misplaced88's blog

A view from my plane window when I came to Prague four months agoIn a little more than two weeks, I'll be boarding a plane, eating a stale airline role and probably crying a little.

In a little more than two weeks, my European adventure will be over. I'll be back in the states, struggling to find a summer job and fighting with my sister. I'll be able to turn on the tv, order take-out and go grocery shopping without randomly throwing cans that look like something I'd like into my cart. My semester in Prague will be over, and I'll be back where I started four months ago.

Maybe I'm being over-dramatic, because a lot has changed in four months. The experiences I've had have been jaw-dropping. I've been to seven countries and 15 cities from the projects of a Roma settlement in the Czech Republic to the wealthiest street in Paris. I've eaten beef tartar in a four star restaurant on the Seine and counted my euro cents to get a role in Italy. I've skied down the Alps, hiked up the Cinque Terre, walked around Budapest, gone under the fortifications of Vyshred and wandered through the winding streets of Paris. I've missed trains, taken too many buses and walked until there were holes in my shoes. I've laughed everyday, cried only once and felt like I'm the luckiest girl alive every morning when I wake up.

I don't think it will truly hit me until I'm home, whiling away my summer days as a waitress, serving hamburgers and thinking of the way the river sometimes shimmers from the Prague sun. I know it will drip out of me, every conversation peppered with some reference to my time abroad here. I never want to let that go. Time has flown by astonishingly fast, and it's left me disoriented and shocked.

The people I have met here will always be special to me. We've shared so much and laughed through most of it. Even in the most frustrating moments, we all found a way to brush it off and smile. I respect the people here so much because of their adventurous spirits and inspiring ambition. We were all brave in coming here and even braver for boarding our planes and resisting the temptation to find an apartment and stay forever.

NYU did an incredible job of making my semester perfect. The trips I've been on have given me such a diverse view of the Czech Republic, and I'm grateful for those experiences. I wish everyday that college lasted longer so I could fit in one more semester abroad. The email for summer sessions is still sitting in my inbox...

I know I'll turn to this experience often, maybe even dive into my memories and float in them for a day. I'll be sad to leave, but so happy at what I have to bring back with me. The first thing I'll do after unpacking is find some good travel deals. A mid summer jaunt to Spain doesn't seem to far out of the picture.

When I get back home, I'll just give people my URLTwo more blogs to go and I don't think I've actually turned any of them in on time. Maybe I shouldn't be admitting that when finals are just around the corner and GPAs are creeping into every one's minds, but studying abroad has drastically loosened my perception of the word "deadline." Late or not, my posts have been a chance for me to look at Prague in an often micro view and explore and reflect on places and people I might have passed by. I've never had a blog before, and most of my journals have remained half filled. Not one to spend much time on the computer and known to some as a technophobe, my excursion to the 'blogosphere' was something I really enjoyed. I can only imagine myself with a twitter account, BBM-ing and IM-ing, g-chatting and skyping while keeping up with my new online community…or maybe not. Either way, I liked tossing around the phrase, "Oh, I wrote about that on my blog." While I'm sure only the people in the class read them, it was fun getting feedback and comments and reading about everyone's experiences. It's something we've all shared this semester, and even though we all had to write on the same topics, the variety of stories opened my eyes to how big the world really is and how much I want to travel and experience the things my peers had the chance to experience this semester. I have to say I wasn't too much of a fan of DeBotton's Art of Travel. I think a wider selection of travel readings from more contemporary authors or perhaps by authors from the places we're all studying would have been a nice way to see a place. Overall, I enjoyed the course a lot. On top of my two journalism classes, my fingers were permanently affixed to the keyboard this semester, but as an aspiring journalist, I've discovered my voice, my passion for travel, and my love for writing and sharing stories.

I'll never get tired of this viewWow, how fast this semester has flown by. It’s incredible to look back on the things I’ve done and seen while studying abroad and I’m experiencing a kind of disbelief that in less than a month, I’ll be back in the States, where ordering food, getting around, and making conversation are almost effortless.

When I said I was going to be studying abroad in Prague, most people asked me why. “Why not Paris? You’ve taken years of French, aren’t you going to use it?” my roommate asked me.

“Why don’t you go to London, I hear it’s like a European New York City,” a few of my friends commented.

I didn’t want to go to New York in Europe and the euro would’ve made me broke in a month. Going to Prague was my chance to do something different, without completely taking the plunge and studying abroad in Ghana. (I think my grandmother would have had a serious heart attack.) I couldn’t wait to experience Eastern Europe while still being able to explore Western Europe. My obsession with travel and living abroad was finally going to happen and because Prague has the benefit of being smack in the middle of Europe, I took full advantage of traveling everywhere.

I can’t even fathom the amount of countries I’ve seen and the experiences and pictures I’m now stockpiling. I’ve spent almost every day here feeling lucky just to be alive and experiencing such an amazing semester, and I wish I could do it again. I’ve learned so much about myself and I feel like I have grown up in these few months. I suppose I’m a bit world-weary in a way, but I’ll never get tired of exploring.

Another new habit: trying to catch every Prague sunsetBad Habit No. 1: Biting my nails.
Bad Habit No. 2: Leaving my clothes on the floor
Bad Habit No. 3: My addiction to Real Housewives of New York.

I could probably go on like this for a while, a list of my bad habits piling up like my unpaid credit card bills from this semester. (Bad Habit No. 4). Sometimes during the day, I find myself becoming more obsessed with all the things I do wrong than the things I do right. But after spending the last three months studying abroad in Prague, my bad habits seem to revolve less around me and more around the city that I have spent such a long time doing everything I can to experience it. For example, my new habit is to try something new everyday. This “something new” almost always involves something with a fair amount of sugar. Pastries, wafer cookies, gummy candies and chocolate bars seem to come in endless varieties here, and in an attempt to assure that I come back to the US having sufficiently tried all sorts of Czech delicacies (and added 10 pounds to my frame) I try to continue this habit.

Luckily, I have also made it a habit to forgo taking the metro and tram systems to see the city by foot. Prague is an incredibly beautiful and architecturally rich city, and much of it can be lost when whizzing past on a hot and crowded tram. Every building is different, their ornate facades and bright colors making Prague a rainbow city, even when the background is the slate grey sky that seems to be a permanent fixture of the Prague landscape.

I could name many habits that have shifted and changed since I’ve been here just as I have changed since stepping off the plane in January. I knew this semester was going to be different and I hoped that I would be too. With less than a month to go, my fingernails are still short, but some of my older habits are fading away like the sun that has finally emerged from the wintertime clouds.

One of the many churches that Marie knew everything aboutMarie Homerova is probably the smartest person I know. While I’m not a student in her class at NYU in Prague, I’ve taken a few field trips with her and her unbelievable knowledge on absolutely everything blows me away. Marie is the professor for Czech Architecture, and with that title apparently comes with the knowledge of every piece of architecture in several cities. On my second day in Prague, her hour long tour of Old Town opened my eyes to the wealth of art and architecture visible—and often hidden—on almost every surface in Prague. While I knew that Prague was a rich center of many different styles of architecture, the sheer breadth of it, and her knowledge on it, made Prague even more complex and layered than I could have ever imagined while flipping through my Lonely Plant Guide on the plane ride over.
When I say that Marie knows everything, I don’t think I am that far from exaggeration. On a trip to Olomouc one weekend early in the semester, she pointed out every fountain and church; she knew every detail of the histories and made them interesting. Her beautiful accent and quiet sense of humor made me interested in the crumbling alabaster facades. Her charming affirmations of her facts with an “Is it so?” made my friends and I smile and we’d find ourselves trying to imitate the genius of this wonderful woman.
Her genius was solidified in my mind when, after a trip to a silver mine in Kutna Hora, Marie interrupted the guide at the mine to interject more history and interesting facts. The woman at the mine makes her living on knowing everything about it, and yet Marie knew just a little more. Her quip after the tour of "That woman didn't really know what she was talking about," made all the students present aware that Marie was brilliant, and perhaps looking to show up the mine tour guide!
While I know that I will never be able to cultivate the knowledge that she has stored in her mind, it’s nice to have a small peek into the rich history of the Czech Republic. She is inspiring to me because she has allowed us to look at Prague with an artist and historian’s eye, and I feel fortunate to have such an insider’s view of the city I’m living in.

Not too far from the truth...I walked into my kitchen this morning and my feet were coated in a thin and crumbly layer of granola, sugar, salt, and dust bunnies. The sink was overflowing and a dollop of yogurt sat gelatinous on the counter near the coffee pot. A half-eaten bowl of popcorn sat in a finger-printed metal bowl and our entire cabinet full of glasses seemed to move itself onto the kitchen table. I wish I could say that this was a nightmare, or perhaps a gross exaggeration, but unfortunately, I live with 10 girls that find it incredibly difficult to flex their arms in such a way that the dishwasher opens and their dishes go in. Everyday, our kitchen becomes the scene of another food fight, without the actual throwing of food. My mother would have a conniption if she saw its state this morning, as I rub the sleep from my eyes and feel my stomach turn. I’m thirsty. The tap is covered by a pot with an errant strand of pasta clinging to its side. This kitchen has obviously seen the signs of our semester in Prague. Responsibility seems to have disappeared this semester, much like the sponge that is hidden beneath this disgusting pile. The idea that we’re supposed to be adults seems to be lost on us, as we stay up late, eat crap, and pretend that magical fairies will somehow descend and clean the dishes we leave out, day after day. I guess it doesn’t help that we live in a somewhat magical city. Prague, while over the course of the three months we’ve been here has become less of a fairytale land, the feeling that we’re studying abroad in a place so rife with history and culture continues to keep me in a daze. I only wish that at least one of us would snap out of it and pop this surreal bubble we’re all in. Maybe the clatter of a thousand dishes breaking as I try to maneuver my water bottle under the sink will do the trick.

This is where my train should have been It’s like I’m in a movie. A woman waits on the platform and wipes away a single tear from her face. Her hand moves in slow motion and I see it from a far. My own breaths are labored and rushed as I struggle to run faster than the slowly moving train. This can’t possibly be happening, I think to myself as the vertebrae in my back bend and strain against the weight of my heavy backpack. “Wait!” I cry, the sodden stench of train exhaust puffing in my face. “Stop the train!” I cry louder.
My fingertips can practically feel the corrugated metal of the side of the Trenitalia train that was supposed to bring me and my traveling partner to Cinque Terre Italy. We had gotten to the train station, only to find a line snaking through and ending much farther than we had anticipated. Our tickets were finally time stamped and handed to us at 8:59. The train was leaving at 9:05.
Train stations are difficult to navigate anyway but the whirring of the changing numbers and times, the people that lull around and the unhelpful conductors create an automatic atmosphere of panic. We ran around for three minutes, each second ticking past me, and landing with a heavy thud in the pit of my stomach. After realizing the train that we were trying to board was bound for Venice, it was with an acute horror that I have never before experienced that our train was three platforms away and slowly creeping out of the echo-y dome of the Milan train station.
In between fast forwarding and slow motion is where I am right now. My hands grip the metal handle and fling open the door of the train. My traveling partner shouts my name, but I know that I can make this! I have the surreal experience of imagining myself hoisting myself onto the train before a train worker shouts no in my face. My panic swells and rises and I shout futile “help us!” as the train picks up speed and disappears.
I can’t face my friend. I can’t decide if I should cry or laugh. I turn around and she looks pale and ashen. “You have got to be kidding me!” we both say at the same time. At once, a tiny jingle of laughter escapes from my mouth, and we walk away, my dreams of an Indiana Jones style train jump dashed much like the hopes of us getting to Cinque Terre before noon. I suppose it wouldn't have been interesting to actually have things go as planned...

What will this unlock?Yesterday, I boarded the tram, rode it three stops, walked through the now-familiar cobblestone streets of Prague and went to class. As I sat listening to my professor discuss Kafka, I thought of how routine my life here had become. I’ve found a rhythm here, and it beats at a slower pace than my life in New York. While I haven’t felt homesick here, I sometimes find myself day-dreaming about New York, and imagining my shoes pounding the “concrete jungle” as my friend recently wrote to me. While reading Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, the story of a nine-year old boy who travels around New York City in search of someone who can answer questions about his father who died in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, being brought back into the world of New York City brought me back away from the quiet mystique of Prague and into the thousands of facets of life in the city.
In the novel, a boy who lost his father in the 9/11 attacks finds a mystery key in his father’s closet. He then spends close to eight months trying to find the origin of the key by going around the five boroughs. It is the stories that he collects during his travels that help him get through the loss of his father. The stories people tell bring new life to a place, much like my experiences traveling this semester. Every place has a different story, and as a traveler, it is our goal to find it. Like the key without a lock in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close each place has its mysteries and secrets.
In Prague, everyday I find a new shop or side street, I come upon a building that has a detail I’ve never seen. I make eye contact with a person on the tram and I avoid it with someone else. Through these encounters, I’m learning just as much about myself as I am the place. The more you uncover, perhaps the more you are aware. My hunger for travel and exploring will be difficult to curb after I leave because Prague is so rich with doors to unlock. And at the end of the semester, I can leave my own key hidden somewhere among the cobblestones and intricate architecture. I wonder who will try to find the lock.

A poster for the ballet "Swan Lake"It’s almost 7:00, and I’m still waiting outside the National Theater in Prague, two tickets to the ballet becoming damp in my sweating hand. Finally, I see her, and I shout her name across the square. She’s running, her heels clacking on the side walk, followed closely by my other friends, teal tulle, hair ribbons and satin purses becoming a jumble as we race up the steps and through the thick red curtain. The usher waves us through—we’ll have a hike. These free tickets don’t mean front row seats, and as we rush up the seven flights of stairs, I joke that I’m not getting enough oxygen. No one else has time to laugh at the joke, and if they did, it would be swallowed by the beautiful sound of a symphony, the sound of hundreds of stings being plucked and tuned. My heart skips a beat and I strain to listen as they tune, a single oboe note ringing clear even from behind the carved doors of the theater.
I finally find my seat in the dark, the faded crushed velvet brushing against my legs, and I can feel the woman sitting next to me glare at me through the antique opera glasses she rented. I feel ashamed for being late, but the feeling is quickly replaced by euphoria, as the orchestra swells with the rise of the curtain and four perfect ballerinas wait motionless for the music to fill their bodies. Suddenly, I am frozen as the dancers move, my eyes the only part of my body capable of fluttering the way their feet glide across the stage. Even my breaths lack the grace of their outstretched arms; they move in perfect symmetry, their tight buns and pale faces a stark contrast to the warmth and beauty the choreography exudes.
The theme from Swan Lake emerges like a loose thread, and everyone holds their breath as the oboe plays its solo. A single ballerina stretches and arches her way across the stage, her body contorting and flowing, even her fingernails seem to feel the depth of the music. And in an instant, the act is over. The ballerina folds her body to the floor and seems to disappear under it, and the curtain comes down. The lights come up, and the faces of the audience mirror my own. We are disoriented and starving to pull the ballerina up from the ground and watch her fly.

Neon fanny pack not included I’m a tourist. As much as I try to avoid that classification, I can’t help it if I want to walk across the Charles Bridge or have a Euro Hot-Dog from the stand outside Tesco. If I make it to Paris, I’m going to see the Eiffel Tower, because that’s what people do. Millions of people walk up the Great Wall of China; they pretend to hold up the Leaning Tower of Pisa, they visit the Pilsner Factory and drink a lot of beer. The first thing I did in Prague was walk down to the Charles Bridge and take photos. I fought my way through the crowds, grumbled, and then slung my arm around a statue and said cheese. I joined the ranks of the tourists that I swore I wasn’t going to be like and then suddenly found that I was. While these experiences may not be authentic, how can authenticity be defined? The only way to truly have an authentic experience is to actually be a part of the culture. While in Prague, I eat a lot of goulash, but I order it in English. While goulash may be authentic, speaking English is not. It is in these moments, where cultures collide, that a balance is struck. In my travels, I’ve had a lot of experiences. I can’t think of anyone else who had to strip down naked and be massaged by a Hungarian man at a bath in Budapest and feel the way I felt about it. I saw a lot of people skiing down the Swiss Alps last weekend, but every single one of us fell in a different part of the slope—we left our imprint in a different place. That is what makes an experience authentic to you—millions of people in the same place, at the same time, sometimes doing the same thing, but at the end of the day, when we’re sharing drinks, a bag of chips and travel stories, everyone’s voice sounds different.