Day 3: Orientation

Tuesday, May 15, 2012 

Orientation! 

I rode the tram to the Prague Institute this morning after a breakfast of bread, cornflakes, lemon tea, orange juice, and a Sarah Zettel novel. (Isavalta is doomed.) The Institute is a beautiful maze of a building sprawled over two and a half sides of an oddly shaped courtyard, which it shares with a tea shop, an art gallery (galerie), and the apartment of Mr. L, who has apparently been there forever. All the buildings are painted a delicious butter yellow and have balconies everywhere. 

To get into the Institute, you walk up some stairs to a metal gate that opens with a key (from the inside, you hold down a button with one hand and kick the gate open with your foot). The rest of the doors inside the Institute open with a chip we were given, which releases the 450-pound electromagnetic door locks when you wave it in front of a little gray sensor. It's rather like waving smelling salts under someone's nose to wake them up. The chip unlocks all of the doors except the ones it doesn't; one of the teachers showed us a keyring with a diverse menagerie of keys, most of them for various Institute doors. From there, we walked through the studios. They are long, narrow, crooked rooms with a pathway down the middle; to reach one studio, you walk through the two or three before it, as they are all laid out in a line. There are offices and balcony doors wedged in little sunlit corners between them. At the other end of the line is a wide, open spiral staircase with cacti and a glass ceiling at the top. You go down this, past little side doors and wall niches and the bicycle standing at the bottom, to go out another door that requires a completely different key to open the enormous wrought iron handle. 

The floors inside the Institute are linoleum, or carpet, or wood, or tile; the walls are linoleum, or carpet, or wood, or the lovely 800-year-old white plaster that we were instructed in the care of this morning. Apparently, the walls (circa 1250) were built with horsehair, straw, and various other materials. If the walls cannot breathe, these materials will get moldy, rot, and make the building collapse; which means that they can't be painted with non-porous paint; which means the paint is not waterproof; which means it can't be washed, so stains have to be painted over or stay forever; and it can't have tape put on it, or three centuries of paint will come off in chunks when the tape is removed. Needless to say, we were told several times not to do this. 

During the lunch break, after a quick Skype call to let my family know I survived two days of airplane travel and made it to Europe, I wandered around the nearby streets - never more than a street or two away, for now, or I never would have found my way back. There is an elegant little square (triangle, really) nearby, with a fountain and benches in the middle. This turns out to be an excellent landmark when navigating in the area; the Institute is in a crooked, overhung little side passage (large enough for a single car to drive down if the pedestrians on the sidewalk turn sideways), but the square (triangle) is visible from many of the nearby streets. I wish I'd found it sooner; I would have gone there to eat my lunch. 

Lunch was a knotted poppyseed sweetbread thing, a bit like dwarf challah and just as delicious, and a slice of some sort of enormous sheet pastry with apple inside and powdered sugar on top. I got them at a shop with "Potraviny" on the sign; I thought it was the shop's name at first, but having seen the same word on other shops, I'm pretty sure it translates as "minimarket." Fortunately, the prices inside were all clearly labeled, and I (with my limited vocabulary) could just point to what I wanted. The woman at the counter probably thought I was mute. 

The open-air market outside sells mostly fruit and knick-knacks, so I haven't bought anything there yet. Maybe later, when I've got my lunch schedule better figured out. Someone had stuck a 20-crown piece to the curb, and a passerby and I shared a laugh when I tried to pick it up. 

One of the first sessions after lunch, thankfully, was an introduction to the Czech language. After reading the pronunciation section of my phrasebook on the plane from London, and muttering every shop and street name I passed under my breath for the following evening and morning, I was fairly confident in my ability to say Czech words. Unfortunately, I still don't know what the vast majority of them mean. (I'm trying to avoid reading any graffiti out loud for now.) 

The teacher managed to make the language introduction clear, entertaining, and memorable. She's a Czech teacher here, so presumably she's had some experience with this. I couldn't imagine a better introduction. 

I already knew "please" (prosím), "thank you" (děkuji), and "I'm sorry / excuse me" (promiňte), of course. Those I memorized on the plane. 

After the language was a brief presentation on Czech history and culture. I fear I will not be able to appreciate two of the major parts, which are hockey and beer. The rest was fascinating, though. Apparently, the Czech republic has one of the highest (possibly the very highest; I forget) concentrations of castles in all of Europe, possibly because every war in Europe comes through here at some point. There are castles just sitting in ruins out in the countryside, free for anyone to wander in and take pieces off of them for souvenirs, because there are simply too many for the country to have any hope of preserving. 

The history teacher then took us on a whirlwind tour of the area within easy walking distance. He seemed disappointed to find, at the end, that he'd only lost two students on the way. 

According to legend, the astronomical clock was created by a renowned clockmaker in Prague. After it was complete, the king didn't want the clockmaker to make another clock this amazing for anyone else, so he had him blinded. Once he was well enough to walk, the clockmaker had someone lead him to the clock; he reached in, knowing every detail of the mechanism even without the use of his eyes, and moved just one piece out of place. It took a hundred years for someone to figure out how to make the clock move again. 

That's the legend, anyway. No one really knows if it's true. It's a beautiful clock, with an elaborate face that shows the time, the hours until sunset, the position and phase of the moon and sun, the signs of the zodiac, the date, and the positions of several stars. Around it are carved figures representing (according to my guide book) Vanity, Greed, Death, and Lust; Death is a skeleton that rings a bell in time to the bell in the tower. More clockwork people (the apostles, I think) walk by and look out of the windows above the clock while the bell rings. After the ringing of the hour, a trumpeter (living, not clockwork) comes out on top and plays a short melody. A group of musicians in the square below harmonized with the trumpeter for a while. 

I continue to be amazed at how beautiful the city is. Every building is gorgeous. There are ancient stone buildings, blackened by age in all the whorls and crevices of their ornate Gothic architecture. There are open markets and little hole-in-the-wall shops. There are restaurants spilling tables out onto the sidewalks. There are buildings in every possible shade of bright, shining, elegantly cracked plaster. There are buildings with whole paintings done on their façades. 

I will have to go back to the library at some point. I think checking out a few picture books could be a good way to learn more Czech. Of course, that would require the often quite complex process of getting a library card, so maybe I would just read them there instead.  

In the process of obtaining dinner, I had my first whole conversation in Czech! 

Granted, it consisted of "Sandwich and chocolate croissant, please." "Here you are." "Thank you." 

(Or in Czech: "Panini Brusel a zenitka čokoladny, prosím." "Prosím." "Děkuji.") 

But still! I communicated! 

I'm not actually sure if "zenitka" means "croissant" or if it's something that just looks kind of like one. 

This was at the Paneria on I forget the street name, where I got the above food for 44 koruna. I think this is about $2.50, but I'm not sure. That seems low. I'm still uncertain about the exchange rate. Something to look up when I get the chance. 

I think I know how the man in that story felt now. 

(Once, there was a Norwegian man living in New York City. He went to the same restaurant every day and ordered "apple-pie-and-coffee," because that was all the English he knew: "apple-pie-and-coffee." Finally, one of his friends taught him to say, "cheese-sandwich," so that he could order something else. Full of pride at this new phrase, he walked into the restaurant the next day and said, "cheese-sandwich!" 

The waitress asked, "white bread or wheat?" 

The man frowned and said, "apple-pie-and-coffee.") 

This is exactly where I am now. I had a whole (brief) conversation today, and I said (I hope) all the right things; but it used a significant fraction of my entire Czech vocabulary, and if the lady at the counter had asked me a question, I would have been completely lost. This language is still a vast and unknown wilderness, and the slightest deviation from the few paths I know could easily leave me as lost as the Norwegian man in the story. (I don't actually remember if he was Norwegian or not. He might have been Swedish.) There are still many places I want to go to which I have yet to find any paths at all. 

Still. This is progress! And the food was delicious. I plan to start actually cooking food soon, but I'll probably wait until I've got other things figured out first. 

I then took the subway to the wrong hotel (which will be the right hotel after we move next week) and had to walk back to the one where we're staying. Fortunately, it's not a long walk - fifteen to twenty minutes, perhaps. I could probably just walk over there for the move this weekend if I didn't have to carry my suitcase. With a suitcase, the walk would be more like forty minutes, and I'd collapse after about ten. 

The subway has what seems like the longest escalator in the world. It's like looking down an aluminum-plated shaft to the core of the Earth. 

Tomorrow, I will have things to buy. Food, for one thing, and possibly a larger sketchbook if the one I brought isn't big enough. Fortunately, there are several grocery stores, an art supply store, and a paper store only a few minutes' walk from the Institute. I suspect I'll be visiting them a lot. 

The weather today was just about perfect, which means that I was in a t-shirt and 75% of everyone else were in sweaters and complaining about the cold. I don't know what the actual temperature was, but I hope it stays like this for a while. 

Also tomorrow: the Opera! We will be going to "Rusalka," by Dvořak, with tickets already paid for as part of the semester. I can't wait!