Prague, Dresden, and Brno!

Hello again All! Once again it has been a little while since my last post, apologies for that. I am really finding it hard to sit down and keep up with this blog when I am on the go most of the time. Too much to see! Well since my last post, we have seen quite a bit. I hope that I can cover all of it.

After a nice relaxing week in our hometown of Olomouc, we once again head to Prague. This time around we had our teachers Jan and Martin. This was the first time the group was able to spend time with them, and we were very excited to see what they had to say about the beautiful town of Prague.

This journey started at the train station in Olomouc. It was about a 2.5 hour train ride (much better than the bus that brought us here I thought). I was lucky enough to sit in a cab with another UNK student, a lovely old couple, and a young student who was also studying in Olomouc. We had a great conversation with all of them. The young student was able to translate for us and this was much appreciated. After many laughs, stories, and shared music, we arrived in Prague. Round Two!

We settled into our hostel, and we were off to explore the town. We had already been in Prague, but this time it was a much better experience. This was because we had our great teachers with us! We went from Old Town Square to the Charles Bridge, and finally the John Lennon Wall. After this we were set loose to rome the town on our own. We all broke off into groups. My group decided to clime Petrin Hill, which has a tower on the top. At first glance, it does not look like a bad walk, but it turned out to be quite the hike. This did not stop us from having a great afternoon! Once we arrived at the top, the view was breathtaking and pictures are not able to do it justice.

Then our small group headed to an American restaurant. This was the best thing I had in a long time. Now don’t get me wrong, I love the Czech food here, but there is something about having a good beef burger with crispy bacon and French fries (and no charge for Ketchup and mustard!). It was just a little taste of home which was nice.

The next day we headed up to the Prague Castle. I thought the outside was amazing, but the detail inside of church was incredible. The history behind it is fascinating. After walking around the church, we saw the changing of the guard. It was something neat to see, but I feel like it was a tad overrated. That night we went out on the town which is alway a good time.

Saturday we once again got on a train and headed to Dresden, Germany. This is a town that I would have never even thought about going to, but I am very glad that I did. It was one of the last cities in Germany to be completely leveled by the allies at the end of WWII. Despite this fact, the people here have managed to almost rebuild their city. Some of the group went to an art museum, but I choose to go to the museum of the castle and royalty that once was in Dresden. I was not able to get many pictures because it cost money to have the right to take pictures inside and I decided not to spend the extra money. It was an incredible collection, and I would encourage anyone coming to the area to take time to see this city and it’s museums.

Sunday, we went to the Jewish quarter in Prague. It was a very humbling experience. Again I did not take any pictures here because they asked that you did not. The first building we walked into consisted of walls covered in thousands of names. These were the names of the Jewish people from the Czech Republic that were killed in the Holocaust. When we went to the second floor, there was an area that had children’s artwork from some of the kids that lived in the concentration camps. Words cannot explain how sad this makes one feel. We then walked through a very old Jewish cemetery. Hundreds of very old tombstones were packed into a very small area. So many that they actually started to stack the graves on top of one another. I was able to learn a little more about the Jewish religion and way of life.

The next week was full of class. We had an upcoming free weekend, so we decided to plan something close and fairly inexpensive. This something turned out to be a weekend trip to Brno, which is located about an hour South West of Olomouc. This sort of random trip turned out to be a very fun time! We left on Saturday morning, and arrived around 11 a.m.. As always, we found a great place to eat. I literally ate an entire half of a pig’s ribcage. Such a great meal, but I was pretty slow the rest of the day.

On Sunday, we went to the Brno castle/prison. We had a great time exploring the lower part of the castle. Then we walked around town and explored all of the old churches and buildings. We were actually able to go to the crypts of one of the churches. It was very chilling. People were put below as a final resting place with no intentions of them mummifying. However the conditions were just perfect to preserve the bodies. Definitely a different way to see a church. In one of the rooms, there were a couple of dozen bodies, and the inscription in the wall read something like this: “What you are, we once were. What we are, you will become.” This gave me the chills! We continued to explore the rest of the day.

Monday we caught our bus and headed back home to Olomouc. Back to class and a busy week of planning for spring break :(. This week we will leave for Vienna and Venice, and later Spring Break. I have a lot to do in such a little amount of time, but I am really looking forward to it.

My next post will NOT be up for a while. These next few weeks will be very stressful and on the go, but also a very good time. I hope I can at least upload pictures to Facebook so I can keep everybody up to date with whats going on.

Na Shledanou!