Vlad the What?

Traveling alone can be scary sometimes. You're out of your comfort zone and separated from your friends, your family, and (sometimes) your language, which leads to a lot of different challenges and problems than can really freak you out. Yesterday I was scared traveling alone, but it was less along the lines of travel or cultural problems and more along the lines of famous supernatural monsters.

What?

On my way to visit the Fisherman's Bastion and St. Matthias Church in Budapest, Hungary, I walked past a sign that advertised the labyrinth caves of "Dracula's Chambers." I was skeptical (it looked like just another tourist trap), but I've always loved Dracula and gothic literature so I decided I had to check it out, heading down into a cellar. And down. And down some more.

The sign outside that explains the history of the caves and supposed Dracula ties.

I decided once I got down there to go into the exhibition, partially because it sounded cool and partially because it was actually cool temperature-wise in the underground caves - I needed a break from the sun.

The whole exhibit was delightfully tacky and scary at the same time. It featured wax sculptures dressed in old theater costumes and posed to depict scenes from an opera with the music of said opera playing through the caves. Other areas, featuring examples of stonework carved in Budapest, had unsettling chants playing in the background.

The Dracula part of the exhibition played up Dracula's, or Vlad the Impaler's, ties to Budapest. Dracula was sentenced to 10 years of prison down in the labyrinth, during which time his wife comitted suicide when his castle was taken over. His grief and anger over these events are what caused him to kill many people in a variety of bloody ways when he got out of prison.

Some fine examples of creepy wax statuary.

Now I know this is all sounds very cheesy and goofy, but it was actually pretty nerve-wracking to walk through alone. There was only one person working at the entrance, and I only saw five other people total (not counting the wax ones, of course) while I was down in the caves. The cave ceilings were low with limited light to show the way. When I got to the Dracula portion, an optional dead-end leg of cave that you walked down and then back up, I considered skipping it.

I'll go through the occassional haunted house around Halloween and I can sometimes be persuaded to watch horror movies, but I don't really like to be scared and don't go out of my way looking to be so. Walking to Dracula's tomb was fun because it was scary, and I chose to do it myself.

No one else was down there when I was, so it was a long walk through the narrowing tunnel (fully decked out with fog, low lights, and sound effects), past Dracula's tomb to the very end of the cave, a near pitch black room with a huge open cage and eerily minimalistic cross tombstones.

I walked back up feeling proud of myself for going down there, even if it didn't really have much to do with my project.

Until I realized it did.

Okay, maybe not Dracula so much as the stonework. I was looking at more of it on my way out and thought about the immense amount of artistry that had gone into most of the pieces, these stones from Budapest's history. My Magellan Project is officially studying art and politics (it's been morphing into a sort of art/politics/history hybrid now), but in my proposal I mentioned brushstrokes and other painting terms because I want to focus on painting in the arts side of things. Dracula helped me realize that that wasn't what I was doing, and it shouldn't be, really.

Whether it's Dvorak's music, Petofi's poems, or stone carvings in a labyrinth, the art that is relevant to the politics and history of any nation is never made in just one form.

Even though I wanted to focus on paintings, I haven't been, and I'm glad. The art I find alongside what I go to see, sometimes even whole exhibitions themselves like the stones in Dracula's Chambers, are equally as important, and as I look back now I'm realizing how much I've learned from all the different kinds of art I've seen.

Thanks, Dracula.

Lost in Prague (And Other Small Victories)

Traveling alone definitely has ups and downs, and for me some of the worst downs have been getting really lost. At home it's fine to be lost because you can just whip out your phone and use the GPS to figure out where you are, but here I'm limited to WiFi. It has actually been great for me to not be able to use my GPS as a crutch, but also very frustrating at times.

Prague is a huge city, the biggest in the Czech Republic, and I now remember many places as places where I have been lost. Usually I'm functionally lost and can retrace my steps and figure out where I went wrong, but I got really lost a few days ago. The sun was setting, I was not in the best part of town, and I didn't know how to get to the tram stop I was looking for.

I waited at the tram stop I was at for a long time trying to regroup and figure out how to get back. I knew I was in the right district of Prague, just on the wrong line. The further from the city you get, the longer the time between trams, so it felt like I was waiting an eternity. Even though it was getting dark I decided to just walk in the general direction that I thought I should and stop being scared, and I found the right stop in less than five minutes. It seems like such a small thing, but small victories, like finding the right tram stop, are helping me become a more confident traveler.

As I study the art and politics of this city, I'm finding a lot of seemingly small, but actually huge, victories for art in its past. I toured the Municipal House, a huge Art Nouveau-style civics house, and learned that it was almost torn down during the communist era. Apparently the leaders didn't like the building's strong artisitic ideals and the fact that it housed Smetana concert hall/ballroom. The building was very expensive when it was built, however, and the communists soon realized that tearing it down would be equally as expensive. The demolition was put off again and again, and while the building fell into disrepair, it was never taken down and was meticulously restored in the 90s.

Another seemingly small victory for the arts was won by Max Brod, who directly disobeyed a friend's wishes. Brod's friend instructed Brod to burn all of his literary work and sketches upon his death, but Brod instead published them. Because of Brod we have the literary works of the now famous Franz Kafka, a Prague native.

The Lennon Wall is an ongoing example of the victories of art in this cultural and political capital. Czech youth in the 1980s greatly admired what John Lennon had stood for and decided to make a monument to him on a plain whitewashed wall. Every night people would write and draw on the wall: grievances, lyrics, pictures of Lennon, etc., and every day the communist regime would paint over the artistic rebellion. Even though the original graffitti has long since been covered by many new layers of messages, pictures, and lyrics, the initial meaning of the wall is still intact: to promote love, peace, and equality.

The Kampa Museum of Central European Modern Art has undergone a lot of natural disasters, most notably flooding (Kampa has definitely earned its water-logged nickname as "The Venice of Prague"). Despite sustaining damage over the years, the museum is still going strong.

What I'm trying to say with all of these examples is this: art is resilient. As I travel around and learn about all the art in this city, it's becoming clear how some of it is only here by sheer luck or happenstance. Even though lots of art has been lost over the centuries, some always remains. The compiliations of art that we have at our fingertips should be treasured because many of them are the results of small victories. I think that makes them even more beautiful.

The Beatles, Rick Steves, and Terezin

Want to know a good way to annoy workers at Prague Castle? Start playing Beatles music just outside the castle walls!

I was in the museum part of the castle, looking at some ancient fabric fragments, when I heard a rousing Czech version of "I Saw Her Standing There" being performed outside. The museum workers got very agitated and closed all the windows, but the music could still be heard throughout the museum. The band's repertoire also included some Stones, Bob Marley, and what sounded like traditional folk music.

It was fun to hear the cultural mash-up - it was something both so familiar and so different at the same time - and it got me thinking about a passage from Rick Steves' Prague guidebook that I really like:

"Globe-trotting destroys ethnocentricity. It helps you understand and appreciate different cultures. Regrettably, there are forces in our society that want you dumbed down for their convenience. Don't let it happen. Thoughtful travel engages you with the world - more important than ever these days. Travel changes people. It broadens perspectives and teaches new ways to measure quality of life. Many travelers toss aside their hometown blinders. Their prized souvenirs are the strands of different cultures they decide to knit into their own character. The world is a cultural yarn shop."

Oh Rick, what would I do without you?

Cheesy yarn metaphors aside, I think Mr. Steves has some great points here. I'm not even a week into my Magellan and I can already sense changes in myself, and I've seen so many sights/strands of this culture already that I want to "knit" into my character.

I was walking through the Pinkas Synagogue in the Jewish Quarter of Prague today when I saw something that I'll never forget: the art of Jewish children who were deported to Terezin, Czech Republic, during WWII.

The drawings and paintings all have a child's name attached and date from 1942 to 1944, showing glimpses of life in that ghetto: from innocent flowers and trees to people on train transports and in food distribution lines.

The art of these children, many of whom ended up being sent to Auschwitz, is brutal in its honesty. They drew and painted what was everyday life to them and created powerful images in the process. I won't forget these pictures because of how simple and truthful they are. It doesn't always take complicated art to move an audience; simple pencil and paintbrush strokes were all these children had, and what they created is sad but astounding.

Like Rick Steves explained, the best souvenirs aren't always physical objects. The experiences, like hearing loud Czech Beatles covers boom through a quiet museum, and parts of other cultures, like the Terezin children's art, that I'm finding here are surprising and I know I'll always cherish them.

I want to be like the Czech cover band and mix everything I'm experiencing into my own character, one yarn at a time.

First Days in Prague!

My room at Kate's.

I made it to Prague! Even though I was nervous about navigating the airports I travelled through, everything went off well, at least as well as a 15-hour trip can. Especially for my first ever plane ride(s)!

I'm doing a homestay while in Prague, and Kate, the woman I'm staying with, has been very friendly and helpful. She helped me figure out the new tram lines in the city and I can now get back and forth across the many, many cobblestones (almost) like a native.

After some much needed travel-recovery sleep, I decided to explore the Old Town of Prague on my first day. I saw the Jan Hus memorial, the Church of St. Nicolas, and Prague's famous Astronomical Clock, just to name a few.

Other than seeing the typical tourist sites and aquainting myself with this great city, I also managed to go to some great museums. I went to Prague's Musueum of Decorative Art, an Alfons Mucha exhibit (a famous Czech artist), and the National Gallery.

While I made my way through the Gallery, I made a friend there named Marek, a roughly 80-year-old museum caretaker. Marek didn't speak English, but even though I couldn't talk to him I could tell he has a lot of fun at his job. The Gallery was pretty empty when I was there, so maybe he was just bored, but he liked to turn the lights off on unsuspecting musueum goers, along with other goofy tricks. He saw someone sketching a statue and motioned for them to draw it from the back, in order to capture the piece's finer assets, of course. Marek also saw me in a room of statues and decided to imitate each one's facial expressions for my benefit. All of Marek's exploits were accompanied by his wheezy laugh. It was so great to see someone who knew the art they were around so well and really have fun with it.

I'm loving Prague so far and I can't wait to see more of it!