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.