Where they go

Travel-writer and critic A.A. Gill says that first impressions are all you get of a place. Time does not clarify the foggy concepts, only fogs what you saw clearly from the start. I can see what he means after just two weeks in Prague, and I'm kicking myself for not capturing it in the first few days. This is my first time outside of the U.S., my first plane ride over the big ocean, a new big city to live in, an alien language to learn, a new weather system to acclimate to; a new beginning.

I left Austin in a huff, mad at the stress it put me through (or that I put me through and blame on place). I came here for a break, to learn to love being a student again, to learn to appreciate the good life that I have there yet have lost all sense of appreciation for. My sentences end prepositions in.

Prague is incredible. It's full of juxtapositions of old beauty and new grafiti, of centuries-long tradition and a few decades of Communism, ending only 15 years ago. The culmination of this semester will be a novella of an academic paper. Here, I've got room to think. It is all that I wanted and more. Day trips I couldn't have imagined in a day dream. My host family, on move-in day, brought me to Don Giovanni, managed to get me a ticket at the last minute. The performance was at the Narodni divadlo, the National Theatre, the same building with original baroque decor (or maybe rococco?) where Mozart directed the first performance about 300 years ago. Next week we go to South Bohemia to celebrate Masopost, which is sort of like the country bumpkin's version of Mardi Gras. We're going to make traditional masks, bake traditional sweets, make pottery, visit a castle. You know, the usual.

But I am blogging next to Maggie, new schoolmate, from inside Villa Incognito, which professes inspiration from the Tom Robbins book. Never read it. Don't much care. Robbins is all over the walls, only English-speakers loudly speaking. Stevie Wonder emits from the badly-adjusted speakers. The barista loudly squeals the milk wand, which is completely unnecessary. My coffee-snobedness multiplies to new measures in this place. Good thing I ordered the green tea with jasmine.