BIBLIOGRIND
The Life of a Wordsmith — Read … Live … Write
Archive for January, 2009
January 30, 2009 at 6:46 pm · Filed under The Prague Blog
I’m vowing to get out of the house and explore Prague, the nature preserves outside the city, and CASTLES of the Czech Republic.
Winter is pretty much done for me, as in I WANT THIS SEASON TO END. This isn’t applecanyon2007-08. This is cold no-snow no-sun sucksucksuck winter. Besides that, I’m holed up in my Suchdol loft finishing my novel and that’s going to be finished by the end of March. So in celebration of that little milestone, I’m vowing to get out of the house and out of Prague come springtime to visit a different castle every weekend.
This pledge is pretty easy to accomplish. CR has the most castles of any European country. I’m not talking dilapidated stone foundations that require imagination to see how life might have been “back then.” Czech’s castles are mostly intact and largely useful (if not still used for some purposes). Just outside of Prague there stand dozens of castles in small towns. Larger castles are only an hour’s train ride.
One of the oldest and undoubtedly the prettiestis Karlstejn Castle, 18 miles SW of Prague. “Charles IV built this medieval castle from 1348 to 1357 to safeguard the crown jewels of the Holy Roman Empire. Although the castle had been changed over the years, with such additions as late Gothic staircases and bridges, renovators have removed these additions, restoring the castle to its original medieval state.”
Apparently, the walk up to the castle takes 20-30 mins. This calls for picnic potential (see definition for “wino”), photos, stopping to smell the wildflowers, and feeling the sun on your face. Springtime is for the outdoors, renewal, guvenation, new wine, blooming flowers, travel, bright colors, women in halter tops, walks in the park, beer gardens and BBQ sausage, sick days and canceled classes, outdoor festivals … and castle roaming.
January 27, 2009 at 7:58 pm · Filed under The Prague Blog
I would trade this teaching gig with few others, as the economy sits now. Getting paid to drop in on a lawyer or corp director — or three enthusiastic 20-somethings — who just want to talk about anything, is more work than most people believe it to be, but it is rewarding work, as I’m speaking with educated people who have opinions and arguments about any subject I can spark off a conversation with.
So the only sticking point about this gig (and there always is with whatever we do) is the buzzing around Prague getting to the offices. I estimate that I take 12 separate public trans rides per day. This includes transfers. From buses to subways (which have their own transfers) to trams. Oh, and I also walk a fair distance to a few places once the motorization ends.
Yet today was the first time I got stuck at a spot. Sort of. The #12 tram from Vltavska area was late. Then a substitute bus came, upon which about a million people bordered. Oh, you better believe I got myself a seat! But then the bus dumped us at a stop and, although I don’t speak much Czech, I got the message that the bus driver was saying to all the passengers: “Walk around the corner to the tram stop for your fucking #12, and stop bitching!”
So I did just that (but I wasn’t bitching). I waited for another 10 minutes, and then the 12 came and got me to the subway and then on up to Dejvicky (with a final bus transfer up to Suchdol). I got home in just over an hour, which was only about 10 minutes past my usual time from Vltavska. Which does not warrant much of a complaint. After five months and some 800+ transport trips, one interruption is a pretty good record.
January 23, 2009 at 10:10 pm · Filed under The Prague Blog
Every couple of weeks, several of we teachers get together for a Friday meal after the weeks’ classes have been exhausted. The usual suspects include about seven Americans, three Brits, two Canadians, and a couple “token” Czechs. We talk, commiserate, laugh, carrouse, and speak happy things about living abroad.
Tonight we dined at Karavanseraj, a Lebanese restaurant along the Vltava River just south of the National Theater (all lit up, views of the castle across the river in Hradcanska, blah, blah, blah). The food is excellent: I had the lamb biryani with a thick raita sause on the side, mango chutney, and three Czech beers. We passed the football of knowledge around a bit and otherwise disquisited on everything from Czech cinema to Rockies v. Alps skiing, Czech women’s fashion and disaffected consumer-society youth, to finding cheap housing and why bother to sit in smokey Jazz clubs.
This all lasts just a couple hours or a little more, and then everyone’s coach seems ready to turn into a pumpkin, so the group splits up in various bunches as they go different ways towards the multidimensional public trans system. I almost stayed out for a double nightcap with Cal (who was head to the Globe Bookstore & Cafe), but thought I’d get home to the new season of Lost, sack out early, and get up early for a good day of writing.
The novel is nearly finished and I just want to keep the momentum going toward the finish line.
January 21, 2009 at 9:44 pm · Filed under The Prague Blog
I haven’t kept up with the blog journal entries simply because I haven’t thought much has merited writing about on a daily or bi-weekly basis. Cold weather! blah. English language classes! blah. Students giving me inside company info that I can’t talk about in public! blah. (though seriously interesting.) Me finishing the long and fantastically rich “The Alexandrian Quartet” by Lawrence Durrell! Actually worth writing a whole series of posts on, so maybe I will.
But then I thought: this journal-diary-blog is as much for me, chronicling the highs lows and middles of life lived fully in another country. These so far 100+ entries establish a narrative (of a sort) that I’ll look at from time to time for the rest of my life. That’s what journals are for, of course. Virginia Woolf once observed (in her journal, naturally): there’s no point in keeping a journal if you don’t often open it to read portions of what you were thinking on some day in the recent or distant past.
As we continually struggle with mind, the concept of being, future, past, THE NOW, and the forever-after-of-that-looming-reality-called-death, a look onto the window of our gentle or tempestuous life given through words is at least a marker, a pause for breath, that counts toward Solace of Moment.
January 20, 2009 at 8:45 pm · Filed under The Prague Blog
I watched Barak Obama’s inaugural speech, and was pleased with his forceful enunciation of what America has been, IS, and must always be. Though sometimes from various points of view one can find the failings of the USA and those who run it and live on its soil, the true breath of These United States has woven people of all possible thoughts, creeds, colors (and reading skills) to make a country who mostly cares not a fig what ya is, but watcha can do!
