The Decision to Flee Came Suddenly

Or maybe not. Maybe I had planned it all along…

It all started on Wednesday, March 18th. I came home from class to find my roommate looking worried. “Ian’s in jail,” he said. Ian was his good friend. The Friday before, Ian had mentioned getting a letter from the foreign police. He said that he had talked to the woman that is in charge of the visa stuff for our company (Ian and I worked at the same language school), and she had told him not to worry, and that they would go on Wednesday morning to get it sorted out. Now, it was Wednesday, and, apparently, it hadn’t been sorted, because Ian was sitting in a jail cell.

After being held for 12 hours without food or water, they released him – but not before giving him 14 days to leave the Schengen zone (continental Europe) and putting a stamp in his passport expelling him for a year therefrom. Turns out, Ian’s offense was overstaying his 90 day tourist visa. They knew this because he had applied for a work visa.

Upon hearing this, I immediately thought, “Uh oh… This applies to me… I may be leaving sooner than I had anticipated…”

A quick word about the visa process for Americans here:

It’s very complicated…

Americans generally come to Europe on 90 day tourist visas. If you intend to study or work, you need a student or work visa. When I came here, I intended to both study and work. If someone had asked me about this at customs, I would have had to lie: “No, I’m just a tourist.” Otherwise, they wouldn’t let me in without the appropriate visa. Technically, this whole adventure has been illegal.

In order to get the work visa, you need an employer to sponsor you. You also need to have housing lined up. The above-board process is to get a job and housing while outside the country, apply for a visa, wait about 3 months, get the visa, come here, and start working. No one does this. It’s impossible. Instead, people come here, find a job and housing, and then apply for their visas – from outside the country. I went to Germany. This makes it look like you’re not actually living and working in the country in which you are illegally living and working. This trick has always worked, and has always been overlooked by the authorities – until, apparently, about a month and a half ago.

When I started working for my company, I immediately got in touch with the woman who handles visas for them. I gave her all my visa paperwork about a month before my tourist visa was set to expire. I told her that I didn’t want to be illegal, and I wanted to apply before I was. She said she couldn’t do the application in time, and that it didn’t matter if I was over my tourist visa. No one had ever been denied a visa coming from our company. Ever.

Back to the story… The night Ian was let out of jail, I heard from someone else who had been waiting for a visa. He had been denied – along with 25 other people from our company. Some people were denied because they had overstayed their tourist visas. Others were denied for seemingly no reason at all.

Trying to gather as much information as I could, I found out that, because of the financial crisis, starting in March, the EU began cracking down on illegals. They’re going after people who come from the east (Ukraine, Russia, Mongolia, Thailand, etc), work here illegally, and then send the money they make back to their home country – taking it out of the local economy. Because of this, the authorities have become very strict about who they issue visas to, and have started looking very carefully at visa applications. I think the woman who was doing all our visas was very loosey-goosey about the applications. Because they had been so relaxed in the past, she would let things slip. But now, because of the crackdown, everything must be done exactly by the book, and all her applications are being scrutinized. She doesn’t work there anymore.

Well, well, well… Well, what about my visa? The people who had been denied had all applied before me. I still needed to wait to hear. So, I waited, anticipating bad news. I finally heard about two weeks ago. One of the women from my company went to the foreign police office to inquire about the status of my visa on my behalf. After pulling some strings, she was able to talk to someone very high up, who told her that I had been denied. And that I would probably be getting a letter in the mail – one that says to come on down to the foreign police office for a little chat.

As great a story as it would be to get arrested, interrogated, and expelled from the country, I think I’d prefer to take my chances with voluntary escape. Hopefully I won’t have any problems at the airport…

This post certainly makes the whole thing sound more dramatic than it actually is. For the most part, I’m actually fine with the situation. The two bad things about it:

1. Prague was just warming up and getting beautiful (and overrun with tourists…). Luckily I got to experience some of this before going.

2. Despite my leaving before they get a chance to interrogate me, the Czech foreign police may still decide to expel me from the Schengen zone for a year or so. This would screw up any trips I would plan to take to… well… Europe. And, if I decide to go to Spain in the fall, I might have trouble getting a visa/entering the country. Not much I can do about this though… I know they’ll expel me for sure if I go talk to them… Seems safer to just leave before they have the opportunity…

So… that’s that. My flight’s tomorrow. Nashledanou, Praha…

See y’all soon.

Obama! Here?!

Today, Obama came to Prague. There were a bunch of people there. He talked about nuclear non-proliferation. Here are some pictures:

No More Plays, Please

Ugh… On Wednesday, we went to see another play. This one was Shakespeare – Anthony and Cleopatra – a Charles University production. Big mistake… I cannot emphasize enough how bad the plays are here. I blame Jamie. It was his idea to go. His defense is that he saw “a professional looking poster” in a book shop. I don’t buy it. He should have known better.

Before the play started, we joked that it might be in Czech (but we decided that would be unlikely). We also joked that they might speak with Czech accents. Be careful what you joke about… The first line of the play was incomprehensible. Is this Czech? No… wait… its English… with a (you guessed it) thick Czech accent. Crap… Within minutes, Ruth had literally run out of the theater, unable to suffer through another second of it. People performing Shakespeare with Czech accents suck. It also didn’t help that virtually the entire ensemble could not act – not to save their lives. Horrifying… Many of them seemed to be confused about the meaning of the lines they were speaking – not sure where to put the inflection, and clueless about how they should feel about them. Which word should I emphasize? I’ll go with “the”. That sounds about right. How does my character feel about this line? How about happy? Sure. When should I smile? I guess now’s as good a time as any…

And the hairdos – oh, the hairdos… Were mullets popular in Roman times? And the blocking – oh, the blocking… It never looks good when the actors bump into one another. Why did you decide to stand there? You have no lines. Get out of the way. It’s bad enough that everyone is struggling desperately to remember what they’re supposed to say next. We don’t need you distracting them by idling in the middle of the scene.

We bolted at the act break – ran from the theater and didn’t look back.

Kafka

You know, Kafka lived here in Prague.

Sometimes I feel like this:


Prague's Franz Kafka International Named World's Most Alienating Airport

Gotta love The Onion...

No Jews Here

So, the other day, I went to the old Jewish Quarter (which is, like, down the street from my apartment). There are a bunch of beautiful old synagogues there. Each one has been converted into a museum. Some of the museums are focused on the history of the Jews in Prague and (what is now) The Czech Republic. Others detail what medieval Jewish life was like. Still others talk about the Holocaust and, specifically, the concentration camp Terezin (which is nearby). Most strangely, a couple talk about Judaism in general - what it was, how it was practiced, what the rituals were, etc... Everything is written in the past tense. It's very surreal.


Up until the war, Prague (and the Czech Republic) supported one of the most thriving and storied Jewish communities in Europe. Now, there are no Jews here. In the entire country there are (something like) a few thousand, and their average age is (something like) 75. The synagogues are now mausoleums to a people that have vanished from the country. As far as the museums are concerned, Jews may very well no longer exist. It's weird reading about yourself in the past tense.




Side note: Now that spring is slowly approaching (very slowly...) there are tourists all over Prague. Most of them seem to be Italian. I hear more Italian than Czech these days. Many of the Italians are student groups - from high school, I think. They must be on (the equivalent of) senior trip. They're everywhere. You can't walk ten steps without getting swept up in another tour filled with (largely disinterested) Italian kids. Oh, there are also French groups, and Spanish groups (haven't seen any Germans yet...). Western Europe must be conspiring to send all their youth to Prague for some reason. Maybe so that they develop a better appreciation of their own cuisine... and learn a little something about these "Jews" they keep hearing about while they're at it...

Gypsy Girls Fighting

I apologize for this. Normally, I wouldn't do this. But, one of my student sent me this video (he sends me all sorts of stuff). I feel like I have to post it. The subject line, in his email, was "gypsy girls fighting". Here it is.


Sorry for that... I'm not sure they're actually "gypsies".

Gold Class

So, last night, Ruth and I decide to go see the movie “Duel: Frost/Nixon” (yes, they added the word “duel” to the title – I have no idea why). At this point, it’s only playing at one cinema in Prague – at one time. We go to the cinema, and ask for tickets. Now, its worth mentioning that I noticed, on the board of “now-playing” movies, that there was a “GC” next to the time for our movie, and only our movie. At the time I didn’t think anything of it. Oops.

We order tickets. They end up costing the equivalent of $16. For a movie ticket?! That’s crazy. Usually, a ticket costs half that amount! The guy at the counter tells us the movie is expensive because its “gold class”. We have no idea what this means, but we figure we’ve come this far, we might as well just watch the damn thing. He asks us where we want to sit, and shows us a screen with a theater layout. The theater has three columns of seat pairs that are each four rows deep. That’s 24 seats. Small theater, right? That’s what I think. We select two seats on the right side of the theater. After handing us our tickets, the ticket guy tells us not to buy food at the concession stand, but rather to buy it “upstairs”. Ok…

Our theater is not listed on the regular directory. Instead, a separate sign points the way. “Gold Class: This Way” We go up a separate escalator and wind up in a very upscale bar. The ticket-taker woman rips our tickets, and then hands us a menu. What do you want? Cocktail? Ice-cream? Cake? Sushi? An entire meal? These can be yours. Hang your coat up in the coat-closet, the movie’s about to start.

The woman leads us to our seats in the theater. The theater, by the way, is not small at all. It’s a regular sized theater – only, it has 24 seats. It’s the seats that are large. They’re gigantic recliners. In between each pair of seats is a table. This is where you would put your sushi, had you ordered some. “I wonder if these seats recline…” I feel around for a… there it is – a switch. And, yes, they recline. And, yes, there’s a leg rest that comes up if you recline far enough. This is comfy…

The movie: good, but not earth shattering. The seats: amazing. Was it worth $16? Yes.