Krakow

About two weeks ago, a few friends and I were lucky enough to make a short trip to Krakow. Our main reason for going was that we wanted to visit Auschwitz, something we’d all learned about in school since we were very young.

In order to get back in time for class on Sunday, we took two overnight trains, one there and one back. Even though we spent less than 24 hours there, we were all pleasantly surprised by our time in Krakow, which turned out to be a very unique and interesting city. We started the day early, our train got into Poland around 6:30 am. We wandered around the main square, which was very still and quiet so early in the morning. We stopped off at a small bakery to get a really delicious breakfast. We had a bus and tour guide to take us through Auschwitz and Birkenau. The morning at the camps was incredibly moving. It was somewhat surreal to actually see in person something I’d seen and heard so much about. We had a great tour guide, who guided us through the entire experience. The museums were very crowded because it was Holocaust Remembrance Week, a time when many families and survivors come back to visit the museums. After a very intense morning, we headed back to Krakow, where we were able to witness a tribute to the president, whose funeral was set to take place in Krakow the day after we left.

Main Square in Krakow

The main square was lined with Polish flags with a strip of black across them. It was being set up for the public memorial service, and we were able to hear a small portion of the dress rehearsal. After that we wander up to see Wawel Castle and the Jewish Quarter, where we stopped for lots and lots of peirogis.

Krakow was a surprisingly beautiful city. There was so much for us to see: castles, churches, museums, etc. Unfortunately, we had to hop back on the overnight train to Prague. It was a pretty crazy time to be in Krakow, but we all felt like we learned a lot and got an opportunity to see what will soon become an important piece of Polish history.

All Around Czechia

I severely need to update this blog. Sorry I’ve been so bad, but we’ve been running all over the Czech Republic, and since the Czechs seem to be utterly confused by Macs, I don’t have a charger. I’ll try to fit in as much as I can tonight before I lose power. I’ve barely written about our classes yet, and they are almost over already! We’ve been on some great excursions in Czechia. We went to a glass factory, where we got to try out some glass blowing. We also went to the Skoda auto plant and took a tour of the assembly line.

View of Cesky Krumlov from the Castle

One of my favorite excursions so far was to Cesky Krumlov, which was an old Medieval town that basically looked like Disney World. It had winding cobblestone streets and cute shops that sold toys and candy. It was also totally surrounded by a moat…with bears in it. We saw the restored Baroque Theatre in the huge castle complex. It still has all of the original machinery for scene changes and effects. We got to go below the stage to see how it all worked.

We just returned from a 3-day Excursion to Moravia. Although it was long, we had a lot of fun. We stayed in Telc and saw more castles than I’ve seen in my entire life. They are all in different condition, some are fantastic and set up for tourists, but we got to see one that had not been renovated and was left basically untouched since WWI. Our whole trip ended with a night in a wine cellar, where we all got to sample Moravia’s famous wines. We all had a fantastic time.

Update on my trip to Krakow will come shortly.

AnnyDoug

Bupa, Pest, and Vienna

So it has been quite a while since my last update. Sorry about that y’all. It’s been a crazy week and a half. It feels like I just got to Prague, but it also feels like I’ve been away from home for forever! Hmmm where should I begin? We started school last week. We usually have 2, 2-hour lectures everyday and a 2-hour lunch. We’ve already found “our place” for lunch, which we go to almost everyday. It is a student pub right down the street from Charles University. They have absolutely amazing and cheap Czech food. My favorite dish so far (which I’ve had three times already) is the pork pieces with sauerkraut and potato dumplings. It is absolutely AMAZING! We also love the soup, which is usually great. Usually it is goulash or chicken soup or something. Today, when we asked what the soup was there was a big commotion, and the waitress called over like three people. One of them started getting out this picture of a cow and pointing and another person was telling us he only knew how to say it in Czech, but then the waitress came out and said the soup was beef something. We couldn’t really understand the second word, but we were all like beef, great, 4 soups please. When it came out, it looked pretty good. At first it looked like chicken, though, and then when I tasted it, it was more like octopus, then all of a sudden Julia says “Oh my god it’s tripe!” and I’m like “cool, what’s tripe? A fish?” And that’s how I learned that tripe is cow stomach. None of us finished our soup….

Overlooking Buda from the banks of Pest

But anyway, I better get back to everything we’ve been up to. After our first 4 days of school during which time we mastered the buses, trams, and metros (with the exception of the night schedules), and explored a lot of Prague, we got a 5 day Easter weekend. The Czech’s take their Easter very seriously, even though they aren’t religious at all. The boys go around the girls’ houses and whip them with sticks, while the girls give them eggs. None of us really wanted to partake in this particular aspect of Czech culture, so we got out of town for the weekend. First, we went to Budapest. We got incredibly lucky. Our train there was from 11pm to 9am, but we got a great deal on a sleeper car. It was like being in a moving hotel room. Each of us got a bed, and we even had bathrooms in the cabins. Budapest was so amazing. Our hostel was in Pest, right around the corner for Saint Istvan (Stephen’s) Basilica.

In front of a very small part of Parliament

Our first morning was spent on a mission to find the Hummus Bar that our guidebook recommended. After a few wrong turns and stumbling upon a lot of great sites, we found some of the best falafel and hummus EVER! We went to see the Parliament, which is an absolutely mammoth compound. (fun fact, at some point in its history the Parliament Building used more energy then all of Budapest combined!)

Some of our group was quite adventurous and went spelunking. I opted not to risk a flare up of my claustrophobia and explored the sites some more. One of my favorite things was the Old Synagogue. It very intricate and an amazing thing to see in a country that was dominated by Nazis and then Communists for almost a century.

Old Synagogue

We also took a walk over to Hero’s Square, where there is a little zoo with the famous baths in them. Unfortunately, we did not have the right weather or the money to be bathed by the Hungarians…too bad. After the spelunkers came back, we had a late dinner and explored Budapest’s unique nightlife. The next day we had some more hummus and visited the Museum of Terror, which is a museum housed in the old Secret Police headquarters.

The basement has hidden cells and torture chambers. It was really fascinating to learn about the effects of the Nazis and Communist rule on the Hungarian people. It was a very sobering museum, much like the Holocaust Museum in DC. For dinner that night we had some more hummus, and then we took a “walk” around Buda, the side of the city across the river. We got quite lost, but it was worth it to see the view of Pest across the river at night and to walk across the famous “chain bridge” on the way back to our hostel.

We woke up on Easter Morning and made our way to the train station to catch our train to Vienna. After riding in the oldest metro car I have ever seen, we stopped by a stand and picked up some chocolate bunnies to get in the spirit. We arrived to a beautiful Easter in Vienna. We walked down the main shopping drag from our hostel to get to the main square where Stephansdom church is located (Saint Stephen and his giant churches seemed to be following us all weekend). We sat down for a traditional Viennese meal, which included more sauerkraut and potatoes, schnitzel, and wurst.

Stephansdom - Our Easter Morning Church

Emily and I went to Easter Vespers as Stephensdom which was actually really fun (even though it was all in German and Latin). There was beautiful music and it was so cool to get to go to service in such a historic church! After the service, we walked over to see Parliament, the Rathaus, the library, and a lot of other very imperial looking buildings. We had some more traditional food, I got spatzle, which is pretty much just like the best version of mac and cheese ever. The next day was cold and rainy, but we tried to make the most of it by going to the Hapsburg’s summer palace and gardens. Gardens weren’t the best idea for such a rainy day, but they were still very impressive. We ate some pretzels from a stand at the Easter market, and then, best of all, we went to see a “Strudel Show” which taught us all how to make traditional apple strudel. We were wet and exhausted, so we sat down for some pizza and then went to the movies.

Strudel, Yum

The next morning it was back home to Prague (who would have thought that would ever feel like going home?). The excitement didn’t stop. We went to a Slavia Praha hockey game, which was so much fun. We got to see two members of the Czech Olympic team play. The Czechs really love their hockey.

Slavia Praha

The fan section was a little more rowdy than at Dartmouth games. I think Lauren would have loved it. We got some Slavia gear to blend in with the locals, but Slavia lost despite our best cheering efforts.

Tomorrow we are off on a full day excursion to Northern Bohemia.

Love you all!

AnnyDoug

Finding My Way Around

So I’ve been in Prague for 3 days now, and I’ve managed to see a lot! Yesterday a big group of us ran errands to get some things we needed to make our apartments a little more homey. After some confusion, we made our way to the center of town on the underground. We charged the vodaphone store and bought our Czech cell phones. Then we went to the Tesco, which is like a huge department store and got a lot of little things. There were about 10 of us riding the Metro with giant laundry baskets full of stuff, pretty hard not to stick out! When we got home the boys cooked us a big pasta dinner, and we all got together and ate in our apartment. Then we explored the nightlife of our neighborhood a little bit.

This morning Ana, Rachel, and I went on a little jog through Zizkov (our ‘hood). It is VERRRY hilly, so we went very slow. There is a little monument and park up the hill behind our building, so we explored that area. Then we got together with some of the other girls and set out for the center of the city. We explored the Easter Market in Wenceslas Square.

Heather and Ana at the Candy Shop

They have all kinds of goodies. Candy, potatoes, all sorts of doughy treats. I got a big slice of ham that was roasting outside, very good. They also have some great painted eggs as well as the sticks that boys are supposed to go around hitting girls with on Easter Monday. After that we set out for Charles Bridge. We wandered around for a bit and got to see some really cool old streets. We found the national theatre and finally got to the Bridge. It was absolutely packed and very hard to get across.

Charles Bridge and the Castle

Julia read to us from one of the guide books what some of the statues were. When we got into the Lesser Town across the bridge, we went to a really cute Café and had the most amazing hot chocolate. It was really more like hot chocolate pudding.

A lot of us had been itching to see the Lennon Wall, and we realized it was only about 2 blocks away from our café, so we went and explored it.

Our Big Group At the Lennon Wall

After that we were exhausted and decided to head home. We start class tomorrow, and we all want to get some rest.

I miss you all! I can’t wait to here from you!

AnnyDoug

DAY ONE!

As always my journey to Prague was full of adventures. Just to sum it up quickly lets say that I managed to break two bags, get a mustard stain on my brand new shirt, nearly faint in an airplane bathroom, but, finally, somehow, I managed to get all of my things to our wonderful apartment. Right now I am living with Ana and Rachel, but there is one more girl who has yet to arrive and she will be our fourth roommate. The apartments are very large and spacious. They have great full kitchens with nice, flat stove tops, microwave, big sink, good pots and pans, mini-fridge, etc. Some grad students in Geography at Charles University, where our classes will be, met a big group of us at the airport and helped us navigate public transportation.

Our neighborhood, Zizkov, is a little rough. It isn’t anywhere many tourists ever go, so it seems really authentic. Right down the street is a bank and a supermarket, which Ana, Rachel, and I hit up as soon as we got our stuff unpacked. Oh, and I forgot to mention, there are only two big double beds in each apartment, so we have to share…..But anyway, we went to the super market and tried to navigate our way around Czech groceries. A lot of things are the same, they have cheerios and Yoplait, and Twix, etc. The most perplexing thing was trying to figure out what was milk. There definitely wasn’t any skim, but we couldn’t tell what was milk and what was yogurt, so we’ll have to see what we ended up buying. We also learned, after we went to the check out, that you have to weigh your own produce….oops.

We sat our on our balcony that over looks a parking lot and a shady apartment building and ate some bread and chesse. Someone described our neighborhood as kind of like Queens, if that helps at all. Professor Magilligan took us all out for our first Czech meal just down the street from our apartments. I had both potato and bread dumplings (which are essentially just slices of potatoes and bread), red and yellow? Cabbage, sausage, pork, and ham. My neighbors got potato pancakes, so I had some of those too.

So despite the crazy day of travel, it has turned out to be a great first day in Prague. Tomorrow, if the rain holds off, we are going to explore the more touristy parts of the city.

BYE!

AnnyDoug