amanda's blog

the motion of travel: I took this from the train. I could never forget the feeling.

I am sitting in NYU’s academic building. The computer lab is empty except for me, and the typing on my keyboard seems to echo and bounce from wall to wall despite the breeze flowing through a half-open window. The other students are outside, I assume, trying to soak in as much of the Prague sun that there is left for us American students.

It’s strange that almost four months have passed since I arrived here. This past weekend, my father and sister visited, and I was able to easily guide them down streets that I once had nearly cried over. I have written about the winding paths and unsteady cobblestone streets of the city where I have lived for the past semester, and the feelings of uncertainty and frustration while traveling abroad. These feelings have not gone away, but rather, I have let go of my feelings of confusing or lack of understanding at a culture I will probably never truly understand.

The Czech Republic is truly a place unlike any other in the world. Despite my ancestry originating from a region that was once Czechoslovakia, there was little that I really knew about what it would be like to live here. But then again, I don’t think that there is anything anyone could have told me to prepare myself for the months to come.

I was flooded with questions about why I was taking this journey, or what I was expecting to do when I got there. Frankly, I had no idea how to answer any of them. I was excited about the uncertainty and lack of rigidity that I had become repulsed by, living in environments where I felt I could easily predict or expect days to go according to something I knew well. I bought a train pass, ready to explore the European continent and come back with stories that would surprise or entertain.

The things I have learned while abroad are not facts that I can reword in an essay. They are not bullet points that I can write down on a resume. They are not even concrete stories, or photos, or emotions that I can describe or show to others.

Today I was in a museum in Prague, and began to think about the ideas behind cubist and modern art. To see the world from multiple perspectives, to understand and attempt to explore the dynamism of life and all that occurs in each moment. All the senses, the various vantage points, the way that time passes… perhaps the only way I will be able to understand my experience here is in creating a work of art. After all, travel is an art, and this course is named as such not only because it is a writing-based course, but because the explanations and reflections we all have been discussing here in our blogs, on this website, are a form of art. To record our lives as they are going on, and to be able to re-read them, and share the stories and thoughts with others, is something that our generation is able to explore unlike any before us. The internet has changed our lives. I would have had a completely different experience here if I was not able to keep in close communication with my friends and family through the online portal.

When I get home, I know for certain that I will try to be more “grown up” and continue to mature. This is more of a result of passing time, than my studying abroad. Of course I will have changed, but I change regardless of this experience. To focus on “changes” is somewhat silly to me. I want to focus on what I will bring back with me, and what will stay the same. I will continue to love traveling, and remember all that I have experienced. Of course I will forget some things, and will probably revert to some of my old habits. But what I have done here is priceless, and I am so glad that I’ve had an output such as this to be able to see my growth as it was happening. My thoughts, my experiences… these do not define me as a person. But they most definitely help.

Years from now, I will look back on this experience as a collection of moments. I’m not sure what I will remember exactly, but I know that the memories will make me smile, perhaps roll my eyes, and sigh. This is something I will never forget.

I am so glad to have been blogging over the past few months. Reading through my posts, I can see my growth, intellectually and otherwise, as I spent my time abroad. I know that others who have been studying abroad have kept a blog although it was not academic, and theirs came out a lot more like diary entries as opposed to intellectual dissections of the culture and art of travel.

When I signed up for “the art of travel” I did not know what to expect. I thought there would be deadlines, but I did not expect the outline of topics and assignments that there were. I think that this helped with the structure of my blog, although sometimes my posts seemed a bit too forced in order to align with the assigned topic. I think that this was good, though, in an academic sense. Like I said, others who kept blogs that were not for a class ended up getting kind of lazy with their posts, either forgetting to post for a while or just writing exactly what was on their mind rather than really reflecting on their experiences.

I think that the deadlines were great because it really forced me to write sometimes when I didn’t feel like it at all. One thing I would change about the deadlines, though, would be to have a certain number of posts to have due in a certain amount of time, rather than on specific dates. I know that myself and others have had trouble getting in posts on the exact date that they are due for travel reasons or others. Sometimes I am in the mood to write a lot on my blog, and other times I have absolutely no inspiration or motivation to write a post. For the next time around I would recommend those sorts of deadlines where there are 3 or 4 posts due by a specific date, rather than having the due dates spread out equally throughout the semester.

I really enjoyed the fact that we were required to post comments on other students’ blogs as well. this made me realize how different and how similar everyone’s abroad experiences were, and how different we all took the act of ‘blogging’ to be. Some students’ blogs were much more academic sounding, while others had that feel of a travel journal. I also really loved looking at others’ photos in each blog, or seeing the progression of another student’s blog. A public post of an experience such as traveling abroad is something really wonderful that has come along with the internet generation. We are able to post our private experiences in a public forum, in order to share with others and reflect on ourselves in a way that we like, rather than being disgusted by our impulsive words in a 7th grade diary 

Overall I really enjoyed this course, and will try to continue this “blogging” throughout my life. I loved it when I got a comment on my blog, and it felt like there was really a community posting about their travel-abroad experiences. The internet is a wonderful place, and it only takes a bit of time and effort to find a real community inside of it. 

Me, In Prague, in the first month abroad: in front of St. Vitus' Cathedral

To a student planning to live and study abroad in Prague-

First of all, I hope that you know how very lucky you are to be able to study abroad at all. Not only are we a small minority of American students who are able to, financially and otherwise, but many students do not have the time or the willingness to put themselves in an entirely new environment at such a young age.

Prague is a city that is newly available for this type of excursion. It would not be possible for a large group of students to live and travel throughout this country or this region when I was born. The year 1989 is a very important year for the Czech Republic. I would highly recommend reading up on the history of Bohemia. Not only has Communism played a huge role in the country’s recent history, but other wars and regimes have greatly affected the mentality and structure of this very different place.

The look of this city is also unlike any you will have ever seen. The medieval look of old town, and the somewhat dilapidated neo-renaissance or art nouveau buildings more outside the center, make Prague a very unique place. I think a basic knowledge of architecture (which is almost inseprable from history and politics) is helpful for the student planning to study here.

There are an infinite number of wonderful things that will happen, but it is impossible to predict what exactly they will be. It is ultimately you who determines how you will conduct your life abroad, btu it is important to know that it is only YOU who has the power to choose where you will go. Perhaps you will decide to travel very often, as I did. And perhaps if you do choose to do so, you will travel alone, or you will travel with friends. This leads to one thing I would recommend strongly, and that would be to avoid traveling in large groups. Many of my friends here felt compelled to plan their spring break trips early on, and with large groups of others who were basically strangers. They felt that they then had to spend lots of time with those people, and sacrifice doing what they really wanted. Many people who I have spoken to regret this “group” travel. It often leads to fights, or dissatisfaction. If you do want to travel with others, I would strongly recommend having the group number not go above five. Seriously. Take this advice to heart. You get a more intense experience with a smaller number of people, and there are less arguments between the group about who wants to do what at what time and for how long, and all those other travel problems.

Which leads to another thing I would recommend: the Eurail pass. It made my experience here in Prague unlike anyone else’s. if you enjoy train travel, take my advice: get the global flexi pass, 15 days within two months. It does not require any planning in advance, saves money, and allows you a lot of time to reflect on your journeys. Make sure to bring a book with you, and don’t carry valuables.

It would be impossible to tell you where to go and what to do in Prague: part of the experience is about being lost, being confused, and finding your way (literally and metaphorically). It is good to acknowledge your misunderstanding of the place you’re in. it is good to be a stranger for a while, and feel uncomfortable. I believe this makes you a stronger person. But then again, it is up to you how you spend your time here.

I lived in the Osadni building, which has the best rooms of all the dorms, but not necessarily the easiest access to the city center. All of the student dorms are wonderful, and so is the staff, so make sure you take advantage of your teachers and the library and the photography darkroom.

I’m jealous that you are just getting ready to embark on your journey – I’m sad that I’m about to leave. This will be an experience unlike any other in your life. But don’t let that worry you, or make you think you’re not doing enough. Just try to enjoy it, and walk around as much as you can.

On the Road Home: I took this in high school in my hometown

I think that the final chapter in Alain de Botton’s The Art of Travel is wonderfully poignant, especially as I read it in the final weeks of my stay in Prague. Last weekend I had taken my final trip, to Sweden, and throughout the entire journey home I kept thinking about the sense of leaving, and of longing to stay. Since January 16, I have been in a new environment almost constantly. Not only have I been a stranger in Prague, but I have traveled to so, so many different countries and places. I feel that I have been looking around me with fresh eyes so constantly that the habit of journeying is now engrained in my vision.
Coming home from Sweden I thought a lot about what it would be like to go home. I felt that the words in de Botton’s final chapter were ones I could have written myself, concerning thinking that we’ve discovered everything interesting about our homes: “It seems inconceivable that there could be anything new to find in a place where we have been living for a decade or more. We have become habituated and therefore blind to it” (234). For a while I truly dreaded returning to my home in the suburbs of Boston for an entire three months for the summer. My friends from high school and I often complain about feelings of boredom or disinterest in that around us.
But the reason why I am not full of dread now, is because I really do believe that these past few months have had an intense effect on the way I conduct my daily life. This may sound dramatic, but it is very, very true. I have traveled mostly alone with a eurail pass that gives me an inordinate amount of time to reflect on my behavior and life and surroundings. Like de Botton said: “It seemed an advantage to be traveling alone. Our
responses to the world are crucially moulded by the company we keep, for we temper our curiosity to fit in with the expectations of others” (248). The company I kept was the world around me, and the strangers I encountered. Occasionally I found myself traveling with one of my best friends, who is also my roommate here in Prague, or meeting up with my boyfriend. But for the most part, and those experiences where I felt I learned most, I was alone.
I will return home and I will try to keep this sense of self that I have felt growing within me over the past few months. I know that it will be hard at first, and I will probably feel similar to the opening lines of “On Habit”, thinking that everyone and everything around me is stubbornly the same. But I will try to explore every day, not only around my bedroom, but through the backyards and small parks that are on a map in my memory. I know that they have changed, just as I have, as time has gone on. I only need to look in a different way, or among different people. Inspiration is infinite.

Prague: Milena's Home: I took this from atop Petrin Hill

Milena Kelly glances at the clock on the wall behind her and simultaneously reaches into a beige frayed purse on her lap.

“Here,” she says, leaning across the table, “take this…” I remove the business card from her palm as she interrupts herself to say, “forgive me, I must go to—” and slips a thin arm into a puffy coat. Her short hair, the color of stale wheat bread, continually falls in her face as she gathers her belongings from the floor of the small café in Prague 2 where we have been speaking for nearly two hours. She stands abruptly erect and looks at the clock again. “You must come for dinner,” she beckons as she glides toward the exit and slips outside, her careful movements allowing the wooden door to shut softly behind her.

The continual shuffling and clinking of mugs seems louder now that Ms. Kelly is no longer speaking soft and perfect English. I run my fingertips over the bold “PhDr.” that precedes her name on the thick rectangle of paper in silence.

“Wow. Her life is…” my friend, Ali, who had been sitting to my left, pauses to search for a word, “it’s just so incredible. So impressive.” I nod and continue to swiftly write half-legible words in a notebook on my lap. Ali’s father had met Milena in Boston in the 1980’s; the two were Czech citizens who had left their native country “for political reasons,” as Milena put it. Her description of moments of significance, tradition, and transition throughout her life are cramped within the margins of nine pages, interspersed with her reflective quotations and bits of advice.

“Your roots are important.” Her face was bland as she explained to Ali and I certain lessons she wants to teach her daughter. “You can only trust yourself and your family,” she says, after mentioning ex-husbands and ex-employees, all who left for “better and newer” things.

Milena has also departed, but wanted desperately to return. She grew up in an apartment less than five minutes from the café. An only child and the daughter of a publisher, her early life was filled with education. She was fluent in four languages by the time she was enrolled at Charles University. The ‘political reasons’ that caused her to depart Prague and her education at Charles University included a mention of Jan Palak, the student who burned himself while protesting the Soviet invasion. Her interest in languages, politics, history, and education brought her to Cambridge, Massachusetts to study at Harvard, a seemingly “better and newer” life.

Classes, work, and peers allowed Milena a comfortable, yet sad and stressful, existence in the United States. Milena met a successful attorney while working on-call as a translator in a Cambridge court. They soon married, but her life with him was weighed down by her desire to return to Prague. “I visited there when I could, but I was totally oppressed living in Cambridge,” the word escapes her diminutive lips as if a curse. “I became a housewife, cooking these big dinners for guests…” She quickly alters any trace of negativity with the elevation of her thinning eyebrows, “but I made the best of it.”
Torn between abandoning her roots and living a rich life brought Milena much solitude, despite meeting Czech friends in the Boston area. A job in the technology sector in Boston brought her comfort and allowed her to commute to the city and escape her fear of a house in the suburbs.
What she remembers as mere days after the Velvet Revolution in 1989, Milena decided to move back to Prague. It was there that she began to utilize her past, and her new American last name, to start her own business.

“It was about being in the right place at the right time,” she shrugs. I nod slowly and she looks directly into my eyes. “You know what they say. The ‘windows of opportunity’… they open, and they close.”

“I had a tremendous head start.” She often stared at the wooden table as she spoke about her past, and ignored the sounds of admiration that escaped Ali’s open mouth. The business school classes and experience as a teaching assistant for language classes at Harvard contributed to her desire to “only do something private enterprise”. She used the multitude of experiences and materials to begin to organize courses and hire teachers to teach English to Czech citizens.
While deeply involving herself in her work and reuniting with friends and family, Milena’s American husband visited. “He didn’t like it, though. He said it was dirty.” Her friends back in the States scorned her for “abandoning this ‘dream’ husband,” she rolls her eyes for a moment and pauses. “But I was finally happy again here. It is what I wanted.” Her and the attorney divorced, but the surname ‘Kelly’ remained with her for what she explains as a distaste for court procedures and business reasons.

“Someone said to me, ‘who wants to learn English from a woman with a last name like yours? If you keep ‘Kelly’, you’ll sell faster.”
“There was a tremendous demand,” she explains, “and anyone who had any ambition went abroad,” after the Iron Curtain lifted. She calls her success good luck and smart timing. She had handled language-translation software while working in Boston, and used the textbooks she had taught with at Harvard to develop her own methods and write course materials.

At the beginning of our conversation she proudly explained her solitude as a woman, and further elaborates in the many who abandoned her business to start their own. She soon switched her field to publishing.

“I knew my father was living comfortably, and I had the resources around the world.” She compares the ease with which she found advice about involving herself in a new profession during a trip back to the States with the suspicion and secrecy of the Czech Republic.

“People are very protective of information here,” she says, glancing at the table next to us. She was scoffed at when naming a price of 1000 crowns for the collection of tape cassettes and textbooks that were part of a package she was selling. In addition to advice from friends in the States, Milena inherited her father’s library and contacted his friends as well in order to supplement the financial and social capital that allowed her to start her own private publishing enterprise.

There have been good and bad times as a one-woman business, but Milena shows a shy pride in her work. “I chose these fields specifically,” she explains near the end of the description of the events in her life until present. “The education sector… it’s honest, and female.”
She often mentions her 18 year old daughter, who she tries “to always involve and instruct” in her work and life. Before Milena leaves she mentions her mother who passed away 5 years ago.

“I used to take her and my daughter with me everywhere,” she smiles broadly, a rare moment during the interview. “I know what hard times are like, I had them here, when I had cancer and my mother was sick. My business was in danger of bankruptcy,” she lists a number of obstacles that she has overcome on her long, thin fingers.

Milena is making her own path while involving traditions and lessons that she has learned from others and from her own life experiences. She did leave her home, but insists, “I always wanted to live here, to come back.”

One of the photos I took in this place I walk across the Vltava River from the tram stop to get to Old Town Square every day that I have class. The NYU Academic buildings are located right on the famous square, and I often see students rushing across the bridge without so much as a glance to what’s surrounding it. In the beginning of the semester I decided to take a look. I wasn’t running late for class, or dying to get back to my dorm. The weather was nice and I had my camera with me, so I walked to the side of the bridge that I don’t normally walk on and started gazing out at the Charles Bridge in the distance and the beautiful skyline of Prague. I rested my head in my palms, and my elbows on the dull gray stones that composed the wall of the bridge. As I stood in idle contemplation, I heard the noise of a child laughing. On the shore below, a mother and her young son were tossing handfuls of what looked like bread crusts towards a huge gaggle of geese and swans. I guessed that there could’ve been at least 100 of them, bobbing their heads and waddling on the rocky shore beneath the bridge I was on. “How do I get down there?” I wondered. I walked toward the end of the bridge, looking for stairs all the while. It ended up that a small park descended into the shore where a few boats were docked. No one seemed to notice me when I approached the scene. The boy and his mother continued to giggle and feed, and I noticed another, older, man. He was solemn and reached quite slowly into a paper bag to feed the geese. I didn’t want to disturb the idyllic moment. The water reflected the sky (billowing clouds and a rare blue) and lapped in small waves over the dirt and rocks that crunched beneath our feet. Birds swam in all directions in the shallow water, but remained close to shore and the food that was being given to them. Prague seems to be a place of many silent and beautiful scenes. In every moment there are millions of them. I have discovered that most people do not try to keep these places a secret, but rather, they let you discover them for yourself. No tour guide would tell you to go to the river bed an hour before sunset. These are the places that make you feel a certain peace and calm that comes with truthful curiosity and wandering, rather than following the advice or plans of some other person. It’s always nice to explore a place you walk across every day, and see it from a different angle.

Me in Athens

I had a pretty crazy spring break. I wanted to use my Eurail pass as much as I possibly could; I have the “global flexi pass” which means that I have 15 days to travel within a period of two months. Even a day before my spring break began, I had little to no plans, except for a flight back to Prague from Athens.

It was both exciting and exhilarating and terrifying to have nothing scheduled other than the end, and to travel mostly alone. Although I had the freedom of being able to decide what to do at any moment, there was a huge amount of responsibility that came along with it. I made a ridiculous amount of lists and possibilities for how to get to Greece using my eurail and little else. I prepared for an aching back from hours spent in a train. I prepared not much else, and tried to tell myself to accept whatever would be presented in my path.

It would take pages for me to recount the entirety of my actions and reflections my journey, so I will spare the reader. In summary: I began by taking a bus to Berlin with my boyfriend who had come to Prague on the last day of my midterms. When he flew back to the US, I took a train back to Prague to collect a few things before departing on another train two hours after I got back. I wanted to get out, rather than spending another night; my building was eerily empty, and there was a train from Vienna, Austria to Zagreb, Croatia at 7:36am. So I booked a hostel in Vienna for the night and prepared to wake early and then fall back asleep on the seven hour train ride.

I got to Zagreb hoping to find an internet café so that I could stay the night in Rijeka, another Croatian city but on the coast, and a few hours away by train. But the hostel that I was planning on booking was suddenly full – I was alone and had no knowledge of what to do, or where to go. I was across the ocean from anyone who I have always counted on to “save” me in times of trouble or anxiety.

I searched for nearly 45 minutes for a hotel in Rijeka, and couldn’t find anything for that night under 79 euro. I started freaking out. I wrote emails to strangers who owned cheap hostels and hotels that were unavailable. I wrote emails to my parents telling them I was safe, mostly to reassure myself.

While looking through my papers I got an idea. I had written down the name of a fishing town that I’d planned to take a day trip to while in Rijeka, called Opatija. I entered the town’s name in “booking.com” and found a hotel called Hotel Kvarner, which was advertised as “the oldest luxury hotel in Opatija”. It was the cheapest option, 36 euro a night. I hastily entered my credit card number and left the internet café to wander around Zagreb until my train.

The train ended up stopping halfway through the ride and the entirety of the passengers were moved to a bus. I was looking out the window at the Croatian countryside, entranced by the fields and mountains that looked so foreign and yet so comforting. A man in my car (who kept insinuating that I was English, rather than American) told me about beautiful things to see on the Croatian coast, and his own travel stories of going to the Grand Canyon and other places in the world.

I was surprised by the amount of kind strangers I met along my journey. The bus that I took from Rijeka center to Opatija ended up dropping me off more than 2km away from my hotel, and a kindly old nurse who was waiting for her husband to pick her up, and could barely speak English, gave me a ride to my hotel. The semi-english speaking man on the train/bus made sure that I was taken care of.

After Opatija I went back to Zagreb to catch a train to Venice, and then to Ancona, where I would take a ferry to Patras, Greece. I watched so much along my trip, becoming more and more introverted and smiling at the memory of my friends and family. I began to speak broken English in order for stranger to be able to understand me.

Everyone’s warnings that I would be unsafe if traveling alone through foreign countries were taken with a grain of salt; I met so many amazingly kind people who went above and beyond to help me. No one took advantage of me. They only wanted me to appreciate their country and remember it with good memories.

I was helped so much when I got to Greece by an amazingly kind 26 year old Turkish girl who drove me to Athens with her and ended up inviting me into the home of her Grecian friend who she’d met in a Masters program. They took care of me as if they’d known me forever. I wondered what I did to deserve all this blind kindness and the wisdom they bestowed upon me, a younger fellow-traveler.

In the end, I will always remember the moments and people that I encountered. Being alone was definitely scary, but I feel like I grew up more in a period of five days than I did in five years. That might be an exaggeration, but I highly doubt there will be anything to compare to the time I had on my spring break 2009.

Image of an old sketchbook of mine

The second book relating to Prague and travel that I am reading for the tutorial is called “The Prague Orgy” by Philip Roth. The book starts out mostly conversationally, and is told from the point-of-view of the author’s supposed alter ego, a writer named Nathan Zuckerman. The narrator has just arrived in Prague when the book begins, and he is talking to a Czech man and woman quite intensely.

The Prague Orgy was recommended to me by my friend, Ali, who is working as an Au Pair just outside of Prague. She had been reading it when we traveled to Vienna for a weekend together, and the title intrigued me for obvious reasons. The title, as well as Roth’s name, as well as the book’s size and plain cover, seemed mysterious and interesting. The line of the first page is “…from Zuckerman’s notebooks”, and many of the actions of the book are written as if they are actual diary entries. Although I ended up not liking the book as much as I’d hoped, the concept of an American writer trying to discover something about the city of Prague and its inhabitants clearly relates to me as I spend my semester here.

I have always been an avid journal writer. I have drawers stuffed full of old diaries detailing moments that sometimes make me cringe when I re-read them. I have been keeping a book here in Prague that is a combination of a scrapbook, a diary detailing my internal thoughts and emotions, a journal detailing my day-to-day activities and planned itineraries for trips or grocery lists, and a sketchbook. I am so glad to have been recording these things – yet at times I wonder if I am preparing for something like Roth’s, or anyone else’s, polished “travel notebook”.

In a class here I read an excerpt of a journalist’s take on Albert Speer. I found it so interesting that for his whole life he kept record of his journals and notebooks, as if to prepare them for later publication.

What good is a journal if no one else, especially the writer, wants to see it again? As I mentioned earlier, there are many diary entries of mine that make me want to throw the papers into a fire. Now, with the knowledge of such things, it’s as if I try to de-personalize my “diary” because I’m aware that other people will want to look at it. I’m aware that another, older “me” will want to look at it, too.

When we censor ourselves in our most personal pieces of writing, what do they become? Am I writing to be able to publish a fictional “alter ego” narration of my travels here? Will it change how I remember the past?

I’m not sure of the answer to any of these questions, but I will always try to record the happenings of my life. If nothing else, I think that this helps me remember.

St. Vitus' Cathedral: A photo I took on my first trip to Prague Castle

The Prague Castle is a site that tourists rarely miss. It sits high above the city, looking down upon Old Town, New Town, and the rest of Prague. I have been to the castle three times since my arrival here in January, and each time I seem to be astounded by something different.

The first time I visited Prague castle I was on a tour with about five other students. It was a beautiful sunny day and I concentrated more on taking photographs than on the history that our tour guide was explaining. I am in a class called Czech Art and Architecture, and have learned quite a bit about the castle’s history, as well as the other buildings on the castle grounds, such as St. Vitus’ Cathedral.

The Prague castle is known as the world’s biggest ancient castle. Even though I glance at the towering buildings every day when I get off the tram to walk across the river to campus, I am always astounded by its prestige and monumental qualities. The second time I went to Prague Castle was with a visitor. We walked up the hill, through the castle gardens, to reach the top and see the view. I didn’t have my camera with me that time, but my friend did, and seemed to be unable to stop snapping photographs. The look and feel of the Prague Castle is almost indescribable. It is not one view of the castle or room inside, but the entirety of getting there that seems so incredible. We walked back down the hill a different way and across the Charles Bridge back to Old Town after spending hours on the castle grounds.

The third time I visited the castle was with my class. At this time I had learned a lot about the history and architectural terms that had to do with the structures on Petrin Hill, and became more infatuated with each aspect. It seems to me that knowing the background or history of anything gives it more depth and a place in time. The years that it took to build the cathedral, the architect’s ideas and the political happenings when building began and was stopped – all these things greatly contribute to the present standing of any architectural or historical site. Being a tourist requires some background information, and I believe that I was better able to appreciate the Prague Castle each time I visited and learned more, and paid more attention.

There is always something new to learn, especially as a tourist. I have been advised by nearly every professor I encounter here that research is one of the most important parts of traveling and learning something new. This is not something I have just been told , but something I have truly lived. I will definitely visit Prague Castle again.

everyone said Český Krumlov looked like a fairy tale: I took this there. Was I "mystified"?

After I read Dean MacCannell’s “Staged Authenticity: Arrangements of Social Space in Tourist Settings,” I thought not only about my current situation as an American student living in Prague. I thought more generally about MacCannell’s thesis about the places we occupy with our societies and our lives: the idea of travel and tourism extends into our own world. The ideas of secrecy and comfort and the stages of “front” and “back” regions seem to fit into all aspects of life.

A large part of the ideas that MacCannell presents have to do with modern religion. He says that tourism “absorbs some of the social functions of religion in the modern world” (589), but it is somewhat hard to know what he means by both modernity as well as which social functions. MacCannell clearly writes from the perspective of an English-speaking westerner, and clearly has ideas about what ‘religion’ and ‘modernity’ are. They are his terms, his history’s terms. Not only does the idea and role of religion differ in countries around the world, but secularism has made its way into various public and private spheres in very different ways as well.

It makes sense, then, for MacCannell, to write about a search for “authenticity”. Having grown up in the United States, a country that is relatively young compared to other places that boast the title of “modern,” it makes sense to feel as if wandering through a country that has farther-reaching folktales and habits is akin to a religious pilgrimage. Because we Americans do not have a series of myths that are definitively “ours” (except for modern myths, in which ‘modern’ politics play a very large role both in the recording of history as well as in the execution of laws or standards), it seems only natural to seek something “else,” or to step through those boundaries that MacCannell identifies as the six stages in the movement from front to back regions.

Going back to what I began earlier concerning MacCannell’s personal identity in framing the idea of tourism, I think that the stages he describes makes sense, but I don’t understand the relation of religousness to his explanation. Truth and fiction both have always played a role in human lives, as well as manipulation (both conscious and unconscious), as well as appearances, but to say that these things “require some mystification” (591), is confusing. MacCannell identifies mystification as “the conscious product of an individual effort to manipulate a social appearance… [but] it can also be found where there is no conscious individual-level manipulation” (592). I don’t think that mystification would be a product, necessarily. Because of the many ideas of what other people’s realities can or could be, it simply doesn’t make sense for MacCannell to even try to define it, for when he does, he includes so many explanations that it becomes meaningless and vague. That is why I think that the stages of appearance and “being” in a society makes sense in relation to experiencing new places and people, but tourism does not necessarily carry a “mystical” vibe to it. I know this because I do not feel this way. I was raised by an agnostic and an atheist. I am not searching for something that I’ve lost. I’m just trying to discover and learn about all I can, and experience life in the process. Of course there are regions of comfort, and of course everyone has parts of their lives that we aren’t aware of. That doesn’t make the structure of reality into a plane of childlike feelings and authoritative acceptance. Just because we are familiar with something doesn’t make us aware or comfortable or accepting of that “truth”. Just because we aren’t familiar with something doesn’t make us childlike and naïve.