Praha, Pivo, Prosim

Since I am located next to a more traditionally ‘normal’ grocery, I thought I’d blog a bit about the food supplies in CR.

Aside from the weird meat products in this country, I’ll say that Czechs love yogurt. I mean really fucking love yogurt. The dairy section at Albert is insane. By my sub-standard measurements, I’d say the yogurt aisle is approx 20+ feet long. No shit. The prices are really reasonable (I just bought some individual containers for 5.90Kc) and come in a variety of flavors. Catering to the Czech national palate of loving all things sweet, there is also a plethora of chocolate and coconut flavored yogurts on the market, too. They are delicious. The Euro yogurts are made with glorious full-fat dairy products and it’s quite evident in the taste. I’ll say they have done well in this area.

The produce department…. This is something that is lacking in comparison to American grocery counterparts. The selection is limited and it’s strange to see many items not refrigerated. Generally speaking, the array of products here is less than in the U.S. which is to be expected but also the supplies of many products are usually around the 50% mark. In other words, the shelves are not always stocked. *An additional note on refrigeration… Ok, here the milk here comes in cartons. No, not like the American cartons. These are more like boxes. Anyway, some milk is kept chilled and some others are not. They just sit in a big pile waiting to be purchased. I can’t figure out the difference in this area. I’m thinking maybe the chilled stuff is ‘real’ whereas the room temperature stuff is some kind of powdered milk variety that never goes bad.

The meat/fish department….. Apparently turkey is non-existent here as Frank can attest that in his time here, he has never seen a turkey in any form, anywhere, ever. Pork is the big seller here and there seems to be a limitless supply of various cuts available. Chicken is also big and it’s no problem to find. Beef isn’t as plentiful but certainly present. The fish… fresh cuts of fish are expensive. I don’t recall what a fresh piece of tuna runs but it’s up there. There is an abundance of fake crab (which I love) as well as fake lobster that I suppose is commonplace as this is a landlocked country so it’s an appropriate substitution.

Random grocery stuff….. if you buy brand name laundry detergent, it’s super expensive. I can’t figure that one out. Also, here’s something that is going to freak me out soon unless I can find the proper measures…. applicator tampons. Where are they? Rosie informed me that they are difficult to procure. Boo. I guess Czech women prefer the maxi variety and to my trained Tampax brain, that is wrong wrong wrong. I just simply cannot do that. I’m not 13 and this ain’t my first rodeo.I was craving some American-style food the other day so I whipped up a nice little breakfast. Fried potatoes and onions with tomatoes, scrambled eggs, Euro bacon and some toast with cream cheese. Outside of Bohemia Bagel, I haven’t seen a bagel for purchase so I had to wing it with the bread. All in all, it was good and although the stove takes a while to heat up, it worked just fine. My kitchen appliances are thousands of miles away and I miss them. Did I mention this flat doesn’t even have a microwave? While mine in the U.S. was complete shit, at least it was an option. Gotta go old school at this new crib.

I snapped some good pics this week from one of the Charles Bridge Towers (and a few other places) this week but I need to run them through Photoshop to reduce the size and do minor tweaking. Oh, and that’s another minor glitch here in Europe…. I only have one adapter. I have far too many electrical things to work simultaneously. So, my Photoshop is on an external drive but since that requires use of the adapter, I can’t keep this machine at full juice while running PS off the external drive. It just makes things more complicated. Yes, I could buy more adapters but apparently they run around 25 USD here. Sucks. I know I’ll break down and get more eventually.

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!

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) 

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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!

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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.

WARNING: non-sequiturs and a bit of stream of consciousness writing below

10a So, I was up at 5a today. Boo.It’s 10a now and I am sitting in the Detroit Metro airport. I can’t get a wireless connection here so I’m typing this in TextEdit. I’d rather use a pretty word processing application but I don’t even think this machine came with any of that software loaded. WTF?

If any of you have been through this airport (Jayne!), it’s actually much nicer than it was 10+ years ago. I am sitting in front of the funky water fountain in the the main terminal and the Northwest overhead tram is parked and picking some peeps up. Since I’m here so GD early before my trans-Atlantic flight, the flight info is not yet displayed on the departures screens throughout the airport. Sure, I could ask what gate to go to but it’s super early and it would be stupid to be sitting there with my thumb up my ass all damn day. While I’m usually quite good at said maneuver, I’d rather not inflict such pain on small children that happen to be passing by. Besides, it’s a ritual that I have a beer in an airport. Granted, it will probably cost me $25 but whatever. I am unemployed and homeless; what else am I supposed to do?

And by the way, there are birds in here. Yes, birds. I guess they like hanging out by the water and the trees. There is some irony of getting shit on in Detroit.

Oh, and as expected I had to pay a fee for having one of my checked bags be over the weight limit set by NW. I was only 12 pounds over–does anyone want to hazard a guess at how much that cost? Ninety farking dollars. Yeah! I was assuming it would be more fifty-ish but my assumption was quickly proven wrong at the ticket counter. WAH!

According to the NW inflight mag, I’ll get treated to a Kiera Knightley movie on the flight later. Hoo-fucking-ray. She was alright in ‘Bend It Like Beckham,’ but what’s the deal with her doing all these Jane Austen-y type Brit flicks? Ok yeah, I get it; you’re English already. Next.

Some douchebag is pacing behind me talking on the phone about Costa Rica & Hong Kong. He’s going on about how CR doesn’t observe Daylight Saving. Fascinating conversation, man.

1123a Jesus, it’s only been 90 minutes. I have since relocated to another spot but nonetheless time is going by slowly. For those curious, I ate a delicious McMuffin purchased from the Golden Arches. As industrial as their products seem to be, they are tasty. One cannot deny this. I’m curious to know how different the Czech brand McD’s will be. Shitty? I hope not. The fries were made by the hands of Little Baby Jesus. This much I know to be true.

Sucks I can’t hop on freebie wireless here. I can pay $8 and get service for the day but that’s kind of ridiculous. A day without Facebook is going to be a difficult one but I think I can cope. I have other methods of self-entertainment. In fact, I just made a really stupid video on iMovie.

 The flight to Amsterdam isn’t even boarding until 3pm. God. Three and a half hours more of sitting. My ass will be sore. A full day’s worth of sitting ain’t good for my delicate keister. At least it’s almost noon so I can start drinking. Too bad I had to pack all the little bottles of liquor my sister gave me. Otherwise, I’d toss one down my gullet. That’s how i roll.More typey after Miller time.

115p Two Sam Adams Winter Lagers later….Two beers including tip? Twenty bucks.

I finally found my gate info but I’m 2 gates down because everyone else had the same idea about plugging in and charging up their products. I gotta have the juice, man

422p Up, Up and Away.. my beautiful balloon…In the air from Detroit, flight time 7 hr 15 min to Amsterdam.There is a screaming/crying baby a few rows back. Now would be a good time for those noise reducing headphones.

Ok, the woman in the seat directly in front of me just put her seat all the way back thus forcing my tray and laptop into my fat lard middle. Fun. I think she’s a stupid European, anyway.

For anyone interested the distance between DTW and AMS is 3900 miles.More later. I want food now.

645pMan, these people are really quite efficient with the beverage and meal service. It was all complete within an hour and the cabin lights were quickly dimmed. As everyone knows airplanes are not the most comfortable places certainly when one is considering the option of sleep. Although the seat next to me is vacant and this row is all mine, the constraints of comfort (or lack thereof) are something I am contending with. My attempt at sleep was nil so I’m updating the blog entry.

According to the inflight information provided on the handy little personal viewing screens, we are somewhere over NE Canada–around Newfoundland, I think. It’s certainly remote as I see no lights for any cities below. Damn. Canada must be a cold and boring place tonight. But, I’ve heard Toronto is a cool ethnically diverse city. Wouldn’t mind visiting there sometime. Of course, Vancouver would be cool too. If I hadn’t been doing this move, I was considering my next solo trip for the summer of ‘09… fly into Portland, hang out for a bit, rent a car and drive up the NW coast through to Seattle and then on to Vancouver. Instead, I’m having an awesome European adventure which frankly, will probably be better than a 5 day domestic trip.

915p Ok, again my attempts at sleeping on this thing are futile. Normally, I am neither a light sleeper nor one who has difficulty falling asleep. I’m far from an insomniac so what gives? I attribute this to the uncomfortableness of trying to sleep while sitting up. Grrr.

Someone just sprayed perfume. Ok lady, this is an enclosed metal tube that we’re all stuck in for 8+ hours. Try keeping your whore juice to a minimum when in close proximity to others for extended periods.

Geography update–checking the digitized flight map, I’m now somewhere over the Atlantic between Iceland & Ireland.

Distance traveled: 2950 milesOutside temp: -48FMPH: 585Altitude: 40,421ft

Perfume lady is at it again. Somebody reeks of vodka. Yes!I

t’s going to be difficult to get used to a 24-hour clock. And this metric thing and temperature conversions are going to constantly weigh on me.

Friday 349p (Prague time) Screaming baby returned. With a vengeance. Seriously, that kid was out of control and not really even ‘crying.’ Bad parenting.

My flight arrived in Amsterdam earlier than expected and when going through customs & security I got a thorough frisking. No seriously, we’re talking thorough. When I went through security in Knoxville, I took off my belt & shoes per US screenings. I removed the belt in Amsterdam but somehow I set the damn detector off. When I was pulled to the side I got probably a full 60 second frisking/groping. I say groping because the inspector seriously had some hands in the pants action as well as serious cuppage of boobs. It was a bit of a disconcerting experience.

Schipol International Airport has some of the best looking employees. This includes the woman who felt me up. To me, it looked like she should have been selling fragrances behind a counter rather than patting down shifty-eyed travelers. All the airport cops were young, hot and toting guns. Of course the gun thing isn’t something I’m accustomed to seeing.

I hopped in a tram that took me far away from the main terminal to my KLM flight bound for Prague. I arrived at 850a and quickly got my gigantic fucking bags and headed out to wait for my pick-up.We drove right through Prague and over the river and I could see from a distance the big castle on the hill.

Hooray!I finally arrived at Biscupcova 3, Praha 3 around 10ish this morning. Oh and the street addresses come after the street name. Google baby, Google. This particular area of town is the ‘Brooklyn’ of Prague.

Since I hadn’t exchanged my US currency at the airport, I knew that was a priority. I changed some money at the bank with a teller who I didn’t exchange courtesies because I don’t speak Czech! With today’s exchange rate, I have 4,183 Crowns. Translated 192USD.

I also went to the corner market-sorry, I don’t know the Czech word just yet. This store is literally about 30 feet from the door of the building and they have various beverages (incl. beer & soda) as well as fruits & dried goods. I wouldn’t necessarily say the contents of the store are like a typical convenient store in the US but the concept is similar. Again, I had no verbal exchange with the woman at the register. I bought a big carbonated water -orange flavored if you are curious as well as a Czech beverage which I had read about. Kofola looks like a regular Coke or Pepsi. Although I try to stay away from caffeine, I decided to get something to help me stay awake and adjust my internal clock. Although this stuff looks like a regular ‘pop,’ it tastes vaguely of Jagermeister. It is rather herbal & medicinal tasting. It’s not horrible, it’s just different.

715pSo, my roommate (a temporary one as she is going to her own flat tomorrow) is a woman who has already been through this program and is now working here in Prague. Nice! She’s given me the heads up about some things so I appreciate that. Strange though is that we have much in common in the ways of where we have both lived. Before she came here she was living in Louisville; she’s also lived in upstate NY but by far the strangest is the Ohio connection. I mentioned that I had also lived in Cleveland. As it turns out we both lived in Chagrin Falls and actually attended the same high school. Mind you, this is a high school of less than 400 enrollment. And, we both left CF after our sophomore years. Her parents still live there and actually they live in a condo between my old church and the high school!

I went back to the little mini-mart a few moments ago to get some more stuff. See photo below. Come on, you knew the beer was coming soon! I’m having some of this tea right now and it’s actually quite good. While I prefer caff-free stuff, I can’t read the packaging so oh well. If I get all amped up, I’ll know I bought the wrong stuff. The ‘Chipsletten’ are some kind of Euro Pringle that are super salty. Me likey. And yes, it’s all about the carbs tonight. Good times, good times.

The little bottles of booze my sister gifted me have also been unwrapped from the rolled-up Martha Stewart ninja style packing and I am proud to say, none of my shit broke. My work was proven effective after all!

Sorry that I have nothing more interesting to report but I’m going to Tesco tomorrow so stay tuned!

 

  

  

 

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Sorry this entry wasn’t very interesting but once I get out on foot more, I’ll have more fun details & photos to post.

Oh and the random pic of a building is just some residential building a few blocks away. I don’t know what it’s called but I thought I’d throw it in there.

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.