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.