How to Fall in Love with a Place

The river split the city in two while ornate bridges worked like stitches connecting one half to the other. The spired Parliament building led the façade that eventually spread out into the tapestry of short, grey buildings that were Pest. Behind us on the Buda side, the red clay roofed houses suggested a fairy tale town that was more show than substance. I was sitting with Tünde, my Hungarian friend, at the top of Buda Castle, getting a run down on why Pest is infinitely cooler than Buda.

I tried to carefully observe all the miniscule structures that created the labyrinth that is Pest, the mix of architectures, the flowing river that reminded me of the Spree, the Seine, the Río Grande de Loiza— all while sitting on a Castle-Cathedral that was a distant cousin of the one I’d visited a few days earlier in Prague. That day my friend Nick had noted with frustration how impossible it is to see every beautiful thing, every detail, take in every element that together creates the whole that is immediately, but vaguely, beautiful.

Drinking and Travel

Most nights started with a box of wine. They cost the equivalent of 50 cents down at the potraviny—the Czech version of a New York deli—and were the perfect pregame agents. My flatmates would cut a corner off the top and insert a straw, drinking it like a box of juice while they applied make up, swapped shoes, and tried on new dresses and shirts. When they eventually got to the club they would have a shot or six of becherovka or vodka, followed by several large pints of excellent beer. And this was their routine every night for four months.

Nothern Bohemia: Part Two

Kladno

After searching Google using phrases like “coats shoes hanging from the ceiling” “mining town performance art czech republic” my efforts at finding exactly what it was Otto took us to in the Central Bohemian town of Kladno proved fruitless. I searched Kladno in the New York Times online which turned up stories from 1939 with headlines like “German policeman slain near Prague; Nazis punish area” and lots of news about the Kladno soccer team. I visited Kladno’s official website but they’re not exactly flouting the abandoned mining facility just outside town that gets taken over by experimental Eastern European performance artists once a year.

So for now I really only have a story and some cool pictures for you, which is really all I ever have for you.

Northern Bohemia: Part One

Mosquito Mountain

Northern Bohemia is a region north of Prague where fourteen NYU film students spent 48 hours they would have otherwise spent in clubs and bars. But when our professor Otto Urban—a Czech art historian and curator who is as cool as his name—told us he was taking us to Northern Bohemia, it didn’t set up much in terms of expectations. When we pressed him for details he said things like mosquito mountain, bone chapel, mining town performance art piece… In other words, we really just had to trust his judgment on this.