Praha, Pivo, Prosim

Sorry–I have had no exciting news to report for a week. To that I say boo.

I promise I’ll blog with greater frequency once my TEFL course is complete. I should have a fancy certificate in my grubby little hands in 6 days so more interesting stuff to come later.

In other news, I found a flatshare that is the shit. Really. The location couldn’t be better. I’m signing a lease on Tuesday. Hooray! Go ahead and Google the Palladium. It’s a really awesome indoor mall in Old Town. It’s about 75 yards from the front door of the new building. Old Town Square is a 5 minute walk. Holy crap. I can’t wait for spring! I’ll take some pics when I move next weekend.

I need a job.

At the potraviny earlier I bought some fake crab salad. First off, I’ll say that I love the American version. And while the original fish from the sea is always better, I do enjoy the fake crab and lobster varieties available in America. Sorry, I do. Fake crab salad is no gastronomical cuisine but it’s just tasty. So anyway, the Czech/Euro fake crab salad is garbage. Booo. I know it’s perhaps ironic to criticize the flavor of an artificial and chemically enhanced ‘meat’ product, but this stuff is rather blech. And it’s far too mayonnaise-y. Note: this statement is said by someone who loves mayonnaise. A sad point in my mayo timeline. So, back into the fridge the fake crab salad went. It’s not inedible it’s just not what I wanted. There is still the option of the clear gel ham roll and mystery cheese sitting in there. Maybe I should get drunk tonight and dig through the horrid jellied mass. Then again, maybe not.

On a Prague related note, I visited an um, well, ‘interesting’ part of town today. Me and the two Brit guys went to the course director’s place for a review. His place is pretty swank. It’s huge, too. The down point of that is that the flat is located in well, kind of a wasteland. It seems to be an area of dirty things, piles of dirt, homeless guys drinking cheap 20Kc wine, and run-down and empty store fronts. The short tram trip to the Pomolvka stop was interesting. We went and had a beer and grabbed some food at a restaurant in the area. I’ll say that Richard was scared to enter first so I had to do it. Ha! I’d all the decor rather austere if you can even call that decor. The heartbeat of Communism I’m sure still beats between the yellowed asbestos walls. The ‘dining’ area was just a square room with large benches and tables. It was definitely a no frills kind of place. Going back to the Communism thing, I’m really being serious. The vibe was rather depressing and bleak. The clientele looked rough. They were mostly older and probably had discussions of the good old days of bathtub Becherovka productions and dumplings made of mud. I’m fairly sure that former heads of state got together in there to discuss who was being sent to the gulags in Siberia. If I had looked closer, I’m sure I could have found hatch marks on the walls for all the on-site stabbings. Oh, and even if I knew the name of the restaurant, I’d be surprised if they had a website because I’m fairly sure they barely even get electricity in that part of town.

Ok, well I’m off for a few drinks in Zizkov tonight. Pivo, pivo, pivo!!!

Snapped this in the a.m. in the Vinohrady area. 

Club Prdel

U Sudu

This was snapped at Club Prdel. Cool bar with a dance club in the cellar. Lots of places here utilize cellar spaces. They are brick walled with many arches &, in general, pretty damn cool.

 Old Town this morning. It was snowing and beautiful. 

This one was at U Sudu–another typical pub that uses cellar space. The street level entrance is very small. The stairs to the cellar areas are creepy and very small and you feel like you are going down into the basement of an old house. Once downstairs, it opens up into a maze of rooms, one after the other. Several bar areas down there, too. Aside from the complicated streets of the Old Town area in which one could get lost, one could easily get lost there, too.

I also made an iMovie clip. Check it out.

I’ll let the visuals do the talking on this one. Clicky for bigger as usual.

I wasn’t lying when I said it was gross and confusing. What’s the deal with aspic, anyway?

Yes, we have our priorities in order. And here in lovely Prague, the beer pictured is .5L bottles rather than pathetic & weak 12 ounce varieties! Ahhh! Blessed pivo! I drink at your fountain!

I’m on the 4th (but U.S. version 5th floor) of an apartment building. This view is going east. Feel free to Google map Biscupcova 3, Praha 3. Anyway, I opened up the big window one morning and leaned out bit to snap this. It’s a good example of this part of town.And, in case you need some clarification on the funky meat thing, here’s a video.

Well, it’s week two and the TEFL Gods have wasted no time throwing us to the wolves! Ok, that’s being dramatic; the TGs aren’t wolves, they are perfectly normal adults who just speak very little English. Shit.

We did a brief bit of classroom instruction (to real students–no, not children either) last week and then prepared a full lesson plan for today’s class. Now we’re in the thick of things and pretty much doing new lesson plans everyday. Today’s plan was a lexis (look it up, it will be ironic), and tomorrow’s plan is a listening exercise/lesson. Although the content isn’t terribly confusing, it’s devising efficient and well-structured lessons that the students ‘get.’ Of course the easy thing would be to just write down words and definitions on the board and ask if the class understands. The problem with that is people will usually say that they DO understand even when they do not. Also, admitting you don’t understand something is a confidence crusher as well as a bit embarrassing. That said, we are required to continually CCQ (concept check question) the material without blatantly saying a definition of a word. Synonyms were my friend today. I don’t know how the hell I’m going to instruct some abstract idea. Shit. Oh well, hopefully that will be for advanced students. The level I’m at this week is pre-intermediate (just above beginner) and it’s rather difficult to ‘dumb down’ your way of speaking and also noting what kind of verbal structure you are using. Eh…. All in all though, today’s lesson went well and I was told so and that makes me feel pretty pleased. Our actual ‘observation’ period has been next to nothing so cranking out lesson plans that ‘work’ has been a challenge. I supposed unless I drop my pants and take a shit on a Czech-English dictionary, it will probably be alright.

On the food front since I know some of you are interested…..

Food update… I have seen some very interesting meat-like items in the refrigerated case of the local grocery. I’ll get to that in a minute….

Again, I picked up a couple things to eat. (Keeping with my theme of getting a few unknown and known items, by the way.) I bought a small plastic container of what I thought was tuna salad. Not even owning a Czech-English dictionary, I can only go on pictures; also, the fact that I know about 10 Czech words doesn’t help in any shopping experience. So, since this container was clear, I examined the contents and the photo on the packaging and deduced that it was probably a rather innocuous tuna salad. Harmless, right?So, I’m back at the flat after class today wanting something to eat…Ah-ha! The tuna! I peeled the top back and it still totally looked like tuna salad. Ok, that’s good. Phew. Problem averted. Hungry stomach satiated.Ok, let’s try this thing…. with fork in hand, I freely took a bite and well, it wasn’t tuna. It was never tuna. Even if I close my eyes and click my heels three times, this shit is never going to be tuna. It’s basically a mayonnaise-y fish puree that is kept chilled probably to discourage any funky Euro bacteria invasion. Damn, I really need to get a friggin’ translating dictionary.

Ok, back to the other weird stuff I saw in the refrigerated case. In the same area as the non-tuna, there are several containers of various meats in various states of um…..suspension? (In the near future–I’ll buy one just to see how ‘interesting’ it is. Yes, of course–photos!) One (I don’t know what it’s called) of these items looks to be sliced deli meat (pork or chicken? The jury is out on that). Oh no, it’s not plain and boring deli meat. This thing is sliced meat wrapped around what could possibly be cream cheese? I am guessing on this. It’s white and looks rather thick. I’m a cream cheese girl but this uh….no thanks. Maybe this was the same stuff on my random sandwich from last week? Perhaps–just making associations here. So, we have the meat wrapped around white stuff and it’s encased in a clear gelatinous matter. I refuse to call it liquid as it is not. I think this particulate is the fourth state of matter also known as plasma. So, the meat rolls are sitting at the bottom of a clear solidified goo. The presentation is questionable at best and I also don’t understand the function of the solidified clear stuff. Is it for preservation? Is it just damn delicious? I believe it is used for the purpose of the former rather than truly being the latter. No way. Impossible. When I picked up a container of this stuff and turned it over, nothing inside moved. At all. Didn’t even budge. Maybe if I experimented with various temperatures the contents would shift and I could use the gelatinous hellspawn as some kind of household glue? It certainly appears to possess the properties of a commercial adhesive or maybe even a solvent.

INFOMERIAL!!!! Got paint on your favorite blouse? Need to clean up the boat for the Missus this weekend? Fuck Sham-Wow–this is the new shizz!! Why go ahead and bust out your pork cheese rolls and keep the clear stuff for miscellaneous chemical stains removal! Buy Mom a tube today!

I’m happy to report no further bad food episodes today.

The Becherovka? Quite digestible and quite good, actually. It does have a kind of herbal taste but not medicinal like Jagermeister. It certainly has a cinnamon quality which probably makes the beverage more female-friendly. All in all, I will be having more!

The mystery can seen in the photo from the last post…. As I had hoped, it was essentially pork and beans. Cut up hot dogs and beans = good.

Our class is doing a bit of a pub crawl tonight around Old Town with former students so this should make for an interesting evening. We are meeting first at a recent graduates flat for a bit of pre-drinking so I’ll bring the Becherovka. Hooray! I’ll also be bringing along my camera to CAPTURE MEMORIES, DAMMIT!

Stay tuned!

Per Jayne’s request, I photographed everything I purchased at the store tonight….. She wanted to see some ‘Euro Shit.’ Her request was actually for me to photo incredibly gross bathrooms, etc. but since I have yet to experience one, I offered up my trip to the potraviny as an alternative.

I just ate the Sunka Classic for dinner (I don’t know how to use accent marks w/o rolling this over to a Czech keypad). The Sunka, as one can tell from the picture, is some kind of ham sandwich. It also had tomatoes and cucumbers. Pretty basic. There was an interesting spread/cheese kind of stuff on the bread. I’d say the consistency was similar to cream cheese and it was the same color but the taste was different. I have no idea what it was. I had to peel back the bread to look at it. A bit odd. Czech mayo? It might be time for the translator…

I bought a new funky soup tonight but I made SURE that the word JETRA was nowhere on the packaging. That was the horrible liver part of the dog juice from a few days ago. Ok, I retract the word soup– this doesn’t really look like soup–kind of looks like a pork and beans kind of gig, eh? Thus far though, the dog food has been the only ‘bad’ thing I’ve eaten. Again, I have to express my utter displeasure at said foodstuff. NEVER AGAIN!

The spaghetti and sauce here is pretty self-explanatory. I went for familiar on that one.

Going back to the Czech love of sweets, I also have a hazelnut flavored pastry roll thing. But this is in German so it doesn’t really count. But it does look tasty. Jesus, I’m eating too many sweets in this town. Damn. Perhaps I should be tracking the exponential growth of my ass.

Ahh, the Becherovka….the Czech national beverage–well, aside from beer. It’s some kind of herbal alcohol that from what I have heard, everyone drinks. I will keep all posted on the this….. Na Zdravi! (Cheers! or ‘to your health) 

Clicky for bigger!! 

And here’s a little video I took out of the bedroom window of what appears to be a drunk schizophrenic man. If only you could have heard him singing before I got out the camera! Again, sorry on the smallness of the video…I’m workin’ in it, man!

 drunkyczech

WALKMOVIE1

My apologies about the smallness of the above video–it’s something I’m going to work on for future uploads. I had one hell of a time resizing it to something that wouldn’t take 4 days to upload. I’m a newbie at posting video this way. 

 Sorry, I don’t have any interesting food items to report eating today. Well, ok I retract that statement. But nothing in the realm of the horrible pork liver/hot dog food soup….

There is a bakery practically at the front door of the building so I went this down this morning. Since I still know squat as far as communicating in Czech, all I can do is point to what I want and say please (PROSIM). The pastry I purchased looked similar to some kind of Boston Creme or domestic US donut. It was small, fried, round, and topped with chocolate. The fried and chocolate covered parts are good enough for me. Alas, this was not really a ‘donut’ as a) it didn’t have a hole nor b) did it have some kind of custard or creamy filling. The chocolate top however, was delicious but it was rather unlike a chocolate topped donut that we are used to in the states. This chocolate was more ‘real’ and less from a ‘jar’ tasting. When the pastry was made, it was clearly dipped in melted chocolate and then the chocolate set. When I ate it, the chocolate crumbled off into bits. Oh and I forgot–the lovely woman at the bakery also sprinkled coconut on top, too. Hooray! I paid 10Kc for this. About a fifty cents. Nice!

Obervation–Czechs really love their chocolates and candies. Stores seem to have rather large displays of sweets–especially considering the size of the stores. To give an idea, I’d say a regular potraviny is about the same size as a gas station mini mart.

Oh, and yesterday at a Tesco Express, I bought a Milka brand chocolate bar. It was strawberry yogurt flavored. Not necessarily being one who goes through hoops for strawberries (I like them just fine), I thought I’d try it out. The actual chocolate bar part was rather standard but it had a kind of filling (not runny) that was the strawberry yogurt. It was actually quite good.

Tonight, I did just go to a (of many) corner POTRAVINY to buy some cheap local beer. I paid 43.90Kc for two so feel free to run that through any currency converter. Good deal. Shopping tip: lots of times you need to bring your own bags to the potraviny as many shops will charge for the bags.

Today, we got a mini Czech lesson–the typical introduction type stuff–Hello-My name is…–What is your name… etc. It’s hard to wrap your mind around alternate sounds for letters that essentially look the same as what you see in your native tongue. There are some accent marks that just make funny sounds and other ‘normal’ looking letters sound completely different. It’s gonna be a doozy!

Tomorrow, we do our first official (partial) lesson to ‘real’ students. Granted, these students pretty much get free lessons but nonetheless I just have to give out a big AHHH! I’ve even gone so far as to script what I’ll do for the short period I’m up there. Shit.

Ok, I promise I’ll get a slideshow up here somehow. It’s just that every way I can think of to upload won’t work because of the file size. Problem number one is that I have copyrighted music on it and YouTube will mute any videos with said music. So, YouTube is not an option. If I could get it hosted directly on this site, I would would do so. However, due to the size of the show, uploading is impossible. Boo. I’ve also done the movie on Picasa & iMovie. iMovie turns the vid into a Quicktime video which is great but again….GRRR.

Update on the food pic from Facebook….The canned soup? Yeah, the stuff that I thought was completely innocuous and harmless? Fuck no. Bloody hell. I opened that thing up and it smelled bad which should have been a red flag. Bad as in masticated dog food. Secondly, after I microwaved it, the stuff smelled worse. It didn’t look appealing and although we ‘eat with our eyes’ first, that really isn’t an issue. Ok, first bite…. OH MY GOD WHAT THE HELL IS THAT MEAT? Eew, gross. The taste & texture was all wrong. No, no, no…. I ran the stuff through my translator only to find that it was pork liver soup. Granted, I hadn’t eaten liver in years and don’t recall liking it back then well…. nothing had changed. Fucking swill. I quickly dumped out that Devil’s juice and ate something else.

The bag of tortellini/dumplings? Meh, had some tonight. Not horrible but not great. They taste is a bit ‘off’ for some reason and they are kind of sour. What are they? I have no idea.

McDonald’s report–Big Macs are fine but the ’special sauce’ is more tart than what we’re used to in the U.S.The beer is still good and cheap. Hooray! I had some good local stuff last night. If you want to see where I ate dinner last night, check out http://www.deminka.com 

If you look up that site, be sure to roll over to the English menu–that option is in the upper right of your screen. We sat at the tables right in front of the rounded bar and I had the fried cheese app (under Deminka beer specials) and the Goulash. The beer? I had some local dark stuff–it’s the one with the longest name on the beer menu. Woo hoo!

The yogurt here is still delicious and I had one for ‘breakfast’ today which was chocolate and coconut. Oh, and the same company that made the pork flavored chips, also makes a paprika/pepper flavored chip and they are quite good as well.