Friday I'm in Love

It's a beautiful day in Brno!

The sun is shining and it's going to be 42 degrees today. The weather here is pretty much the same as at home in Hershey, PA.

Tonight is the first official "Feast Fridays" - something a friend and I started in order to keep our palates interesting. On Fridays we go out into the town and try a new restaurant. So far about 12 people have said they'll come. With a crowd like that, who knows where we might end up.

God of Wine
Wine tasting at the Vinna Galerie on Tuesday was probably the highlight of my week. My friend R from Memphis and I joined a group of friends from France - S, Y, and M. Here's our wine list - along with my personal opinions of each (sorry to my Czech friends for the lack of accents on the letters):

1)Ryzlink Vlassky: A white wine that didn't seem to have much flavor to me, but they said it had green apples or something in it.
2)Muskat Moravsky: Another white wine, this time better. S smelled fromage when she first gave it a sniff. :)
3)Palava: The best of the white wines. Had honey in it I think.
4)Frankovka Cuvee: A rose wine. M swore it was more like water than wine.
5)Svatovavrinecke: The first red wine. Let's just say I don't think I like red wine.
6)Cabernet Moravia: Another red. Had a cherry base I think.
7)Zweigeltrebe: The last red - I actually gave the rest of it to M.
*8)Bobulky: Okay - this is the greatest wine I've ever had and I will definitely bring a bottle back to the US. For the Czechs, this is a very special and expensive dessert wine. A bottle is about 300kc or $25. It's a straw wine, meaning they lay the grapes out for a while and so there's a very small production yield. Of all the wines we tried, I recommend this.

All throughout the tasting there was cheese, bread, and an assortment of gray and odd pink meats that I don't think I would have touched even if I was a meat-eater. Also grapes, red peppers, and olives. It was a pretty lovely evening and the Vinna Galerie was cool because it had been in a movie, so they had pictures from the film all around. There was also a live (and lively!) band of men who played some upbeat music like Hava Nagila.

Quelqu'un m'a dit
Meanwhile, our new French friends taught us some phrases (You are my sunshine/Tu es mon rayon soleil) and apparently "beet" (the purplish vegetable) sounds like the French word for "dick", while "chat" (cat) is actually pussy...so basically we've been unwittingly saying dirty things all through high school...how secretly amused must Madame S have been?!

They taught us about the different French regions and why some French know German (but are not German!). There's a wine festival along the beach in France sometime in the spring that I'd really love to go to while I'm in Europe...along with Queen's Day in the Netherlands that is.

Modern Love
Otherwise I'm looking forward to tea and possibly staying over at my Czech friend M's house when she's finished with her English language exams. She lives in Olomouc which is about 2 hours away. She's also teaching English with us - she's a very bright and intelligent young woman who loves traveling. Her story is actually as international as it is sweet - she met her boyfriend, an Englishman, while doing research in Honduras and found she couldn't be without him. At one point, she traveled for 40 hours just to be with him before he left for another destination. She says, "We have the same soul. We want to spend our life traveling." For anyone (like my sister) who imagines the Czech people as an old, crinkled woman with a scarf on her head, I think M is a good representation of the very much connected youth of Central Europe.

Last Chance to Lose Your Keys
During our lunch break on Wednesday, M wanted to take a picture of the "Revoluce" (Revolution) art sculpture in a nearby park. It's about 20 feet high and spells "Revoluce" vertically in a shining arrangement of keys - house keys, brass keys, colored keys. It is in remembrance of the Velvet Revolution, when the Czech people stood up against the regime and shook their keys in the streets. Michelle proudly tells me that of all the countries under the regime, the Czechs were the only ones brave enough to stand up and speak out. It's called the Velvet Revolution because the transition was smooth like velvet, and there was minimal violence. All the keys in the sculpture were donated by the Czech people - making it more than art, but also a piece of history.

Coin Laundry
I went to Clubwash yesterday to do my laundry. Almost got lost, and had that terrible feeling like I was in a bad part of town. Saw some people dressed as spacemen and a white Christmas tree and that gave me some comfort. It took a long time - left at 6 and got back around 10:30 - but I'd do it again with some friends. It's nice because you can just drop off your clothes and they do everything for you. I had some Svijany beer there and it was good. Read a bit more of "Great Expectations" while people came and went. There seemed to be a pub-crawl-contest going on so these groups would come in and get a beer, take pictures, and move on to the next pub. Clubwash is nice because you hear a mix of languages and accents. Two loads of laundry, two beers, and a bag of chips cost me $20 though - which sucks terribly - but at least I have clean clothes again.

Choose Life
So my plans for the upcoming week include an Opera on the 10th and my first "real" lesson on Monday - teaching them about present perfect simple and continuous tense (wish me luck!). Then tea with Michelle on the 12th and possibly seeing Black Swan with Czech subtitles with R. B wants to teach me how to wash my clothes by hand - don't know how I feel about that - could just be the spoiled American in me.

They Remind Me Too Much of You
Today is the 12th year anniversary of my grandmother's death. It was a turning point in my life, much in the same way I think coming to Brno is going to be. A new chapter starts here. The world feels upside down. Things don't always make sense anymore, like the logical order of things has been shuffled and scattered like Scrabble tiles. Then, slowly, the pieces rearrange and something new breathes into life.