Saket Vora

Wow what an awesome night. It’s 1am now on September 1st actually, but I just got back from the lounge. I went in the lounge at around 8:30pm. This is fairly typical. After getting my bike fixed, I came back at around 4pm and worked through some pages in my digital communications book. Lishuang and her Chinese friend were cooking dinner. I went to the lounge cause it’s nicer to work there…more windows + big table. At around 6:30pm I started to make bhatata and vatananu shak (potatoes and peas). It actually turned out VERY close to something my mom would cook! I’ve never made it before but I followed the steps she described and it worked out! Put some oil in a pot, then when hot put in some onion. Then I added two chopped tomatoes and four small chopped potatoes (which I let soak in warm water for 2 hours). I then added water and put in cumin, corriander, chili powder, and salt. Then I just let it cook, adding water when it was boiled off too much. After a while I added some frozen peas. I let it cook until the potatoes were soft. Instead of rotli I had to use tortillas instead, but it was ok. Pretty good! The chili powder here sucks though. I buy ‘extra hot chili’ from an Asian supermarket and it barely does anything. But yeah, it turned out a LOT better than my chana masala. Christian had some too and liked it.

Meanwhile I let Laure use my Internet cause she had to order books and her internet doesn’t work yet. After being back in my room for only 30 minutes, Frieder messaged me saying that Eddy and his French friends are in the kitchen making crepes. So I joined them and we spent the next two hours in the kitchen talking and taking turns making French crepes. We were flipping them out of the pan and over like pancakes too…Christian got really good at it by the end. It’s really like making dosas, only faster. I was pretty good at it. I have dosa mix that I will make one time. The flour was bread flour instead of pastry flour, so the consistency wasn’t perfect but they still tasted great.

After a while the conversation turned to cards, and Frieder explained to me a german game called Skat. I’ve always thought Bridge was the most complicated card game I knew, but now Skat is. Wow. Talk about a thinking game. It was crazy. There are elements like Bridge but the way you get points is totally different. After we played one round I showed them how bridge works, and we played one round of that. Then Marion (oh that’s right, we got our last room filled in the corridor: Marion from France. The French are taking over ) and her boyfriend explained Texas Hold’Em poker and we played one round of that. It was really great just sitting, talking, and learning new card games.

Anyway, must go to bed now. I’m meeting my engineering advisor EARLY tomorrow, then getting an ID, then going to my digital communication lecture in English, thankfully.

Over the past two days I have been trying to follow as best I can the developing situation that is going on in New Orleans and Biloxi. I have no TV coverage, just Internet. The damage that this hurricane has caused is simply staggering. I have always known that New Orleans has been a highly susceptible city, and now it is experiencing what many have thought of as a “worst case scenario”. I’m sure there will be plenty of finger pointing going on soon.

This damage has affected hundreds of thousands of lives not just in New Orleans and Biloxi, but family members and even businesses for these cities are industrial and commericial centers. It could take maybe two months before even rebuilding is possible, and surely years before the area has recovered.

In the short term, the region is turning into a humanitarian crisis. Lack of water, food, electricity; increase of illnesses and disease due to standing swamp water; and sadly looting by despicable people who shame the very idea of ‘citizen’. There is a special place in hell waiting for those who would use this terrible event to engage in criminal acts for mere personal material gain.

Even though I am far away now, my thoughts are on those who have suffered and those who are trying to help tackle to this incalculable catastrophe.

Over the weekend I went out biking around Lund with my camera. Found a nice city park with a fountain and lake in the middle. During my travels I discovered a true Indian restaurant and on the way back to the city center I came across a ‘garage sale’ that was setup on a three or four block stretch of sidewalk. I walked through the stalls which sort of looked the same but were selling some interesting items. Later I met up with Andreas and visited Spoletorpe, which is by the train station. We looked at some of his pictures and talked about cameras, then went to their basement and played table tennis. Afterwards we went out biking around Lund taking photos. Upon coming back to the dorm at around 6 or 7pm, I was delighted to find my internet working. The next three hours were spent catching up on things, Skyping with Nader and the family. I was planning on cooking chana masala that night, but got delayed and instead baked a ready-made pizza. It was quite good though. Afterwards I got with Frieder and his friend Paul and played Battlefield 1942, a co-op game. Great fun! On Sunday I took it easy in the morning, then went to Malmo with Andreas at 2pm to see the America’s Cup race. They had a great pavilion setup with a huge TV to follow the ships, but we wanted to see the ships ourselves but they were too far out at sea to really get a good look. We met up with Laure there but it started to get stormy and rainy so we headed back to Lund. This was the night I tried the chana masala. The spices were from a mix, not the raw ones, and so it wasn’t quite right. The pot was too tall and not wide enough. It didn’t really look like the chana masala Mom makes, but it sort of tasted like it. The biggest problem was the lack of chili powder. I bought some today as well as separate grounded coriander and cumin, so the next round will be better. Tonight I’ll use some tortellini pasta I’ve had for a while and I think it’ll go bad soon. On Wednesday I’ll try making bhatata and vatana shak.

I bought an iron today (dry iron, $35, ugh) cause the driers here wrinkles my pants really bad. I also bought my digital communications book. Funny thing is that the lectures for that course are all in Swedish, but the prof will hold 1 hour a week in English for us exchange students. The exercise sessions are in English though.

Now that much of the basic info has been noted, these journal entries will be considerably shorter. No luck on the internet for my room yet, the office closes too early and I am at other required meetings. I was able to use the hotspots in the AF building and Kårhuset, so at least the email backlog was taken care of. After the meeting I walked home and then took my bike to the supermarket and dropped 280 kr on groceries. I got vegetables and snacks, and I will be making pizza for the corridor dinner we will be having tomorrow evening. Oh yes, and today we had a mini Christmas in the kitchen today. We discovered two Ikea Starter Kits and tableware in our kitchen, and we opened them to find a whole array of vital essentials. We have plates, glasses, flatware, frying pans, pots, containers, mixing bowls, spatulas, etc. etc. It is great! We arranged the kitchen, and Yoko had three of her Japanese friends and they tried cooking some Japanese food. I also learned that ‘yaki’ means fried, so Yaki Soba is fried noodles! While I am here I will try to learn some basics in French, Spanish, Chinese, and Japanese. Mind you, this is basics as in ‘hello’, ‘thank you’, ‘excuse me’, ‘bye’, ‘please’, and some simple phrases. We were all going to go to a welcome party at the AF building for exchange students and had a pre-party in the kitchen. We waited an hour to get into the party ($10 entrance fee) and the cheapest beer at the bar was 48 kr. The music was typical dance-hip-hop, and it was very crowded. I bounced out after two hours, and walked back to the dorm with Nick.

The Swedish course today went a little strange today. Our usual teacher was sick and the professor we got after an hour never spoke a single word of English to us. He would explain the meaning of Swedish words using examples in Swedish. There were many moments where we all just stared at each other, wondering whether he was asking us a question, what the question was, and how we could ever hope to answer it.

The long corridor dinners continue to be the norm. Yuko has her Japanese friends over quite often because their kitchen pales in comparison to ours. One time she brought in a Canadian guy named Lloyd who was cool to talk with. He’s a math major, and he’s also a vegetarian because of environmental reasons. Frieder and Lloyd and I also began talking about the Millenium Problems in mathematics.

It rained for the first time yesterday, and while it is partly cloudy today the weather is getting colder now. I’m watching football now (ahem, soccer) and this is a Champions League qualifying match. It’s really exciting. Tonight there is another big welcome party at the Kårhuset for international students. $10 entrance fee, and that doesn’t get you any food or alcohol. Seems kind of silly. It’s a moot point anyway, because I could not even get a ticket to it due to a long meeting with my engineering advisor when I learned that I did not get into an engineering course I had requested. Oh well. I’ll call up Andreas and maybe head over to Spoletorpe tonight. Later.

I went into Malmö today, and was pleased to find that the Malmö Festival was in full swing. They had taken over the two large squares in central Malmö and setup an enormous stage there. There was live music, rides, and over hundred food and wares stands all along the streets. I had a $3 falafel that was great. I was going to go with Phillip and Helene, but Helene went on an excursion in the morning and Philip did not wake up until 12. After exploring the festival for two hours, I took a bus to the IKEA store. It was amazing. It is an enormous store, bigger than most anchor stores in malls. They had everything you could need for your home there, and it is ALL made by IKEA. I bought a floormat (should have gotten two), blanket cover, kitchen gloves, hand towels, and batteries. While riding the bus back to central Malmö, I spotted a Vodaphone store and walked out of there 30 minutes later with my Swedish cell phone. That’s one big thing checked off on my to-do list. My number is 0709-31 29 38. The phone itself costs $80. It is locked for use only with Swedish Vodaphone SIM cards, but maybe you can hack it to unlock it. Hopefully I can sell it back to someone going to Sweden in the spring.

After arriving back in Lund, I went over the kitchen at around 7pm to begin cooking for our big corridor dinner. It turned out to be a tremendous time. Christian and I first tackled the dough for the pizza, while Laure began her Greek salad and Eddy started his pasta sauce. At first we were just going to have salad, pasta, and pizza but Lishuang came and started some Chinese meatballs, Yuko and her three Japanese friends came and made some ginger pork, and Pablo made a Spanish potato omlette. We also had chips and salsa and Frieder made some French fries. Along with a bottle of red wine and some beer, it was quite a feast! The food was overall quite good, except the oven shut off halfway through Christian’s pepperoni pizza and so it was a little strange.

The best part was the company. Having German, French, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, Greek, and American people all around the dinner table talking is very enjoyable. The common language for everyone is English, and I am the only one to have it a primary tongue. Many times I was asked for the correct word or way to say something. We exchanged ways to say common phrases in all the different languages. I discovered that there might be a Bridge club here in Lund, and while none of my corridor mates knows Bridge, I hope to teach them! After the long dinner winded down, Christian brought his stereo system and Powerbook in and started some music going. He can actually DJ, but alas his mixing tables are in Germany.

We finally got around to the Swedish verbs in the language class. Quite strange…there are no conjugations. Afterward the class I went and got my internet form and did some grocery shopping for the general corridor. Everyone chipped in 20 kr and I got essentials like flour, oils, spices, aluminum foil, etc. The International Housing Office, which has to stamp my internet form before I can enter the long queue of people waiting to get internet, has irritatingly short office hours. They are open on three days a week, and only from 10am to 2pm. When you consider that on August 17 over 1,000 international students arrived in Lund (and who all have to complete this paperwork), having office hours like these is borderline insanity if the end goal is to run an efficient timely program. Last Friday some people waited in line at the housing office for two hours waiting to get their form stamped. It will be late September before I get internet access in my dorm room.

Except for this internet hassle, everything else is going great. I have found hotspots that are only a five minute bike ride from my dorm. The weather has been unusually wonderful – everyone says that it should be rainy and stormy but for the past 6 days we have had clear skies, warm temperatures, and a breeze. We might get some rain on Thursday, but only temporary.

The vice chancellor of Lund gave a welcome talk to the international students today. The Lund male choir performed at the talk and were very nice, singing songs in German, Swedish, and Finnish. Afterward I met the vice chancellor and talked with him for a while.

Corridor life continues to be extremely pleasurable. On Sunday and today, when I went in to cook dinner, I did not leave the kitchen/lounge area until 12:30 or 1am, but people sit and they talk for hours about all sorts of things. One funny thing that happened was that Lishuang heard some Chinese that drifted up through the open window while cooking and went to the window and started talking to two Chinese students below. She came back five minutes later noticeably more excited, because she must have been quite pleased to finally hear a familiar tongue!

Tomorrow does not look to be very eventful. I will go to Vodaphone or Telia and buy a phonecard so I can call home. I received two calls from home but did not answer them because my phone was silent during the chancellor’s talk. I called collect but they were not home. As the conversation tonight shifted to credit cards, I suddenly realized like a slap in the face that I really need to check my credit card bill. All the commotion and the lack of handy internet access has taken it’s toll. I will check it first thing tomorrow. The wireless router at the AF building had its DHCP shot, so hopefully they have fixed it now.

Now that much of the basic info has been noted, these journal entries will be considerably shorter. No luck on the internet for my room yet, the office closes too early and I am at other required meetings. I was able to use the hotspots in the AF building and Kårhuset, so at least the email backlog was taken care of. After the meeting I walked home and then took my bike to the supermarket and dropped 280 kr on groceries. I got vegetables and snacks, and I will be making pizza for the corridor dinner we will be having tomorrow evening. Oh yes, and today we had a mini Christmas in the kitchen today. We discovered two Ikea Starter Kits and tableware in our kitchen, and we opened them to find a whole array of vital essentials. We have plates, glasses, flatware, frying pans, pots, containers, mixing bowls, spatulas, etc. etc. It is great! We arranged the kitchen, and Yoko had three of her Japanese friends and they tried cooking some Japanese food. I also learned that ‘yaki’ means fried, so Yaki Soba is fried noodles! While I am here I will try to learn some basics in French, Spanish, Chinese, and Japanese. Mind you, this is basics as in ‘hello’, ‘thank you’, ‘excuse me’, ‘bye’, ‘please’, and some simple phrases. We were all going to go to a welcome party at the AF building for exchange students and had a pre-party in the kitchen. We waited an hour to get into the party ($10 entrance fee) and the cheapest beer at the bar was 48 kr. The music was typical dance-hip-hop, and it was very crowded. I bounced out after two hours, and walked back to the dorm with Nick.

First day of the language course. Swedish, I’m discovering, is worse than English when it comes to using letters that either a) are not spoken or b) are used in non-conventional ways. This makes Swedish rather difficult to sound out words. We learned a few basic phrases today, such as how to introduce yourself, say where you are from, what languages you speak, where you live, etc. Fairly typical stuff. I wish, however, that instead of feeding us these ‘useful’ phrases they teach us the elements of the language first, key verbs (like ‘to do’, ‘to say’, ‘to live’, ‘to go’, ‘to eat’, ‘to drink’, etc.) and basic forms of conjugation. This way we are given the tools with which to construct our own sentences and the skills to break down sentences we see in the town. Hopefully we will get there soon. On the bus ride over and in my class I met some University of California students and after class we went and got some lunch then walked over to the Kårhuset building where they gave an information talk. The arrival day activities I think overwhelmed some of these students, mostly because they are still adjusting to this environment.

Something I learned today: you cannot trust the sun to navigate. I also bought a bike today. Even though it cost more than I would like to pay, the vendor said I could come back next week when they are selling their next shipment and if I like something better I can trade. I need to buy a cheap battery operated rear and front light for it…they say the fine for not having it is 700 kr ($95). I found a store selling a cheap clock radio, priced at 200 kr ($27) but I will look around first. I have also decided to cut my own hair while in Lund. A normal hair cut costs 270 to 300 kr ($36 to $40). Yes, three times as much back home. I will see how much it is in Denmark.

The Internet for the dorm room is quite a hurdle to cross. You have to get a formed signed by the caretaker and by the international housing office, both which have limited office hours. Then the processing is done entirely by hand, so for us students living in the Delphi housing complex, we probably will not have an internet connection in our dorm rooms until late September. However, while this is quite an inconvenience, Lund has several free hotspots located in town, so tomorrow I should finally get a constant internet access.

The weather again was marvelous today; I’m hoping it stays this nice for a while. In my mentor group meeting today, it became clear that Lund is known for its partying. The social structure around here is formed with student ‘Nations’. These are student led organizations that provide a means for people to meet each other and to do activities together. Nations also have their own cafes and restaurants where you can get meals from. You have to join a nation to get your student ID card, and many of the nations offer the same kind of things. They also have a party or a pub night, and have galas or proms too. Nations can range in size from 4,000 to 150. One nation that caught my eye is the Smålands Nation, which is apparently known for being quite active in politics and such. It seems different enough from the others. Even though you join one Nation does not forbid you from attending other Nation activities. I do not quite understand the whole setup but I will once they start up. Tomorrow night there is a huge international welcome party with a 70 kr ($9.30) entrance fee. I will go to a) see what these ‘parties’ are all about and b) practically everyone else will be going too.

This evening I ran into Eddy as he was coming in and he and I brought all the appliances into the kitchen from the corridor and cleaned them. In talking with him I learned he has been to American many many times and has spent summers in New York, Philadephia, Boston, Miami, and Atlanta. Later on a lot of us came by, including Laure, Helene and her boyfriend (who is leaving tomorrow back to France), and Christian and Frieder from Germany. At one point Eddy, Philip, Laure, and Helene were speaking in one corner in French and Frieder and Christian in another in German. Quite cool. We decided to have a corridor dinner on Saturday evening, and it will give everyone a chance to meet each other and talk about what needs to be bought and such.

In closing, I will describe the diversity of our corridor.

Me – United States
Yoko – Japan
Judith – Austria
Laure – France
Pablo – Spain
Helene – France
Christian – Germany
Eddy – France
Frieder – Germany
Amelia – Greece
Lishuang – China

Arrival day. The train ride from Berlin to Malmö was actually rather enjoyable. Rather worn out from my 1.5 days in Berlin (carrying a 35 lb. pack nearly the whole time and walking 10 miles) I got to the Östbahnhof early and just chilled. The sleeper compartment was a two-bed with bathroom/shower. My suitemate spoke very good English with a smart sounding Scandinavian accent. He was in Berlin on a business trip, missed the plane, and bought the last ticket on this train to Malmö. He was headed to Copenhagen, where he works as a lawyer for the Coca-Cola Company for Nordic Affairs. He shared a can of Becks with me (something I must remember…when traveling or when you are going to meet new people in Europe, keep some alcohol and cups to share) and gave me a nice introduction to Scandinavia. He was very pleasant to talk with and seemed much younger than he was. I didn’t know this, but the train actually boarded a ferry and crossed the sea! We arrived in Malmö early and it was simple to board the commuter train to Lund. At Lund I followed a group of German students and soon a herd of students gathered. As we waited to go to Lund, I met two Canadians, two Australians, and a German. All seemed like good guys, though clearly were looking forward to the parties. Oh well. Whether it is a fault of mine or not, I am not one whose eyes shine with the anticipation of ‘wild’ parties where the booze flows freely. I also have cinderblocks for feet and can’t dance. Besides, many of these students arrived in Sweden or Denmark only a day earlier and were quite prepared to ‘go all out’. After spending the last two weeks visiting seven cities and wearing my sole a good centimeter, I confidently choose to forego the first day partying and pub crawling and instead attend to more pressing concerns: laundry! My travels and lack of access forced me to actually buy clothes in Berlin (I wanted to make a good impression in Lund, after all). Fortunately, the clothes are now being cleaned in the facility the next building over…and I must go check on them now.

First impressions of Lund: it is a small, relaxed town with a campus feeling. The weather together was marvelous – low 70s, sun shining. My room is in one of the farther dorms from campus; I can get there easily by train but I will most assuredly buy a bike. In reality, it might not be so different than how far my apartment will be from NC State in the spring. I got out of the check-in procedure at around 11 and was given transport to the dorm. Linda (actually Lee-schwam..sorry for the butchered spelling), who is from Shanghai, and I were the first in our corridor and we did most of the initial exploring. This dorm was recently renovated so the kitchen and rooms are in terrific shape (particularly the kitchen..three refrigerators, two stoves, big lounge area) but there are no numbers on the doors. We played a game of trying to see which room was ours. Linda and I also set about the task of putting up some temporary labels to help the others move in. I also met Emily, who is from Melbourne, Australia and helped get her bag up the stairs. On the second floor of this building, there is a right corridor and left corridor. She is on the left while I’m on the right. Linda and I planned on heading out to the town after settling in to look for groceries and some basic items. Emily also joined us. Before left I called collect back home to let them know all was ok. I need to find a calling card. We found a Vodaphone store but they were out of their cheapest cell phone so I’ll go there tomorrow. Seeing no real grocery store, we headed to a place near our dorm called Willys, which is a full blown grocery store. As Emily and I walked around getting our bearings, another guy must have seen us and asked if we were exchange students. That was how Nick, a chemical engineering student at UC Santa Barbara joined us and we explored this strange new supermarket together. He also lives in the Delphi dorm complex, but he is in building X whereas Emily and I are building N.

Anyway. It is currently 9:45pm and I am having a dinner of sandwich bread, peanut butter, brie cheese, an apple, and orange juice from concentrate. While my mom is likely to be frowning, fear not: I’ve located an Indian restaurant, no fewer than 3 falafel places, an a Mexican restaurant. Besides, such meals as tonight won’t linger for long after we get our plates and flatware settled and we can christen to the kitchen with some real cooking. I have bought some spaghetti and pasta sauce. I’m going to learn Chinese cooking from Linda. My mentor group, who I might not be able to meet fully tomorrow due a conflict with my Swedish language course, is also extremely diverse, with 16 countries represented (including one from India). Australians are perhaps the most represented among the people I have encountered. Though we come from different backgrounds and cultures, we seem to all share the trait of openness and eagerness to interact with people.

I will go to bed early tonight. I want to get a good rest after all this traveling. The language program will start tomorrow at 9am. I will try to get the Internet working tomorrow as well. It is the most asked question in the corridor.

I was by myself in Berlin, and only stayed there for less than two days because of my train to Sweden. Much of the city was reduced to rubble during the war, and then a good portion of it was held back under Soviet control. As a result, there has been an incredible amount of reconstruction and development following the fall of the Wall and the city has a modern look and feel to it. One thing that noticeably stuck out as I rode the trains throughout the city is the very large amount of graffiti everywhere. While you cannot see so much when you are in the main hubs and squares, but go just two or three blocks and you will see it covering a lot. And not just open walls – the graffiti will routinely be sprayed over store fronts and such. It seemed odd to me how this type of thing was accepted.

Because I was by myself, I shifted gears quite a bit while in Berlin. I would go 8 hours without eating if I didn’t feel hungry. I had to check out of the hostel on Tuesday morning and my train was not until 11pm that night. So I packed everything I had into my backpack and hauled it everywhere. I paid 9 euros and joined a walking tour covering the sights of the Third Reich, which was very good. Berlin is forced to deal with the painful history of the Nazis and as a result you do not see big prominent markers at key places (the spot above Hitler’s bunker is a ubiquitous parking lot…the subway station nearby uses much of Hitler’s red marble). The tour guide was able to point out many things that I would have missed entirely. We saw where Goebbels and Himmler and Speer and such had their offices, and learned a lot about the rise of the Nazis and more of the men. I went to the Checkpoint Charlie museum and the actual checkpoint has been preserved but it is entirely tourist-ized now.

I got to the train station early, at around 9pm, got my bags and then killed some time before the train arrived.

We arrived in Praha on August 12 at around 3pm at the Praha-Holesvice station. This train station was the most poorly laid out station of all the cities we visted. Perhaps it was just due to our platform of arrival, but it seems strange to have the information desk located what appeared to be a quarter of a mile from the platform. There were the small, unkept cobblestones that proved irritating for rolling bags, and I definitely think my nice rolling suitcase got a bit mis-aligned due to it. A travel tip for Praha: the taxi drivers can cheat you pretty bad, so agree on a price before even getting in the cab and have it written down. We kept a sheet with the address of our hotel and the Czech words (from a travel guide) “How much is the fare” written on it. The taxi drivers should know a bit of English or German, but get the agreed upon fare written down on the paper. Our taxi driver took euros. The currency in Czech is the Czech koruna (or crown), and during our visit it was 23 koruna to $1, which we approximated to 25. For every 100 koruna something was priced, we multiplied by 4 to get the USD amount. Much of the streets are cobblestone, which must do an incredible amount of wear on those tires. Even during the ride to the hotel, we were struck at how many pure tourists we saw. This observation was repeated nearly everywhere we went. It is said that during the high season, tourists outnumber local Praguers by nearly 2 to 1. As Brandyn warned me accurately: Prague is touristy! Our gameplan for Prague was light compared to Budapest and Vienna. There were no museums we were pressing to see, and a day trip to the Karlstejn was an afterthought. We took it easy in Prague, and spent most of the time touring the city and enjoying its feel. Out of the three big cities we visited, Prague had the ‘old Europe’ atmosphere that many people visualize in their minds. Narrow one way cobblestoned and windy streets, old architecture with vivid red roofs everywhere, and several squares. Beer is a true Czech tradition, and I was interested to see that the original Budweiser was Czech. No, this is not the Budweiser that we get in America (Anheuser-Busch got into a big naming battle when they tried to sell their stuff here). This is brewed in a Czech town that has the German name of Budweis. The Pilsner brand is also brewed in Czech in the town of Plzen, and both of these are displayed prominently on every block in front of the numerous pubs and cafes. Food wise, one finds many Czech and Italian food, but little else. If you look though, you can find some gems. The food, while decent, was nothing too remarkable. We were reminded again about European service style though. After seating you and giving menus, it can be 7 minutes before the waiter comes by to take your drinks. Alas, no re-fills were to be found in Praha. I tried sneaking one in, but they slapped a $2.10 extra charge to the bill. Again, this is perhaps the largest disparity between dining here and in America, another one being that most people pay cash.

One day we visited the the castle on the other side of the river. There St. Vithus Cathedral is located and it is a great example of gothic architecture. It was more ornamental and not as oppressive as the high gothic church in Vienna, and had very intricate stained glass. A side façade of the castle was also very nicely designed. At the cathedral, Sachi and I climbed 287 steps of this small circular staircase to get to an observation tower. The views of the city were spectacular, with a sea of red roofs and the bridges crossing the Vltava river. In the Old Town section of Praha, where our hotel was, we went to the large square where the famous astronomical clock is located. This clock does not tell the time; instead it shows information about the solstices, sun and moon info, etc. It is an elegant structure. At each hour the masses gather to see a little show when some small statues placed by the clock move and dance. I’m expecting a neat show, but the end result was actually rather laughable. I thought: the masses gather to see that? Oh well. Charles Bridge is a tourist haven, and there are hawkers selling their wares all over this pedestrian river crossing. There are also musicians, and one in particular was very cool. He had a dozen crystal wine glasses filled with water, and he would dip his fingers in a water-oil solution then move them around the rims of the glasses, causing them to resonate and create sounds. It is hard to describe, but it was really quite amazing to hear it. Unfortunately, I don’t have any sound clips. He wasn’t playing just one glass at a time, it looked as if he was playing the piano with his fingers of both hands over many glasses and at different speeds and motions. Karlov street, which is a continuation of the Charles Bridge as it gets to the city center, is always full of people and a thousand souvenir shops line it. This country definitely plays up its Communist past, and you can get KGB and CCCP shirts, pins, even old style Soviet military hats.

The last major thing I saw was the Jewish quarter. There is some history with it; Hitler had apparently spared this quarter of Praha to make it a museum to the ‘extinct race’. During the war, the exiled ruler of the Czech organized an assassination attempt on the Nazi ruler of Czechoslovakia and two Czech paratroopers ambused the guy’s car and killed him. They were chased into a church before taking their lives to avoid capture. It was rumored that the paratroopers came from a town called Lidnice, and in revenge Hitler ordered all the men in the town killed and sent all the women and children to concentration camps before bulldozing every single structure to the ground. The Czech people have gone through a lot of painful times. What I really wanted to see in the quarter was the Jewish cemetery. I don’t have all the details, but the cemetery ran out of space so they put another layer of dirt and then added names to the tombstones. It is more than 6 or 7 people deep now. The tombstones are not neatly laid out either, they are more crude than one often sees in American cemeteries and they jut out of the ground. Seeing it produces a strange feeling indeed.

We might have approached Prague differently had it been the first city of our trip. But even though we took it slowly, it was still interesting to experience.