Journalism gone rogue - a run-in with Fox News

So here I am, back in the States for less than 48 hours and I’ve already had a run-in with Fox News. I didn’t mean for it to happen, really I didn’t. I was at the gym, happily running along to the inane but harmless babble of the Today Show, when it was replaced by some bizarre program called Dr Oz. Despite my near-religions devotion to NPR and Vanity Fair, I only encounter American popular culture en masse about every six to eight months, so things like Dr Oz, whose show appears to be a sort of “Ask the Doctor” advice column come to life, sneak up on me. Today the good doc’s topic, complete with graphics, terrifying diagrams and large-point fonts, was SEVEN DEADLY SYMPTOMS YOU SHOULD NEVER IGNORE!!! Ignoring them was precisely what I endeavored to do; after finally managing to wean myself off self-diagnosis websites and the habit of comparing my skin with Google image results of “mole + melanoma,” Dr. Oz was the last thing I needed. I didn’t want to break my stride to switch the channels on the televisions, so from the remaining options of NFL highlights or Fox, I chose the latter. After all, it’s always good to check in with the propaganda machine of the enemy.

And what a machine it is! Luckily, the machine I was running on was just as robust or the pace I reached as my anger mounted might have proved too much for the poor thing. During the general election in the UK, I frequently felt that sound-bites and slogans had taken the place of genuine commentary – everyone interviewed seemed to be playing Madlibs with the same set of phrases: “fairness,” “value for money,” “out of touch,” and so on. Fox News is even worse. On a “news” report discussing the performance of American students in math and science as compared to students in Asia, the anchor asked the education reporter a series of questions such as “how are we gonna turn this ship around?” which seemed as if their chief merit lay in their universal application to any issue. The economy? Health care? The intractability of Congress? Someone call the Navy, because that’s a heck of a lot of ships to turn around.

Along with the lazy rhetoric, there’s the syntax and the pronunciation. (I think it's catching; even writing about it is making me employ more exclamation marks and capital letters than usual.) Since when is Guantanamo Bay “Gitmo”?! Who introduces a guest like this: “Being that you’ve served on numerous Congressional committees…” Being that?! How clunky can you possibly get? And why do all Fox News anchors, reporters and guests, regardless of regional accent, universally leave the final -g off words ending in –ing? “Well, we’re receivin’ new information from AP and I know you’re gonna be workin’ on that throughout the day, so we’ll be keepin’ you up to date as things develop…” There must be a Fox News pronunciation bureau, a folksy Mr. Hyde to the Dr. Jekyll of the BBC pronunciation bureau (which, despite its imperialistic attitude towards foreign words, does not, to its credit, encourage all employees to sound like the cast of The Archers!). Speaking of the BBC, writers satirizing the American media on The Now Show and News Quiz better watch out – the stuff Fox itself actually comes up with is better than any parody.

Take this, for example.

The last segment I watched featured an interview with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange’s stepfather. The Fox anchor said that this would provide insight into Assange’s character. I’ve tried unsuccessfully to find a link to this conversation online, but when asked to describe his stepson, the man said something along these lines: “Julian always stuck up for the underdog at school. He was always upset at people ganging up on weak people.” Following this pre-recorded revelation, the camera panned back to the anchor, who repeated, “ALWAYS upset at people!” before cutting to commercial. Dear god. It’s like nineteenth century theatrical melodrama, only people base their lives and votes on it. I’m writing about communism and censorship at the moment, and while the repression of free speech is deplorable, so too is the proliferation of ignorance masquerading the name of information. At what point does such profound misrepresentation of the facts constitute a crime against democracy? How can the First Amendment and “rogue” news outlets coexist?

I don’t know the answers to these questions. I do know, however, that from now on, I shall be going to the gym with iPod fully charged and stocked with NPR podcasts.

A room of one’s own; or, I hate hostels

Before I get on to the main topic of this post (the nature of which you can probably guess from its none-too-subtle title), I would like to apologize for the disruption to this blog, which has been caused by yet another international house move. Specifically, the flat in Prague was for sale sans tenants, so we had to skedaddle, as a result of which I am likely to be in Warsaw rather more than expected, so stayed tuned for more Polish-themed posts. Lest anyone remember that I'm actually meant to be in Prague working on my PhD, fear not! That's still happening (in fact, I'm in Prague now) and I'll have a permanent place sorted out from January. In the interim, though, accommodation is an on-going problem to be solved, which brings me to today's topic…Hostelling.

I am making something of a brash statement with this post – after all, I've stayed in quite a few hostels in my day, in a variety of contexts, and I've mostly pretended (even to myself) that I both like them and find them meaningful, in the same way one speaks of summer camp, as something you have to experience. I do this out of the same combination of guilt and peer pressure that made my teen-aged self agree (on more than one occasion) to accompany friends on trips to the local amusement park because it's-fun-and-everyone-likes-it. It may be that another trip to Hersheypark awaits me, and I may well spend another night in a hostel, but that doesn't negate the value of honesty. Therefore, let it be known that, along with inverted rollercoasters (especially this one), I have a significant antipathy towards hostels.

It's not their frequently Spartan nature that I object too. Not all accommodation needs to be luxurious and, along with stints in boutique hotels and the occasional five-star, I've had lovely stays in very basic pensions and guest houses, as well as a variety of two- and three-star hotels in locations from Croatia to Montmartre. What bothers me most about hostels is their meanness, particularly the stinginess with which they mete out their measly services. Hostels are Ryanair translated to the hospitality industry. Ages ago, I read this article discussing results from at 2006 J. P. Morgan survey of hotel guests which show that said guests prefer paying for their accommodation in one lump sum, to being constantly badgered to fork over for yet another a la carte option that feels like its necessity should go without saying. This is true even if that single payment in larger than the totaled side dish options.

The classic example of this in the hostelling is the towel. The hostel in which I'm currently staying (I'm not going to name names, as it's not a bad place and they're all the same when it comes to this stuff) charges 200 Czech crowns (roughly £7.50) as a deposit for a towel. Why is this necessary? As checkout time is 11am, and presumably I'm going to shower before I leave, what could possibly induce me to jam a soggy towel into my suitcase? If I was okay with that, I'd probably have brought my own towel anyway. As for the deposit – I get it back when I leave, of course, provided that I produce the receipt I was given, along with the towel in question. Why is the receipt necessary? Surely the towel itself is a sufficient proof of purchase. Does the hostel staff need the receipt because they fear that, along with Let's Go Eastern Europe 2010, I may have a commercial embroidery machine crammed into my Ryanair-surcharge-proof carry-on suitcase, which I have brought along for the express purpose of embossing the hostel's logo to produce four replicas of the towel I've actually borrowed, in order to collect a whopping 1000kc at checkout? Highly unlikely, particularly given that the enforcement of "quiet time" between 10pm-6am would render such a noisy activity highly impractical. Which brings me back to my original question – why is any of this necessary? How is a business model that tracks such an absurdly obvious amenity as towels to this degree at all functional, let alone a good idea?!

At odds with such petty meanness and the distrust it implies, is the back-packer allure of hostels. Why stay in a cold, corporatized hotel when you can share a room with six strangers, do your own laundry and learn about the world? While this is lovely in theory, I find it's not often so in practice. Someone always snores, someone's on a work trip and there's usually a pair of girls partying their way across Europe. Or if it's fine in the room, then there are no cups available for actually drinking the free (cheap) tea, the wi-fi doesn't work, or there's no quiet place to receive a phone call or use skype. I experienced this last situation last night. I solved it by wandering outside to take my call (sssshhh!!!) while pondering the paradoxical fact that while there was nowhere inside that I could talk on the phone, there was ample space for a loud (and detailed) conversation on the topic of menstruation and getting/falling pregnant. How? Why?

While hostels undoubtedly perplex me, those two questions could also be applied to my decision, given my feelings, to stay in one. This time, the choice was motivated by a variety of factors – when booking, I reflected that none of the Prague hotels I've stayed in have been that great, so why pay nice-hotel prices for accommodation that wasn't particularly so? Also, and this is perhaps the stronger reason, I felt, I'll admit, the siren backpacker song (sans backpack, in my case). I wondered if I was getting too old and set in my ways – why does someone my age need to stay in a hotel anyway? Am I really so far along the autistic spectrum that I can't handle three nights in a room with other twenty-something females? The answer to this question is that while I can, this doesn't necessarily mean I should. In fact, Mr P (after my rant regarding the lack of tea cups) has already made me promise that I will stay in a hotel the next time. All of which, taken together, makes me wonder if my frustration might somehow be parlayed into a business venture: A Room of One's Own: the budget hotels for post-grad students. The concept would be quite simple: the titular promise, with wi-fi, coffee/tea, cup and (most importantly) towel included.

On geographic reconciliation…

One of my most recurring analogies is the similarity of city-human relationships to human-human relationships. In the past I've spoken of my relationship with London as akin to the kind of rapport you have with a colleague you don't particularly like but who, after months of working together (and possibly threatening to quit a few times), you grudgingly come to respect. If the past few months in Prague have prompted me to realize what the Big Smoke has to offer, I have endeavored to remain aloof and unemotional in my appraisal; romanticizing ex-cities cities is a bit like staying hung up on ex-lovers: it makes it quite difficult to a) move on or b) appreciate the here, now, today-ness of life.

That being said, on my current (and it's still on-going, so this subject to change) trip to London, the city has acted like a previously disloyal, but now apologetic lover bent on winning me back. Gone is the professional courtesy, the grudging acknowledgement that I exist. By London standards, the past few days have been a positive lovefest of pleasures, overt, covert and overheard. Here, at the risk of being uncritical and (dare I say it?) positive, are some highlights of abnormal niceness.

• It's evening and I land at Luton, terrified of going through passport control sans UK visa and UK partner. Also have vision of epic, snaking queues, against the likelihood of which I've stocked up on Wizz Air Bake Rolls. In the end, no need for angst – a lovely man resembling Ghandi stamps my passport with nary a suspicious look and I am through in five minutes. My bag is the first one I see as I enter reclaim and I am out of the airport in twenty minutes, surely a Luton world record.
  
• On the train/underground, en route to my friend's house, three separate men volunteer to lift/carry my bag.
  
• In St. Pancras, I stop to buy a bottle of wine at M&S and I am carded by the cashier who also offers to throw away the empty Diet Coke bottle I am carrying and tells me to have a nice day.
  
• Standing on the platform waiting for the Jubilee Line, I observe an elderly couple (think early-mid eighties) standing on the platform, loving discussing the fact that they "should like to see that exhibition" (Diaghilev & The Ballet Russes at the V&A). Have lovely, dreamy moment thinking how nice it is to retire in a city, where one can continue to do such things and get about by public transport rather than being stranded, unable to drive, in the middle of suburban hell. Briefly imagine myself and Mr P as a spry octogenarians, gallery hopping in 2065.
  
• Getting lost between Swiss Cottage and my friend's house, someone asks me if I'm lost and endeavors to point me the right way, again without my asking for help.
  
• A rather posh old lady at the Starbucks on Haverstock Hill admires my art deco ring. I notice it is shining abnormally brightly despite my lackadaisical attitude towards cleaning it, which I chose to interpret as a positive omen.
  
• It's sunny, sit-outside-in-a-sleeveless-dress warm, and it's October.
  
• I get a £2 coin that I've not seen before - the one with Darwin in profile facing a chimp - and think that if such a coin were minted in the States, entire Congressional districts would probably refuse to spend it. It seems an emblem of rationality.

Add to this a series of lovely and much needed coffees, brunches, dinners and lunches with friends and you have a very pleasant 96 hours. Of course there has been some profound oddness as well – such as the strange man on the tube Saturday morning who asked if my tights (grey lacey fishnets) were "spider webs" and informed that I was "really making quite a fashion statement, you know?" (fishnets, boots and a uniqlo skirt - daring!) before asking probing questions about my nationality. My favorite brunch spot has closed, to be replaced by some blasphemous attempt at an "Italian American Diner." (Aren't all vaguely ethnic diners in the US Greek?) Then there was a humiliating and upsetting scene on the Baker Street tube, which consisted of a (presumably drunk) man berating his (also drunk) girlfriend in front of the entire station, in one of the most horrifying displays of public misogyny I have ever encountered. However there's also been the palpable sense of delight I've felt at blending back into London's diversity after largely mono-ethnic Prague, where seeing two little girls of different ethnicities, in matching school uniforms, sitting on the bus, sharing a set of headphones and listening to one iPod makes me feel that there are some very important things which this city, despite its inhuman scale and occasional coldness, has gotten very, very right.

The Perils of Over-Thinking; or, How not to take a language class.

As of today, I have had lessons with both of my new Czech teachers and I am thrilled. Yes, that’s right, I have two: one for grammar and general language development, the other for more grammar and professional vocabulary development (so I don’t sound like an idiot while endeavouring to use a library or to explain that I am writing my thesis on Czech theatre). While no one will ever replace my first Czech teacher in my heart – despite emerging from my year living in Prague with a nice collection of nouns, I could barely string a sentence together when I joined her class and she helped me enormously – my new teachers are pedagogically sound, professional and generally impressive, which is lovely after the surprisingly old-school approach of Letní škola.

It transpires, however, that while their teaching is excellent, I am not such a good student. Oh, I learn what they’re teaching me. That’s not the problem at all. My problem consists of my compulsive need to be authentic. Perhaps I’ve absorbed too much of what Václav Havel has to say about the importance of living in truth, but I find it virtually impossible to answer questions designed for controlled grammar practice without pausing to reflect. I interpret the most banal requests as existential conundrums of epic proportions. This morning, my teacher asked me to answer this question: “Of what is there less in Prague than in London?” Rather than rattling off something easy like “Indian restaurants” (in the genitive plural) in response to the above-question, I thought for a good 30 seconds longer than should have been necessary, creating an awkward silence as I nominated and rejected one answer after another. The first answer that popped into my head (my friends!) was honest, but seemed too personal for the first lesson, while the second (drinkable wine) seemed insulting and risked making me look like a wino. Finally I hit upon what seemed like the perfect reply (antisocial behaviour), but then I couldn’t remember the word for behaviour, despite giving a presentation on this very topic last month. In the end, I went for the practical, if random (fresh coriander).

The rest of the lesson, continuing on the theme of comparisons, was an interrogatory minefield – “What do the majority of Czechs do?”, “What is true of a handful of Czechs?”, “Which of these mobile phones is the oldest, largest, lightest?”, “Who is a better student, you or the other students in your programme?” That last one nearly sent me into cardiac arrest, especially after the trauma of evaluating the three phones my teacher and I had between us. (I don’t know which one is the oldest. I can guess, but what if I’m wrong and say something really offensive?!) Rather than subjugating truth to grammar and saying something – anything! – I diplomatically explained (well, as diplomatically as I can explain anything in Czech) that this is an impossible question, as everyone in my programme is working on a different topic and we are therefore not in direct competition. I managed to work some of the target language into my explanation so as to not entirely abstain from the task on ethical grounds, conscientious-objector style.

I think the majority (většina, see, I told you I was learning) of my language class anxiety stems from my experiences as a teacher. I know for a fact that teachers talk about their students. Some of my oddest students have included a Czech guy whose girlfriend’s cat always ate his homework, another who looked like giant baby, was terrified of public transport and professed to be interested in nothing, a Russian twenty-something obsessed with Vladimir Putin to the point that he dressed like him, a Russian girl who despised Yulia Timoshenko and the idea of women taking part in public life and a Turkish guy who managed to insert sexual innuendos and emoticons into the most innocent assignments, including a formal business letter! These are the war stories I tell my fellow teachers, and while they’re often highly amusing, I so do not want to be one of these people. To compound matters, I’m also conducting these classes entirely in Czech; whereas my first teacher knew my (comparatively) sane, (relatively) charming and articulate English-speaking self, these new ones are left alone with my Czech persona, and lord knows what she’s capable of saying!

Fellow language-learners, does this ever afflict you, or am I alone in this absurd linguistic psychodrama? Perhaps this problem will abate with time or increased fluency? It suddenly occurs to me that perhaps the wacky students I've mentioned above had actually adopted those alternate personas in order to cope. Language class as acting excercise? Hmm...I'll have to think about that for awhile.

Expat or Foreigner? Cizinecká Policie v. Česká Spořitelna

On Monday, Mr P and I had two extremely diverse experiences of expat life in Prague. Where did we go to achieve this? Well, first we went here:

And then, a bit later, we went here:

The first photo is our new Czech bank, Česka Spořitelna on Rytířská ulice in Prague 1. The second, is the Foreigner's Police in Pankrac. The two could not be more different and experiencing both on the same day was something of a head trip.

First there's the terminology. Česka Spořitelna is equally famous for its gorgeous interior and its Expat Centre, which allows you to conduct all your banking in English. When you open an account, you are plied with tea, coffee and sparkling water and offered a variety of discounts on local services (including a slightly pricey gym which we had both, annoyingly, already joined). You're also asked to fill in a card listing your favourite leisure activities, so ČS knows to which of its swanky sponsored events it should invite you, the coveted expat customer. At the CP, by comparison, there are no expats, only foreigners. While I don't love the term expat (too often a glamorous-sounding synonym for socially irresponsible adult adolescent), "foreigner," at least in English, feels quite rude and calls up images of a crowd of Tea Partiers armed with pitchforks, hillbilly accents, tar and feathers. But I digress…

For our stint as foreigners at the cizinecká policie (CP) in Prague 4, Mr. P and I arrived armed with our passports and health insurance cards and accompanied by Nora, our unflappable immigration agent. We needed an immigration agent because the foreign police (despite the fact that the people they deal with are almost exclusively non-Czech-speaking) speak only Czech, and while my vocabulary is reasonably adequate for most daily interactions, Czech legalese is well and truly beyond me. We also needed help because the regulations and paperwork necessary for applying for residency in the ČR are constantly changing, making it difficult for a lay person to keep remotely on top of which forms and documents are currently necessary. We had thought our case would be fairly straightforward, Mr P being a European citizen and all. We'd had a visit from a couple of CP officers (which sadly I missed), who examined our flat (how many people live here?), our photographs and our wardrobes, followed a few weeks later by a letter instructing us to appear to pick up our resident permits. Stress free, right?

Wrong. First off, there's the atmosphere of the CP itself. We arrived at a modern building in Prague 4, where an open door revealed a shiny, white police station. I was just thinking "ah, not so bad", when Mr P pointed out a sign on the door directing us to the next door, which opened onto a far dingier scene, somewhat reminiscent of a US DMV in all its take-a-number-and-wait-five-hours splendour. (That's the Department of Motor Vehicles, for the uninitiated, aka the place you go to when you need a new driver's license, or want to experience Soviet-style bureacracy coupled with American righteous indignation – a fascinating juxtaposition, really.) The chairs were uncomfortable, wire-mesh creations, but at least there was the ubiquitous instant coffee machine in case we hadn't had enough coffee at the bank, though by the time I spotted it, the atmosphere had me so stressed out that the thought of consuming anything made my stomach churn. The creepiest thing about the CP were the doors. I really wanted to photograph them, but was scared I'd be yelled at for doing so, so description will have to suffice. I needed to use the bathroom and the doors to get there were all numbered, in creepy block numbers more suited to jail cells than public conveniences. Also, they weren't in numeric order. Door 47 (WC pro zeny) opened to reveal doors 13 and 62 (stalls, only one of which actually opened). I felt trapped in a prison film, a suspicion which increased when I washed my hands and was effectively hosed down by an overzealous tap and emerged dripping. Lovely.

Mercifully, we didn't have to wait long, as Nora had arrived early to get us a good number. We did encounter some difficulties surrounding Mr P's accidentally laundered passport and previous Czech residence permit, which had been retained by his last Czech employer and was thus not on his person. The lady dealing with our case was about to fine him 3000kc (£100) for not having it, when a passing colleague told her that to do so would be ridiculous, as the permit had expired anyway (whew!), so in the end, we were let off with only a bit of hassle. Hassling seems to be what the foreigner's police do best. Why make a simple request when it's so much more fun to harangue? For example, US passports list the state, not city of birth. CP lady wanted my city of birth, so first she called Nora to the desk, who then called me to the desk and explained what was required. While I was writing it down for her, CP lady continued to lament that "Pennsylvanie" was not a "konkrétní místo" (a concrete place) and that she needed the city. I wrote "Harrisburg, PA." CP lady entered "Harrisburg" on my residency permit, which, ironically, is not at all a konkrétní místo when separated from the PA bit, as god knows how many Harrisburgs there are in the United States! (A quick google search reveals Harrisburgs in Utah, Arkansas and California, for a start.)

In the end, however, all was well and I was issued with this lovely blue document, which means that I am legal. What excites me the most, though, is that I can now finally get a library card with borrowing privileges at the city library (hurrah!) without a friend needing to vouch for me.

Still, a few days later and I'm feeling distinctly ambivalent about both these experiences. A friend recently pointed out to me that my Facebook location still lists London as my current city. I know it does. I know I should change it. I just can't seem to. Coming here has left me feeling so dislocated – between here, there and somewhere else, with the place I'm coming from not the place I'm from, though it was for the past three years. If that sentence is confusing, it's meant to be. I'm a bit of a psycho-geographic jumble at the moment and don't know where I'm coming from or going to. None of this is aided by recent political events in the US, which have me wondering whether I need to go home and pitch in against the lunatics (I'm convinced, after seeing this photo of Christine O'Donnell that Sarah Palin is actually asexually reproducing) or seek political asylum here in Europe. Sigh. Do you always know where home is?

Unexpected coupling…

When I lived in Philadelphia, I was once in a train crash. I was seated on board a stationary local train at 30^th Street station when the express train drove into us. It wasn't moving fast and no one was hurt, but we all felt the impact. Moments later, we were informed that what had occurred was not a train crash, but rather an "accidental coupling"; the impact had caused the express to attach itself to our train. Cue much amusement for the passengers as we explored the possibilities of SEPTA's suggestive description of our predicament.

I have just experienced another unexpected coupling on rails, this time an unsuccessful one, mercifully. I am on my old friend the EC Polonia, which I caught at the ungodly hour of 6.45 in order to be back for a performance in Prague this evening. As a thank you for my professional diligence, which meant leaving Warsaw – and Mr P – before I am usually awake on a weekday, let alone on a Sunday, I have had the pleasure of sexual overtures from the deeply misguided young man sitting across from me in the carriage. Did he think that because a man put my bags on the train and kissed me goodbye that I would be lonely and in need of some comfort? Did he think I have a lover in every city on the EC Polonia route and would now like one for the between-cities bit as well? Did he think that the Heineken he offered me (mind you, it was about 7.30am at the time) would change my mind? Whatever his intentions, it was deeply unpleasant and has left me terrified to decamp to the loo or dining car, lest he slip date rape drug into my water bottle or rifle through my carryon. Unhappily, he has also fallen asleep, stretched out full length across three seats, which has thus far deterred any neutralizing third parties from joining our carriage and diffusing the situation. I have never been in such a hurry to get to Ostrava!

I had intended to write about the fab nightlife in Warsaw – I've been saying for years that I want to open a club whose playlist will be equally influenced by Jack White and Edith Piaf and finally found such a place this weekend! – but I'm feeling so disheartened – not disgusted so much as a flummoxed and oddly depressed – by my travelling companion that I need to address the topic of such behaviour. How? Why? What on earth did he – and all who behave that way – think was going to happen?

I've become more aware – and wary – of unwelcome advances since being back in Prague. I think there are a few reasons for this, which have more to do with me than the perpetrators. For one thing, in London I rarely went out on my own at night – I was always either with friends or Mr P – and if I did I was home before the tubes stopped running. I lived in a neighbourhood where no one bothers you unless you have lived there for most, if not all, of your life and are therefore implicated in one kind of urban turf war or another. I was largely invisible there, while on the tube I was protected by the unwritten rules of Transport for London, which forbid eye contact with strangers, let alone conversation, therefore necessitating the devotion of numerous column inches in Metro and The Evening Standard to "I looked at you for ten seconds between Bond Street and Green Park"-type messages. I did get the odd whistle or "give us a smile, love" from builders engaged on various projects in my neighbourhood, but these days I can think back on their casual objectification of my person with mild nostalgia, since they never invaded my personal space or tried shamelessly to look up my skirt when I stopped to tie my shoe, two of my least savoury experiences in the last month.

I'm not going to go on some sort of horrible anti-men rant here, or debate which countries' lotharios are the most brazen. I like the Czech Republic's healthy, non-judgemental attitude to sexuality and the body. It makes for good cultural products and allows women of all ages to tan topless in a family environment, or enjoy a sauna sans bathing suit, activities which would be interpreted much more sexually in the US and UK. I also like clothes, I like to look interesting and, while attracting men is not my motivation, I accept that unsolicited – and unwelcome – attention is bound to come to all women at one time or another. I won't deny, either, that the occasional street compliment can occasionally boost the ego. I remember the first one I received – I was college shopping in New York City and was catcalled by a group of French waiters on a smoke break. I was eighteen and delighted, my father, who was accompanying me, less so. One of my favourite sartorial accolades came from another French waiter, this time in Paris, who declared my ensemble "formidable!" and rushed to my aid with an ice cube and boiling water when I dripped some vinaigrette on a cream silk blouse. He was sweet and it made me feel fabulous. I will remember it fondly when I'm a nice old woman.

What bothers me most are the moments when my gender – and age, as I suspect this will become a less frequent occurrence with time - seem to render me incapable of securing moments of quiet and reflection when I desire them. Like on a train. Or perhaps a bridge. I live quite close to the river in Prague and my walk home often takes me across a bridge. During the day it's full of car and tram traffic, but at night it is peaceful and lovely and sometimes I would like to stop and gaze out at the water for awhile. I don't do this, however, since the last time I tried, two different men interpreted my behaviour as an invitation to pick me up. I don't know the solution to this, apart from wearing a hat like this. But I wish it didn't occur.

Happily for my personal well-being and sanity, I have no more solo train journeys planned for the foreseeable future and will be spending the next three weeks in Prague. I'm looking forward to a bit of time in one place and the chance to write about adventures not taking place on rails.

PS – I wrote this on Sunday, but didn't get round to posting it until today, when I heard a relevant report on Radio 4's Woman's Hour about the London Anti-Street Harassment Campaign. The movement's founder says it's meant to empower women and eradicate street harassment. A male commentator thought that the campaign implies that women are weak and unable to handle unwelcome attention and said attempts to curb men's comments amounts to the policing of thought. What do you think? Is a "hey, baby" or "look at the legs on that!" in the same league as ethnic and religious slurs, or do we just need to toughen up and get over it?

From a library in the frozen north…

I'm back in Warsaw, after a quick working week in Prague. This was the trip I was always planning to take, though the excessive back-and-forth-ness has left me feeling two things: first, that I live rather more here than there at the moment, which doesn't distress me, as I continue to like this city; and, second, that three eight-hour train journeys in the space of seven days are too much, even for someone who loves movement as much as I do.

Since I'm not confined to the weekend, I've had a chance to experience the day-to-day-ness of working in Warsaw, which for me means finding a good library. I wish I was the sort of person who could read and write texts more complicated than email effectively against the backdrop of café-noise, or that I could discipline myself to work at home, but after much trial and error I've accepted that libraries just work better for me. As a result, I have quite a collection of international library cards, the newest of which I acquired yesterday:

My endeavors to photograph it haven't gone too well – it's sort of come out all blurry – but I love this photograph. The lighting is almost painterly. It was taken by a Polish undergrad-type manning the registration desk at the University of Warsaw Library, which is equipped for this purpose with a light not dissimilar to those I encountered at the London College of Fashion. The library is located off Nowý Swiat – I know which street to turn down thanks to an enormous statues of Copernicus conveniently located at the intersection. The full name of the library is Biblioteka Uniwersytecka w Warszawie, which offers a fascinating glimpse of the differences between Czech and Polish, a topic currently occupying much of my attention. In Czech, the word knihovna is used for library, which can create some confusion since the word for bookshelf is also knihovna. You can alleviate this problem by using the diminutive form to distinguish between them. The Poles have avoided this altogether by using the Latinate biblioteka. This is fascinating to me, having studied the modernization of Czech in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when there was much squabbling among grammarians about the appropriate sources of new words. The attitude that was eventually adopted was quite conservative – loanwords should come, if at all possible, from other Slavic languages or be created from Czech themselves. Thus, Czechs can borrow a kniha (book) from a knihovna, while speakers of Polish, which seems not to have had such a conservative loanward policy, use a biblioteka, despite the fact that the Polish word for book is książka. Linguistic analysis aside, I like this library, which looks like this:

On the ground floor there's a sort of atrium thing that contains Coffee Heaven – Poland's answer to Starbucks – as well as used book kiosks and a poster shop I want to visit today. Within the library itself, I have found a wonderful book by Eva Hoffman called Exit into History, which documents her travels through post-Communist countries in the early 1990s. It's very personal with lots of material from interviews, as well as her own reactions to her experience, which makes it incredibly insightful and unpretentious and – from my point of view – very helpful. She also talks about the frustration of being unable to use Polish in Czechoslovakia very effectively, a situation I am now experiencing in reverse. I feel an overwhelming desire to wear a badge, like those sported by Costa Coffee baristas in London – festooned with little flags conveying the information that I am able to function reasonably adequately in more than one language. It is a bizarre situation to be able to read, and even understand, (though as always, my language skills are better in written form) while being unable to produce anything. I feel profoundly guilty that I can't answer an old lady's question about which bus stop is next, even though I know that's what she's asking. I also know that this response, as I told Mr P (in an extremely rare low moment of his own last week), is irrational, as there is no way to master a complex language within one week of arriving somewhere, even if one has a good working grasp of a related language. At least the Poles are nice about it, generally. Yesterday a research student asked me to take part in her study and when I told her I couldn't speak Polish she still gave one of the cookies she'd brought along as thank yous to participants. Bless.

In other news, it's freezing here! The freezing starting on Monday, but before that it was quite beautiful, as in this picture that I have chosen to leave you with, taken at a concert of Chopin music in Lazienki Park.

(And yes, that's a stature of Chopin looking on…apologies to random girl on the right. I really need some photo editing software of greater sophistication than Paint.)

Prague to Warsaw Odyssey, Part 2

I made it! Yes, I'm here. Once I left the Pendolino train in Ostrava, it became a bit of an adventure. My next train, the EC Polonia from Vienna, was delayed by twenty minutes, so I had time to sample a local speciality: the Ostrava latte.

When I ordered it, I thought it must have been a mistake, until I saw about half a dozen people ranging from a young crusty couple to a professional twenty-something drinking the same thing. Apart from hot beverages served in cups obviously designed for cold drinks, Ostrava delighted me by playing the sorts of train station songs (composed of the bell-like sounds that precede announcements of arrivals or departures, and always make me feel like boarding a train for Moscow or Bucharest) that used be common at Hlavní nadráží pre-refurb. I also realized, while there, that I can now understand train announcements in Czech, which delighted me, as I still think I can't speak or understand it properly, even after 100 hours of instruction in the past 4 weeks. Unfortunately, the EC Polonia didn't function as well as my language skills – we had made it one stop out of Ostrava when the train ground to a halt. Forty minutes later, after much frantic running back and forth by engineers in orange overalls and an announcement in Polish that I couldn't understand , we were finally on our way again. I was greatly relieved, since given the start to my journey, an announcement advising us all to detrain and seek accommodation in Ostrava and environs until the next day would not have seemed at all out of keeping with the mood of the journey. Luckily there were no more breakdowns, though the journey did become marginally more interesting at Katowice, when the Viennese hipsters in my carriage were replaced by a mother with two daughters in their early twenties, one of whom looked like she'd just been in a fight. If only I could understand Polish better…

As for Warsaw itself, I had a great weekend. I don't understand why the city gets such a bad rap. Perhaps I'm more predisposed to like it – there aren't many American cities with the concentrated beauty and consistent charm of many of the European cities I've visited, and I suppose if you're used to Bath, or Prague or Vienna, then Warsaw is something of a monstrosity. But for an ex-Philadelphian who's risked life and limb navigating the museum district on foot or going to a concert at the Electric Factory, crossing four lanes of speeding inner-city traffic to get to dinner doesn't create a lot of cognitive dissonance. To be totally honest, I find the motorists of Warsaw a lot easier to deal with – and less intimidating – than the cycling hordes of Amsterdam. I also love the air. The city's built on sand – when you cross the Vistula, on the east bank you can actually see a sandy beach – and the air feels saltier and cleaner than in Prague. It was windy this weekend and freezing for August which only enhanced the crispness. Plus it has some green parts, like this park by Mr. P's flat:

The people watching is fab – lots of cool style going on in Warsaw, which seems not to be plagued by the grown-up skater/punk style that haunts Prague – and great bars. We went out with some of Mr. P's new colleagues on Saturday, which ended up being a tour of places I want to go back to – an arty club in the vaulted-ceilinged basement under the Zacheta gallery, and a lounge with fantastic chandeliers and a retro-glam vibe hiding in a courtyard nearby. Early in the day, we went to Praga and found this delightful, artist-haunted and book-filled café in a converted vodka factory (which reminded me of the set of Karamozovi)...

...then stopped at another on our way back, where we found both Becherovka and a wonderfully atmospheric dark interior. Then there's the sense of history, which is everywhere you turn. The city feels like a geode – grim on the outside, but sparkling inside. Dark and haunted and hip simultaneously. I love it. So far.

As for now, zpatky do Prahy na práci – I am so behind on work. Which I'm going to start doing. On the train. Right now. After I figure out if the men in my carriage are Czech or Polish. I think they're speaking Czech, but they're reading Polish newspapers. But I can read Polish a bit, so they probably read it very well. But I can't understand them very well. Maybe they're Moravian? Oh the endless joys of Slavic languages.

Prague to Warsaw odyssey, Part 1

I wasn't even supposed to go to Warsaw this weekend. Mr P. was supposed to come to Prague, but it seems that, despite my protestations that Warsaw isn't really that bad, any Czech resident there who's able to hightails it back to Prague at the weekend. Traveler be warned: book your Friday night plane tickets well in advance. Since everyone is coming here, I've been left with no choice but to go there. And what a journey it's been thus far.

This the Metro C station at Hlavní nádraží.

Four hours ago, when I really needed to use it, it was closed. I found out while on a stationary train at I.P. Pavlova, when the driver announced that we would not be leaving the station after all. It was 9.45. The train to Warsaw was leaving at 10.11. I didn't understand how this could be happening. While living in London, I proclaimed the genius of the Prague metro. It's not like the tube – no weekend closures, no signal failures, no waiting for an available platform at Earls Court. It always works. It's never, in my experience, not worked. Until today, when I had an international train to catch. My caffeine-deprived brain couldn't process the information. Following the crowd out of the station, I decided the sensible thing would be to hail a cab. Except that there aren't any cabs at I.P. Pavlova at 9.50am on a Friday morning. I tried phoning a cab company and was given a 10 minute wait time. No good. At 10.11, I was slightly hysterical and on a tram to Náměstí Miru, wondering how I ever thought another foray into multi-city living was in any sense a good idea.

Not to be daunted by the broken metro and missed train, I proceeded by other means of transportation to the station. I thought I would be consigned to the slowest train of the day, a 10-hour long nightmare that arrives in Warsaw at 10.45, but was rescued by a Pendolino service to Ostrava that would get me there an hour and half earlier, in time for a fashionably late dinner. Score. At this point I realized that it was after 11am and I had yet to eat or drink anything. An early lunch seemed a good idea. But first I had to find the loo. Here it is:

You can't quite make out the blurry blue sign, but it says "WC". Yes, that's right. The loos, in a busy international train station, where people, like the man in this photo, are carrying baggage, are at the top of a long flight of stairs. They also cost the princely sum of 10kc to use, which is a trifle steep, though I would happily fork over twice that amount if all profits went to the construction of an escalator. Considering that Hl. Nádr. has just been through an extensive remodeling, I'm not sure how this happened. How is this at all logical? Whoever designed it seems to have realized that the act of dragging heavy suitcases up there was likely to make one hot and sweaty, as they kindly installed showers (40kc, prosim). Unfortunately they failed to take into account the fact that you'd then have to schlep your stuff back downstairs after showering. Perhaps a shower at each end is the answer? You may right ask if there are luggage lockers at the station – surely the weary traveler can deposit his/her baggage and proceed unencumbered up the stairs? Yes, there is a lovely locker bank. But only, apparently, if you have the right change. I thought I did, until I tried to pay and realized the lockers don't accept coins smaller than 5kc, at which point I gave up and hauled my stuff up the stairs.

After this adventure, I collapsed in the Potrafena Husa restaurant in the station. I had briefly considered running out for something lighter and of Asian extraction, but given how the day was going, I thought it best not to leave the station. I grabbed a table next to a group of semi-annoying backpackers and ordered a šopský salát (tomato, cucumbers, peppers, Balkan cheese, onions) and, from the beer menu, toasty s kozím syrem (toasted bread with goat cheese and caramelized onions). When my food arrived, I appeared to have ordered two large salads. I was too tired to attempt an ironic comment to the waiter or to check the menu again to see if I'd missed the fact that the goat cheese toast came with salad. I just ate them.

In happier news, Potrafena Husa had wi-fi. I started writing this post and was checking the email when the salads arrived. After I'd eaten them and tried to get back online, the network had disappeared.

Now, however, I am caffeinated and on my way, speeding east across the Czech countryside between Pardubice and Olomouc armed with Bourdieu, sparkling water and sláné tyčinky. The Pendolino is lovely and best of all, the loos are at ground level.

Do you have any train travel horror stories to share? Or suggestions for re-redesigning Hlavní nadráží?

From London to Afghanistan via Černošice

It's Monday in Prague and rainy and gray again. On the plus side, my teacher assures us that this is the best weather for studying (unless, like me, you're partial to studying under trees in parks) and Petr and Kristyna have resurfaced in Lesson 2 of Communicative Czech - for those dying of curiousity, Kristyna has splashed out on two tickets to the opera in Italy and has asked Petr - via written note, no less - if he will accompany her.

Romance aside, it's a bit surreal at the moment. While shopping in Tesco last night, Paul and I picked up The Observer. Looking at the front page while queueing to pay, we realized that the leading article about a British doctor killed in Afghanistan was about our upstairs neighbor, Karen Woo. I don't know what to say about it really, apart from that she was lovely. She discusses her relief work in Afghanistan on her blog. Paul knew her better than I did, but I remember her coming to our epic 2009 Fourth of July party and bonding with the pigs. We used to get her post by mistake sometimes...I think we still have some of it.

It's hard to know how to feel in the wake of something as senseless and disheartening as the killing of a group of people authentically responding to the genuine needs of others. Reading the comments some have made on Karen's blog and other sites, there are the usual comments that surface in such situations including an attempt to couch the whole story in religious terms. As for me, I would like to feel empowered by Karen's life and example, but instead I feel predominantly anger and frustration. I am angry, perhaps unfairly, at the free Prague city papers for not mentioning this story - or really any foreign news - at all and instead devoting a full page (for the sixth day in a row) to cities in the Czech Republic with foreign names. I am angry with myself for feeling this way, when it is my choice to live here and my problem that I prefer to turn the pages of my newspaper rather than scroll through them online. I'm frustrated by how much I still don't know, by my inability to speak enough to participate readily in the kinds of conversations that came so easily in London. I am sad to have left a neighborhood where, despite the vastness of the city that contained it, I knew my neighbors and spoke to them. Despite the good times I've had in this city - and know I can have again - I can't shake the feeling that I'm going home at the end of August. I suppose that's the big realisation of the last three weeks...sometime in the past three years, London became home. And for the first time in my life, though it surprises me both in terms of where it's occurring and for what place, I am homesick.

Before picking up The Observer, I had intended to write about my Sunday adventures in the countryside outside of Prague. One of the definite advantages to life in Prague is its proximity to said countryside and though I am admittedly suspicious of any pursuits requiring sensible shoes, I agreed to accompany Paul on a sunny walk from Černošice to Třebotov. En route, we saw...

...fairy tale-esque pine forests...

...an abandoned Jewish cemetery on the edge of the forest...

...and a very small, but aesthetically pleasing church.

That's all I can bear to upload at the moment...for a snap of the smallest frog in the world, you'll have to see my facebook page. I suspect (and Paul concurs) that Karen would have liked the frog.

PS - I have an office!

I am so very excited to have an office that I thought it deserved its own post. Here is a picture of me in my office.

Though you can only see one, my office (I derive a great deal of pleasure from describing it thus) has two windows. It is a work in progress, but it already contains a fab ergonomic chair designed to correct my posture, a french memo board and a colorful rug. I shall post another picture when it is finished and which will hopefully contain an antique writing bureau, but for now, this is my lovely, IKEA-fabulous den of reading and writingness.

The third side of the coin…

Each time I take a break from writing here (and let's be honest – there's been significantly more break time than writing time), I always feel the need, upon beginning again, to write some sort of explanation for my absence, accompanied by a new mission statement and pledge to do better. I'm going to break with tradition this time and dispense with the preamble – what's new is that I've moved to Prague for at least a year to work on my thesis and study Czech, meaning that, for the time being anyway, this will be a space to contemplate three contexts - London, Prague and the US – as well as to chronicle my current adventures. In addition to issues of language and human behavior, I'll also take the odd detour in

to fashion and matters artistic.

So, without further ado…

Right now, my life is being dominated by Czech class, specifically Charles University's Letní škola slovanských studíi 2010 (the typing of which reminds me how badly I need to get a Czech keyboard…). As a casual teacher of English, it's fascinating, particularly after my experience teaching summer school at UCL last year, to see the process from the other side of the classroom. I always envied my students at UCL, and elsewhere, who had nothing to do but roll up to class at nine o'clock. No arriving an hour ear

ly to cut out little bits of paper for communication activities, no queuing endlessly for the photocopier or having to maniacally improvise a paperless lesson if the photocopier was broken. My non-stressful student commute is even lovelier than I imaged – I'm living a block from the river, so I leave the house, stroll around the corner, cross Palackého Most and either amble along the river to the Philosophy Faculty (see below) or catch a tram that takes the same route.

As a teacher, I find that I tend freak out before the lesson – I'll change the material five times, convinced it's all horribly boring or patronizing or inappropriate for adult learners or I photocopy two extra grammar activities and a speaking exercise two minutes before class starts in case all else fails – but once I'm actually in front of the class, I calm down rapidly and seem to know what to do without thinking about it. As a student, the stress begins when the class does. I am shocked, daily, but how much I don't understand. I've never had a class entirely in another language before and it amazes me the extent to which I miss things. I don't know how English students cope. In the idiosyncratic and ego-stroking Czech-for-foreigners language leveling system (of which more later – this deserves its own post), I'm considered advanced (about pre-int/int in English levels) and mine is the first level in which students are instructed solely in Czech (unless we are absolutely dying, in which case we can request, in Czech, a translation). I've lived in Prague for over a year altogether and studied in London for a year and a half and I still understand only about 80% of what my main teacher says (not bad) and 30% of what my conversation teacher says (she speaks so fast that I still haven't managed to catch her name). Is this what it was like for my students, all of whom, from beginners up, were instructed only in English? How did their beginner and elementary level heads not just explode? Or is Czech really a great deal more difficult than other languages?

The pedagogical methods employed in teaching Czech fascinate me. In comparison to the wealth of EFL materials available, much of which is, admittedly, redundant and/or of dubious value, teachers of Czech seem to survive on two main textbooks – Communicative Czech and Czech Step By Step – neither of which appear to come with communication activities involving little bits of cut out paper. There's no obsession with the phonetic alphabet a la New English File either, and Communicative Czech in particular appears to delight in thematic and narrative randomness. In the Elementary textbook, we follow the burgeoning romance of Bulgarian student Kristyna and her Czech boyfriend Petr for three chapters, during which they go to the theatre, plan a trip to Bulgaria and visit Petr's family in Brno. Then, just after the Locative Singular, Petr and Kristýna disappear in favor of shopping friends, a middle aged couple arguing about what to wear to the theatre and another man named Petr, who is dissatisfied with his job in Prague and wants to relocate to České Budejovice. Nothing further of K & P. What happened?! Kristýna is studying Czech…so perhaps the locative singular proved too much for her to master? Or possibly their romance will be rekindled in Intermediate Communicative Czech! Watch this space!

Seriously, though – the methods employed in teaching Czech are the sort of old fashioned drills that delight the perfectionist in me, but which would likely get an EFL teacher a bad evaluation should s/he employ them. Lots of teacher time – my teachers almost never stop talking – and little variation. No controlled language practice moving towards free improvisation – just grammar, grammar, grammar, while the conversation class doesn't pre-teach structure, but instead confronts shell-shocked students emerging from a two and half hour grammar class with "UNESCO, good or bad? Discuss." I'm not saying it doesn't work – already on day two I'm catching significantly more than I did yesterday – but it does make me wonder whether each language requires its own carefully calibrated pedagogy or if the EFL method really is the best – purely as a result of what a big business it is, as compared to the teaching of Slavic languages, which apart from Russian, are a relatively small game. Has all the money invested in EFL resulted in the best of all possible language teaching models, or does the EFL industry just churn out methodologies and textbooks the way Jerry Bruckheimer cranks out blockbusters?

I shall continue to think about this as the course progresses…but should any language teachers or learners read this, do share your opinions on the matter. (This should not, however, be interpreted as an invitation to the online Esperanto lobby to advocate their cause, as they did the last time I posted about language.)