cash is the new plastic

Funny story:

So Casey and I stopped by the Namesti Miru Christmas market Sunday (i.e. last) night after coming back from a day trip to Kutna Hora. They are selling hot honey wine and Czech candied almonds. We indulge in both, congratulating ourselves on making good life decisions.

On our walk back to the dorm, I stop by the Bankomat (the European version of the ATM) to withdraw some cash. Buzzed, I insert in my card. I punch in my PIN number. An error message pops up telling me it's the wrong code. I concentrate harder and punch the PIN number in again. The same message pops up. The same message pops up three more times.

Then a new message pops up telling me that my card has been "detained" and to contact my bank for more information.

Confused and still buzzed, I go through the pouch I carry my cards in to see if there is a number I can call and realize that I've stupidly inserted in my credit card instead of my debit card. No wonder the PIN number wasn't working. I turn to the lady standing behind me waiting to get to the Bankomat to seek help. She speaks no English.

Finally, I figure out that I'm supposed to call the Euronet number listed on the Bankomat. The Czech guy on the phone tells me in a heavy accent that a technician service man (?) is going to come pick up my card, which will then be sent to my home bank. "IN AMERICA?!?!" I ask. In America, he says.

He assures me that my card is safe inside the machine, but that it will stay very much inside the machine, thanks to my bank tagging it for "security reasons." Couldn't they just ask me a couple questions to make sure that I'm me? I have awful images of hundreds of tagged and detained credit cards lumped together inside the metal stomach of this greedy Bankomat I now despise. I call my parents to have them cancel my credit card, just in case, and in the meantime realize that that was the first time I've heard my mother's voice since leaving the States in August.

And so here I am, once again abroad without a credit card.
I'm never drinking on a Sunday night ever again.

hot chocolate, prosim

The sun officially sets now around 4 pm every day and it's really ridiculously, mind-numbingly cold outside, but that's all become magically okay because...

IT'S SNOWING!

To celebrate the first snow of the year, Casey, Becca, and I watched "Love Actually" after our mandatory first-snow snowball fight. The Christmas market at Namesti Miru has opened up, the tree is being lighted in Old Town Square on the 29th, NYU has a student-organized, catered Thanksgiving feast planned for this coming Thursday that has a guest list of 170 people, and it's all beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

I love the holidays.

yes we can

Since I've last updated this blog, I've been to Cesky Krumlov (a UNESCO World Heritage Site), London, Krakow, Bari, Rome, the Vatican, Florence, Pisa, and Venice. But watching the crowds cheer in Chicago last night was the first time I was really homesick for America.

It really happened:
PRESIDENT-ELECT OBAMA!

I absolutely cannot believe it. We spent the entire night at a Sports Bar that was hosting an American viewing party, shouting and cheering every time a CNN projection popped up on screen. Around 4:45 in the morning, the place was closing down, Dom, Casey and I were crashing, and they still hadn't called it. We booked it in the cold to the nearest night tram, and then all of a sudden Dom got a text from his dad back in CA telling us that Fox News had called it. Then there was another saying CNN had called it. It was all over.

We were literally screaming on the tram, hugging ecstatic fellow Americans heading home from watching TV in the bars, fist pumping and skipping down the street. We got back to our dorm and ran down to the basement to watch CNN, getting there just in time to see John McCain give his concession speech. I crawled into bed at 6 am -- or midnight EST, depending on how you look at it. I didn't get to see Obama give his victory speech, since my head was throbbing from lack of sleep and dried out contacts, but it's all good because I just YouTubed it. Who watches TV on TV anymore anyway? (...5 points if you get the reference.)

em la sinh vien

I feel like my language skills are exactly one country behind where I actually am.

This past summer in Viet Nam, I felt I was trying to speak French everywhere -- and I actually did in a lot of places, including Bangkok.

But here? Instead of Czech, I've been using my very, very, very limited knowledge of Vietnamese to communicate with the local shopkeepers instead of Czech or English (...or French or Chinese). The reason? All the little shop owners down my street are Vietnamese, with stores selling bags, food, water, fruit, alcohol, etc. It's definitely not what I expected, but it's something weirdly comforting and familiar to have around.

The owner of the store down the street definitely recognized me today from the one time I popped in to look at bags and ended up just getting chocoalte (Milka strawberry joghurt). After a few conversational nothings -- including a mix-up where I thought they were asking me if I was a student, but I was actually replying "Yes, I'm an American student" to them telling me that I was very pretty -- I ended up deciding that the 300 crown bag I liked was "dat qua" ("too expensive"). Looking back, that was like $15 or so, so I'm going to go back to the store on Monday and just get it.

Then just now, on our way back from the gym (my first time at the Flora fitness one, and it felt so good to be on an elliptical again!), we popped into a little store to get a bottle of water and a Diet Coke for Amanda, only to find a friendly store owner who asked if I was Chinese, Vietnamese, or American and then tried to make conversation with me in both Vietnamese and Czech.

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure how much I was able to communicate to him, but just I was stepping out, I hear him go, "Em oi!" (which essentially is the phrase you use to get the attention of someone younger than you). I turn around, and he comes over and gives me and Amanda each a free apple.

Vietnamese: 1, Czech: 0.

bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens

There is actually so much to say about my last weekend in Vienna that I have absolutely no idea where to start and can therefore only say this:

The entire three days and three nights of feeling too much at home at Inga's little restaurant, wandering around in the freezing wind and drizzling rain, being in total awe of the Hapsburg's, getting creeped out by seeing real skeletons for the first time in the cathedral's catacombs, dancing to American music, meeting Austrian people (who seemed much friendlier and goofier than Czech people), having endless amounts of pastries, ice cream, falafel, hummus, strum, coffee, strudel, chocolate, wine, and schnitzel, and getting driven around by our new Austrian friend Philipp on our last night made all four of us girls really realize how much we were missing in Prague. The bus ride back was pretty much exclusively NYU kids trying to make it back before class Monday, and the four of us just couldn't understand how they were all ready to go back to Prague and we still weren't. Why didn't we make as many Czech friends as we did Austrian friends from Vienna in those three days? How did we find such charming little places and not have "our place" in Prague yet? Why have we eaten so much good food in Vienna, but haven't treated ourselves in Prague? Walking back from the metro stop, we realized that our dorm was definitely "familiar," but it wasn't "home" yet.

I've made a resolution to really discover and fall in love with Prague and so far am proud to say that I've been sticking to that goal pretty well. My internship's office is in Lucerna, arguably the oldest working movie theater in Europe, and it's located in this great (though touristy) area with tons of shops and cafes. Granted, the down side of working in such an old, historical building is that on my very first day I got stuck in the elevator because the elevator is wooden and nonstop. Little rectangular boxes come down that you basically jump into and then jump out of, but I was texting on my way down and didn't realize that I had forgotten to jump off at the bottom floor until I heard a shout and saw some guys peering down as I disappeared deeper, deeper, deeper into the darkness... only to see giant wooden knobs turn my little elevator box around and swing me back up about five minutes later. I was seriously getting worried though.

Besides Stupid American moments like that (others include finding out the laundry detergent we had bought was actually fabric softener and not detergent and telling my professor in Czech class "Thank you, urine"), my newest hobby/obsession is walking around until I find a random cafe that I like and sitting down to a cup of tea or coffee to journal or read for hours and hours (...by which I mean at max probably two and a half hours because I feel like I rarely have a block of free time longer than that during which I don't have to meet up with someone or go run errands somewhere...). It's helping me feel more settled in a city that I've always liked but haven't fallen totally in love with yet or really felt completely a part of. Maybe it's because everyone talks about how the Czechs don't smile at strangers that much, or maybe it's the totally unrecognizable language, but I think a lot of it might just be in my head.

And that I can fix.