The Traveling Librarian

I'm back!

2008-05-27T05:26:00.001-07:00

I'm back in the good ol' USA where we have comfy beds and normal toilets! I had a wonderful time and can't wait to go back again!

Slovakia Day 3

2008-05-21T08:33:00.000-07:00

Whew! What a whirlwind day! Last night, we got back from the opera Boris Godonov (a russion, bloody, depressing opera) at midnight. We crashed, but we were up bright and early this morning to leave the house at 8 for a day of site seeing and visiting the US embassy.

We started the day seeing some of the sights around Bratislava with a tour guide named Martin Sloboda. At first I just thought, "Wow, this guy knows alot about Bratislava." Soon, i picked up our guide book and had an epiphany: Martin Slaboda WROTE our guide book. That guidebook stand over there? All Martin Slaboda books. That's right! THe resident expert on all things Slavic wss our tour guide. Wow. I started listening more carefully! My favorite slovak story that he told was about the tradition of eating trout/carp for Christmas. Several days before Christmas, the families go to the market and get a LIVE fish. They bring the live fish home and let it live in their bathtub for a few days (so that the kids can play with it or something). Then on christmas day, they catch the fish (which is supposed to be hysterical) and then the father of the family is responsible for killing the fish (hopefully away from the children as they have now become emotionally attached, i'm sure). and they cut it up and eat it for Christmas dinner. Bizarre, no?

After our tour, we got to visit the American Embassy (Holy security, Batman!) and speak with the American/Slovak Ambassador for about an hour. Honestly, i know it was a big honor, but I was struggling to stay awake.

After that, we did a few more tour spots and then stopped to get lunch. I got broccoli cream soup that was DELICIOUS! Turkey, and rice with raisons in them. Strange, but very tasty.

After that, we had a few adventures at the local post office looking for collectable stamps for a few members of our GSE team.

Then we wandered back through some souvenir stands, and eventually made our way back home.

Tonight we will be eating as a group with all of our host families at a local pub. Tommorow morning we leave for Prague bright and early!

No clue aobut interenet access in Prague, so you may hear from me only when I'm back in the states! It's only 4 days now!

Slovakia Day 2 (lost count of what day along time ago)

2008-05-20T06:07:00.000-07:00

Hello blog readers!

It has been awhile. I was in Valtice-Breclav, the wine region of the Czech Republic (or the "whine" region, as the third week hit us pretty hard. We were all exhausted). Since I was too tired (and a little sick with a cold, but i got over it) I didn't get a chance to write a daily entry. I know, i know. I'm sorry. But here are some highlights from the last week:

* walking through Valtice and listing to the local community news blared communist style over loud speakers

* trying duck liver for the first and last time

* visiting three countries (Austira, Czech Republic, and Slovakia) all in one day.

* planting a tree, which I named "Lexie the Magnificant" at the Tri Gracie forest, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Yes, that's right- the nations of the world will be caring for my tree.

* biking 32 kilometers all over the Valtice country side. Not the smartest move I ever made, and I'm still smarting from that bicycle seat but the country side is beautiful. Think of northern italy. It's very very similar.

* seeing a million wine cellars. Trust me when I tell you, you've seen one, you've seen them all.

* staying in a castle where our Host, his girlfriend, and their 11 year old son whom everyone calls "The Baron" because he is a baron.

Ok so now we have moved on to Slovakia. Since crossing the border into Slovakia, we have learned a few things:
#1, Czech is no where near as close to Slovak as everyone tells you. You can try the very few Czech words you know, and you have a 50/50 change of it actually working. Most of the time they just make a confused face at my attempts. At least they are not laughing!

#2 the Slovak people are much more religious than the Czech people. Here many more people attend church (as opposed to the large amount of atheism/agnositicsm prevalent in the CR)

#3 The United States of America is a baby compared to the rest of the world. We were at a recently unearthed archeological dig in Nitra, and the official at the site said "15th, 16th century? Not interested. But this, this is 9th century. That's good stuff!" Uh...so our country wasn't even around in the 15th and 16th century. Hmmmm. Today I got to see a rare book from the 18th century, and I realized, this book is as old as my country! But I digress...

So far we are really enjoying Bratislava. Today was a vocational day for all of us. I got to tour some library sites with a local library director. He first took me to a local library. I started looking at their classification system, which he explained was International Classification Numbers, and it was eerily similar to Dewey. Hmmm....a possibly copycat? After the local library which was ho-hum, they took me to a special Children's library. I was in Library Heaven!!! I got to meet the head children's librarian, Ludmila, and she showed me some of their programs and projects. For instance, they just had a program about monkeys, and the children had made monkey faces to place on the wall. Next to this, there was a posterboard where visitors could draw a picture of a monkey. I most definitely added a monkey!

After a while I started commenting on books, such as "Oh! Look at that one, it's about a funny yarn ball." She ripped it off the shelf and gave it to me. Like, to have permanently. I'm all "Ummmm, this is really nice and all, but don't you need to discard this???" Apparently not. So she kept handing me books from their collection. I felt really bad taking them because their collection was very small and not in that good of shape. But the host said I would be rude not to. We kept on, and we came to a fairy tale poster featuring a witch and a princess. I commented that it was "Yegi Baba" and she got excited and ripped it off the wall to give to me. Soon I just shut my mouth and wouldn't comment anymore. She tried to get me to take 3 hardback beautiful editions of Slovak fairytales, but I told her they wouldn't fit in my luggage. Other than that, It was a very wonderful experience.

After that, he took me to a special library for teachers and education students. At first, once again i thought "Ho-hum". But we started walking down these corridors, until we got to a door with bars across it. I'm thinking "Oh gosh, this is where they lock the book stealers". They open in and don't worry, it's only the WORLD's LARGEST COLLECTION of RARE BOOKS. Yup, hundreds and hundreds of books from the 15th, 16th, 17th and on centuries. Mostly in Czech, German, Latin, and Russian. They're picking these rare books up and throwing them around and I'm all like "ACK! Put some gloves on or something! Where is the climate control??? Where are the special boxes???? DO YOU PEOPLE KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE?!?!?!" It totally blew my mind. I know at BYU, the special collections archive keeps rare books and they have not even a tenth of what was in this collection. And they treat their books very seriuosly. Not here! One of the slovak librarians opened a book and put it down spine up. I almost passed out.

My personal favorite editions where the Orbis Pictus books, (Picture Dictionaries) from the 16th century in Latin, Czech, German, and Slovak. Very cool. There were also some cool older books bound in music paper. Just the randomest coolest little collection.

Another favorite library highlight from today was to see an automatic card catalog. It was a giant wall sized box of card trays. The librarian punched in a number and correct tray would pop out. A front runner of the OPAC i guess? ;)

All in all, a very good day. Tonight we are going to see an opera at the Slovak National Theater. So I need to go get gussied up.

Love to all,

Lexie

We are alive!

2008-05-19T07:54:00.001-07:00

We are alive, and well in Slovakia! More to come shortly...

Day 15

2008-05-12T12:26:00.000-07:00

Day 15- That's right! we are now on the downward slope. More than halfway through, and we're all still alive. At this point we have visited 4 different places (Prague, Pilzen, Cesky Raj, and Ostrava), we have learned alot of words, and we are all still (pretty much) getting along.

Today was our vocational days. I started out by visiting the Municpal Library in Ostrava (that is the equivalent to the Public Library). They have a HUGE system. Keep in mind that Ostrava metro is around 310,000 people. They have one Main branch and TWENTY SIX branch libraries. That's right, i said it: TWENTY SIX branches. Holy cow. That's like HMCPLx2 plus more. To help handle all of this, they have it split up into five districts. Each of these districts answers to one district leader, who is directly under the Library Director. Unfortunately, the library director was not there today, but I did get to meet with one of the District Directors who spoke very good English.

It was very fortunate that I was able to meet with this director, because she is responsible for a project that is very much like what i do in Outreach. One of the biggest social problems Ostrava faces is that of the gypsies. They estimate that there are around 30,000 gypsies living in the Ostrava area (that's 10% of the total population!) The gypsies are mostly migrant workers who were put out of a job when the coal and steel mines in the area shut down. So there is a lot of unemployment and low literacy among gypsies. To make the situation even worse, they band together and form ghettos, where they elect a gypsy king and refuse to cooperate with city services. So. What can a library do about this? Well two years ago, this library director i spoke to, opened a small branch library in the biggest of the inner ostrava gypsy ghettos. This library focuses primarily on the gypsy children. It hosts programs such as storytimes, lock ins, field trips, and classes for the children. And this is librarianship on a personal level: one field trip they had planned was scheduled for a saturday morning. They told the parents, and promoted the trip. Then the saturday morning rolls around and no children were at the library. So they go to the houses of the children. The parents are smoking and drinking on the front porch, and they ask them where the children are. The gypsy parents told them that the kids are inside asleep, and if they want them to come on the trip the librarians can wake them up themselves. So house by house, these librarians woke these children up, washed them, got them dressed and put them on a bus for a field trip. She said that they are also teaching them basic lessons like "how to wash your hands" or "How to blow your nose" or "How to use a public bathroom" because the parents are not teaching the children these things. They are not sure of the success of this program, because the outputs they are looking for (like personal hygiene and cultural awareness) really can't be measured by statistics. But they think it's working because the children keep coming back to the library, day after day

Another thing I thought was cool was the way they order books. Every Tuesday morning, their vendor shows up at the library with a pile of new books. Then the five librarians spend all morning pouring through the books deciding if they want it for the collection. Then they give the vendor the list of books they want to keep (and possibly order more) and give the other ones back. While it may not be the most time sensible thing to do, i thought it was neat that they got to look at the books before they ordered them.

After my visit at the Municpal library, I visited the state scientific library. It was pretty cool: it was like an academic library, except that anyone could use it. They are hoping to move into a new building very soon.

After all the library visits, I got to visit with the vice-mayor of Ostrava, and he presented our team with many Ostrava gifts. Then we went to the coal mining museum (which is housed in a real historic mine. It was trippy!) and after that we had a rotary club meeting with all the rotarians in Ostrava. It really was a wonderful, but full day.

I was so busy, I didn't have time for a word of the day. BUT! I started listening to Czech, and I started understanding some of it for the first time today. Most of it was contextual clues, but still. Im proud of myself.

Tommorow we leave for Valtice. I'm not sure what our internet situation will be like as we will be staying in a castle (that's right, the library princess is staying in a castle, BOO-yah!) so I don't know if i will have interent or not. I guess it depends on how recently they've renovated the castle. However, don't worry. I'll keep writing posts and put them up as soon as I get a chance.

Day 14

2008-05-11T10:55:00.000-07:00

It.s official! We.ve hit the halfway mark! We are on day 14 of our adventure, and still loving every minute of it. However, I think I can safely speak for the team when I say that we all missed our mothers very much today. So mom, this is a Mother.s Day shout out for you!

Today we started the day by going to Frenstat, a small local town. I got to örder my first Czech zimzlena, or ice cream cone. (I had pistachio and chocolate, in case you were wondering.) Then we visited a museum on Czech folk life and immigration. Now, a word about Czech museums. I have visited many, many, museums in our tours here. In Prague, and a little in Pilsen I found the museums a little confusing and not very well curated. I had wondered if it was just a holdover from the communist era, or maybe a cultural/language thing. Not so! Because here in Moravia (the general area where I am staying is known as Moravia) the museums are tiny, but FABULOUS. The museum we visited yesterdaz in Pribor about Sigmund Freud, was superbly done and the exhibitions where very well put together. It was even (dare I say this about a museum?) very entertaining! Today we visited the Czech folklife and immigration museum in Frenstat. I had a similar experience with this museum as well. The museum exhibits were interesting, and very creatively put together. For instance, one of the largest Czech immigrated communities is in Texas. So they have a room that is divided by a large ship bridge. On one side is everyday historic life in the Czech area. Then you cross the bridge, and on the bridge are all sorts of primary historical documents about the immigrants from the CR. On the other side, is Texas! You read all kinds of interesting information about their lives in Texas. For instance, did you know that even today, Czech is the third most popular language spoken in Texas? (It.s right behind English and Spanish). The other exhibits were all done in a similarly superb fashion.

After that, we went on a short trip into the Beskzÿdy mountains (prounounced "Bes kiddy"). We took a ski lift up into the small moravian town at the top. It was gorgeous! We could see all around. Our host said that if the clouds had cleared out, we should be able to see all the way into the Slovakian Tatra Mountains. From there, we hiked up the mountain trail to a small statue of Radgegast, one of the folklife gods of beer. After that we went back to the trail and WALKED DOWN THE SIDE OF THE MOUTAIN. This sounds like not a big deal, but this mountain was bigger than any of the mountains in Huntsville. I was ready to fall over and die by the time I got down.

While we were up in the mountains, we stopped and had lunch at local restaurace. I got to try a local dish called Halusky (prounounced "hal loush key") that was very good. It was potato gnochi, with goatcheese and bacon. It tasted just like the best Velvetta shells and cheese you have ever had in your life! I loved it.

Words of the daÿ: zemzlina (pronounced "zem ez lina" and meaning Ice Cream) and ohchijee (totally not sure of the spelling, so i just spelled in phonetically. It means "certainly!")

We are all still having a wonderful time and we love our host families. We would stay here forever if they.d let us!

Tommorow we having vocational daÿs. I.m scheduled to visit the local public library and scientific library. Im VERY excited!!!

Day 12 and 13

2008-05-10T13:09:00.001-07:00

First of all let me apologize for any spelling mistakes that there may be in this blog. I am using a Czech keyboard for the first time, and Im still learning the ropes. The biggest problem is that the y and z keys are switched around, which means that if I don§t pay attention I might type like this..."verz nice to see zou todaz". Anyways, the team and i are safe here in Ostrava. I have a wonderful host family, and I am enjoying staying in a family home. It means clean laundry! Today we went to a little village called Stromberk, which has been called the Czech Bethlehem. It was a very quaint little village with a strange tradition. Many centuries ago, Turkish invaders came into the village and cut all the ears off of the inhabitants. So today, they sell cookies there shaped like ears. I ate ear cookies! And don§t worry, they were delicious! We also got to visit the Tatra car museum, and see all of the cool old cars. Then, possibly my favorite part of the day, was when we got to visit Sigmund Freud§s birthplace. The museum thez have there is really cool, and the curatorship was above anzthing else I have seen on this trip. I§ll write more about it when I have a chance. Till then, know that everzthing is going well and I§m having a blast! Tommorow we are taking a trip to the Bendresky Mountains, and to a large shopping center...whoo hoo!

Word of the day is "Spisza!" prounounced "sh_pizza" it means SUPER!

Ta ta for now!

Day 11

2008-05-08T11:40:00.000-07:00

Today I learned how beer is made.

But let me back up a little. Since today was our "down time" day, we could do whatever we wanted. So of course, i started out the day sleeping in (which was WONDERFUL!) After that, since I didn't have to meet my group until noon I decided to walk around Pilzen town square and do a little shopping. The only problem is that today is Victory in Europe (or VE) day, so everything was closed. After a while, I not only got a little lonely, but I started to get bored. Eventually I was able to meet up with two of my group members. We decided to check out the local "Pilzen Plaza" which is like a mall/shopping center. I desperately wanted to go, since I had left my sunglasses at home and I was ready to maim and injure innocent bystanders to get a pair of sunglasses of my own. This has become a major issue in the last day or so becuase the sun has been brutal. I have some serious sunburns from the last few days. So we visited Pilzen Plaza and I found a pair of sunglasses for 399Kc (that's roughly the equivelant of $24). It was only a short trip, and it was only me and the boys on our team so we decided to come back after lunch. After that we wandered back to the square stopping for a juice break. We met up with the rest of our group around noon when we went to a local mill restaurant for lunch. I got this tuna pasta thing that was DELICIOUS! After the mill restaurant, we went to visit the famous Pilsner Urquell brewery.

Now a word about the brewery: I knew that this experience would be totally lost on me because I do not drink beer, have never had beer, and don't really care how it's made. But I knew that it was important to our hosts and the culture I'm visiting, so I went. Oh my goodness! This brewery was like the Disneyland of Beer. You walk into their HUGE campus, and there's little brewery houses, shops, and gardens. On the tour, we started out watching a film called "Beer World". Soon my team member Allison and I were singing "Beer World, It's Beer World, everything is Beer World..." It got a little crazy. After the opening film, they took us to the Pilsner Urquell packaging plant where they package the beer in bottles and cans. We got to watch the process and it was like watching one of those manufacturing shows on the Discovery Channel. After that, we were taken by the Pilsner Urquell bus to their actual brewery. We got to ride on the largest elevator in the CR, up to their rotating auditorium. They showed us a movie depicting how beer is made as the floor rotated (i'm serious- it really is the Disneyland of beer). After that we got to enjoy "the full sensory experience" of the beer making process. We got to taste the barley and the hops- the "spice of beer" (ok, after the i tasted the hops which were in a finely ground powder form, i'm like "Seriously? Who drinks this stuff?!" it was NASTY. Allison assured me that was not what beer actually tastes like." Then they took us down through the big brewing kettles to the caves under the brewery where they cool and store the beer. Then whomever wanted to could taste unfiltered (that means there is still yeast floating around) and unpasturized beer. Some liked it, others didn't. I personally was ready to leave the magic kingdom of beer.

So we went back to the Pilzen Plaza to do some more shopping. Since it has been very sunny and unbearably hot the last few days, I desperately needed some sunscreen. I went to a drugstore in the plaza, and found some Nivea sunscreen. I thought for sure, since it was a brand i recognized it would be in english. Sure enough, when I peeled off the Czech label, the english was there underneath. Hallelujah! After that, I scoured the shopping center for tshirts to wear in the hot weather. Luckily, ESPRIT was having a sale so i loaded up on some tshirts to survive for the next few days.

After all this shopping, we were hungry! So we sauntered up to the mall food court to check out the selections. We had: Czech fast food (like sausages and saurkraut, ready to go!) Czech Chinese Food (interesting...) Angus Burgers, and Italian. We were feeling like American comfort food so we all got Angus Cheeseburgers. But apparently the combo meal has not caught on yet in the CR, so we had to order Cheeseburger, fries, drink, and ketchup seperately (yes, you have to pay for "Omacky" or ketchup. It's about 7Kc, which is around $.10). By the time they added everything up it came out to around 155Kc (which is like $9!!! Can you imagine paying that at Mcdonalds for a burger and fries???) So disgruntled about that (and the ad they had of a cow licking it's lips while it looked at a hamburger) we sat down to enjoy our meal. But here is the Czech version of a hamburger: no ketchup or mustard. Instead...Tartar Sauce! It was very strange.

All in all, it was an intersting cultural experience day.

And the words for the day: Toalety (prounounced "Toilet-y" meaning: bathroom. Or sometimes W.C. - which stands for "Water Closet" works just as well) and "Omacky" meaning, Ketchup.

Now a sidenote to all of my blog fans: In the morning I will be leaving pilzen to transfer to Ostrava, a town in the northern region of the Czech Republic. I'm not sure what my internet connectivity will be like there, so I do not know when my next blog post will be. But don't worry, even if i can't post daily i'll save the journals up and post them all at once when I do have internet. So as they say here, CIAO!!!

Day 10

2008-05-07T10:40:00.000-07:00

Today was the 1st Annual Pilzen Rotary Charity Golf Tournament. We got up bright and early and made our way to the Pilzen Golf Course. Once there, local dignitaries started arriving by the ton! We got to meet H.E. Richard Graber, the American Ambassidor to the Czech Republic; one of the Czech Senators, the Lord Mayor of Pilzen, and the lead singer of Yellow Dog (the local Pilzen band that plays US Southern Rock in Czech. They were the ones playing "Freebird" a few nights ago). We took several pictures and smiled and shook hands for awhile. Soon, since Butler was the only team member would actually be participating in the golf tournament, the girls and I left the golf course to go see a local castle/chateau.

Our guide, Yurak, explained that there were two types of Czech castles: strongholds and palaces. We had seen many of the big stone strongholds, but today we would see a palace. He told us he would be taking us to a "hunting castle". Of course, with the accent we all thought he said "haunted castle" and I got really excited until I realized the actual translation. Oh well. Yurak took us to Castle Kozel up in the mountains by Pilzen. It is like a smaller Czech version of Versailles. It had some beautiful outside gardens and sculptures, and was made up by a campus of buildings. Inside the buildings, the rooms were decorated in Rococo/Louis 16th style of furniture. My favorite feature of the decor though was the heavy use of Trompe l'Oeil that was used on the walls. It's a technique that uses visual tricks to make you think there are things like molding, brick work, etc when really it's just painting and shading. And it was all over this place! Perhaps one of the coolest roomes in the palace was a small theater, complete with gas lamps.

After this visit to Kozel, we drove to Dolni Vlkys, or Wilkeshen. This was a very important visit for me because this was the village where my grandmother, Leopoldine Sedlachek was born, and my main motivation for visiting the Czech Republic. Yesterday, I was fortunate enough to meet Jan Soukoup, the architect I mentioned who is in charge of restoring Czech national monuements. As fate would have it, he had just finished restoring a small chapel in Dolni Vlkys, and had the back story on the village. This was a small German community about 20 miles from Pilzen when my grandmother was born. It was a pretty active village, even during WWII because of it's largely German population. However, after WWII the anti-German sentiment was pretty strong. The village was partily destroyed and it's occupants sent to re-location camps. Today there is not much more than a few buildings left, and they are turning the remains of it into a suburb for Pilzen. However, it was a poignant moment to walk the grounds where my Grandmother and family lived so long ago. It was made even more poignant, as on the drive to the village I received word that my Aunt had passed away (we had been expecting it, so it wasn't a suprise). It was a very bittersweet look at the circle of life, as I examined where one part of my family tree had been born, I pondered the loss of another part. I am so grateful that I had this opportunity, and so grateful that the local Rotary club made it possible. One of the rotarions, Yurak our guide had been calling me their "Czech grandchild" all week.

After our visit to Dolni Vlkys, we went to Yurak's house. It was an old converted farm and it looked like paradise. I took some pictures but I don't know that they did it justice. His gardens were beautiful. He also had 4 cats, which i was very happy to play with since I miss my own cats very much.

After that we stopped for lunch, and then made our way back to the golf tournament for the wrap up celebration. The wrap up celebration had an auction, which was conducted in Czech. However, being willing to engage in whatever culture we could, we soon started bidding. Allison, one of the team members bid against herself in an effort to win a blanket (which she did get). I was talking to a friend and since I was gesticulating wildly, I accidentally entered the bidding on an item. Thankfully, another person outbid me, but it was a heart pounding moment! After that we got to say goodbye to several of the Rotoract friends we have made here. We will be leaving Pilzen on Friday and it is not likely that we will see them again. It's amazing to me how you can become fiends with people so quickly! I hope to keep in touch with all of them through email.

There are no words of the day. I was too caught up in other things to worry about language. I'll try harder tommorow!

Pictures from Karlovy Vary and various Pilzen stuff

2008-05-06T13:14:00.000-07:00

Ok, here it is...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/46411863@N00/sets/72157604917013546/

enjoy!

Day 9 (i think?)

2008-05-06T11:45:00.000-07:00

I'm warning you right now, i'm starting to get delirious. Too much travel and too much Czech language can make you a confused girl! So if this post is a little non-cohesive, please forgive. Today was our "regional visits day". The good news is that unlike the US, you can cover most of the Czech Republic by car in 3 hours or so. So regional visits can be made very quickly. Our first visit was to Karlovy Vary, which is the spa town where Casino Royale was shot. It was GORGEOUS!!! I hope to post pictures tonight so you can share in my wonderment. Now, the thing that Karlovy Vary is known for is it's healthful mineral spa waters. They have 13 "spas" around the city that look like fountains. People walk around with little cups, filling up the cups and drinking this "health" water. Now my first clue that this might not be a good idea is when I started to notice that the design of the cups was to drink through the handle (so you don't smell the water- not good). So our host went and got us a bunch of cups to "take the waters" with. Being the good sport that I am, I tried it. Holy cow. It was NASTY. You could taste alot of iron, it was salty, and it was warm. I did by best to swallow it down but I was done. Afterwards all the Czech people we were visiting with told us their "I tried the water once and was sick for 5 weeks" stories. I was thinking "thanks alot guys!"

After that, we were taken to a local brewery that has a small restaurant in a cave. Our host (Roman, one of the GSE team members from the Czech team) has a funny sense of humor so he told us he would order an appetizer, but we had to promise to eat it. Since I've liked Czech food so far, I thought "No problem". Except that he ordered cow tongue. Which, I figured when in Rome, do as the Romans! I ate cow tongue. It tasted alot like roast beef, but the texture was alot spongier (this grossed me out and I wouldn't eat another piece). Between the cow tongue and the water I was a little woozy!

After that we went to a gorgeous local monestary and catherdral that we toured. They had an extensive library which included English books from the early 1900s! However as I looked closer at the books, I noticed that even though they were all very professional faced and edged towards the edge of the shelves, they were held in place by fishing wire! I laughed as I thought of the time and hassle that would save if we did that to our library. No one would ever mess up our shelves again!

In between our visits, Roman took great delight in giving us "Czech Language Lessons" in which he taughts us how to say various swear words in Czech. Now I know just about as many swear words as I do real words in Czech. To his credit, he also taught us how to ask for chocolate at a store.

After our time at the monestary we buzzed back to Pilzen just in time to see the "Thank You America!" celebration at the "Diky Amerikco!" monument. We were with a locally renowned architect who took us to his office which overlooked the ceremony. We watched as the Czech Military Band played the "Star Spangled Banner" and it was quite a touching moment to think about how grateful this country was for the aide we provided during WWII. Our architect friend, Mr. Jan Soukoup provided us with books about the liberation of Pilzen which had beautiful black and white pictures of American tanks rolling through Pilzen on May 6, 1945 on the very streets we were walking and being received with a warm welcome by the Czech People. It was a very moving moment.

After this, it was time for dinner and we were taken to a restaurant called Simsalumbim! which had a magic/wizardry theme. It was actually a very cool restaurant and I was really digging the theme until I realized that they were piping in music you might hear in an elevator. Kenny G. really ruined the "magical mood". But the cool thing is that our adventurous team member, Butler ordered "Kangaroo Steak" and he let us try some. It was interesting, not bad. So in one day I have had: mineral water from Karlovy Vary, Cow Tongue, and Kangaroo. I live life on the wildside!

My words of the day: I'm trying REALLY hard to learn how to say Librarian in Czech. So according to my non-swear word Czech lesson from Roman, here are my words for the day: Kniha (prounounced "Ka-nee-ha" which means book), knihovna (prounounced "Ka-nee-hov-na" and means Library), and knihovnik "prounounced "ka-nee-hov-nik" and means librarian). It's actually alot to remember!

And i'm starting to learn numbers: i learned how to say: jeden (prounounced "Yed-na" which means "one")

So basically to ask for chocolate politely in a store you would say: Jeden chocolada, prosim." See my first Czech sentence!

Day 8

2008-05-05T13:19:00.000-07:00

Pilzen has definitely been a whirlwind of activity. This morning was vocational day, which I thought meant I would get to study my vocation but the Czech translation is that I got to study various vocations. So I started the day out on the front steps of the Pilzen City Hall. My host showed up and informed me that I was going to visit the local university Dental school where he is a professor. Okay. I'm playing along and then my host asks me what I do. I told him I was a librarian, and he seemed surprised, but agreed that we could stop in at a local library. We got to the Dental School of Charles University (which is the oldest, most prestigous university in Pilzen) and he showed me all of his classes, how they teach students to make molds, crowns, etc. My favorite part was where I got to see the little Dental museum. They had chairs from the 1930s and dental work from the beginning of time till now. Let's just say I'm very glad I live in an age that believes in "Laughing Gas"! Some of that other stuff looked painful! After the Dental school, my host took me to the medical library at Charles University. As luck would have it, the director (a very nice lady who luckily spoke a little English) was in and I was able to talk to her. She told me that she had recently had the chance to attend an ALA conference, and was very impressed with American Libraries. She informed me that their library was moving away from collecting print materials and moving all online. To the point that there were no print materials in the library! Any archival or print materials were kept in the various dental and medical schools, while the library housed all the up to date online databases. She says this has impacted her job because instead of showing people where to find a book, etc she and her staff have now become databases teachers. They had alot of databases that I recognized from when I worked at my University Library such as: CINAHL, PubMed, MedLine, Ovid, LexisNexis, etc. I asked her about the issue of censorship and she told me that the Czech libraries do not tolerate Censorship at all. The Czech people still remember communism, and the censorship that took place and are adamantly opposed to censorship in any form. In fact, during the Communist area, librarians in the smaller towns would fight against the communists by hiding "safe books" (so called because they were prohibited and if found, would be locked up in a safe) in their tiny village collections because it was unlikely communists would look there. If the soldiers did come by on an inspections,it was unlikely they would be educated enough to know what they were looking for. I thought that was a very interesting view on censorship. We as librarians constantly fight against censorship because of the very notion of something like the Communist era taking place. However, this is censorship on the other side- they fight against it so it won't happen again.

After my visit with the Director of the Charles University Medical Library, I was taken to Western Bohemia University where I met up with one of my other team members, Eleanor to sit it on a University Class. Since Eleanor is a math teacher, we sat in on a Math class. They said that since we were their guests, they would give the math lecture in English. Which was very kind, but they needn't have bothered since the last math class i had was Algebra for dummies in 2001. This was applied advanced mathematics. Once the professor started talking I had no idea what was going on. All this vocation visiting had worked up an appetite, so we went to a local italian restaurant (the Czech people love Italian food). I was looking at the pizza menu, and a pizza caught my eye: it had Chicken, pineapple, and oregano. And it was called.....(drumroll please)....the Alabama! So i ate alabama pizza for lunch. After that, I met up with the rest of the group at the Radio Ceske Pilzen station. The Station director and PR manager were kind enough to take us on a tour of the station, including all of the bomb shelters and pirate radio studios that were operating during WWII (I'm telling you, it's a whole different world here). The coolest thing is that they showed us the unique design of their current studios- to help with noise reduction, the studios are built so that they are suspended by concrete blocks in the area. They are basically floating on supports, so that the noise vibrations from each area will not interfere with recording. Supposedly they are one of the only stations in the world that are designed and built this way. After that, we headed back to our hotels to change into our official team uniforms: grey pants, white sweater, navy blazer, and rotary scarf. It's very not cute. In fact, one of the waiters in the hotel we were meeting at asked us if we were "American Stewardesses". That got a big laugh!

We gave our presentation and met all of the local rotarians. After all of this work, we decided we needed a treat, so the three other team members and I went and got ice cream. I got Marscapone flavored which was a creamy rasberry with chocolate bits. Pretty tasty. All in all, a good but busy day.

Tommorow we will tour Karlovy Vary (Carlsbad in English), a local posh spa town where Casino Royale was filmed.

The Czech words of the day: děkujeme (prounounced "Dj-a-qui-em", which is Thank you in the plural form, like "We thank you". Děkuji! prounounced "Dj-a-qui-ae" is "I thank you" These are both very hard to say and I'm still working on it)
And the other: Chocolada (which is you guessed it: CHOCOLATE!)

I was going to try a really hard word they told me for the red clouds at a sunset, but my host told me to stop trying because all I kept saying was "Worms".

Day 7

2008-05-04T12:50:00.001-07:00

Holy cow. I'm too tired to write much today! We did a walking tour of Pilzen. Our guides were some local University and high school kids (we spend alot of time with the kids because they know more English than the adults do). They took us to Saint Bartholomews. We walked all the way to the very top (that is 306 stairs for your information). It had a wonderful view of the city and the surrounding country. After that our tourguides lead us on a tour of underground Pilzen. Basically, this is a series of cellars that were originally created for storing beer back in the day (I'm talking like Medieval time, y'all) then because of fire safety concerns and the fear of mauraders, they created underground tunnels to connect these cellars. The underground network spans the entire length of the city out into the surrounding areas. It was very useful during WWII for smuggling and hiding people and forbidden materials. After our tour of the underground, we had a quick snack in Pilzen square where we watched the parade of American Army Artilery as they paraded around the square. Then we went to lunch at the Pilsner Urquell Brewery. I really thought the food was nothing fabulous, so I won't describe it in detail. After that, we walked past an American Army re-enactment of Patton's camp, by Pilzen city walls. That was on our way to our first Czech Soccer (or football) game. We stayed for one half, and then headed off to an old church to listen to a Baroque music concert. After that, we had dinner at a little Czech Pub. I ordered Smasovaska (sp?) which is basically toast, with eggs, and cheese. The Czech call it "Beer Food". I said it went just fine with my Coca Cola Light (which by the way is much tastier than Diet Coke. I think its because they use ingredients which are not approved by the FDA).

Each day while I'm here in the CR, i'm trying to learn new words in Czech. I actually had two new words of the day today: Caj (which is prounounced "Chai" and means, duh, tea) and Hracky (which is prounounced "Huh-rach-key" and means toys). I'll keep you updated on the words I pick for tommorow.

Pictures, Pictures, Pictures

2008-05-03T14:40:00.001-07:00

Hi all,

Here are some pictures from my first 6 days of the trip. I'm sorry it's only 40- i have many more to add and I will later. But I'm tired and I want to go to bed!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/46411863@N00/sets/72157604867435391/

Day 6

2008-05-03T13:59:00.001-07:00

May 3, 2008 (Day 6)

Today we left Czech Paradise (Ceske Raj) and traveled back to Prague. At Prague we went to our Prague flat one last time and frantically threw everything into our bags. Then in the parking lot we said goodbye to Jan and his family. They really have been amazing while we were here: giving us a place to stay, taking us out into the country, feeding us. I can’t imagine anything else they could have possibly done. After we were packed, and we said goodbye, we drove to Pilzen. Pilzen is a nice city, very comparable to Huntsville. It’s big, but not to big. It’s modern, but still has history. Our first main crisis occurred when we pulled in: May 6 is the Pilzen Independence day when Pilzen was freed during WWII by the Americans. As a result, all the streets were closed off for demonstrations and displays of American tanks, vehicles, and other artillery. As they day wore on, it was not unusual to see an American tank role down the street. For the first time in this trip, I wasn’t worried about being American in a country that is not so friendly to Americans right now (there is a whole issue with American Radar that has the Czechs all fired up). All of the business are flying Czech and American flags. It’s kind of nice to see! Anyways, this was a problem because the parking lot where we were supposed to meet our rotary contacts was blocked off. So we did some improvisation and pulled into a side street. All day, we had been nervous about who our Pilzen Rotarians would be. Would they be nice? Would they be weird? Would they take care of us like Jan and his family had? So we’re sitting on a side street in Pilzen and a car pulls up. And out steps our host: Roman, a member of the Czech team we had met several times while they were visiting Alabama! So Roman and his sweet girlfriend Theresa showed up around Pilzen. They took us to get a snack. I got some baked cheese with chili peppers and a raspberry Fanta. Yum! Then we walked around. I got to see St. Bartholomews church, and rub the little cherub who supposedly bestows a wish on all who rub it. I also saw the 3 largest Jewish Synagogue in the world! As we were walking around, one thing was much more apparent in Pilzen than it had been in Prague. There is a much bigger contrast between traditional and communist architecture here. Roman was telling us a lot of the stories about Pilzen in the communist era. The things the people went through are astonishing. And the fact that in the face of that, Pilzen can still be very proud of it’s past and present says a lot about the caliber of people who inhabit it.

Tomorrow we are going on another walking tour of Pilzen, an excursion to the Pilzen brewery where they make Pilsner Urquell, a very popular beer here, and then probably more walking (seriously, I’m walking like 10 miles a day).

I have my first vocational day on Monday, when I get to meet with the staff of the library at the University of Western Bohemia. We’ll see how it goes!

Day 4 & 5

2008-05-03T13:04:00.000-07:00

I spent Days 4 & 5 in Ceske Raj (prounounced "Chesky Rye") which means Czech Paradise/Eden. It's basically the Czech Country side. We stayed with Jan and his family and got to visit many castles. Really, any description I could possibly give would not be adequate, so I'm going to try to post some pictures. We got to see alot of castles!

Day 3

2008-05-03T12:56:00.003-07:00

April 30, 2008 (Day 3)

Today we woke up early and headed over to Vlad the Impaler’s for breakfast. We had a traditional Czech breakfast including bread, cherry preserves, stolen (homemade sweet bread), deli turkey, cheese, yogurt, and fish sauce. Yes, fish sauce. It was very fishy (probably the first Czech food item I have not totally loved). But everything else was VERY tasty. After our very early breakfast, we hoped on the Metro with George P’s wife Martina. She took us on a shopping tour of Prague and we got to visit lots of fun stores. I bought a ton of souvenirs!!! My personal favorite store was Luxor Books, which is the Czech version of Barnes and Noble. I bought a cool Peter Sis (or Petr Sis here) book in Czech since I love his illustrations and he’s a CR native. After that we went to the Czech National Museum of Natural History, which was actually a little bit of a let down because it was a Museum about dinosaurs and stuff but it was in Czech, we really couldn’t understand much of it. And it really didn’t have anything to do with the history of the CR. They did have an interesting exhibit all about feet throughout history- to enter you had to walk though a gigantic foot. Serious. After that we got to eat lunch at a cute little local Italian eatery. I had a pepperoni pizza, which here comes with pepperoni, salami, and hot peppers on it. It was SO good, but it took FOREVER for them to make it. After that we took a cab back to our flat where we had a short rest before we left for “The Burning of the Witches” (or as they say here in the CR- “The Burning of the Vitches”). Now, when first got our itinerary, we noticed that on day 3, that night we would be attending the Burning of Winter. However, when we asked the local Czech people about it, they would sheepishly smile and say “It’s not “Winter”. It’s “Witches”. Every single person we asked had that same sheepish smile and wouldn’t elaborate. We started to get worried we would be burning really Witches! Finally, the nice Doctor we met yesterday at the Rotary meeting explain to us that it is a tradition that started out in Pagan times as the celebration from the transition from Winter to Spring. Basically the villages would sacrifice a person (burning them) to please Winter, so she would go away and turn into spring. Later when the Catholic Chuch became more prevalent, they started to burn Protestants (which they excused their actions by proclaiming their victims “Witches” as they were heretics to the church). A few years after that action fell out of favor, they started burning effigies of a witch, calling it the “Burning of the Witches”. They celebrate it like we do Halloween, and it’s a National Holiday the day after. All day long leading up to the Burning, we saw little girls dressed like Witches (the witch plays a large part in Czech mythology. There are witch puppets, shirts, key chains everywhere in the CR. It’s very much more popular in this country than in our own where the symbol of the witch is considered by many to be satanic). With all of this in mind, and the attitude that we could keep an open mind, we set out for the Burning of the Witches. Our guide, Yurag (a Slovak name, which is prounounced “Yuri” or “George”) took us to a little park along the Vltava river. There was an area where a band was setting up, and local people were building a bonfire. Around 9, the band started playing. The highlight for me was hearing “Cotton Eye Joe” in Czech! Around 9:30, the bonfire started and they definitely burned a human effigy. While the Czech crowd cheered, I found it very disturbing deep down. It reminded me too much of our own US history- featuring the burnings of the Salem Witch Trials and other human burnings. Too many times we have used that manner of execution on undeserving individuals. I really felt very uncomfortable. Finally we convinced Yurag to leave and we went to a local swanky restaurant where we drank Hot Chocolate and got to meet an American exchange student named Christina who was awesome! She told us a lot about some local things we didn’t know about and tours to go on. We had a really great time, and finally got home around midnight. All in all, it was a very interesting day!

Day 2

2008-05-03T12:56:00.001-07:00

April 29, 2008 (Day 2)

Today we walked all over Prague. Seriously. George P and Vladimir were our guides (I’ve started called Vladimir “Vlad the Impaler” because of his knack for wanting to start out as early as possible in the morning.) We started out at George P.’s office in the Business district of Prague, and from their took the subway to Wenceslas Square. Wenceslas square is a really cool monument to…well, I’m not really sure what it’s a monument to, but it’s got a guy on a horse and I think he’s name is Wenceslas. It’s right in front of the Czech Museum of Natural History (which I’ll get into later). Anyways, we walked down Wenceslas Square taking in some of the beautiful architecture. One of the interesting things about Prague is that as a city, they didn’t have much money. So instead of building new buildings over the years, they’ve just built on top of the buildings they had. (George P’s interpretation of this was “Prague is like an ogre. It’s got layers”). So the architecture is very interesting as you will have Romanesque, next to Gothic, next to Art Deco, next to modern brand new. From there we walked through a little shopping center to a monastery and the beautiful rose gardens that surround it. After that we walked to Old Town Square where we saw the Prague Clock Tower (with a clock that is so intricate and beautiful it not only tells you the time, but also the Zodiac sign for the day, the saint of the day, and the position of the planets.) We kept on walking into the tourist shopping/museum district. We were able to visit a few stores. One of my favorite was a store that sold nothing but puppets and wooden toys. I thought the puppets were really cute, but they didn’t hold a candle to Folkmanis. One of the things we learned in the store however is that there is a very popular children’s cartoon TV show featuring a weird little mole. Since then, we’ve seen that Mole everywhere! After that we kept on walking, walking, walking till we got to the Embassy district. We got to see a bunch of Embassies (although never the American one, b/c it was a little farther away). We got to cross the Charles Bridge (where apparently, underneath the bridge there is a water goblin named Josef who steals the souls of all who drown in the Vltava river and keeps them in little pots. The Czechs have a very weird fairy tale history.) and see all of the art being sold. We got to the other side where our guides told us about a large historical flood that covered up all of the buildings, include a mortuary. Since the mortuary was flooded, all of the bodies floated out into the streets. After the floods resided, the mortuary was deemed unusable for that purpose and was turned into a café. Yes, that’s right- if you go to Prague you can eat in Café Mortuary (technically it’s call Café Mornice- which means mortuary in Czech). After we cross the Charles bridge we were able to see the Czech museum of Modern Art and the gardens surrounding it. Finally we got to eat lunch! I had a traditional Czech dish: beef sirloin in a cream citrus sauce with bread dumplings and beef noodle soup. It was REALLY good! I’m loving Czech food. After that we walked all the way up to Prague castle, and got to walk around the cathedral of St. Nicholas. We didn’t get to go into Prague castle, but we might get to do that when we return to Prague. The view was really gorgeous! Then we had to make haste back to our flat where we changed into our Rotary uniform so we could do the Rotary presentation at a local GSE club. We met a really fun young Czech doctor who interned at UAB for a few months. He took us back to our flat, and we finally got to go to sleep around 11 pm.

Day 1

2008-05-03T12:54:00.000-07:00

April 28, 2007

We made it! After our 9 hour flight, we arrived in Prague. Our team was divided up. Greg and Butler were escorted by several Rotary members, and Eleanor, Allison, and I were escorted by a sweet Rotary member named Jan (pronounced Yan) and his son Mark (Jan enlisted the help of his son b/c he thought his English was not very good. However, his English was much better than my Czech!) Jan took us on a quick driving tour of Prague. And when I say quick, I am describing his driving. In Prague the rules of the road seem to be no rules at all. Just go fast and slam on the breaks. 45 minutes into the driving tour, Eleanor, Allison and I were all a little green from the stopping and starting. However, thankfully it was soon at an end. Jan is in the commercial real estate development business, and as a result owns several apartments (or “flats” as he calls them) around Prague. He dropped us off at one of these flats which will be our home for the next few days, and let us rest and freshen up for a few hours. Of course, knowing me, I got hungry. Jan had told us that we could help ourselves to the contents of the fridge in the flat, so I got to try Blutorange Juice (which is the juice of blood oranges). It was actually pretty good! It wasn’t sweet at all like our American juices- it reminded me more of grapefruit juice. Then around 3:30 we were off again! Jan and Mark took us to the Tower Praha/TV Tower Prague, which was an important part of the Communist regime (used for relaying communications) but since has been turned into a tourist overlook. We were able to see a wonderful view of all of Prague, and took a lot of pictures! Jan and Mark did a good job of answering all of our questions, about the change from Communism to a free economy, and the Velvet Divorce of Czech Republic and Slovakia. After that, they gave us the choice of going to a “touristy restaurant” or a really good local restaurant. We said “REALLY GOOD LOCAL RESTAURANT PLEASE!!!” So we got to take a walk through some of the neighborhoods of Prague. On the way we saw many interesting things: the Czech People really love their dogs. They don’t seem to have any leash laws, and practically every other person you pass on the street has a little dog trotting right next to them. The dogs are very well behaved in comparison to American dogs I know. There doesn’t seem to be a breed favorite, b/c I saw everything from poodles, to golden retrievers. We walked through a beautiful park and got to see the largest one room church in Europe. It was very impressive! I took lots of pictures. Finally we made our way to the restaurant which Jan told us the name translated to “Poetry in Food”. It was a very interested Medieval décor restaurant. But they specialized in Czech food. I ordered the “Velvety Velvet” which was a chicken breast stuffed with blue cheese, pears, ham, cranberries and pecans. It came with vegetables (like what we eat in the US) and creamed potatoes (potatoes with crème on them). It was SO GOOD. I ate every single bite. While we ate, Jan and Mark tried to educate us on various aspects of Czech culture. For instance, we had been taught to say “nazdar” as “hello!”. However, Jan told us that only his grandfather said nazdar, and it was much cooler to say “ahoy!” (which I noticed a lot of people used interchangeably between Hello and Goodbye on our walk home). I also learned how to say “Thank you” and “Wonderful/Awesome!” We also talked about Czech cinema, tv, and authors. The best known Czech author, Kafka, presented a little bit of a controversy for them. While they are proud he is Czech, they don’t think he accurately represents Czech literature. Then we discussed our schedule for the upcoming week. Tomorrow we will be going on a foot tour of Prague with George, the Rotary President of the Prague Club. Then tomorrow night will be our first presentation. Wednesday, we will have a few more tours and then we will attend “The Burning of Winter” which is a festival put on by the local Rotoract. I’m not sure what to expect because all of the older Rotarians talk about it very warily- they say there’s lots of live music and noise. After that on Thursday we will be leaving for “Czech Paradise/Czech Wonderland” which is an area out on the Prague countryside known for it’s castles (which after I expressed unusual interest in b/c I’ve always wanted to see what it’s like to be a princess, Jan and Mark started calling me Princess). They said they would be sure to show me some of the castle ruins that serve as the setting for several local fairytales, including Baba Yaga. We will be able to stay in a rustic inn there in the country, so that should be fascinating as well. Then we walked back. On our way back, Mark made sure we had a chance to taste Kofula, which is the national Czech pop drink. It looks like Coke, but tastes closer to Sprite (but with a cola tinge to it). And he told us how to order it at the restaurants. Now we are at our flat, recovering from our crazy day and working on the biorhythms and jetlag.

This has been a whirlwind adventure so far and I can’t wait to see where the rest of the month takes me!

I'm alive!!!!

2008-04-29T23:26:00.000-07:00

I'm alive, for all of you who were worried! The flat I'm staying in does not have internet access, so I have not been able to post. I'm currently in Prague, but on saturday we will move to Pilzen. I have been writing notes each day and hope to be able to post them when I get to Pilzen.

i am having a wonderful time, and I don't miss Alabama at all (right now!)

Love to all,

Lexie

Preparing...

2008-04-21T11:26:00.000-07:00

It’s now 6 days and counting till I leave the United States for my travels in the Czech and Slovak Republics. It has taken a lot of preparation to get to this point, and even more before I leave on Sunday!

My Group Study Exchange (GSE) team consists of 5 people: Our group leader, Greg who is a retired Samford professor of Geology (and who was also the team leader of Stephenie W's team to Australia, so I know I'm in good hands), Butler-the director of Alabama Public Radio in Tuscaloosa, Eleanor-a Birmingham high school math teacher, Alison- an accountant in Birmingham, and of course myself- a librarian. One of the things my team has worked on in the past few months is a presentation of our lives in the United States. In this presentation we will describe basic things about ourselves: our families, our jobs. We will also do our best to describe a bit about our state. This presentation will be given at 6 Rotary Clubs in the Czech and Slovak Republics as well as the Rotary District Conference in Prague.

If you would like to see what I will be presenting while I’m visiting these countries, you can click on this link to view my presentation:

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Unfortunately, you won’t have my witty repartee that accompanies it. Alas, technology only takes you so far!