A very, very long blog

Whenever I write about sports (which isn't often), there's always the overwhelming temptation to compare the game to a battle or war. And why not? There's strategy and maneuvering, attacks and defenses, and a delicate balance of overwhelming force and stealthy precision. And that's to say nothing of the fans at the games: sweaty men full of piss and vinegar and adrenaline and beer, all of them roaring as one in a voice that echoes the battle scenes in 'Braveheart.'

But it's such a nonsensical comparison when you think about it. A football game is just a game, the outcome of which rarely matters once the players leave the field. The outcome of war, however, is perhaps the thing that matters most to our species as a whole. It ends not only lives, but can also end a way of life, and be a defining time in the history of a nation or of the world.

So why get so excited about something that doesn't really matter? Why pour all that emotion into 162 games only to watch the Phillies choke at the end if their failure has little or no effect on a fan's day-to-day life?

I think it's a granfalloon: an artificial association people make with one another in order to feel united. (Granfalloon is a word Vonnegut made up. I don't think Meriam Webster has recognized it yet, but I keep trying to get it to catch on.) It's easier to be a part of a group that like the same sports team, or listen to the same music, or read Harry Potter books than it is to find someone who has similar philosophies or principles or core beliefs. That's not to say we don't develop meaningful friendships that are originally based on silly common interests. I just think it's interesting that when we are getting to know a person, we try to find out what they like, not what they are like.

But I digress. I haven't even mentioned the game. We followed Jan (our Czech professor) from the tram stop to the football (soccer) stadium, which isn't very much like a stadium I've seen at home. It was small (my guess was that it held about 6,000 people), and there weren't a lot of bells and whistles that American stadiums have: the specialized eateries, the cotton candy vendors, the 'brew pub' area. There was beer and sausage. And chicken wings, if you wanted to hunt around for them. But mostly beer and sausage.

At about half time, it was mostly beer.

I don't really like sports, and I understand football about as well as I understand astrophysics, so I can't give you a play-by-play of what happened, other than to say Jan's team (Bohemia) lost 1-0. What struck me most was the way the fans cheered. At almost every sporting event I've been to in the states, there's a PA system or a big TV screen giving people prompts on what kind of cheer to do. Here, there was none of that, just a collective consciousness of the crowd that knew when to say this or that, when to start singing the fight song, or when to taunt the other team as one. I didn't understand any of what they were saying, but I understood the crowd's ability to communicate within itself. To me, that was more impressive than the entire game.

Onto Pilsen...

To see the Czech Republic from the train window was incredible. The landscape reminded me of Vermont: green hills full of trees and grass rolling by the windows, but it was broken by cities here and there, many with abandoned factories that reminded me of Rust Belt towns straight out of a Springsteen song. The ride took an hour and a half, and when I got off the train I suddenly realized that if Martin didn't meet me in a situation, I would be very screwed. One of the lines from Paul Simon's 'You Can Call Me Al' ran through my head: 'He doesn't speak the language, he holds no currency. He is a foreign man.' For me, at that time, 'foreign' meant 'totally helpless.'

But Martin met me exactly like he said he would, so there was no problem. We went straight to work, going first to a special school for Roma children to interview the director there.

A word about Romas and education: Most Roma kids go to schools for the mentally challenged. Their parents put them there sometimes because they will be around people like them, or sometimes because the work load is easier than it would be at a normal school. But in a school for the mentally challenged, in a country where the majority is white, about 80 percent of the students at the special school were Roma. I won't draw any conclusions from that until later in the project...

The interview with the director went very smoothly, I thought. He was candid and interesting to talk to, though he was speaking to me through Martin. Interviewing via interpreter is a new challenge for me. Martin and I work well together, but I don't know what the source is saying, so it's hard for me to formulate follow-up questions. Also, having to go through an extra step to get information back and forth throws off the rythym of the interview, so it was much more of a formal question-and-answer session than the conversations I'm used to having with sources.

At the end of the interview, I asked the director if he would please write down his name and his official title at the school so that I could be sure to get it right in our story. At that point, he became very wary of me. He would not let us leave until we assured him that he could proofread our article before we published it. I tried to tell him that we would be happy to send him a copy of the article, but that we wouldn't be able to make any changes unless there were factual inaccuracies, but Martin told me that it's legal here in Czech to proof an article that you will be quoted in. I would soon learn that people are usually very hesitant to give their names at all, let alone asking for an advance copy of the article. I wasn't prepared for this, and I don't know what we'll do about it.

After a couple more interviews, Martin and I did some sightseeing. We visted the main cathedral in town, the original part of which was constructed in the 13th Century. We also climbed the steeple, which was about 100 meters high (a little shorter than the Statue of Liberty). The climb wasn't bad, and the view from the top was terrific, but I negleted to tell Martin about my fear of heights until we were on the viewing platform and I was pressed against the wall, as far away from the edge as I could get. The descent was even worse: the stairs were steep, and the wood creaked with each step. Martin just walked down the way you would on any set of stairs, but I clung to the railings, took one step at a time, and had to stop along the way a couple of times just to calm myself down. When I finally reached the bottom, Martin was standing there laughing at me. Apparently I can get in front of 500 people with a guitar no problem, but a flight of stairs makes me sweat. Go figure...

After that little ordeal, we started bar hopping around Pilsen. Because it's the home of Pilsner Urquell, bars have access to the beer in different stages of completion. One bar served it filtered, but not pasteurized. Another served it unfiltered and unpasteurized. The more raw the beer, the cloudier the texture was. And, I thought, the better the taste.

Tuesday saw more interviews and more beer, and a visit from President Bush, which many of Martin's friends weren't too happy about. I was disappointed that I wasn't here in Prague to see the reception the city gave him, but that's just as well. I think it might do me good to not think about \nU.S. politics for a little while. But while we were out Tuesday night, one person came into the bar with a George Bush mask on. When they learned that there was a real live American in the bar, everybody wanted to know what I thought of him. It wasn't exactly the venue to say EVERYTHING I thought about him, so I just told people I didn't vote for him, and that seemed to be the right answer.

Today we woke up early to catch the bus back to Prague so Martin could visit the American embassy to get his visa. I've got class in an hour, so I'm going to grab some lunch beforehand. Hope all is well with you folks. Keep writing comments, I enjoy hearing from all of you. And thanks for sitting through this long blog entry. Hope it kept your interest.

Na zdraví!
S