Spring is finally here! :-)

No snow for over 2 weeks! (well, sort of....)

Weather in the solid 50s! (trust me, that's warm)

And floods and floods of tourists everywhere (you win some, you lose some)


Spring has finally reached Prague! :-D

Congratulations Stacie!!!

Congratulations to one of my best friends (and favorite yinzer) (and devoted blog fan), who was just accepted to the MBA program at Harvard Business School!!!!!!!!!

Way to go, Stacie!! :-D

At the dinner table: A side-by-side comparison of the eating habits of Czechs, Germans, the French, and Americans.

Disclaimer: These observations are admittedly one sided impressions from what were sometimes brief encounters with native eaters. Any readers of Czech, German, French, or American origin should not take offense at anything stated here. On the other hand, comments to the blog entry are appreciated!

Breakfast:

• Czechs: Bread and meat: Hard long thin rolls, various slices of salomi and other meats, yogart with granola perhaps.
• Germans: Sliced bread or croissants with cheeses (brie and the like), marmalades, honey. Also cherry tomatoes and pickles -- I think I'm the only American capable of enjoying pickles for breakfast, as it turns out. :-)
• French: French croissant (more crumbly than I'm used to) or bread with jam, yogart, cheese
• Americans: There are really three types: 1) Cereal, probably sweet; 2) sausage, eggs, pancakes, etc.; 3) Huh, breakfast? Does coffee count?

When you walk into a moderately nice restaurant:

• Czechs: Seat yourself
• Germans: They point at a table and you assume you should sit there.
• French: You should have a reservation
• Americans: Don't even think of seating yourself... customers can't be trusted to do such things correctly. A personal escort will walk you to your table, even standing beside the chair you should sit in to ensure that you don't miss it and sit on the floor instead.
  

When the food arrives, waiters say:

• Czechs: "Please" (prosim). Actually, people use "prosim" for everything in the CR!
• Germans: "Thank you" (danke shen?) I was never sure whether I should also say thank you, or try to be more creative
• French: ???
• Americans: "Here you go"?

Dinner must always include:

• Czechs: Soup. Always. If not at dinner, definitely lunchtime. Potato dumplings aren't mandatory but strongly encouraged, along with a thick sauce of some sort.
• Germans: Potatoes and a slab of meat, maybe Weiner Schnizel. Also salads seem to be a constant side item, but sometimes this literally means a bowl of lettuce with dressing thrown in. What can I say, they're a highly bare-bones and efficient people. :-)
  
• French: Wine and dessert
• Americans: Umm, french fries?

Speaking of french fries, here is how they're eaten:

• Czechs: With tartar sauce (mayo-based)
  
• Germans: Alone? I wasn't offered anything anyway.
• French: With mustard
• Americans: Good old Heinz ketchup

Eating styles:

• Czechs: Eat incredibly quickly, and always with the fork in left hand, knife in right at all times.
• Germans: Always with the fork in left hand, knife in right at all times. Eat more slowly than Czechs, but still faster than me. This is possibly because I am attempting to eat my pasta with my fork in my left hand at the time. ;-)
• French: Always with the fork in left hand, knife in right at all times. If by chance this isn't the case (silly American), both hands should be visable above the table at all times or it's considered to be very rude.
• Americans: Cut food with fork in left, knife in right, but eat with only one hand which means fork in right hand while knife stays on the right side of the plate. My Czech friend told me he learned officially in his English class that Americans are "one-hand eaters". If this is you, beware -- in Europe waiters try to clear your plate away the moment both fork and knife sit on the same side of your plate. If this happens to you, simply swat them away and say "Hey, I'm an American!". They'll understand... ;-)

With meals, people drink:

• Czechs: Beer, or nothing -- both happen often and at all times of the day. Otherwise, carbonated bottled water. Tap water doesn't do the most pleasant things to the digestive system.
• Germans: Beer or tap water
• French: Wine. Actually, in the first restaurant we went to, I was asked what wine I wanted as my appetizer. Nice place. :-) Coffee comes at the end of the meal.
• Americans: A soft drink.

Beer:

• Czechs: You walk into a bar and say "Beer" (pivo) and they'll give you a beer. No specific beer name necessary most of the time. Two main local brews: Pilsner and Staropramen. Cost: $1 (30 Kz)
• Germans: You walk into a bar and say "Beer" (bier) and they'll give you a funny look. They ask 'dark?', you say no, and they'll give you a Ur Pils. Still, they weren't quite as haughty about beer as I expected.
• French: Why are you ordering beer in France?
• Americans: You walk into a bar and say "Beer" and they'll roll their eyes and go to the next customer. :-)

Dessert:

• Czechs: If it's there, normally some pastry or dumpling with fruit involved.
• Germans: I only had one dessert, and it was at a Tapas restaurant -- not the best example. The Crema Catalana was good though...
• French: Almost always part of the meal, at lunch times too. And all the desserts I saw (pastries, tartes, sorbets, creme broulees...) all looked (okay, tasted) fantastic!
• Americans: Cookie, ice cream, cakes... Hey, sometimes all three at once. :-)

Tipping after meals:

• Czechs: Optional, meant to be an actual indicator of how pleased you are with a meal. If you tip around 10% your Czech companions' eyes will boggle, and I'm sure they'll go home to their wives shocked at how frivolous those Americans are with money. Around 5% is more appropriate it seems. This money all goes directly into their pockets, no tax on it. Of course, some touristy places in Prague they'll add 18% tip to your bill, just because they figure you won't fight it I guess.
• Germans: I never found out the protocol. Following the Czech lead I didn't tip American amounts, but around 10%. Either the waiters hated me or were thrilled with their fantastic luck. The guys in the restaurant below my hotel (two visits) didn't seem to mind me much.
• French: Included in the food price I'm told, though that's not directly stated on the bill.
• Americans: 15% mandatory, 20% if you're very happy. Waitresses make crap because the system assumes that they'll get 10% tip at the bare, bare minimum. When I waitressed after high school, we had to submit tip amounts at the end of the night, which of course there was never time to actually count. I was told to just write slightly more than 10% of my total bills; any less the IRS might chase you.

For a good dinner you pay:

• Czechs: 350 Kz for 2 people... around $15 total, $7.50 each (Klub Arkitektu with my mom... fantastic meal too).
• Germans: 15 Euros... around $20? (hotel restaurant)
• French: 35 Euros or more, depending on how much wine you had (various restaurants)
• Americans: $20

A fantastic journey westward

I just returned to Prague after five days in Saarbrucken (Germany), and another two in Paris.

Saarbrucken was a productive work visit... made a lot of interesting contacts, gave a well-received talk, and though the linguistics (specifically deep semantics) overload made my head hurt a bit, there's a chance some of it could actually end up helping my research -- something professionally useful from this Europe trip!

Paris was just a fantastic trip overall, thanks to the organized guiding of my French pals Ben and Daphnee, who not only led me through almost every Paris monument and famous sight known to tourists, not only found me a great and reasonably-priced hotel, but took me to some fantastic restaurants for food that blew even me away, and I rarely care much about food one way or the other. I took way too many pictures to post or to entertain anyone but the most bored and work-avoiding of my "readership", but once I upload everything I'll find a few interesting ones to post here and will put others on my separate CLSP picture site.

I love Prague and was happy to return... still, great to have a little adventure and take advantage of my time in Europe!

Travels to Saarbrucken, Germany

I’m writing this as I sit on the train from Mainz, Germany to my final destination of Saarbrucken, where I’ll spend the next week working at Saarland University. (Note: post written Monday 3/13, posted 3/14). The plan was fly Prague -> Frankfurt and take train(s) southwest to Saarbrucken, estimated 1.5+2 hrs. It’s been a much longer travel than I expected. My very first lone train ride (not counting the MARC to DC) and the rest of my traveling day hasn’t been the cleanest, but it looks to all work out in the end (of course, I’m not checked into the hotel yet…).

Yesterday, planned travel day: surprise snowstorm, and the city kind of choked. There were several inches on the ground and almost no roads were really cleared, but it didn’t even occur to me til I was almost at the airport that things might be shut down. Sure enough, soon as I arrive I see that my flight was cancelled, and soon after the airport was announced closed until late that evening. After 2 hours in a slow line to reschedule my flight, I picked a morning flight for the next day instead of taking my chances for the evening. As it turned out, things did open and I could have taken off at 7pm… but an extra 8 hrs at the airport without a guarantee just didn’t seem worth it.

The Prague airport was open today. I got there a little more than an hour before my 10:20 flight, but just checking in took almost 45 minutes so I was a little panicked. It wasn’t just me though -- everyone surrounding me was on the 10:20 flight, the desk people just seemed extraordinarily slow. It turned out that the airline woman yesterday didn’t actually switch my flight to today like she said she had, but the rush of getting everyone through the line worked to my advantage I guess -- the woman who checked me in just sighed and added me to the flight right then to keep things moving. The flight left Prague ~20 min late, prob because of the delay in checking everyone in, but it worked out okay.

There’s a small train station in the Frankfurt airport; I bought tix for a 1:23 train, but after waiting from 1pm, when a train arrived at 1:15, I got on assuming it was early or would wait. Of course, all signs were in Germany, but Mainz, the city I needed, seemed to be on the sign so I went with it. And of course… wrong train. It shared routes with my train til the 2nd-to-last stop so I didn’t realize til it was too late. I took an extra train to get from Weisbaren (??) where I ended up to Mainz, hoping noone would check my ticket to see what happened (they didn’t). The mistake of not waiting 5 min for the correct train has pushed my schedule over 2 hr behind though, on top of the day behind I already started from the snow. I just hope that the Saarland people didn’t have too much planned for me. It turns out my Vodaphone mobile service doesn’t work here either; a disappointment since Vodaphone is all over Europe. Having one service cover the entire U.S. has spoiled me I guess. Not worth it to buy prepaid Germany service for a week though, with the overhead of buying the card and the min minutes necessary to buy.

One thing to mention though -- the west Germany landscape has indeed been pretty beautiful; it’s been nice to see it by train. I’m going by train from Saarbrucken to Paris next weekend, so I think that will be even better. Prague is lucky its got the beautiful buildings and architecture and history working for it. I miss seeing mountains.

Backpedal 3/9: The Computer Science Ball

As though I hadn’t gone to enough balls in the two months I’ve been in Prague, I went to a third one this past Thursday. This ball was not Moravian like the other two (one in Pavel’s village, another called the Moravian Ball here in Prague), so the music and dancing was a bit different. More notably, this was the ball for the Charles University Faculty of Arts and Faculty of Math, Physics, and Computer Science (“faculties” here are like departments or colleges in the U.S.). The poster, with the girl wrapped around her guy as he stares longingly into his laptop screen, says it all. :-) It used to annoy me a lot when I passed it in my office building. Then it occurred to me though that if the Johns Hopkins (let alone Carnegie Mellon!) computer science and math and linguistics students had their own ball, it would be a chore to get the guys out of the computer lab and into fancy clothes to begin with!


Guys here are pretty good dancers, forced to learn in high school. Too bad we don’t have that more in the States -- I’d love to have a good dancing partner and opportunities to show it off!

The best part about the ball: the ballroom was absolutely gorgeous.

Backpedal: 3/8 PHP party with Honza

Last Wed night I went to a small party at my friend Honza’s apartment. PHP stands for something Czech, and I was assured that it wasn’t named for the programming language Honza and his friends do work in. Right. Anyway, they get together once a month or so, play their guitars and sing songs, drink various drinks, and are merry. An evening of good fun -- some pictures here:

Backpedal: 2/11 Ball in Pavel's village

Didn't write earlier, so writing now. Topic: my weekend in Moravia, otherwise described in this post.

This was the first of the balls I attended in the Czech Republic, as well as the smallest and the cutest. I was the least sure of what to expect here. I figured it would be mostly young people, but the village is pretty small (~125 houses) and social events are few and far between, so there were people of all ages (above the minimum of 15), including Pavel’s kindergarten teacher whom I had the opportunity to meet! ;-) At first I mainly sat and watched others dancing, then Pavel danced with me a few times, and slowly others worked up the courage (I think they were mainly intimidated by the language barrier which I can understand. Many were starting to enjoy the opportunity to practice their English with me, which ranged from “Hello How Are You” to quite good. I had a lot of fun talking, and especially dancing. I need to talk my boyfriend into doing this with me more.


One of the highlights of the village ball: a raffle. Some won shampoo, others won kitchen appliances. Eliska, however, won a prized dead pheasant. The idea I guess is that you take it home, defeather it, and enjoy some nice fresh pheasant. Mmmm. I thought it was pretty funny, but some men near us, possibly the hunters who donated it in the first place, scolded us for not giving the prize its due and proper respect. Whoops. :-)


Sadly, none of us won one of the grand prizes: a pig’s head, just like the one I’d watched Pavel’s family slice off their pig earlier that day. Some lucky family must have been pretty excited. :-)

The conclusion of the Winter Olympics

The Winter 2006 Olympics have finally concluded. The final Czech count was four medals, including a coveted ice hockey bronze (though they had been pining for the gold this year), so they improved greatly from my 2/14 post. Ice hockey is definitely Olympic event #1 here, followed maybe by the various cross-country skiing events (Sasha Cohen who?), and it's easy to tell why since these are the Czechs' strengths.

Nice to have something to follow here from Prague alongside my American buddies. I'm still sad that I'll have to miss the Oscars tonight though!

The Magic Flute

Last night my mother and I went to the Estates Theater, part of the Czech National Theater, where my mother saw her very first opera: Mozart's The Magic Flute. Appropriate since we just watched the movie Amadeus earlier this week which includes some of the production of it (premier 2 months prior to Mozart's death). I got my mom to rent Amadeus from Blockbuster before flying out here -- not because we were going to see "The Magic Flute", but because I found out that much of it was filmed here in Prague. Yes, I'm a little nerdy. :-) Anyway, at least Amadeus prepared me for the fact that this opera would be pretty absurb, though I was still surprised. A very strange story.


I was a little disappointed by the quality of the performance actually, though my mother didn't notice anything so it's probably because at years of performing, my ear is pretty sensitive to issues with pitch, etc. Anyway, everything was good, but just not as good as I would have expected in Prague, city of classical music and city of Mozart, and with the National Theater no less. We could have gone to the Czech State Opera house... perhaps that would have been better. The problem was that operas at the CSOH had subtitles only in Czech, while Magic Flute was sung in German with Czech dialog, but had subtitles in German and English. The better for the tourists, which was what more than half of the audience was... which may be why it wasn't quite up to par. Oh well, the price for convenience I guess.