The week has been crazy busy
with 12 hour school days plus apartment hunting, the visa process, etc. We
finally found an apartment that we love—perfect part of town, just enough space,
and best of all: a couple of rare amenities. Reminiscent of communism, I
suppose, the Czechs waste no money on extraneous comforts like dishwashers,
microwaves, and dryers. Our new apartment is only lacking the latter.
This brings me to cultural disparity number one: no
dryers=very stiff clothes. It’s like pulling on a thin sheet of fresh smelling
cardboard. I’m still baffled that especially in such a climate they won’t succumb
to modern technology and just throw clean clothes in a machine and pull them out
soft and dry an hour later. Another minor effect of this we discovered when we
attempted to cleverly rid our clothing of the smoke stench that clings to it
after entering any restaurant or bar. “Dryer sheets,” we thought. “That’s the
answer, and we can prolong the inevitable 24 hour wash/air dry cycle.” Of
course, without dryers, would there be any need for dryer sheets? The answer is
no, and there ended our brilliant quest for freshness.
Cultural disparity number two: Snow. It’s everywhere, all
the time. So much that we take it for granted. On our morning walks to school we
tip our hats to snowcapped Winston, but that’s about it. Thursday night,
however, we celebrated the end to the most difficult part of the week by eating
a late dinner after class. When we walked out, there were feet upon feet of
fresh snow. It was so late that we were the first ones to see it undefiled by
footsteps or tires, and it was literally glittering under the streetlamps. Our token
Canadian was even impressed. We went down to the park in the neighborhood to
revel in the fresh snow in all its glory, and there we met two new friends,
Victor and Victor. It wasn’t until the next morning when we arrived at school black
and blue and comparing battle scars that we realized how misleading that
beautiful, glittering fluffy looking stuff actually is. Scars will fade, but
the memories of sledding down the hill (sledless) with Victor and Victor never
will.
I don’t know what to call cultural disparity number three.
Last night, we walked into a restaurant that we’d been eyeing for a while. The
sign said Casa Latina: Mexican Cantina and Grill, and it looked pretty clean
and not too crowded from the outside. We walked in and immediately felt like we’d
entered someone’s home unannounced. It looked like any other restaurant, but it
was completely empty and the “employees,” seemingly shocked that people had
entered to patronize their establishment, were sitting around watching a
bootleg copy of Django projected on the wall. We asked if we could eat, and
they ushered us to the back room. One guy took our order, and then a couple
more came up and asked for it too. It was starting to get weird. They brought
out one person’s beer at a time in five minute intervals—completely contrary to
Czech fashion—and continued to ask for our order. There were literally two
items on the menu: quesadilla with ham or quesadilla with chicken. Still unclear
as to what was so befuddling.
They streamed Christina Aguilera YouTube vids on the
projector and eventually brought out our meals through a small door in the
wall, one by one and very slowly. They FOR SURE went and got this food
somewhere else and brought it into the restaurant for us. We finished and went
up to pay, but the guys up front said, “oh no, you cannot leave now. The owner
has just gone to the store and will be back in a minute.” The hostage situation
ended about half an hour later when the owner returned and allowed us to pay
and leave. We made a mental note of some curious language on the chalkboard
alcohol list, and when we got home, did a little research to find that—long story
short—Casa Latina is not, in fact, a Mexican Cantina and Grill.
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