Viennese Gender Equality and Pet Tolerance

In the subway, there are two sets of signs which indicate special seats for those who may need special seating. On one set of signs the disabled and parent are male, and on the second set of signs, they are female. The pregnant person is always female. One can only go so far.






As for dogs, you can take them on the subway and into restaurants as long as they have a muzzle and a leash. In observation, they both seem to be optional, especially for chihuahuas and miniature pinschers.




Nobody mentions what one does about the carnivorous zebras




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Art is provocation

David Černý is a bad boy of Czech art. He writes, "Provocation is the amplified reason why the art exists. What's supposed to be called art and not design has to have something behind it. It has to have a message, whatever. It can have a static message, but it has to have a message. It's not a chair." He has done a number of sculptures around Prague, as well as internationally, but he has stirred up a lot of controversy. Oddly enough, though he has had his art work banned in several countries and irritated many, the only piece of art that landed him in jail was the pink tank because they said he had "defaced public property." Here is a selection of his work around Prague.

Babies: these guys are also climbing up the side of a tv tower which was voted by a tourism survey as the second ugliest building in the world.




The Pink Tank for which he was arrested. It now has its own barge out in the middle of the Vlatava River where tourists in little pedal boats can crash into it to the hilarious delight of the observers on Národní Bridge.



Hanging man: this is Sigmund Freud, hanging out. Černý said this represents the choice we all need to make, which is to hang on or let go.



Peeing men: this is outside the Kafka Museum, as noted in an earlier post. I later learned that you can instant message the statues to pee quotes into the pool.




Wenceslas on a dead horse: this is hanging in a cinema and makes fun of the patriotic sculpture of Good King Wenceslas out in the middle of Wenceslas Square so I include the statue for your comparison.







The pointed guns: this is a sculpture of four pistols all pointed at each other, and it is hanging in a small museum off Karlova street, but we forgot to photograph it. Drat.

I really enjoy these sculptures because while they are strong political statements, they are funny. It's like Jon Stewart: you get the bad news, but in such a way that one feels like one can bear it and not have to jump off a bridge because there is no hope.

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Vienna v. Prague

Vienna was the political hub of the Empire until the 20th century, and Prague was the Bureaucratic hinterland. How cool to compare the architecture of power between the two! In Prague there is this big lump on a stoney hill where the rules came down to the town from on high. In Vienna, this is was where the Emperor centralized his control, and his is where the boyz from Prague came to get the rules. So to get a handle on the material culture of this contrast, we went to the Schönbrunn to see the summer palace, which they claim has no relation to Versailles, but any careful observer looks at it and thinks, "Yeah, right."



We went on the "imperial tour" which means short, least expensive tour that goes through the first set of apartments only. The crowds were artfully managed, there were automated ticket machines, and the progression of movement was gently organized with velvet ropes. It was smooth and admirable. I wonder very much what the curriculum is at the international hospitality science program is. Does it include crowd management and satisfaction? It seemed that the brilliant addition of the audio tour resulted in slow but continuously moving zombies who were very quiet and controllable. Debbie and I got the written guide, and we had constant running chatter on the rooms (discretely of course), but our audio guide colleagues shuffled slowly from room to room in silence. I'm sure the audio tour is very good, but it seemed to raise tourist passivity to a whole new level. I will admit that it was a little creepy to be passed by a silent slow moving tide of people with vacant expressions and electronic devices glued to their ears.


The gardens are great! (and reminiscent of Versailles, shhh). Gardens that were once the demesne of aristocrats, it are now a public garden where people sun themselves, soothe their unhappy children, read books, eat lunch, and chat. The shift from elite to plebeian is hilarious and complete. But being one of the plebes, I enjoyed the gardens greatly. Debbie and I put up our parasols, which conveniently double as umbrellas at need, and walked around the gardens our own personal shade. While the palace exudes power in it's grand sweep, elegant gilt decoration, and almost mythic history, the gardens are also an expression of power.


The trees are bent to make great green walls, the roses are macramé vines, and the flowerbeds are perfectly geometrical. Here is Man bending Nature to His will. Nonetheless, the lesser creatures are taken care of.


Here is a duck ramp in one of the fountains so that ducks can get out. We witnessed a duck use this nice concession. The sad history of assassination and suicide of the inhabitants of the palace, and the incomprehensible opulence made me happy to be an unnoticed ordinary person with a tiny postage stamp of a garden. Life is so much easier this way, and, frankly, with fewer hedges, my hedges are better trimmed than the hedges at schönbrunn. They are currently restoring the main hall for 2.3 million€ so I think they have laid off some gardeners. There were many hedges that were in desperate need of a trim. However, they were very polite about the reconstruction and put on their signs "we apologize for any inconvenience or disappointment our renovations may cause." How sweet! I have ever had a tourist venue apologize for any disappointment.


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Prague Castle

Prague Castle is a big lump on the hill overlooking the city. The castle is really a complex of different buildings that accreted around a site up on the hill, so it is a hilarious jumble of architectural styles. The cathedral is crunchy gothic on the outside with creamy baroque on the inside.


The Basilica of St. George is frothy Baroque on the outside with chewy Romanesque on the inside. St. George slays his dragon left and right, and the palaces are filled with reproductions, the originals of which appear to all be located in Vienna. There were never really kings at this castle: it was full of minor officials who did the bidding of kings in...other places like Vienna. So this was a small tower of bureaucrats, the really dangerous people. Kafka talked about that. He said that bureaucracy was dangerous because they hid the punishments and made torture a depersonalized mechanical process. He said the worst thing is that they made oppression efficient. Well, this "castle" seems to have been all about this.

It is a big warren of buildings that makes lot of money for the state. Several thousand people per day must pass through the doors of this stone island. The passage ways are jammed with people rain or shine, and there are a lot of languages to be heard. Most of them waddle at a glacial pace, and they stop suddenly to photograph each other. Americans just stand where they are and smile, but the European tourists have special poses. It is great fun to watch the various poses they take: it is like low level voguing for all ages.


The cathedral is properly huge, but all the buildings of the "castle" complex cluster around it's knees and rather dampen the effect by hemming it in. It peeks out over the tops of the bureaucratic buildings in a kind of irritated way. Inside, it recovers its dignity since it doesn't need to compete with the scribes on its own territory. The windows are painted with art deco scenes, and there are statues of dead bishops in all the little chapels. The principal grave that is the highlight of the visit is the grave of St. Nepomok, a religious person who was martyred by being thrown off the Charles Bridge. There is a plaque on the bridge now that people rub for good luck.

I also noticed that there is a plaque with a dog on it on the bridge that is also very shiny so people must pet the bronze dog as well. If you look at the statue of Franz Kafka in the Jewish Quarter, people seem to rub the tips of his boots.


The most exciting room of the main "castle" building, where there were audiences and records and replica crown jewels (which are in Vienna), was the room of defenestration. In a Catholic/Protestant dispute, three castle officials were thrown out the window of this room, but they landed on a compost heap and survived. Some versions of the story say it was angels, others say it was just providential poop, but either way it was not a short fall. We stood in the little, fateful room and marveled at how small it was and how it was essentially a dead end. The castle regents were totally cornered. It must have been a terrifying time. Look under the windows: you will see a monument to the regents where they landed on the compost pile.

The palaces one can tour seem like they were cold and dark. They seem like they were grim places to live, but with all those aristocrats and their bureaucrats, there had to be servants, and theses servants lived in little houses along the castle wall on a street called Golden Lane. The houses were one and two room affairs with low ceilings and small windows that look out on the royal gardens.


They seemed like they were quite cozy. Kafka's sister owned number 22, and Kafka wrote "The Country Doctor" there. It is a bookshop now, but it was delightful to go into that small space after all the big spaces of he cathedral and palaces because it was such a human scale. It was comfortable and cheery, though quite small. It was easy to understand how Kafka could write in this space.

The insight of the day came from visiting the portrait gallery and the national gallery. Both places have extensive collections of neoclassical 19th century paintings, and it is a rather second rate collection. As we walked through the collections, I realized that I was bored by the neoclassical style. It felt stati and like nothing was happening. Sure it was pretty, but it didn't really speak to the moment. I was not interested in the moral education of a bygone era that was harking back to a bygoner era. Then, around a corner, we hit the paintings of an impressionist, and it was lovely. There were only three in this sea of Right and Proper neoclassicism, but I suddenly understood why people got fed up with it and why the expressionism of the early 20th century seemed so radical and so necessary. The past was no longer the guide, what was important was the experience of the present. Intellectually, I has understood that, but trudging through the neoclassical doldrums of the national gallery to suddenly drift up on the impressionists was a jolt of personal recognition of the problem. It was so exciting I had to sit down for a moment and recover. This is what gothic lit is about: throwing off the chains of a restrictive past and transgressing the old mores for more free expression. This old dog has finally learned how this trick works.


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Early morning in Prague

I will tell you who is up early in Prague: drunks (who never went to bed), homeless people, and serious photographers. I fell into the last category as I went out at 5:30 this morning to take some specific photographs without the hordes. Across the Charles Bridge drunken young people swayed and sang in small disheveled groups. A young man crawled across the old town square until some police officers came to see if he was okay. Another young man flew in little airplane circles making airplane noises while his friends hooted. The homeless people ignored them and shuffled through the streets with their plastic bags of possessions, chatting amiably. I and my photographer colleagues politely and earnestly clicked away at the nice clear places, although in some of the movies I took, it was impossible to avoid the drunks as they randomly reeled into the frame. When you watch my slick production video, see if you can spot the two drunks who made it into the final cut.



Early morning sorts things out. When there are fewer people out, what one is doing is made more visible. When Debbie and I walked home at midnight from our visit with her friend at a cafe, the crowds were still out, and it felt safer and more anonymous. This morning, I felt more exposed and certainly more on guard. I like the early morning because it seems to expose a city and make it clearer, although I was not prepared for early morning to seem less safe. I suppose it felt less safe because I have never been in a place where there so many early morning drunks. Their behavior was random, which made them more difficult to deal with.

An assignment that I will give to the students is to do a photo essay of the beautiful, the ugly, and the authentic sides of Prague. This entire assignment can be done quite quickly at 6:00 am as it is all concentrated at this time.


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Prague, this is a crone with claws

Kafka says you have to yield to Prague, or else. In so much of the analysis of his writing, and in his writing itself, the reader gets the sense of a divided love/hate relationship with the city. But it is sometimes funny. The Castle is truly funny in places, and all over the city there are humorous pieces of sculpture. In front of the Kafka Museum are these two guys peeing into a basin at their feet that is in the shape of the Czech Republic. Debbie and I sat waiting for the museum to open this morning and watched people react to this fountain. As these large copper men pee into their fountain, their hips swivel and their winkies raise and lower such that the water sprays all around. People hold their winkies, pat their bottoms, and put their hands into the "pee" streaming into the fountain. This fountain is so blatant about an essentially unspeakable and basic performance that it is powerfully attractive to the passing audience. It is positively magnetic. On our way home from a cafe last night, Debbie and I witness a gentleman merrily peeing between two parked cars, but the fact that he wasn't made of copper and he wasn't peeing into a symbolic basin just left him being disgusting in public.




So with this hilarious sculpture, the Kafka Museum starts with a bang. After the copper boyz, there is a big K. Here are Debbie and I doing interpretive tableaux with the K. For reasons of good taste, we did not do any interpretive tableaux with the copper boyz.


The museum is set up so that the viewers can experience Kafka's work through the disorientation that he creates in his texts. It kind of missed the humor, but maybe I am just a nut to find some of the surrealism humorous. There are two excellent short films, one that shows Prague from his twisted, modernist, cubist point of view, and another that is a brilliant summary of the The Castle. Whoever did the text was brilliant because the English, and I guess the Czech, narrative plaques were both poetic and informative. I felt like I had a better feeling for the texts after going through the museum where we are urged by a sign to let the space show us and the sound guide us through Kafka's parallel universe Prague.

In the part about the horror of bureaucracy, there is a hallway of filing cabinets most of which do not open. There are two phones, one does not work, the other has a voice reading The Trial, and there is a third phone one hears ringing but cannot be found to be answered. I tried to open some if the shut filing cabinets and laughed when I couldn't because it reminded me of my filing cabinet that I often can't open. They are full of information, but I can't get it, so I essentially don't have it. The cognitive dissonance could be frustrating, but it is also funny. Debbie and I stood amongst the filing cabinets that wouldn't open, listening to the phone ringing which could not answered, and laughed because of the feeling of urgency created by the phone that was artificial, but real, but futile. Good metacognition can result is really funny moments.

On our way home, we stopped at The Slavia Cafe for coffee. This is a slightly faded art deco cafe of the old French style where the room is large but crowded with little tables. The waiter was so sweet to speak to us in English, because he could, and let us order in "Czech". "Dva kavu prosim" resulted in two coffees from the lovely waiter who said, "That's easy!". This cafe was a place where Kafka and his art and music buddies would meet for coffee. A local person we met the other day said that all the other cafes in Prague raised their prices but the Slavia forgot.



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Continuing Adventures in Czech Language and Culture

As I was hiking up the hill with the other middle-aged ladies out Doing Business, a woman came up to me and said a rapid sentence in Czech. I understood two words, and they were both street names. I guessed that she was asking for directions, and I repeated the street name I recognized, Narodni. Ano, she said, and then called something to her friend that I guessed was, "Hey, she's got a map!". I showed this person the map and pointed to Narodni Street. Ze? She said pointing down the street. Ano, I said, Ze. I think this meant something like, yes, that way. I recognized the work Djekui as thank you, and I just smiled and waved because I do not yet have the Czech for, you're welcome, in my brain. Nonetheless, that worked out well.

Alas my next attempt at interaction with the grocery store clerk went less well. Grocery stores cause me great anxiety because I was yelled at once in a Swiss grocery store because I did not weigh my apples and mark them before I got to the register. This negative feedback on my lack of grocery cultural competence taught me to do a great deal of observation before getting to the register. I had already observed that you do not get your change in your hand. Instead you let the change be put into a little indentation on the counter and then pick it up, unless it is at a street cart where there is not a cup. Anyway, I got my stuff, and spent a few minutes watching people check out. I noticed that the checkout lady didn't like to make change as well.
I also noticed that she weighed the stuff herself, so I didn't need to weigh anything myself. I had read that I needed my own bag, and I had that. With all my planning ready, I prepared to effect my grocery buying plan.

I put my stuff on the belt, and she ran it all through. She said a long sentence to me that started with Dobry Den and I think that she wanted to know if I had a Tesco savings card. unprepared for that, I was silent, but I should have said Dobry Den back. I'll try that next time. She then pushed all my stuff through and took out a plastic bag for my stuff! Neh, I said and held up my bag. She put the bag away and let me bag my stuff. That seemed okay. Then came the exchange of cash. It was 171 koruna. I pulled out a 100 note,and started to fish for change, since I thought this is her preference. It was, but I was too slow. She leaned over and took the right change out of my hand. It happened really fast! I was sad I was so slow. The numbers came up quickly, I wasn't wearing glasses, and I had to read each coin. *sigh*. Next time, I will be better aware of my coins, and I will greet properly. Was it instrumentally successful? Yes. I got my groceries. Was it socially successful? No. I look forward to the day when I have an service interaction with a Czech person where I do not annoy that person.

Gothic Journeys out of the city

In the spirit of the Gothic, I went to find Kafka's grave today. In the spirit of keeping my sanity, I moved out of the hostel to a grown up hotel. First the grave. Kafka's grave is not located in the old Jewish cemetery, but in the new Jewish cemetery. The difference is about three miles and 180 koruna. The New Jewish Cemetery is located up the southern hill of the city. It felt a lot like the Upper West side of Manahttan to me: old row houses, trees working hard to grow through the pavement, and lots of cars parked on the side streets. the stores were all modern stores with almost no English in sight. This is where the normal people live.

To get to the cemeteries, one must walk quite a ways up the southern hill of the city. There are two gave yards, huge grave parks, really. One is for Christians and the other for Jews. The Christian cemetery is in full and present use. There was a funeral taking place as I passed by. The graves are decorated with flowers, lamps and pictures. Certain graves have benches installed in front of them so that mourners can commune. In front of one grave two women sat quietly weeping. At the crematory wall, another woman was freshening the flowers. At the gate going into the cemetery, there is a big sign in Czech and English: Beware Of Pickpockets. As near as I can tell, the method of a pickpocket is to bump up against you and in the extrication, take your stuff. If, in a quiet grave yard some one ran up to me and bumped into me that wo uld be beyond strange. Therefore, I must assume that "pickpocket" is a euphemism for "robber". It was scary to think of being set upon by robbers amidst the graves!

In the New Jewish cemetery, established in 1890, one finds many prominent Jewish writers and notables. They had to start this one because the one from the 1500s in the Jewish Ghetto was full. In the middle of he 20th century, Prague lost most of its Jewish population due to the Nazi Troubles. Kafka and his family are here. His three sisters have a plaque because they died in the camps. Anyway, this is more a memorial grave yard th aone in active participation like the one next door. The graves are covered with ivy, and there arena benches for relatives. There are, however, offerings of little pebbles and tiny trinkets left at the more notable graves and at the holocaust memorial sites. So there is, indeed, active mourning going on at this site, but it is more abstract and generalized than at the other graveyard.



Kafka's gravestone lists him and his parents with the plaque for his sisters leaned against the plinth. There is no icy on this grave, but a gravel "yard" around it. There are many little offerings of pebbles, beads, and fake flowers. I sat on a bench near the grave and watched a slow processions of pilgrims come by. They were all middle aged travelers in sensible shoes and quick-dry nylon pants, American and German. They came singly and silently. I watched five pass by. Each came down the path, stopped by the grave, and silently regarded it before turning and slowly walking away. None of these "mourners" made offerings, but, as a middle aged mourner in sensible shoes and quick-dry pants, I did leave a blue bead I found outside the hostel.




On the walk back, I walked down the street where Kafka lived when he wrote a few short stories. It borders a park, and the facades of the buildings do look like they must come from the turn of the previous century, it must have looked a lot like this when K was here. But more grey. In pictures I have seen from the turn of the 20th century, the buildings look a bit more worn and more air pollution stained than now when they have received a bit more friendly paint. Still I was entertained to think that this is what K saw as he walked on this street. It was nice, and it actually seemed quite a posh place to live in the early 21st century.

The contrast of the old town and the new town was interesting to see because of the contrast of bustling tourism and quiet residence. Will this inform my readings? Well, downtown is more closed in and the pressure seems greater. Getting out into the residential area did seem more relaxed.

The IJAS Conference

If you google this conference, you will find a thread in the Chronicle of Higher Education, where it talks about how the people posting on the thread think this conference is a scam. None of the threads define what they mean as "scam". One person did assert that it is merely a vacation for people who go. If that is the definition of scam, then about every conference I know has people who attend in scam mode. Why else would they call it a scam? Maybe because there is no professional organization that goes with it. Maybe because there are no big time speakers invited. Maybe because it is multidisciplinary.



I would not assert that this conference is a scam. I fact, I think it is pretty valuable. By virtue of the fact that the conference is truly international, one gets to hear about on the ground research in other countries in the cultural traditions of their academic research. Individual variety comes right out, and it is fascinating. The American presenters are highly energetic and data driven about helping low income NYC students. The Turkish speakers tell a narrative and read straight from the power point about something I did not understand. The Polish presenter had highly multicolored slides about how the sounds of poetry make us happy. The German presenter and the Romanian presenter read dense papers about theology. The grad student in English studies read a paper full of whimsical self disclosure about reading Mrs. Dalloway in the tub. An Israeli Buddhist gave a moving account of his moment of enlightenment in the Judean desert. Having such variety in culture, kinds of questions being asked, and styles of presentations is an experience of widening the world that would not occur in discipline specific situations. This pulls you out of your silo if you let it.





Some people here, as in other places, present, and leave. They make it a scam for themselves, just as those at the American Psychological Association or the Professional and Organizational Development Association do when they present and leave. Some people here have also shortened papers they have written for the purpose of other conferences. Some don't even bother to change the PowerPoints to be tailored for this conference. This seems unprofessional but maybe this is a little scam- like in that they re not taking the conference as seriously as they might, probably because it is not a discipline specific conference. But not everybody is like that. There are many presentations that take themselves and the audience seriously.

Is this a scam because there are no big speakers? No. The big guys are great, but more interesting is what the little guys are doing in the moment. You can get your own big guys at your discipline specific conference, but here you get to hear things from regular researchers in little chunks. More would be too much. For the most part these are supposed to be for a general audience, although, of course, some do get a bit jargony. Humans are just that way in all their infinite variety.

Is this a scam because there is no plenary or closing? Well, on that point I am a little disappointed. I believe a bit of cohesion would be good, but that is my personal bias. Maybe the bus trip works like a plenary. I can report on that tomorrow. Technically, we can ask more questions during the trips.

Commentry on blogging with an iPad

Gentle Reader, I'm sure you have noticed the strange punctuation and spelling in that last post. You have probably also noticed that there are no photos. These two things are a result of my blogging on eBlogger using an iPad. There are severe compatibility problems with the iPad and this blogging program. There are other applications that would allow better editing and the ability to upload photos, but then i would have to start a whole new blog. Rrrrr. Alas there will be nought but text until I get back when I will be back on a real computer so I can edit and add photos.

In the last entry, I mentioned three hostels. At the moment, I am at the Dlouha Hostel, all the locked doors are propped open with shoes, the young people shout their conversations, punctuated with swigs of beers, half of which goes into the young person and the other half onto the floor, giving the common room the sticky atmosphere of a festive frat. In fact, this hostel has the joie de vivre of a frat in many ways. Our students might really like the free wheeling atmosphere and be able to ignore the sticky grit. The far safer and quieter Downtown Hostsel would make me feel easier about them, but they might not like it as much for those reasons. Therefore, the slightly cleaner Ritchie Hostel might win our custom being as they are cleaner, but still in three middle of it.

OMG, one of the beer soaked young people just announced that she planned to have an existential crisis tomorrow at noon! I feel the real estate values rising.

Following Kafka through the woods

Following Kafka through a dark and twisting wood




Often when I am creating a course, I become immersed in the author and his or her world. When I created the Lanscape and Lit course, I was working with writers in British Romanticism, which was rather pleasant be use there is a sentimentality that is an idealistic enjoyment of beauty even if it will eventually decay. Creating a course on Gothic lit includes horror and surreal struggles with repression. Kafka's invocation of the horror of paralysis, the void of identity crisis and the capricious power of invisible oppressors is, well, oppressive. I went to the park where he would walk and sat on a lovely hillside covered with cherry trees. I read that this is where he would sit and brood on the meaning of life. As a Lady of a Certain Age, this just seems silly, and I would have given him a swift kick and told him to quit being such a whiner. Check it out man: this is a hillside of cherry trees overlooking a beautiful city. You really have to be dedicated to being unhappy to be so here. But then I guess that's where his literature came from.




Actually, the absurdity of the surrealism in The Castle is funny, so. I guess that is the final escape hatch. If you laugh at how ridiculous the horror is, then it loses some of it's power. There is huge Hollywood style sculpture on the hillside, visible from any point that has a northern river view, that is a huge metronome and tall white letters that spell out "the tears of Lenin.". It is in the place where they blew up a statue of Stalin in 1962.




I checked out the local mass at the cathedral of Our Lady, which sits on the north side of the square. It was in Czech, but the plainsong was in Latin, so the music was quite nice. When the sun came out the whole place glowed with light as it came in the high windows and reflected off the white washed walls and the gilded statues. But then the sun went in and the full weight of a cold grey Gothic Catholicism fell on the space like a big Wile E. Coyote anvil. I was glad I kept my coat on because it got cold. It was during communion that I had an. Interesting insight about the Self Regulated Learning/Experiential Learning cycle.

In this Learning Cycle, one experiences something, makes a mistake, figures out what the right thing is, and then gets to try again with trying not to make the mistake. Well, in our classes, we don't always let students finish by trying again. They take a test, or write a paper, and that's it. The errors are pointed out and we move on. This is terribly counter productive. It is important to try again on The Same Thing in order to learn. S what lead me to this is here I am in a Czech mass, and I'm standing up and sitting down with everyone. I go up for communion, and I'm telling you, Gentle Reader, this has always worked before. I know there are variations, so I watch the guy in front of me, and I did what he did: took the wafer in my hand, and turned to leave. "Hissst," goes the priest. I think to myself, dart, I should have gone to the right to the little acolyte. I had forgotten to stay and be blessed.

A more successful interaction was when I was hiking up the hill with the other middle-aged ladies out Doing Business, a woman came up to me and said a rapid sentence in Czech. I understood two words, and they were both street names. I guessed that she was asking for directions, and I repeated the street name I recognized, Narodni. Ano, she said, and then called something to her friend that I guessed was, "Hey, she's got a map!". I showed this person the map and pointed to Narodni Street. Ze? She said pointing down the street. Ano, I said, Ze. I think this meant something like, yes, that way. I recognized the work Djekui as thank you, and I just smiled and waved because I do not yet have the Czech for, you're welcome, in my brain. Nonetheless, that worked out well.

Alas my next attempt at interaction with the grocery store clerk went less well. Grocery stores cause me great anxiety because I was yelled at once in a Swiss grocery store because I did not weigh my apples and mark them before I got to the register. This negative feedback on my lack of grocery cultural competence taught me to do a great deal of observation before getting to the register. I had already observed that you do not get your change in your hand. Instead you let the change be put into a little indentation on the counter and then pick it up, unless it is at a street cart where there is not a cup. Anyway, I got my stuff, and spent a few minutes watching people check out. I noticed that the checkout lady didn't like to make change as well. I also noticed that she weighed the stuff herself, so I didn't need to weigh anything myself. I had read that I needed my own bag, and I had that. With all my planning ready, I prepared to effect my grocery buying plan.

I put my stuff on the belt, and she ran it all through. She said a long sentence to me that started with Dobry Den and I think that she wanted to know if I had a Tesco savings card. unprepared for that, I was silent, but I should have said Dobry Den back. I'll try that next time. She then pushed all my stuff through and took out a plastic bag for my stuff! Neh, I said and held up my bag. She put the bag away and let me bag my stuff. That seemed okay. Then came the exchange of cash. It was 171 koruna. I pulled out a 100 note,and started to fish for change, since I thought this is her preference. It was, but I was too slow. She leaned over and took the right change out of my hand. It happened really fast! I was sad I was so slow. The numbers came up quickly, I wasn't wearing glasses, and I had to read each coin. *sigh*. Next time, I will be better aware of my coins, and I will greet properly. Was it instrumentally successful? Yes. I got my groceries. Was it socially successful? No. I look forward to the day when I have an service interaction with a Czech person where I do not annoy that person. in front of the priest. I go back, he makes the sign of the cross on my forehead.....and takes my wafer! I went back to my seat and watched everybody else. They did what I had done. I have no idea what I did wrong. If I were to learn what was right, then I would have to go back a few times and try again, but I failed this test, and in this case, I don't get to try again. So I reflected that a) I'll never know and b) there is great benefit for students to do an assessment multiple times if we hope for any of the learning to stick. Newsflash: midterm and final are not enough.

But back to the Castle. Even though Critics agree that Hradcany Castle isn't necessarily The castle, but it is for this reader. There it is up on the hill, and I haven't managed to get to it yet. I will, since St Vitus up there is a special Gothic masterpiece, and there is a little Kafka museum up there too, but I'm waiting for Debbie to arrive to visit the castle. Nevertheless, there I am, after a very disappointing visit to the Strahov Monastery, standing just outside the gates in the pouring rain, hiding under a tree, and not going in because now is not the right time. I laughed at myself as my feet got wetter and wetter. Absurdity and Surrealism have a Venn diagram relationship.

And now for a moment of complaint: the Strahov Monastery library is quite beautiful, from a bibliophilic point of view, but it is a Dickensian experience. You know when the ragged urchin presses his nose against the window of the toy/candy shop but knows nothing can come of it? Well, bibliophiles have to press their metaphorical noses up against a velvet rope that goes across a three foot door with an eagle eyed guard who pounces on anyone producing a camera. It reminded me of trying to view the Mona Lisa at the Louvre behind that scratched, spit slimed piece of plexiglass. In this case, the pictures on the internet are better because the bitterness of disappointment is much less.
But my lessons in turning oppression to humor came to my rescue because this guard who gets to spend all day looking at this beautiful library never gets to see it because she is too busy guarding it. I laughed all the way down the stairs.

So then I go down to the Kafka Museum, which is on the New Town side of the river, quite near the Charles Bridge. It has a big K in front of it as one sculpture, and then there is a fountain of two bronze men holding their rather prominent winkies and urinating at each other into the fountain. Their pelvises are on swivels so they spray their wee around the fountain. There is no text to go with this sculpture, so one must make up one's own text. We are, once more, standing at the Venn intersection of the absurd and the surreal. I don't think one could give this sculpture any text. Mothers take pictures of their children with these sculptures. People put their hands into the fountain spray. I was transfixed not just by the sculpture, but also with the public interaction with it. I guess it is making the private so surprisingly public that it strips away the observers' inhibitions. That little guy in Brussels has Nothing on these guys.

On a final technical note, I interviewed hostels today. The Dlouha Travelers Hostel is dirty, noisy, free, and near the edge of the main old town square. The Downtown Hostel is spic and span, quiet, tightly controlled, and a longer walk from the central old town square. The Ritchie Hostel is right in between those two extremes.

Looking for Where Kafka Slept

Today I caught the train from Wien to Praha. It was a beautiful, bucolic ride through the country. If we take the students on this train ride, I think they will enjoy it. There is a direct train from Wein- Miedling to Prague, which is quite convenient. It is a five hour trip.

The Prague train station is in stark contrast with the flavor of the town. It is steel and glass modernity with all the amenities one could want. I walked from the train station to the hostel. At 1:00 pm on a Saturday, the streets were empty. The tourists seem to come out at 3:00. By 3:00 one could not easily cross the Charles Bridge, and the royal mile was packed. They were having a "taste of Prague" in the old city square, so it was full of barbecue, sausages, and beer. The students would really enjoy this as a first exposure. It has a rich mix of modern and old and enough chatkies to choke a goat. It is different enough for them to awed by things they have only read about or seen in movies, and yet enough is familiar and accessible so as not to be overwhelming.


The Dlouha Travellers Hostel and Pension is typical of urban hostels: filthy, loud, and public. I am staying in one of the multiple gender dorms. The toilets don't work, so one must go down the hall to the swampy bathrooms that another hall shares. The young people have only one high volume with which to communicate. This youthful exuberance is something else our student would like. The location is excellent. If we took over an entire dorm, or rented all their apartments, then it would be good.


Today I did the old town Kafka tour and visited all the places he lived in the city. I believe a lot has changed in a hundred years, and few locations remain although the context remains. One can stand on the bridge where one of his characters commits suicide, and that is good and creepy. I'm reading the castle, and critics don't agree that the Prague castle is THE castle, but I can certainly imagine it.

It visible and impossible. I certainly see how Kafka felt hemmed in and futile in this town of so much change and not change. His writing has a depressingly contemporary feel to it.


There is a poignant piece of modern sculpture just off the old city square. It is several rows of red plush theatre seats facing a brick wall. I think we will take one of our promotional photos here. It is so Kafkaesque. What I wonder about right now, is what is the antidote to Kafka's world? Is it the rank hedonism that Prague gives itself to during high tourist season where it is all sausage, gift sets of Bekerovka, and crystal? Is it religion in the churches and synagogues that dot the old city? Dunno. Tomorrow I'll go t othe park and see if I find anything there.

New journey starts: the metacognitive cultural humility quest

Blog post 1
June 17, 2011


Here I am in a kind of study abroad ready to do a little experiential learning.  Page and I are talking about critical thinking blogging to increase cultural awareness, and we are in the process of trying to adapt the concept of cultural humility to the foreign language classroom.  Sipple  and I are working on applying Bakhtin's concept of carnival to the experience of study abroad. So, here I am putting on my metaphorical white lab coat, splitting myself into metacognitive observer and immersed participant, and taking notes.  This is armchair theorizing on wheels, ethnography through the looking glass, the practical application of critical navel gazing, as it were.

First, blogging as metacognitive practice.  If I'm not careful, this blog could turn into a travelogue where I just chronicle what happens in a kind of boring reportage.  I need to remember to observe/describe, analyze, evaluate, and extrapolate.  At this point in the journey, I am two thirds along in my journey as I wait in Heathrow for my flight to Vienna.  In getting from Cincinnati FTP Heathrow via Toronto, I noticed two things: there is a lot of personal stress for travelers trying to make The Rules of the airport make sense, and it is tiring to make connections work.  

Airports now have all kinds of crazy rules that don't always make sense like the liquids in the plastic bag, going through all the different kinds of security procedures, and what documents one must give to whom and when.  It is rather the opposite of carnival: it reminds me of a Kafkaesque world where officials needing something just turn up and block you from your task until some line has been walked through.  In Toronto, we had to get off the plane, go through a passport and Landing Card check even though we were only making a connection inside the airport to another Air Canada flight.  (note to self: never do that again!). I asked apparently official  two people why we had to do this, and they both looked off into space and muttered vagaries: it was The Rules.  I think that the stress is increased by the apparent arbitrariness of The Rules and consequent feeling of lack of control or being at the mercy of mysterious forces.  The most constructive response, I think, is to just let go of control and treat airports and their ilk as seas with high chop: a mild force of nature that you can't push against but which can be maneuvered and accounted for in other ways.  

The other observation was about how tiring this is.  Hurry up and wait is stressful, and it is really  hard to sleep well on a plane.  As a result, I think that on our study abroad trip, we need to have a snack provision time because I went up to Costa Coffee, and that cup of coffee worked wonders.  If we go directly to Prague from Cincinnati, or Vienna, we'll need to make sure we have plenty of rest time planned in, and we need to make sure that the kids have snacks or, more likely, time to get snacks.  

I think that giving oneself to the carnivalesque world of international travel is tightly related to the practice of cultural humility because both require letting go of control and being more responsive than proactive.  One can plan and plan, but once in motion, one can only use the plan as a general guideline.  The customs man at the UK Border Control asked me a series of border questions ending with "What kind of professor are you?" Would there have been a wrong answer? Was he waiting for a hesitation in case I wasn't what I had written for my profession on my landing card?  I blurted out "Comparative literature" because it sounded less silly than "English".  He was fine with that, but I reflected on the cultural humility "courageous questions" as I hiked on to the next terminal to see if I had dealt with that moment in the way that we recommend in our paper.  
      What are my biases about this group of people?  
                I believe that border authority people are capricious.
      How do I know these biases are true or not?
                 I have passed through customs in many countries and been confused            by them often.
       What will happen if I act on these biases?
                 I don't know because border authority people confuse me.
        What kind of relationship do I want to have with this person?
                 I know I am harmless so I want to give him answers that will make him happy.
         
I guess I was humble enough.  I answered his questions, and when i was confused, I just went with whatever came to mind.  It seemed to work well enough. I think the challenge in cultural humility will really come into play when I am weaker with the language skills, like in Austria and the Czech Republic.  What is my plan, a la self regulated learning?  I will plan ahead what I need to say, use that plan as a guideline, when I get confused I will slow down and try to politely work though the interaction with writing or graphic aids.  Okay. The next step in my participation in this carnival of humility will begin in two hours when I have to find the S7 train to Praterstern and buy a ticket for it.  Heh heh.   We'll see how this best laid plan of this mouse goes.  

*****
Ha! It was so easy to get to the hotel from the airport thanks to the fabulous public transport and a little research.  At the hotel desk, Page will laugh, I didn't have to use my fancy sentences asking the clerk to speak English because all of my night school German worked just fine.  Of course the clerk was kind and patient, so that was good.  What new understanding do I have? Go in with a plan and wing it.  

This part of the outer ring of Vienna is the work-a-day business use end of the city.  At Pratersterne u-bahn and s-bahn station, everybody gathers to sit around, smoke cigarettes, drink  whatever, and have their dogs bark at each other amidst the trash.  It is quite scruffy, and not quite what I expected, although I'm not sure what I expected.  I certainly did not expect to see 19th century buildings with graffiti tags on them.  But the coolest thing so far is the never ending bike parade in the congested bike lane: a bike with a trailer full of full sized speaker cranking out industrial synth, a recumbent bike with the driver on the cell phone so he steers with one foot and peels with the other whilst on the phone, baskets of all sizes, roller blazers with bicycle bells in their hands to get the slow bikes out of the way, pirate flags, stuffed rabbits, and tigger ente painted bikes.  That was fun to see.