A Familiar Face in Prague

Happy New Year! Hope all of your resolutions are either going terrifically or have already come to a quick conclusion so that you can continue living happily—as you probably were before.

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Lisa and I were scheduled to travel to northeastern Slovakia after our week teaching in Tábor. Since we had revisited Bratislava the weekend before, we decided that we should see Prague one more time before heading home for the holidays.

Fortunately for us, I have a friend that is currently living in Prague, teaching English for a local company while also scheduling private lessons. Prefacing this friendship is a little difficult as it is not an incredibly normal one. To put it briefly, my favorite band is State Radio—a sometimes reggae-infused rock band from Boston. Back in 2007, I joined the Red Letter Tribe, an online forum of people that discuss the goings-on of the band, their music, their live shows, etc. I can’t attest now as I haven’t been on the site in a long time, but back then it was an incredibly tight knit group of people—a sort of online “family”, if you will. Through this amazing network, I’ve gotten to spend time (often having a free place to crash) with awesome people in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Illinois, North Carolina, Virginia, New Jersey, and maybe some more places that are currently escaping my memory.

State Radio’s fans have managed to form their own little cult…minus the Kool Aid.

I believe I had only actually met Nica—my friend living in Prague—once (in Baltimore, if I remember correctly.) In any event: once in RLT, always in RLT. She was more than willing to open her apartment up to Lisa, Kevin and I. We, of course, graciously accepted.

MGK: Cleveland’s finest. Known for his sick hip hop flow and his ability to get arrested in the Strongsville mall.

We met her at the subway stop nearest to her place and, after brief introductions, walked about 10 minutes to a doorway that led up to her apartment. She lives in a cozy little flat with two other people—both of which we would meet later on in the night. After talking for a second Nica and her roommate (who coincidentally is from Shaker Heights and shared a homeroom in high school with now-famous rapper MGK a.k.a. Machine Gun Kelly) took us to a cool little restaurant with great food and drinks. I got some sort of potato pancake sandwich item; it was pretty splendid. It was also nice to get a chance to converse with some international teachers who took a different route in the EFL world—interesting and enlightening, indeed.

We took an alternative route home in order to grab some drinks from the grocery store and, after watching a few installments of R. Kelly’s “Trapped in the Closet”, proceeded to spend a night out Prague style (which, coincidentally, has no relation to Gangnam Style.) This included drinks with friends in the apartment, a nearby bar commonly frequented by English teachers living in Prague, a packed club for some dancing & the obligatory 24 hour pizza place a block or so away from Nica’s place. All in all, it was a pretty fantastic night—one that lasted until a little past 5 a.m.

The Žižkov TV Tower swarming with infants.

For those not aware, there is a tower in Prague known as the Žižkov Television Tower. It is a massive structure and was built toward the end of the reign of Communism. Locals generally hated it during those days, viewing it as a sign of the overpowering control that the Communists had over the city. Since 2001, statues of oversized crawling babies with intensely mutilated faces have been attached to the outside of the statue, much to the liking of those living in the city. The statues were created by David Černý, a well-known artist from Prague who is admired for his works that always push boundaries of normality and often of political correctness.

Nica lives very near to this tower—this provided us a good opportunity as return sightseers to observe something new. It also came in handy when attempting to walk home inebriated at 5 in the morning. Just aim for the massive tower and take it from there.

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The day after, we woke up (slowly but surely) and decided to check out some of the Christmas market action going on in the city. At this point, the only Christmas market I had seen was the one in Bratislava. The market in Prague’s Old Town Square generally consisted of the same components—there were just lots more them. And it was all organized neater, too.

All of us posed on the stairway of the random bridge in Prague’s Christmas market.

Slovaks have developed this “little brother” complex (beginning in the days of Czechoslovakia) from their capital city getting compared to Prague—a complex that, when push comes to shove, I think is sort of erroneous at this point. But, if someone were to base these feelings solely on the presentation of their respective Christmas markets, it would be a no-contest. Bratislava’s was wonderful; the lights were pretty, the music was beautiful, the food was delectable. But it was sort of haphazard in appearance. Prague’s looked like it was put together by an assembled team of Europe’s finest event planners. The food/souvenir stands were put in perfect rows to create logical walkways for visitors and each decoration was hung meticulously to give off the right effect. And, possibly most important of all, Prague’s Christmas tree was severely more majestic than the seizure-inducing, flashing spectacle that was the tree in Bratislava. To be perfectly fair, Prague’s market was definitely a little bit more expensive and was so incredibly crowded that, several times during our short visit, we lost a couple people in our own small group. Of course, Bratislava offered me my first Christmas market experience and, therefore, will always hold a special place in my heart.

Actually, the greasy pork sandwiches and potato pancakes are probably still clogged in my arteries somewhere—so that’s close enough to a special place in my heart.

We stopped off at another smaller Christmas market nearer to Nica’s apartment before heading back for some unsuccessful knickknack shopping. It was much smaller than the one we saw in the afternoon, but featured a huge, attractive tree situated in front of a beautifully lit church that sported these blue strings of decorative lights, shooting off in every direction. It was sort of like an LED Christmas maypole.

Decorative lights emanating from the Christmas tree like a yuletide spider web.

That night, we  made huevos rancheros for dinner, visited some other American’s apartment to join in the festivities of a surprise Bar Mitzvah (unfortunately we missed the actual “ceremony”), and went out to some bars—though, not nearly as extensively as the night before.

Thus ended my third visit to the charmed city of Prague. It was wildly dissimilar from the first two and all the more exciting because of it.

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The main strip of Sabinov; it looks more exciting than it is. Sort of like pictures of Olean, NY.

After Prague, Lisa and I took the long journey to Sabinov, Slovakia. Sabinov is a medium-sized town with a nice, little main strip. But, other than that, it doesn’t have a ton going for it. [It is close to Veľký Šariš—a small town that has the privilege of claiming as their own the Šariš Brewery , the largest brewery in Slovakia.] We weren’t actually teaching in Sabinov, but had to take a 5 or 10 minute bus ride every morning to a village called Ražňany to work in a small, Catholic primary school with children between the ages of 6-9. The teachers were all exceedingly kind and, while the children were often difficult to work with simply because of their age and language levels, they were genuinely great kids—excitable in all ways imaginable.

Additionally, they loved to sing. I’ve probably, in all my days of living, never seen any creature more excited to do anything. The only competition might be a dog I saw the other day in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park who ran up to my brother and I with a stick. That dog might have been more excited to fetch that stick than those kids were to sing songs. Maybe. But probably not. If I hovered my mouse over the correct YouTube video at the correct time during the course of the day’s lessons, the children would become possessed—taken over by some other-worldly being that feeds on the shrill singing voices of foreign language students below the age of 10. Their bodies shook and their eyes darted back and forth amongst each other, reveling in the fact that, very soon, their aching desires all might be pacified by the hypnotizing forces of the endearing snowman falling on the ice or the monkeys mistakenly jumping on the bed—even after all of their primate comrades had been sent to the doctor for severe head trauma.

This damn snowman’s adorable antics were like the crack rock to these poor prepubescents.

It was a pretty wild thing to witness.

On Thursday, we had the chance to experience Slovakia’s St. Nicholas Day celebrations. Unfortunately, because we were in a primary school where all the teachers are gentle and caring, I don’t think we were able to see the real thing. Normally, two people come into the classroom unannounced: an angel and a devil. One by one, they go around the room, asking the children about each individual child and how they had behaved throughout the prior year. If the child’s peers deem him/her as good, the child receives candy. If, on the contrary, the child’s peers deem him/her naughty, the child gets hit relentlessly with a thin stick by the devil, resulting in hysterical laughter and many years’ worth of rich tradition.

I’m pretty sure this ritual corresponds directly to the infamous Krampus—though I never heard anything about children being stuffed into sacks and carried off to dank lairs.

Today’s Recommended Song: The Doors – “The End”

One more post to go until I am fully caught up.

Next update: Budapest.