After a long delay, I'm finally making myself start keeping up with this travel journal.

A few weekends ago, NYU brought up on a trip to the southern regionn of the Czech Republic, called Moravia. It's more rural, and I'm told it's the equivalent of the American south. There they were celebrating Fašanky, the equivalent of Mardi Gras. The first day we were there we went to Brno, where somehow I didn't get any good pictures. The next day, we went to a couple small villages where they were celebrating. People came out of their houses with plates of finger sandwiches and Slivovice, which is a sort of plum brandy, and insisted that everybody who passed took a sandwich and a shot. We were all drunk by 11am, and hungover by noon. We then went to another town where there was a more official celebration, with dancing and small bands playing.

everything I expected from a provincial southern Moravian town.


a group of musicians playing folk songs


a lot of people in strange costumes, confused, drunk students


Taryn, Vanessa and Alex with face paint.

Last weekend my roommate Mark needed to go to Slovakia to apply for a Czech visa. Apparently you have to apply for one from out of the country. He asked me if I wanted to go, and I thought that it would be a good adventure. We took a bus and went to Bratislava, the capital where the Czech embassy is.

Bratislava was a little colder and a whole lot windier than Prague. There wasn't too much to do there. A lot of the city looks the way it did in the 80s--Soviet Bloc housing and dilapidated buildings and bits of rubble all over the place and all. It was nice, though. quieter and less busy than Prague. We had breakfast both mornings we were there at this place called Bagel & Coffee Story. It was relatively pricey (Slovakia just switched over to the euro, and we're not used to paying five or six dollars for breakfast), but really good. They had VH1 playing, and the Matchbox Twenty videos made the place feel like home circa 2000.

We saw this one thing called the Blue Church. I don't know what i was expecting, and I probably shouldn't have been surprised when I saw this.

Incidentally, that's the only place in the country you'll find a color that bright.

The first night we were there, we spontaneously decided to see if we could get tickets to the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra. Twenty-five minutes later, we were sitting in the front row at the Filharmona. With our student discount, the tickets came out to €4,80 each.

It doesn't always look that scary, I promise. I took this picture the next night when we were in the neighborhood and there was some mayor's ball going on. The inside word from a guy with the band playing at the entrance was that they weren't checking invitations, but we were hardly dressed for a ball, or else we would have tried to get some free food.

One more thing. Wherever we went into a bookstore we (which I like to do for no other reason than I like bookstores, okay?), we saw this:

This time in Slovak. I just can't get away from it.

I've had bad luck the last couple weeks. Last week I was losing everything: tweezers, some clothing, ID, camera. I found the ID and camera, but the tweezers and clothing are still missing. This week everything has been breaking: zipper on a pair of my jeans, the lining in the shoulder of my coat, and my laptop charger , which cost 3250 Kč (about $150). By this time next week, I expect to be in a full body cast, after being hit by a series of cars/trams/locals/metro escalator stairs (which move very quickly and are easy to fall on).

In lighter news, sightseeing!
Wandering around is exhausting. I've been to a couple museums, eaten at a bunch of bars and restaurants, and seen a whole lot of places walking around.

I was walking around looking for a bookstore, and I came across this

I'm not really sure what it is. There are a lot of doorways like this in the city. I assume they are all gates to hell.

We went to this modern art museum, where they had this giant installation of books on this huge wall.

There's mark, so you get an idea of the size of this wall.

Every now and then, it is sunny. I estimate we've had a cumulative ten hours of sunny weather since I've been here.

That's a picture of Staro Město (Old Town Square) one day.

That's Alex, Taryn, and Mark, my roommate, in another part of Old Town Square.


That's a book by Hugh Laurie I saw in a bookstore in the Flora mall here. Why he has a gun, I do not know.

This isn't a travel-related entry, so unless you're interested in the minutiae of my life, feel free to skip it.

This week is my first week of classes. I'm taking Kafka and his Contexts, Post-War Eastern European Poetry, American Literature in a European Perspective, and Modern Dissent in Central Europe: The Art of Defeat. I like all of my professors. 

Jan Urban, the professor for Modern Dissent, was actually this big dissident who had a hand in the Velvet Revolution (the nonviolent overthrow of the Communist government in late 1989). He's a very intense, charismatic man.

I hear classes abroad are easier, because professors understand that in addition to class, students are trying to cope with living in a foreign country, as well as being tourists. I think judging from the syllabi my courses don't seem to be too bad. I do have a five-page paper to write every week for poetry, but I get the feeling from my professor that it's pretty relaxed, and more about having a dialogue with him than having academic busywork. 

I am glad to be taking a class on Kafka in his home city of Prague. Freshman year of college, I had this professor who was born in Petersburg, Russia. We read Crime and Punishment. It was an amazing experience for this man to not only be familiar with all the subtleties of Russian literature, but to explain to us the actual layout of the city and how it plays into the story. I had previously read this novel in high school, where I got only a fraction of understanding of it. It wasn't that our teacher was entirely inept, but the Brooklyn-raised public high school instructor was ill-equipped to teach Dostoevsky. That same teacher had us read Kafka's Metamorphosis. I expect to get more out of this Kafka class than I ever could have in high school.

I haven't gotten into the meat of my courses yet, but I am looking forward to working. All of this idleness is killing me.

In other news, I'm trying to get into some extra-curricular things. I hopped on the student run online newspaper here, The Prague Wanderer. I'm really interested in an editorial position, just to get some experience putting together a publication. I don't at the moment plan on contributing. 

I also spoke with and sent an email to a guy at Umělec Magazine, a sort of modern Central European visual culture magazine. I'm kind of looking for the same thing there, but since it's an actual company and not a school-run group, I'm hoping for some more interesting work, even gofer odd jobs. I explained that I'll basically work long hours for free, so I'm hopeful that he'll find a use for me.

A few days ago, I went with a local professor on a tour of Prague Castle, in the Hradčany district. It was beautiful. I'd never been inside of a castle before (and technically, we still didn't go inside the actual castle). There was an amazing complex, with all sorts of huge, elaborate, old buildings, courtyards, a very large, impressive cathedral, and one of the prettiest vistas I have ever seen. 

The St. Vitus Cathedral, however, is in front of this sort of arched hallway, and so it's not possible to get far back enough to get a picture of the entire thing.

Although that looks pretty close, doesn't it? I'm so awesome.

Here's a brief history lesson for you, too. During the 15th and then again in the 17th century, it became fashionable to, when people pissed you off, throw them out the window (especially politicians). This is called defenestration. The defenestration of two Catholic officials was actually the inciting incident of the Thirteen Years' War. Defenestration was a punishment, not necessarily a death sentence. As often as not, the defenestratee survived. Here are some of the windows commonly used to throw people out of.

I took so many pictures at prague castle, my batteries actually died before the tour was over. I plan on going back again at least once, at which point I'll take more pictures and post again.

It's Thursday. I've been in Prague now since last saturday morning. I'd never been on such a long flight, not nearly, but I think I handled jet lag pretty well. It's tiresome to talk too much about moving in. My dorm here is absolutely beautiful, and the neighborhood is nice.

Things in Prague are cheaper than in the U.S.. The current exchange rate at the writing of this entry is 21.56 Czech Koruny (crowns) to the dollar. A decent meal can be gotten for as little as 80Kč.

We watched the CNN feed of Obama's inauguration on a computer. Every time I hear him speak it makes me want to go out and try to make the world a better place. Afterwards, we ate and went to a bar called Cross Club. It was everything I'd hoped for in an Eastern European bar. It had several floors, a very industrial theme, a drum & bass room, an angry Czech metal room, a stage for bands to perform on, and elevated catwalks near the ceiling with tables and chairs to sit in. and several bars. The drinks were also reasonably priced.

Yesterday, I went to the gym that our school subsidizes membership for. Like cross club, it also was what I expected to find in Eastern Europe. It is out of the way enough to begin with. It's down an alley and past a video store. On the ground floor there is the front desk where you sign in and the locker rooms. Down a long flight of stairs is the actual exercise room. There are some treadmills, stationary bikes and ellipticals, and some free weights, and then there are some machines I've never seen. Half of these look like your ordinary medieval torture devices, but the other half I am unable to describe in words, and would probably give you nightmares if I did. Im not sure how they work, but in lieu of weights as resistance, there is some sort of hydraulic system.

I'm still settling into life here. It takes a while for me to warm up to places, and so I'm still not entirely comfortable here. I wander a lot and try to see as many things as I can. I'm not used to being out walking around all day every day, so I'm pretty exhausted. Most people here seem to like going out every night, too, something I have neither the desire nor the energy nor the money to do. It's understandable, though, seeing as how besides a two-and-a-half hour czech lesson every day we are free from responsibility. I think things will settle down some once classes start

Hello! This is Adam, and you're reading my travel blog while I'm studying abroad in Prague this spring. I'll try to update as best I can, but I get pretty lazy sometimes, just to warn you.