Day 6: Bees!

Friday, May 18, 2012 

Those of us who were interested left at 8 am today for the bee trip, an excursion to a beekeeping institute outside of Prague. It was the first time I'd seen the train station.

Also the first time I'd ridden on the top floor of one of those double-decker trains.

We took the train from Prague, past a series of beautiful little towns, to the equally beautiful little town of Libčice (LEEB-chee-tseh).

From here, we walked under the train tracks (there were tiny black-and-white cliff swallows nesting underneath the overhang)...

And took a ferry, just barely big enough to carry everyone, over to the island where the bees are. 

The countryside was beautiful. 

The institute itself - I forget the full name, if I ever heard it - seems to be focused on bee breeding and research.

Our guide was an enthusiastic fountain of information about bees. We heard about the life spans of the workers (several weeks), queens (several months), and drones (an unspecified length of time until their fatal mating with a queen); the construction and division of labor within a hive; the division of hives (young queen stays in old hive, old queen takes half the bees to build a new one); the six things bees produce (wax, honey, royal jelly, venom, propylase - an antibacterial substance they use to coat their hives - and other bees); the reproduction of queens (they lay more than their body weight in eggs every day, hence the need for the concentrated protein in royal jelly); the production of honey (which is mostly dehydrated nectar)… It was fascinating. 

One of the most complicated parts was the selling of queens. Apparently, any bee in the hive can become a queen, depending on an extremely complex set of environmental conditions during her development. This isn't surprising, as all the workers that come from unfertilized eggs are sterile clones of the queen anyway. The queens will normally kill each other until there's only one left in a colony (except in the cases where the old queen takes half the colony off in a swarm to build a new one). However, beekeepers will take larvae out of the colony and raise them in little cups, carefully monitored in isolation, to produce whole groups of queens that they can sell to other beekeepers. (The pedigrees of queens and drones are carefully recorded.)

The usual method is to put the queen, eight or so attendant workers, and a few weeks' supply of food in a small cage and send it through the mail. Once the queen and her attendants arrive, introducing her to the beekeeper's other bees is a complex process of its own. 

One way is to put the new queen in a small cage within a preexisting colony. (Not the cages above, which are for raising queens to adulthood. I just liked the way they look.) This protects her from the more aggressive workers who would kill her for being a foreigner. The friendlier workers will feed her instead, until her smell and the colony's smell are mixed together, and it seems as if she belongs there. The beekeeper then opens the hive up and replaces the cage's cork with a cork made of sugar. After the hive is closed and the bees have calmed down again, they eat the sugar cork, and the new queen can come out to take her place in the colony. 

Ten percent of the time, one particularly xenophobic worker will still kill the queen at this point, but it works the other ninety percent. 

The other (somewhat more reliable) way is to isolate a group of workers somewhere. In a preexisting colony, the workers can recover from the loss of their old queen; they simply take the brood of larvae they already have and raise one of them to be the new queen. They don't need or want any fancy foreign royalty. An isolated group of workers, however, has no brood and therefore no hope for the future. They eventually become desperate enough to take any queen they can find. This allows the beekeeper to introduce a new queen and let her and the older workers start a new colony. 

The bees they keep at the institute have been specially bred to be friendly; they will actually let people pick them up and pet them. They flew around peacefully while Dalibor took their hive apart to show us the honey, the queen, and the larvae, and they stopped occasionally to rest on people's clothes before flying away again. Even the people who were nervous at first seemed to be completely comfortable around them by the end, and I was surprised at how many of us were comfortable with them right from the beginning.

The queens are marked with dots, color-coded to the year of their birth. This one was born in 2008, if I remember correctly.

After showing us the hives, our guide took one of the combs out and brought it to the centrifuge in the shed next door so that we could extract and taste the honey.

It was delicious. I've never been a huge fan of store-bought honey; I like it, but there's an odd sticky taste to it that I can only eat in small amounts. This, however, was like a mix of sugar and sunshine, light and clear with hardly any color or stickiness to it at all.

I didn't want to stop eating it.

At the end of the tour, we also got to sample honey chocolate and mead. Some of us loved the mead; others thought it tasted like cough syrup. I could taste the sweetness of the honey, but the revolting medicinal taste of the alcohol ruined it, as usual. Oh well. The chocolate was quite good, though. 

We had lunch at a tiny little food stand that seemed to be one of the only other buildings on the island. It was a little red-brown building next to the ferry stop.

They had apparently made a huge pot of guláš (beef and onion stew) in advance, and they served it to our group until it ran out, which took a long time. It was delicious - thick and meaty, faintly spicy, with slices of warm potato bread to soak it up. I went back for seconds. 

We found an insect of some sort on the ferry on the way back; it looked a bit like a miniature dobsonfly, black and flat-headed with black-veined wings like stained glass. Everyone gathered around to exclaim over it and take pictures of it sitting on my hand.

We missed the train by about three minutes, so we had lots of time to sit at the station and wait. I did a quick sketch of the tracks and the trees and cliffs around them. 

One of the other students saw me sketching and recommended the work of illustrator Syd Mead, particularly his elegant way of suggesting the shapes of trees; I will definitely have to look him up when I get the chance. I recommended Tony Cliff in return. 

We met several cats today - a calico at the beekeeping institute and a golden tabby with black paws at the train station. Both were large and plump and seemed to enjoy the adoring attention of a couple dozen college students an ocean away from our own cats, though I'm sure they couldn't understand a word we said.

The ride back was uneventful, though I took lots more pictures of the towns we passed...

The cliffs between them... 

Interesting bits of railroad and river engineering... 

And some of the more elaborate graffiti.

Day 5: Quiet Occupations

Thursday, May 17, 2012 

More photography for the Fibers class. This trip ended up bringing me all the way to the river Vltava (which is the opposite end of the Old Town from the section we're supposed to be photographing, but I had enough photos by then and didn't care) and into a beautiful little corner of the city, full of trees and gardens and narrow yellow passages. It's the quietest part of the city I've seen yet. I just walked through it slowly for a while, drinking in the sun and silence. 

The layout of Prague is starting to make a bit more sense now. We're staying near the Old Town (Staré Město), which is nestled into a bend in the Vltava. The Institute is right in the middle of the Old Town; the hotels are in Vinohrady, a bit farther from the river. It takes maybe fifteen minutes to get between the two by the #22 tram. I'm starting to get a feel for these two districts of the city, at least. I found my way across nearly the entire width of the Old Town and back to the Institute again without a map today, and I can do the same with at least two or three of the tram stops I use regularly. It's like a lot of places - once you remember the names and positions of a few major streets and particularly tall landmarks, you can use them to find the places you're familiar with, if you don't mind wandering around half-lost a lot of the time. 

I got lunch at the Paneria on the way back and ate it in Uhelny Trh, the little triangular square near the Institute.

There's a pigeon there who walks in circles around people and looks cute until they feed it. This seems to work fairly well. It got a few dropped crumbs of my sandwich bread, but none of my apple strudel. 

I also got some future dinner and lunch supplies at Albert, a grocery store nearby. I managed to get what I hope is several days' worth of food for 75 Kč (about $4?) 

We started lacemaking this morning! We're doing bobbin lace, which is made by winding thread onto a series of bobbins (little hanging wooden spindle things) and twisting them around each other. Nothing complicated yet - we just learned how to do a simple chain stitch, which is basically a four-strand braid. Simple, but fun already.

I spent most of the rest of the day, after lace and photography, resting and drawing at the Institute and catching up on the webcomics I've ignored for the past week. The internet access at the hotel is erratic at best, so this is the place to do it. 

I also found this beautiful animated short, following a link from one of my favorite webcomic artists. 

I had a fairly long conversation this evening with one of my roommates about science fiction. He just discovered the genre recently and loves it, particularly the work of Arthur C. Clarke and H.G. Wells. I recommended C.J. Cherryh, Larry Niven, and Scott Westerfield; he recommended Under the Dome, a science fiction book by Stephen King. I've heard almost nothing but good reviews of Stephen King's work, but I've been reluctant to get into it due to its being horror, so I'll definitely have to look this one up. 

Day 4, Part 2: The Opera

Wednesday, May 16, 2012 (continued)

Opera in the evening! The Institute gave out tickets to all the students, and we dressed up and walked over to the Opera. 

"Dressed up," that is, in whatever we'd brought with us, which made us a somewhat motley bunch. We had everything from shorts and t-shirts to full-fledged evening gowns. 

The Prague Opera has possibly the most ornate interior of any building I've ever seen. Elaborate Rococo scrollwork has grown up like ivy to cover every possible surface. There are paintings on the ceiling (easily visible from our balcony seats), with some of the foreground figures and scenery done as trompe l'oeil relief sculptures, which blend seamlessly into the wild swoops and curls of ornamentation that serve as irregular frames. It's a beautiful effect. Everything whirls into everything else. There are statues holding up pillars, reclining below the ceiling, arching out over the boxes with wreaths and musical instruments in their hands. 

None of my photographs came out, to my great disappointment. The lighting was just too romantically dim. 

The opera we saw was Rusalka, by Antonin Dvořak, whose name I cannot type properly on an American keyboard. (I've been looking up Czech words on Google and copying the accented characters from there when I need to write them.) Fortunately, there was a screen with English translations of the words above the stage, so we could understand what was happening. The singing was incredible; several of the arias sent chills up my spine, and there were some beautifully complex harmonies in the few chorus numbers. We could see the delicious, opulent detail in the sets and costumes even from our seats near the ceiling. The story was similar to The Little Mermaid (perhaps based on the same original story?), but with a nearly completely useless prince and a much more ambiguous ending. The Little Mermaid tends to have a happy or a tragic ending, depending on which version you read. This was... somewhere in between. Bittersweet, perhaps. 

A lot of the opera was left up to the viewer, actually - particularly the motivations of the witch, who was probably the most interesting character. You were never quite sure whether she was trying to help the other characters or destroy them. 

Day 4, Part 1: The Explore

Wednesday, May 16, 2012 

One of the strangest things here is not recognizing any of the birds. (Except the pigeons.) I'm used to recognizing practically every bird I see, and here, they're all unfamiliar. (Except the pigeons.) 

Some new birds: 

Western Jackdaw, Corvus monedula 

Eurasian Jay, Garrulus glandarius

Eurasian Magpie, Pica pica 

(No photograph; they are quick and elusive birds.) 

The Eurasian Jay is especially magnificent - a big, golden-brown bird with a black mustache and a bar of bright blue along each wing. There was one sitting on a building near the Institute. According to Wikipedia, they live across all of Europe and Asia, eat practically everything, and normally live in forests, but have been moving into cities recently. 

The Jackdaw is an elegant bird - black shading gently into a high, ash-gray collar around its neck. They or the magpies, depending on where you go, seem to take the place of crows in America. 

For the first Fibers class assignment, we split up into teams of two and went out into the city to sketch and photograph whatever interested us. Each team had an assigned section of the Old Town (Staré Město) to explore. 

Ours included the massive Gothic archway at one end; 

a corner of the Old Town Square at the other;

and a mix of tourist avenues and twisty little side-street mazes in between. 

We spent most of our time with only the vaguest idea of where we were. Thank goodness for maps and street signs. 

Even the sidewalks in Prague are beautiful. They're made of thick stone tiles in various shades of red, gray, and white, arranged in different patterns on different streets. (If there's any system to the patterns, I haven't been paying attention enough to figure it out.) Some of the patterns are fairly complex. 

Then there's the metalwork, the statuary, the elaborate and multi-layered graffiti, the architecture in every style from Gothic to Renaissance to modern to flagrantly Rococo…

I took 200 photographs in two hours, and I would have taken more if I hadn't had to spend so much time navigating. Prague is as lovely as it is confusing.

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! 

Day 1-2: by Bus and Airplane

May 13-14, 2012

Arrival in Prague. Two days on airplanes.

British Airways was the fanciest and had the most cheerful service. American Airlines was the one that served dinner and breakfast, though, and it was delicious - lasagna and rolls and croissants with jam. Unless this was unusual, I don't know why people complain about airplane food.

Then again, I do tend to like nearly everything.

I was unable to sleep during the night, on the long AA flight over the ocean; instead, I kept falling asleep over Europe, when I actually wanted to be awake. The result was that I got very little sleep at any time. That's all right; I've done it before.

I have never been outside the United States before, and it shows. All the way into London-Heathrow Airport, I kept looking out the window and thinking, those are English people! Doing English things in England! The land of Shakespeare, of Gaiman and Pratchett and Miéville and Monty Python and Diana Wynne Jones! I am actually setting foot on this incredible island!

Granted, I was in an airport the whole time and never actually touched the ground except through layers of concrete and asphalt, but still. It was so exciting it was silly.

I ended up going through security three times today. Once at the beginning of the trip; once at Dallas, because I didn't realize that the baggage claim area was outside security or that I would pick my one suitcase up later, in Prague; and once in London, because everyone apparently has to go through security in London no matter what. Fortunately, it's much less draconian than US security. Customs in Prague was completely uneventful.

It's a little disturbing how many airports are basically shopping malls with gates around the outside. Sketching people in them is still fun, though, as long as I avoid people who look my way often. A lot of people get stiff and unnatural if they know they're being watched.

I realized in the London-Heathrow airport that I was largely choosing people to sketch based on the number of wrinkles they had. I tried to include some younger faces too, but they never turned out as well. Older faces are just more interesting.

On the way into London, we were treated to beautiful views of the English countryside's cloud formations. They were thick and white and completely opaque. Anything could have been underneath them. On the way out of London, though, the clouds cleared halfway to France, and I got to enjoy tea and biscuits 30,000 feet over the English Channel.

My favorite part of the flights was going over the mountains of Germany, with little white-cottage villages sprinkled like sugar into every valley - until we got to Prague, which was like flying over the most beautiful parts of the 16th century. All these gorgeous little towns, whitewash and red roof tiles over twisting little hillside streets…

The Czech Republic has beautiful coins. Much heavier than American. Bicolored metal and ornate heraldic lions. (I'll try to post photos later.) I got about 1080 koruna (crowns) for 60 dollars, so the exchange rate seems to be about 18/1.

Everything looks different in Prague. Everything. The signs and caution fences are different; the street signs are attached to buildings rather than poles; half the streets are cobblestone; there are what I assume are magpies instead of crows, as well as rosy gray doves with white rings around their necks; the buildings in the area around the airport are mostly a sort of eclectic, slightly shabby Bauhaus style, lots of rectangles and bright colors and cement, a look I don't always care for but which looks beautiful when a whole part of a city is done that way; the buses seem to use the streets and the tram tracks interchangeably; even the plants are all unfamiliar - some just have textures that are subtly different from anything in America, while others are quite alien, like the ones with black bark that flakes off sycamore-style halfway up their white trunks.

Not to mention the language. I don't understand a single word anyone is saying, with the exception of other students from the US. I have no reason to believe that anyone would understand anything I said. It's a rather humbling experience. I'd started studying my Czech phrasebook on the plane, but I'd had time to look over the pronunciation guide, nothing more. All I could do was watch the signs go by outside the bus from the airport, able to pronounce but not understand them, and hope that the name of my destination would show up somewhere prominent when I reached it.

I must learn the language as soon as possible. I can already pronounce the letters (fortunately, they are phonetic and logical, however unfamiliar some of the sounds are); next, I move on to words. That will take somewhat longer.

My two roommates were already at the hotel, so we got to introduce ourselves before collapsing from exhaustion. We all wear retainers, sleep heavily, and are fans of Pokemon.

The hotel apparently has wi-fi ("vee-fee," as it's pronounced here), but it only actually works in certain parts of the building. With at least five stories, I'm not surprised. The rooms are tall and full of pleasantly mismatched fabrics, with bathrooms a little larger than my closet at home. Taking a shower is a bit like one of those puzzle games where you must move things around using only a limited number of places to stack them. We shall see if this remains fun or becomes annoying with repetition. We'll be in a different hotel next week (this one is a last-minute one-week emergency relocation for about half the students), at which point everything is likely to change anyway. No way to tell yet.