Mucha Museum

Breanne and I went to see the "Mucha Museum" today. Alphons Mucha is one of the Czech Republic's proudest sons.

Highlights for me: his "arts" series, including Dance:
And poetry:

Culture-iffic

Sunday night Ellie, Bre and I went and saw Okkervil River, an indie rock band (that Ben really likes). It was a fun show. I haven't been to a little concert here so it was neat. It was held in a sort of club, in a basement below a bar, which itself was below a very fancy cafe with a separate entrance and all. The club had cool furniture, very modern though, as noted by the band, it was "Jim Beam" themed.
The show was fun, they play good music, we took a poster.
On Monday, my media and democracy class took a field trip to the headquarters of "Radio Free Europe" which is now many things and "Radio Free" for many places, but not Europe so much, since "Europe is free." We talked to the director of Radio Free Iraq, who was a cool Russian guy. He told us about their service, which is compiled in Prague and sent to Iraq via satellite, for safety reasons. They only have about 7 people who have to put together a 5 hour broadcast 7 days a week. Which is crazy. They also have something like 27 correspondents in Iraq who file reports. He talked about the situation on the ground, where now 4 major attacks and 100 people kidnapped a day is considered a vast improvement over the past few years.
The RFE building itself involved a lot of security - we had to give them our passport numbers several days in advance and went through metal detectors and such. Apparently, this building would be the target if Prague ever had a terrorist attack, not only for its symbolic importance but also just because of all of the things that go on there - Radio Free Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.
The RFE building itself is historical and rather intimidating.
Media and Democracy, as a class, has gotten interesting lately - I had to turn in my paper (and I must give a presentation next week) on an issue in journalistic ethics - mine was "Lying for the story". I read two case studies about journalists who were deceptive in their methods to get information that the government was withholding. The first case study was about a guy who snuck into (the office part of a) prison during a riot to find out about a hostage situation - and the other was about a reporter who pretended to be a mortician to access the morgue during Desert Storm, because he suspected combat casualties were being underreported. Apparently "reputable" papers don't go for any undercover journalism, although it does get published elsewhere... and there are lots of arguments on both sides considering duty to the truth, freedom of press vs. government, endangering others... ask me about it sometime :)

In art class today we went to "trade fair palace" (Veletrzni Palace) to see some modern arts - Cubism, Abstraction, Expressionism, Impressionism, Surrealism - it was pretty great. The museum is big and "a functionalist masterpiece" - it was built in the 20s and opened as an art gallery after communism.
My favorite part was a bit on set design for the theater - there were a bunch of little dioramas displaying sets for plays, designed by one of the Capek brothers (Czech playwrights who invented the word "robot"). There was some really crazy stuff, with false perspective, sloping floors and big staircases.
I was also impressed by the collection - there were paintings by Monet, Van Gogh, Degas and Picasso - including this one:
Art history is fascinating. Story about Czech art history - under communism, art essentially stopped. The only style allowed was "social realism" - this was the case everywhere communism ruled. My art teacher, a tour guide, everyone here who talks about this style basically laughs and talks about how terrible it was. The idea was just to glorify communism. My teacher said today that "mediocre artists used it as a way to become the official artists of the state." The paintings really are awkward - smiling workers and the communist flag, etc - but I find it so funny how appalled the Czechs are by the whole movement. Especially since in Russia - according to Mark's blog and pictures - the soviet art is still everywhere.

an awkward communist painting (not one I saw, but those were awkward too)

more social realist art from the Museum of Communism in Prague

After communism, Czechs were behind the modern art movement, according to my teacher, and are still working to catch up to the cutting edge.

A Beautiful Weekend (a real blog post, for once)

It's winter!!!

Winter has begun! and Breanne and I bought a 2-day pass for the Prague Castle Museums, so this has been an actually interesting weekend at home.
Yesterday we had a relaxed breakfast, then took a tram up to the castle and learned about the history of Czech royalty in the "Story of the Castle" exhibit. We then visited the Romanesque basilica of St.George... and when we came out it was hailing/raining and so very cold!

the gargoyles were breathing icicles... so cold!

We didn't have umbrellas or rainproof coats (although all the czech people did, and were not surprised by the sudden change in weather..) so we ran to the tram and were very very wet by the time we got home. But we put on some dry clothes and made dinner... fish sticks and rice and green beans. mmm comfort food.

This morning we woke up and there was a dusting of snow on the cars on the streets. Snow really doesn't stick on the streets... but you can get the idea and that's what counts.

the view out our window onto the fresh morning snow

Then I turned in my second article for the paper - it's about the student council President and honestly I have just lost interest... but I'm glad that's finally done.

We returned to the castle and visited the portrait gallery and national gallery, full of all the most famous Czech paintings. It was so nice and culture-y. And we also toured the palace, home of the great big royal ballroom thing (also where they threw people out the windows during revolutions, but no big...).

isn't this room nice? not bad to be royalty...

Then as we left the museums to go home... it was snowing!!! So beautiful!

St.Vitus Cathedral, in the beautiful wintertime

Cassie, Ali, Breanne and I made a big "breakfast for dinner" (ok, they cooked and I dj'd...) and listened to Christmas carols.

Ellie, cooking up some potatoes

You can find my youtube playlist for the evening here... it was an 'eclectic variety' (we don't have the comcast cable music channels, so we have to make it up). I call the mix "Christmas at Home: when home is full of weird college-aged girls who have been away from America for 3 months."
Billy Idol's music video for "Jingle Bell Rock" was probably the biggest hit, although the animated gifs in the "feliz navidad" video we found were PRETTY FANTASTIC. And if you've never seen the David Bowie/Bing Crosby duet of "Little Drummer Boy".. prepare yourself.

After dinner Ali, Cassie and I took a nice walk around town and saw everything dusted with snow... the ol' Jan Hus statue, astronomical clock, Charles bridge, churches, Winceslas square... it's a whole different city now.

good ol' Jan Hus... all covered in snow

What a nice night... but I miss my family and all our traditions at home. I will miss thanksgiving... but won't Christmas be great!!!

Love!! Please leave comments if you can!

(if you want to see the rest of the pictures I've been taking here in hometown prague... here is the place: link)

Home from Poland

Hi y'all!
We went to Krakow this weekend. It was really fun, and I have lots of pictures and lots of stories to tell. Unfortunately... I also have a lot of homework... but here are the highlights!
We took a sleeper train:
We saw a DaVinci painting at a museum: We saw an amazing gothic cathedral - inside was all painted up:
We saw another cathedral, where the pope used to chill: We saw and purchased some cool Polish crafts from the famous "Cloth Hall"
We sampled local cuisine:
And we enjoyed clear and beautiful weather the whole time.

Here is a link to the album with the rest of my pictures from this weekend:

Krakow

Or just watch the (captioned!) slideshow below:

Dobra Kava = good coffee

More more more!
I only have tonight, and then I'm done with classes for the week, Again. On Monday, we had a visiting speaker in my Media & Democracy class: Iva Drapalova, who was the AP bureau chief for Prague during Soviet rule, 1968-88. She had a lot of great stories, about being tailed by the secret police, about working for people who she never spoke to, and about journalism being a really poorly paid field. She was really witty and fun (and 84 years old!), and honestly quite a bit more interesting and well-spoken than my actual teacher, who is probably a great journalist, but not a great teacher, especially of philosophy.
Czech class has been really cool this week; our teacher is out so we were placed in a different class, which is quite a bit more organized and fast-paced. We are learning adjective endings, numbers, and restaurant vocab. Today we learned a couple other phrases as well:
Jsou zamilovani. = They are in love.
Laska je slepa. = Love is blind.
Miluju te. = I love you.
In Prague Art & Architecture yesterday, we took a walk through the city to see the gothic architecture, and then went to the National Gallery, which is held in a former convent. It was cold... but interesting! We saw the evolution of Gothic art from functionalist to emotional, and the shift of feelings from peaceful reverence to suffering, in the faces of statues and paintings. We saw about 20 statues on the same theme; Madonna and Child; and our teacher explained in detail the significance in each tiny difference. It was fastinating, no lie.
I have reporting this afternoon, and then East-Central European politics tonight. If I can survive through that my roomies and I are going out for traditional Czech dinner! Huzzah!

Here is a slideshow of MORE pictures, this time, from Breanne's camera. There are pictures from Dresden & a couple from Prague near the end of last week. There are some pictures of me&the roomies, and some of my NEW CAMERA. :)

Paranoid, Extremely Angry (Dresden was fun!)

We went to Dresden! I purchased a new camera! And we saw many beautiful things. We had a lovely time on Breanne's Birthday weekend in nearby Dresden, Germany. The city is most known because it was destroyed in WWII (see: Slaughter-house 5). But it has been rebuilt quite a bit and is a very nice place to walk around and see the sights.
The city was mainly developed under Augustus the Great and his sons/fathers/family (they were all named Augustus the something, so I'm a bit sketchy on the details), who brought in a bunch of art to the museum and built a bunch of churches and other large buildings.
Here is the comprehensive slideshow:

So.. Germany! Thank goodness. It was great to be somewhere where I understand the language. I could speak to shopkeepers and waiters and all, which made me feel very empowered. However, they were all also eager to speak English. This is so different from Prague; even after we express that we know no Czech, everyone here will keep talking to us in it. Different world.
Germany was also nice for its clean, open, and organized grocery stores and other such accessibility (quote: "This only has two languages on it, and one of them is English!" vs. Prague, where everything is in 5 different Slavic languages).
We stayed in very clean, pleasant, and colorfully painted Hostel Mondpalast, which is located right in the middle of the night-life action.
So, good game, team!
Highlights: re-visiting the Zwinger museum of old masters, to see:
(I also bought a print.)Learning about otherwise smiley and innocent midwestern Ali's eyebrow-raised suspicious face:
Taking pictures with all the many boroque statues:german pastries!!!
And of course... taking pictures with my new camera!
(the color is called "bohemian brown")

Churches with bones, miners

We've finally started traveling!
Yesterday, most of my roommates and I took a day trip to Kutna Hora, a town about 1.5 hours outside of Prague. We took the train, under the direction of Breanne, and despite the fact that no one spoke English and that Czech people are really grumpy, it actually worked!
We arrived at the train station, which was described by our tour books as 'a 40-minute walk out of town'- and then walked to a little suburb of Kutna Hora called Sedlec. Sedlec is the home of "the bone church," a church decorated inside with immense sculptures and such made of human bones. This chandellier, for example, includes every kind of bone that is found in the human body.
So... that was really odd. This church became like this, because the cementary of this church was a very popular place for the rich to be buried. Then the plague came... and just more and more skeletons came to this place. So in the 19th century some artist came in and made all of these decorations and such from bleached bones. Very odd. Oh, Europe. Here's Breanne in front of one of the huge pyramids of bones:
So, yeah. Then we walked to Kutna Hora proper. It was really hot out, so that was a bummer, and I think it was a couple miles away. But we made it, and walked around the town. Kutna Hora was completely abandoned. Apparently on Saturday afternoon, Nothing is open. Stores, bars, restaurants, everything was shut tight, with very few exceptions. It was such a great change from Prague... there were tourists, but so few, we could walk down completely empty streets... it was just relaxing and wonderful. We found a restaurant from my guidebook (go go The Rough Guide to Prague!), and it was fantastic. Here we are:There were quesadillas and crepes and gnocchi, it was delicious. We went around the table and talked about what our parents do for a living, and what we thought each other's parents did for a living. Everyone was surprised that mom is an artist and dad is... whatever dad is... (as usual)... and that was fun.
After lunch, we took a little break in a grassy park in the middle of the city. Kutna Hora is an old, old, town, that was rich several centuries ago when it was primarily a mining town. The town produced silver coins that were used throughout Europe. The town was quite close to Prague and even London in size and wealth for a while in the 14th century, and as a result an enormous gothic cathedral was built there. Now, it's a really little town (20,000 people).
We went to the church (the Cathedral of st Borora)... and it was Amazing. My guidebook called it "arguably the most spectacular and moving ecclesiastical building in central Europe." as far as my experience has shown, I would tend to agree. It.was.huge! 5 or six stories just in this one enormous room- with peaked arches pointing up to morw pointed arches... There were original paintings all over the walls from the 15th century, there were pulpits and statues from every era. 50 feet above the congregation pews, there were 7-foot tall carved wooden statues of the virtues, looking down and reaching out to those sitting below.
Something that particularly struck me about the church was the emphasis on the occupation of the town. Instead of glorifying kings and saints, the church glorified miners - the common people of Kutna Hora. St. Borora (Barbara, maybe?) is the patron saint of miners, and there were paintings and carvings and windows all dedicated to the profession. How very democratic, or something!

After the Church, we wandered the town a bit, stopped at the grocery store, and then walked back to the train station. It was a very, very nice day.

Lots more pictures can be found here: (link)
look! comment on them Or just check them out in the following slideshow...


In other news...
I just made myself some delicious scrambled eggs, and my roommate found some chicken in not-whole-chicken form at the store. Cooking is looking up!

The apartmentmates are, though, preparing a complaint to the program leaders about parts of our accomidation... since we don't have any dishes at all that can go in the oven, we don't even have enough glasses for everyone, they gave us our wrong home address for people to mail us things, etc, etc... There's nothing too troubling, and we're getting by, but there are some things that would be expected (and that other people in our program were provided with), and it's pretty reasonable to bring it up, I think. (Complaining does make me feel sad, though).

Next weekend, we're going to Dresden! I've been there once before and adored the museum. I can't wait to go back and see:Which is huge and captivating, and:Which is probably my favorite painting ever (just look at her apron!)
And all of that reminds me: (link)

Classes... begin!

This weekend was lazy. I hung out at the house and went to the store a couple times. I bonded with my roommates... overall quite relaxing. We have been attempting to cook a bit with our somewhat limited utensils. We don't have a tea kettle or a coffee maker... no pans for the oven, etc... but pasta has worked so far, as has delicious Czech Ramen, and that's enough for now. I want to make some chicken, but I am scared at the supermarket, since I don't know what the packaging says... and I don't even know how to approach cooking a whole chicken... so, we'll see how it works without that, and how long I can last.
Yesterday, my classes began! We went to school early, because Breanne and I wanted to switch our schedules around a bit. Unfortunately, one of the classes I really wanted/needed for my major, Politics of the EU, is full! I switched it out for "Reporting", which should actually be great, since there are no journalism classes at Lewis & Clark. I'm a bit sad that I won't be able to fill that International Affairs requirement, though.
After the registrar, we hit up the library for textbooks. Here, we get textbooks and readers from the library... for free! We just have to return them at the end of the semester. Overall, this seems like a pretty good deal... No shelling out $600 for textbooks, and no heavy things to sadly depart from at the end of my time here.
My roommates and I then paid a visit to Bohemia Bagel for some coffee and, well, bagels. It's pretty cheap-ish (although it would be cheaper if we had a coffee maker... grr...) and RIGHT down the street from school... less than a block away. It seems like this will probably be a hang-out location all semester.
My first class is "Media in a Democracy". My professor's name is Bruce Konviser, and he is a freelance journalist from the US, living in Prague now for over 10 years. He has been in the Washington Post and on CNN, so I trust him to know what he's talking about. This class is about media ethics, and the role of media in a democracy. After a year at the PioLog, I think it will be really, really nice to discuss the issues of ethical and moral journalism... the duty of the media in the system, etc. It's pretty complicated, and I don't think we all really "get it."
Speaking of PioLog (being the Lewis&Clark school paper)... I miss it! I'm sad to be gone this semester, and I'm concerned that there won't be a good position for me open when I get back. I don't really want to edit news again, and I am nowhere near wanting to edit sports, features, or arts... but there's really nothing I can do; they need to give positions to people who are There. If I had my mac with me, I would offer to edit from here... but that's not really reasonable, since I'm completely out of the loop and the time zone. I really wanted to steal "back door"(the back cover, comedy page) this spring... but apparently they've offered that position to Ben. I guess I'll just have to fight him! :)
Back to Prague: Today, I had two more classes: Elementary Czech, and Prague Art & Architecture. Czech is a difficult language... but my professor seems like a nice guy who is very interested in us taking advantage of our time here in Prague. I hope I can be dedicated in challenging myself and learning as much as I can.
Prague Art & Architecture is going to be amazing. Today, the first day of class, our teacher took us on a walk up to Prague castle, where she talked to us about the Romanesque and Gothic styles on the churches up there. It was really cool! One of the big theses of her lecture today related to the "layering" of Prague's architecture. One building can show features typical of several different eras, as through the centuries, it has been renovated, repaired, and redecorated. For example, the St.George's Monestary was first constructed in the Romanesque style. A Gothic chapel was added a century later, and then a new Renaissance entryway was constructed centuries later.
Anyway... I love this class. I have never done art history before, and so far it's really quite amazing. I spoke to my Professor briefly about research she's been working on; currently she is specializing in the transition in the 1990s, directly after the fall of the Soviet Union. She said that there was a lot of change going on in that time, since during communism there was no private art market, no independent galleries, etc, and all of it thus needed to be created from the ground up.
Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of my classes: I will have "Reporting" and "East Central European Politics." Hopefully they will go as well as my first three have.
I went to TESCO (our wal-mart superstore) today to try and get some school supplies... and ran into the entirety of Prague, trying to do the same thing. Kids and their parents held lists of school supplies and were crowding the aisles picking out notebooks and pens. I was scared... so I went home. There's always tomorrow.
And here, my friends, are the photos:


Technical note: The photo captions should just "show up" now. I went back in time (to old entries) and fixed the other slideshows as well... to make them hopefully easier to use and prettier. I also added slideshows to old entries that didn't have photos... So... yay! Everything is documented now.