City Living

City living has it's pros and cons. You have great a public transportation system (well, at least in European cities), things are open late, you can get everywhere without a car, and you can find plenty of things to get involved in. And then there are the cons: People. Lots of them. The metros, trams, and buses are crowded. The trams and buses get stuck in traffic, so you may as well be driving. At least then you would have your own personal space...and you'd be sitting down...and there wouldn't be a screaming baby...I digress.

Then there's the even darker side of cities. Don't get me wrong, I know these things happen everywhere, but increasing the population density increases the chances of witnessing them. I'm talking about things like: some guy puking on the tram; some guy puking on the metro; the beginnings of a bar fight out in the street; the end product of a bar fight painting the streets with drops blood; a car to car collision; and, most recently, a car-pedestrian collision. That last one I saw this past week while waiting for my bus to go to work in the morning. It was frightening. Especially since the pedestrian was a little boy. He was okay, though he for sure has a broken leg. The look on the mother's face was the most heart-breaking.

But all-in-all I do like living in a city. Though I don't know if I will choose it long-term. Time will tell. My dear friend can current holder of the title "the person Maggie spends most of her free-time with" hates Prague. He works here, and so occasionally crashes in the city during the week if he has to get to an early meeting the next morning, or a band he likes is playing at some bar, but otherwise he commutes every day to a small village near the city of Plzen.

This small town is where I spend most of my weekends providing nice balance and escape from the city. The village is called Rokycany, and it just recently celebrated 900 years since the first recorded mention of the town. To commemorate, they had this festival over the weekend. My friend had to go to Prague for a bit of work, so I wandered the festival alone for a couple of hours. It consisted of a couple rows of stands where people sell mostly homemade things or food and two stages; a main stage and a side stage. Rokycany has a sister town in Germany, so the side stage was devoted entirely to German acts. Seeing as I am WAY more comfortable with German rather than Czech. I stationed myself by this stage. It was nice to hear people speaking German around me again. Though I discovered later that the beer was 10 crowns more by this stage. I suppose to Germans it's the difference between 1 euro and 1.50 (either way, dirt cheap) but for someone earning Czech wages, that's a big difference. Anyway, while there I saw two acts; a jazz band, which was pretty good, and a singing duo. It was a man and a woman who sang all sorts of songs along with a CD. It was pretty much like a karaoke show, and just as hilarious, especially when they attempted to sing in English, "burnz burnz burnz, ze rink of fire, ze rink of fire." Classic.

Why I dropped off of the face of the planet (or at least the world wide web), and why I'm back.

It's been 9 months. No, I haven't been gestating a baby. But I have been really really busy. So much so that my happiness unfortunately suffered a bit. And then I don't particularly feel like writing or at least anything that can be posted for all to see. By the time it was all sorted out and I had found a new place to live, I had already fallen out of the habit. (And I was still really really busy). Plus, I'll be honest, I don't want to look more exciting on the internet than I am in real life. Sp I've taken the following steps to insure that this year will be better than the last.

1) Quit my 2nd job of teaching adults in the evening.
I only had one class anyway, but I still had to go the whole way to Barrandov at least once a month to turn in my paperwork so I could collect my 1500 cK or so. It just wasn't worth it. (Barrandov is a part of Prague that's really far away.)

2) Got rid of my private lessons.
Two more free nights!

3) Stopped taking Czech lessons.
This may not be the greatest for my Czech skills. But it saves a boat load of time and money.

4) Moved into a new apartment.
Well, I did this twice. But the most recently I found a new place that is cheaper, closer to most of my schools, and more visitor-friendly than the place in which I lived from Feb-June.

I don't have any special reason for returning to the blogosphere except that I have a bunch of really cool things I want to write about.

And since I'm soooo cool in person, there's no danger of me looking more exciting online.