Day 28: Quiet

Saturday, June 9, 2012 

I brought my loom back to the Penzion with me last night. After I woke up this afternoon, I finished tapestry number 3, then spent the rest of the day (what little there was) drawing comics on my laptop. Another lazy Saturday. 

Prague - or the district we're in, at least - seems to shut down almost completely on Saturdays. Most of the stores are closed, and traffic is nearly nonexistent except on the main streets. 

When I got hungry, I walked a few blocks - the weather was gorgeous, the streets practically deserted - to get a few slices of pizza for lunch. (Giallo Rosso, the tiny hole-in-the-wall pizzeria near the Metro stop, lets you get pizza by the slice. The ham and spinach variety is my current favorite.) I ate them in the park while watching pigeons - it's amazing how different they all are if you look closely - and listening to children playing in the fountain on the other end. To paraphrase Terry Pratchett, it's a pleasant sound when you can't hear what they're actually saying. 

After pizza, I walked back across the street to the bakery next door to the pizza place and got a slice of chocolate cake, which I ate while looking out the front door at much the same view. Delicious. On the way back to the Penzion, I checked the hours of the Vietnamese place - it's one of the restaurants that's open on Saturdays - and stopped at the corner potraviny to get some shampoo to refill my nearly empty bottle. 

This is what I love about living in a city. Anything you need is within walking distance - usually several of what you need, and even more if you count places you can get to by the Metro. Lunch, dinner, a visit to the park, and a brief shopping trip today made for a total of maybe twenty minutes of walking, and I could have done it in less if I'd done less wandering around. 

Of course, the downside of living in a city is that everything is also within walking distance of several thousand other people, so it's hard to get any privacy. 

That's why I had dinner at Bong Sen again. It's one of the friendliest - and even more so, the quietest - restaurants I've ever visited. In a city full of noisy bars, crowded restaurants, and hotels full of college students (which can get noisy sometimes), it is an oasis of peace and good food. 

Of course, I've only been there after 9:30 pm, which might have something to do with it. For the sake of their business, I hope it's busier during the day. 

Tonight, I was one of only three customers in the restaurant; after I'd finished my rice and vegetables (69 crowns, or about $4 - it's also one of the only restaurants in the entire city where you can get dinner for less than 100), they let me stay and write until closing time (10:30). This one hour might end up being the source of five or six future Hamjamser posts. 

I might have found a place to go regularly. It's a shame I won't be able to do so after I return home. In the meantime, if you're ever in Prague, the address is Řipska 19, Vinohrady. Stop here for dinner at least once. 

Day 27: Solitaire

Friday, June 8, 2012 

Weaving all day! Finished tapestry number 2 and started number 3! Stripes and gradients and an attempt at a fringe! I might be addicted to weaving! Yay! 

The soundtrack for this project turned out to be the album Right Outta Nowhere, by Christine Kane. Good music for weaving. Good music for anything, really. 

The power cord for my laptop inexplicably broke in my backpack earlier this week, so I've been using my laptop sparingly to conserve power. Today, I managed to get in touch with the Institute's IT expert, who loaned me an old spare cord he had. I can type again! 

After all the walking yesterday, I didn't really feel like going anywhere today. (Besides, I had weaving to do.) I'm not sure if I left the Institute at all before the trip back to Vinohrady in the evening. This is something that happens to me fairly often: I'll start making something, look up a little while later, and wonder when it got so dark outside... 

There are actually signs up in the Metro forbidding passengers to put stickers on the walls and doors (at least, I'm pretty sure that's what the signs say). Despite this, someone had looked at the lines and dots of the station diagrams above the doors... 

...And had added a little PacMan and ghosts. 

I had dinner at Bong Sen, the Vietnamese restaurant around the corner from the Penzion. I got a large amount of meat and vegetables for a small amount of money, with a white pillow of rice on the side. Delicious. It was nearly closing time, so the restaurant was quiet, nearly deserted except for the wait staff and a small girl (related, I think) whom they were helping to practice counting in Czech. I think she was better at it than I am yet. 

I have found myself returning to the Penzion later and later each day. (Still never after 11 pm, I think.) Partly, this is because I have a tendency to work and forget to eat dinner until after the Institute closes. Partly, though, it's because the later I get back, the fewer people will try to talk to me on the way up to the room. 

They keep inviting me to clubs and bars and restaurants. This is very nice of them, and I appreciate the thought. I've passed by the doors of the occasional bar and club, though, and they seem to contain mostly alcohol, crowds, and noise. If I wanted that kind of fun, I could just beat my head against a wall for a few hours. 

Dinner might be nice, if it was a quiet restaurant; after about 9 pm, though, I'm rarely in a mood to spend time with people, or talk to people, or remember that people exist. That's what I do in the morning and afternoon. All I want after sundown is to shut myself in a quiet room and forget that there's a world outside my head and the book or screen in front of it. 

I am a nearly complete introvert - always have been - and I'm happy that way. But I hate to disappoint the extroverts who invite me to places. I like these people, I really am grateful for the offer, and I can only hope that they aren't offended that I have to keep refusing it. 

Day 17: Morning

Tuesday, May 29, 2012 

A relatively uneventful day. In the fibers class, I starched my lace design, then pulled out roughly fifteen hundred thousand billion pins to release it from the pillow. (Yesterday's photo was taken after this, obviously. Why did I make a design with so many curves and intersections? Because I like the way it looks, that's why…) 

The starching went well, though, and we then started carving our designs for the upcoming blue-printing project. We don't have time to learn how to carve the forms out of wood, the traditional way, so we're using blocks of foam instead. It's certainly much easier to carve. 

Other than a long-awaited Skype call and a few hours of reading webcomics, I didn't really do much else today. Instead, I thought those of you who read this weblog might be interested to see the route I take every morning. 

I start at the Penzion. 

Our room is on the other side of the building, so you can't see the windows from here. The street it's on is just about wide enough for two cars to pass each other, as long as they're small. Like all of Prague, there are frequently people walking assorted dogs on the sidewalks. Watch where you step. 

From here, you turn right and walk toward the TV tower with the giant baby sculptures on it. It's about five times as tall as anything else in the city, so it makes a good landmark. 

There are some interesting murals on the left. 

Planning ahead for lunch, I often stop to get an inexpensive pastry of some kind at this bakery. 

The Metro is down here, at the bottom of what appears to be the third longest escalator in the world. People occasionally roll things down the dividers between the railings. 

In the confined spaces beneath the city, you can feel the wind rushing out of the tunnel before you can even hear the train itself. 

Like any urban public transportation, the train gets more and more crowded as it approaches downtown in the morning. There are rarely any empty seats. 

These handy charts are posted above every door. We get off at Můstek. 

There's one inactive escalator at nearly all the Metro stops; the middle one at the Můstek stop seems to have been completely ripped out. 

I assume it's for repairs. 

At the top of a much shorter escalator (the ground is lower here by the river), you come out into the Old Town. 

There's an open-air market that spans two or three blocks, with booths selling fruit and chocolates and cackling witch marionettes. They're usually still setting up when classes begin. 

Through Uhelny Trh, the little triangle at the end of the market… 

Down a narrower side street, past assorted restaurants… 

Through the archway between the jeweler and the violin shop… 

And you come out into the quiet yellow courtyard that the Institute overlooks. 

Most of the windows you can see here are part of the Institute. It shares the courtyard with a tea room (to the left) and an art gallery (to the right). The main Institute entrances are also to the right.  

The door on the left leads to a common room, a computer lab, one of the five miniature kitchens, and the non-design classrooms. The design studios are up the stairs and through the metal gate. The door under the chicken leads to the art gallery, which occupies a space somewhere beneath/behind/between the Institute. I'm not really sure how it all fits together. 

Through the gate, up some stairs, past a balcony, through another door, and you come out into the main hallway, which also functions as part of the Institute's library.

At the end is the chain of odd little trapezoid-shaped rooms occupied by the fibers studio. Here's the view from near my desk… 

And my desk itself, right by the door, looking uncharacteristically tidy this morning.