Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow...

The picturesque view of Brno from my office window at the edge of the business park. I love the look of fresh snow on buildings. This whole weekend is going to be snowing, my office window right now is pure white at this point if i were to head out my jacket would be covered within 20 secs. I feel a little sorry for some of my colleagues from the tropics who are suffering at this point, but I completely love it :)

Now that you enjoyed the view, I'll ruin it a little by letting you know that quaint looking park across the street from my building is actually a cemetery :p It looks so interesting though, I'm always tempted to enter and just wander around it, but it seems a little disrespectful to the dead to enter based on an inkling of curiosity.

Thanksgiving in Paris

Thanksgiving abroad was a little hard, probably harder than Christmas, because at least that's celebrated around the world. The Thanksgiving tradition however is purely American, and its observance is met with mainly mild amusement as Americans like myself ask friends to go out to dinner. On Thanksgiving day my friends and I headed to a steak house http://www.steakhousek1.cz/, which was recommended to me by my coworkers. They didn't have the traditional Turkey and stuffing, but I got to have a Kangaroo and an Ostrich with some bacon, cream and onion mashed potatoes, so that has got to count for something. Also my friend Ray got into the spirit of things and covered the gluttony portion of the holiday. The man devoured a 1kg platter of assorted meats like it was made of yogurt :-O (though for those non-metric users that works out to being about 2.2lbs, which isn't the most impressive thing by American standards, but still a lot of meat)

Holiday should become popular in his home country of Nigeria if he decides to spread the word about it ;-)



I also was fortunate enough to spend the Thanksgiving weekend in Paris. Big thank you to my friends, American Parisians: Romina (double duty: as guide and hostess :-D) and Peggy for spending the weekend with me, and fellow trainee Chen chen for providing me with photos of the trip. I had a wonderful time, but it is one of those cities where you need a better part of a week in optimal non-touristy season to get to see everything.  I'll have to go back again some day to hit up the Louvre, Les Invalides, Versailles, Assemblé Nationale, and the Opéra Garnier.


However I did manage to see everything in the following map below. Lots of walking in the nippy 0 C weather. The warm mulled wine in the Christmas Market on Champs Elysees was the perfect thing to fight off the cold. Not included on the map or album was our night visit to the Sacré-Cœur Basilica, which features a terrific view of the skyline of Paris at night. So I'm throwing in some stock images of the place I pulled from the web.





Map

View Larger Map



Pictures of the trip

Paris

Gypsies vs Roma/ Romani

So as stated in the previous post I'm going to try and discuss the gypsy situation in the Czech Rep/ (Slavic states.) I kind of wanted to avoid it since it's a race relations issue, and even as an "objective" outside observer it's hard to form a politically correct view of the issue. I'll try and go over the history I've learned in brief, but I mainly want to focus on what's going on today. There's been pretty horrendous things done to the Romani people, and it plays a part on how they've kind of fallen into their lower class niche of society today, but I'm not sure if it really justifies the way the modern gypsy behaves.


First, let's make a clarification of definitions even it's one that is not found in the standard dictionary. Ethnically a gypsy is a Roma/ Romani, a people descended from the Indian subcontinet. In England, a gypsy is a pejorative term, stemming from the Greek word for an Egyptian. During the middle ages when the Romani first entered European lands, the Europeans believed that they were descended from Egyptian exiles who had protected the baby Jesus (how much of this confusion was due to European ignorance or Romani leaders looking to earn hospitality and favor from the local lords, one can only guess). In the US we think of the term gypsies belonging to a romanticized lifestyle of artistic vagrants, fortune tellers, or the beautiful Esmeralda from the Hunchback of Notre Damne story. However when I use the term gypsy I don't mean for it to be synonymous with all Roma, instead I use it to refer to those Roma, predominantly living in Eastern Europe, who follow a certain lifestyle of getting by living off of charity, welfare, and the occasional illegal activity (theft). My intended usage is similar to how the term "white trash/ trailer trash" is not a pejorative term for Caucasians in general, but for a specific group, that is by definition Caucasian, living a distinct type of lifestyle the other members of society finds unbecoming. 


Americans tend to think of this:








Modern reality is this:

Taken from http://www.1adventure.com/archives/000207.html

History in Brief:

• In Royal Hungary, strong anti-Romani policies emerged since they were increasingly seen as Turkish spies or as a fifth column. They were expelled from many locations and increasingly adopted a nomadic way of life.
• In the Habsburg Monarchy under Maria Theresia (1740–1780), a series of decrees tried to force the Romanies to sedentarize, removed rights to horse and wagon ownership (1754), renamed them as "New Citizens" and forced Romani boys into military service if they had no trade (1761), forced them to register with the local authorities (1767), and prohibited marriage between Romanies (1773). Her successor Josef II prohibited the wearing of traditional Romani clothing and the use of the Romani language, punishable by flogging.
• Porajmos/ Porrajmos "Devouring" the victimization of Roma during the holocaust  
• Post WWII, Communist Eastern Europe, Romanies experienced assimilation schemes and restrictions on cultural freedom. What were originally migrant populations (filling social niches like migrant farmers) were seen as leading improper lifestyle, and forced to settle into government provided housing (often on the outskirts of the community). I don't imagine any residential buildings in the communist era being considered very good, but most likely the housing provided to the Romani was even worse.

My following criticisms on gypsies should not be considered criticisms on the Roma in general, nor a criticism of being poor. I feel that the gypsy persecution Roma face are the similar to the hardships of the impoverished groups living in the U.S. (lack of means and education  leading to a repeating cycle of social repression), but there are disparities that make the comparison not entirely equal. Due to protests of racism the Czech government had built brand new housing for the Gypsy community in the late 90's - early 00's. Within a couple years the tenants had torn the place up, setting fires in the middle of the room (perhaps for traditional cooking purposes, or cheap way to heat the apartment), and tearing out anything of reasonable value and reselling it to pawn shops. Then the gypsy community came back and demanded another residence be built because the original building is now in a state of complete disarray, or else they will protest racism again. Stories like this are quite commonly shared amongst my Czech acquaintances, and I was literally dumbfounded to think such a situation of "bite the hand that feeds you" could possibly be true. 


Outside nations have taken a crack at solving the issue, believing it's the Czech's fault for being too racist to give the gypsy community a fair chance at thriving, and have gotten their share of the headache. After a documentary broadcast where an elderly gypsy woman living in Canada appeared stating Canada as a promised land of spacious housing, plentiful welfare, jobs for the asking and trips to Niagara Falls. Some local Czech governments even jumped on board and paid for their one way tickets. Amidst a refugee boom Canada was forced to put in place a visa requirement for Czech citizens to halt the wave of people. Canada even took the unusual step of sending a delegate from its embassy in Prague to conduct television interviews and speak with Gypsy groups. The envoy was not, as Canadian diplomats often do, spreading the gospel that Canada heads the 1997 U.N. list of national economic and social development. The mission, rather, was to remind potential immigrants that it's hard to find a job if you don't speak English or French, that housing is expensive and hard to acquire and that no one will greet you at the airport with a welfare check. At this point the fact that Canada is making no attempt to give asylum to any more gypsies I think speaks volumes regarding how justified the criticisms levied against the Czech government attempts to aid their gypsy citizens have been.

My main criticism, and what I feel is the crux of the situation is the cultural attitude towards education. Education in the Czech Rep is far more accessible to everyone than in the U.S. Even up to the university years tuition and books are paid by the government, and students just need to provide their own housing payments. 

There is discrimination due to Romani children primarily entering school speaking a pigeon of Czech and the traditional Romani language that usually places them in remedial schools or for schools for the mentally handicapped. However while that kind of exclusion from better schools is certainly wrong I don't think being stuck at "bad" school is legitimate grounds for why gypsies have a ridiculous drop out rate by the 2nd year of high school. I find it completely intolerable to quit school when you have a system that even if you start at a remedial level you are still almost guaranteed some form of higher education if you desire to pursue it, while there are countries where kids who just want to go to primary school have to bear the burden of traveling vast distances or helping the family gain additional income. 

The culture values members who are clever, but in their history it's never been about book smarts, it's always been about how well do they know the traditional customs, and how well one could improvise a solution to get their family/caravan/village out of a bad situation. This might be my personal bias, and with respect to the value of adhering to traditional ways as a form of communal identity, I find this apathetic attitude towards a scholastic education incredibly short sighted. It also did not help my opinion to read a news article that a Czech school had to implement a penalty of reducing the welfare checks on gypsy parents to keep them from pulling their kids out of school I.E. the government is literally paying gypsies to keep their kids in school, while every other community pays to put their kids in school. I mean really what is one supposed to do for a living as a high school dropout in the Czech Rep, besides peddle flowers on the street, ask for hand outs or as personally experienced, subject others to cons and thievery. Why are these parents shooting their kids' future in the foot?

Not to be a total uncle tom about this, but there something to be said about at least in part trying to be a model minority: assimilate into the local culture, get educated so that you can bring something useful to the the table as well as learn how to protest in a meaningful way for social justice not for some sense of entitlement towards receiving government handouts.

Sources:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/americas/sep/03/gypsies.htm

Early conclusion to the blog, (at least for the pictures portion)

So my blog has been a little barren the past couple weeks, not due in any part to a lack of activities I've been undertaking, but unfortunately due to the fact that my Google Nexus One was STOLEN by gypsies while I was walking through the middle of downtown. Efforts to recover it since (cops, visiting local pawn shops where the thieves likely unloaded it), have all proved to be rather fruitless. That phone was my main communication device (both phone and online), music player, gps when I got lost, and most relevant to this blog my only camera. So in terms of posting to this site unfortunately I simply don't have any visual content to entice you loyal readers to keep coming. Though the situation does give me a reason to cover a topic, I had thought I would steer away from, the gypsy situation in Europe (next post).

Man, I'm going to miss the hell out of this phone :'(

The whole month in general has been something of a loss as it's been marked with:

• My wallet being lost the week before my phone incident (though it was returned to me a couple days later ID and cards intact but missing about $250 in cash). 
• Saying bye to my "European BFF" who has gone off to Argentina to be with her bf (a former trainee like myself), both of whom I'll admit openly to missing a great deal. 
• An overload of incidences regarding minor annoyances at miscommunication/ incompetence
• Some other emotional junk that I won't get into on such a public posting

Events of the last few weeks that deserve mentioning, but have no pictures to share about.

• Czechoslovakia Independence day = free day off work = visit Olomouc, to see fellow trainee, Chris from New Castle to have him show us around his stomping grounds and a couple UNESCO sites like the famous column in the center of the city. Also because of the holiday we got free entrance to a historical art museum, which had some amazing religious relics and really audacious property of the former elite.
• Telc, quaint little village though some Czechs insist that it is a city had a lot of Gothic charm and a lovely park behind a château.
• Vienna part deux
• St Martin's day, and the traditional roasted goose dish

Burcak festival > Columbus day

So this past Monday while making a call into New York, I was shocked to find the offices were closed due to Columbus day. I normally wouldn't think much of the holiday back home, but it was still a small shock to think it had completely slipped under my radar. Missing out on the day just seemed like a little reminder of how disconnected my current life is from the current going-ons of people back home. 

However, while young students, government workers, and some bankers might have gotten the one day off in the U.S. the residents of Brno were treated to a week long harvest style festival in the city square. Free city entertainment is always a win in my book, and one of the reasons I really enjoy living here! 

With the start of Fall the wine growers of the region have a traditional drink, Burcak, that they make from newly harvested wine grapes that have just started fermenting. The concoction derived from said early wine making stage is a drink that tastes like grape juice and soda with the tiniest hint of alcohol.. It's the perfect way to combat the cold snap the region is experiencing, (my return from from Indonesia was marked by leaving +30C degree weather to having a high of 12C and low of 2C), without feeling like an alcoholic. I treated myself to a 1L bottle that should be able to provide me a nice glass with dinner for a week or so.

Acappella quartet, performed some Christmas Carols and pop hits like ABBA

Warm Honey Wine, perfect after dinner treat

$3 USD for BBQ meat and beer :D

There's actually chickens, rabbits, and geese in these cages, but it's too dark to see them in the photo

Another of Brno's new sculptures. This large black phallic object is actually supposed to be a functioning clock/calendar.

"Burcak is very young grape juice that is just starting fermenting. It is high in sugar and low in alcohol, but throughout fermentation the ratio between them is changing in favor of alcohol and wine is being born."
http://www.maniactourist.com/cool-places/prague-wine-harvesting-festival-tasting-the-burcak.html
I found this blog about a man visiting Prague who was enjoying the Burcak drinking festival there. However as he mentions the tradition originated in the Moravian region, where Brno lies, so I think it's inferred that the festival and Burcak I got was better ;)

New header

You may also notice a new banner I put at the header of my blog linking to freerice.com. For those of you who tend to have a few minutes to waste surfing the net playing internet games I recommend this site where that gaming can be put to good use feeding the world's hungry! Win win at no cost to you, just for playing the fairly educational trivia games on the site you're also performing a good deed :)

I'm personally going to use it try and refresh my Spanish vocab, which is in a pretty sad state these days as evidenced by the Spain trip I have still yet to collect photos from my friends to create a post for.

A Not So European Intermission

For what people may actually come to my blog you may have noticed that I have not posted anything in the past few weeks. This was because I was in fact not only out of the country, but out of the continent for a my cousin's wedding in Indonesia. There's a lot of great things to say about the country (enough to create another blog, so I don't want to put a lengthy post here), but reliable and fast internet is not one of them. So for my reading faithful you get the compilation of photos I took after I've already returned. 

I used Picasa because it beats muddling through facebook picture interface, and annoying privacy settings that keep some of my friends from seeing my pics, because they're not friends with my other friends. 

I’m still waiting for pictures to be sent to me that were taken by the professional photographers at the wedding ceremonies. I'll perhaps edit this post or put up another post as they become available.

Bali: hotel, beach, wedding

Bali

Bali wedding dinner photos taken by my cousin

http://picasaweb.google.com/yunkins/DYDinnerBanquet?authkey=Gv1sRgCLvY3LTdxYLG4gE&feat=email#

Bandung: family hometown

Bandung

Jogjakarta: solo tour

Jogjakarta

Kuala Lampur Airport

Kuala Lampur Airport

End of Summer

I know I haven't posted in awhile, mainly because I had myself a big ID reunion in Spain a couple weeks ago that I wanted to discuss, but I'm waiting on my friends to post all of their pictures to link them all in my post before I go into it. Hopefully I can write it up in the near future, even though at this point it's already been a couple of weeks since I came back.

In the meantime I guess I can discuss the winding down of Summer, and Fall lifestyle that seems to have quickly taken over. Since the beginning of September that Summer weather of 26-32 degrees Celsius has disappeared seemingly overnight and given way to 8-16 degrees cloudy weather. Frankly with how heavy Czech cuisine is (no Summer friendly fruit or smoothie dishes), and the nature of most of my clothes brought for the purpose of dealing with the cold, the temperature drop has been a welcome change.

Antonio climbing one of said new "modern/" ugly sculptures in the city

With Fall also comes a push to complete the construction projects around the city before the university students return, and the season opening for the local classical theater companies (drama, ballet, opera.) The city has nearly completed the construction around the construction that had diverted a lot of the tram lines around the city earlier this year, and has dotted the city with new sculptures (much of which I consider crap, but eye of the beholder right?)




My first excursion with the Brno trainees to the local ballet company was quite the revelation. The theater is quite stunning, and a student ticket at a measly 55CZK works out to less than 3 dollars for a 2 hour performance! In the US for the same thing I could expect to have spent at least 10 times that.



Pictures of the theater

Theatre

Synopsis of the ballet I saw can be found here:
http://www.youri-vamos.com/coppelia_en.php

Pax Americana and Imperialism

Lately being one of the few Americans in my social circle, conversations take a serious turn, and despite being a liberal Californian I am asked to account for why the US has done the many notorious things it has. None of my explanations I could offer work into nice short sound bites, and often I hold my tongue for lack of desire to perform a lengthy lecture on history and philosophy. Yet, without going into said lecture suffice to say, I firmly believe that there is a quite complex web of reasons for why the US needs to exert its military power internationally (especially in the role of posturing to maintain regional peace), while such actions are certainly towards its own benefit and gain; it often benefits the rest of the world by the similar margins. My point being that Americans, while the argument can be made that we have our own selfish reasons, do things that benefits the global community, because no other superpower to serve as an alternative to do so, and thus the US has a moral imperative to use said superpower status to its full capacity to bring about common good when within its reasonable power to do so.

However while I've been a believer of the Pax Americana, and the US being a "disinterested" party utilizing military force for the betterment of the global community as a whole. This video of debate between Buckley and Chompsky from over 50 years ago has forced me to wonder whether the US should really bother. The hard truth is that perhaps our military ventures have been largely imperialistic. Chompsky does not really offer any better condition we should strive for, as his best techniques like Socrates has been merely to point out what we think to be commonly held truths to be not as truthful as we would like to believe. It can be inferred that the only moral application of force is in the defense of our own borders. However I don't really believe there's any practicality to the thought of regressing our forces to such a stance.

Full video of the Chompsky Buckley debate


A more recent speech on the same topic with references to Suharto, which I imagine holds some relevance for the members of my family who grew up in Indonesia.

Restaurants

I wanted to wait for sometime to pass before discussing this topic to give an impartial view. After being here since late March, having tried a wide range of what is available at the grocery store and restaurants, sometimes paying more than I reasonably should have to test whether the cost was justified in the resulting quality, I feel I have enough data to discuss this point. This isn't a discussion about Czech cuisine, a possible sequel to this post, which is full of interesting dishes with some ridiculously labor/time intensive recipes that are shared throughout the central European region. This is more a criticism that offers my hypotheses as to why restaurants here are in the state they are in.

I think the biggest factor regarding the satisfaction, both in regard to taste and presentation, of food here is quality control, or rather the absence there of. I don't see myself as a food snob, and I won't fault a restaurant for not delivering culinary gold. Especially for the type of restaurants a person frequents week to week, whether in the US or anywhere else in the world, what the customer expects is the precision/repeatability of the quality of the dish. A person goes back to their favorite Chinese, Indian, Italian, Sushi, etc place not necessarily because they get an orgasm in their mouth each time they go there, but because it hits a certain sweet sweet spot for them on the opposing scales of good taste and affordability, and it hits that spot nearly every time they go. If a favorite restaurant consecutively disappoints one usually assumes a new inferior chef has taken over the kitchen, and the disappointed customer stops going back.

This paradigm does not work for most Czech restaurants, because they really lack repeatability of the quality of what they serve. If I enter a restaurant one day to try it out, I may get one of the best meals I've had since my arrival, memorize this dish as a favorite, and tell myself to make a repeat visit. I may return the next week or even the next day order the same exact thing, and have it fail so badly at matching what I had ordered before I would swear I was in another restaurant.

My coworkers and other Czech people I've met all seem to have similar views as myself regarding the nature of the restaurant business in the Czech Republic (insisting that a proper tasting Czech meal can only be found cooked at home.) Anecdotally they blame the years of Communism, for the government standardization of menus, sourcing of grocery ingredients, and the general apathy when it comes to service that Czech culture in general has been slow to warm up to 20 years after its conversion to Capitalism. Perhaps the latter is the most telling as many restaurants seem to be carbon copies of one another yet there is no sense of competition to outdo each other to maintain customer satisfaction and gain repeat business.

A complaint to the wait staff to see the manager is often met with a shrug or a "I am the manager" sort of response most American waiters probably only dream of being able to say, but know they could never get away with for fear of losing their job or a good chunk of their business. Fear of such a penalty is so unlikely in the Czech Republic you could call it an impossibility. Taking it out of the tip isn't much of a punishment, because this is a country that doesn't expect tip to begin with. The standard fare is simply to round your bill to the nearest 10 Czech crowns, and the difference is considered tip which equates to about 50 cents or less. Even with the surge of expats in recent years who have been rewarding a much generous 10% of their bill, myself included, few restaurants except those that cater towards tourists or have more cosmopolitan owners have utilized this carrot to give themselves and their staff the motivation to match global standards.

See below a link to various dishes I've had some good, most average, and some which can only be described as WTF? failures.

Food

Housing

Before I get into this I got to say my own personal experience hasn't been that bad, and I'm hardly miserable in the Czech Republic. At most, I'm just a bit annoyed at the lack of logic or common decency in some of the things I've heard and observed in situations where an entitled Czech person whether they be a bar owner, apartment owner, or some other kind of authority seriously took advantage of foreigners.

Finding an apartment itself is a major ordeal as many forums that are meant to be directed at foreigners are in fact in Czech :p Many expats a have tried to ban together posting on community portals, but the these threads are generally painfully out of date, and simply aren't active enough to give you quality information. Some expats have even taken to being real estate providers, and there is usually a marked difference in how much easier the contract creation and quality of apartment is. The only drawback is that it tends to be on the pricier side of an intern's salary. A common thing to do is go through a Realtor who will charge you one month rent as his commission on top of you paying the deposit and first month rent to the owner.

Once you've found a place and you're moved in Czech real estate owners are super SHADY to their tenants! I've heard too many stories of how someone goes on Christmas vacation, but leaves the keys to their flat for their friend who needs a place to crash, and that friend getting promptly thrown out by an angry owner the next morning, for not being on the contract, in the snow with all of 15 minutes to gather their stuff; or getting no recourse or restitution when a tenant is kicked out on a whim, because the owners want to renovate less than a month after a tenant moves in (shouldn't the owner been giving at least 2 month's notice for something like this, not taking on a new tenant.) These are such huge "wtf, I've been robbed" levels of shady that I would be shocked to hear in even the most money grubbing cultures.

Thankfully that's not the case for me. My owner is a super sweet grandma with a granddaughter who was born and raised in the US (so I get double sympathy from her for being a foreigner and American), and speaks English fairly well, which is why my flat mates choose her place to begin with.

Summer Festivities in Brno

Summers in general are my most hated seasons. I hate being sweaty, and I hate the explosion of the mosquito population during these months. It does not help that the Czech Rep is not big on AC, and that temperature swings from a rainy 15C to a humid 28C in the course of 24 hours have left me with a slight cold isn't enough to make me feel sick just miserable. Few things are more uncomfortable, while not actually considered sick, than being sweaty as being sweaty, congested, and having a slight cough.

However, one of nice things about Summers is that cities generally take it on themselves to try to get their populations out and about by providing free entertainment in their downtown/ central square areas. Thankfully Brno is certainly not an exception half the week the main square Namesti Svobody "Freedom Square" will host some kind of concert or performance for people wishing to bask in the sun before a late sunset or enjoying a drink to cool of from residual evening heat.

Below a quick video, sorry for the shaking, of a Jazz concert typical of a Saturday night in Brno.



Also I've recently made some inroads into the Brno expat community. The group of AIESEC interns like myself is itself a mini community, but I've found it interesting to compare notes on experiences with the community at large. With companies like IBM and AT&T having large offices in Brno it seems a little weird that they're mostly staffed by foreigners, but their presence is probably the largest factor in rapidly transforming the city into one that can actively engage with foreigners as tourists or residents (it still isn't at adequate levels, but it's certainly made progress from what I heard it was like 2 years ago.)

Within the group I tend to hang out with are two fellow Americans Kyle and Chris working as English instructors, who call me out on how my English has degraded whenever my pronunciation tends to get warbled. Ulrike, a German instructor/tutor, who has turned into my social 411 for events going on around the city. Dario, who loves to call me "Californication" instead of my name, and fulfilling my growing stereotype that all Italians must be awesome at music plays a really impressive improvisational guitar (shown below.)

The New Apartment

Last week I finished moving out of the dorm after spending the past 4 months living under "student" conditions. I'm quite happy to finally be in an apartment, and I hope I've fulfilled my dormitory living quota for the rest of my life :p

The Good:
Here's a video of a quick tour of the layout of the apartment. It actually is a lot cleaner now since filming, I think I managed to guilt my apartment mates a little into being a bit more self conscious of how messy the place was. Of course, now that I have a more proper kitchen pictures of my cooking on facebook will look a bit better (hopefully.) Also in a country where AC is not that common in housing residences, and in the middle of one of the hottest Summers in the Czech Rep I honestly don't mind the heat due to my room being in the back of the house with the windows facing large backyard garden and some strategic trees that give ample shade to my 2nd story window.





Only small complaints thus far:
The water heater that sits in the bathroom sometimes chooses not to work :p All good during the Summer not so good during winter :(
Increased time to get to work. The new location adds about 15-20 mins to my commute (essentially double the distance from the dormitory.) Not that big by American standards when riding a car, but this is also a city where by car you could prob clear the whole city in the same amount of time.
However the convenience of having a bus stop less than 200 ft away and 2 different tram stops servicing 3 different lines each only a block away totally beats my old daily routine of walking up a hill, Masaryk University campus stairs, and 4 flights of dormitory stairs to get to my room.


View Larger Map

4th of July just isn't the same...

Being an American in Europe during the 4th of July weekend can feel like an office birthday party where someone forgot to bring a cake. Missing out on the BBQ's, traditional firework show, and the general "AMERICA Yeah!" vibe that permeates the country has probably brought me the closest to being homesick I've been since my arrival.

However in what could be described as an act of conciliation the Czech Rep gave me a 4 day weekend for my troubles. In reality it's because of Saints Cyril and Methodius Day (5th) and Jan Hus Day (6th). Two Czech holidays celebrating the saints who brought Christianity to the Slavic region in 863, and the execution of the martyr who laid some of the philosophical seeds for the Lutheran  (Protestant) Reformation in 1415 respectively. Typically most Czechs would decided to spend the vacation days to get the full week or more to take a family trip somewhere, and my boss was very casual about the idea of if I wanted some extra days just to let her know. Unfortunately this holiday crept out on me before I had a good chance to plan for it, with my old roommate in Sweden having just gone through eye surgery which made the weekend visit an impossibility, and embarking on something like a tour through Italy would have required a couple more days than I had to map everything out.

Despite this I managed to fill a rather eventful low cost weekend with day trips to the Brno lake, Vienna, and the local aquatic center (links to Picasa found below).

Vienna

Marianske Udoli - the local lake for sun bathing, picnic-ing, and a refreshing swim

Vienna was fantastic, and it's mind boggling how much a 1.5 hour trip by car from the Czech Rep can make. Between the architecture, population mix, culture, food, and prevalence of very fluent multilingual citizens I actually felt tempted by the thought of this is the kind of city I could live in indefinitely :) I will definitely be making as many return trips as possible.

Renault World Series

VROOM!!!! VROOM!!

Saturday June 5th was the Renault World Series, while actually not the largest race in Brno, which is the MotoGP later this year, this one was still really entertaining, and as you can see from the video the weather was perfect for basking in the sun, sitting on the hill with an ice cream, and enjoying the combination of technology and testosterone that is Formula Renault and the GP2 :D

Europe's mobile network

One of the biggest unfulfilled promise, in my mind, of the EU's common market is the fact that there is not one unified phone service provider. I think it's ridiculous that I can travel the equivalent of a small US state, and find my phone's sim completely useless upon crossing the border into a neighboring country.

There are certainly large providers Tmobile, Vodafone, O2 Telefonica that provides service in several countries, but none of them can claim to operate in "most" much less all of the EU. Instead they claim that upon entering a country that they don't service you should still be able to have a working phone through their "partner" networks. In theory you should have uninterrupted service, with a slight additional fee, but nothing too noticeable due to EU tariff restrictions. However this has NEVER worked out for my phone anywhere I've gone thus far!

I've done a lot of scouring of travel forums and find many posts by Australians in a similar position to myself. The options for using a prepaid sim card over a subscription basically break down to 3 choices (most only accessible through British retailers):

1) Get a global sim: higher, but mostly negligible, fees. Data is still a bit of a novelty for this market niche (not sure why as most people picking up these sim cards are prob international travelers with a smartphone). You would think these things would be about as common as an ice cream shop next to a fat camp/ gym, but on my last trip to Brussels when I asked at the airport if I could pick one up they said they were sold out. I was impressed by GO-SIM which seemed to have a nice broad list of operating in 75 countries, data, and would cost about 20 pounds for a starter set plus shipping.

2) Pick up a different sim card in every country you go to. The price of a prepaid sim is so ridiculously low, that in pure cost terms I can understand the logic. However, I'm not looking to start a collection of these things like they were baseball cards. They're ridiculously small, and lack a convenient way of hold them. I've tried every possible pocket in my wallet and they always find a way of ending up on the floor. That's bye bye 10+ Euros if I'm not careful about looking on the ground. Add to that the fact that if you're someone who's traveling within a city or country for less than a week, do you really want to spend half a day at an electronic store/ phone boutique picking one of these suckers up?

3) Rely on your major carrier to be able to utilize a partner or competitor's network as stated above. All of the major mobile service providers list option plans for travelers, especially for roaming within the EU. In fact O2, which I currently use, stated that for their prepaid sims it is an AUTOMATICALLY ACTIVATED SERVICE. For some of my other friends, it has been about as easy as receiving/sending a txt message to confirm that it is okay to connect to another network once they power up in another country, and they were good to go. I thought this would be the most convenient method, but I have been finding that the ease of switching service networks as you switch borders to be a load of crap. I've never gotten anything besides a network unavailable and an emergency call option out of my phone even if it can see the other phone networks.

Possible difficulties due to the handset itself. There are some issues that I feel might be inherent in the fact that the Nexus is not available for retail in Europe beyond Great Britain.

Mobile internet for some reason has always been a huge annoyance I don't know how convenient it is supposed to be for other phones, but following activation instructions for me only gets me as far as seeing that I have credit to spend on the network without any ability for actual net access. I'm not sure if it's something inherently lacking in the Nexus's design, but access to both internet and MMS services seems to require me manually inputting the NAT info for the network, which is not the most convenient thing to track down. Phone and sms always work as soon as I put in the chip, and call the network with the activation code, but it's been beyond my research to find a reason as to why getting internet from the same network has been such a pain in the ass.

Ajou Reunion

It took two years to finally get my butt across the Atlantic to do it, but on May 29th it finally happened! The long awaited reunion with some of my best friends from when I was studying abroad at Ajou University in Suwon, Korea. As anyone who has gone on a study abroad will concur about their own experiences, the nature of being in a foreign environment with adventurous types who chose to put themselves in such situation tends to create deep bonds. This was certainly true of our group, where our misadventures could have filled an entire tv series, but as is typically the case post study abroad return our lives moved on and we began to lose touch. Although time and distance took its natural toll on the frequency of our communication with one another (the occasional facebook message) there was a sense of blessed surprise during the weekend. Despite how much we had changed individually as a group we were able to pick up right where we left off in Korea.

The 4 day weekend got to a rocky start as I was supposed to take a 4AM bus to the airport (which required me to walk to the station from my dorm since trams would not be operational at that hour), and due to my trying to avoid sleep so I could pass out on the long bus/ plane rides I ended up passing out around 2 in the morning and waking up at 4:45... A panicked search of the bus service website and online ticket purchase for the next departure (the faster route to the center of Prague instead taking me all the way to the airport unlike my original ticket), and I was out the door with the urgency of a firefighter. Thankfully around 5AM is when the trams start running their 10 min routines, and I was a good 20 mins early for the bus.

After looking at the time table for bus service, I realized that once arriving at the Prague central station I would have to wait 30 mins before a bus to go to the airport, and that it would arrive with less than 20 mins for me to check in before the flight. A frantic search through my google Nexus (thank you mobile internet) found no public transport routes that could get me to the airport any faster. So I bit the bullet, and put in an online order for a taxi to pick me up as soon as I arrived at the station. The decision got me to the airport a safe 45 mins before my gate closed, but cost me about $30 for a ten minute drive (in purchase power parity perspective I generally can go most of the entire work week only spending that much :/)

I thought once I got on the plane everything would go smoothly, but as is generally the case with most of my plans, that would work out beautifully in other people's hands, I was bound to be sidelined by other freak externalities requiring me to make quick improvisations and adjustments after my arrival. Fortunately I guess, this crap happens to me so often I'm used to such disasters happening.

Obstacle 1: Sim card never works upon crossing the Czech border (more on this in another post).

Obstacle 2: Brussel's street signs while more coherent than Czech's are ridiculously confusing randomly switching their names between French and Flemish variants, which made my detailed maps, I printed before my trip, about as useful as a child drawn map scrawled in crayon on the back of a napkin.

Obstacle 3: Upon purchasing a local prepaid sim card, I still could not get the thing to work. Eventually got a visiting French speaker to help me activate the phone, sms and internet services, but although I had credit activated for the account my phone still could not detect the internet network without me manually inputting the NAT information. Spent 10 euros using the hostel's 1 euro per 15 min console to search through a bunch of phone forums with none of the NAT addresses working on my phone :(

As I had arrived a day earlier than everyone else I took the opportunity to explore the city on my own i.e. wander the city with an emphasis on looking at the places residents hang out more than tourists. I checked out the Jardain Botanique park near my station, snacked at a cafe, and of course checked out the local mall and book stores (Brussels is the world capital of comics after all). Although Brussels already has the distinction of having both French and Flemish as primary languages and it not really being a tourist hot spot it does have a very international feel due much in part to the fact that the EU has several of its governing bodies located within the city. This pays off for me as I was able to easily get along with all the shop clerks speaking only English, something I really don't get in the Czech Rep unless I'm in a tourist infested neighborhood...

As impressive as my solo tour was it was the rest of the weekend that I had really come for, starting the next morning with the arrivals of Pedro, Vanni, Ania and Rikard. After some hugs, comments on how "fit" people had become, and some overly affectionate gestures from Vanni (one can only assume due to him being Italian :p ), we were ready to explore the city proper as Ania had lived in the city before for a year. With perfect weather (sunny with a slight breeze) that could rival SF the day became a walking tour hitting up all the tourist attractions, stopping wherever we saw food and drink that looked appealing, and slowly being joined by the later arrivals as the day progressed.

In order of arrival: Adrian, Viri, Maciej, Magda, Otto, Adam, Juan and a brief "in spirit" appearance by Arnaud the one member of the Spring semester group that actually resides in Brussels, but couldn't make it to the event. At dinner we were joined Ajou Summer member Simon and Hunnie who are currently living in the city as well, and they showed us a couple of hot spots, and we all finished the night at their apartment before making the trek back to our hostel in the wee hours of the morning. Sunday morning was mostly spent recovering from the previous night, but by noon we were out again repeating much of the previous day's agenda of taking in sights and grabbing up the local treats wherever possible, while starting to make our goodbyes to members who were returning back to their respective homes. I was understandably completely exhausted by the end of the day (see photo), but was recharged by the restaurant Simon and Hunnie took us to for dinner, which in French translated to something like "Find or End of the Century". It was easily the best meal I've had in all of Europe thus far... seriously look how happy I am in that photo :)

The next day was time for my own goodbye, and though I was already missing them by the time I got to the airport I knew that after this weekend it doesn't matter how many years pass I'll still be able to count all of them as friends. (cue sappy music yea yea I know I shouldn't have said such a corny ending to my post)

More pictures of my trip can be found on my facebook account, or here on my Picasa.

A list of recommended things for people to do if they make a trip in the future:

Grand Place Grote Market

Manneken Pis

Atomium

Galeries Saint Hubert-Sint Hubertusgalerijen

Palais Royal de Bruxelles

Rue de la Loi

Sorry for the break in service :p

Lot of activities going on the last couple weeks, which left me too tired to meet my weekly deadlines for this blog. But since today is a slow day at work, I may as well use the time to catch you all up with what's been going on!

Quick list of topics for subsequent posts:

Ajou Reunion - Brussels, Belgium weekend of 29-31rs of May

Renault World Series - Brno, Czech Rep weekend 5th-6th of June

Start of Summer - some of the hottest days in Czech history, and my escape from the heat by frequenting the local pool

World Cup - June 12th - July 11th, located in South Africa, but I'm viewing in Brno, and it's my first time watching with a wide group of internationals all zealously supporting different teams

Ignis Brunensis

So I'm after some frustrating experiments with blogspot's upload function I found that it was a far easier route to just upload my vids to youtube and embed them. So I hope you enjoy the fruit of my efforts in posting these, though honestly it's not that different from a screen saver :p I'll have to take better videos in the future so stay tuned!

Last week was the start of the annual fireworks competition Ignis Brunensis, which might be the biggest spectacle in the Czech Republic outside of them cinching IIHF hockey championship on Sunday :) The atmosphere is generally filled with that mix of Summer carnival and the energy of students both high school and university sensing their Summer holiday is almost upon them. The weather has serendipitously held up during the nights of the show, while during the day there seems to be an extreme fluctuation between harsh thundershowers then blindingly sunny weather every couple hours.

Just a small snippet of the first actual show which lasted for about 20 mins, at a certain point I have to put down the phone and just watch the show :p

Old World Beauty

Haha I know I’ve been bad, and have not posted anything in 2 weeks! So to make it up I’ll put up a block of pictures I’ve been building up since my arrival in Brno. Hopefully this huge mass of photos keeps you returning to the blog for more ;)

The theme of the post is old school architecture of the city of Brno. Honestly, I used to get a little miffed at the previous occasions when European friends would recant tales of their visits to the US and their subsequent general disappointment at how ugly the cities they visited were. I always thought sure Western Europe may be packed with a few more famous landmarks, but in the end there all just cities like anywhere else in the world right? I can’t really speak for the rest of the European cities, but in my short time in Brno I am starting to understand how drab the cities back home can seem, where only the commercial real estate makes an effort to appear impressive, but rarely in a completely awe inspiring fashion.

While Brno certainly has it’s fair share of the modern, it is 2nd largest city in the Czech Rep after all, and its fair share of the ugly, the period under communist rule did not do any favors towards making any worthwhile contributions to the city’s skyline, it’s the old school buildings that really gives this otherwise typical city its WOW factor. By “old school” I’m referring to buildings that were built as late as 1920’s to as early as the 1600’s all perfectly encapsulating the architectural fashion of their respective eras despite whatever renovation must have been needed since their creation. The sheer amount of flourishes that adorn simple random buildings every time you turn on to a new street can really provide a highlight to your day. If you’re willing to take the time to notice something will always catch your eye, and give you the realization that a leisurely stroll through city center has revealed art.

Hope you all enjoy the pictures, but you really need to visit rather than be comforted by vicarious viewing from my simple 6MP camera phone :D











The dreaded camera phone self portrait shot, just to show that these are indeed my photos, and I'm very much alive with all vital organs intact :)