New York

Yes...this past weekend I traveled to NY...for USY group leader weekend!

It was a very weird experience being back with loud Americans for a short period of time...

Now i'm back in Prague for a week of finals (4 -10 page papers, 4 exams and 1 presentation) literally Monday to Monday. Then I have a couple of days to relax and I leave for Amsterdam on the 14th and am home for good on the 18th of May!

Bratislava and Brno

Eastern Europe! Yeah!
We went to the Slovak Pub for lunch. It was huge and every chair was whimsy and could break any minute. The menu was funny and had a lot of student options...

We went to two castles in Bratislava. The Devin Castle and Bratislava Castle. Devin is to the north where the two rivers meet. It was beautiful and out in the middle of nowhere. Napoleon destroyed it so no it is mostly ruins. Then the Bratislava castle is being restored for the next 5 years so we walked around up there anyway...

The weekend we went to Bratislava was Bratislava weekend and museums and tours were free. We took a free city walking tour but the boat ride we didnt get on in time...because the Slovaks all cut the line and pushed ahead in front of us. Then we went to the National museum and the exhibits cost money...on free museum day...hmmm

Overall...nice town...not really like the movie Eurotrip


Then we went to Brno which is the second largest city in the Czech Republic and saw the Fed Cup match between the Czech Republic and the US. It is a big international tennis tournament. We were the only loud USA fans in the whole arena. Our seats were in the last row but after the first set we moved to the first row on the other side behind the american team.
The crowd was really loud after a point was scored with boom or thundersticks...and then everyone got quiet for the serve. If the Czechs won the point, the crown would scream and beat their sticks together, and if the Americans won, Dan and I would yell and clap our thundersticks and we would be the only ones.
The American players and coaches noticed us and started to cheer at us...we had to leave a little early to catch the bus back to Prague...but the Americans ended up winning!

Budapest

The weekend I came back from Israel, my whole program went to Budapest. It was funny, cuz I just flew through Budapest on my way back from Israel and then took a 7 hour bus ride there from Prague the next day.
We learned about the Jewish Community and the present state of anti-Semitism in Hungary. We went to the Dohany Synagogue, the second largest in the world. We went there for services and there were about 80 people there...but they told us it is full on the high holidays. I saw Viki who I met in Prague who lives in Budapest and she told me to come to shul Saturday morning at her shul. So I did...it was nice.

There are around 100,000 Jews in the city which is huuuge cuz prague has about 4,000. Most dont identify as jewish but are technically Jewish. The neo-Arrow cross party has just become more public there. This party led Hingary in the interwar period and was actively anti-Semitic. We were told about them and they wear arrow cross flags on the arms, but we actually saw them. There was a guy there who was wearing a Nike swoosh shirt but instead of saying Nike it said Nazi. It was scary...

Budapest was a nice city overall...very beautiful

Israel for Passover = AMAZING!

I loved being able to eat everything!
I had:
Burger King on matzah bun and chicken wings
Schwarma on Matzah
Turkey Burger on Matzah bun
Chicken Burger on Matzah bun
Kebobs
Steak
Lamb Ribs
and lots of other stuff...

I saw people in Jerusalem which was great! Literally I was outside at Hebrew U for about 2 hours on Shabbat and saw everyone I knew!

Went to services at the kotel, went to Paul's cousins apartment in the Cardo...Dinner was amazing! There were a bunch of people and she made a 10 pound roast and had chicken and salads and guac and egg salad and everything! It was great!

Saw Josh Rabin...met with my wheels staff (minus Avi) for a steak lunch at El Gaucho...

Went to Tiberias...went biking around the Kineret...ate at the decks!
Went to Haifa...chilled there

Flew back to Prague!

The Three Presidents

Our program took us on a trip to Terezin to see a ceremony with Shimon Peres, the Pres of Israel and Vaclav Klaus, the Pres of the Czech Republic. It was a very small ceremony with about 50 people there which was really cool.

Then Obama came to town! He spoke a lot about Czech history which was suprising and talked about working together to stop Iran from having nucleur materials.

Pics on Facebook...

Vienna

Our train was delayed for about 2 hours because it looked like the train hit someone...but we're not sure. We finally got there, went to the hostel and then took the metro into the center of the city where we were conned into buying tickets for the Imperial Orchestra from a guy dressed up in a cape and hat. It was pretty cool. It was about 10 musicians playing songs of Strauss and Mozart and others. There were two opera singers and ballet dancers as well.
We went to the top of the Stephensdom cathedral and had great views of the city. We then wandered to the Stadttempel and sat in on shabbat morning services for about an hour. The cantor had a great voice and there was a choir which was cool. Then we walked down the Naschmarkt which was a street about two miles long and it was packed with millions of stands selling fruits and veggies and spices and meat and fish and olives and nuts (kind of like the shuk in israel but bigger). Then at the end, there was a huuuuge flea market and people were selling really anything you could think of, from sink parts to dolls heads...

Then we went to the Kunsthistorisches, the Fine Art Museum and looked at a lot of paintings

Then we tried to get standing room tickets for the Staatsoper, the main opera house but we didnt find the line in time and were about 50 people away from getting tickets, so instead we saw a movie...Pink Panther 2...it was horrible and we knew it was going to be horrible, but all the locals in the theater were laughing at the stupidest things which made it mildly entertaining.

On Sunday we went the the Schloss Schonbrunn, the Habsburg Palace. It was very big and the grounds were huuuuge. It was also pouring rain. We went up a big hill to the top and had a view of the palace and grounds which was nice but i'm sure it would be nicer in the spring/ summer.

Poland

It's been a long time and now that I need to procrastinate while studying and writing papers...its time to catch up a little bit. Pictures are on facebook

Poland - Krakow:
The town is great. There is a big market square in the center that is very big...i think they said it is the second largest in Europe. We were able to meet some Polish students in Krakow who are studying European Studies and the Holocaust which was pretty cool. They showed us around the city that night as well. It was very interesting to meet these students and see Poland from their perspective, as where they grew up and now live.

Warsaw:
Pretty boring. Pretty old town but all reconstructed to look old...
We went to a reform Jewish synagogue and had dinner there. The Rabbi there looked like Dick Cheney and liked to talk a lot and sing for us. I tried to join in some of the singing so as not to embarrass him. The Jewish community in Poland was very small and in this house they were having a concert that night and a lot of people showed up which was really surprising.

Auschwitz:
I save this for last because for me, it was not the main focus of the trip. I have already been to Auschwitz and it was obviously important for me to be back there, but it was everything else on the trip and the perspective of meeting with students both in Warsaw and in the town of Auschwitz that really made my experience in Poland different.

Sevilla Continued

So there was a pillow fight in the main town square which was fun to watch!

and we spent some time in the Alcazar Gardens - a huge abandoned palace and the gardens are amazing! This is just one part of the gardens..

Here is part of the ornate wall - just one wall of the thousands throughout the Alcazar

We took a tour of the Plaza Del Torros - Bull fighting! I wasn't there during the season but I would have LOVED to see a bull fight...the Cock fighting in Puerto Rico was the closest I got to seeing animals involved in a fight...I'll have to go back for a Bull fight at some point

The Plaza De Espana - Beautiful!!!!

I had an amazing time! Spanyards are loud unlike Czechs. And the weather...did i mention that? Lemme say again...amazing!!

I'm going to have to do another tour in Spain at some point...amazing country!

Sevilla

Sevilla was unbelievable!

I stayed with my friend Erica and her roommates. Erica and my friend Carolyn showed me around while I was there and it was a blast!

First of all...it was about 80 degrees out every day, sun

ny, and beautiful! We ate every meal outside and I wore T-shirts! We walked around the city and walked through some beautiful gardens. We hit up every major site in Sevilla. We went to see a flamenco show which was awesome (sorry picture is small...)

We went to the Torra del Oro which is a tower that you can climb up and had a bunch of history exhibits on the way up. The commentary on the Audio guide was in first person so it was pretty funny and it was a good review for Carolyn and Erica's test. 

Then we went to St. Stephans Cathedral which is the 3rd largest in the world next to the Vatican and the Cathedral in London (forget the name). It was massive and very beautiful and had a lot of cool things inside to see including the grave of Christopher Columbus!

Then we walked around gardens for a bit and saw lots of big trees and t-shirts --- these were some of my favorite

haha

Terezin

It's a whole town. A town where just 50 years ago, Jews from all around Bohemia and Moravia were deported to. Our tour guide was a very cute old man who has survived Terezin and Auchwitz. He had escaped four times throughout the war and seen many of his family members perish. It didn't even seem to bother him when we walked by the cemetery near the crematorium and he said casually, "o, by the way, my mother is buried in one of these two mass graves...i don't know which one."
This man has had a book written about his story and also testified for the Spielberg foundation. I can't remember his name right now but Andrew bought the book...so i'll let you know later...
Anyway...we ate lunch at this place called memorial restaurant which we were told after was a building where a massacre of Jews occurred.
We toured the museum barracks and saw exhibitions on the art and theater and music of Terezin.

I am doing a paper for one of my classes on the comparison between Terezin and Lodz in Poland...so I'll have more info on Terezin to share once I start that.

Losing my manhood??

So I would like your opinion on this one (this is a test to see who is reading...not that i write that often or care at all).

Saturday night Jack and I (just the two of us...weird..) went to the Pussycat Dolls concert in Prague. I don't know what to think of myself...it was good...the music wasn't my favorite, but the performers were just amazing dancers. There were a lot of guys there like us that didn't seem to be with their girlfriends or wives. It seemed like a pretty mixed crowd....there were a lot of little girls there with their mothers though...

The best part of the night is that it didn't matter what section our tickets were. We climbed into different sections twice with the last section being the VIP one on the side of the stage...pretty cool!

Recording and Movies...

During the week here, I lead a pretty normal life. I sleep, I cook, I clean, I go to class, go to the movies, go out, and take random trips.

Last week, I recorded my solo for Rak Shalom Tirkedi Halayla. I traveled out to Prague 5 to this guy who turned a basement into a studio and he recorded me. The problem was that Michael told me it was recorded at the wrong rate - so I have to go back and do it again when I have a chance (probably this coming Sunday night). It was good that it didnt work though because I don't think it came out too welll...my voice sounded strained and the sickness was coming through (as the guy in the studio said).

I saw Benjamin Button - weird movie...but good.

I'm really glad movies come out here a lot later than they do in the U.S. because I was really behind on my movie going at home!

Spinkleruv Mlyn

I like waiting for laundry...it gives me time to write!

I am getting really behind here...so the next couple entries will catch us up until this point.

Classes have been going well. My Monday's and Wednesday's are tough but I've been making it through!

The weekend After Berlin I went skiing! Jack, Zach, Hilary and I rented a car and drove up to the border of the Czech Republic and Poland (NE). The whole border of the Czech Republic is mountains. This teeny little car had a lot of pep to it! But it was sleeting/snowing on the way up there so we had to take it carefully.

We got to our very nice hotel, and went out on the town. It is a nice small ski town with lots of lodges and restaurants. We had a nice Italian dinner. I had the olives appetizer and pizza with tuna which was very good. Then we went to this place at the top of the hill that had music playing and searchlights called Silver Rock. It was obviously the place to be because it was packed! We ordered a drink to share and then sat there for a while, danced a little bit, then went home to get rested for the long day ahead of us.

The whole time we were in Spindleruv Mlyn, it was snowing! It didn't stop! Which made conditions for skiing ideal. We went up the first hill and not only was it the hardest thing I had ever done...Hilary had never skied before so props to her! The hills got progressively harder but we all made it through with some minor falls. We got very wet!

At lunch we went to the lodge at the bottom of the mountain. Part of the menu was in Hebrew...which was weird and I have no idea why...

Anyway, we finished our day and sat down to a delicious dinner which none of us ate because we weren't hungry. I had one out of my three veggie fajitas! But I did have a veggie taco soup before for an appetizer which was delicious! Plus it was an earlier dinner...i have to defend myself when it comes to food!

We drove back and thought the roads were going to be worse then they were because it had been snowing for the past day...but they were fine and it wasn't sleeting or snowing at the time we left so that helped!

Berlin

So It's been a while since I have written...
Whenever I get a chance to sleep that is what I have been doing. I hate my stupid colds that last for weeks if not months!
But now its Sunday and I just woke up and I'm lying in bed and I can't talk because my throat hurts so I figured...why not write? So here it goes..

Not this weekend we are in now but last weekend, I took a trip to Berlin with a bunch of friends (9 of us total) and there were some other people from our program there as well staying in a different hostel. We took the train from a really sketchy Prague railway station after deciding not to go to the main one, but apparently the train stopped at both stations. We sat in normal seats, some of which had little tables in the middle with seats facing each other. We slept, ate, and played cards. It was about a 5 hour ride and we got into Berlin close to midnight Thursday night.

The station we got into was also not the main station of Berlin, it was the east station. Everything was closed and there was no information desk. We found our way to the main area of the train station after everyone took out some euros, and waited for the bus. We got on the bus and couldn't pay because we didnt have bills small enough and he wouldn't take them. He let us on anyway and about 15 or 20 minutes later we realized we got on a bus going in the wrong direction. So we got off, waited for another bus going the opposite direction for about 10 minutes and got on the same bus number going in the opposite direction. It was the last bus of the night so it did not go all the way to where we needed to go and stopped its route back at the train station. All throughout this trip of bus mishaps, Lisa had to go to the bathroom. It was really painful to watch her suffer. She finally went to the bathroom in a port-o-potty behind a sketchy kebob restaurant next to the train station. We found our way to the front of the train station again (the bus dropped us off by this kebob place in the back) and hopped in cabs for an 8 euro cab ride to our hostel. It would have been worth it to do this in the first place because that comes out to 2 euros each, and each bus ride was a little over 2 euros a person...although we didn't pay the first one...it still was not worth it to take the bus and we wasted about an hour.

We finally got to our hostel and everyone was really pleased. It was very nice and a fun place to be in a great location. The room was pretty big and the beds were a decent size and were pretty comfortable. We were all starving at this point because our train left at 6ish so we didnt have a chance to eat dinner..just snacks...so we went out to a kebob place down the street and I had some falafel which was delicious.

We got up the next morning and did the New Berlin Free walking tour. New Europe is a company that runs free tours in every city. Josh, Jon and I did one in Edinburgh Scotland. They are legitimate tours (especially the Berlin one which was 5 hours long) and they just expect tips at the end. So you end up tipping like 5 euros a person which is nothing for a full 5 hour tour. It was FREEZING outside for 5 hours. But we hit all the major sights.

We started out in Pariser Platz by the Brandenburg Gate and continued to the Reichstag which is German house of Parliament. It was burned down "mysteriously" in 1933 and never rebuilt during Hitlers rule...hmmm...
Then we journeyed to the Holocaust memorial which is very interesting the way it was done. It is a bunch of concrete blocks and as you walk through them, they become taller and you feel as if you are sinking deeper. The ground is also very uneven. There are a lot of people that have different interpretations and the architect did not really write much about it. It is 2,711 stones on a 5 and a half acre plot of land.

Then we continued to the former site of hitlers bunker where his killed himself, the Luftwaffe headquarters(now the German tax offices), a part of the Berlin Wall still standing, the former SS headquarters, Checkpoint Charlie (the crossing point between American and Soviet sectors), Gendarmenmarkt (where the symphony orchestra plays well as the French and German cathedrals which look exactly the same), Bebelplatz (where the opera house is), The book burning memorial, The Unter den Linden (old royal blvd), The Neue Wache (memorial to the victims of war and tyranny, and Museum Island (where all the museums are...).

Then we went on the Third Reich tour and learned more about the Third Reich and saw some things that we didn't see on the free tour, like The soviet memorial which was the first thing the soviets built when they came into Berlin. We also saw all of the Jewish area and synagogue and museums and memorials and old cemeteries and a demolished old persons home and commemoration plaques and the site of the former Jewish community center.

I forgot to mention...I went to this Vietnamese place called Monsieur Vongs which was amazing! I had wonton soup with tofu and fresh vegetables and then a glass noodle salad which was delicious! The second night we all went to this amazing Italian place on valentines day and they gave the girls roses and made the pizzas into heart shapes.

Then we left on Sunday...we took the train from the main station and we sat in one of those six person compartments. We took two of them obviously...but it was amazing cuz we could sleep well and watch some TV on a laptop and really have nice intimate conversations without disturbing other people on the train. And, those cars are the main thing anyone has to experience on a European train like in the movie Eurotrip when a random guy comes and sits with them...that's exactly what it was like although its a good thing no one came in and there were not many tunnels...

Got back safely and we were ready to begin our full week of classes!

Český Krumlov

Český Krumlov is a small town in the Southern Bohemian Region of the Czech Republic. It is about 3 hours south of Prague. We left Sunday morning very early - about 9AM. The normally busy street of Vodichkova was completely empty (see photo to right). I had a nice little nap on the bus...I am used to that from the past two summers...I just wish we had a 6 hour ride instead of a 3 hour one. The best sleep has been achieved on 6 hour bus rides. Cleveland to Chicago is the best example of an amazing ride to sleep on because there is nothing exciting to see on the way. Anyway...I digress...Český Krumlov... It was a very nice quaint town. Beautiful. Nice for a vacation...if it were warm outside. Český Krumlov in the winter is insanely cold and snowy...no wonder why there were no tourists to be found except for us! Normally Český Krumlov has a tourist population of 1.2 million every year. With a population of about 15,000 in the city... crazy ratio!


The main attraction of Český Krumlov is the castle. It was inhabited by the Schwarzenberg's who you would think are Jewish...but they are not. Anyway, the castle was very very beautiful and huuuuuuge! It had corridors leading to different parts of the castle on three different levels and it also has the longest lasting and well preserved Baroque theater from the 1700s.
















Also in Český, they had a fairytale museum which turned out to be a puppet, or marionette museum. There were some pretty weird ones...like this owl.
They also had a museum of torture in a dungeon...it was pretty creepy.












There was also some delicious food goin on in the Český. The first day for lunch I had steamed buckwheat with spinach and vegetables for only 100 Kc which is about 5 dollars. It was delicious! I really should have taken pictures! Then that night, dinner was provided and I had Salmon. It was okay. But then the next day for lunch we went to a Vegetarian restaurant and I had the Veggi Chili which was delicious! I also tasted some Hummus and Guacamole which were both very good...but the Chili was the highlight of the meal. I also had some delicious mint Chai (which is Czech for tea).

It's late...I'm talking to Shira now! It's her Birthday! Happy Birthday!

Fun Stuff

So, the first week of classes was very good. Some are very boring, others are interesting.
I joined the gym this week so I've been spending some time there which is good.
Thursday I went with a bunch of people to the Hockey game...Czech Republic vs. Finland. The Czechs played really well...unitl the middle of the third period when they scored three goals and won 5-3 in the end. At the game, instead of booing, they do this high pitched whistle through their teeth, which i couldn't do before the game, but I learned well enough to whistle in that way that I was able to boo. My goal by the end of the semester is to be able to whistle like that really loudly.

Friday night we went to Beit Praha, the reform congregation in the Spanish synagouge. There was a guy there who is apparently a famous anthropologist and lectures all aroud the world named Sam. There were also a lot of other Americans there. We went after services to thier Tu-Bshvat seder/ dinner and had lots of fruits and some brisket.
Today in the evening, we went to something called Red Bull Crushed Ice. It was a downhill ice skating course with obstacles and four go down at a time so they fall and knock into each other a lot. It was pretty exciting! They also had all sorts of Red Bull drinks there obvoiusly including a Hot Red Bull which was pretty good, but smelled like some sort of medicine I hated when I was younger.
Then we went to a lateish dinner at Therapy cafe down the street from our apartment and I had a nice pasta bowl with this Blue Cheese sauce and it was absolutely delicious!
Now I am catching up on email and phone calls, cleaning my room/apt and watching a movie with the roomates.

Tomorrow we get up early and go for an overnight trip (back Monday night) to Chesky Krumlov, a town about three hourse away from Prague

Second round of classes...only one!

Today I slept late and went to my one class at 2:30. It is entitled Prague, Vienna, Budapest. It is a cultural and intellectual history of those three cities. We are reading stuff from Freud and other philosophers. The class seems interesting but it is a TON of reading. We technically have 208 pages due on Thursday. There is no way everyone is going to read that!! It seems like if we get the basic idea of the readings we should be fine.

Then I went to Tesco and picked up some salmon filet to freeze (about 1 kg) and a small pillow (which is hard to find). All the pillows here are huuuge. The one they gave us is huge and it has been hurting my neck, so I'm excited for the small one! I also got a bowl to make salad in.

Then I came back, cut up the salmon, put it in the freezer, and went to dinner. A bunch of us (my roomates and a couple others) went to this Chinese place a couple minutes away. I had Spicy Tofu which was very good! Now I'm back home and going to sleep to get up for class tomorrow at 8AM!!!

My First Day of School...

So today was the first day!

After staying up until about 3am to watch the first half of the superbowl and the halftime show, I got up at 8am, had breakfast and a cup of coffee to wake up and headed to start my long day of classes. Monday's are INSANE! But it's good that I get over half of my classes over with on the first day of the week. I had Jewish History (mostly of the Czech lands), a perspective which had never been covered in any American classes, A Czech film course (today we watched a silent film with random German phrases randomly placed throughout the film), Czech language which was basically a review of what we did in intensive Czech last week (i got the second highest grade in my class on the practice quiz!), and Antisemetism and the Holocaust in Czech lands, which again, will focus on the Czech lands as opposed to Poland and what we think of as the "normal" Holocaust studies.

A little tidbit of information that I didn't know and something to sum up my day of learning: We will see in the history of Jewish in Czech lands, that no matter how bad the Jews were persecuted, it was not as horrible as some other countries.

So 8 hours of class down for today -- 7 left for the rest of the week!

1 class tomorrow from 2:30-4...what am I going to do with myself!?!?

Recap of the week...very very short recap

About a week has gone by. We went on tours of the Jewish quarter area which is now, ironically, the richest town in the area with all of these high end 5th avenue shops. We visited the old-new synagogue, the oldest synagogue still in use today and went to Friday night services there yesterday. We went to the cemetery where Kafka was buried as well as the old one in the Jewish quarter along with the holocaust memorial. We also saw the Spanish Synagogue. We went on a tour of the old city and the castle and some old church. We also went to this 5 story club by the Charles Bridge called Karlove Lasne which was pretty cool. We had a week full of Czech language which is ridiculous and we are ready to start the normal class schedule on Monday. 

I went to Rabbi Hoffberg's for lunch again today and he had Rabbi Dushinsky over as well as a man named Menashe and his wife Analiza who are from Finland, living in Prague for another couple months and are then moving back to Yemin Moshe in Israel. Rabbi Hoffberg loves to tell stories but Rabbi Dushinsky loves to talk even more so it was a funny dynamic between the two of them. Rabbi Hoffberg would be telling a story, Dushinsky would interrupt and Rabbi Hoffberg would yell at him for interrupting. It was very funny. 

Tomorrow we are going to the town of Pilzen about an hour and a half away by train

Praha 2

So I left off telling you about Rabbi Dushinsky who I met Saturday morning in the Jerusalem synagogue. After shul I went to Rabbi Hoffbergs apartment for lunch along with a Rabbinical student at HUC in Jerusalem. We ate lots of good food and chicken wings.

Some interesting things about the passage area that Rabbi Hoffberg lives in:
First, it is right across from the CET academic center, about a 5 minute walk from my apartment. It is in the Lucerna building. That is a famous building where they hold the Czech version of the Oscars every year - downstairs in the 1500 person theater. They also have other events there during the year that are regularly telivised. Lucerna is also the place where every single high school prom takes place. There is a prom there every night during the prom season. Walking around at night, you say girls in big ball gowns...like cinderella gowns, and boys in tuxedos.
Hanging in the Passage is The "dead horse" which is a sculpture by the Czech artist David Cerny. It is a parody of the statue of St. Wenceslas in Wenceslas square. It is a horse hanging upside down.
The elevator that goes up to his building is one of the oldest elevators. It is just a bunch of wooden boxes that move up and down and you literaly grab the handlebar and jump in and out of the moving box. It is the original Shabbat elevator. It is not electric and you don't have to press any buttons. All you have to do is jump. You get used to it after a while but it took some explaining in order to get us up to the 3rd floor safely.

For more info and pictures of the Lucerna pasaz go to: http://www.360cities.net/image/lucerna-pasaz

First Days!

I landed in Prague at about 10:30, went through passport control and got my bags. I then withdrew money from the bankomat (2,000 kc) and was suprised when they gave me a 2,000 kc bill which is about the equivalent of $100. I sat in the airport reading my lonelyplanet guidebook on Prague for about 45 minutes until Lisa, one of my apartment mates arrived and we shared a cab to our apartment. The cost of the cab was about 600 kc. We got to our apartment and climbed up the 6 flights of stairs (we are on the 5th floor and they start here with 0). We walked in and it was freezing cold because our roomates Andrew and Ivana couldn't figure out how to turn the heat on when they arrived at 6am, so they were sitting in the freezing apartment most of the day. I bundled up in my jacket and sat and talked with Ivana and Andrew for a bit. Andrew is from Westchester the bestchester and goes to Wash U! Ivana is Czeck and she is from Havirov a small town in the Moravian region. People from Moravia hate people in Prague. They think they are too rushed and speak too quickly. People who live in Prague hate everyone else because they are not like them, sort of like New Yorkers. 

I then took a nap with my roomate Andrew because he was jetlagged and I had not gotten any sleep the night before due to my 7 am flight out of London. We slept for three hours or so until we had to go to our opening dinner at a restaurant right down the street. We didn't know it was right down the street so it took us about 20 minutes to get there (around a couple of blocks). I ate mashed potatoes and vegetables. I guess they figured if you ordered that, you don't eat meat, because people who got mashed potatoes and chicken had bits of ham in their mashed potatoes. I had my first Czech beer called Krusovice. It was pretty good but I appreciated it more later in the week when I was a little less tired. My favorite so far has been Kozel which is a darker beer. Beer in Prague is unbelievable! Not only is it the best beer ever, it is really really cheap. The average cost is about 26-30 kc which is about 1.25-1.50. That's not for a bottle, that's for half a liter. Everyone always said it was cheaper than water and that is no joke. It actually is! The reason why Czech's like to drink so much is probably because of communism. They have a beer on their way to work, a couple at lunch, and drink and smoke all night.

The next day was orientation. My orientation was a lot shorter than the other track, so a bunch of us went to walk around old town square. Then we met back at the CET center, which is right in the middle of the new city in Wenceslav square, to go shopping. We went to Tesco which is the Czech version of Wallmart as they say, but it was more like Harrods in London, five floors of everything you could ever possibly need including groceries. What is weird is that you have to pay for your items before you leave each floor (i guess that makes sense...). What is also weird is that you have to weigh your vegetables yourself. I keep making that mistake (the two times i have bought groceries). Once, they did it for me and the other time they just took it away and I couldn't buy my bananas, or banans as they say in Czech. 

That night, Friday night, we went to the conservative service at the Jewish Community center. We met Rabbi Hoffberg and he talked to us about the Jewish Community in Prague. What is interesting is that only about a third of them are actually Jewish. A lot of people who affiliate themselves with Judaism are doing it because they had Jewish roots that were possibly on their fathers side which does not make them Jewish. Also, all throughout Prague's history, it was normal not to know if you had Jewish relatives. Rabbi Hoffberg told me a story of a man who was coming to his conversion classes and to shabbat services and he lived hours away. He worked on the train tracks and rode the front of the trains at night to inspect the rails and make sure the train was not derailed. One day, Rabbi Hoffberg asked him, Peter, where are you staying and he said that since he could ride the trains for free, he would get on a train Friday night after services, ride it until the morning, go to services and ride back home. Peter went through the conversion and got on a service trip to Israel painting tanks and whatnot. After that trip he came back and said he wanted to move to Israel. He moved to Israel and started attending services at Shira Chadasha. He would stay at a nearby church for free and would eat meals at different peoples houses in the community. About a year later, when his aunt was dying he found out he was actually Jewish. Peter is still in Israel to this day and he is 28 years old and lives in Jerusalem. 

Rabbi Hoffberg told me that there were many stories like this one and I'm sure I'll hear more throughout the semester. Saturday morning I went to services at the Jerusalem synagouge. The Conservative community joined this leftish wing orthodox community for Shabbat morning services. They have services in a little chapel called the winter synagouge because the main one is not heated. Rabbi Hoffberg took me into the main shul just to see it and it was beautiful and had wonderful acoustics as a Chazan from Brighton demonstrated at the demand of Rabbi Dushinsky who teaches Chazzanut in the community. He has a very unique story as well (as told by Rabbi Hoffberg). He was a Rabbi in Australia and some other places, then moved to Israel and was stuck in some town in Israel where all the basketball players and rich famous people live. He wanted to do some conversions and other things on the side and the Rabbi's in Israel didnt like that...I don't remember the whole story but somehow he was framed and arrested and put in jail for 30 days. I don't remember the details but read it here:

 http://jewishwhistleblower.blogspot.com/2005/03/rabbi-binyamin-bar-zohar-acquitted-on.html.

This should be enough to get you started...I will post more later when I feel like writing...