Family Visits in Europe

I'll eventually have an entry about friends visiting me, and an entry about A Dinner Party, my project (I'll wait until we're closer to finished), but first I figured I should write about my family coming to visit me out here.

My uncle Craig Underwood, whose blog you should definitely check out (www.collaborationevangelist.com), brought his wife Patty and kids, Jordan and Myles, out here for a week. I had some things I had to take care of during the week, but I did get to see them quite a bit while they were here.

The first place I showed them was Old Town Square, which is absolutely overwhelming for your mind if you've never been. I've been there a thousand times at this point, but I think they were taking it all in pretty well. The old buildings are beautiful and spectacular, and it sometimes feel like you've been transported back in time, unless there's a big modern fair going on in the middle of it with obnoxiously loud music. The prices are as high there as anywhere else, but it's one of my favorite places to take a stroll, depending on the crowds. I'll never forget the first time Vefik and I stepped in there.

They seemed to be enjoying themselves.

We did the usual stuff. I showed them as much as I could. We went to the castle. I showed them Mala Strana, the most beautiful part of the city. We went to the John Lennon Wall. I went back to Pisek. They went to the Jewish quarter, and a few other places. They visited me, and then I went with them later on in the week to the zoo, which is incredible.

That's right, they let you hang out with the lemurs.

I thoroughly enjoyed Zoo Praha. I have to go back at some point. I haven't been to a zoo since Meredith and I went to Cincinatti a few years back. This is a huge place, with a random but good selection of animals.

I took Craig around the city a bit in the evenings. We hunted for statues by David Cerny (look him up if you haven't heard of him... he's absolutely insane) one night. We went to several shops around the city. Unfortunately, I couldn't talk him out of this:

But yeah, the Underwood visit was a good lesson in time management. And it was the first time in months that I was talking to someone I knew before I got here. AND it was my first opportunity to show off a city. Twas wondrous.

A week or so after that, my father and brother arrived. I was busy shooting during the first weekend, but they took on Prague without me. They stopped in Pisek and saw me, hopped down to Bratislava, then Vienna, and finally returned to Prague, where I met up with them again. I took them to the castle, Kutna Hora, Vysehrad, and Zizkov. They really loved it, from what I can tell.

Can't you see the excitement?

They got a pretty good sense of what a strange place the Czech Republic can be. Prague has such a macabre history of martyrs, wars, and the plague, but it's somehow an insanely charming city.

Kutna Hora's especially memorable for these guys. It's an hour away from Prague, so it's more of a genuine Czech town. And surrounding yourself with bones and not being terrified is an indescribable feeling.

See? No terror here.

It's weird to spend so much time in the company of strangers and then suddenly end up knowing a city well enough to navigate it, and then showing people you've known your whole life what it's like. It's like when you have different groups of friends that you hang out with but not all at once. When they converge it feels like worlds are colliding. That's kind of what it felt like. Not bad, just surreal.

When Dad and Chris left, I walked back to the bus station from Vysehrad. A lot of the Prague public transportation was down for a few hours because of the Prague marathon, which I walked right into several times.

Twas interesting.

Why do I never update this anymore?

I've been as busy as ever lately, trying to sort out school stuff, shoot my project, and greet visitors with a smile. My father and brother are in the region right now (in Vienna at this very moment), and my uncle Craig and his family were here a few weeks back. My project, A Dinner Party, is now in postproduction, and I've got a horde of visitors in the coming weeks.

Regardless, I did do a bit of travel in the last few months within the Czech Republic, and I haven't posted anything about these places. Some of the stuff's been in and around Prague, and other stuff's been a bit further.

Around Prague, a few weeks back, I was able to go to a party for the Czech TV station called Nova. It had students from schools all around the Czech Republic. Free food and drinks, plenty of people, and a spectacular location for a party: right on the Charles Bridge.

I had some time that weekend, so I decided to go to a place I'd heard about for months, but never dared to go before: Kutna Hora.

This is the legendary bone ossuary where they turned a pile of plague and war bones into art. There's nothing like it anywhere else, and it's a little bit creepy and a little bit funny. If you're ever in the area, it's one of those things you mostly have to see to believe.

They say that the chandelier holds every bone in the human body. I'm willing to take their word for it.

Best. Signature. Ever.

I was able to befriend two nice Australians who were doing their own tour of Europe before entering the real world while I was there. By the time we were out of the ossuary, we had all decided that the only word for that place is "bizarre."

The following week, the Czech film Normal premiered in Prague at the Lucerna theater. My Cinematography instructor, Antonio Riestra, was the Director of Photography for the film, and he got Eirik and me into the premiere. It's a pretty disturbing storyline about a serial killer in Dusseldorf, but it's a pretty solid film. And the premiere was quite spectacular.

Shortly after that excursion, I went off to Moravia with Iain and Anna, two friends I have from Pisek, who live there. Iain's from Canada and Anna's Czech. They showed me the glorious eastern side of this place. It's beautiful. There's a different feel to Moravia than Bohemia... it's just a more relaxed area.

While we were there, we went to Olomouc.

Olomouc is a very old city, famous for its bizarre statues involving dolphin love:

Couldn't explain this if I tried.

It also has an astronomical clock, sort of like Prague. This one's a bit different:

I prefer Prague's, but this one doesn't have thousands of people gawking in front of it while ignoring the pickpockets in the crowd, so I guess they're even.

Olomouc is quite beautiful, but this was right before Spring really hit us, so it was raining like crazy for a while that day. Iain and Anna suggested that we go to the local mall, which provided hours of entertainment with bizarre Czech advertisements, ice cream, and a giant chocolate egg that we adopted.

I was kind of taken with this egg. It was 60 Kc, which is about $3. We split it between the three of us, and took care of it like it was our own. On the train back to the area where Anna's from, we took several photos of myself and the egg, which disturbed the other passengers on the train. We recently started eating it, but it didn't endure the heat of the last few weeks very well.