Monday, September 06, 2004

What do I have to do to find a hedge maze?

Most of my weekend went as planned. I visited a 5 story dance club Friday night. My favorite floor was oldies (Where else can you rock to Deep Purple, hear "U Can't Touch This", and sing along to "In the Jungle") And on Sunday, I toured the beautiful Prague Castle, and found a mall/supermarket to stock up for the semester. Saturday's plan was to go on a picnic to Petrin Park. It has gardens, a maze, and a huge tower resembling the Eiffel Tower which provides a spectacular view of Prague. But this plan was dashed by a simple message on the whiteboard in our residence hall "Martina has flu"

First question you should ask is Who is Martina? Martina is an RA in the Machova residence hall (my home in Prague). Martina is also the focus of many crushes due in her large part to her being Czech and having adorable mannerisms. So as you would expect there was a great deal of anticipation for the trip.
Second question is of course shouldn't it be "Martina has the flu"? Yes, it should. Many Slavic languages, Czech among them, lack articles. As such many native speakers often struggle with them and either leave them out or overuse them.

After friday night's debauchery, my suite had a collective late start and a delicous brunch around 1pm. Afterwards, we gathered some other friends and decided to take the tram across the river and explore "Lesser Town" [I wish New York had such literal names for the Boros, I think Staten Island should be Lesser Island] Well wouldn't you know, that the first thing we find on the other side of the river is a huge hill. We start to climb and discover that we have happened upon the very park we had planned to go to. So we opted not to take the tram up the mountain, but instead to walk. It really paid off, we saw some beautiful gardens and nature trails and were able to preserve a spirit of adventure and discovery that would have been robbed from us by something as direct and mechanical as a tram. We were a bit tired by the time we reached the summit but the view from Petrin tower was well worth it.

I wish the maze had been as exciting. Martina had told me about it last week and mentioned that there were mirrors to both confuse you and to distort your image. But it turns out that it was merely a lame path of mirrors that I don't consider a maze because there was only one path to follow. The distorted mirrors were fun, but nothing new. I had my hopes set far too high, I was hoping for a real hedge maze with sculpted topiary and all. And is it too much to ask, to get a minotaur in the center? I'm willing to settle for a statue.

Anyway thats enough for now, and a decent summary of the weekend. Stay tuned for info on classes coming soon.
Hope everyone has a nice Labor Day, we don't have that here in Prague.


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