Who'd have suspected

that Sunday would be an epic party night? Certainly not me. But perhaps one would have such suspicions if they knew that THE SCORPIONS were in town.

That's right, I'm not embarassed to say that I went and saw the goddamn scorpions last night at the Brno Rondo. I admit, however, to being pretty embarassed that so many other people did too. The crowd was monstrous and they were so happy to hear Winds of Change and Through my Eyes and whatnot (note that I only learned these song names last night at the concert) that it was almost sad.

The lead singer (I think his name is Klaus) was into audience participation to a ridiculous degree, and led many, many sing alongs when he wasn't busy playing his (I'm not kidding) tambourine. By the end of the night, however, I did hear 'Rock you like a hurricane' so now I can die happy.

After the concert, having heard of a plot amongst many of the american kids to watch football in a local sports bar, my roommate and I made our way there. The american kids had bailed, but since his home team was on and neither of us particularly wanted to go home, we hung around. We drank a few pilsners and talked a bit about the concert and eventually began talking to someone beside us at the bar who happened to be from Massachusetts. We talked to him for a good long while and then he had to go, so his seat was taken by another person who wanted to talk to us.

This person, however, was not american. This person was a fairly drunk and very friendly czech man who spoke almost as little English as I speak Czech. He spoke slightly less german than I do, too, so conversation was very difficult. Tom, my roommate, ended up talking with his two younger companions while the older fellow tried desperately to talk to me. I understood him to say quite loudly that Scorpions were shit!! and that he 'is' rock and roll (meaning the czech man speaking).

He told me how Rush concert prague is number one and that I am from Nashville: country. I love America music! Ozzy Osborne, I love. I am rock and roll, love.

This is pretty much all I could grasp for a long time, then he invited me home. He said something to the effect of getting me girls (or me getting him girls, maybe) and that he wished I could go to his home, where his friends speak good english and am rock and roll, too.

Of course, it doesn't take that long to write, or to read, but to figure all this out took me an excrutiating hour and a half. Finally, I think when he wasn't looking, I paid the bill and we split. The bill was a bit higher than usual (twice as much) because we had thought it a nice idea to get these other guys each some Johnny Walker. Of course, the gentleman I was speaking to quickly informed me "Johnny Walker is shit! Like Scorpions" then he spit on the ground.

Anyway, last night was a long one, but tomorrow I have the day off to study the hell out of Czech, which is terrifically hard. Despite the fact that I know only ten words or so, the guy at the bar embraced myself and my roommate and told us we were "Czech boys! Good Czech boys!"

So this is one good czech boy signing off for the evening.

Nashledanou!

MUSIC: beck: bottle of blues

friday

so it's friday.

I've been without my computer for nearly the whole week again, and I'm getting used to it. It's a nagging annoyance, but that's about it.

This week I got into a class on american independent films finally, and I went to my first eastern european cinema class. I watched and must expect to watch at least one movie every wednesday and another two movies every thursday. No complaints.

Thursday was my roommate's, Tom's, birthday, and so I slept very little last night as I was obligated to stay up and party. In fact, in something less than an hour, I'm meeting him to head to a bar to celebrate a bit more stylishly (this being compared to sitting on our balcony).

Today I met a fellow who spoke perfect english and was very polite, then I found out he was a czech mormon and was trying to get me to go to his church on sunday. I made up something about being out of town to visit bratislava and got out of it.

I think it's starting to rain and I already have a pretty nasty cold, but I don't now have time to go to my room (which is all the way across town) and get a jacket or something. C'est la vie.

So that's my brief entry for the week, more or less.

Expect more of the same until I get more time in these labs or my computer returns to the land of the living.

HEY! Read this!

All right, so I just screwed up a little. I intended the series of pictures to be in order of my approach from outside the dorm to my bedroom, but I screwed it up and did it backwards.

So, to get the right feel for it, scroll down to the bottom of the pictures with today's date, and start there, scrolling up until you get back to this post. Then you'll have completed the tour and will have no trouble finding me when you come visit to give me lots of money and bring me american dvds and books and cough medicine.

Enjoy!

MUSIC: pedro the lion: indian summer

And here's my little bed. Covered with crap. 

See. 

Here's the shower/sink. Over here they put the toilets in separate tiny rooms all by themselves. 

the veiw down the hall. I told you it was broad day light. 

And the hotplate where I make tea. 

Here's my little kitchen. 

I can't explain the effects I'm getting with this camera. This is my hall again, and it's broad daylight and a nice day, to boot. 

This is my hallway, and I must say that all of my pictures have a sort of shining-esque quality to them. I promise the Czech republic isn't nearly so grim and stylized. 

Again a fairly blurry shot. This is the excellent lift that helps me get heavy things up to my room. It's terrifying. Beside it, you can see the stairs that I climb, which are not as horrifying as they appear. 

This is me heading for my dorm and snapping a picture while on the move. It's blurry as hell, I know, but I think it's kinda cool, and if you don't, get your own blog. 

And if I lived on that street, these would be even more stairs for me to climb. but I don't live there. Take a left here and you'll run into a wall, but with some reasonable navigation skills, you'll find my dorm. 

Here's another look from right beside that statue. This is the summit of a series of hill and stairs that is absolutely no fun to walk up every day. 

This is a statue that is right outside the dorm. I know you can't tell what it is, but it's a nice little skyline, all the same. 

cold

No, not to say that it is cold here, now. I think it's colder here than back home, but it's not terribly cold, really. No, the title derives from my most frustrating illness. I have a cold.

Normally, that's no problem, but here, it sucks. It is impossible to find any cold medicine here. Absolutely impossible. I can't even find cough drops or multivitamins. So I'm combatting the illness the only way I know how: getting drunk a lot.

no, that was a joke. I'm drinking lots of orange juice and getting plenty of rest.

That's really all that's going on at the moment. I'm in the lab trying to print up my documentation for absentee voting, which means that tomorrow I get to hunt for a fax machine. After this post, though, I'm gonna go buy some OJ and head back to my lair at Vinarska. There, I'll read and drink OJ and eat sandwiches and chips and probably watch Lost in Translation.

in the meantime, everybody be good, and for the love of god post a comment or two. At the moment I'm forced to assume that the only one who reads this is me, and that's hardly a delight to think of.

MUSIC: smashing pumpkins: adore (the album)

damned internet

There have been several times over the past few days when I've wanted to post a new entry. Indeed, there have been times when I've actually gotten as far as the website and started typing them. Every time I do so, however, I suddenly am informed that my system will shut down and I will be forced to delay my posting to another time.

It's positively inexplicable.

So here I am making an effort to sum up all the things I would've said over the course of the posts I haven't made.

First of all, I have to mention my first solo class here. I've been to two other classes, but each time they were filled with other international students. So the first solo class was British Social History since 1707. It seems like it's going to be a pretty solid class, but then at the end, we watch Black Adder. For those of you who don't know, Black Adder is Rowan Atkinson's pre-Mr. Bean absurd british comedy show. So essentially we spent twenty minutes of a history class watch Mr. Bean insult Samuel Johnson.

My next class is an Introduction to Irish History and Culture. In that one, I'm the only male, and it's going to be a-okay. You may have noticed something odd about my classes. Let me give you the full list as it stands now so you can make a better judgement:

Czech for foreigners
The Age of Story
American Independent Filmmaking
Czech Cinema
Eastern European Cinema
English Social history
Irish History and Culture

Perhaps you'll notice that the history classes are in no way eastern european (one reason I came over here) and the film classes are all commentary and criticism rather than any hands on work (the other reason I came over here). A little frustrating.

One of the posts I started to create was a thank you letter to McDonald's. Now, of course, the feeling is gone, so it would be ridiculous to try and recreate the letter I had planned on Friday. Basically the idea was to thank the corporation for being consistant (though perhaps consistently awful) worldwide. I, for the first time on friday, went into a mcdonald's here and it was awesome. Not the food, of course, that was only slightly better than the mcdonald's food here. The awesomeness was in knowing what I was ordering and getting it with almost none of the struggle that goes with getting anything done in this land where English is strange.

Oddly enough, as it seems to have become a theme with me this weekend, yesterday I ate at little ceasars. I, too, was embarassed that of all the pizza chains in the US that is the one that has expanded here. And, in true little ceasars fashion, it was awful.

Where I found the little caesars was on the bottom level of Tesco. I suppose I should properly write it TESCO, because it's freaking enormous. It was compared to a wal mart when described to me, but it's almost more it's own mall. Truly a department store, with massive sprawling departments including cloth by the yard, strollers, hats, watches, and anything else you could want. I nearly invested in a heavy coat, a hat, and some gloves, but it's not really cold enough yet to even wear the coat I brought.

So that's pretty much it. I'm going to try and post this thing and just you know, keep truckin'.

MUSIC: hum: the inuit promise
(possibly the best song recorded ever)