three separate thoughts

today was a very, very sunny day and i went to the zoo.  zoo praha is considered to be one of the best zoos in the world, occupying 111 acres of land, and housing "about 4,600 animals that represent 630 species from all around the world."  the polar bears paced and paced.

last week n. and i went to slovanský dům to see "he's just not that into you" ("až tak moc tě nežere") in english with czech subtitles.  it was strange to see baltimore because the film didn't really look like baltimore.

and a new bead store opened on strossmayerovo náměstí, with excellent timing (i was beginning to wonder if there is one).  the saleswoman looks like she would rather be eating thumbtacks, but the selection is very exciting!

folkin' around

i found a hidden gem today. the historické muzeum, a branch of národní muzeum tucked away in a little white chateau in a corner of the park kinského zahrada, houses a precious collection of czech costume, toys, embroidery, and other traditional crafts. each room is dedicated to a different part of czech traditions, such as crafts, feasting, customs of spring, summer, christmas, birth and death, and wedding.

 everything is in czech, but between buying a student ticket, turning in my coat, and being given directions to where everything is in the museum, i am happy to say that i did not have to resort to english for one second.  the museum is quiet and not very big, but was clearly put together with such love and care, that i felt so happy and calm to carefully observe each beautiful object, to the sound of traditional music in some rooms, and simply chirping birds in others.  i want to come back here every weekend until i have drawn every item on display!

hello spring

the city was stuffed with people today, because of the easter markets in old town and wenceslas squares, and if that didn't make it impossible to get anywhere, the prague half-marathon caused any remaining space to be blocked off.  i walked around for about an hour and that was enough, so i went home and worked on an illustration assignment for eight hours straight.  

while the religious aspects of czech easter were suppressed under communism, the pagan tradition of welcoming the spring remains a bright and cheerful celebration.  the most recognizable symbol of czech easter is the decorated egg, which girls give to boys on easter monday (april 13th this year).

baila bamba

j. and i wanted to look at this ball outside of kampa museum, but there were three women all over it, laughing and photographing it for-ever.  of course we got annoyed waiting for them to leave the ball already, it's just a stupid ball that reflects things, but when they did leave, it all suddenly made sense because this ball is actually oh such fun.

ça pourrait changer

yesterday morning the weather went through the extremes of all four seasons. i made too much semolina porridge and ate the whole lot and then, when the weather was sunny and skirt-safe, i went (well, ran; i was late again) to národní muzeum for the tuesday czech modern art lecture. when i came back outside, it was rain-snowing, and i looked like i got dressed in a different hemisphere than everyone else on the street. it was just that kind of day for me.

but then, i skipped my architecture lecture to go to a fashion show at café louvre, where our friend s. was one of the designers. the show was from students in the clothing design atelier at my school and featured sustainable fashion made from recycled materials. but equally important was the wine and lots of familiar faces in the circles of people. there was even one delicate-looking creature in fantastic shiny shoes, whom i will draw when i get the chance. and his face looked so much like yours, a., that i really missed you then!

co je to droždí?

čerstvé mléko ("fresh milk" in czech, "sour milk" in russian)

every day i try to go as long as possible without giving up and using english; just calm down and try to concentrate on what someone might be saying at me too see if i can understand.  i was caught off guard when i went to buy groceries this morning, and the checkout woman mixed my things in with the person before me.  there was a little cube of yeast left behind, and when i looked up i realized that i was being asked a question for the second time.  i gave up and let her know that i have no idea what she was talking about, but when i left the store i was so frustrated with myself, because she was asking if the yeast was mine, and i could have understood the question (i know the word "droždí" (yeast) from the russian "drozzhi").  i could have just said "ne" and avoided having to be looked at like there is no hope left for me in this world.  oh well, i suppose everyone is taken for an idiot from time to time.  some more than others.

illustrated stamps

i have picked my most favorite ones from the lot, the ones with the non-communist illustrations and nice colors. i think they are just the bee's knees and i love them. 

i will participate in the next assignment for illustration, which is a little flipbook. i have never done a flipbook before, but after the entirely english-free explanation at the film and animation studio this morning, it seems like it would be fun and not so difficult, just careful planning and a lot of drawing of the same thing over and over. the illustration assistant was kind enough to translate about ten percent of what was being said + careful ear-straining on my part, and i got the basic idea. except, i have no idea what to do. the theme is "love + hate." help, friends! it has to be a very quick little joke; it takes about 2 seconds to flip through it.

shoe

found a lonesome gentleman's shoe in the park at night.  no shoelace or gentleman in sight.  he had flung himself over the parapet and surreptitiously vanished. i hope it was not our gentleman that lives in the attic of no. 31 ulice čechova.

tančící dům

i walked far today, to the previously unexplored nové město. another perspective and another mood of prague. here is tančící dům ("dancing building"), another important example of modern architecture in the city. it was designed by frank gehry and completed construction in 1992. all of the houses around it are from the 19th century, as were the houses that used to be on the corner where the dancing building now stands. the corner houses were destroyed on february 2nd, 1945 by an ally bomb that was meant to hit dresden. it stayed wrecked until 1948, and afterwards many proposals were made to do something about reconstructing the buildings at this busy intersection.
the reason for the way the left side of the building curves inward in the middle is that during the planning stages, neighbors living in the house next door complained that they would lose their view of prague castle. they had to be accommodated.

at first the building was difficult for czechs to get used to. i think it is very beautiful and what i like most about it is that despite its modern edge, it is respectful to and embraces and echoes the richness of shape and detail of its 19th century neighbors.
i even accidentally found the house that inspired gehry to give the windows on his building the effect of "popping out," which creates the illusion of an additional layer on the façade. it is located one block behind and to the right of the dancing building, on the corner of gorazdova and trojanova streets.

snail mail

nice, calm day that got cold and started snowing again, but very quietly and without fuss.  discovered an antiques shop in malá strana with so many things in it: postcards, books, photographs, pins, smoking pipes, posters, tin boxes, skates, typewriters, puppets, and ten times less expensive than all of the antiques shops in the touristy old town.  i found a bag of mixed stamps, mostly from the 1960s and 70s, for just 100 crowns and now i am examining its contents at home. 

273 stamps from československo, 19 from the czech republic, 17 german (including 4 deutches reich stamps from the second world war and 5 stamps from the 1880s), 15 peruvian, 8 canadian, 7 slovakian, 6 bulgarian, 5 american, 5 english, 4 italian, 2 each from denmark, netherlands, france, belgium, and hungary, and one each from poland, russia, norway, australia, switzerland, vietnam, burma, cuba, madagascar, mongolia, indochine, and martinique.

what does it take

about my illustration studio at VŠUP. foreign students are almost completely ignored by the other students and the professor and the professor's assistant.  the classes and critiques are in czech, which feels like i am trapped inside a foreign film without subtitles. normally i don't mind that much, but today was just plain frustrating because i waited three hours to get a useless five minute consultation, missing drawing class.  plus, the object of my dazzlingly unfounded affection was absolutely nowhere to be found just when i had made my mind up to be brave today, so an all-around unsatisfactory experience.  then i saw vincent gallo on a bus stop h&m advertisement, and felt a little better.

sidewalks

studies of mosaic sidewalk designs in different parts of prague.

jsem ráda, že jsem ráda

i think that spring is coming soon.  n. and i went to a french crêperie near strossmayerovo naměstí yesterday evening and i had an apple purée and honey crêpe and hot milk with almond syrup and jack johnson was quietly singing from the speakers ("i was sitting, waiting, wishing you believed in superstitions, then maybe you'd see the signs...") and i had a sudden and overwhelming feeling of being very happy and very content with my life at that moment.

čeština pro cizince

jmenuju se jelena bryksénková. nejsem češka, jsem cizínka. bydlím v praze sedm, ulice se jmenuje na výšinach. mám útulný pokoj v koleji mikoláše alše. studuju v ateliéru ilustrace a grafiky na vysoké škole umělecko-průmyslove v praze jedna u naměstí jana palacha. nemluvím česky a rozumím velmi špatně, ale jsem ráda, že jsem tady v praze. 

мо-жет-э-то-шкаф

semi-strange, possibly magical object on the horizon.  there is only one way to find out, one way with many variations.  i am devising a stratagem to approach said object.

slon du jour

"by what latitude could we,  abandoned thus to the fury of symbols,

be occasionally a prey to the demon of analogy,

seeing ourselves the object of extreme overtures, of singular, special attentions?"  i don't know, but i feel it all of the time.  i went farther into stromovka today, because i think that spring is here, and found another train tracks beyond the park.  a very cute blue and orange train came out from the left.  it was called "city elephant."  and on the way back i noticed that all of the trees in this park have eyes.

kabul

we celebrated friday the thirteenth at an afghan restaurant called kabul, where the waiter turned out to be russian, and spent all evening fluttering around our table and answering every request with some witty remark.  after we had asked for the check, he brought another round of red wine, "from him."  and on our way out we were told that we had "colored his entire evening."  definitely coming back to this place.

асса

the weather has been dreary and rainy most of the time, and today there was even hail when i was hanging around the castle. i had to turn my coat pockets inside out to throw out the piles of little ice blocks that had accumulated there.

zlatý anděl

this morning i took the metro to smíchov district in prague 5 to see the zlatý anděl ("golden angel") office building. the building was designed by the french architect jean nouvel and was completed in 2000. nouvel noticed that there are many houses in prague with painted façades, and wanted to find a modern way of "painting" the building.  the crossroads at which the building stands is called anděl, so the picture nouvel imagined was of an angel guarding over prague.  

in his search for a "modern angel," nouvel collected thousands of images, and finally settled on the one played by german actor bruno ganz in wim wenders' 1987 film "wings of desire."  using a photograph that was printed in dots and applied directly to the glass with the help of a grid, the figure of the angel was placed in front of a panoramic image of prague.  across the photograph, in red text, are printed quotes from authors and poets that are connected with the city.  

last week's modern architecture lecture was entirely about zlatý anděl, from the idea to the final execution, and i felt that i had to see it myself. the look of the building changes with the time of day. i looked at it from different directions, which was difficult because the intersection is very busy with people, cars, and trams, and i must have been the only person looking up at it. this is an important lesson i am learning about prague: you miss so much here if you don't look up.

bleak

sometimes, i feel like i am a ghost.

czechoslovakian film poster design

from today's history of graphic design lecture. films often appeared in czechoslovakia years later than their first international premiere.  graphic designers often did not know what the film was about before creating the poster, and usually had a tight deadline and one photograph to work with.  the information on the poster was limited to the title of the film, the name of the director, and sometimes a brief description.  all of these factors had a significant impact on the design, and often produced a more interesting result.  above left, the original international theatrical poster for federico fellini's "8 1/2" from 1963, and right, the czechoslovakian poster from 1964, by bedřich dlouhý.

čajovna u kostela

n. and i went to another tearoom this evening.  they had better halva than the clock tower tea club, and something very very delicious called masala chai, which is a sweet indian tea brewed with milk and strong spices.  this was a good way to spend the evening because i was like a zombie all day.

с 8-ым марта

march 8th is international women's day.  it isn't actually very international, because only people from former soviet republics take it very seriously and celebrate, but i wish all of you a happy day, anyway.  today we will go to eat celebratory cake.  also, as of today, i have been living in prague for one month.

dinner party

last night we had a birthday party for r. in the big leisure room on the first floor of the dormitory.  people cooked very, very good food.  that's czech rum + cola in my hand and i am crazy from going to bed late and waking early.  pam-param-pam-pam.  photograph by a.

edward gorey

look what i found at fišer bookstore.  i was happy but also i wonder about how someone had to redraw some of gorey's hand-drawn type in czech...

the tea club

there is a clock tower outside of my window.

if one goes up and up and up the staircase inside at night,

one finds a tea club.

we went up yesterday to the warm carpeted rooms, where we took off our coats and shoes at the door and put on the provided slippers, and sat on the floor around a low table drinking turkish black tea and eating halva.

artěl: art for everyday use, 1908-1935

last tuesday, when the city gallery was discovered closed and exhibition-less,  our weekly guide zuzana bauerova took the group to the uměleckoprůmyslové museum v praze (the museum of applied arts in prague), which currently has on exhibit beautifully designed objects for everyday use, and especially the most precious, cutest little wooden toys from the czech artěl applied arts scene of the early 20th century.  no photography allowed in the museum, so i drew some of them instead.

mystery somewhat solved

it took me a very long time to find any information about this house, since it doesn't even seem to have a name. but what i was finally able to find out is that stromovka park was first conceived in the 13th century as a hunting grounds for bohemian kings. this house, which sits on the park's highest point, was a hunting lodge built in the 15th century. in the early 19th century, the lodge was rebuilt in the neo-gothic style. it now houses the newspaper and periodical archive of the national museum.

černý slon

(black elephant hotel)

pavel called me yesterday because he just returned from his skiing trip and wants to know how he can help me. i...don't...know. i haven't touched the pieces of linoleum on my shelf yet, and i don't really have any ideas. i should think of something i can do, but then the idea of calling him back (when?) to ask for help with tools or to use his studio (how?) is not a warm and fuzzy one. 

mansion in the mist

dear mansion on the hill, what are you?  i have not come close enough to figure it out yet.

popo cafe petl again on sunday night for live gypsy music.  we danced like crazy even though it was less balkan and more havana, the usual gypsy kings repertoire ("volare," "bamboleo...") until some real gypsies came down for two seconds and danced very quickly in a whirl of body parts, putting the rest of us non-gypsies to shame.  too bad it did not last very long.  

on tuesdays we meet with our guide at different galleries for czech modern art and art history.  last week, we came to the city gallery and there was no exhibition because the museum is being renovated.  this tuesday, we met outside the national museum of music and found out that it is open every day but tuesday!  this kind of thing is funny and happens a lot.  classes are cancelled, lectures are moved to a different time and place without notice.  i am always guessing what will (not) happen next.

petřín hill

j. and i walked for five hours today, climbed petřín hill, which is high, higher than even prague castle.  at the top there are children getting circular pony rides and signs pointing to what we thought is a maze (bludiště), but we never found it.  the day started in stromovka park again: if i go deep enough into it, i find a planetarium.  if i go deeper still and more to the right, a rather large amusement park suddenly appears through the trees.  if i go left, i find the russian embassy. something about all of these things feels a little whimsical, like i fell though a rabbit hole at some point and didn't notice it.

this view is already about halfway down the hill.

no. 31, ulice čechova

if found this house yesterday, on the next street, and immediately and inexplicably wanted to cry.  i have come back to stand in front of it twice today, my head filling with stories about who must live in the top floor, where the door leading to the decaying balcony is open.  it must be the home of someone like the canterville ghost.  judging by the inscription "léta páně mdccccv," it was built in 1905.

then later today, i saw one of "our" men, in a black trench coat, walking down the street toward me, and decided that he, without a doubt, lives, slightly miss havisham-style, in this house.  he drinks cold tea and sits at a three-legged writing desk, writing detective stories.

park stromovka

i finally went to explore my neighborhood, bubeneč, and found this very, very large and dismally beautiful park behind the street where i live.  there are many hidden places and twisty trees, and mysterious mansions visible on hilltops.

drawing class

on thursday i was finally able to go to drawing class, which lasted about three hours.  there is a giant roll of paper in the corner and when i come in, i tear off a very long piece and attach it to a very tall easel, and draw the nude model full size.  i hate working so big, but it wasn't so bad at all...

městská knihovna v praze

i went this morning  to make a borrower's card at the prague municipal library.  n. came with me to speed up the process by speaking czech and translating the application.  now with my card, i really feel more a part of a community, in a very tiny way.  the english and russian collections are not very big (but why should they be?) but this way i don't have to be picky and will be happy to read whatever i can find.

re-evolution

yesterday evening i went with n. and i. and r. to popo cafe petl in malá strana for live latin music.  we sat at a very small round table with giant mugs of hoegaarden, and stood up sometimes to dance in front of the stage.  i did not plan on dancing, but "seize the day more often" is one of my resolutions for the new year.  also, these glowing penguins were accidently discovered by me when i was wandering around aimlessly on kampa island.  they are part of kampa museum's exhibition called re-evolution.

8 1/2

the english-language globe bookstore and cafe on pštrossova has free screenings of classic films every sunday night.  yesterday i went with n. and n. and r. to drink hot wine and watch fellini's "8 1/2."  it was very beautiful in imagery and music, but i thought that it would never end... 

снег пошёл.

on thursday i did not return until 10:30 pm, so there was no chance of going out, but a few people came to my room with little presents like chocolates, a small kalanchoe plant, and a bird bookmark.  it was so sweet, and we had a bottle of red wine saved up for the occasion (or until we found a corkscrew).  tonight we will try to get more people together for a proper 21st celebration.

gmt+1

ever since i arrived here almost two weeks ago, i feel like i have been running late to everything.  every day i find myself in the position of holding a sandwich in one hand, and pulling my tights on with the other, while trying to remember where i put my keys.  for someone who is never late to anything ever, i am very shocked and confused.  everyone says that this is ok, because the czechs are always late, but that is hardly a consolation.