socks

back in prague, last day of czech language class, but for some reason, our class was annexed by one of the professors, and we were kicked out. our language teacher walked us across the river to a lil park, also, she had us practice Czech along the way. at one point one of the girls was assigned to ask the door-guard of the university (who was sitting in front of a rather large clock) "kolik je hodin?" and another girl was told to ask a student on the street, (standing next to a metro stop) "kde je metro?" i pointed to stuff along the way expanding my vocabulary "whats that?" id ask loď, pták, and kámen were some of the answers i got. after wrapping that up we combined the classes to discuss our experiences of Vienna. the opinions were a little more consistent across the board. I like Vienna, its not too expensive, its very clean and orderly, thought the "rich history" is alot of fancy facade work, i still like it. it clearly was, and is the West, fancy shops and everything, it clearly wasnt as depressed as Prague or Budapest was under communuism, and because it was never split like Berlin, it was able to recover from WWII more wholly. though as someone pointed out, there was very little addressing of the whole Nazi thing, and the Holocaust. Harlow kept pointing that the Austrians tend think of themselves as victims of the Nazis as well. when in reality, Hitler did quite literally walk in under waving banners of welcome. though this bit of conversation allowed me to discuss my feelings on the relationship between Berlin and the Holocaust and Nazis. as i said a few kids where unhappy with how the modern Berliners address the history of the Nazis and the Holocaust, but i pointed out that it is a marked contrast with Vienna. Berliners have at least attempted to address it, openly discussing it from a historical context, and less openly feeling a sort of national guilt over what happened, where as in Austria, they just kinda leave it alone, i suppose they have had an extra 50 years to get over it, but i still think that seeing the difference, cats should appreciate the effort Germany has put into addressing these issues. there was a brief discussion of the readings, and we quickly meandered to the national film archive to watch a film. a buddy of Harlow's, a film critic and historian gave us some info on the theater we were in before the screening. In the 19h century, the theater was an integral place for the gathering of Czech intellectuals, and artists, because at the time the Hapsburgs were attempting to Austria-fy the Czechlands by introducing German in school, and imperial art n stuff. Before WWI , this place was the first fulltime movie theater in the Czechlands. Then after WWII, this became imortant center for animated films, due to the historical tradition of puppetry and marionettes here in the Czech lands. Then during the times of communism, the entire neighborhood was turned into the HQ of the secret police, everything was open, but no one wanted to be here, so it wasnt until after 1989, that the artistic nature of the neighborhood returned. The family which owned the area prior to WWII was given the property after the commies left Czechoslovakia, donated it to the governmeent for the film archives. We will now be wathcing The Loves of a Blonde, by Miloš Forman ( Miloš Forman ) on 35mm film (this is the first time i have ever seen a film from FILM to my knowledge), to maintain the film experience. the movie is Czech Avant Garde, so it was weird, it had both professional actors and amateur? actors (people literally pulled off the street). i wont ruin it for anyone that intends to watch the movie, but its a working class girl gets involved with some kid, from Prague, and then she goes to his home. and thats it, kinda had to be there. somehow, over the course of doing my laundry in the sink, i ent up with an uneven number of socks. anyways, its early, there may be an update later as to what i end up doing, i do wanna try some of the local absinthe, compare it to what i get from MKE.