Praha, Pivo, Prosim

COMMIES

I don’t have a television. I don’t have a radio. Well ok, I do have these things but they are packed away in a storage unit that is 4k miles away. As such, I get all my information from this here lovely interwebs. So……

One class (that happens to be in what I’m convinced is a former Communist Doctor’s office) has a radio. Because the class isn’t in an office building that requires a special security pass, I usually arrive early and pre-board any necessary text for a lesson. Since I’m always early, I turn on the radio and get my fill of weekly Czech radio. Of course I cannot understand what the DJs say when they are speaking. I still listen. However, English language music (like all forms of popular culture) has infiltrated the radio waves. Peppered between Czech songs are the ones I can understand. There are of course songs I don’t know and this just isn’t because I’m tragically unhip. It’s the Euro tunage. A few months back I heard a song I liked. I’m a writer of lyrics. But this is not for some deep and soulful purpose; this is only for the task of locating a particular song to download later. Anyway, I came home and downloaded this song. Ha, it is a Romanian pop group. Nice.

Cut to this week….most recently (as in Tuesday of this week) I heard another song I liked. I presume my ear noticed it because the band sounds quite a lot like Depeche Mode*. Camouflage is a German synthpop band from the 80s. I admit it, I’m a sucker for shitty synthpop. Go ahead & rag on it, I deserve the ridicule. It’s just damn catchy music. If you like bad 80s synth, check out these lyrics.

Or here’s the video if you so choose. Does anyone else thing the band has a Matt Damon-faced singer? How does Jason Bourne have time to program his Moog when determining his own identity?

*As an aside…… I found out about this place while reading an article on something else this week. It’s in Estonian but it’s real. Yes, a DM-themed bar. I’m a DM fan but I won’t be making a special trip to Tallinn for this.

LUNCH

There’s a great vegetarian Indian place about 2 blocks from here. (Check the menu for Dhaba Tynska) I’m pretty far from vegetarian on the food scale but Indian food is so tasty that meat really isn’t necessary. This place is literally in the shadows of Tyn Cathedral and insanely cheap. It’s in a courtyard of a sidestreet and unless you knew it was there, you’d walk right by. I love those hidden little gems. Beas offers a rather small menu but the ‘big menu’ is a mere 100KC. Score!

I also tried my first Kombucha. Kombucha is fermented tea. I can confirm that it does not taste like tea but does indeed taste fermented. The taste is really quite odd and off-putting. To be more specific, it rather tastes like something rotting; like something you should have thrown away 2 days ago but were too lazy and hungover. Like many similar foods that taste funky and gross, Kombucha is supposed to have some curative and beneficial qualities thus the reason for ingesting the stuff. If you haven’t heard of Kombucha, it’s not a fancy Euro-fied beverage. I had heard of the stuff in the US and my friend John used to buy it. Just look around in any health food or organic store and they’ll probably have it in their inventory.

Prior to having the stuff though I do recall Tina Fey on Letterman talking about her recent addiction to the dubious beverage. Go to 4:15 to hear her talk about it. She’s pretty spot on in her assessment and commentary.

On the note of Tina Fey, oh how I miss 30 Rock. Too bad I can’t get Hulu over here. Season 3 episodes are damn hard to locate online. Sadness.

CHEESE

If I said pickled cheese, the reaction of any normal person would be one of the following: ick, eew, gross, fuck that, nasty, hell no, etc. However, contrary to these thoughts, pickled cheese is freaking delicious. Pickled Hermelin is a staple bar food here in the C.R.. I was hesitant to try it for the very reason any normal person would hesitate to try the stuff. But I can report with great glee that pickled hermelin is the bomb. It’s not pickled in the traditional sense of being pickled. I usually associate tart, tangy, sour and vinegary with pickled foods. The hermelin is packed in a jar with various herbs, spices and other goodies such as garlic, peppers, juniper berries, capers, black pepper, onion, and oil. Basically you just let the stuff sit and work it’s magic in a jar. That easy. When the stuff is ready, you smear it all over some hearty Czech bread (Sumava is suggested) and you have a wonderful treat. I loved the stuff so much that I went to Tesco and bought a big plastic jar of the stuff. By no means is a 60Kc purchase of cheese going to be the world’s finest but it will surely satisfy my new cheese obsession.

Voila!

WORK

Here’s an example of the boring stuff I was researching last week to do a lesson at Kaufland. It’s at their logistics center in the Czech countryside. The place is huge and cumbersome and you can see the facility from kilometers away. It’s kind of one of those, ‘Oh shit, what the hell IS that over there,’ moments.

You can imagine the riveting buckets of information one can locate about grocery stores and related vocabulary. It’s rather boring and uninteresting material to do for 90 minutes.

NEWS

While surfing around on links from Reddit (my new go-to source aggregator), I saw the words penis and laser so naturally I did a little tap of my track pad and off I went. But what struck me as more tragic and interesting than the actual article was the sidebar. Yes, those are all associated news blurbs related to penis trauma this week. So this makes me query, ‘Does some dude behind a monitor aggregate articles on genitalia?’ Interesting gig. Is this a WTF moment? Or perhaps even a FTW? You decide.

ADVERTISING

What? Where’s Tom Cruise when you need him? How many level II Thetans approve of this message?

RANDOM PICS OF THE WEEK

Letna Park and an invader

Find the pivo!

Church at Strahov Monastery

Reminder: I live here

As I slowly check things off my moving/stuff to do checklist, I’ve posted a pic of the most expensive from the checked off column. I don’t usually consider myself cheap or miserly but I hate spending this kind of money on something I really don’t need. Perhaps a less expensive model could have/should have been purchased or even an inferior (don’t kill me PC lovers for using that term) brand, but for nothing other than aesthetics and WOW factor did I buy the new aluminum MacBook. I’ve expounded on my female-driven/estrogen-laden love for Macs in previous blogs (since deleted) so it’s fair to say that I’m forever a convert to the Apple brand. It just sucks that their systems are pricer than most others. To that I say boo.

On the other end of things I’m justifying this expense for a few reasons…
a) I never make huge purchases
b) I wanted this particular (new!!) machine
c) this will be my main mode of communication to people thousands of miles away
d) I hear the new version of iLife is just sick…

The next step is to move my iTunes from my current iMac to an external hard drive. I’ve read up on this and it might be more complicated than it seems. Not looking forward to that. But, after all that business is complete, I’ll check another expense off my list and go ahead and buy an iPod. Truth be told I wouldn’t mind an iPod Touch, either. Again with the need factor as I clearly do NOT need the Touch but they are amazing and pretty and so much fun. I do need to get my music on a portable player and while a larger capacity iPod would be feasible my chick instinct might force me to buy an iPod Touch. Damn, sometimes this vagina renders me weak and powerless to the shopping Gods. If anyone has any input on the iPod vs. Touch debate, please leave a comment. I need to be pursuaded.

UPDATE: 9:45 pm…. Several times today after posting this initial blog, I confess I was THIS CLOSE to throwing my budget to the wind and purchasing a 32GB iPod Touch. Real restraint exhibited today.

And a few other things….

The latest installment of WHAT’S ON MY NEIGHBOR’S DOORSTEP

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Well, it seems my neighbor has expanded her garbage repertoire this holiday season to include a few new and unique items. While the poop bag pile is at a minimum (or perhaps because it’s mostly hidden), she managed to stack on a box from JC Penney as well as the dog box/carrier thing that is apparently no longer of use. I don’t think the dog kicked it as the poo is still clearly present. I’m curious to see the upgraded canine accomodations.

And here’s a snippet of how unorganized and generally messy my apartment is today. No, I don’t have inches of guano all over the place nor is the carpeet littered with fast food containers. My place is certainly habitable but if I had important guests arriving (let’s say the Queen of England), she would be unimpressed even if I did buy the fancy rose-scented soaps.

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Yes there is an iPod Shuffle here but frankly, due to it’s lacking capacity, I don’t consider it a ‘real’ iPod. A coworker told me he has nearly 200GB of music (you read that right) and while I don’t have anything NEAR that but I’d like to have all my tunes on a player rather than be required to swap them out when I’m bored. Two hundred GB of music is excessive and there just isn’t any way one can really enjoy ALL that stuff. Hell, at present I’m deleting a bunch of files from my paltry 16GB worth of tunes because I neither want nor need music that I skip over.