Greetings from Prague

So, for whomever my audience for this ends up being, hello. I've completed my first week at NYU in Prague. The city is very beautiful, a powerful tribute to many different architectural styles and a rich, remarkable history. 

I guess I should start off with one cultural idea that nicely describes the contemporary czechs, pivo, which means beer in Czech. Pilsner advertisements conceal sides of buildings, other beer signs jut out of buildings, signaling the large number of small neighborhood bars. It is not uncommon here to have beer with lunch, a couple after work, then with dinner (in case you couldn't guess, the beer here is very good). To accompany this liquid treasure is a very healthy, nutritious national diet of potato or bread dumplings, creme sauce, pork, beef, and of course, the favorite vegetarian option, smazeny syr or fried cheese. Luckily, people here are starting to catch onto the international organic movement and have adopted more healthy alternatives. Grocery stores now offers "bio" products which are all organic. Numerous vegetarian restaurants (not offering such items as smazeny syr) now dot the city. Of course, cigarettes are very popular and smoked in restaurants, bars, malls, surgery rooms at hospital (jk I don't know that and hopefully won't find out). 

With the help of two hour language classes everyday this week, I've learned enough Czech to get around. Here's some samples of the consonant-heavy, mouthful of words we learned:

dobry den - good day

na shledanou - good bye

jedna, dva, tri, ctyri - 1, 2, 3, 4

dekuji - thank you

prosim - please

jak se jmenujete? - what is your name?

heres a doozy: strc prst skrz krk - put your finger through your throat (kind of a czech tongue-twister)

Prague is a fairly small city, especially in comparison to New York. It has three subway lines, and a very convenient tram system (nowhere really takes more than 30 minutes to get to). I'm living in the Vinohrady district, which is in Prague 2. It's tree-lined streets, fin-de-siecle architecture, and proximity to old town make it a very popular residential area.

Czechs are generally nice to tourists; they tend to take pride in their history and culture and want others to experience it. However, they also tend to not be particularly friendly. They are generally reserved and highly dislike loud voices in public (hence, they do get annoyed at us American college students). This is probably one of the vestiges of their somewhat recent communist past. There's also a tendency to stare here on public transportation and sometimes in parks and other public spaces. My Czech teacher assured us that they weren't spiteful or pugnacious glares, but rather curious observations of those around. Whereas in America, we would most likely divert our eyes or smile when a stranger catches you staring, here it's a cultural norm to keep on lookin'.

Some fun fashion trends that I guess are unfortunately popular in Eastern Europe are a form of the mullet on both men and women and pretty bad red hair dye jobs on women. And tevas reign the footwear department.

Well, I guess I'll load some pictures from a lil trip across the Vlatava River on the Charles Bridge to Mala Strana, the neighborhood south of the Prague Castle and the Kampa Musuem, the biggest modern art museum in prague.

A Distant View of the Prague Castle From the Charles Bridge

One of Many Beautiful Statues on the Charles Bridge

A Very Moving Monument to the Victims of Communism in Prague

From An Exhibit From a Contemporary Artist Group at the Museum Kampa (with a view of old town in the background) 

A Rather Disturbing Installation at the Museum Kampa (this nation went through a lot of sh*t)

Once a monument to Czechoslovakia's liberation by the Soviet in 1945, this tank stood menacingly in a prominent square. In 1991 (two years after the end of Soviet-led occupation of Prague), artist David Cerny painted the monument pink one night. . . F U Soviets, now we're going to party!