Friday, July 13, 2007

Prepositions and Propositions

Yesterday, I was wondering around the city and I got kind of lost. I knew where I was going, but I thought that there was a faster way and I tried to take a shortcut. Unfortunately, I don’t know the city as well as I thought, and it wasn’t very long and I was very lost in Old Town. Luckily, I know enough to ask “Kde je Narodni Divadlo?” (Where is National Theater) and I asked multiple people where it was. However, I had no idea what they answered. I didn’t know enough Czech to understand their response, so I ended up just getting more and more lost.
I started noticing something interesting, however, and I was really excited to see that all the stores were using the preposition “u”, which means at, around, by, etc. When you use u, the following nouns and adjectives have to change to the genitive case (which is a complicated case within the Czech language, but kind of exciting for loser linguists like me). So, I was just wondering around, saying things like “oh, u Staromestke Kavy comes from Staromestka kava”. Well, that is a bad example, because I don’t think I ever found an Old-Town cup of coffee, but I think you get the point. So, I would alternate between exclaiming in joy when I saw another prepositional phrase and asking randoms on the street where Narodni Divadlo is. I finally found two Slovak men who had decent English, who were also lost, and we continued searching for Karluv Moct. I asked this older women if she knew where Charles’ Bridge was, and she told me to follow her and I did. Well, she brought me to a random door and said “joint” and obviously, I responded “ne”. She then made hand motions towards my crotch and obviously was implying that she would have sex with me. So, that is how my happy day full of prepositions changed into an encounter with a prostitute.
The guys and I finally found Karluv Moct, and they wanted to go to a club, but it was too expensive. I tried to convince them to go with me to Friends, but right before I got to Tingl Tangl, they left me, so I walked home alone.

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