The Homeland

Imagine a place where they are always playing your favorite throwback music, the walls are covering in prints and kitsch, and there are students students rolling joints and drinking beers at 11 am on the weekdays.

Imagine when you sit down, they give you your favorite chai latte without ordering, and let you linger for hours over your book or homework.  There’s wifi.

Imagine they serve fried cheese on a roll for $2.50. Beer for $1.50.

 

It exists, and its the greatest place on Earth, or at least in Prague.  Alone or with friends, this little cafe by school has become our home base as we struggle through editing drafts, editing work, writing, reading, and selecting negatives.  They always great us with a smile, they help us with our Czech, and we make sure to tip well.

On my worst days, where everything seems pretty bleak and spring feels like a distant dream, I stumble in world weary and emerge with a little more faith in humanity.  On a particularly bad day, they happened to be playing the entire Simon and Garfunkel discography, and I nearly cried for joy.

The best part is that nearly anytime I go- Sunday afternoon, my brief lunch break on Wednesday- there’s a good friend sitting at one of our usual tables, and I can pull up chair and feel instantly at ease.  Conversation or homework, beers or sausage, we are all there for the same reason.  It’s good to come home.

 

Photo courtesy of Claire Voon.

La Reina de la Playa

My time is Prague has been all running and no pauses; even the pauses have been full.

Giving myself a chance to slow down during this most unholy of all times, midterms, has been a welcome relief.  I bought new toothpaste and soap.   I learned to make halusky.  I sorted through a enormous backlog of reading I’d been putting off, and stumbled across my Google Reader (RIP) feed for Buenos Aires.

And even though the sun is setting is fire-y array over Prague and I am in the comfort of a wonderful place I love, I have to say it.

Te extraño, Buenos Aires.  Te extraño mucho, en todo: el arte del calle, el sol, las empandas y hielo en la tarde.  Café and mate en el Bosque.  La madrugada antes de dormir en el fin de semana. 

I miss it all, and more besides-  I really do love BsAs.  I loved the slowness of time and feeling of being on the edge of the world.  Mostly I loved the potential to be a part of it all, by virtue of the welcome of people and an ease with the language.  Speaking the language of the country in which you reside changes everything.

For all the wonder of this semester, last semester I was scaling Machu Picchu, finding the best of friends and encouraged down roads that were entirely new to me, and entirely open.  The months were louder and longer and wider.  I find myself looking over the horizon to New York, and Prague feels like a working layover more than an exploration.  Spring Break is coming, and I’ll have some time alone with Prague-  I’m looking forward to it.

Long to Prague Wandering

Life in Prague is busy, busier than I could have expected, and so different from my life in Buenos Aires.  I hit three continents in as many months, which was a lot.  I’ve been working most of the time, and travelling when I can.

One of the things I’ve been working hard on is Prague Wandering, which is our campus newspaper of sorts.  We rebooted it this year after a hiatus, and the first issue has been published.

So while I haven’t been writing here, I have been writing for PW and editing as well.  I definitely recommend you check out the Slav Epic. :P

The Colors Bleed Together (pt 3)

In the sunshine, everything seemed real again.  With very little in the way of sightseeing left to do, we wandered back toward the castle.  There was no real way to avoid the murder street, though somehow in their drunken navigation the night before, my friends had managed to dodge it.  It had also taken them an hour and a one euro cab ride to find the ten blocks back to the hostel. If they had suspected us of exaggerating before, we were vindicated by the still horrifying and bloody street, now devoid of people.  It still smelled like copper, and we didn’t linger long.

Bratislava redeemed itself through the casual hours of snacking, getting lost and feasting that followed, though not entirely.  A particularly good lunch of fried trout and some excellent dark beer went a long way.

The Colors Bleed Together (pt 2)

The kindness of strangers is the most important part of losing yourself in a foreign city.  Some wonderful man walking his dog led us back down, through underpasses and by graffiti covered walls toward Sub Klub.  Of course aside from being in the middle of nowhere (or as middle of nowhere as you can be in a tiny city), Sub Klub wasn’t open yet.  Friendly Slovak club-goers softened the chill, amid “Dubstep is Life” scrawling around us.   Inside, down a long hallway was grungy and psychedelic, with cold seeping from every crack.  We  threw our bodies around a mostly empty dance floor and let the lights flash around us.

Eventually the chill and the echoes got old, and we tumbled back out into the night.  At the request of a drunken roommate, we split up- some to walk home the way we came, to enjoy the views of nighttime Bratislava, some into a cab directly to the hostel.  Unable to speak Slovack, I wrangled the only friend who spoke any Slavic language into the cab, and we sped through the streets toward the hostel.  In the silence, in the night, everything looked unfamiliar, though we had walked the streets before.  We dropped our sleepy roommate at the hostel and threw ourselves back outside, my friend and I, at the mercy of the night.