Prague, Dresden and more!

Last time I blogged I was enduring a rather engaging week of orientation.  I say this with much sarcasm.  Good news is that orientation week is long gone!  However, those of you reading have a long road ahead of you, but bear with me there will be pictures!

It was after orientation week, and a big group of us thought it would be fun to get dressed up and have a night on the town.  Of course me and about four other girls were taking our sweet time getting ready so we told the rest of the group we would meet them in about a half hour.  So, as we approach one of the tram stops we see the rest of the group walking in the opposite direction.  Us girls on the tram start to yell and wave, as we make eye contact with some of our friends walking.  At the next stop we all hopped off the tram and in skirts, dresses, and curls we ran after them to find not a person in site.  No worries, we will just find a place with Wi-Fi and catch up with them where ever they went.  Except, the other group didn’t have Wi-Fi at the place they went. So naturally the only way to make the night better is to go to a place that feels like home, McDonalds.  Fun fact, when you order a meal to go they give you a nice small glass cup! That's pretty unique I think.  So we got all of our food and caught the next bus home.  Everything was going uphill, we got our food, a glass cup, and were headed to watch some movies.   But then we missed our stop and the bus took about five different turns into Olomouc and we were lost, whoops!  At that point Abby said it best, “I don’t know what was worse, fancy night or orientation!”  No need to worry though, we all eventually found our way home safely.  I thought I would share this one night because we laugh about this night too often!

The week following orientation, actual classes started.  I have classes every day from 4:45pm to 7:15pm, rough life I know.  I’m taking a Czech language, a European History, and a European special topics class.  I take these classes with the other students I came here with from UNK.  The Czech language consists of trying to pronounce long words with many accents for an hour a day.  I am getting pretty good at introducing myself, but that’s about it.  It’s all right though, the rest of class struggles just the same and the teacher is either laughing at us or with us, but either way is fine.   My European history class is once a week and a nice refresher of what I learned in my high school European history class.  Then there are my special topics classes, which are taught by a different professor every time.  These classes are either really interesting, or very dry and hard to understand.  But either way I can’t complain too much because I have it quite easy over here! 

After a week of classes the group headed on our first weekend field trip to Prague! I love this city and could not wait to spend another weekend there! The day we arrived, we checked into our hostel and headed out on a short tour of the city.  I saw many of the same sights on this tour as I did on the free tour I went on my first weekend in Prague.  But one thing new I saw was the John Lennon wall.  On this people were able to express their emotions during the communist regime. 

Abby and I in front of a section of the John Lennon wall.

 

After the wall we were set loose and a group of us decided to make our way up to the Prague Eiffel tower.  This was one long journey, all up hill, and once we got to the small Eiffel tower, there were more stairs.  Although this view was completely worth it:

Jenna and I on top of the Prague Eiffel Tower.

The group that made the journey.

The view over looking the Prague Castle and part of the river.

On the way down I thought everything would be easy, and then the bird poop came. 

 

The next day the group went on a tour of the Prague castle.  Here we were able to tour the cathedral and a couple other buildings.  I personally thought that cathedral was the most interesting. 

These are different views of the cathedral.  Not to be mistaken for the castle, which actually encompasses the cathedral and the buildings surrounding.

Just one of the stain glass windows in this church.  There were dozens of others that reached just as high.

 

The organ in the church, could not believe the size of this so I had to take a picture for you Grandma Dolezal!

 

We all know the famous Christmas song of Good King Wenceslas and this is where he is buried. 

After the castle we were released for the day and the group broke up to go venture into the city once again.  I ended up finding a place to eat with some girls and then we wandered into some shops.  After a few more hours I was more than ready for a power nap but only after I found some Wi-Fi.  It doesn’t bug me to go all day without checking my phone, but at this point it had been almost a full twenty four plus hours and I was wanting some contact with back home.  Jenna and I broke off from the group to find Wi-Fi and we were able to eat this wonderful Nutella, whip cream and chocolate crepe. 

 

The next day the whole group, 27 of us, headed on a day trip to a city in Germany called Dresden.  Here we had a very short walking tour of the city where we saw a statue of Martin Luther and an old church that was bombed during World War II but has since been recreated. 

This is the Church in Dresden with the Statue of Martin Luther in front.  The darker color bricks are actually stones that were preserved from the first church. 

 After this tour we all had the option of two different art museums.  I choose the first one and had very high hopes of seeing some piece of art that I would recognize, and luckily I did! 

This painting is called Sistine Madonna.  The winged angles at the bottom of the painting have been recreated in many other scenarios and are pretty famous.  That was the only painting however that I recognized and after about two hours at the art museums Molly and I were more than ready to leave.  We had about three hours to spare before we had to meet in front of the Statue of Martin Luther. During this time we managed to visit a couple different shops, find an ATM to pull out some euros, get some ice cream, and enjoy the nice sunny day at an outside restaurant.  Except during this time we never actually ate one solid meal.  When the group reconvened at the statue we went straight to the top of the church to see the view of Dresden.  This was a great view but it didn’t mean much to me because I don’t really know much about Dresden.  After this the group started to make our way back to the train station.  Molly and I were starving and determined to get food before we got on the train so we ran in front of the group to get a gyro.  During this time the rest of the group discovered that they had only five minutes to catch the train. As Molly and I had our backs turned towards the side walk the group ran past us.  Oblivious to all of this, we stood there, eating our gyros, waiting to spot the group.  After a couple of minutes a slight panic set in so we started to make our way to the train station thinking we were going to have to figure out how to get home by ourselves.  To our great luck, we ran into the group outside the train station because they all missed the train!  I should have learned a lesson to always stay with the group but I was happy and full off my gyro, and rest of the group missed the train too so, life works out well sometimes.

The next and last day in Prague was one of my favorites so far.  I was able to see different museums and synagogues in the Jewish Quarter.  Our first stop was the Pinkas Synagogue where written on the walls were 80,000 names, the birth and death date if known of the Jewish victims of Bohemia and Moravia.  It was completely eye opening, and the names seemed to go on forever. 

Also, at this synagogue were pictures that children had drawn at a work camp called Terezin.  The children were encouraged to express their feelings through these drawings.  Before the teacher left the camp she hid the pictures in hopes that they would be found again one day.  After this synagogue I walked through the Jewish cemetery.  This cemetery was unlike any other because it looked like the head stones were just thrown around at random.  I learned that once the Jews lay a body to rest they cannot move or touch the body again.  For that reason, and because there was a lack of space, the Jews had to burry body on top of body.  During WWII many of the synagogues and other Jewish places were destroyed.  However, because Hitler loved the city of Prague the most he kept everything untouched in plans to create a museum of the extinct race.  I thought that these couple synagogues and museums were eye opening I can hardly imagine what impact the concentration camps will leave.

This concludes my Prague and Dresden field trip and basically my blog.  Since the trip we have had a week of classes and another weekend.  I haven’t done much since because I am trying to save up money for my spring break.  However, I did get two pieces of good news!  I am officially accepted into the Social Work program at UNK, and this summer I got accepted for an internship at Pro Deo Youth Center in Lee’s Summit, Missouri!  I could not be more thankful for such wonderful opportunities coming my way! At the end of this week I will be going on another field trip to Vienna, Austria and Venice, Italy.  After Venice I am let loose and will start my week long journey in Italy.  I will be traveling the cities of Rome, La Spezia, Cinque Terre, and Pisa.  I will be ending my trip in Prague for Easter.  This blog entry was long, and I can only tell that the next will be even longer.  Thanks for reading, miss you all!