Unexpected Czech Sights

Thinking of it, the Czech Republic was also full of weird things.

One unusual landmark in Prague was the TV tower.

I lived by Petrin Hill in Prague 6, so I was able to take a walk to a lookout point in this park, and see the Prague Castle to the left, followed by a sea of red rooftops flowing downhill to the Vltava River, crossed by old bridges, followed on the opposite banks by Old Town and pointy Gothic towers and historic sites, later engulfed by another sea of red rooftops, all eventually making their collective way under the giant, grey, modern structure of the TV tower on the opposite end of the city.

This tower would have a blinking red light at the top, and I remember taking cabs around that part of the city at strange hours of the night, and always looking upward out my car window, to notice the everlasting, consistent off-and-on glow brought on by the tip TV tower.

I went up close to it once, and it was all covered by sculptures of crawling babies. I thought this was rather appropriate.

Another weird part of Prague was the Museum of Communism. I don’t know what it’s history was, but it was somehow located across the way from a casino and a McDonald’s, in an area that had been apparently very capitalized. Within such an ironic location, it looked like a makeshift gallery that some people had thrown together by searching through their grandparents’ attics for some old propaganda material to throw together.

A bit outside of Prague was Kutna Hora, which had the famous bone church. This structure was hundreds of skulls, topped off by hip bones and femur surprises, arranged in the most beautiful way possible.

Individual human beings probably think of their own skeletons with a lot of regard. I had never seen a display where so many of them were just arranged all together, a bunch of passed human bodies from centuries ago actually having a physical presence in front of me. I hear of historic figures by means of literature or story, and maybe see some of their possessions in a museum, but here were a bunch of nameless humans from history actually present in front of my eyes, reduced down to their inner physical beings.

Riding the trains through the Czech countryside was also an interesting thing to do. The trains looked and acted like they had not been updated since the 1950s, so it felt like I was time traveling. I watched the movie, Closely Watched Trains, about a year ago, and it reminded me of these times.

I went the Czech at this time of year, almost exactly three years ago. My experience in this city and this country, and my nostalgia, would never be the same if it were not for all of these strange things.

Edinburgh

One great European adventure I had was my journey to Edinburgh, Scotland.

I didn’t really go to any tourist attractions, nor really do anything specific at all, but it was still just a magical time. The food and the weather of this city were not my favorite, but it was still amazing. I remember taking the plane ride there from Prague with my two friends, and exchanging our leftover Polish zlotny to somehow convert into British pounds to somehow buy us a couple of waters and a soda. We landed at the airport sometime late in the evening, when it was dark and the air was somewhat wet. We boarded a double-decker bus that dropped us off right downtown.

In fact, our couchsurfing destination turned out to be right downtown, which was a very nice flat rented out by a few friendly people in their mid to late twenties. You could literally see the castle right out the window, which either looked grey, or was permanently fogged by the eternal clouds and sporadic mists and rain of the greater United Kingdom…

Despite the rain and mist, I felt a bout of adventure and inspiration under my umbrella, through the wet sidewalks with old buildings, and through the roads where people drove on the wrong side. I felt inspired by the castle gates and monuments that I had no idea the history about, and also the occasional plaid-infested tourist trap store blasting electronic bagpipe music, which sold Braveheart paraphernalia, shoddy kilts, endless shot glasses and stuffed animals resembling the Loch Ness monster. I wandered through the above-ground infrastructure of this medieval-looking old city and its dark buildings that appeared like they had put up with hundreds of years of oppression and gloom.

We kept going back to this Christmas market that was set up in the center of town, part of which was full of German vendors selling all sorts of charming but useless crafted items, as well as lots of forms of holiday baked goods and sugar. We rode the Ferris wheel and the carousel to be extra goofy. We watched the merry people ice skating on the rink below, and drank wintery warm drinks to cheer ourselves under the dampening blanket of grey clouds.

Of course no trip to Scotland is complete without the pub trips. We found some with typical Scottish names, and rather than having DJs bumping it to those on the dance floor, they had live bands that usually played the same songs over again in a loop. One pub was full of people of all ages on a Friday night, and the band was playing “You’ll take the high road and I’ll take the low road” as every other song. Although I heard that song about five times that night, I’m sure these Scottish regulars had heard that song exponentially more than that. Another Irish-themed pub named Dropkick Murphys had a similar band that would play a version of Amazing Grace, but modified their verses by singing “I once was drunk, but now I’m found!!!!!” I heard this line at least four times.

One day my friend and I took a walk to the water. I was not sure which body of water it was, and was less sure where I was going, but managed to walk the way down and down, through streets and more streets of endless residential areas that vaguely reminded me of how residential neighborhoods of London were represented in the Disney movies I would watch as a child. These particular streets in real life were beautiful, repetitive, often gated, quiet and empty, and I kept walking down, enjoying a place I had never seen before.

Finally got to the water and it was bluish and more grey in the distance, with a tiny, brown makeshift beach and some seagulls scattered around. I wasn’t sure where the other side of the water led to, but it was gorgeous and unique and worth the long, strange journey. On the way back, we boarded the top of a double-decker bus while some mumbling individual in a dirty jacket kept talking to himself about the town being run by the Teletubbies. I half paid attention to this, and half paid attention to the moving view outside the window, seeing how the Scots built their neighborhoods in this particular route, their local version of supermarkets and hardware stores and convenience stores and routine establishments with their own cultural touch.

It also turned out to be Saint Andrew’s Day when I was there. I’m still not sure what that means, but there sure was a lovely fireworks show!

Reflecting on Scotland, I realize I was not really sure what was going on, knew very little about the country and maybe did not quite do anything in particular. I have to say it was the best non-particular trip I’ve had!

Unexpected Canadian Things

One of the best parts about traveling is coming across random things you would never expect. These particular things are usually really small. Sure mountain peaks, intense bridges, tall buildings, skylines, monuments, ruins, battlegrounds and ancient castles are very special, but hundreds of thousands of people have seen them.

I took pictures of some of the random things I would come across when I was in Vancouver, BC.

One strange thing I saw was this cheeseburger, which was actually a cake. I saw this at T&T grocery, which is a giant Asian supermarket full of delicious surprises. I have never seen lettuce situated on a cake, nor have I ever seen strawberries being used instead of tomatoes. I wonder which tastes better.

Another strange thing I saw was this sign at a restaurant. It looks like a fish is trying to jump out of its tank or bowl of soup or something by yelling at the lobster, but will ultimately be pushed down by chopsticks. Then there are random orange flame stickers put on strange parts of this poster, such as adjacent to the fish, and above or under Chinese characters. All the while, the lobster dances.

Probably the strangest things I saw were the signs hung around the hostel I was staying at. This grimy abode was owned by some short, crazy Italian man who communicated with the guests by tearing out note book paper and putting weird, mis-spelled, crossed-out and edited messages on the wall that he wrote in markers.

I could not ever tell if they were serious or not, but they were highly amusing.

PDX International Rose Test Garden

After living in Portland for a year and a half, I finally made it to the International Rose Test Garden.

I have to say that I never thought it was necessary because Portland is already called the “City or Roses” or “Rose City,” or whatever, all the time. They’re everywhere! There’s a medium-sized rose garden near my house at Peninsula Park, and every residential block you walk through is bound to have at least two rose bushes growing in front lawns.

However, I was impressed with this International Rose Garden. It is situated on top of a hill in a wooded area and manicured almost perfectly.

Each bush has a different type of rose displaying its particular color to the world, whether white or red or white with red tips, or small purple ones or huge pink ones. It was an interesting experience to get up and personal with the roses and examine their lovely form and sniff what they have to offer, and compare it to other smells I have come across in my life, whether sweet tarts or lavender or perfume or sugar or cucumbers or the other rose I had just smelled.

I think the best way to experience this place is to get really close with the specific batches of roses with all of your senses and display their unique differences, and then step back a bit, walk around, gaze over some new bushes from a distance and see and smell and hear their collective make-up.

This place also made me nostalgic for a small rose garden I would frequent in Prague. This one was up a hill in a big park near where I was living, behind that psuedo Eifel Tower and before some other strange-looking socialist dormitories. I would walk through it almost daily when the weather was nice or almost nice, and do what I did at the new rose garden, by touching and smelling and observing their individual characteristics and collective whole. Gardeners would often trim this garden to keep it neat, so I would pick up the expired flowers and their thorns from their piles on the ground so that I could bring them back to my tiny, spartan dormitory for subtle decoration. I think all rose gardens in the future will always remind me of this one…

Northwest Urban Lakes

While I was in Seattle, I randomly decided to go to a place called Green Lake. I thought it would be some small pond of no importance in some public park, but I was very surprised at its reality.

It turned out to be a decent-sized lake, with people all around swimming, diving off the diving boards, sun bathing, sailing, fishing and paddling. The water was remarkably clear for it being in such a densely populated city, and its shore was lined with a path with lots of lovely trees, flowers and blackberry bushes.

I was surprised at how clean the water was, I actually got in for a bit and went for a walk, far enough that the water would not hit the tip of my shorts. Others enjoyed the park by circling the lake, and there were lots of dog walkers, parents with strollers and joggers that look like they came there a lot.

Back in Portland, I wanted to go check out Laurelhurst Park in Southeast, the urban lake I am most familiar with. Though not Greek Lake, it is a pleasant place to daze off at the brown waters and watch the turtles basking and the ducks waddling.

I was surprised to find this lake had been immensely reduced. It was locked off entirely by a steel fence, and some sign said that they were draining the lake and taking the fish out.

There was one part where you could get sort of near where the lake used to be, and this was fortunately the area that you could also feed the ducks. The sign on the fence said that the birds would go elsewhere and then return once they refilled the water, but I guess a few of them were too stubborn to move. These birds were all funneling their beaks throughout the bleak mud, to navigate their new fraction of a swimming hole that was really a small puddle.

We fed them some burger buns through and over the fence, and talked about how strange this place now looked.

Last Days in the Van

I exited Vancouver yesterday via Amtrak. I had to walk down to the train station, past Chinatown, at about 5:45 AM. The sky was pink and grey, slightly dusting light over the many crackheads and shaded streets and block buildings. I liked this side of Vancouver, it was quite interesting. Getting through customs is of course not my favorite activity at the crack of dawn, but the Cascade line train was magically much nicer than the ones I’ve taken before. I am now in Seattle, taking in new things but reflecting on my past few days.

I decided that Vancouver is a city of amazing parks and useful integration of the nature into the city. It’s crazy that there can be so many immense skyscrapers and gridded activity with humans passing all around by so many of the urbanized nature sites with clear waters and tall pine trees.

I went through Stanley Park a couple times. The first time in, I of course did the normal activity to check out the Totem Poles. I also came across a number of tourists speaking a multitude of different languages, leaning over a dock. I looked down, and they were all observing a pack of raccoons digging their little claws into the sand to find clams, and devouring them like bandits. I learned at this situation that the word for “raccoon” is the same in many different languages, but I’m not exactly sure which ones they were. Of course the views of the Lion’s Gate Bridge, and the people that were staring at it, were quite amazing in their own way.

There is water all over the city, and many different points to check out the mellow waves, bridges and boats. The urban beaches are also top-notch. It is one thing to read simplified reviews of these beaches on tour guide websites, and another to actually breathe the Canadian salt air and feel the sludgy mud on your feet.

I checked out Jericho Beach one of the days, and was amazed at how such a big city could still encompass such a beach.

The view to the front was of green mountains with rolling peaks surrounded by white clouds, the view to the right was the city scape of Vancouver’s skyscapers and Stanley Park, and the view to the left which eventually drifted further off into the Pacific Ocean.

The water was quite shallow, so the immediate part of the water-beach break was infested by sand boarders sliding along the wet earth. The water had lots of huge and tiny boats, carrying people or cargo or both. I managed to get a sunburn at an unusual time of the day, but I was more focused on the picturesque combination of these factors. They held my interest of enhanced human access to cities and to nature in such proximity.

Compare and Contrast Travel

I have been in Vancouver, British Columbia, for 4 days so far. I have been staying in this downtown hostel that is more of a dirty flophouse in my opinion, which has been quite funny.

I realize that when I travel, I always tend to compare everything to other places I’ve been. Within a day, I made the observation that Vancouver reminds me of a combo of Toronto and Portland. I also have walked through Chinatown a few times, and decided I like it more than the one in San Francisco, less than the one in New York City, and of course more than the one in Portland, as it’s kind of a joke.

I was sitting in a park the other day on the water, and a German tour guide came by, and from what I made out of my knowledge of German, he compared the Lion’s Gate Bridge as the Golden Gate Bridge of this city, and Stanley Park as the Central Park. I have also walked down Hastings Street, which is supposedly the sketchy street of the city full of drugged-out weirdos, and decided it was no worse than Mission Street in San Francisco, or the west side of the Burnside Bridge in Portland. Yaletown looked like the Pearl in Portland. Downtown clubbing scene resembled home too.

Of course some things about this city are unique. In Chinatown, I became fascinated by this shop that had a plethora of dried-out dead animals, even though I’m a vegetarian. Never have I seen a specimen of double dead geckos on a stick!

I noticed there seem to be a lot of international ESL students, most of whom look Japanese and Korean. I notice these things because I used to work as an ESL teacher.

I also saw a seagull trying to scarf down a starfish, which is also a first. Later that day, I saw a seagull picking its beak at a flattened-out pigeon that had been run over on the street. Yum.

Well, I have a few more days in this city to go exploring. I am enjoying my time so far, and hope to run into more new stuff, or perhaps see if it reminds me of familiar places…

Remaining Issues

Now and then, I think of this time I was interviewed on the streets in Prague during a protest:

http://www.praguetravelguide.info/article-317421-en.html

It was for the Prague Post, an English-printed newspaper, but I am not sure if this is around any more.

It was a fairly rainy, dismal day, like many in Prague. The clouds and the moisture reflected on the grey cobblestones.

This day had a particularly odd feel because a few groups of neo-Nazi protesters were coming in from Germany and Poland into Prague. A few of them were held up at the borders of the country, but in this buffer time, hundreds of people gathered to come guard the Old Jewish Quarter against their unwelcome presence. The protesters did succeed, as according the article, none did make it into the Jewish Quarter, and many were arrested.

We were told to go by our old professor, Jan Wiener, in our European History class. This was quite likely the most bizarre class I’ve ever taken during my four years in college. It was held in our decrepit communist dormitory in a very institutional room with fluorescent lights at 8 in the morning on Tuesdays. Most of us were still dressed in our pajamas, as we got up from down the hall and walked into the room and listened to the short old man with white hair tell us about old history and his personal war stories. He never brought any notes, nor seemed to prepare much for the class, but would endlessly lecture for three hours about political relations and occupations and battles from World War I and World War II from his Jewish and Czech perspective, fermented from his 80-plus years of experience.

This was quite the strange contrast for someone coming from my generation, being in Prague as an enjoyable state and escaping from the confines of the formations of the New World across the Atlantic, now enjoying the beauty and the freedom that this city granted me and fulfilled my dreams. Those from two generations ago had quite a different story, and somehow history and its consequences brought us together in that room in that time.

Jan told us that the neo-Nazis were coming to town one day, and encouraged us to join him at the protest and blockade them out. His personal favorite way of conducting class was to tell us of old stories when he would be at a beer hall, and get up to punch out Nazis that would harass him, then sit down and finish his drink. He said he would not be afraid to throw out a few punches when they came around. It was quite interesting to imagine, as I saw him entering through the blockade, walking with his cane, held up by his wife, ready as ever to face his enemies.

Though there was confusion with the mixture of languages and different humans, and not everyone completely knew what was going on until later, it was quite an impressive site to see the turn-out. Around the break out of WWII, some people in Prague had tried to protest against the former Nazi occupation by assassinating an officer, only to have a suburban town destroyed and leveled. A concentration camp, Terezin, was also developed in this era. There seems to be no Jews currently living in the Jewish quarter, as it is an upscale area full of expensive cafes and galleries and avant-garde statues of Franz Kafka. However, it is still important that people feel the need to stand up to it as an effort against residual effects of the dark history that Europe has faced.

OBX

Nowadays, I often compare my beach trips to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. I went to Sauvie Island over the weekend, which is a beach and farm-lined island outside of Portland, and being there kept giving me vague flashbacks of this place.

The first time I went there it was during the summer, in 2005. From what I remember, we set up a camp ground on Ocracoke Island, and spent the night drinking wine on the beach, and later running into the ocean waves under the stars.

The following day we parked our car in the parking lot on the edge of town by some general store, and paid a man to escort us to an uninhabited island a few miles away with his boat. Though sunburned and eaten alive by horseflies in the daylight and mosquitoes at sundown, it was quite an interesting human versus nature experience.

After he dropped us off on a dock, he warned us of the shark-infested areas, so we had to make sure to steer clear of any possible predators in the water. The beaming sun made us delirious, and we had to find patches of water to cool off, where we wouldn’t be attacked, and could swim aside the wildlife and sparkling flying fish that would jump out of the water. At the end of the day, we had to turn on our camping stove buried in the sand to cook some ramen on the beach, while hundreds of mosquitoes somehow dove into the small, contained fire. We got in a tent to try to shelter ourselves, and made sure to kill every last one of them before we would rest. The following day, the man picked us up from the dock and drove us back to the designated parking lot on the end of Ocracoke. We entered civilization again, all battered and burnt and half-dressed with eyes half open, obvious products of weak survival skills against this area’s natural habitat. I believe we departed the coast to Asheville that day, to take on the landlocked mountains, as we were defeated by the coast.

I went back to Ocracoke about two and a half years ago, to escape the dark and dismal late fall of New York state. The way down, we took the ugly highway trip down Route 95 through the New Jersey turnpike, the dreaded drive-through of the Northeast, full of stench and Ikea and oil tanks and traffic and rusty industrial steel and crazy connections of multiple on-ramps through the most densely-populated American state, also known as the country’s armpit. A couple states later, we stopped off in Washington, DC, for the night, then continued on out of the megaopolis of extreme population, southward, into a warmer place.

The entrance into the outer banks is quite wholesome. It is a network of long islands with beach houses, and lots of little shops selling fudge and sunscreen and beads and kites and fresh produce, as you can smell the salty ocean air and see it flapping all of the flags hanging in the air. At one point we took a large, free ferry boat across the water, where people get to dock their cars on its platform, to hang out in the waves under the seagulls, and wave to other approaching ships full of jolly vacationers.

We reached Ocracoke, one of the more southern islands, and entered our somewhat-remembered campground. It has a bunch of sites set up around a circular parking lot, sectioned off right before the brush and cacti and sand dunes that then descend off and downward into the sandy beach. You must run uphill through the friction-packed sand trails and brush off the dozens of mosquitoes before reaching the summit and sliding down to the ocean area and have the breeze blow these pests away.

The beach there itself is quite slow-paced. The waves are mellow, and the water is warm for swimming. Once in a while, you can see groups of dolphins jumping up and down through the water in synchronized patterns.

The people there seem to encompass the slow pace. Once in a while, some buff men go out in their kayaks and face the windy water with their paddles. Otherwise, it is usually just groups of people hanging out on beach blankets, or a collection of men who set up fishing poles upright in the sand and wait around for their daily prey that they put in buckets.

By the end of the day, the sun sets on the beach, creating another warm mesh of concluding mellow colors. A spread of different shells and former sealife washes ashore, sometimes even a crystallized jellyfish.

I haven’t been in a while, nor do I know when I will go back. I hear stories from others that go to the Outer Banks, and compare mine to theirs’, or I see stickers on the backs of campers and try and guess which island they may have spent their time.

Karlovy Vary

One of the majestic treasures of the Czech Republic is a small resort town named Karlovy Vary. I think its name in English translates as something as Carlsbad, taken from its German name. It is a spa town that is located close to the border of Germany, in the western part of Bohemia. Though I did not make it to any of the spas or massage parlors, I found it an excellent daytrip out of Prague.

Some people envision relaxing resorts as some pristine and sunny paradises, excluded communities with climate control and tropical pine trees and soft sand and smooth breezes and complimentary margaritas while you relax on a float in a pool.

I think I like a place like this more. I remember it being grey, cloudy, cold and tucked in the hills of patched forests, some of the trees naked, some of them short and evergreen and some of them displaying their last stretch of November browns and yellows, flaunting what they still could.

Amidst the uncomfortable climate and wetness, you can touch your hands under the designated hot spring fountains, and get a taste of burning mineral water for some interesting geological contrast.

The town was full of many Russians showing off their flashy fur coats, likely relaxed by all of the massages and spas and treatments that this town has to offer. There were also many suspended cardboard cut-outs of Bechorovka hanging along the river that ran through the town, the Czech Republic’s national liquor that tastes somewhat like gingery, syrupy, sugary Christmas. Another wonderful warm-up is the smell and taste of the huge, flat waffery cookies that they seem to have in markets all over this country, but in Karlovy Vary, they place them in a flat press and sell them to you on the streets.

One final destination is the ascent up the hills via a designated tram car, to a small panoramic glass tower where you can look below upon the streets and structures, all within a colder elevation with circling snow and wrenching winds. This spot is probably a scenic scam by the spas and the springs and the warming liquors and pastries to make people come back down for warmth treatments.