Saturday, April 29, 2006

Where the money goes

This is horrifyingly amazing. I'm looking at my finances for the last 3 1/2 months, and found a few surprises:

$56.18 in ATM fees -- charges for withdrawing money in Prague, Germany, France, UK
$12.52 in "Internation Transaction" credit card service charges - 3% fee
$38.51 in fees charged for using my check/debit card in stores
-------
$107.21 spent on nothing.

I'd considered getting a Czech bank account while I was here, but it seemed like too much of a hassle. I mainly only use my debit card on groceries and a few larger items -- the fact that stores here charge an extra fee for using credit cards really starts to add up. I use my credit card for large travel items (paying for hotels killed me here, and of course I won't get reimbursed for that part). When I withdraw money from an ATM, I'm (now) aware that it charges ~$7 in fees each withdrawal, so I try to take out as much money as the machine will let me, at least in Prague.

Thought I was doing this intelligently..... ouch. The scary thing is this could have been much worse. There must be a better way to do this!

Thursday, April 20, 2006

back to Easter


I spent Easter weekend in Liberec with my friend Eliska and her family. The city was nice (often cold and rainy, but not this time), her family was great, and I enjoyed Czech Easter traditions like spending a day decorating eggs.

And yes, I let myself be pomlázka'd. :-)

When I wrote in my blog earlier about my discovery of the pomlazka tradition, I wasn't surprised to raise the ire of some of the Czechs who read my blog. So to mysterious Czech readers Jana and Mirek, and others who didn't comment on the blog, I wanted to respond and elaborate a bit. I hope you'll take it in the light, discussion-provoking manner in which it's intended!

I should be clearer; especially after having experienced the holiday and tradition, I realize that the whipping is for the most part in good fun. It was nice having neighbors stopping by the house and chatting (even if it was to spank us and get some painted eggs, candy, and alcohol!), and when not a lot of boys stopped by I could tell my host family was a bit disappointed. It's nice to hold on to traditions, and absolutely no one who stopped by was mean or disrespectful in any way.


That said, the tradition will always trouble me a bit, and here's why. I don't believe that many Czech men are aggressive and ready to pounce, but some could be, and here's a holiday where hitting women literally is condoned. Several boys who stopped by insisted that the soft end of the pomlaska was for young girls and we had to get the hard end which stung more, and a Czech guy I talked to said he knew guys who bought very hard whips special bc they thought it was more fun when it hurt.

Even more than that though, there's something a little disturbing to me about teaching this to children. Playful as it may be, there's something slightly degrading about being spanked, and I believe it must set in children's heads early on that boys (even the younger ones) dominate girls (even the older ones). So we'll leave it at that. I won't ask the Czechs to change their traditions, but were I to settle in Prague permanently, I wouldn't teach them to my children either. To each his own.

But back to Liberec and my Czech Easter -- everything was beautiful, everyone was wonderful, and I couldn't have asked for a better holiday!!! :-)

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Here come the tourists... in their underwear




Charles Bridge in February

Charles Bridge in April

Okay, not really, obviously. That would make them a bit easier to bear though I think! (and maybe you need to be a regular blog reader to get that joke anyway :-))

To all of you not currently in Prague, you're missing out (and you're lucky). The weather here is beautiful, which makes walking through the beautiful streets, courtyards, and bridges amazing.

However, all of Europe and elsewhere seems to have figured out the secret, and they've flooded the streets! What's more, the various shop, craft, and restaurant owners have decided to take advantage of the recent population shift (Dear Czechs: welcome to capitalism), and they've decided that their normal shops and restaurants aren't enough -- instead they've choked Staromestske Namesti (the Old Town Square), Malostranske Namesti (where I work), Andel, and who knows where else with little house-like shop structures.

And yes, I do realize the irony in my annoyance that the Old Town Square old marketplace has actually become, god-forbid, a market. ;-) Still, it's bad enough tripping over tourists without also tripping over porta-potties and huge artificial trees with Easter eggs on them! Easter was just last week of course, but the celebration has been going on almost a month now!

And yes, I'll describe my Easter experiences soon... busy, busy, busy.



Friday, April 14, 2006

Paris pictures finally up

I went to Paris almost a month ago, but finally posted the pictures on my website. Check them out here.

Boo for being sick

As it turns out, I've spent today being sick - obviously no fun. Thankfully a teleconference planned for this afternoon with others from my grant in Prague, Saarbrucken Germany, Baltimore, and Providence has been postponed to next week (and thankfully again not til Tues rather than Monday, when I'll still be out of town for Easter Monday, hopefully without anyone swinging a pomlazka at me!)

So I'm pretty much useless today. (But yes, I can still blog :-) Not much brain power required here...) The timing is no good...
  • For work: I'm already going to be missing Monday for Easter traveling, and London next Friday, and have to give an hour long talk to the Czechs here the following Monday, so getting work done today would have been best.

  • Personally: yesterday out of nowhere while walking home from work, I ran into an old friend from CMU! I hadn't seen Andy Lee (or Andrew, as he's reverted to) since, well, I'm sure I was in Pittsburgh at the time. Nice to see him though -- he and some friends just ran the Paris marathon, which must have been awesome, and have been traveling through Europe since. Anyway, hoped to meet up tonight, but as I'm half dead and continue to sporadically cough out my lungs, don't think it will happen. Would have been fun, but so it goes.

    (read Andrew's blog)

    Plus, when is getting sick ever good?

  • Travel-wise: Going to visit Eliska and her family in Liberec tomorrow; hope I feel better then!

  • Because, if it happened just one month later, I could have my mom making soup for me!
Okay, enough whining from me! Hope you have a good day, and a great Easter!

Veselé Velikonoce!

Three month anniversary -- and one to go!

Three months ago, on Jan 14, I arrived in Prague, and exactly one month from now, May 14, I head home.

It's really amazing how time has flown!

Thursday, April 13, 2006

The strangest Easter tradition I've ever heard of

Today, talking to the Czech professor who is hosting me here in the Czech Republic, he told me nonchalantly about an old Czech Easter tradition which made my jaw drop. And sure enough, I confirmed it with a number of others, all of whom found it typical and no big deal.

Every Easter Monday, to bring good luck and a good summer harvest, men and boys whip the girls and women.

Seriously, yes! I can only imagine that this is generally done in a light and teasing manner, as the Czech guys who told me are all sweet as can be and I can't imagine them taking part in this otherwise. But still, they also mentioned that sometimes it is taken too far, "and the women don't appreciate that much". An understatement if I ever heard one!


The whipping generally occurs on either the legs or the buttocks. The name of the whip -- and the "flogging festival" itself -- is the pomlázka. The tradition is a pagan one, and perhaps regrew in popularity during Communist times, in which celebrating the religious focus of Easter was generally forbidden. (Also due to this, Easter Monday and not at all Good Friday or even Easter Sunday is the most celebrated day here). The pomlazka whip is traditionally made of braided willow twigs, but these days men typically just buy them. Often, the women also have water thrown on them by the men, to "cleanse" them prior to the whipping. In exchange for being whipped by the men, the women are expected to give the man who whipped them candy or some small gift. More often in recent times the gift is actually alcohol. Really, you ask, get the men carrying the whips drunk? Whose idea was this?!! They also give the men they like a ribbon to hang off of the whip. Boys and men who are left without many ribbons hanging off their whip are often quite embarrassed.

Signs of an abusive relationship? Women who are not whipped, or not often, are said to be a little hurt, since no one bothered to show them the proper attention.

So what do women think of this? Here is one Czech woman's point of view.


Can you even imagine something like this happening in the U.S.? Even assuming that it was absolutely always done in good fun (which I have trouble believing so condoning it seems a little scary), can you imagine parents putting up with this being done in a schoolyard, for example? This is the country where children hugging each other can sometimes get them in trouble!

Craziness, pure craziness. No one better shake a twig at me this weekend, that's all I can say!



To any Czechs reading this, I'm sure you'll think I'm overreacting and tell me it's no big deal, and I'm sure it normally isn't. Regardless, this entry covers my general reaction. :-)

Saturday, April 08, 2006

Unexperienced Prague experiences

The past two nights I've gone out with my American friend Mark (introduced via email by my Hopkins friend Andrew) and two of his buddies from growing up in South Carolina, John and Justin. The guys were a lot of fun -- I had a great time listening to their stories, and group-reminiscing about our days growing up in the South. :-) John and Justin were actually hear on part of their whirlwind tour of Europe -- 2-3 weeks spent in Dublin, Frankfurt, Heidelburg, Vienna, Salzburg, Prague, and Berlin next (I think that's it, that's what I'm remembering anyway). Anyway, lots of fun, and if I can remember the URL of their blog I'll definitely check it out.

Talking to them though, I realized their blog has a lot of stuff that mine does not: scandels and taboo. :-) Not that I would be opposed to including some on mine but there are the problems that 1) my mom reads this, 2) I actually *am* opposed to including really personal things, or things which could discourage future employments :-), and really the most important reason 3) I spend most of my days staring at my computer doing work, and not a lot generally happens to me here.

From what I've learned though, it seems I am missing out on a key Prague experience which all of these guys and others have experienced: midday drug pushes and sex offers. ;-)

Probably a lot of it is because I'm female (esp the sex offers), maybe because I look clean cut (I decided not to experiment with the always popular goth look when coming here), or because I walk through town quickly and with purpose (it's very difficult for me to walk slowly actually... seems more efficient my way!). But for these guys, Prague has a whole different side. Guys walk up to them on the street with heavily accented "Hey, you want the pot?" (or "Do you know where I can get the pot?"), or walking the other direction and whispering "heroin!" just as they pass by. Unbelievable -- this just doesn't happen to me, and based on my experiences here it's hard to imagine that it could!

And this isn't confined to particularly shady areas of town either. Walking town, one guy had a girl walk up to him and say "Excuse me, do you want sex?" and when he said no, she countered "Why not? Why don't you want sex?". Another guy was wandering Wenseslas Square past a group of girls talking, and as he passed two looked at him and said "Blowjob? You want a blowjob? I do for you...". A very generous offer, I'm sure, but he managed to resist somehow.

I'm told just five years ago things like this were much worse, which I believe (and definitely even more so pre-1989). Still, it makes me rethink things a bit. Perhaps when my relatives were telling me to watch out because "Prague is the porn capital of the world" (still no evidence of this so far from my observations), they were more right than we guessed!

Floods in Prague, cont'd

arnab said...

how were the floods in prague? i saw pictures of budapest under several feet of water... i hope vltava wasn't as bad as danube!

--
Actually, I'm a little confused, though maybe I'm misunderstanding... the floods I mentioned were of tourists, not of water! Pictures of Budapest under several feet of tourists would be kind of cool to see though. :-)

Speaking of floods though, there was a pretty bad one in Prague back in 2002... if you know what Prague looks like normally, the pictures posted below are pretty crazy. (And even without that, it's obvious that the water mark on most of the buildings is at least six feet up... yikes).


The Charles Bridge held strong though, no levee-type incidents here! They just don't build them like they built them in 1357 anymore. :-P

Thursday, April 06, 2006

I love Dan Quayle quotes

Yes, I'll get back to my Prague experiences soon... I have a bunch of posts half written and pictures waiting to post, but I just haven't been able to sit down to do it. In the meantime though, I thought this page was great. I used to collect dumb Dan Quayle quotes, demonstrating the wisdom of George H. W. Bush's VP almost as much as the quotables of our current esteemed world leader. This page has a good collection though -- nice for a laugh. :-)

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/d/dan_quayle.html

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Interesting article from BBC

Let's be honest: if you have time to read my blog, you have time to read a quick article and provoke your mind a bit. :-)

In the interest of being a "real blogger", here's a link to an interesting article from the BBC that I haven't seen picked up on any American news sites yet.

"How the US 'lost' Latin America"
(thanks to Arnab for passing the link along)