My Introduction to Handball

I woke up to a SLAM! Then another slam! SLAM! SLAM! “What is going on?” I asked my roommate. “O you must not have seen them last night. There is a Swedish girls handball team staying in our hostel this weekend.”

By the time I got out of bed and went downstairs for breakfast the team was already gone. The slamming of doors must have been the frantic rush to leave for their early morning game.

I had heard of handball before. I think I even caught a bit of it on the olympics last summer. All I knew was that it was a hybrid of basketball and soccer and that the American team was never any good. So why even watch?

Forgetting about handball, that afternoon my friends and I walked to an open American football field. It is strange because it is clearly for American football not soccer (in Prague at that) and it is one of the only public open green spaces big enough and nice enough to play pick up sports on. On the way there walking down the hill from the hostel we passed by an inflatable dome structure used to play soccer indoors in the winter. We heard a crowd erupt and a whistle blow. One of our friends Taliessen said he thought that there might a handball court inside and what we heard was one of the handball tournament games going on that weekend.

I didn’t know it was that big of a handball tournament. I thought the girls in our hostel were just an anomaly. But Taliessen talked to their coach the night before and apparently this is the largest yearly handball tournament in Europe. Taliessen is a big handball fan. He has told me before its his favorite sport to play. I didn’t really get why. It seemed just like a weird version of basketball. “No dude it’s sick trust me.” So we went in.

He wanted us to just take a peek inside to see if it really was a handball court. From the outside we could see it was too small for soccer and too big for basketball. So we snuck into the court (we saw signs saying players and families only) and then Czech words on a different sign. We couldn’t tell if it said to pay for entrance or for soft drinks and snacks. I didn’t feel like paying to watch 14 year olds play a sport I didn’t understand.

We finally found a way to the inflatable dome and one by one we each pushed through the revolving doors (revolving doors are necessary because the only thing keeping the dome pushed up against gravity is the higher air pressure inside). Inside the windowless dome an odd ambient light illuminated the field/court? The tough white canvas skin of the dome glows lighting up the inside of the playing field.

We watched a 15 year old German girls team play. We only caught the last few minutes of that game but it was so entertaining to watch I was hooked enough to stay for the next game. Handball uses a tiny soccer ball about a size three or what seven year olds and younger play with. You only move the ball by passing with your hands so most people can palm the ball one handed. And you shoot on a goal that is very similar in size to a field hockey goal. You pass the ball with your hands and you only get two steps after you receive it (or you have to dribble). There is also a basketball like three point arc that only the goalie can be in so the shots come from farther away.

Looking back on that weekend it seems weird. Imagine you’re in college and you and friends were exploring your foreign city on a study abroad trip. Would you give up one of your few free Saturdays to sit and watch a teenage team in a tournament for a sport you don’t even understand?

Usually I wouldn’t but handball is really an exciting sport. It is fast, physical and can be very fluid and beautiful to watch. Also I factor in the novelty of it. We didn’t know the rules and the only one who had played organized handball was Taliessen. And that was only at summer camp but he liked it so much that he understood the rules enough and he could explain it to us. What I didn’t know is that we would find something to root for when we stayed to watch that next full game.

The next game was a team of 13/14 year olds boys. Germans vs. Swedes. The Germans were tall, coordinated, and organized. Puberty had been kind to them. Their Swedish opponents were tragically awkward. Some players would run like new born foals, all knees and elbows. Their captain was a really remarkably small kid complete with high shorts and his shirt tucked in way too tight and of course he was wearing rec specs. We speculated he was the coaches son. We found out later we were right and he was as wholesome and hardworking as we surmised. Unfortunately, the awkward Swedes even had a girl on their team. Not that that’s a bad thing but there was a separate girls division. So it’s just embarrassing for the few 13 year old boys sitting on the bench at the start of the game knowing that the only girl on the team is better enough than him to be a starter.

We immediately made the connection that they were like the “Average Joe’s” team from the movie Dodgeball. Either way they needed our support. By about halftime we understood the rules enough having listened to Taliessen’s play by play that we could tell when a play was good or not. And more importantly if someone was unjustly fouled or a player was cheating…Let the vocal support begin. The Joe’s were getting beat. But not so bad. They played fundamentally well and were tougher than the Germans expected. Also that one girl earned her starting position. She had a cannon. She might have had the strongest arm on the team, but she was pretty inaccurate. This was turning out exactly like the Dodgeball movie. We finished watching that game and then went to go throw the frisbee on the American football field before the sun went down.

The next day (Saturday) my roommate Kyle found out where our Average Joe’s team was playing. We gave them so much support (and booing of the other team) at the next game that the teams on the side waiting around us even started cheering for the Joe’s. In this game, the Joe’s were playing a huge Croatian team (bigger than the Germans). At the start of the game you could tell the Croats were cocky and laughing about how easy this would be for them. Wrong. The Joe’s stole the pass on the first possession moved the ball up the court and scored. Fundamentals baby. The Croats were stunned. They were going to have to work for this W.

After the game (even though the Joe’s lost) they came over and clapped for us. The parents were so excited they weren’t the only ones who cheered on their kids. The team Mom was overjoyed that we returned from the day before to follow their team. My roommate exchanged e-mails with the manager and that night we heard that they even took a picture of us cheering for their kids and wrote about us in the team blog.

The next day, Sunday, was the finals. The Joe’s didn’t make it. But at least they won a game or two. Unfortunately we didn’t see those but still those kids had heart. The day of the finals, if you saw us you probably would’ve thought that we were little fanboys at the World Series or something. There had to be thousands of people here. It was an arena way on the edge of town and one we had not gone to yet.

Kyle: “O look there’s that really good german team!”

Tyler: “Look at those jerseys and all those kinds of handballs!”

Me: “Guys they serve beer here!”

There were mascots running around. Guys getting ready for halftime performances. Beer and handball finals? This was going to be a good day. My roommate’s sister was visiting that weekend too and she didn’t even mind we didn’t do all the touristy stuff. We found a better well kept secret.

         

We walked up the stairs toward the organized clapping and the Rihanna music playing and we were floored. We stood at the top level looking down on this palace of handball. The stadium easily fit more than five thousand people. And it was at capacity. Imagine yourself in middle school playing in front of that many people-it was awesome.

You could tell where each team was by their different colored warm ups in a blob of 20 or so splattered around the arena. And usually countries although maybe rivals united in the stands to cheer on their fellow countrymen. It really was packed. People were standing on the top row because there weren’t any seats. We strategically waited for one team to leave for warm ups so we could get a seat. As the day progressed, the teams just got better and better.

We were floored by their talent. Under 16 girls A division finals was Denmark v. Germany. Under 16 boys division A finals was England vs. Croatia. They were physical. I mean its like basketball but you are allowed to tackle your opponent. Sometimes. We never figured out how hard you were allowed to hit. Then it got serious. Under 17 girls division A finals. Swedes vs. Czechs. The home crowd went wild for them. They had drums and trumpets and way more support. At half time there was a pro BMX biker doing tricks on the court to entertain the crowd. In the second half, the swedes pulled away and won. The Czech girls seemed not to mind. They were still excited to have gotten that far. They were not sad at all after they lost in the finals. They started their own cheer and clapped for all of us in the home crowd rooting for them.

   

The not so graceful bmx biker who fell atleast 5 times during his run

Our little halftime entertainment

Then came the grandaddy of them all.

Denmark vs. France.

What I learned from the final: The French team was really cocky. They were also dirty but in return would act like they were fouled every play. I didn’t like the way the Danes played either, very pre-madonna like. It was not a very fluid game. The French were up the entire game. But in the last 5 minutes something amazing happened. It got real chippy and although the Danes were down by four, the French helped them out. Three players went to the penalty box. Two French and one Dane. The floor, now less crowded, immediately opened up. Play flew by and after some quick goals the Danes were now just down by one. Two players re-entered. The French were still a man down but a point up. In the last 50 seconds the Danes tied it. What an amazing comeback! The noise level of the stadium was at a constant roar. Everyone in the arena was yelling together united against the French (there was only one girls team left on the far side cheering for their French comrades). 12 seconds left. Is there an overtime, a shootout? How does this work? Danes steal it. 9 seconds left. They move into scoring position right in front of us on our side of the court. 6 seconds. The set play. The motion. The Danish captain gets it. 3 seconds. He shoots. Bounces off the court under the goalies leg and up into the back of the net. Mayhem. The French race to get the ball. But time expires. French players are all in the ref’s face yelling for a foul not called. Too late guys. You can already see the Danes know soon they’ll be holding the trophy.

Exhausted, hoarse, with a headache from the noise and a buzz from the beer, we walked home happy. Thank goodness the French lost. On the way out we bought tournament souvenir t-shirts because we are going to want to remember this weekend. We still hadn’t played a game of handball yet, but the day before one handball accidentally walked home with us after we watched the Joe’s and we were now itching to play. We also started noticing courts all around the city. Anywhere where there was outdoor basketball hoop underneath it was a handball net. Once it warms up, we are definitely going to play outside.

Danes tie it late

The captain takes the last show

He might be too far inside?

The winning score

Danes celebrate

French players argue at the end of the game

Czech Differences

A surprising difference between the US and the Czech Republic is the lack of regulation. I noticed this my first week here. I was taking a shower and accidentally bumped the lever that controls the water temperature. If I do this in America usually the water heats up and I have a few seconds to turn it down since I don’t need it that warm. But here waiting a few seconds left a sash-like red burn from my shoulder down the front of my chest as the water turned to the hottest it could go really quickly. I realized their showers don’t have any anti-scald mechanisms! And we are basically staying in a Czech hotel. Comparatively the US would definitely require a hotel to not be able to burn its guests. Since then I have been keeping notes on the little differences that surprised me here. Later that week I burned my hand shaving and I learned that the faucets don’t have anti-scald mechanisms either.

Two weeks ago some guys from the Czech public works started fixing the street outside of our bedroom, at six in the morning. So I found out that they either don’t have to or don’t enforce noise ordinances either. Banging street pavers together, jackhammering concrete, or cutting block could also carry on until 9 or 10 at night. But really I wouldn’t worry much about the police enforcing these noise ordinances if they do have them. The police are not very intimidating. On several occasions I’ve seen the beat cops texting or playing on their cell phones while keeping the train stations safe. Also it’s weird seeing cops who have mohawks or unkempt beards. They really don’t look that official or like they are serious about enforcing the laws.

During the middle of the night I was trying to close my window to drown out some street noise and I burned my arm on one of the heating pipes in the corner of our room. There was no metal or foam guard on it. So I cut foam off the one pipe that was insulated and half covered both of them so I would stop bumping into it. Another strange thing is that the road workers don’t put out street markers to slow drivers down or say the road would be closed. I don’t have a car here so the road repair doesn’t bother me but if I were a road worker I would feel much safer knowing the drivers at least had a warning to slow down before they drive past me.

I got really lost my first day in Prague. I bought a street map to be able to find the school here but I couldn’t find the streets. I used a compass to orient myself and count streets but I couldn’t find any street names. It took me two hours of wandering in the neighborhood near the school to realize the street names are posted on the corner of buildings not on sign posts as I was used to. I learned in my writing class last week that has historical significance. During Russian occupation the civilians would change the street names by painting the wrong name on the side of a building to confuse the Russian tank and truck drivers as they went through the twisting narrow streets. Another odd thing about the traffic here is that in most neighborhoods cars park on the sidewalk. It’s not so much of an inconvenience since the sidewalks are usually plenty wide and still have enough room to plant street trees in the side walk, but it’s just odd to see a whole row of cars parked two wheels in the street and two wheels on the sidewalk.

I then noticed how many building codes were different. All main fire exit doors didn’t push to open to be able to leave a building quickly. There are no marked fire exits, evacuation maps, sprinklers, fire alarms, or extinguishers in most places either. Our hotel doors only lock from the inside with a key. That’s nice so you don’t accidentally lock yourself out of your room. But it’s bad if you needed to get out of the room quickly in the middle of the night and you misplaced your key. Also many outside stairs are very steep without landings and many buildings don’t have handicapped accessibility.

I don’t think I’ve seen a single firetruck in 4 months here, and maybe only 2 ambulances

After a few weeks of being here some of the storage closets in the rooms were upgraded. I came home from school one day and I saw our carpenter wearing flip flops. It definitely looked unprofessional but for someone who carries heavy slabs of wood and walks around small pieces of splintered wood and screws, closed toe shoes at least seem more practical. I tried not to worry about him using a portable saw or drill, because he definitely never used work gloves, safety goggles, or ear protection. And to install the last heavy wood shelves high above his head he used our desk chair to climb up there. I left when I saw that. I was still sort of mad that they didn’t tell us carpenters would be working in our room all week. Also I didn’t want to have to help him install new closets if they weren’t going to pay me. I would also feel obliged to give him first aid if he hurt himself so I looked for a place to relax somewhere else.

One might guess a reason for the lack of regulation might be because of all of the old buildings and windy cobble stone streets. And that for reasons of historical preservation they are kept without these modern upgrades that would destroy their character. Also they were made in pre-industrial times before people had lawyers and the ability to sue a proprietor for getting injured staying at a place. But I’ve noticed even the new buildings in Prague don’t come with some of these fire safety regulations.

Old basement style taverns are popular here-U Sudicka is just up the road from our hotel

 

U sudu is another basement tavern popular with our students

My theory, however, is that the lack of regulation stems from a huge distrust of central power. This is a country that was occupied by foreign powers for the better part of the 20^th Century. It was only 23 years ago that the Communists gave up their power. So that means that anyone older than me lived through communism and its stranglehold grip on the country. But after the Communists left everything didn’t turn out better immediately. They are still living with the after effects of oppression. That is partly cause for the perceptions that Czechs aren’t friendly or open to foreigners. Really they just have deeper relationships and don’t constantly engage in small talk.

In the early nineties as newly freed Czech Republic, Prague erected what is still its tallest building, a TV tower. To an outsider that may seem like a true sign of capitalism’s victory over communism. For television brings shameless advertising, inspiring empty consumerism, MTV, youth empowerment, and fast food. The people of Prague hate this tower though. I have to agree it is quite an ugly building and in my early 1900′s neighborhood it doesn’t fit in stylistically at all. But at first many people were scared it was made to watch over them. It towers over adjacent buildings and I could see the worry that it served the purposes of Big Brother. And with how oppressive the communists were, with secret police, total media control, and making many non-conforming people political prisoners I’m sure the citizens here did not easily forget how not having freedom felt.

the towering tv tower

the baby statues added to the side of the tv tower by a local artist as part of a “beautification” project

So my theory is that it scares people to have a central agency like the fire marshall come by and inspect your walls while you are not there. They may be worried a marshall could install bugs in the walls and tap your conversations under the false pretenses of upgrading your building for safety reasons. Another thing I have noticed is that Europeans are more trusting that their neighbors will have common sense. They are not worried about being sued if someone gets hurt on your property even if it is their fault like we are in America. This attitude allows for creative solutions that may sound upfront like they’re too dangerous. But they get really cool features in parks that we probably couldn’t have because of safety regulation. Another example is allowing cars on the sidewalk since the streets are too crowded with too few spaces. Or trusting the building won’t burn down while your in it since you won’t be warned by an alarm and you could be locked inside your room. I think the important thing about regulation is finding a proper balance. And to not forget what the end goal is. And to keep in mind that if what you are giving up allows you to live more safely to make sure that it doesn’t actually take away some of your freedoms forever.

The Old “Locals vs. Shoobees” Fight Rekindled

The word “shoobee” is an American term used by locals in a beach town to describe tourists. It originated from surfers and other beach goers calling the annoying tourists, “bees” and the locals would tell the annoying bees to “shoo,” or go away.

Until I came to Prauge I have never used the term shoobee. That is because I haven’t lived in a popular tourist destination like Wrightsville Beach, NC where it would be necessary. I have never been on the “locals” side of that divide, however, walking to class last week I noticed how much more annoying it is now having to fight through tourists. In a way felt the pain of the surfers whose choice waves were crowded by fumbling boogey boarders and swimmers. And all I was trying to do was walk to class. But it turned into an exercise of crowd navigation and not crashing into a visitor while I was speed walking and trying to make it to class on time.

The tourists started coming in droves two weeks ago. The official start of “tourist season” in Prague begins two weeks before Easter. Small markets started popping up in the places where there are large open spaces to gather. In these markets there are small wooden huts where vendors sell very fragile painted eggs wrapped in a scant amount of tissue paper just asking to be cracked in a carry-on bag when it flies home to the States. There are also food huts that sell traditional Czech food. Sausages on buns, which is basically a big hot dog, and other fatty and delicious smelling grilled foods. In that regard it is very similar to the NC state fair. For the vendors arrive and leave unannounced and I am still wondering who works there and what do they do when the celebration is over?
Fragile Easter eggs

These small wooden huts are adorned with garlands of brightly colored fake flowers and Czech and English signs in an old-timey type font. The idea is that the Easter celebration occurs when the weather starts getting nice, starting the two weeks before Easter Sunday. Unfortunately this year’s winter has been unseasonably cold and long. So for the last month the highs barely have reached the thirties and our cold, cloudy windy days hardly remind me of the promise of spring and it’s accompanying warmth.

The annoying thing about these newly arrived tourists is that they make it hard for non-tourists to complete their daily routine. Saying this I realize that I have started to consider myself a local in the us vs. them battle against shoobees. Going back to the beach analogy, I don’t remember ever being called a shoobee to my face but I was always worried that I would be. When I first got to Prague I was worried about sticking out and being disrespectful, but I’m starting to understand how to fit in now. For me the label tourists and shoobees have a negative connotation to it because of their bumbling ambivalence and to how locals like to live. I’m sure when I was a kid on a family vacation at the beach it was easy to spot that I wasn’t supposed to be there, but I still liked to pretend to try and fit in.

Well now that I live in Prague, which is a very popular tourist destination, I definitely can tell who is a shoobee. A lot of it has to do with the fact that they impede my regular activity. If on my walk to school a group of people clogging the sidewalk all of a sudden just stop to look at a map and I run into them, they’re probably tourists. If going to the supermarket I have to dodge under a camera lens that is swung up into my face so that they can take a picture of an old looking building, they’re probably a tourist.

But it is not entirely the tourists fault. NCSU’s Prague Institute is located in the heart of tourists territory. Most people from Prague don’t have regular business in this tourist area. Two blocks to the east of the Prague Institute is Wenceslas Square, where Prague has held all of its important street protests during: the Soviet occupation from 1969-1989; as well as when the Nazi’s occupied the country during WWII. Surrounding Wenceslas is a multitude of restaurants claiming in English to be “Traditional Czech Cuisine,” historical museums, and chintzy tourist trinket shops, which are their biggest weakness. Two blocks north of the NCSU Prague Institute is Old Town Square, home to the famous Prague clock tower, more museums and that traditional overpriced Czech food. The buildings which surround the square display an impressive cross-section of all of the different styles and time periods of architecture that have been built in Prague, which amaze visitors.

Old Town Square During Easter

Wenceslas During the Velvet Revolution (End of Soviet Occupation)

Every day the clock tower in Old Town Square is pickpocket central. For at the turn of every hour when a crowd of several hundred tourists gather tightly together and stop to look up to watch the figures pop in and out of the clock and dance to the chimes. Pickpockets love this because most of the people are looking up at the clock are tourists carrying a large amount of cash and the best part is their arms are in the air holding cameras in front of their face. So for several minutes as the holy clock signifies a new hour most of the tourists raise their hands up away from their wallets, cover their faces and allow the thieves to pounce. Personally, I don’t mind the pickpockets very much. I think I have become comfortable enough with them to be able to go through my everyday routine, even on crowded trams after a hockey game for instance, and not have to constantly worry about being robbed. Hopefully my comfort is also shown by me acting and looking like a Czech. This is a familiarity that comes gradually. Some other noticeable changes that have occurred to me, are that I have stopped gawking at all of the different architecture, I don’t feel the need to go to the touristy “must-see” places and I no longer need a map to take public transit to a place I have never been before.

The nice things about this familiarity or perhaps jadedness is that people know me now. The small businesses, restaurants and bars we frequent know we give good regular business and their service has definitely improved from the first few times we obnoxiously wandered in there. For example two weeks ago a friend and I got back from Berlin really late and were trying to find dinner before bed. Around closing time we walked in to a local Italian place where we have gotten to know the server well this semester and he stayed open an extra 30 minutes just to serve us.Today at the laundromat the guy behind the counter remembered me so he knew which size washer and dryer I needed. He also knew I could start the machine on my own even though the directions were in Czech and the machines are not really intuitive.

As a group we now go to local places where the food is better and cheaper and maybe the business is more hidden or out of the way. Most places we can fake that we’re Czech at least for a little bit. We can even order drinks and food from the Czech menus. I have even started to meet real Czechs. We were warned before the trip that the Czechs are standoffish. Their distrust of foreigners probably comes from the fact that they’ve were occupied thrice during the last century by powers abroad. But yesterday I met two Czech kids playing soccer at a local stadium and last night at the bar two different Czech guys challenged me and my roommate to a game of table soccer and we hung out for a while with them after the game.

But apart from making it harder to walk around the influx of tourists have started to affect other parts of my life. This is the part that makes me sound really snobby, but the obnoxious tourists don’t understand the way of life here and they don’t seem to try to understand either. Last week I attended Palm Sunday mass at one of the Catholic churches that offers a service in English. I really enjoyed the service. I haven’t been in Prague for very many weekends so it was nice to get a chance to go to church here. The service was in a beautiful marble covered ornate Catholic cathedral on the west side of the river. It was very airy and freezing cold-most people kept on their coats during the service which is different from our heated churches back home. There are a fair amount of relocated English speakers in Prague so although it may sound like an English service would consists entirely of visitors there actually were a fair amount of Prague locals in attendance too.

Catholic services have a universal structure, which is nice for someone like myself who goes to church in Raleigh and can know the order of the service in Prague as well. But I was not expecting all of the tourists who came to the service and acted disrespectfully though. I was shocked and a little angry that some people were walking through the side aisles of the church, while the congregation was standing still praying and there were tourists taking pictures of the holy ornate shrines.

I understand they are only here for a short trip but as a tourist who wasn’t of the faith I definitely wouldn’t walk into a mosque or synagogue to take pictures during their service also not during one of their most important religious holidays. And if they were Catholic and didn’t know better than to not take pictures during a service they must be lapsed Catholics because it is shameful to not know better than that. It really bugged me because the old church is open to the public when services aren’t going on. And there is a sign that asks visitors to be quiet and respect those who come there to find peace when services are not happening.

Our Lady Victorious-Infant Jesus of Prague Cathedral

Hopefully the next stage of my “localization” will be to learn where to go and when so as to not have to constantly keep bumping into tourists.

Observing in Amsterdam

Normally when I see a group playing soccer in the park I would join up immediately. No matter if they too old or young or even bad at soccer. Soccer in the park is great. It is the communal game. It is one of my favorite things to do back home. Today though, I am a visitor in Amsterdam and I choose to sit out and not join myself up. Instead I observe and sketch their interactions.

The Netherlands is notable for its brand of soccer. They call it complete soccer. If the Italians are too slow, the English are too fast and the Germans are too methodical, the Dutch have it all. In a relaxed and confident style the Dutch play the game with mastery. The most surprising thing was how few people were actually playing soccer in the park or in the street during my visit. For a country as small as the Netherlands that has produced so much international talent I figured it was because they must enlist everyone at the earliest age to constantly have a ball at their feet. In Italy and El Salvador the kids can’t get enough. But I think the Dutch are so skillfully relaxed because they are so happy.

It is such a pleasant country. Even the fast food workers were polite. It’s easy to see why they’d be happy as well: Low crime rate, beautiful cities and countryside, high standard of living, all packed into a very accessible small country. I would be proud of that as well.

So it is a Tuesday afternoon in the low 50’s, not exactly the perfect weather to be hanging around outside. But it was one of the first nice days of the year. It seemed as if everyone was playing hooky that day to soak up some sun: parents, teens, grandparents. Literally thousands of cyclists and walkers passed us that afternoon just leisurely going by.

The group of young people playing soccer next to us were very cool. All of their beach cruiser bikes were piled up on top of one another. And the boys and girls were doing the same. I don’t know many people my age in Europe but I’m guessing the hipster trend signifies the same social status back home: Discriminating taste in music, inattention to antiquated laws, stylish fashion, and an exclusive tight group of friends. I recognized this group looked surprisingly like my group back home. The girls rock the haircuts that a few years ago could’ve been considered ugly and the boys that dressed the most like Ducky from sixteen candles somehow have become the trendsetters. And casually drinking beers on a Tuesday afternoon knocking around a soccer ball is what my friends and I do to kill time back in the states.

Watching them play I missed my friends and that camaraderie but I didn’t join up because I wanted to observe them closely. Interacting with them I probably would have gotten to know their names and maybe what college or high school they attend near by but I’d be less observant to smaller complexities of their behavior. You can notice a lot about people when you quietly observe. And that helps multitudes when you are trying to draw them.

When I sketch in the park I purposefully try not to give a lot of detail. Just in case the mother walking with her three-year-old son were to notice me I’d just tell them I’m practicing their form not their facial features for a photo realistic impression. But today I sit very still and observe. I want to remember their attitudes to be able to draw them more accurately. What I noticed: It is a Tuesday, 3 in the afternoon, and good friends are drinking beer enjoying each others company just fooling around playing soccer in the park. One guy is definitely better than the others.  Dressed in suspenders and a v neck white t-shirt he has a commanding air about him. You can tell the way they respect his ability. He toys around with the ball manipulating it to do exactly what he wants. The others know he’s better and instead of complaining that he’s hogging it they stand back a little farther and watch him. They want to learn from him and have the control over the ball that he does. The less skillful ones are easier to spot. When they juggle the ball little bits of beer spill out. The leader doesn’t lose any beer. He’s done this before.

After a little while a girl sitting with the group comes out to play. She’s trying to flirt with one of the more skilled players. She is wearing high heels and a skirt. So it only a takes a few minutes for everyone to see that she isn’t dressed properly for this activity. The game slows to a frustratingly slow pace. The one she flirts walks away from the group and the game picks back up again. They go back to lying about with the rest of the group next to the bikes. A noble act.  He seemed more interested in the girl than the game anyway.

The Old Baba

Last week our landscape architecture studio visited the modernist Baba neighborhood in Prague. The area is on a steep ridge, which has a nice view of the city. When I asked what the word “Baba” meant in Czech, our studio professor translated it as meaning “a very very very old woman.” I thought that was curious and not surprisingly the neighborhood has absolutely nothing to do with an old woman.

All of the houses at Baba were designed by the Czech Republic’s most famous male architects during the 1930’s.

Generally speaking I don’t really like modern architecture and these houses were no exception. It is true they were a real break from the norm of what defined architecture back then. But to see why they’re unappealing all you have to do is look at the state of the buildings today, eighty years later. That may seem like a long time but in Prague there are traditionally built buildings here, like the one that the Prague Institute is housed in, that date back to the 1200’s, over eight HUNDRED years ago. Comparing traditional buildings from the 1930’s to the modern ones of the same time period it is disheartening to see the “modern” buildings crumbling before your eyes. It is shameful from a sustainability standpoint that the architects were so bad at their craft that their creations would only last one generation before they need an extreme expensive overhaul or are torn down.

Modern architects might be more successful if they called themselves sculptors. Because like public art sculptures in a park providing refuge for the homeless during a rain storm, these modern homes also leak on their residents and are mainly just pretty to look at. The annoying thing is that the public art sculptures are even made of materials that have more permanence than the modern homes.

Modern homes usually are not as functional as traditionally built structures either. Flat roofs collect water, no overhanging roof eaves mean that water stains the white washed exterior. And people don’t live their lives in an angular way. You cannot designate the activities that you think people will do. You should design for the activities they will do. And those designs should not be so exacting that there is no room to change it later on. In these modern homes there is no room allowed for clutter or dirt. Forget owning a dog or raising children there. You would have to constantly pick up after yourself because of the lack of storage. And the large walls of glass mean that everyone else can see if you have been messy.

So what you get is that some the most famous modern homes now are turned into museums. It seems that the only thing keeping the houses from crumbling is that all the visitors are charged to enter. That wouldn’t be very practical for a homeowner. I’m sure they would get lonely since their friends and neighbors were ticked off for having to pay every time they came over to the leaky but pretty modern house.

A few days after visiting the Baba site my buddy Luca and I were late to our morning drawing class. Running up the escalator from the subway to street level Luca got stuck on the escalator that was going up parallel next to mine.

In Prague the subway escalators are very long and steep since they go from deep underground up to the earth’s surface again. All of the escalators can fit two people wide. Those just riding stand to the right of the escalator and those in a hurry walk or run up the left side.

When I got to the top of the escalator I noticed Luca wasn’t along side of me anymore. I peeked over the edge of the apex on his escalator and noticed an elderly woman with a cane halfway up the escalator who was so wide it made it impossible for anyone to pass her on the left. She was a picture perfect image of a Baba. Luca and a long line of other late people were starting to collect in the fast lane behind her. After much foot tapping and waiting for Luca to arrive at the top he dodged by the old woman who was going really slowly and carefully off of the top of the escalator and we ran the last three blocks to class. We showed up just in time for the start of class but everyone was just waiting around for class to start. Our figure-drawing teacher told us that we were still waiting on our figure-drawing model for that class. That moment Daniel, our student liaison at the Institute walked in. Overhearing us from the hallway he walked in saying in his Czech accent with a big goofy grin “O ya I am the model for your class this morning!” He then started jokingly pulling up his sweatshirt to reveal his stomach like a stripper.

We all busted out laughing. Since I was late for class and didn’t pay attention the week before to what we would be doing in this week’s class, I was confused. He had me for a second saying he was the model. But he told me he was joking and said grinning even wider now “No your model just got here!”

In walks the Baba from the subway. I’m sure the question on the top of everyone’s mind was something like, “Wait, this is our nude model for the figure drawing class?” Sure enough she hobbled over to the corner and was down to skivvies in under a minute. She may not move fast on the street but she could undress quicker than lightning. Off goes the bra and so began our class.

I tried to hide my laughter to not sound immature. It wasn’t that this really old lady was naked in front of me. I thought it was cool I was finally getting to do nude figure drawing in a real art class. I just was dumbstruck by the fact that we had just seen her on the street with clothes on and her slow walking held up a bunch of other strangers. She also didn’t seem to mind that the blinds were open either. Across the courtyard from us were a coffee shop, art gallery, other classrooms and apartments who could see her if they cared to look into our class’s windows.

It got stranger when a few minutes later, sitting topless in a chair five feet in front of my desk, this Baba started making kissing lips and kissing noises at me then started saying “hezky.”

I told her I couldn’t speak Czech so our teacher translated that it meant pretty. Our drawing teacher doesn’t speak very good English so I take what she says with a healthy hint of doubt that she is using the right word. The teacher said without looking over “O she thinks your drawing of her is pretty!” That makes sense I guess. I looked down at my page and all I had was a sketchy outline of the models shape. It hardly looked like anything at all yet.

At the time I wasn’t sure if the Baba meant to pick on me to make me uncomfortable or was actually hitting on me but I’m sure my face was beet red. Looking back on it now I’m more convinced she was calling me “hezky,” meaning pretty, handsome, attractive, or good-looking: as an adjective attributed to a person. Rather than “pekny,” meaning nice pretty or fine, which is an adjective describing objects. Our teacher told us later the Baba is a well-known Czech model and has been modeling for over thirty years for some of the most famous Czech artists. I thought back to the old public speaking adage that if you are nervous you should imagine everyone else in your underwear. I don’t know if that is really good advice. Seeing her stripped down just made me more nervous.

Either way for someone not wearing any clothes she sure was confident.

A Weekend Away

Last weekend I spent traveling with school friends in Vienna. A nice aspect of studying in Prague is that every week no students have Friday classes. So with eight other friends from NCSU we took a bus at 630 Friday morning and headed south to Austria.

I didn’t know what to expect of Austria. Two of the other people on the trip planned the bus tickets and hostel accommodations so I was just along for the ride. Vienna was on my bucket list of European cities to visit before I arrived so I was excited to be casually checking it off. The first thing I thought of when I stepped off of the bus in Vienna was that maybe it was a like Germany’s version of Mexico. That idea was solely based upon the fact that Austria was farther south than Germany and I had heard people in Vienna are nicer to foreigners than in Prague. I imagined Germans skipping town for a quick warm weekend south where the beer was good and the food was cheap and the service was friendly.

I was wrong about the Mexico-Austria analogy in just about every way possible, but the servers were nicer to strangers. Austria was cold, colder than Prague. Austria was also very expensive, about double what prices cost in Prague. Prague’s currency is the Czech Crown and Italy and Austria and most of the rest of Europe have Euros. My previous experience with the Euro was on a trip to Sicily before the semester started. There I was shocked that food and beer were somehow even cheaper than in Prague. Sicily is cheap because Italy’s economy is not doing well and southern Italy’s economy is even worse than the north. Sicily also has a third world feel with the awesome amount of outdoor markets so good prices can usually be found by haggling. So the euro is not really so standardized and Vienna and Sicily are good examples. I was shocked that food cost double what it did in Prague tho. They share a border and the capitals of each country are less than four hours apart.

My final impression was that Vienna was very similar to Prague in appearance, but more modernized and metropolitan. Along with the standard metropolitan aspect of Vienna came a more expensive price tag. I left feeling bad about globalization. I loved how in Prague and Sicily the city development and way of life seems unchanged for generations despite pressure from the outside world. Specifically I mean the way of life outside of the city center because all big cities have their typical tourist trap areas. But in Vienna we stayed outside of the center in a Turkish neighborhood, which I thought would be an interesting cultural experience, but there were no restaurants and night life and in the other parts of the city were prohibitively expensive.

It is an unintended consequence of doing business across borders that as countries make it easier to cross the border, the native ways of life begin to blend and lose their unique flavors. I remember when I first decided to study abroad in Prague I was a little mad at myself for not putting in more effort and finding a program in London or Barcelona, because who ever heard of Prague? I wasn’t even sure if the country it was in was Czechoslovakia or not (It isn’t, in 1991 Czechoslovakia split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia). But that’s exactly it, having a unique national, cultural and local identity is important. I didn’t study abroad and go to Vienna to experience Austria’s take on New York City, I came to experience Austria. So my advice for anyone making a weekend trip is to find a smaller town outside of the capital. Things will be cheaper for sure and you’ll really get to see how the locals live. And hopefully something they do is better than the way you do and you can bring it back with you.

Not to completely knock Vienna because we did have a good time. Having a fun group to travel with makes all the difference. And if you look at the pictures you’ll see college kids goofing off on a euro-trip. But behind all of the smiles and snowballs thrown we were all itching to get back to Prague by the end of the trip. We missed our cheap beer and warm hearty food from chilly servers. It is nice to realize how much you value something that lost its luster. In this case even though we made a mistake thinking Vienna would have more to offer us than Prague it made our return all the sweeter knowing we have many more long weekends to spend staying back in Prague. It is amazing how quickly we all adapted to a new place to live and became comfortable. I thought that I would be most homesick for the US. And deep down I still am. But even after just 6 weeks here Prague has a sense of normalcy and place. I am thankful that it was a weekend away that got us amped up for a weekend at home.

Memorial to the Victims of Communism

This weekend I visited the Memorial to the Victims of Communism at the base of Petrin Hill in Prague.

To get there I crossed over the Vlatava River going west by ways of Most Legii into the Mala Strana or “Lesser Town” area. Just north of the Charles Bridge, Uzjed Street T’s into the hill and stops at the base of it. If the street continued, the memorial would be aligned in the center of the street. The monument begins with a set of unusual steps up the hill from the street and ends in a second set of equally odd steps adorned with sculpture.

As I approached the sculpture site the landscape designer side of my brain immediately noticed the peculiarities of the steps: they were not level; they had much too high of a rise over run; and they would require awkwardly long strides to be considered a perron.*

Before setting foot on the sculpture I imagined the difficulty it would require to climb it and the changed mind frame it must place the visitors in. Words like struggle, uphill, hazardous all popped into my mind. I pictured the cheeky architects who have designed hundreds of sets of functional steps but when designing this were asked to calculate something different. In doing so they bucked the traditional and time saving standards for stair calculations and had to make the users struggle up the stairs on purpose. Even though I visited the site by myself, when I realized that I could see past the experience and predict the planning that went into creating that feeling, it made me feel like I just ruined my own surprise birthday since I already knew what was coming.

This strategy of building stairs to intentionally alter the human experience is actually a quite common tool for landscape designers. In other places I’ve visited I’ve seen similar strategies to make a user feel: “empowered” walking slightly elevated from the rest, “small” by turning a corner and viewing a beautiful towering building, or “safe” by protecting the user from dangerous types of traffic. The communist memorial, however, is the most successful since it drives home its point in an unassuming way combining visuals with experience.

Although it may sound silly to fear walking through a public art piece, on the day I visited the stairs were actually quite dangerous. It had snowed the day before and that day it was raining and melting the snow. Still the steps were not so steep that with a thin coat of watery ice on them you would automatically slide down each steps’ too steep slope onto the sidewalk some feet below. I realized that the grit pattern on the surface of the concrete had to have been calculated as enough to create just enough friction and traction for the users’ feet fighting the slope of the stairs, well done fellow architects.

The sculpture, like the stairs also offers an easily translatable message. On each stair are sculptures of a man and as you ascend each stair there is less and less of a complete statue, symbolizing the crumbling of the human mind and body that the Czechs felt under the communist rule. The man degrades from a full person down to just a foot on the last and highest step. Looking back down from the top of the sculpture onto the street some neat illusions are created by angles since each sculpture alternates to which side it is offset to. Some sculptures look like they complete the next more full sculpture to where it has missing parts.

To announce the sculpture is a small unassuming plaque placed on a rock in front of and off to the side of the sculpture that read, “The memorial to the victims of Communism is dedicated to all victims. Not only those who were jailed and executed but also those whose lives were ruined by totalitarian despotism.” For the literalist and historian there is bronze strip that runs up the first set of steps of the sculpture that gives the estimated numbers of those persecuted by communist tyranny: 205,486 arrested; 170,938 forced into exile; 4,500 died in prison; 327 shot trying to escape; and 248 executed.

*a perron is a long flight of  steps generally used outside on gently sloping hills that would be too steep to walk directly up on a smooth paved surface. The “step” action of perron allows for a less steep grade and a longer pace between each stair.

There are beautiful views of Prague higher up Petrin Hill from the memorial.

The Importance of Keeping Up Your Guard

Traveling in a foreign country is difficult. It is difficult because things are unfamiliar, so normal repeated actions require extra thought and planning to be able to complete. Getting a “feel” for a place is important because you then start to think less and less about each new and strange action and soon it’ll become habitual again. Still you are a foreigner and you should not overestimate your comfort level.

When I got to Sicily two weeks before school started to do some traveling on my own, one of the co-owners of the hostel I stayed at told me about how she was robbed the previous week. Andrea is a native Argentinian but has been working in Palermo running the hostel with Giuseppe for the last 8 years. When she arrived back in Palermo, Giuseppe met her at the bus station and she ran up to give her friend a hug. Just steps away from Giuseppe two men on a scooter drove fast up onto the sidewalk towards her and snatched her purse off her right shoulder and drove off without slowing down or dismounting the scooter. In the purse were: her Italian ID, credit cards, cash, work VISA, and passport. Neither Andrea nor Giuseppe had ever been robbed before living in Palermo so it reminded me not to be jaded and careless with my belongings while I traveled.

On my third day in Palermo I went to Monte Pellegrino. On the top of that mountain, which overlooks Palermo, is a beautiful chapel carved into the steep stone hillside. The chapel was made at the former home of the patron saint of Palermo, a reclusive nun.

It is a very winding bus ride up the sheer cliff. It was made more precarious because it was raining. Palermo receives very little rain every year so the streets are not laid out well to handle the few deluges they do receive. So there was a big bus, a narrow road, a precipitous edge, wet pavement, and very few guardrails.

At the top of the mountain is a picturesque view of the city from the balcony at the entrance of the church and a few tourist traps at the foot of the church steps, nothing else. The inside of the church is beautiful. It is a simple carved stone ceiling with very ornate religious statues and other effects on top of a tile floor. Since it is basically a cave in a mountain, it drips water from the ceiling like all caves do. To prevent the water from dripping on t he beautiful ancient artifacts lining the cave and parishioners in the pews, a gutter system has been constructed from all the drip spots so that overlapping metal finally directs the water away and outside. You might expect the gutter system to clash with the ornate details of the other trappings but instead it looks like a modern art sculpture. A true example of form following function.

I went in the church and had a wonderful and calming experience thinking to myself about religion, my family, and those who have passed on.

The second I left the chapel I could sense a man had been waiting for me. I smelled his strong cologne a few feet away. Ignoring him and trying to decipher some ancient Latin inscribed in the walls he leans in and says, “It’s beautiful isn’t it?”

“Yes.” I reply.

The writing I was looking at was not beautiful he was just making small talk. He introduced himself as Gabriel, but I was not in the mood to meet anyone. So not trying to be rude but trying to preserve the relaxing calm I felt I just looked at him placidly until he said, “Ok well goodbye.”

I perused the gift shop, talked to a priest, and went back to the front balcony of the church now that the weather was breaking. The wind cleared the clouds away and I caught some pictures of the stormy clouds over the city with the ocean behind.

On the other side of the balcony Gabriel was talking heatedly(/excitedly?) with another man. I still haven’t learned enough Italian to be able to tell when they are arguing or just talking because their conversations are louder, closer, and more animated than most typical American conversations.

Either way, when he saw my camera, a nice DSLR with a quality lens I just received for my birthday a month before, he and the other man stopped talking and Gabriel walked over to me. As I began to put my camera away zippered and hidden under my coat he pokes his head into my chest and says, “O let me see!” I obliged since I still had to wait on the bus anyway and keeping a firm grip on my camera I show him the few shots I just took outside.

He says, “Man you must be a professional!” They weren’t that great.

“Are you from America!?” I reply yes.

“O I love America, where are you from?” North Carolina.

“O the Nurd Caroleena!” Incredulously I ask, you know where that is? He smiles back huge and just looks at me goofily.

“I’m going to America this year. ” He says changing topics. O ya, what for?

“Well I majored in politics in Italy but I work in weapons.” What?

“Yes I work in weapons.” Weapons? “Yes the weapons! So very soon, I go to America to be a marine. “

I’m no military expert but I don’t think non-US citizens can enter the US on a whim to join the marines. Very skeptical of his story and motives I just calmly look at him again until he stops touching my elbow and he says “Ok goodbye then.”

I walk down the church steps to wait on the bus. The weather turns bad again as the wind starts whipping and the rain starts stinging. The two owners of the tourist trap gift shop were disheartened by their lack of customers and started to close their sheds. The only other building up here is a coffee shop/restaurant. How do these places stay open during the offseason I wonder?

I hunker down to read my book and wait.

“Brian, my friend come here and warm up and have a cappuccino!” I hear. Dang it, did I tell him my name?

Gabriel is holding open the door to the coffee shop. Well I guess he works there then. Capuccino in Italy is very strong. And my brother in law who lived in Sicily for a while told me to drink a lot of it. I hadn’t had any yet so I went in figuring I could see the bus from the window if it came while I waited inside.

I enter and there are two other people in there I have not seen yet, a man and a woman. The woman makes me a cappuccino and the man reads a paper sitting next to Gabriel. I sip my cappuccino and look at the post cards.

When I finish the tiny plastic cup of hot brown caffeine Gabriel says, “How you get home?” The bus.

“Why not take your car?” I don’t have a car here. I don’t even have a car in America.

“No take your car.” I then realize the man sitting next to Gabriel has his hand out and a pair of car keys in his hand and Gabriel is pointing to a small silver hatchback parked outside the coffee shop. I froze. My first thought was, O God I hope they didn’t roofie my cappuccino.

Then more logically I thought they must have been playing a joke. I waited. I stared at both of them for a few seconds, neither of them flinching or giving me any sign that they were not completely serious. This was now very weird. And I was not trying to star in the sequel to “Taken.”

I said no.

And I decided to take my chances in the weather outside to wait for the bus.

Human Likeness

Written: February 6, 2013

Maya Angelou once said, “I am human, and nothing human can be alien to me.” I heard this quote the week before I left to study abroad this spring and it had a powerful impact on me. Since I left this sentiment has come back to me unexpectedly several times.

Flying on the plane from NYC to Berlin I overheard a man sitting behind me complaining about how many babies were on our flight. Of course babies cried on the flight. It was 8 hours long and it hopped the second biggest ocean in the world. But babies always cry. But what got me thinking was the fact that these were not your normal American babies. These were world traveler babies probably hailing from North America and Europe: American, German, English and Italian babies. But I couldn’t tell the difference between any of these babies. I could only guess their nationality based upon the accent or language their parents used to soothe them. No matter what language babies will grow up to speak they all cry the same.

How pure are babies? They have so much hope and untainted perspective to create a better world than the one we leave them. Seeing babies reminds me of the miracle of life and the chance we all have to break down barriers, adopted babies especially. Babies do not care about borders. They care about milk and soft warm blankets.

If there is anything that unites us as a species it is the purity of babies. A baby adopted from North Korea by a Chinese family will have significantly different worldview, opinions, and tastes than a Congolese baby adopted by an English family. It is amazing how malleable we are as people. But that ability to morph and shape us to assimilate only proves how alike we really are.

My first day in Prague I had to walk 2.5 miles to the hostel where I would stay for the semester with a heavy hiking backpack containing all of my belongings for the semester. It was a cold and rainy day. I was tired; still jet lagged; dirty and smelly. I overslept the previous day and missed my train. I hadn’t showered in three days and was still flustered experiencing a foreign place for the first time. As I was going down a busy sidewalk I saw a backpacker clad in similar attire as myself walking in the opposite direction. He also looked tired, cold, and grouchy. I then noticed his clothes and fingers had much more dirt on them than mine. He also looked like he hadn’t slept well in two weeks not two days. I got to thinking that he was a backpacker who lost all of his money and was now homeless. And then I realized well jeez, some people must think I look homeless too! People might treat me as a bum although in that moment I was thankfully very far from being homeless.

We all look similar and arrive at that look from different but similar paths. But at one point we all looked alike, before we were babies when we were just developing in the womb.

This summer I visited Cal Berkeley to check out their graduate degree program. My girlfriend and I were an hour early for my interview and deciding how to kill time we saw a very strange scene. In the July heat a homeless man was wearing a big black down coat and very small tight black trousers that showed the bottom 3 inches of his very bird-like legs. He was thrown out of a restaurant and walked to the nearest trashcan. He pulled out a used Starbucks cup and tried to swig it. To his dismay it was empty. He angrily jumped up and down on the cup. And then he dug up some dirt and rocks with his hands and shoved it into a blue postal service mailing box.

In my first week in Prague I was walking through Wenceslaus Square when I saw something similar. In January a homeless man dressed unprepared for the cold weather was trash picking for empty coffee cups. He found one. He also tried to drink someone’s cold old coffee. And dismayed he threw the cup angrily at the ground and started yelling at the trashcan.

Crazy is crazy no matter the language, or nationality, or age, or gender. We all have similar breaking points and reactions to life experiences depending on the things that happen to us. And we were all once babies.

My First Experience with “Figuring It Out As I Go” Style Traveling

Written: January 29, 2013

Amazingly, on the flight from NYC to Berlin I slept 6 out of the 8 hours of the flight. When I woke in the “morning” Berlin time on the flight I had a little congratulatory dance to myself in my seat still under the blanket. I figured sweet-no jet lag, I just woke up and so did everyone else in Berlin, and I missed all the boring waiting part of the flight.

So I arrive in Berlin. In the airport I was very paranoid that I would be pickpocketed or leave a bag unwatched for a few minutes and it be stolen. After I got my passport checked I accidentally skipped customs because I followed a large group getting off our plane and no one else from our flight went through either…oops!

When I bought my plane ticket to Berlin months ago I had the vague plan of meeting up with my girlfriend’s cousin who lives in Berlin. Unfortunately I didn’t get to meet her cousin Sam until one of her family gatherings over Christmas break, just two weeks before I left. Not knowing him before I didn’t want to ask him over an email if I could stay with him. So when I met him in person he told me he would show me around Berlin when I got there but he just got offered a short term job in Texas, so he wouldn’t return until two weeks after I arrived in Berlin. Lesson learned why planning ahead is nice. You don’t have these vague meetings go sour on you.

To begin my experiment of planning on the fly, first I had to figure out how to get from the airport (20 min. NW of the city) to Berlin. I picked up a few rules from friends who have spontaneously backpacked before, and I remembered that international Starbucks and McDonalds usually have free wifi. So I found a cozy corner where my bags were inconspicuous next to a power outlet to charge my laptop and camped out in a Starbucks for 5 hours in the airport terminal. That seems like too long of a time but I planned my next big moves: how to get from the airport in Berlin to the center of Berlin; what hostel to stay at; how to get from the hostel to a train station; what train to take; how to get from the Prague train station to school; and how to get from school to the hostel in Prague. Since I arrived in Berlin on January 8^th and school starts on January 30^th I didn’t mind wasting one entire morning in Europe just planning. When I figured the plan out for my next two days I had to wait two more hours at the airport since I could not check into the hostel until 3 pm. Lesson learned why planning ahead is nice. You don’t have to wait doing nothing if you book your room ahead of time.

I have heard the Berlin public transit system is great, if you speak German. I don’t speak any German. I speak Spanish well enough and can read Latin. Arrogantly I figured that I could make my way by on that. Wrong. At the German bus counter I knew the street of my hostel reservation and from Google Maps the bus numbers I thought that I needed to get there. At the bus counter both of the old men laughed at me when I told them which two bus tickets I needed. They sold me a different single bus ticket telling me that was what I really wanted.

So I waited for the bus they directed me to and saw the one I planned on taking drive by. I got on the bus they told me to and realized I hadn’t memorized the landmarks for this new bus yet. I only knew which stop to get off. I could tell by my sense of direction that it was headed for the wrong part of the city though. My gut told me I would be better off trying to find the hostel on my own. I made a plan to get off at a large stop which would hopefully have a transfer station and ask someone there which bus could help me get to my hostel.

I also heard from friends who have traveled that even outside of the UK most people in Europe speak English and so if you are in a pinch you’d be ok asking a question in English. I don’t think that is correct. I think that many people do speak English, but you have to find people who look like they speak English, by their dress or if their profession would necessitate it. Lesson learned why planning ahead is nice. You will struggle less trying to ask questions in English with people who don’t speak English.

The big transfer stop I got off at didn’t have either number bus that I originally planned to take. And no one at the bus stop spoke English. They understood my question and what street I needed so they indicated the next bus they were getting on I also wanted, I think. I didn’t glean much from their German responses. The bus driver also didn’t speak English. At least they were friendly and not condescending about it. I figured I would ride the bus look for some sort of street clue and if I didn’t see any just get off after an hour and stay at hotel if I saw one. As the doors closed on the bus an off duty driver ran up banged on the door and was let on for a lift home. The bus driver indicated that I needed help in German knowing the off duty driver spoke English. It was divine intervention. The off duty driver told me I was on the right bus, where to get off, and how to walk to the street I needed. It was an incredible moment and looking back a nice thing that wouldn’t have happened if I had planned.

So I got off on the right stop and spent the next 30 minutes looking for the street the hostel was on and walking the entire length of the street. Lesson learned why planning ahead is nice. You will find much better walking directions than Google maps on hosteling websites. Many google maps locations are approximated in foreign countries.

Having a long day of travel and walking around in the cold in Berlin with all of my belongings, I treated myself to a single room at the hostel. I could take a shower in the room and decompress and not worry about my things being stolen.

My first night in Berlin I talked to my girlfriend on skype for some encouragement and felt much better about my situation. Checkout was at ten so I made a plan to get up at 8 am eat breakfast, shower, repack, print my train ticket and leave by 9. My train was at 1030 so that gave me 30 minutes to walk to the train station. And an hour buffer time to find my train and patiently wait at the station. Also that train would give me enough time to get to the school in Prague drop off all of my school supplies I did not need to bring to travel and make it to the hostel before dark. I left my blinds open since I had no alarm clock and I figured facing east the sun would wake me in the morning.

I woke to a loud banging and someone coming in my room. I turned the light on and said “Hey I’m in here!” The voice behind the cracked door said. “It is 11 am. If you do not check out in 15 minutes we will charge you to stay another night.” Lesson learned why planning ahead is nice. You can factor in a buffer time for travel and plan not to be super jet lagged and sleep 13 hours your first day. Also while wildly throwing my clothes in a bag I made a plan to buy a digital watch with an alarm.

Thankfully the front desk had free maps so I made it to the station easily. As I walked to the train station I realized that I also overslept because I didn’t wake up with the sun. It is super bleak in Germany in January and the sun doesn’t get up until 9 am and set until 330 pm as compared with 8 am and 430 in Raleigh. Double whoops.

At the train station I had to ask them to print my ticket and reassign me to a later train. The lady at the counter was annoyed by me and was talking bad about me to a lady cop behind the counter. Good thing I don’t speak any German. She reluctantly helped me out and I made the train.

So it has turned out to be a funny story I have retold already but it was a trying experience. In the end I am glad I did it because when you are traveling on foreign turf things do not always go as planned. Looking back I was uninjured, not robbed, and eventually made it to my destination. Another lesson learned. It is cheaper and less time consuming to just buy a flight to the city of your final destination than to take planes buses and trains.

Traveling on my own was also very difficult and unexpectedly emotional. Not having someone to regularly talk to is a strange experience that took me two weeks to get used to. But the trial by fire episode prepared me for my next adventure and I learned I didn’t need to plan as meticulously as I used to but I learned the necessary basics as well.