So over the past couple of weeks I had been messaging this couchsurfer Djali, who is 1/4 Persian and 3/4 Czech, about getting together and cooking some Persian food. Since the weather started to get nice we decided on a picnic. So we had the picnic on Saturday! It was a success. I cooked the Persian things (Kookoo Sabzi and Adas Polo) and Djali made some meat. We had the picnic on this hill in Djali’s neighborhood. There were many bottles of wine, including a bottle from Russian River that our friend David brought! See video of David below, talking about how to bring cool wine to a picnic. He’s French. Our picnic was quite international: we had a person from Portugal, Germany, Russia, France, Czech Republic and three Americans (one of unknown origins, one of Greek nationality and one of Iranian nationality – me). After the picnic we crammed six people into an elevator to Djali’s apt. and we got stuck. Paul, the artist, and Petr, this couchsurfer from Moscow, figured out a way to get us out though… after being in there for like 5-10 minutes. Good job guys!
On Friday I walked from my neighborhood of Kobylisy to the city center, which was about 6.5 km. It was a really nice and sunny day! On my way to the center I passed by this fair, so I went in to explore it — I found the scariest ride and rode that. It did the truck with making me fear for my life when the thing spun me to the top (see picture below). After the fair I went to a tea-house and met up with a group of couchsurfers. Post tea-house we headed to a hookah place/restaurant and the five of us had some soup and more tea and apple hookah. There was a belly dancer. Post hookah place, there was three of us remaining and we went to a beer garden first and then had drinks at Blind Eye this kinda rocker bar owned by an American expat. It was nice. I talked to the owner and asked him if I could DJ for free on Sunday and he said sure (they usually don’t have DJs on Sundays). Time to get some mp3s together, whoo!
Oh man, I had the most amazing dinner last night at this restaurant called Lehka Hlava. I went there with my new friend Paul or Art Zog (you could see him pictured in the crammed metro photo in the previous post). He’s friends of an SF friend and an awesome artist in residence here in Prague. Anyway so we went to this restaurant and it was fantastic. He ordered these couscous-feta croquettes and I had a bulgar-tempeh pilaf sort of thing. So delicious. The restaurant was decorated interestingly, there was a starry ceiling and the tables where like lamp-tables.
I have been in Prague for over a week now and haven’t seen much of the city, because I have been going to Village Cinemas almost everyday for the Febio Fest. It’s ending on Friday but I’m not going to the cinemas anymore! I’ve had enough. The movies I ended up seeing and my ratings based on 4 stars are: Mysterious Skin (****), Dear Wendy(**), Wendy & Lucy (***), Adoration (****), It’s All About Love (***), Plastic City (*), Vegas: Based on a True Story (***), More (**), Encarnación (**), The Early Years: Erik Nietzsche Part 1 (***), Nightmare Detective (****). Best soundtrack = Mysterious Skin (lots of Slowdive songs and original music composed by Harold Budd & Robin Guthrie). I saw one director: Amir Naderi — he spoke a little bit before & after his Vegas: Based on a True Story film. Nightmare Detective is a great Japanese horror film. The Early Years: Erik Nietzsche Part 1 is written by Lars Von Trier and is satire on Danish film school.
The public transportation in Prague is pretty great. The underground stops running around 12-1am but there are buses & street trams that run all night and the signage/way-finding is pretty great. At every bus stop & tram stop there is also a schedule. The night buses & trams seem to come every 30 minutes. Right around the time when the metro stops running in the center of town, the trams are crowded as fuck though! But after a few stops it kind of clears a little. Luckily I am staying near where one of the trams terminates so I haven’t had to take one cab, but it does take about an hour to get home. They also use one of those honorary ticket systems here like in most of Europe, and I can’t say that I have been purchasing too many tickets.
I’m in Prague now, subletting a place for almost 3 weeks. I checked out another cafeteria style veggie place (they’re just cheap…), here is my meal, it was OK. Slice of pizza, some mashed potatoes, some tofu thing, and some veggie sausage/potato thing. Name of the place is “Country Life.”
Me and Teresa were worthless on Saturday. Well, I was worthless, Teresa cooked me some pasta. And we watched the German movie “The Lives of Others” — great film. On Sunday, we had quite a schedule: brunch, the Schirn again (this time for the Darwin exhibit – fantastic), and then some waffles. Scoped out some Segway peoples, I think on a Segway tour. I’m a bit sad to leave Germany, but I will be back!
I love Germany. So post-museums, I walked around for a second and snapped some shots then returned to Offenbach. Decompressed for a second, because museums are quite exhausting (j/k). Later in the evening, I went out to dinner with Pascal, my Offenbach host. I had spinach with feta. That’s precisely what it was. When I saw it, I didn’t think it would be that good, but it was very good — you really can’t go wrong with spinach and feta. After dinner me and Pascal headed to Teresa’s flat. Teresa is my new host. She is a gorgeous model. See her pictured below. <3
Pascal introduced me to Apfelwein at dinner, and I had some more at Teresa’s place. It’s wine made out of apples I guess. But it has half as much alcohol as grape wine. It’s local to Frankfurt apparently. I like it very much, tastes like watered down apple juice.
After hangin’ around for a while, we all headed to the amazing Robert Johnson for the Wighnomy Bros., who were off-the-hook… kept me dancing until my feet hurt. There’s a shitty video clip below of them DJing some Sound-of-Silence remix or cover or something or whatever, I enjoyed that moment (and many others). Me and Teresa didn’t get back until 8am. Coulda been worse (or better if we stayed longer?).
So, the main reason I derailed my east of Europe adventures and came to Germany was to see Spectrum. I’d seen it advertised on a MySpace bulletin, that my MySpace friend Kosmik-Klaus was doing visuals for Spectrum in Würzburg, which is 1.5 – 2 hours away from Frankfurt. That made me want to go more because his visuals are some of the best and I enjoy a good audio/visual experience. I contacted Klaus (pictured on my right, below) on MySpace, asking him if he knew of anyone that was driving from Frankfurt to Würzburg. He sent some emails and found Jürgen (very left). Me and Jürgen exchanged some emails and everything was set! After I had my Persian dinner, I headed to Jürgen’s and I rode to Würzburg with two other guys. I forget their names. One of them brought some equipment to record the concert, let’s call him Tape-man. So we went to the venue, Cafe Cairo, and we were there pretty early. Opening band played, Vibravoid, they were okay, I think they might have had a longer set than Spectrum though! Ha… Anyhow. Spectrum were fantastic, Kosmik-Klaus’ vizualz were off-the-chain, and I very much enjoyed my evening. After the show was over we were still hanging around for a bit because Tape-man was taking his time chatting it up with people, some of which were Spectrum drummer & bass player. I guess Tape-man was talking to them about me and how I am couchsurfing, and they wanted to talk to me. So I explained to Spectrum drummer & bass player about couchsurfing and then parted with them sayin’ “See you in Barcelona!” since I told them I’d be heading there. In other news, the new guitar player is a total babe.
Took a short train from Budapest to Bratislava and then hopped on a plane to Frankfurt. I arrived at my couchsurfing host’s flat in Offenbach around 1am. We chatted a little bit, had some tea and then passed out (my first time sleeping on a floor this whole trip, not too bad). Tonight I am going to see Spectrum so I didn’t have much time to explore except going to eat at a Persian restaurant called Chandis. I had wanted to check out a place called Pistazie, which makes lots of Persian dishes with a tofu option but they are closed in those hours between lunch & dinner. Chandis was nice though, I had a vegetable stew with basmati rice. Below you will see my new hair, a funny German advertisement for metro passes, a random store front and then my dinner place and foods.
I met up with Kyle again and we saw the Pest side of the city today: Hero’s square, the other castle, parliament, and other things. After parliament we ate dinner at Eden Vegetarian, yet another cafeteria style place. We shared the plate of food. After dinner I went to get my haircut, and it was the most stressful haircut ever, the girl was just doing things that I was not used to, like straightening my bangs so she could trim them and also I had wanted to keep my length but it became really short. (There was someone translating to her what I wanted. I guess that was lost in translation). In the end the haircut turned out good, I think. The bangs are a little bit off but not super noticeable. Dora knew where I was getting my haircut at, and she rang the place while I was there. Her and Martin came to say a proper goodbye to me since I was leaving the next day. After the cut, I met back up with Kyle and the sun was down now. We chilled near the Danube for a little bit, became a little bit mesmerized by the fast-flowing water, which looks like gold with the reflection of the lights on the water.
