my slobbish roommates.  On Saturday I went to his soccer game, where I nearly froze.  It started at 3:30 in the afternoon, and the temperature was supposedly about 73°.  I don't believe that at all, and by the time the game finished at about six, it was below zero.  It was a nice weekend overall, though, and the best I've eaten since I got here.

Bicycle races in Třebová.  The incline is wicked steep; Libor, Lenka and I hiked up there in the spring.

The Czech is not impressed.

This week has otherwise just been busy in Brno.  I've got lots of schoolwork, which I'm not complaining about, because I have to say, I'm really happy to wake up every morning and go to school.  Our teachers are absolutely amazing, they're so friendly, so much fun, and quite honestly some of the best teachers I've ever had.  They really love teaching Czech, they love interacting with all the nationalities present in school, and they're so talented at explaining the most complicated words to such a wide audience and the various ways we interpret them.  For example, try and think of how you would explain the word "responsibility" to a group of 15 people, each of whom come from a different part of the world and speak a different language.  Not so easy, is it?  It's just a really great program, and I'm elated that things have worked out the way they have and I'm able to partake in it.

A lot of it comes down to the kids I go to school with, of course.  I straddle two groups, but both of them are full of such interesting, funny, and friendly people.  I definitely got very lucky.  I love hanging out with them, and we all chat all the time now, even outside of school.  I mentioned some of the nationalities in my first entry, but here are the ones represented in the two groups I'm in: USA, Russia, Poland, Sweden, Israel, the Ukraine, France, Belgium, Belorussia, Serbia, Slovenia, Hungary, Finland, Germany, Austria, Korea, Latvia, Italy and others, which I'm surely forgetting at the moment.  Everyone is great, though, and so interested in Czech and the Czech Republic.  The long and short of it is, they're as big of dorks as me!

Last night, Wednesday, there was a gathering in a Ukrainian restaurant here in Brno.  There are quite a lot of Russians in Brno, and also people who just speak Russian.  Back in the days of Czechoslovakia being a Soviet satellite, everybody was required to learn Russian in school.  At times, they actually spent more time studying Russian than Czech, if you can believe it.  All the kids from the Ukraine and Belarus can also speak Russian just as well as they can speak their first languages (Ukrainian and Belorussian), so they have little gatherings to meet.  My friend Yevheniya from the Ukraine invited me, so that I could hear some Russian and Ukrainian, as well as try Ukrainian food.  With my trusty sidekick along for the ride, Libor and I met Yevheniya, Ola (Poland), Dina (Russia), Anton (Russia), Kristina (Israel/Russia), and Łukasz (Poland).  We took the tram to the restaurant, where there were other people, and spent the evening there.  It was pretty cool, hearing true Russian spoken, and talking to people from all over the east.  Unfortunately, my Russian is limited to saying, "I don't speak Russian.  I don't understand," but everybody wanted to teach me something, and otherwise spoke Czech or English with me.  I guess it's time for me to start learning some Russian, so that I can say something besides Я не понимаю!

Борщ aka boršč aka borshch, the first Ukrainian food I've ever had.

By the way, tomorrow, October 28th, is a holiday here in the Czech Republic.  It's the day on which Czechoslovakia was formed in 1918.  Celebrate!

Nie Mówię po Polsku

Cześć!  Nie mówię po polsku.

That's Polish for, "Hey!  I don't speak Polish."  If you hadn't guessed, the theme of this will be Poland.

Yesterday was an adventurous day.  I only had one class, Tvůrčí psaní (Creative Writing), which is actually a lot of fun.  Our teacher is really relaxed, and we're basically learning different methods of writing.  It's a lot of stuff that we learnt in elementary school, but it's a good course because we're learning how to do it all again, but in Czech (which is harder than it might sound).  Our teacher's father was also a very well-known underground author during communism, and his work was distributed around Brno and Czechoslovakia as an anti-communist writer.  You could say our teacher takes writing fairly seriously.

After class, though, I was invited by some Polish friends to visit Brno's "Automotodrom."  This bastardization of words basically means racetrack.  To get to the drom, though, was quite the production.  First, we had to take the tram from school to Hlavní nádraží, Brno's main train station.  We then had to switch to another tram and ride to the end station, about twenty minutes.

Michał and Kasia during our long tram ride.

We finally reached the end station of the tram, and from there we had to connect to a bus.  We actually had to take a regional bus, because the racetrack is outside of Brno proper.  After much to do with figuring out where the bus stop was, where we buy tickets, where we were going, etc., we were aboard the bus and underway.  Of course, the stops were not announced, so we had no idea where we were going, but kept a look-out whenever we stopped so as to see where exactly we were.  Well, lo and behold, after about thirty minutes of traveling, we stopped and everybody got out.  The driver, who was less than friendly, told us we were in Říčany, the last stop.  What?  He then gruffly told us that we had not pressed the button to let him know to stop the bus, because the stop we needed was only by request.  He was also the guy who sold us the ticket and told us exactly which stop we needed.  I pointed out to the others that in this type of bus, there aren't any buttons that you can press to request a stop.  Well, we had to get out in Říčany, wait three minutes for him to turn the bus around, and then get back on the bus and head back in the direction we came from.

Joanna, Michał and Kasia in Říčany.

When we got back on the bus, we politely told him we wanted to go to the racetrack, and asked if he'd be so kind as to tell us when we were there.  He told us he had stopped there on the trip out, but he would let us know.  Less than ten minutes later, he pulled up right in front of the main gate of the racetrack, where we had never stopped the first go around.  He told us to get out there (as if we couldn't figure that out), but at least we made it.

The main entrance to the racetracks, if there were any doubt.

We headed into the tracks, which were open to the public yesterday.  There are some races out there today, one lasting for six hours (crazy), so teams from across Europe have come to compete.  We were able to climb up into the stands and watch some of the test drives, which was pretty cool since I'd never seen one live before.

The starting/finish line.

We wandered around for bit, saw a lot of the cars, even got down onto the level of the track with the cars careening past us.  After about fifty minutes, though, we decided it was time to head back into Brno.  The weather has changed dramatically in the past week, going from the 80s down to the 30s/40s, so it was chilly out, and we had plans to go to a theater to see a performance of "The Idiots" at 7.  Remember, our trip out to the tracks had lasted roughly an hour and a half, and we stayed for about fifty minutes.  We wanted to make sure we had enough time to get back to Brno before the performance, in case something went wrong.  We headed back to the bus stop, and lo and behold, the second bus of the day, which just also happened to be the last, leaving form the tracks didn't come for another two hours.  It was ridiculous, and we couldn't believe it.  As we contemplated what to do, Michał took matters into his own hands, and started stopping cars as they were leaving the arena, begging them to give us a lift back to Brno.  Naturally, nobody wanted to help us.

The sign at the bus stop.  "Warning: Shooting Range.  Do Not Enter."

After trying to hitch a ride with several cars, we finally gave up and headed to the restaurant to sit inside where it was warm and wait for the bus.  Once 6:30 came around, we were there waiting for the bus, successfully climbed aboard, and made it back to Brno.  We were too late to go to the theater to see the performance, but were laughing that we didn't need to go, we'd performed our own version of "The Idiots" by our afternoon mishaps.

All in all, it was a fun afternoon with the Poles, I got to see racetracks for the first time ever (aside from the kind down in Misquamicut), and then had a relaxing evening at my place.  Tonight I'm headed to the movies with my friend from Sweden, and then out to a pub to celebrate a Polish friend's birthday.  Ah, the charmed life I lead.

Rozjedem!

Čau z České republiky!

After getting some requests both from the United States and from Europe, I've decided to start another blog chronicling my life and adventures here on the Old Continent.  Here we go...

My plane to Spain, 9/13/11

To get you up to speed, my name is Matthew, I'm a 23-year-old American from the tiny state of Rhode Island, though here I most often claim New York City or Boston as my hometown.  This is my third time living in Europe, the first being in Graz, Austria, where I was an exchange student at Karl Franzens Universität and had potentially the best year of my life.  Last year, I lived in Havlíčkův Brod, Czech Republic, as an English teaching assistant by way of the Fulbright scholarship.  Now, I'm back in the Czech Republic, living in Brno, the country's second largest city with about 400,000 inhabitants, not too far from the borders of Austria and Slovakia.  I'm studying at Masarykova Univerzita, in English Masaryk University, in a program called Čeština pro cizince, Czech for Foreigners.  I love it, it's so much fun, my classmates are great, and our teachers are outstanding.  I won't get a degree from this program, but I will get something similar to a diploma proclaiming my competence in Czech.  I go to school for about 17-18 hours a week, where instruction is only in Czech, and I straddle two groups, "Intermediate 2" and "Intermediate 3."

Building "D" at Masaryk University.  Not very pretty, but don't worry, the others buildings we have classes in are classic European buildings.

I know a lot of you back in the States aren't familiar with Czech, so here's just an example.

Čeština je západní slovanský jazyk, který je podobný slovenštině.  Česká republika je malá země přesně upostřed Evropy, jejími sousedy jsou Rakousko, Slovensko, Polsko a Německo.  V České republice bydlí Češi, kteří jsou nejvstřícnější národ v Evropě.

In other words, it's a little bit different from English.  What I just wrote is, "Czech is a western Slavic language, which is similar to Slovak.  The Czech Republic is a small country exactly in the middle of Europe, its neighbors are Austria, Slovakia, Poland, and Germany.  Czechs live in the Czech Republic, and are the most warm-hearted nation in Europe."

School is great, and my classmates are awesome.  It's a very interesting mix of students, ranging from Sweden and France to Russia and Belarus.  There are even some students from Asia, and one girl from Israel.  There are some other Americans in the program, mostly older than me, who have lived in the Czech Republic for several years as English teachers and the like.  I've become friends with several of the kids in my classes, we hang out and chat a lot, and it's great because we speak almost solely in Czech.  We've had some really interesting debates, ranging from the best place to travel to the way that atomic energy is perceived in our countries.

My first few weeks here were a little shaky, since most of my stuff was left around the country.  I still don't have everything, a lot of it is still at my friend Libor's, but it's not a problem.  I already moved from one apartment to another, and now I live in a big apartment in the middle of the city (literally), two tram stops from school, with six other people (five Czechs, one Spaniard).  I'm on the hunt for a job, so that I can secure a visa, as well as make some money.  Hopefully something will come up from the applications I've sent out.

The house I live in.

Well, I can't think of much else to write at the moment, but I'll try to put some updates on here from time to time so that you can all hear what's going on.  It's taken me a while to start something like this because our internet wasn't working, but my landlord appears to have fixed it, so I can start writing here, uploading pictures, and making phone calls.  If you want my address, shoot me an email, you all know how I feel about getting mail.  If you want to make donations to my bank account, well that'd just be real swell.  Just kidding (or am I?).

My backyard: Petrov, the city's cathedral.

Přeju vám všem hezký den z Brna!