The Quarter in Summary.

The following is the document I submitted to the foundation. Peruse as you will.


Dear Foundation Members, Fellows, Colleagues, and Parties Yet Unknown:

I knew quite well going into this endeavor that mine was a fairly ambitious project. It began as thirteen countries, twenty-four cities. On a very brief sidenote, when the members of the foundation informed me that I could not enter Russian soil, save Kaliningrad, I was initially irritated. Russian hockey is some of the best hockey on the planet, and I frankly hadn't the faintest what to do with the month I'd allocated for Moscow and Petersburg. I've since decided this was serendipitous; I'm replacing Russia with Moldova, Croatia, Slovenia, and Bosnia, which brings my country total from thirteen to seventeen, with the city total approaching forty. Hockey presence is minimal in the southernmost of these countries, but the places where there's the least hockey have yielded the most results and the most welcoming teammates. For example, I decided to start in Prague, the capital of a country that holds hockey high as its national game. Though I spent three weeks in Prague, I didn't get anything in but practice skates. I talked to coaches and players alike, and they weren't even willing to see how I skated. The ones who spoke English well enough to tell me "why" told me that the rosters were already set, and they didn't want to disrupt team chemistry. With important games on the line, I suppose that's understandable; I just wanted a chance. Brno was too small to have much of a pronounced hockey scene, though I public skated there with fair frequency. I found my first luck in Bratislava, where I met a group of guys who played once or twice a week. They played full contact, and there I saw an advantage. One of the first things I noticed about Czech and Slovakian hockey was that they trained their players much more in the departments of skating and passing than in hitting. This was to my advantage. I'll be the first to confess that I'm about average as hockey players go, but I'm good at skating, passing, and hitting. Even though these gentlemen could stickhandle through autobahn traffic, I could keep up with them in the passing and skating departments. I had a decided edge in the hitting skill subset, however. The first time I racked someone from the other team over my hip and saw him flip on his back in front of me, I thought to myself "okay, I can do this." My stint in Bratislava wasn't entirely injury-free, though good things came from both of my major injuries. Both of the times I got hit in the face were a result of the simple fact that my helmet repair kit...didn't, so my unguarded face was plenty exposed to the puck that hit it in game one and the stick that hit it in game two. Badges of honor, I tell you. Incidentally, when I got a puck to the face, I passed it off for a goal, and when I got a stick to the nose, even though I'd quelled the initial fountain of blood, my teammates were saying "are you okay? you should go change clothes." Being the stubborn hokejist I am, as soon as my alternate center came off the ice, to my teammates' surprise, I hopped on, and wouldn't you know it, I scored a gorgeous goal. Kosice was rather more of a wash for hockey, in a way similar to Brno. It was just too small to accommodate much hockey enthusiasm. Professionals, very small children, and figure skaters dominated the ice time, so opportunities for pick-up games were minimal. When I was in Slovakia's largest gothic cathedral, however, I saw a poster for a floor hockey league. I was excited until I found, upon further research, that it was a devout Catholic ball hockey league. Though I was already excluded on both counts, the tournament didn't start until a solid two weeks after I left Kosice. Before departure from Kosice, however, I made sure to pick up a pair of inline skates to improve my chances of playing. It paid off.

In the month since, my heart, soul and skates have been stitched to Krakow, Poland. Krakow has been by far my most productive location in all possible respects. I played over ten times in my four weeks in Krakow, and the range of talent and surface was amazing. I played with an intriguing mix of extreme amateurs and former professionals on a small rink which was less a rink and more a barn with an air conditioning system. Conversely, in the same complex of ice rinks, I played on the super-nice regulation-sized surface with a fairly solid bunch of showboats who knew how to score, but couldn't and wouldn't pass to save their own lives. It's so rare to meet players who are extremely talented and know how to fit on a team--it frankly amazed me to find this dearth of team-oriented talent to be a fact which retains consistency across the Atlantic Ocean. I made lots of friends in the locker room, from Mace, the economics student with a passion for American politics, to Marcin, a fortysomething pack-a-day smoking physical therapist who made a tidy living; in addition to his private practice, he is the lead violinist in one of Poland's most famous and innovative folk bands. He wanted to know if Chicago was close to Arkansas, since he might be going to Chicago in a couple of years to play for the Polish community there. In addition, I relived a lot of my original hockey days. I played on broken asphalt with people younger than me (high schoolers) until it was simply too dark to see the ball anymore. As though my ego weren't inflated enough, they were calling me "Gretzky" by the end of my first game with them, and they weren't even being sarcastic. Roller hockey is dangerous, since it tricks me into thinking that I rock really really hard at hockey in general. The roller hockey experiences brought back memories, as my blog will mention in more detail. Furthermore, I learned the majority of the Polish swear words I know on those nights. But one uniting factor gives me solace even after the most brutal of hockey games: the ceremonial post-game beer in the shower.

From a practical standpoint, what's been interesting for me is the almost inverse correlation between how popular hockey is in a given place and how often I get to play there. Prague is unquestionably one of the world capitals of ice hockey. The game there is smooth, clean, and lightning fast. Kosice, though smaller than Bratislava, boasts the new U.S. Steel Kosice arena, one of the largest in the country, and as such hosts a lot of elite-level tournaments. The teams in Prague and Kosice were amazing, but, as mentioned, my negotiations with anyone and everyone were fruitless. For counterexample, other than HK Slovan, the Slovakian elite league champions, Bratislava has little hockey to its credit. Its youth teams are mediocre and its recreational teams are nigh-nonexistent. I found the only one in Bratislava, to the best of my knowledge. The team was reasonably welcoming, though they had a limited number of spots on any given week and I generally only got to play in the event of a cancellation. In furtherance, Krakow had the smallest scene I've encountered yet, but I found the warmest reception and the best, most frequent games there. Now I'm in Warszawa, which hasn't yielded much yet. I have some emails floating out in cyberspace, this time written in broken but understandable Polish, which I find an improvement over the hope that I bore the recipients of my emails in Krakow: namely that they would understand more English than I did Polish.

Speaking of Slavic languages, they're improving, by and large. My Czech was never good to begin with, my Slovak is functional, though not conversational, and my Polish is approaching decent, to my delight. I spent quality time with my phrasebook to memorize the art and literature vocabulary, and I use that to talk culture with Poles, some of whom have turned me on to some very good artists/bands. I turn you to Tadeusz Kantor in the art realm and Zion Train in the music realm, in particular. Recently I've started insisting that my hostel staffs speak to me in Polish, and only switch to English if I just don't "get it." I try my best to respond in kind, and it provides a self-crafted immersive atmosphere that enables me to pick up the language much more quickly. Moreover, I suppose the trip so far has been more pan-European that I might have initially imagined. Staying in hostels puts me in regular contact with Slavic natives, but also with people from all over Western Europe. We discuss literature and music, swap anecdotes. At the end of the day, we trade lists of authors, bands and artists (along with contact information). In other words, I'm getting a broader cultural education than I could have hoped for, and while it's perhaps unfortunate that English is something of a modern Esperanto, it's certainly been to my benefit when talking with Western Europeans. I haven't the faintest idea what I've going to do in the Baltics, honestly. Phrasebooks are well and good, but I hate spouting a language without knowing what does what, grammatically speaking. I see myself gesticulating wildly and then feeling very proud of myself when I finally manage to buy grapes in Estonia.

When I'm not playing hockey, I'm exploring the city, either with or without objectives. It frankly doesn't matter. In every case so far, my first full day in a given place has involved an abortive quest for any and all hockey rinks. I often pass quite close to my quarry, but this "no backtracking" policy I've acquired has proven both bane and boon. The bane is that I haven't gone for an excursion on my first day in a city and walked fewer than ten kilometers. But the boon also resides in these deathmarches into the dirt. I see lots of things I wouldn't otherwise. If there's one thing I've learned (and I promise you, I've learned more than one thing), it's this: though my project is hockey-centric, if I focus too much, I miss the entire point. Hockey happens, as does linguistic and cultural interaction. The challenge is filling the interstices. I realized this in Bratislava, where I'll admit that I spent a couple of days trying to figure out what in the hell to do with myself. Bratislava is not the most happening town in the western world, so between going from the largest to the very tiniest art galleries and buying Ulysses to fill out the hours, I just felt like I was marking time between games. It turned out that I was. I've learned since then that the best and most productive way to fill time involves meeting locals, even if only in a service capacity. As a non sequitur, though, Ulysses is the perfect book for my Watson year; a curious little man sets out on a long, strange journey and returns home by an extremely circuitous route. Here endeth the lesson.

I've also learned that I HATE travel days. I'm tempted to join PETA on a new angle and tell them that the iditarod is cruel, because if hauling things through cold weather sucks this much for me, then it must be much worse for dogs. Between being stuck in tiny castle towns, walking miles to find the Hidden Hostel, and walking miles more to find the rink in question, there simply must be a better way. The easiest way is ascetic Buddhism, where I renounce material possessions and just move on. It's a damn shame that you can't play hockey without material possessions. This is all exaggeration, though. Changing cities is simply the least pleasant of the routines I've carved for myself on this odyssey, and only forays to and from the train station are especially awful. Being able to graft structure onto this quasi-nomadic life has often proved my saving grace. From the checklists in my journal (and yes, I grade myself at the end of the day) to filling in my day's journey on my map with a pen, small rituals of organization help me get things done on the chaotic days, and give me the perseverance to fill in the gaps between chaotic days with more than just scrabble, drink, and idle distraction. As it currently stands, my life's structure is extant and reliable, but extremely adaptable, and I love it.

My experiences so far have touched the extremes of sublime and scary, and every point between, though with a reliably Slavic penchant for the bizarre. I've learned substantial amounts about the power of both language and sport, including the consoling power of language. When inundated for hours with the language of the day, sometimes nothing feels better than a relaxed conversation with an Anglophone or a few pages of Joyce. It's a beer in the shower for my brain. On the whole, it's been an amazing three months, and I never cease to be adequately...whelmed. I anticipate more more adventures and look forward to keeping you all in the loop. In the meantime, I'd once again like to express my gratitude to the foundation for its generosity, and leave all involved parties with my best assurance that their investment in me is a sound one.

With fondest wishes and body checks from the frozen north,

Joshua Brandon Harris

30.X.2007

P.S. More detailed anecdones can be found on http://bladesandrails.blogspot.com, while photos can be found at the following locations:
http://sewanee.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2016785&id=44700686&op=6
http://sewanee.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2016786&id=44700686&op=6
http://sewanee.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2016787&id=44700686&op=6
http://sewanee.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2016788&id=44700686&op=6
http://sewanee.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2016789&id=44700686
http://sewanee.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2016840&id=44700686
http://sewanee.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2016841&id=44700686
http://sewanee.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2017369&id=44700686
http://sewanee.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2017371&id=44700686