01/01/2011

And now our time begins to tick down. It has always been as such but now it is more apparent. Two weeks folds into one and a half, turns into only a half week turns into merely days and hours. After two months I am looking around to see what is left to see and the answer is SOO MUCH! My illness early on and subsequent attempt to make up for lost time has prevented me from seeing everything. I say everything in jest as most visitors only see a fraction of what this town has to offer, as much as any town can really. And the wintery weather has put a damper on the free roaming to and fro’. But even in this case the sentiment should be considered false. When one is in a foreign place I think the impulse is to measure one’s success by the amount of souveniers one can accumulate to prove that you did what you did. Photos of yourself in front of monuments, castles, statues and signs serve to justfy the expense of the trip, ticket stubs, beer glasses and T-shirts all signify the experience of being, gently prodding memory cells and reassuring that sense of self that says you were “thought of” during a particular excursion. The next days will consist primarily of beginning to pack, making final arrangements and making our peace with Cesky Krumlov. And maybe do some work? Funny how that works. So much to do even as you make more work for yourself.

12/31/2010

We got all packed up and made our way to the train station early this morning with enough time for one last hostel breakfast. We had planned to take the bus but on New Years Eve traveling back to Cesky Krumlov is a sold out affair. The train trip was a rather simple transition through with little lay over. I spent time taking photos in the train with the Nikon for a more purposeful and specific investigation of facial features.
Our arrival at the train station was met with an encounter with an individual who was quite confused as to which country he was really from. As far as an incident is was minor however it did elevate my anger level and it causes me to wonder: if your actions do not in fact cause the fear and intimidation you meant to occur then what do you really intend to happen? It is unfortunate that one can not walk side by side to discuss an event after the fact. You only have your angels and devils feuding over what you think the outcome might have been.
The rest of the afternoon was spent making sure that what did happen at Christmas didn’t happen again for New Years- Doh! I mean to say the rest of the afternoon was spent repeating the same steps as before! The one difference this time was our ace in the hole. She goes by the name of Lucie. Lucie had arranged for a reservation at the Gypsy Bar which had a cover charge, but included live music, garunteed seating and a bottle of champagne for the witching hour.
We arrived around 7ish and ordered a very reasonably priced dinner and enjoyed the Roma five piece band and were also treated to a bit of dancing. At twelve we hastily said cheers and rushed to the town square where the arsenal was being ignited! If tonight was a battle than the sky was our enemy. With a relentless sense of zeal for fireworks audience became participants and participants reloaded their arms while becoming for a moment merely an enthralled spectator. There was this rumor that the New Year’s in Praha would be simply “INSANE!” One can not judge what one cannot see, and one should never consider the unexperienced as better or worse. I will say that our New Years was a spectacular one spent, for the first time, amongst the winding streets of castle village Cesky Krumlov.

12/30/2010

One thing that I have been doing with my photographs on this trip in particular is to try and capture the perspective and actions that best describe various sculptures I come across. This is a fun way to think about narrative. Sculpture concerns itself primarily in this case with veneration of the person, myth or idea. The piece set in stone or metal usually sits atop another structure and occupies a space well above the gaze of most viewers. Suffice to say that most people cannot view the sculpture in the round or even on equal terms. With my lens I have attempted to imbue the scene with perspective that only a lens can. Mimicing the framing of cinema I attempt to distill the moment into a single frame. The easy part is that my actors never get tired of posing.
Did I mention it is cold? Very much so that our daily treks are a course plotted out by a series of connecting entryways that guard against wind and bitter cold, perhaps even offering liquid sustenance. I must say that as much as one hates to indulge in tourism one must experience a bit of it just to get the details of the visual culture as it manifests across segments. This humor I spoke of earlier when I was highlighting Jára I also found in other places, such as a hanging statue of a man riding on an upside down horse which apparently is making fun of aristocracy and the need to venerate important figures on horses. I also found other manifestations of this type of irreverent humor in pubs, on signs and in public bathrooms. Hidden treasures that aren’t hidden are still treasures.

12/29/2010

I am taking lots of photos as the case demands it. So much texture, context and form to interpret. I am trying to take some “normal” photos so that others can “see” Praha. I have also in the process been trying to retain my attention to small details and constantly scan the walls and crevices for hidden treasures. The problem becomes that when you are new to an area everything is a treasure, but not everything has field dominance, especially when advertising motifs have moved in from the west. Lights are nothing new but the malls are quite new as are KFC and Mc Donald’s sinage. There are definitely declinations between new tourist areas and old tourist areas. One seeks to capitalize on culture and history while the other is concerned with pure modern commerce. The one thing I do love though is the conversion of older arcades into more modern and flexible places for mixed business. In America we have less reverence for old structures and how they may be repurposed. This also may be due in part to our poor construction of quick build projects.

12/28/2010

I will simply say what an honor it is to exist in a city with this many sculptures. The architecture in Prague is an amazing. There are so many co-mingling of styles all in such a relatively small area its nothing short of pure excitement.
I don’t remember too much about my first trip to Prague almost 20 years ago… scratch that, I do not remember much of the city as such. I remember traveling with my friend Walle as we first arrived in the outskirts of town and took the 1st “youth hostel” we came upon which amounted to a spare room in a man’s apartment. In the morning before we left for the train station the owner gave us a cup of “cowboy” coffee, the type where the grounds are in the bottom of the cup your drinking out of.
I remember meeting a Nigerian man who shares my middle name of Bandele in our next choice of youth hostel. Upon arriving at the main train stations it became clear that there would be many choices of “youth hostels.” The one we ended up choosing I can scarcely even imagine where that would have been 20 years after or even if it still retained its function. Bandele was traveling much like we were and between the three of us we tried to have a conversation with the clerk at the desk of our hostel. She was an older woman from Hungary and did not speak, English or German. Bandele spoke Bulgarian, which seemed similar enough to get basic gist of what she was asking of us-, which were posters. Posters from the west. She wanted images to put up around the hostel and it didn’t seem to matter what sort of images as she named many different names of pop culture icons like MLK, John Lennon, Bob Marley, and so on. It had never really dawned on me the cultural currency images were and are such that there might be a desire to import such images and that simply the acquisition of such images might be important. During this time I was only maybe twenty years old and not too aware as the trip to Germany was my first excursion out of the country, first real excursion out into the rest of the world. The fall of the Berlin wall was televised across the world and made it into my bedroom, however the events of the Velvet Revolution remain elusive in my memories.

12/27/2010

In the early early morning we set out onto the cobblestone streets of Cesky Krumlov bound for a big yellow bus vaguely reminding me of the Flonase drug bee. At seven o’clock in the morning the sun was non-existent and viewing the landscape was difficult. Eventually the sky began to brighten and the snow covered fields were revealed, only interrupted occasionally by small towns and commerce centers. It was during this time an alternative view of Cesky Budejovice via bus window. Our only other vantage point had been from the steps of the train station between transits to Cesky Krumlov. Most of my time on the bus was spent staring out the bus window while listening to Czech radio which played a mixture of eighties pop and Czech hits. It’s funny how normally I feel that becoming immersed in cultural media like television and radio helps navigate the new space we inhabit, but now it seems somewhat remote as my usage of such centralized devices has lessened and fallen by the wayside in favor of more decentralized forms of communication such as the internet. Actually it’s not that funny since it has limited my “access” so to speak, the TV signal seems to be carried most preferably by satellite, theoretically this is the same in the US between the densely packed cities and the migration to an all-digital signal.

The following is inspired by this trip. I am posting this well after the fact due to an indecision on how to process the experience. I accumulated more than thirty minutes of footage during the bus ride, and recorded as much radio broadcast to match. However, the impulse to include all the material seemed excessive, and the thought of covering and dealing with so much seemed counter productive. In short, I became blocked. In the end I was able to encorage myself to "let go" of the vast majority, in effect abandon the original idea and simply go for something less literal and less demanding. I encourage comments.

12/26/2010

Today was spent mostly processing images and preparing for our trip to Prague.
Once there we shall await Joe’s arrival. We have plans to stay at a hostel while we are there and taking in the sights. I do not plan on writing much during this time, as this is the perfect time to play tourist. The one time where it will be “OK” to stand around and gawk like a befuddled child with no agenda. Of course it will be interesting since we have no money, well virtually no money anyway. But this is exactly the same as it happened last time I visited Prague back in 1991 only maybe I have more than ‘”Zwanzig Mark.” Back then it was nearing the final months of a yearlong stay in Germany. We had always talked about the desire to visit Prague and we were told that this would be the last time to go and get the “real Prague.” After this everything would change. We shall see.