Breaking it Up: Praha (Prague)

...Now that my ladder's gone 

I must lie down where all the ladders start 

In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.

--William Butler Yeats,  "The Circus Animals’ Desertion"



On the third day of the new year, before my friends had woken, I packed away the few things I left out the night before that I would need in the morning, I pulled on my coat and my gloves and my scarf, and I headed out into the still debris-strewn streets of west Berlin. I took the metro to the train station, headphones in, drifting in and out of attention to the world around me once I had gotten myself where I needed to be. I boarded the train and sat in the window seat even though my reservation was for the aisle. We pulled away from the station and I realized I'd be riding backwards. I slouched in my seat until I was comfortable and I slept for a while and when the train's stopping at a station woke me up we were no longer in Berlin or a city and I saw a man looking down at his ticket then at me so I started to rise from my chair but he waved me back and sat beside me. I nodded at him gratefully but didn't speak and he didn't speak and I continued to watch the world pull backwards away from me and I tried not to think about my friends or Kosovo or turning 30 or my guilt or all the thousand little things I chide myself for every day. I tried to empty my mind and let the words of Bob Dylan fill it and watch Germany slip away and feel peace.

I did try.

Prague was frigid and the wind bit through my jeans, through my muscle, seemingly through my very bones, the minute I stepped out of the train station. I followed a group of rolling suitcase-touting tourists to the town center. I couldn't get a good internet connection anywhere so I ducked into a hotel, blinked my eyes sadly and asked for a street map. I checked the street I was on and found the street of my AirBnB and felt a rising surge of triumph when I found the building number of my apartment followed by a swift plummet when I realized I had no way to contact the host. I wandered up and down the street seeking internet or an idea of what to do, whichever could present itself first, before my host stepped out and recognized me, let me in, gave me the key and left me to my solitude.

I have never had an AirBnB meeting/key exchange that was not an exercise in patience and fortitude. But it's still the best way to go, to my mind.

I looked around the little studio that would be my home for a few days and now, not consumed with finding my way through a strange city, the edges of my mind began to refill with all the doubts and anger and sadness I'd been pushing away so I went back out into the street and let the crystalline cold of early January in the Czech Republic freeze me into a human-shaped automaton. I walked around a bit and went to the grocery to store to stock up on supplies (beer, junk food) and returned to my temporary home to thaw and sleep.

I walked through the famous Christmas market, past the famous astrological clock, across the famous bridge and up to the famous castle and I looked on at the famous beauty of this city and I felt mostly nothing.

I stared at this church from an alcove where I was hiding while waiting for a momentary blow-up of snow and wind to pass, and I felt nothing.

The skies cleared and I felt nothing.

I took pictures of things I thought were beautiful and things I thought were strange or interesting, but I felt nothing.

I sought out things I'd read about, I went through the motions of a person on vacation, and I felt nothing.

I looked at the lights and the people and I smelled the meat and the beer and the potatoes and the garlic and I felt nothing and I heard the singing and the deep, bellowing clangor of the city's church-bells and I felt nothing.

I returned to the apartment after my wanderings through the city, because my legs ached below where my coat protected my torso and thighs. I slept then, mostly I slept, for the several days I was there. I slept and I drank and I ate and I thought and then I remembered. I thought about my host family in Topanica and I thought about my host family in Rahovec and I thought about Trump and I thought about the friends I had made and I thought about all of the friends I have said goodbye to, unable to say if I would ever meet them again and I thought about that professor in college who inspired my stupid Peace Corps dreams and I thought about all the reasons why I should stay and do what was right and I thought about all the things it would mean for me to do that and I thought about all the reasons why I should go and I thought about all the things I would feel if I did that and I remembered the moment I was looking on the Peace Corps website at the list of countries who were taking TEFL volunteers and I remembered choosing Kosovo and I remembered riding my bike through the excruciating heat of mid-day summer in Hanoi to get my documents mailed in time and I remembered the agony of waiting, of people asking about my application and having no answer, and the ecstasy when I read my invitation while sitting in a cabana on a beach in Thailand with Zach and I remembered the first night of my stay in Georgia when I was bewildered and freezing and I remembered the feeling that my life was moving forward somehow and I remembered leaving Chile and thinking I'd never teach or travel abroad again and I remembered the panic attack I'd had walking down the street of New York with my mom a few days before I flew to Prishtina and I hated myself more strongly, more acutely and more venomously than I had ever hated anyone or anything before in my entire life.

And then I slept and I tried to forget.

I did try.

Hollókő

My journey to Hollókő, or: the day Emily came face to face with just how little Hungarian she knows.

Hollókő is small, and not easy to get to. For those attempting to use public transportation, it can be done (I did it!). But you must get to the VolanBusz station by 8, because this is the only bus that will take you there. There is a complicated train route, but it involves a bus/train/taxi combination, while this is a much easier direct route. There is also only one bus back to Budapest (the website alleges that there are twoat 15:00 and one leaving at 16:00... FALSE). It leaves at 16:00. This becomes a factor when what starts out as a seemingly gorgeous day suddenly turns into a biblical storm, but you have gone inside all of the shops and random museums Hollókő has to offer and you realize you still have an hour more than you realized to kill. My recommendation: while walking into the village you pass a big cafe (free public bathrooms in the back, FYI) that makes very nice lattes and which may have the only English-speaking residents of Hollókő working inside. It also has wi-fi. Just saying.

Okay, so anyway! According to a 2001 census, Hollókő (which means "raven stone", I believe, in Hungarian), is considered an ethnographic village and has preserved the layout and many of the buildings from its original incarnation in the 13th century (although obviously many have had to be rebuilt or restored along the way). It has about 390 residents. ITWhich is obvious once your rickety old bus rolls up on this village (not town, VILLAGE). It's tiny. But there is enough to do to justify the 2.5 hour bus ride both ways, there is a fantastic old castle up on the hill above the village, complete with creepy mannequins dressed in medieval garb and great views of the rolling Cserhát Mountains, there's a nice walking path/forest area behind the village which I recommend exploring because even though the bus drops most of the days' tourists off at 10:30 in the morning, none of the shops are really open yet, and there is the village itself, which has  interesting shops, traditional restaurants, some very terrifying and some very banal museums. I hit up two museums, the castle, took a walk, entered most of the shops, ate some lángos, bought some postcards and some souvenirs for the fam, had a coffee, wandered up away from the oldest part of the village to take a look at the cemetery, and still had time to stand around waiting for the bus back. 5.5 hours is plenty of time.

Take note of how the sky looks here at the beginning of the day, when I'd just gotten off the bus and am wandering around, and then later, when I've returned from my walk up to the castle.

Beautiful morning (except for that stupid car and the stupid construction guys working on the stupid roads! Stupid public works!) but no shops were open, so I found a road behind the village and decided to try my luck.

This was, at one time, a picnic area. It seems.

Clouds in the distance? They won't trouble me, surely!

Idyllic.

Ahoy! A castle. I tried for a little while to climb up this hill and approach the castle that way before I realized I was, like, deep in tick territory and decided to just go around and use the stairs/trail up to the castle like everyone else.

Sighted!

Fun fact; műemlék means monument. I learned that because after seeing about two dozen times every I went in Budapest I finally thought to look up the word in my English-Hungarian dictionary. Handy!

Beautiful rolling hills. Is that a dark cloud rolling by? It'll pass. Surely.

Some history on the műemlék.

Oh... okay. This room was walled off by a SERIOUS wooden and metal gate, even though (and I cannot be sure of this) I have a strong suspicion that these clothes are not ACTUALLY from the era of this castle but are instead merely reproductions. Again, I cannot be sure, it's just something about the felt-like appearance of the head coverings that leads me to posit this.

Gah, alright Hollókő castle! Enough with the creepy medieval dummies everywhere!!

The chapel.

Castle selfie? Also, I lost one of these earrings at some point during the day. I got them during my travels in Chile, they are the copihue flower (Chile's national flower), and I am STILL a little upset about losing one. I loved those earrings. Rabble rabble.

King of the castle.

Um, was that thunder? No. No. Just... a very big truck. Out here. In the forest.

Climbing back down in the village... okay, no. That was definitely thunder.

Cool broom collection, bro!

Uhhh...

Baszd.

Okay, fine, I'll hide out in this creepy baby doll museum for a little bit (student admission costs about $1) and hopefully the storm will pass...

Oh. My. God.

What have I done.

(Clearly a female doll with a mustache pasted on.) 

My name is Talky Tina and I don't think I like you. 

My name is Talky Tina and I think I could even hate you.

My name is Talky Tina... and you'll be sorry!

My name is Talky Tina and I'm beginning to hate you.

My name is Talky Tina and I'm going to kill you.

  

Come play with us....

 

For ever and ever and ever...

What exactly is happening here? Doll face lift gone wrong? Burn victim? Elastigirl? What's wrong with your hands?!  What's wrong with your face??

This was my hell. Fucking dolls. Shudder. By the time I finished this ordeal it was still raining so I went into a few other shops and then visited the Posta museum. Honestly, unless you've got a raging, uncontrollable love for the history of postal services that place was not worth the very, very cheap admission. It's just one room with like, an old Posta uniform, some posters, a printout information packet (all of the plaques are in Hungarian) and some photos of letters/postage stamps. You'd be better off just reading the Wiki page on it.

After the trauma of the Baba museum and the boredom of the Posta museum the storm had passed, so I walked around and checked out a few more of the old houses and shops within (all the Hungarikum crafts you could want you can find here!). There's a nice market in the entrance to the village as well, with some different candy/food options and some toys for kids, if that's what you're looking for.

Tiny, tiny chapel.

I ended by walking up to the cemetery (it was closed, but there was this interesting alter set up at what seemed to be just a normal house across the street) and then got some coffee, and that was that! All in all, an enjoyable if slightly nightmare-inducing day.