This is Truth.

Bohemian Rhapsody

Scott Says stuff throughout this entry, as he did on his blog where this was posted originally.

Pictures are here: http://etapravda.shutterfly.com/

I say: I figure everyone wanted an outside perspective on All That Is The CZRepublic, as well as how Scott Bertucci is getting along in far off lands. So here it is, my 8 day whirlareel with Scott Bertucci. I tried to send this to everyone who knew both of us in some capacity, or everyone who might be otherwise interested, but there may be some over or under. If there was some omission, let me know. At some point over the last few months I lost my cell phone with all of your phone numbers and email addresses, so, I may have missed a few of you, please feel free to forward.

Cheska Respublika March 24 April 1, 2006

After arriving 3 hours early to Sheremetyevo International Airport ("Worst Airport in Europe" The Russia Journal), I managed to barely get to the gate 20 minutes before it closed. Had my baggage screened and went through metal detectors at the entrance, at customs, and at the terminal gate. Stood in line behind a Canadian who checked a Portland Pirates hockey bag, and sure enough, he played for my home town AHL team before signing with the Russian Interior Ministry Hockey Club (there's a Commie program holdover for you) and playing there for the past year. He clearly wasn't particularly happy with his career move.

To the sound of 237 Russians clapping, the Airoflot Airbus 319 touched down at Prague Ryzune at 7:30pm. Had to ask the passport control office to stamp my passport, since they were barely opening them as they sent the people through. A far cry from the anal probing of the FSB(KGB) officers at Sheremetyevo passport control. ("Why are you coming to Mother Russia?" "Sometimes, I don't even know.")

Friday:

Scott was waiting at the exit portal for the non-EU arrivals, and greeted me from afar with a movement of the head so slight, you might have thought he was caught under the chin by a slight updraft, rather than seeing a close friend 3 months removed. He's still got the edge, fear not.

We walked to the bus stop, where he looked at the time sheet and announced that we there would be another bus in 3 minutes. Czechs should set their watches to those things. We took the bus to the metro, and the metro to the tram, and the tram to his house, the whole process taking less than 45 minutes.

Scott dropped me into it head first, we went to some pub in Mala Strana (Lesser Side of the City) and introduced me to his TEFL teaching program friends. They are good guys, and I really liked the 30-something divorcee Mark, but it was a poorly kept secret that they didn't hold water against the old crew. Good guys, but not everyone can be Brash Manimals. Yes, the beer was cheap and delicious. The service, which is considered surly by the expats, was leaps and bounds superior to what I've grown accustomed to here. I don't even care about surliness, really, I just prefer some amount of promptness, which is absent from a culture where someone will answer their cell phone before they take your order if it rings, even right in front of you. After the pub, we hit some other basement club with his crew, then the disco Futurum, which was housed in a 19th century townhouse with 20 foot ceilings. Quite a venue. Actually saw Scott making out with a girl, which I think may be the first time I've ever seen that happen. She told him straight out that it would be only make out on that dance floor for the night. As he puts it, with Czech girls, you always know where you stand. Kind of refreshing for a guy who is always being gamed by American women. In true Eastern bloc country fashion, we shared his (thankfully massive) bed every night for the whole trip.

Scott Says: The bed is huge.

Saturday:

Trounced around the old town, as my head swiveled around to catch the fantastic architecture. It was too much to take in. As soon as you get taken in my some Romanesque masterpiece, you get distracted by an Art Nuveau statue or a Gothic spire. Scott: "Between the tail and the architecture, I've been suffering from whiplash." Hiked up to the southern fortifications of the city, through the national cemetery, every marble carved being a work of art, and along the stately Vltava Riverbank.

Dinner was an event every night, and Saturday started the trend. At U Poshty Restaurance (Restaurant by the Post Office), I fell in love with Czech specialty, svichkova, for the first time. Bread dumplings and slow-cooked meat, drowning in a spiced gravy with spiced heavy cream, cranberries and orange rinds. The happy Czech guy serving it to us made the experience complete, as did the extremely comfortable pub setting. That night, Scott demanded that I see Face-2-Face, and I acquiesced to his terms. At what seemed like the edge of the known world, we attended this disco with possibly worse music than I've heard even in Russia. An accomplishment. It was quite apparent why he went to this place, what with the age range which stretched from 16-30. On the massive TV projection hanging on the wall of the basement level, there were naked people prancing about, male and female, and I thought we were at Manray or The Basement or some other pseudo-gay club in Boston or London. Some Mad Hatter looking character, complete with hat and a shaved head and a disturbing grin, was running around talking in Czech (all I could distinguish was an occasional 'Super!') and agitating for the youths to take their clothes off, male and female. He had two girls in all white that were at times taking it upon themselves to relieve the denizens of their clothes. At one point, the girl was literally blowing a guy. Wefigured they were just playing a porno movie to suit the general mood of debauchery. Later, we went to the upstairs club, and immediately saw the Mad Hatter up on stage, and realized that it was a simulcast we had been watching. The Mad Hatter welcomed us all to Sex Night as he sent out his girls, as Scott dubbed, the Angels of Death, to secure more victims. We retreated to the bar area and proceeded to be shocked and awed. I felt suitably Conservative American, as I watched these girls pulling clothes off guys, and thought, 'that just ain't right.' We left, thoroughly confused, but thus entertained.

Scott Says: Another important point about svikova is that the gravy is based in slow cooked root vegetables, including celeriak, carrot, parsnip which are pushed through a sieve before being mixed into the gravy. In my mind it, is the cadillac of Czech cuisine.

Some of the people at the club had to be planted. It's not normal for you to be so comfortable with someone else removing your clothes on a crowded dance floor, and then to look so good doing it.

Sunday:

Hiked across Scott's neighborhood and up Zhizhkov mountain, where the Czech Communist government built the largest equestrian statue on earth to commemorate the success of a hussite leader in holding off a crusader army 10 times the size of his. I realized that Communism here was much different than in Russia, where the Czechs had experienced no military successes during the entire reign of the Communist regime, and their most recent success was as a roaming legion of released war prisoners who conquered of the Trans-Siberian railway from an inconveniently Communist Russia. We spent the rest of the afternoon at the Museum of Czech Military History, which, as you might imagine, had an agenda, being

1. we didn't really want to fight with the Germans and Austrians in
WW1, but we were part of their empire
2. we were ready to kill some Nazis in WW2, and you democracies
deserted us and gave our defensible borders away for nothing.
3. we are in NATO

Later where we ate at a rather famous restaurant, and suitably enjoyed the best garlic soup I've ever had, maybe one of the best soups anyone has ever had, and some goulash. We talked and drank beautifully perfect Budweiser Budvars until the dead of the night. We covered all topics, from girls, to our future, to Brad's predicament, to the Scott Epic, to reminiscing about Final Fight and the Mike Haggar spinning clothesline punch complete with 'Whooowh!' sound effect, which became another running joke throughout the trip.


Monday:

Scott went to Dresden to get a passport stamp, leaving Prague to myself for what was the most beautiful day there since he arrived in October. After a brief rain, it was 60 degrees and sunny. This was an aberration, but a welcome one. I trounced around the city myself, taking it all in, probably covering 15 km on foot. Having forgot my student ID, I stayed on the streets, as museum entry was half price with it. I climbed up ridiculous hills, drank beer from the park bars at the top, checked out the former site of the largest Stalin statue on Earth (now occupied by a metronome that doesn't seem to do anything, and about 200 skateboarding kids), which made the sculptor so miserable to construct it that he committed suicide shortly before it was unveiled in 1955.
For dinner I went to some little place, tried to speak Czech and was immediately mistaken for a Czech by one waitress and a Russian by another. Apparently my pronunciation trills the 'r' a little too far. The languages are quite similar, though not Spanish-Italian similar, maybe something like Spanish-Romanian. This was a running theme for my trip, where in simple exchanges and transactions I tried to use only Czech, and was mistaken for a Czech or a Russian every time. And of course tourists approached me about 4 times a day, and asked if I spoke any English before they inquired as to where to find this street or that street or the town square or the old church or the castle or the clock tower. They all assumed I was Czech. I was walking around with a Prague guidebook the whole time. I don't know if I should be flattered when mistaken by the locals, or just think that people are morons in the case of the tourists.
Scott Says: It struck me as strange that so many people took Myles for Czech, particularly, as he mentioned, since he was carrying a tourbook..

I'm not sure about the sequence of events, but either Sunday or Monday was the night that we drank hot spiced red wine with orange wedges at some other extremely comfortable bar near Scott's house with his friend Christine, who is friends somehow with Surjeet, which is a good indication of her coolness. I just hope for his sake that he makes good friends with her, he could use a female friend to keep him soft enough.

Tuesday:

Went to Prague Castle in the pouring rain. It rained every day, at some point during the day, but this was the only day that it was actually limiting. The castle commands a pretty spectacular locale overlooking the ford point of the Vltava, hovering over the 14th century bridge which spans the river. The castle itself has been covered over by insensitive Viennese architects with 19th century plaster, but the palace, cathedral and old streets are all rather interesting in their own rights. The national gallery was alright, but paled in comparison the special exhibits I saw later.

Scott and I spent the evening at a traditional Slovak restaurant, complete with a folk band. The food was basically Central European peasant soul food. Tiny potato dumplings with cream and cheese and sausage it was basically like macaroni and cheese, but much richer. The cabbage soup was flavorful, and thus in direct opposition to Russian soups.

Wednesday:

Went to the village of Kutina Hora on the train to see their cathedral, medieval town, and the Ossuary. The bones of 40000 people stacked up into temples, placed on mouldings, framing the alter, and forming columns and a chandelier. Met a Czech guy on the plane who was confused by my presence, traveling on an untouristed commuter line in rural Bohemia with my Russian book and my English-language Prague guide book. Turns out he lived in the US for 2 years and said that he loved the place. He lived in San Francisco and Boston. I told him he tried on our best two shoes. He asked why I lived in Russia, and I said it was hard to remember while traveling through the CR. He said he had never been there, but he 'could get an impression.' Well put.

Returned to Prague for the Jan Saudek exhibit, a photographer who is pretty cutting edge and often times disturbing for my Irish Catholic American upbringing. I just get uncomfortable seeing a naked 13 year old posing for a photograph. I'm standing there trying to appreciate his use of skewed imagery, passage of time, doctoring of background images and colors, but all the while waiting for someone to come arrest me or something. His work is loved and hated, which was pretty much how I felt about it.

Met Scott for the infamous Chesky Lev, or Czech Lion, a manhole cover sized plate of baked pork, potato and bread dumplings, and red and white versions of sauerkraut, as well as vegetables. Oh, the monumental excess. We tried to go to jazz night, apparently it was cancelled, then headed to a Cuban bar for Velvet, which is like a cross between pilsner and Guinness. Fantastic. A couple Czech girls gave him 3 looks as we left, and Scott did nothing about it, which kind of got to him. Indicative of his new outlook, though, he was able to get over it rather quickly, rather than dwelling on his inaction all afternoon. I was proud of him, though as we laid in bed, I broke his balls relentlessly on what he could have had.


Thursday:

Karlstein Castle, the secret fortress in the woods between two mountains where the Bohemian kings would hide the crown jewels, so that invading armies couldn't seize them. Probably the most impressively located castle I've ever seen. I'll provide photos. The Hussites seiged it but couldn't get through the first gate, and the Swedes during the 30 years war (still a mindfuck that the Swedes were all the way in Central Europe) got into he 2nd courtyard but couldn't take the main tower. Many a tall blonde man died that summer. Maybe that's why they haven't really fought anyone for any reason since then.

Afterwards checked out the Mucha Museum, dedicated to the Art Nuveau pioneer and Czech native. The man was amazing. I might even call his work on Princess Hydastra or on The Liberation of Russia's Serfs two of my all time favorite pieces of work I fully understand why Scott devoted one of his shoulders to the guy for eternity, with the Sokol Festival Placard tattooed all over it.

Pub Night Thursday is what Scott looks forward to above all other nights on his social calendar. It is his only consistent opportunity to interact with Czechs, and turned out to be only the second time I did so myself. The students were nice, sociable adults. One guy, George, had been a student in their program for something like 6 years, never advancing above the second level. Maybe he just wanted to meet the girls who come through to teach or take classes. Scott and the other teachers bought him a boob cake. How kitchy. I kind of dodged it it takes too much frosting to make a mound of boob, and it kind of threw off the cake. Ate something that resembled fried potato balls with grilled pork and broccoli for dinner, also fantastic. Went to indie night, which was filled with expat student guys and indie music, a recipe for disaster, as turned out to be the case. We packed it in after we realized that we were all about to sleep. How is it indie music if its popular? I mean, indie music is supposed to be unpopular and kind of terrible, and this was merely the latter version. We had fun though, and nothing would be lost.

Scott Says: The program at Oxford TEFL is only really for training teachers. The students pay an extremely low fee for the courses because they are sub-par and lack continuity. While they do try to pitch a variety of material to the GPs (guniea pigs, ie, the locals, mostly Czechs) there is some ground which is covered over and over agian and ground that is never touched, even if they come month after month, since the program repeats. George is in the upper of the two levels, but essentially has nowhere to go.

To be fair, Nebe is hit and miss. When Desha was here, she loved it. That night was a definate miss.


Friday:

Friday was something of an epic. The Eastern Bloc epic sort of thing that drove Scott over the pond. We got up late and he went into the office to do paperwork, while I patroned the Museum of Communism to get a bit of anti-Russian vindictiveness. A private institution, which you could tell as it shares the same sign and entryway as a casino. The highlight of the tiny and overpriced exhibit was certainly the 30 minute video from the Prague Spring and Velvet Revolution, showing phalanxes of riot police beating up student protestors in the square just outside of the building only 15 years beforehand. When you walk outside, you feel as though you were walking across history. The victory won on that square 17 years ago is slightly spoiled by the McDonald's, KFCs and souvenier shops selling Russian matrioishka dolls and Soviet hats.

Scott and I climbed up Prepin Hill, the highest point in the city, overlooking the whole valley where it lies. At some point, we fell into a Wisconsonian accent, and kept that going for the duration of the day. Its even funnier when passers by have to assume that's your real speaking voice. Got a laugh from the hall of mirrors, and climbed the mini Eiffel Tower atop the hill during what happened to be The Windiest Day in Central Europe, prompting Scott to do his best gasping in fear Hank Hill impression throughout ascent and descent. The view was pretty spectacular, even if the whole tower was shaking throughout the visit.

That night we went back to the top of the hill to catch a psychobilly show by The Flaming Cocks, a local band, and The Peacocks, an apparently popular Swiss band. It was situated near the Communist-built largest stadium in Europe (in disuse, since at 200,000 capacity, its far too big for any Czech sporting events), in the basement of a Communist housing bloc which is now used as a student dormitory. What a deathtrap. I'll have nightmares of what my Dad, or worse, my grandfather, would have to say about catching a show in that one-exit bomb shelter. No taps, bottles only, which is not conducive to a mosh pit. Neither is my flowing long hair, button down polo shirt, or black slacks from express, but hey, I was traveling. Turns out the Czechs don't really 'dance' anyway. The first band was legitimate, afterwards Scott bought their shirt and I tried to convince them to play Moscow. The second band was alight, and they got better over the course of the show, expecially when they played something that sounded like semi-covers of Revival, Indigo Friends or The Party in Your Head by the Reverend Horton Heat. Some girl gave Scott the look with the invite over, and when he got close to her, she punched him in the gut. I turned around at one point and when I looked back, Scott reappeared with two shots of absinthe for us, which were served without sugar, the truly ridiculous way. (He insisted on taking a shot of it the weekend before, insisting the side-effects often reported were a myth associated with the fact that its just extremely strong alcohol.) The dance party which followed was decent, but we needed to leave to try and catch the last bus, which we did not. So we proceeded to scale down the Prepin Hill through some poorly lit park, trying to go straight down and ignoring the walls, which led straight to a 12 foot drop from the 14th century outer city walls. Scott inexplicably decided to scale along the side of the wall on a ledge, until it led him to a battlement which we was in no way capable of getting around, so he came back my way towards the ground, until eventually the section of the wall he was on gave out and he plummeted to the ground. I thought I would be carrying him the rest of the way, but he snapped right up, somehow, and offered one hand to grab my foot as I came down. As soon as I did, the lights came on in a nearby villa, so we sprinted away as if we were in high school again. I busted his balls the rest of the trip about his destroying a 14th century relic. After another kilometer or so, we came upon a rather major square called Andel, and eventually decided to go to KFC so he could wash the wall remnants off his pants. It was about 1:30am.

Scott Says: Myles left out that after I helped him down fom the wall, we walked for a bit, only then realizing we were in someone's backyard. The hill rose to the back of a garage (scaling the gate was out of the question) and he went out on the roof, and luckily, there was a pole that served no other purpose than for us to shimmy down it at the front of the garage. It was at this point that the lights went on.

I also looked into it because I couldn't stand the thought of having ruined a 14th century devensive relic. It turns out that thing is "only" an 18th century retaining wall, which is far less interesting. Oops.

We couldn't help ourselves, and I bought chicken, and shortly after we exited, me splurging on an ice cream cone. We were crossing the street to the tram station along the river at the center of the night route, planning on taking it downtown to some other interesting venue with 80s music. Then, suddenly, the world ended.

An hour later, I was walking up to the tram station at Hladvi Hospodar, alone. I had no idea what or where Hladvi Hospodar was.

The trams were stopped at what was clearly a turnaround. I checked the schedule, realized that one would start again in 15 minutes, and waited there, alone. When I checked my phone for the time, I saw that I had one missed text from Scott, ('where you at?') at 2:26am. It was now 3:37. Throughout this time, I am calling and texting Scott to no answer. I thought I had blacked out and walked across the river, but I couldn't tell where I was because there was a highway over the tracks to my west, and I couldn't see the river, I started walking in that direction, and realized quickly that I should turn around so as not to catch the next tram. I got back to the station stop just in time for it to start again, and got onto the first 57 tram, which as the schedule said would stop at Scott's street. 3:50am.

I boarded the train alone, and when it took off, I quickly realized that I was at the end of the tram line, and heading towards Scott's house from the east, the opposite side of the city from the KFC we had left together. I got to his place, sat on his stoop (I didn't have a set of keys), and called repeatedly. I walked around to entertain myself while I waited to hear from him, and after I had been at his house for 45 minutes, he finally answered my call, clearly confused and outside, but at a tram stop and promising he would be back in 20 to 60 minutes. Nice window. Its 4:19am. I tried and failed to find something open to entertain me, and eventually started walking around aimlessly to wait, figuring I could back track on the tram line and meet up with him at a previous stop. Eventually I gave up on this endeavor, and took a passing tram back to his house. He arrived 20 minutes later, alone, and just as lucid as I was. When we got upstairs, we looked at the tram map immediately, to find, to our horror, shame and confusion, that we had ended up at the extreme Eastern and Western points of the city, along the same tram line, with his house in the center of town between us. Both of us remember leaving KFC. He recalls boarding a tram, seeing I wasn't on it with him, getting off, and then later being woken up by the announcement by the tram operator that it was the end of the line. We tried to figure out what happened for the duration of the night. He said it made sense that I was where I was, if I got on the proper train and went towards his house and the center of town. He thought it was possible that he got on a tram, like me, heading East, saw that I wasn't there, got off and got on another one going the opposite direction to backtrack and find me, and then fell asleep. He also thinks I fell asleep, because I would have been on the proper tram, took it to the end of the line, and got off like he did, when the end of the line was announced. The only problem with that is the fact that I do not remember anything between finishing that ice cream and walking towards Hladvi Hospodar, thereby do not remember being on a tram at any time. My only explanations: abduction or a single shot of sugarless absinthe.

Scott Says: I agree with this explanation, but I had a case of deja vu recently which leads me to believe that Myles and I were on the same tram initially and I got off at the right stop, but didn't prompt him to do so (I should have). Then I must have gotten on a train to go back to look for him and that was when I fell asleep. Either scenario is possible.

Saturday was my bloody retreat from the western front. We got up late, walked around a little, and returned to u Poshty for more beloved svichkova. Scott's unsecretive reason for going to that place regularly was working that day a Czech girl with a minihawk. He was quite enamored with her, but not in the Our House way in a more mature, confident and contented way. She was quite pretty, and exactly the sort of girl he loves, but you felt as though he was too self-aware to let his life be controlled by fantasies. Scott is in a good way right now, and I am happy for him.

In general, it was a great trip. In retrospect, I probably could have tried to spend more time with Scott, since my time with him was obviously the highlight, but it may not have been possible anyway. His carryings on about The Hottest Girl In The World eating a full pork knee and drinking a half liter of beer, our impersonations of the Womanimal (posthuminously named) trying to be sexy, our attempts to read my Hungarian phrasebook in our idea of a Hungarian accent (something like the Klingons from Star Trek), me spitting out my musli all over his kitchen table in reaction to seeing his reaction when I showed him the 17 letter Russian word from one of my readings ( pronounce as: 'vseperemalyvayushchikh': English = 'the all consuming grist-mill'), Scott's vision of a grand summit, where the two of us would sit in a bar with beers and Brad's image would be simulcast on a screen at the third chair (probably with a bottle of coke in front of it, from which we would pour a bit out every few minutes), waking up after long nights to soundtracks from spaghetti westerns, Carl Perkins, Tango and Opera as only SB can deliver.

Scott Says: My subsequent trip to Hungary, I assure you did not make our lampooning of Magyar any less valid. Egesheggere. Cheers.

Not that I didn't create some memories alone, including being mistaken repeatedly as a Russian or Czech, with tourists walking up to me sheepishly to ask for directions and saying "excuse me, do you speak any English?", yelling 'A!' at the obnoxious Russians on my castle tour group to shut them up, since they didn't get the point when our distraught and ambiguously gay Czech tour guide told them to do so in English, or the plane ride home, when I was caught in the typical Russian situation of pretending to travel with some old lady because her bags were over the weight limit for Aeroflot's flight home, which turned out to be my first trip on a Russian plane (most of Aeroflot's planes are Airbuses), though while it seemed to fly just fine, had no stereo, no TVs, no in-armrest tray tables (only removable ones that stuck into a screwed-in afterthought mounting, which inevitably broke so that I had to eat my Aeroflot dinnerbox (2 slices cold meat, 1 slice cold cheese, 3 cucumber slices somewhere between pickled and fresh, slice black bread, 1 dinner roll, 1 cold meat turnover, 1 chocolate, 1 cup of tea) out of my lap, seatbelts that didn't quite fashion, an overhead compartment that was too narrow for my backpack, backrests made of light plastic and foam, and so on. When the stuardesses pushed the newspaper and magazine cart through our section of the plane, they were mobbed by the middle aged middle class Russian ladies on either side of the aisle, who grabbed about 7 magazines apiece, so that they were out of everything before they reached aisle 15. Oh, and of course there was the obligatory cheering when we landed safely, which was conspicuously more animated on the Illushin-98 than the Airbus-380 I went to Prague on. The problem with Aeroflot is that no one wants to fly on them, and no one wants to come to Russia, so they end up making partnerships with reputable international airlines, so that when customers think they're booking Air France to Boston or Czech Air to Prague or AlItalia to Rome, they'll get to the gate to see that lumbering red-white-and-blue on silver hulk of an Aeroflot jet. I really don't understand why they still use the Soviet hammer-and-sickle on their logo, but at the same time their interior cabins and uniform colors are a light blue and orangey combination, which both clashes with and defies the faades of the planes themselves. And in case you're wondering, there's no preferred boarding procedure (where the 1st class passengers get on first) or really a procedure at all, its more like 'ahhh, Motherland! We are late! Everyone get on the freaking plane now!'

The whole point of this trip came to light for me on the way home. Its easy to forget out here what its like to have such good, close, and complete friends. Less surprising may be that you forget about the comforts of living in a normal country, from friendlier people to safer streets, freedom from spies, comprehensive public transport, good food, good beer, better weather, beautiful landscapes, I could go on. I was pretty broken up to come back to Moscow, and I know Scott says he's looking for a new crew, but I'm only thinking of getting my old one back. During the Chesky Lev feast, I had a sudden realization: 'Scott, you're never going back, are you?' 'I may not,' he replied. I guess we all have to get over it.

MS.
Photos: http://etapravda.shutterfly.com


Scott Says: Myles is that type of complete friend he speaks of. I experienced the same feeling, particularly as he stayed with me and was here for a long time. I was already aware of it from visits by Desha and Surjeet as well. Myles was fortunate to come at a time when I was changing schedules, so I had an abundance of free time compared to when the others had come, so despite his lamentations, we did spend alot of time together, comparatively.

It's true there is no substitute for long time relations. I am now reaching the point with some people here that is as good as it can be after a short time, and I know I will stay in touch with them. But of course by it's nature lacks the depth of a 4, 6, or 8 year freindship. The jokes, the collective experience, the paragraph with a look; it's all unique.

Come see it all for yourself.

posted by Майлз Г. Смит @ 8:57 PM