In addition to updating this more frequently, I am also putting my pictures up more. For those of you who don't know where to find them or didn't know I do that or whatever, you can find my photos at http://davidritch.smugmug.com/Becki-1
In my last entry, I forgot to mention going to see the astronomical clock on it's anniversary. Last year, the clock was 600 years old, so they did this whole huge video projection on the clock which told the history of it and all that fun stuff. Since it was so popular, they decided to redo the video projection again this year. It was mostly the same video as last year, but it was amazing to be able to see it in person. This is the official video from the show last year, what I saw was pretty similar to this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4LVEAiZJyg&feature=related
Since my last entry, two days ago, I haven't done too much. Yesterday, I was planning on visiting Josefov. When I got there, it cost money to get to see most of the stuff that I was interested in, so I ended up just wandering around the city. The interesting thing that I found was an interesting Catholic church. In the church, they had a statue of the baby Jesus and people had made him clothes and different people would send in their outfit for him. It seemed really weird to me, the whole idea of playing dress up with a baby Jesus. But I guess to each their own.
Today, I went to the huge Metronome that's above the above the city. Back in the days of the Communist era, there was a statue of Stalin there, seemingly watching the city. When the statue was torn down, they replaced it with a huge metronome. I don't know the meaning behind the metronome, but it's pretty awesome looking. From there, you can see the whole city of Prague and there's a nice little park area. When I was up there, I was able to relax and spend some time doing readings for my classes and just enjoy the beautiful weather.
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Laundry Day
I know that's it been forever since I actually did an update on this thing, but I'm going to work on getting better about that. Right now, I'm sitting in the laundry mat and I'm going to be here for a few hours, so I might as well write something here. For the past month, I have really been getting used to everyday life in Prague. It no longer seems weird to me that I see a castle whenever I leave my building for classes. Cobblestone everywhere seems like the way everything's always been.
Since my last update, so much has happened. I had two full weeks of Czech intensive. One day, after class, we went to the Cubism Museum, which was pretty cool. During those weeks, most of the time, I would wake up at some late morning time and then go wander the city for a while. It was so cool to see the different parts of the city and get to know the areas near the school. After classes, some of the days, we went to see interesting things around the city. One day after class, we went on a walk to a cafe and on the way, we stopped by the Kafka Museum. We didn't go inside, but we looked at the statues outside, which are done by this very offensive artist who has controversial statues all over Prague. They are so interesting to see his different statues.
One morning, a couple of my friends and I woke up super early to see the sunrise on Charles Bridge. We were so excited to see how amazing it was going to be, but we forgot that Prague doesn't have pretty sunrises yet. It was still too cold and gross out for the sun to be pretty. We waited and all we saw was the sky going from dark to somewhat lighter grays. When we gave up on it being pretty, we went to take the metro to some place to explore, but the metro was not working. Apparently, two of the cars had disconnected while they were driving. I don't know if anyone got hurt or anything, but the whole metro closed, all three lines. It was so weird to see. The nice thing about that was that it forced us to actually figure out how to use the trams in order to get back home to the dorm.
The other big thing that I have done recently is going to the Prague Zoo. According to Forbes Magazine when they ranked the zoos in the world, Prague Zoo was in the top 10 best zoos. It was an amazing zoo with animals that I had never seen before, but I couldn't read what they were because all the signs were just in Czech. There was a part where they had bats that could fly out at people, which freaked some people out a lot. There weren't any signs or anything, so no one knew that the bats could fly out until they were just a few inches away from your face in the dark room.
After Czech class ended, it was time for the normal semester classes to start up. This semester, I'm taking four classes. On Mondays, I have Alternative Culture: Literature, Music, and Lifestyles. This class is pretty awesome, we're learning about the history of the Underground movement in the Czech Republic and how it's political influence helped bring down the communist regime. Most Monday mornings, I have also been going up to this local high school to volunteer. They have us going to the English classes so that the students can get better at their English by talking to a native speaker. On Tuesdays, I have to wake up super early for my class starting at 9:00 am. My days start off with Language, Culture, and Social Cognition. The class is a mixture of anthropology, linguistics, and psychology and there are Czech students and other international students from the United States, Canada, and from all over Europe. From that class, I have a nice long break, so I wander around for a while and get lunch somewhere. In the afternoon, I have Recent Economic Developments, which is a class about the economic developments of the Czech Republic and the transition from communism to the current system. On Wednesdays, I have Utopia East and West: the Sixties to the present, which is kind of an interesting class. Personally, I don't think I really like most of the stuff that we have been reading, but hopefully I'll start liking more of the stuff as the semester goes on. And there's the whole issue that most of the earlier Utopian readings we're doing from the East are basically Soviet propaganda, which I just find annoying. I don't agree with communism, I don't believe it's ever a good idea, and no amount of literature is going to change that. After that class ends, which is around noon, my weekend starts. Every week, I have a four day weekend, so I can spend lots of time exploring the city and traveling.
The one thing that I have started getting involved with is this program called Tandem. It's a language exchange program. I put my name and email address up on this board and have been getting emails from a bunch of local Czech people who want to talk to a native English speaker to improve their English and in return, they help me learn a little more Czech. Most of the time, the people I meet with have been in Prague longer than I have, so they show me interesting places that I wouldn't have probably found on my own during my time here.
I'm sure that there are other things that I should be writing about, but at the moment, this is all I can think about to write. Since it's lent, I'm going to make myself update this at least every other day, at least for the times that I can. When I go away on weekend trips, I'm probably not going to be bringing my computer, so I can't update then. Next weekend, I'm going to be on a trip to Istanbul, which I am super excited about and then I have trips every other week for the next few weeks.
Since my last update, so much has happened. I had two full weeks of Czech intensive. One day, after class, we went to the Cubism Museum, which was pretty cool. During those weeks, most of the time, I would wake up at some late morning time and then go wander the city for a while. It was so cool to see the different parts of the city and get to know the areas near the school. After classes, some of the days, we went to see interesting things around the city. One day after class, we went on a walk to a cafe and on the way, we stopped by the Kafka Museum. We didn't go inside, but we looked at the statues outside, which are done by this very offensive artist who has controversial statues all over Prague. They are so interesting to see his different statues.
One morning, a couple of my friends and I woke up super early to see the sunrise on Charles Bridge. We were so excited to see how amazing it was going to be, but we forgot that Prague doesn't have pretty sunrises yet. It was still too cold and gross out for the sun to be pretty. We waited and all we saw was the sky going from dark to somewhat lighter grays. When we gave up on it being pretty, we went to take the metro to some place to explore, but the metro was not working. Apparently, two of the cars had disconnected while they were driving. I don't know if anyone got hurt or anything, but the whole metro closed, all three lines. It was so weird to see. The nice thing about that was that it forced us to actually figure out how to use the trams in order to get back home to the dorm.
The other big thing that I have done recently is going to the Prague Zoo. According to Forbes Magazine when they ranked the zoos in the world, Prague Zoo was in the top 10 best zoos. It was an amazing zoo with animals that I had never seen before, but I couldn't read what they were because all the signs were just in Czech. There was a part where they had bats that could fly out at people, which freaked some people out a lot. There weren't any signs or anything, so no one knew that the bats could fly out until they were just a few inches away from your face in the dark room.
After Czech class ended, it was time for the normal semester classes to start up. This semester, I'm taking four classes. On Mondays, I have Alternative Culture: Literature, Music, and Lifestyles. This class is pretty awesome, we're learning about the history of the Underground movement in the Czech Republic and how it's political influence helped bring down the communist regime. Most Monday mornings, I have also been going up to this local high school to volunteer. They have us going to the English classes so that the students can get better at their English by talking to a native speaker. On Tuesdays, I have to wake up super early for my class starting at 9:00 am. My days start off with Language, Culture, and Social Cognition. The class is a mixture of anthropology, linguistics, and psychology and there are Czech students and other international students from the United States, Canada, and from all over Europe. From that class, I have a nice long break, so I wander around for a while and get lunch somewhere. In the afternoon, I have Recent Economic Developments, which is a class about the economic developments of the Czech Republic and the transition from communism to the current system. On Wednesdays, I have Utopia East and West: the Sixties to the present, which is kind of an interesting class. Personally, I don't think I really like most of the stuff that we have been reading, but hopefully I'll start liking more of the stuff as the semester goes on. And there's the whole issue that most of the earlier Utopian readings we're doing from the East are basically Soviet propaganda, which I just find annoying. I don't agree with communism, I don't believe it's ever a good idea, and no amount of literature is going to change that. After that class ends, which is around noon, my weekend starts. Every week, I have a four day weekend, so I can spend lots of time exploring the city and traveling.
The one thing that I have started getting involved with is this program called Tandem. It's a language exchange program. I put my name and email address up on this board and have been getting emails from a bunch of local Czech people who want to talk to a native English speaker to improve their English and in return, they help me learn a little more Czech. Most of the time, the people I meet with have been in Prague longer than I have, so they show me interesting places that I wouldn't have probably found on my own during my time here.
I'm sure that there are other things that I should be writing about, but at the moment, this is all I can think about to write. Since it's lent, I'm going to make myself update this at least every other day, at least for the times that I can. When I go away on weekend trips, I'm probably not going to be bringing my computer, so I can't update then. Next weekend, I'm going to be on a trip to Istanbul, which I am super excited about and then I have trips every other week for the next few weeks.
Monday, February 7, 2011
Czech Lessons Day 1
Today was my first lesson in Czech language. Since my class is in the afternoon, today was the first time in a long while that I was actually able to sleep in, which was really nice. I had a nice relaxing morning and made some soup for lunch that I got a little while ago and still wasn't able to read the instructions, but somehow I managed to make it work out in the end. I finally headed out to class around 1:30 and we got there a little early, so a group of us went to go get some water before class, but when we got back the rest of the group had gone. Apparently, they went on a tour of the building that our classroom was in, but I'm not too worried about missing it. Then we headed to class, which was the longest class that I have ever sat through. According to the schedule they gave us, we would be in class from 2:00-6:45, but luckily for us, we end up getting two fifteen minute breaks, so we don't go completely insane. Today we just worked on learning how to pronounce the different letters in the alphabet, which is going to take some getting used to on my part. For the last part of class, we went on a bit of a field trip. We walked from the classroom to the John Lennon wall. On the way there, we crossed over the Charles Bridge, which has some of the most beautiful views of the city that I have seen yet. From there, we walked over this little bridge, just over a stream, that was covered with probably thousands of locks. What we were told is that, couples come to this bridge with a lock. As a symbol of their love, they attach the lock to the bridge and throw the keys into the little stream under the bridge. That way, there will always be a memory of their love in the city. From there, we went to the John Lennon wall. The wall doesn't have John Lennon on it or anything, but for the people of Prague, this wall was a symbol of freedom during the oppression of the Communist rule. At one point, John Lennon was a symbol for the free Western world, outside of the Communist rule, which is kind of ironic to me. The song lyrics and everything that I have always heard John Lennon credited with saying has always sounded pretty Communist to me, but I guess it's still vastly different from the Communism of the Soviet Union. As soon as they could, the local government would paint the wall completely white, but every night new protest graffiti would be painted onto the wall. It was used as an outlet for any form of protest and still is to this day. It was completely covered with all kinds of sayings, in Czech and other languages, and all sorts of images. After that, we went to a little student cafe and just chilled out there for a while. Overall, it was a pretty good day.
Just Back From Moravia
This weekend there was an optional AIFS trip to the Moravian city of Brno, which is basically in Czech wine country. We left on Friday morning, around 10:30 and stopped by a town called Tisnov on our way to the hotel. While we were there, we saw a church with the most amazing archway for an entrance, it's called the "Porta Coeli" or the "Gate to Heaven". When we got there, I saw the first cats I've seen in all of Europe from this trip, but they looked a little wild, so I didn't go play with them. The church was beautiful inside, but yet again, it was a place where they wouldn't allow people to take pictures inside. I guess in this area, it's considered disrespectful to take photos of the inside of a church, which seems so weird to me. From there, we drove to our hotel, which was a really nice hotel that made our dorms look tiny and uncomfortable. A group of us just wandered into the town to get ice cream, because we were craving it for some reason, and just wanted to relax for a little while before meeting for dinner and a wine tasting that evening. When we got to the wine tasting and dinner, first we went down this flight of stairs, into the dining area. The walls were arched over our heads and it felt like we were really in a cellar eating our food. On the table, there were pitchers of red and white wine, bottles of sparkling water, and some appetizers that tasted kind of like a hummus with peppers and some pickles in it. We were all enjoying those things when the meal came out, it was some of the best chicken I've ever had. It was falling off the bone and we were all picking as much of the meat off those bones as we could. While I was eating, I noticed something brush up against my leg and looked down to find a cat running around the table, running against people. It was so cute. After we all finished, we went to the room where they process the grapes for making the wine. While in there, we tried three different kinds of white wine and then two types of red, all of which tasted wonderful. We then headed back to the dining area to finish off the wine from the table and just talk for a while.
The next day, we started off with a trip to Gregor Mendel's Garden and Museum. The museum is right outside of the monastery where Mendel lived and grew those peas, which helped him learn the basics of genetics. It was really cool to see where something that has effected us so much started out. After that, we boarded the bus again and headed to fields near Austerlitz, where Napoleon battled in 1805 in a fight which would later be known as the Battle of Three Emperors. We saw the whole battle field from the spot where Napoleon was standing, so that he could see all that was happening. From there, we went to the Memorial of Peace, which was built to commemorate this battle. The thing that made this memorial so interesting is that, unlike most, it was not for one side or another, it was in memory of all people who lost their lives to this battle. At the sight of the memorial, there is also a really weird museum. We went to it, and it felt like we were being herded from room to room. As we entered each room, the door would close behind us and we would have to stay and watch some repetitive presentation about the war. After each weird presentation, a door would open up, and we would have to move onto the next one. It was a very weird place and I felt like I didn't learn a lot of what they were trying to teach us there. After that, we went on a walking tour of the city of Brno, which is a fascinating city. Everything was so beautiful and each building seemed to have an interesting story to it.
The next day, we woke up and checked out of the hotel to start seeing the sights for the day. The first place we visited was a baroque church nicknamed the "Pearl of Moravia", but it was kind of awkward when we visited. We didn't know that they were going to be in the middle of their mass when we got there, so we walked into the room and just stood silently looking around. We ended up leaving that rather quickly, so we didn't bother people too much and headed to the second church we were going to visit in a town called Adamov. The cool thing about this church was the elaborate wooden alter carved in the 16th century. The alter was divided into three main areas, the bottom, the middle, and the top. On the bottom, there was a scene depicting the apostles gathering to watch the the Virgin Mary ascend to heaven. In the middle, the Virgin Mary is gathering with the angels on her way to heaven. On the top, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are gathered to crown her as a queen of heaven. Along the sides, there are statues of saints and lots of elaborate carvings. From there, we headed to the coolest part of the day, a system of underground caves called the Moravian Karst. In the caves, there is a river that flows and we took a boat ride down that river. It was the most beautiful cave system that I have ever seen and I can't even figure out the words to describe it. For this one, honestly, it'd be better to just look at my pictures of the trip there.
Today, I'm starting my first class in a little over an hour. I'm going to be taking an intensive two week course in Czech language, which I'm hoping will be very useful and that I'll learn a lot.
The next day, we started off with a trip to Gregor Mendel's Garden and Museum. The museum is right outside of the monastery where Mendel lived and grew those peas, which helped him learn the basics of genetics. It was really cool to see where something that has effected us so much started out. After that, we boarded the bus again and headed to fields near Austerlitz, where Napoleon battled in 1805 in a fight which would later be known as the Battle of Three Emperors. We saw the whole battle field from the spot where Napoleon was standing, so that he could see all that was happening. From there, we went to the Memorial of Peace, which was built to commemorate this battle. The thing that made this memorial so interesting is that, unlike most, it was not for one side or another, it was in memory of all people who lost their lives to this battle. At the sight of the memorial, there is also a really weird museum. We went to it, and it felt like we were being herded from room to room. As we entered each room, the door would close behind us and we would have to stay and watch some repetitive presentation about the war. After each weird presentation, a door would open up, and we would have to move onto the next one. It was a very weird place and I felt like I didn't learn a lot of what they were trying to teach us there. After that, we went on a walking tour of the city of Brno, which is a fascinating city. Everything was so beautiful and each building seemed to have an interesting story to it.
The next day, we woke up and checked out of the hotel to start seeing the sights for the day. The first place we visited was a baroque church nicknamed the "Pearl of Moravia", but it was kind of awkward when we visited. We didn't know that they were going to be in the middle of their mass when we got there, so we walked into the room and just stood silently looking around. We ended up leaving that rather quickly, so we didn't bother people too much and headed to the second church we were going to visit in a town called Adamov. The cool thing about this church was the elaborate wooden alter carved in the 16th century. The alter was divided into three main areas, the bottom, the middle, and the top. On the bottom, there was a scene depicting the apostles gathering to watch the the Virgin Mary ascend to heaven. In the middle, the Virgin Mary is gathering with the angels on her way to heaven. On the top, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are gathered to crown her as a queen of heaven. Along the sides, there are statues of saints and lots of elaborate carvings. From there, we headed to the coolest part of the day, a system of underground caves called the Moravian Karst. In the caves, there is a river that flows and we took a boat ride down that river. It was the most beautiful cave system that I have ever seen and I can't even figure out the words to describe it. For this one, honestly, it'd be better to just look at my pictures of the trip there.
Today, I'm starting my first class in a little over an hour. I'm going to be taking an intensive two week course in Czech language, which I'm hoping will be very useful and that I'll learn a lot.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Day Two of Mandatory ECES Trips
Today, we went to our second, and last, round of mandatory trips through ECES. I picked the trip to Cesky Sternberk and Kunta Hora, which probably don’t mean anything to people who don’t know much about the Czech Republic. The first place we went was the Cesky Sternberk castle, which is a beautiful Gothic castle about an hour and a half outside of Prague. It's kind of up a mountain to get to it, but it is a beautiful structure. The high outer walls are somewhere between two and three meters thick all throughout the castle, so it would take a lot of energy and money to heat the whole building, so they just don't bother. Inside, there were wonderful stucco artwork all over the walls everywhere. The furniture was from all different areas in time and it was so cool to see all the thing that they had collected there over the time. One of the ladies who had lived there in the past collected silver miniatures which were so intricate it was amazing. Her husband, after realizing that he had nothing to collect, decided that he should collect pipes, which was weird since he never smoked. Some of the pipes were so long that none of us could understand how anyone would be able to light them. The bad part about that place was that they didn't allow pictures to be taken from inside unless you got some over priced stickers, which I didn't see where to get, so I didn't get any pictures. But that turned out to be alright, since I was low on battery life and there were lots of things that wanted to get pictures of today. The really unique thing that they had there, and have a lot of places over here, was hot wine. It tasted like hot cider almost, but just more of a grape kind of taste. They had it in a black pot that was suspended over a fire. It was seemed like we were just back in the past with all that.
From there, we went down to the city of Kutna Hora, a historical Czech city. It was full of beautiful architecture and cute little shops. I ended up taking a lot of pictures while I was walking around the city, which I'm going to end up posting at some time on the smugmug account. We ended up getting a tradition Czech lunch, which was really good. I got garlic soup, which tasted amazing, but was really strong. From there, we went to a cute little wooden toys shop that looked like it was filled with handmade toys. There was an older couple working the shop and they didn't speak English, so I'm not sure if they made them, but they were so pretty. Most of the toys were child friendly, but as we were looking at them, the man working there brought over one of the toys that he thought we would like. It was a wooden toy that had a button on the bottom that you could press to make the couple on the top of thing have sex. It was the funniest thing I had ever seen, especially surrounded by all the innocent toys in the rest of the shop.
We then met up with the whole group and went to St. Barbara's cathedral, a Gothic cathedral in the city of Kunta Hora. When it was being built, according to legend, the architect was worried that the building would collapse from the weight of the building on thin walls. When the building was finished, they were collapsing the scaffolding and, thinking that he heard the whole building falling, he jumped off the cliff next to the cathedral to save himself the embarrassment of such a huge failure. Inside, the church was covered in wonderful stained glass works and elaborate alters to various saints. There was also the most beautiful organ I think I've ever seen. On the top of the pipes, there were statues of different angels forming a band, including an angel playing a set of timpani.
Then we loaded back onto the bus to see the Sedlec Charnel House, the highlight of the day. This was a church that has become famous for two very different reasons. The first is that a priest once visited the hill where Jesus was crucified and took some of the sand from that hill and spread it around the base of this church. Because of that, many people wanted to be burried there, which caused a massive buildup of bodies laying around. One day, someone decided that, if they're gonna have all these bodies around, they might as well put them to use. They took the bones from some 40,000 people to use for artwork inside the building. Everywhere I looked, there were different bones being used in the most interesting ways I've ever seen. The one thing that seemed the most out of place in my mind was the baby angel playing a horn while holding a human skull in the other hand. It was also really interesting to see how they used the bones to write out words on the wall. Personally, I would love something that to happen with my bones when I die, it just seems so interesting. It's like these people have been given immortality by becoming something more than they could have ever become without with. Before this artwork, they were just rotting, nameless corpses, but now they are part of a, exhibit which will be marveled at for hundreds of years. After we left there, we headed back to the dorm for the night.
From there, we went down to the city of Kutna Hora, a historical Czech city. It was full of beautiful architecture and cute little shops. I ended up taking a lot of pictures while I was walking around the city, which I'm going to end up posting at some time on the smugmug account. We ended up getting a tradition Czech lunch, which was really good. I got garlic soup, which tasted amazing, but was really strong. From there, we went to a cute little wooden toys shop that looked like it was filled with handmade toys. There was an older couple working the shop and they didn't speak English, so I'm not sure if they made them, but they were so pretty. Most of the toys were child friendly, but as we were looking at them, the man working there brought over one of the toys that he thought we would like. It was a wooden toy that had a button on the bottom that you could press to make the couple on the top of thing have sex. It was the funniest thing I had ever seen, especially surrounded by all the innocent toys in the rest of the shop.
We then met up with the whole group and went to St. Barbara's cathedral, a Gothic cathedral in the city of Kunta Hora. When it was being built, according to legend, the architect was worried that the building would collapse from the weight of the building on thin walls. When the building was finished, they were collapsing the scaffolding and, thinking that he heard the whole building falling, he jumped off the cliff next to the cathedral to save himself the embarrassment of such a huge failure. Inside, the church was covered in wonderful stained glass works and elaborate alters to various saints. There was also the most beautiful organ I think I've ever seen. On the top of the pipes, there were statues of different angels forming a band, including an angel playing a set of timpani.
Then we loaded back onto the bus to see the Sedlec Charnel House, the highlight of the day. This was a church that has become famous for two very different reasons. The first is that a priest once visited the hill where Jesus was crucified and took some of the sand from that hill and spread it around the base of this church. Because of that, many people wanted to be burried there, which caused a massive buildup of bodies laying around. One day, someone decided that, if they're gonna have all these bodies around, they might as well put them to use. They took the bones from some 40,000 people to use for artwork inside the building. Everywhere I looked, there were different bones being used in the most interesting ways I've ever seen. The one thing that seemed the most out of place in my mind was the baby angel playing a horn while holding a human skull in the other hand. It was also really interesting to see how they used the bones to write out words on the wall. Personally, I would love something that to happen with my bones when I die, it just seems so interesting. It's like these people have been given immortality by becoming something more than they could have ever become without with. Before this artwork, they were just rotting, nameless corpses, but now they are part of a, exhibit which will be marveled at for hundreds of years. After we left there, we headed back to the dorm for the night.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
First Mandatory Trip
Today, all of the ECES (Eastern and Central European Studies) students had to go on one of three mandatory trips, but we got to pick which one to go on. For the one today, I ended up going to the called "Pribram and Communist Working Camp Vojna." To start the day off, we all met in the lobby of my dorm at 8:30 in the morning to get in our groups. For some reason, my group was the smallest of the groups, but we headed on the bus and were on our way. Our first stop was at the Mons Sacer Basilica Minor, also known as the Holy Mountain. It was such a beautiful church near the town of Pribram. We walked up the snowy mountain to get to it and it was so cold that we were all wondering if it was even worth being outside. When we got to it, it looked almost like a castle standing out on the otherwise lifeless landscape. As we walked up, a good number of us pulled out our cameras to take some photos of the sight. As we got closer, the art was more intricate and more interesting, but right as I was about to take a picture of one statue beheading another one, some angry woman came over yelling about how we can't take pictures here. At this point, we are still in the outside part of the basicalla, so I don't see any reason why I shouldn't take pictures. There isn't any damage that a flash would do that the elements that is in wouldn't do much worse, but I figured that it was just an attempt to make us buy their postcards, which I didn't really care to do after that. We were then told that, since we were a group of tourists and not pilgrims or locals worshiping, we would have to pay in order to enter the inside part and be led by one of their tour guides. I think that it is outrageous to do something like that in a church, especially one that offers housing to the pilgrims that come visit. And they didn't have a tour guide who spoke anything except Czech, so the woman guiding us around had to be a translator for the group. It was a beautiful church inside and out. The interesting thing to me was that the alters were made of locally mined silver. There were also cameras set up so that, if we were interested, we could watch the service somewhere online. I think that the link is www.svata-hora.cz for anyone who is interested in that.
As we left that, we walked down a baroque flight of stairs, which I was a little skeptical about at first. The idea of walking down some really old stairs covered in snow while wearing my walking shoes, because I didn't know that there was snow since there's not much in Prague, just seemed like a bad idea to me. But as we walked up, I saw this giant tunnel above the ground where we were heading. That was the stairs. They were covered, so there was no snow and it was a lot warmer than the freezing outside parts of the church. That staircase seemed to go on forever, but when we got to the end, we were in the town of Pribram.
Our first stop in this town was a small, cheaply put together, museum. I don't mean cheaply put together in a bad way, what I mean is that there was no government funding, so they were low on funds, so they did the best with the budget they had. It was a museum of the Third Resistance. Everything written was in Czech, with no other language translations and all the employees spoke only Czech, but that was alright because we had our translator. She told us that the man who was going to be explaining everything for us was actually a part of the Third Resistance and would be telling us about his story in relation to the communist take-over of Czechoslovakia. When he was 18, he fought against Hitler's army coming into the Czech lands and remembers rejoicing when Hitler's army was forced to leave the city, but he said that no one thought that, in just a few years' time, there would be another oppressive leader ruling them. He talked about how he was one of the people who would help smuggle people out of the country through the border mountains. One time, he was able to get in contact with some Americans, I believe, and they asked him if he could get some documents for them. He said yes, and got them the documents successfully, but the government was able to trace the missing documents back to him. He refused to give the source of the documents, taking the full blame of the crime which gave him a sentence of 20 years in a forced labour camp, but I'll save the rest of that story for when I get to the part about going to the camp. He showed us the documents which the government decreed that every year there would be 300,000 (I might be wrong about that number...) citizens each year sent off to labour camps without any trial. That meant that the government could create made up charges and just throw people into the labour camps for no reason, which created a life of fear for each citizen. There was a listing of the percentage make up of the camps, which he thought was an ironic list of facts. The highest percentage of the people forced into the camps were from the working class, they made up 30-something percent. The next highest group was the housewives, who made up 20-something percent. He didn't mention the exact other groups, but there was a list with somewhere around twenty-five to thirty different groupings of people. Then we walked into a room with a bunch of intricate and interesting handmade crafts. He told us that these were things made by people who went in the camp. The thing that stuck out in my mind the most was the handmade deck of cards, with only four cards shown. The suits that were used in the deck were: spades, hearts, circles, and acorns. There were also a bunch of dolls and little outfits that the housewives would make to give to their children when they could come visit them. The last exhibit that really stood out to me was the part about the church at that time. When the communists took over, they decided that religion was a bad idea, so they had to get rid of it. Part of that meant that needed to get rid of the religious officials, like priests and nuns. Many of these people were sent into the labour camps and forced to work for their "crimes" of being a leader in the church.
After that museum, we went to get some tradition Czech food for lunch in a local restaurant. I just got the goloush (probably spelled all kinds of wrong) with potato or bread dumplings, I don't remember. The meat was the interesting part, I think it was deer, but the woman was just saying that it was game, which could be deer, hare, rabbit, pheasant, partridge, or even wild boar according to my Czech guidebook. Whatever it was, it tasted good, so it doesn't bother me. The man who had given us the tour came with us to lunch and, once we had finished, we headed out to Vojna.
When I first walked up to the camp, it looks very similar to the images that I have seen of the German concentration camps. There was even a sign over the gate to the camp that said something about working for your freedom, which is very close to the sign that concentration camps have. There were the scary looking guard towers all around the barbed wire fence trapping the people inside. We walked in the open gate and there still had dogs in the guard dog area, which I thought was really cool. We climbed up the stairs in the new building, so that we could get an overview of the entire camp and we learned more about our guide's experiences in the camp. When he first got to the camp, his job was to pluck the feathers from geese to make pillows and stuff like that. Because of years doing that, both of his index fingers have become permanently curved from the action. After his time doing that, he worked in a uranium processing portion of the camp. Oh, I forgot to mention that above, the camps were originally built by the German political prisoners, to force them to work the uranium mines underground. At the museum, they had a piece of uranium still in the raw for us to see what they were mining and he used the radiation detector to show us the levels that the one piece was just letting into the room. So the main point of the labor in the camps was for the Uranium mining. In this camp, they had three mines which the prisoners were forced to work in and there was only about 10% of the Uranium mined, so there is a chance that at some point, if we need Uranium, that people will have to use these mines again. As a prisoner in the camp, the workers had to work one of the three shifts: 6:00-14:00, 14:00-22:00, or 22:00-6:00. While working, they were given one meal every 24 hours and it was black coffee and 30 grams of bread, so everyone there was becoming malnourished. When he told us that the shift started at a given time, what that means is that the workers needed to be at their stations at that time, which took hours. One of the mines was far enough away from the camp that they would have to march for an hour just to get to work. From the high up view, we went to see the barracks for the people in solidarity confinement. These were the people who were being punished for some action they did while in the camps or people who they viewed were dangerous to be around the other prisoners, like political activists. Our guide told us that he was once locked there for 20 days because he had asked for a reduction in his sentence, but the official charge states that he was there for refusing to report others in an attempt to escape. While people were in this barrack, they only got food every three days, instead of the normal daily amount. The next stop was the regular barracks, which showed the small rooms that they would pile lots of people into for sleeping. It was terrible living conditions, but we didn't have time in our tour to see the rest of the camp. We had to hurry through that part and then started walking back towards our bus, but as we were walking, our guide pointed out a building. He told us that it was the Center for Cultural Enlightenment, or something like that. This was the building that they would force them to dance in and it was where their band preformed on holidays. During the holidays where the band played, the band would be in this building and all the other prisoners were forced to stand outside, completely still and listen to the music. The last place that we were able to walk into was a bomb shelter, I think. It was a tiny, underground concrete room that was unlit and very scary inside. Before the nicer barracks were build for the prisoners being punished, the guards would just throw them into this room as punishment. That meant that the walls were covered in marking from all the different prisoners who had been there in the past, but it also sometimes housed dead bodies for days at a time, if not more. Of the rooms and buildings that we visited, this was the one that definitely gave me the most uncomfortable feeling. But as soon as we finished seeing that room, it was back to a nice warm bus to go back to the dorm.
Tomorrow I'm going on my other mandatory trip from ECES, which I'm hoping is as interesting as this one, but hopefully not as depressing.
As we left that, we walked down a baroque flight of stairs, which I was a little skeptical about at first. The idea of walking down some really old stairs covered in snow while wearing my walking shoes, because I didn't know that there was snow since there's not much in Prague, just seemed like a bad idea to me. But as we walked up, I saw this giant tunnel above the ground where we were heading. That was the stairs. They were covered, so there was no snow and it was a lot warmer than the freezing outside parts of the church. That staircase seemed to go on forever, but when we got to the end, we were in the town of Pribram.
Our first stop in this town was a small, cheaply put together, museum. I don't mean cheaply put together in a bad way, what I mean is that there was no government funding, so they were low on funds, so they did the best with the budget they had. It was a museum of the Third Resistance. Everything written was in Czech, with no other language translations and all the employees spoke only Czech, but that was alright because we had our translator. She told us that the man who was going to be explaining everything for us was actually a part of the Third Resistance and would be telling us about his story in relation to the communist take-over of Czechoslovakia. When he was 18, he fought against Hitler's army coming into the Czech lands and remembers rejoicing when Hitler's army was forced to leave the city, but he said that no one thought that, in just a few years' time, there would be another oppressive leader ruling them. He talked about how he was one of the people who would help smuggle people out of the country through the border mountains. One time, he was able to get in contact with some Americans, I believe, and they asked him if he could get some documents for them. He said yes, and got them the documents successfully, but the government was able to trace the missing documents back to him. He refused to give the source of the documents, taking the full blame of the crime which gave him a sentence of 20 years in a forced labour camp, but I'll save the rest of that story for when I get to the part about going to the camp. He showed us the documents which the government decreed that every year there would be 300,000 (I might be wrong about that number...) citizens each year sent off to labour camps without any trial. That meant that the government could create made up charges and just throw people into the labour camps for no reason, which created a life of fear for each citizen. There was a listing of the percentage make up of the camps, which he thought was an ironic list of facts. The highest percentage of the people forced into the camps were from the working class, they made up 30-something percent. The next highest group was the housewives, who made up 20-something percent. He didn't mention the exact other groups, but there was a list with somewhere around twenty-five to thirty different groupings of people. Then we walked into a room with a bunch of intricate and interesting handmade crafts. He told us that these were things made by people who went in the camp. The thing that stuck out in my mind the most was the handmade deck of cards, with only four cards shown. The suits that were used in the deck were: spades, hearts, circles, and acorns. There were also a bunch of dolls and little outfits that the housewives would make to give to their children when they could come visit them. The last exhibit that really stood out to me was the part about the church at that time. When the communists took over, they decided that religion was a bad idea, so they had to get rid of it. Part of that meant that needed to get rid of the religious officials, like priests and nuns. Many of these people were sent into the labour camps and forced to work for their "crimes" of being a leader in the church.
After that museum, we went to get some tradition Czech food for lunch in a local restaurant. I just got the goloush (probably spelled all kinds of wrong) with potato or bread dumplings, I don't remember. The meat was the interesting part, I think it was deer, but the woman was just saying that it was game, which could be deer, hare, rabbit, pheasant, partridge, or even wild boar according to my Czech guidebook. Whatever it was, it tasted good, so it doesn't bother me. The man who had given us the tour came with us to lunch and, once we had finished, we headed out to Vojna.
When I first walked up to the camp, it looks very similar to the images that I have seen of the German concentration camps. There was even a sign over the gate to the camp that said something about working for your freedom, which is very close to the sign that concentration camps have. There were the scary looking guard towers all around the barbed wire fence trapping the people inside. We walked in the open gate and there still had dogs in the guard dog area, which I thought was really cool. We climbed up the stairs in the new building, so that we could get an overview of the entire camp and we learned more about our guide's experiences in the camp. When he first got to the camp, his job was to pluck the feathers from geese to make pillows and stuff like that. Because of years doing that, both of his index fingers have become permanently curved from the action. After his time doing that, he worked in a uranium processing portion of the camp. Oh, I forgot to mention that above, the camps were originally built by the German political prisoners, to force them to work the uranium mines underground. At the museum, they had a piece of uranium still in the raw for us to see what they were mining and he used the radiation detector to show us the levels that the one piece was just letting into the room. So the main point of the labor in the camps was for the Uranium mining. In this camp, they had three mines which the prisoners were forced to work in and there was only about 10% of the Uranium mined, so there is a chance that at some point, if we need Uranium, that people will have to use these mines again. As a prisoner in the camp, the workers had to work one of the three shifts: 6:00-14:00, 14:00-22:00, or 22:00-6:00. While working, they were given one meal every 24 hours and it was black coffee and 30 grams of bread, so everyone there was becoming malnourished. When he told us that the shift started at a given time, what that means is that the workers needed to be at their stations at that time, which took hours. One of the mines was far enough away from the camp that they would have to march for an hour just to get to work. From the high up view, we went to see the barracks for the people in solidarity confinement. These were the people who were being punished for some action they did while in the camps or people who they viewed were dangerous to be around the other prisoners, like political activists. Our guide told us that he was once locked there for 20 days because he had asked for a reduction in his sentence, but the official charge states that he was there for refusing to report others in an attempt to escape. While people were in this barrack, they only got food every three days, instead of the normal daily amount. The next stop was the regular barracks, which showed the small rooms that they would pile lots of people into for sleeping. It was terrible living conditions, but we didn't have time in our tour to see the rest of the camp. We had to hurry through that part and then started walking back towards our bus, but as we were walking, our guide pointed out a building. He told us that it was the Center for Cultural Enlightenment, or something like that. This was the building that they would force them to dance in and it was where their band preformed on holidays. During the holidays where the band played, the band would be in this building and all the other prisoners were forced to stand outside, completely still and listen to the music. The last place that we were able to walk into was a bomb shelter, I think. It was a tiny, underground concrete room that was unlit and very scary inside. Before the nicer barracks were build for the prisoners being punished, the guards would just throw them into this room as punishment. That meant that the walls were covered in marking from all the different prisoners who had been there in the past, but it also sometimes housed dead bodies for days at a time, if not more. Of the rooms and buildings that we visited, this was the one that definitely gave me the most uncomfortable feeling. But as soon as we finished seeing that room, it was back to a nice warm bus to go back to the dorm.
Tomorrow I'm going on my other mandatory trip from ECES, which I'm hoping is as interesting as this one, but hopefully not as depressing.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Finally updating.
For people who have been trying to remind me not to forget about my blog, I have not forgotten about this. I just have not had much free time, so I haven’t been able to figure out how to word things to post them, but I’m finally getting to it all now that I’m moved into my dorm in Prague.
London!
So, I landed at about 8:30am in London, I think. I was a little disoriented because of the whole time difference thing and just getting off a plane that I had been on for somewhere around seven hours. After getting through customs and getting my luggage, I walked out through the arrivals gate and there was a guy holding a sign saying “Rebecca Ritch”. It was kind of cool to see that. He was the guy whose job it was to collect me and take me to the hotel. At the hotel, I met up with the two representatives from AIFS, who led me to a room to put my bags until check in. I wandered around the area around my hotel for a little while alone, since I hadn’t flown with anyone and there was no one at the hotel when I got there. When it finally got to be around 2 pm, I got back to the hotel to get my room and find my roommate. Some of the rooms weren’t ready yet, so most of us ended up sitting in the lobby of the hotel waiting for a while, but we all got our rooms before too late. That afternoon, we all got together for drinks in the hotel bar, to get to know each other a little better. Most of us ended up going out after that, but I didn’t stay out too late, since I was so jetlagged.
Our next day started with a wakeup call at 7:00am so we had time to get a good breakfast before our tour of the city. We all got our full English breakfast and the piled onto the bus. The tour took us through the whole city, so we could see all the sights and plan the rest of our day. After the tour, I went with a group of people who went out to a pub for lunch and then to the National Gallery. It had some cool pictures, but there were two of them that I really loved. First off, there was the Van Gough painting of the daisies, which is always fun. Not only was it cool to see one of Van Gough’s wonderful paintings, but it was kind of funny to see the one from the Doctor Who episode in a museum in the United Kingdom. The other picture I loved was one by Monet, my favorite painter. It was one of his older pieces, but I don’t remember its real name. It was of the water lilies at sunset in his garden. There were lots of reds and purples in the painting, which really made it stand out next to the other Monet pieces around it, which were mostly greens and blues. From there, we walked outside and I saw an interesting image. The two water fountains outside were quatrefoil shaped and there were four giant lion statues standing around a statue in the middle of the square. I was really happy to see two of my sorority’s symbols together like that. After that, some of us headed out to Kings Cross, to see Platform 9 ¾ from Harry Potter. Since they were doing some construction, we couldn’t make it to the real spot that they have it, but they had one set up for the tourist to pose with. It was a terrible set up, but it was better than nothing. After we finished posing with it, we headed back to the hotel to get ready to go out for the night. Most of our group ended up going out to this place called Zoo Bar, which was a lot of fun. By the time we got back, there was about 45 minutes until our wakeup call at 3:15am, so I didn’t bother going to sleep. We got checked out and then it was off to Germany!
Munich!
I’m a little fuzzy on all of the details of my time in Munich because of a combination of residual jetlag and sleep deprivation. We got checked into the hotel and had some free time to get lunch, but I ended up just taking a small nap instead. When I woke up, we had a tour of Munich. The first hour or so of the tour was a bus tour around the city, where we saw the major sites and learned a little about the history of the city. After the driving part, we had a walking tour. They took us through all these side streets and through alleys, so I had no idea how to navigate my way from one spot to another. After that, we went back to the hotel for just a little bit before most of the group got together to explore the city and get dinner. We went to the closest beer hall to our hotel for dinner and it was a cute little place with an awesome sausage specialty on the dinner menu, so I got that and, of course, a beer for dinner. First, I would like to say that, in general, I don’t like beer, but after the trip to Germany, I was willing to try beers and I learned that there is good beer out there; you just have to look for it. After that, we spent what seemed like hours trying to find the famous Hofbrรคuhaus. We spent basically the whole night just having a good time there and then somehow were able to find our way back to the hotel for the night. The next morning was another early morning to catch the plan to Prague.
Prague!
It seems like I’ve been in Prague for a while now, which seems weird. It is such a wonderful city, and I’m so happy that I get to call it my home for the next few months. Most of our time here has been going on tours of the city, which don’t seem to help me find my way around very well, and a lot of meetings where they give us all the same information all over again. I’m really looking forward to getting on a schedule that doesn’t involve waking up every day for meetings or some planned activity where I have to meet somewhere at 8:30 in the morning or earlier. Yesterday was the first day that we really had a lot of time to do whatever we wanted, so I got some of the important stuff. Megan, this awesome girl in my program, took me to the mall which has everything that you would ever need in life. I got my cell phone, which isn’t that unusual for a mall, but I also went grocery shopping there. It was three stories high and almost every store looked like a great place to shop, even though some were a little too expensive for my tastes.
This morning, we had another meeting, this time with all the American students studying in the Eastern and Central Europe (ECES) program, which is what I’m in. They told us about the various stuff that there is to do around the city, different trips that we can take with them, and just some basic information. One of the things that they told us about that I really found interesting is volunteering at a local high school as an assistant for the English classes. I think I’m going to try to get involved with that because it seems like a great opportunity, and it would probably end up helping me understand the whole Czech language better. It just seems like a fantastic opportunity to help out while really understanding so much about the culture from a very different view than most foreigners get to see. Also, I figure it might help out if I still want to teach high school at some point in my life to have helped out in a classroom setting.
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