Obama in Prague

COOPERATION, DIALOGUE, PEACE and a William Butler Yeats quote....This is indeed a new administration and it makes me so giddy and happy I could scream. And in fact I did scream (and clap) repeatedly at Obama's speech in Prague this morning.

Everything was perfect. The crowd was wonderful (I think every American living in Prague was there along with Czechs and other nationalities) The setting was beautiful (an old square in front of the Prague Castle gates overlooking a view of the city), and of course Obama's speech was inspiring. He not only talked about the Czech Republic as if he had a degree in Czech history, but spoke about the importance of global cooperation towards Nuclear Arms reduction.

I truely feel proud to be an American

Venice Holiday

The long winter continues in Prague....so on the recommendation of my "doctor" I went to Venice to take in some of the healing Venetian sun....How I long for a time when instead of anti-depressants doctors recommended scenic holidays. Sun, art, good food and of course gelato, lots of gelato....is a cure for most anything.

Israel Trip

Ok, it's been WAY too long since my last post, but in my defense I've spent the last month racking up frequent flier miles on a Prague-New York-Israel-New York-Prague trip marathon. For those of you who don't know, I had the amazing opportunity to go on an all-expense-paid Birthright trip to Israel in January (yes I'm a quarter jewish, and that's enough). It was a very eye opening experience in many ways, which I'm not going to go into right now, but to tide you over I've put together a short clip of the trip to give you a taste of my Israeli experience.




Note: The conflict in Gaza began just a couple of days before I left, however the tour I was on did a very good job (for better or worse) of keeping us away from the conflict area, to such an extent that we often heard more about the conflict from friends back home in the US than we did during our trip. This is the reason you don't see any reference to the conflict in the video, however I hope to share some of my experiences and insights in a later post.

Bananas + Nutella = Communism

Bananas and Nutella...what's the connection (besides making a delicious crepe)? Communism of course!

The more people I meet, the more aware I am of the impact communism had on people's everyday lives. I'm not referring to the spying and threats, the repression of individual and artistic freedom, or even the cement block monstrosities that litter the outskirts of the city. It's the little everyday, seemingly meaningless, impacts that really astound me. I learned about communism and the fall of the Berlin wall in school, but even though it happened during my life time it always seemed like some distant, long-ago history lesson.

However here it shaped people's childhoods. It strikes me because it's different than meeting great grandpa so-and-so who fought in WWII, these people are my age, they share my interests, we relate to a common pop culture, heck, they're my friends on Facebook. Despite this fact every now and then some comment will pop up in conversation and I'm reminded that our childhoods were very different.

For example, I was recently having breakfast with a friend who grew up in Prague. Half way through my bowl of Cherios i see her face light up. She's holding a single serving packet of Nutella. "I have to bring this back to my husband," she declared. "Why?" I ask. "You can buy a big one in any grocery store."

Apparently as a child she used to collect the labels of any western candy that snuck it's way into the country. She and her friends would treasure these logos and paste the labels inside their notebooks. Nutella was one of the grand prizes. It still makes her excited.

A couple of weeks later I'm sitting in my living room with a friend from Latvia. We're chatting about movies when she spots the bunch of bananas on my counter. "I didn't see a banana until I was 10 years old," she states. They just didn't have them. She vividly remembers an uncle who brought a banana all the way from Poland in the early 90's. It was brown and mushy, but a very exciting treat all the same.

I know these are small anecdotes, but they pop-up all the time and they fascinate me. I'm often reminded of the opening line by one of my favorite British comics, Eddie Izzard, when performing for an American audience( I paraphrase),

"Hello, I'm from Europe, you know, where the history's from."

So I'm now living in the middle of where all that history happened, both distant and recent. We'll see how much I absorb, but one thing I know for sure is that I won't be able to eat another crepe without thinking of communism.

I guess I'll have to pay

"I'm American!" I scream. I usually don't publicize this fact when living/traveling in a foreign country, at least not at the top of my lungs. But here I sit in my cozy Prague apartment yelling my nationality at my unrepentant computer.

I just need a fix of my ABC line up (don't judge) and my computer obstinately tells me it won't give me a hit because "Only viewers within the United States can watch these episodes," hence the screaming. This is not only the case with ABC.com, this isolationist approach to entertainment is also taken by Netflix movie streaming, and recently discovered Hulu.com (is it really better to have loved and lost, than to have never watched at all?).

At first I'm upset because I can't access my free episodes of Ugly Betty. Yah, yah. I know I'm living in a European city with so much culture and art that it oozes out from between its cobblestone streets. But I don't want culture now, I want my American TV, I'd even settle for an episode of Grey's Anatomy. I just need 30 minutes of mindless zoning. And my ameri-cenric computer won't give it to me.

Next I'm outraged about the self-centered, imperialistic tone of the message. What? Only American's deserve mindless TV? This can't be good for foreign relations. Someone call the Obama transition team. I have a way to help restore America's image abroad.

Finally I settle on self-blame and feelings of ineptitude. In case you are unaware, my claims of being a "technical genius" are indeed sarcasm, and while my roommate is sitting through several technical classes learning about aspect ratios and PAL vs NTSC whatever, i'm pretty sure she spends the time doodling in her notebook, because both of our 100k educations put together can't get me the new episode of Grey’s Anatomy...

How is a girl supposed to procrastinate under these conditions? I guess I'll just have to go to the National Gallery, or face the beast and actually write my grad school essays. Then again I do know a dealer that only charges $1.99. Think I'll make a call to iTunes.

Prague Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving!

Ok, it might be a bit belated, but none of my European friends are any the wiser. Lena and I had to keep postponing our Thanksgiving celebration, and almost scrapped the idea, but finally decided we couldn't go an entire year without our favorite foods. So we pulled Pavel (our turkey) out of the freezer and decided to host a Prague Thanksgiving in mid-December.

I tried to go shopping for ingredients a couple of days ago, but to my surprise I came back empty handed. Now this may be a "well, duh" moment for the rest of you, but apparently most of our traditional thanksgiving ingredients don't exist in Prague, or Europe for that matter. I finally came to the realization that the first Thanksgiving feast was hosted by the Native American's to:

1. Generously share their bounty with the new arrivals who were starving to death.
2. Introduce the newcomers to "new world" dishes they don't have in Europe (like green bean casserole, and yams with marshmallows).

However, like a true Thanksgiving miracle we found sweet potatoes, and cranberry sauce just in time, and were able to improvise the rest--making stuffing from scratch just like our forefathers.

So in the end we were able to share the joys of an American Thanksgiving with our new friends from Bulgaria, Turkey, the Czech Republic, and Montenegro. The "orange potato" dish was a hit, and I've never seen a group find green bean casserole so exotic.

Happy Thanksgiving from Prague

Jaro, Me, Nazira, Lena
Pavel

Portland Farewell Party

It may be a strange way to start my blog, but sometimes you need to see the end of one chapter before you can begin the next (or in my case create a very sappy video montage). I found myself putting this together at 1am last night. I think the holidays are making me a bit homesick for all my wonderful friends in Portland.

I promise that future posts about life in Prague are on the way.




Thanks to Laura for her amazing cinematography skills on a point and shoot camera.