Dresden

I went to Dresden with ISC March 28 & 29, there were about 15 of us from CTU and about 10 from the School of Economics. We left way too early in the morning on the 28th. The only good thing about it was that we got to ride in a compartment train, which me and Caitie couldn’t help but feel like we were headed to Hogwarts because it was like a Harry Potter train. We arrived in Dresden after a relatively short train ride of about 2 hours. We were given free time to walk around.

My first steps on the cobblestone of Dresden.

Dresden is a fairly small city so it didn’t take us long to see most of it, and it was quite rainy and gross. We ended up at the royal families palace and ran into a ton of Asian tourists. We then entertained ourselves by making fun of them. And taking photos in the same stances they were taking photos in.

These were some old ruins that were being excavated.

Frauenkirche, a really pretty church in the middle of Old town.

After this I think our exhaustion hit us so we wandered around looking for somewhere to get a snack. We ended up finding a tiny little vegetarian restaurant. Even though it was only 11a we all decided to try our first German bier. I had a Hefeweizen, it’s a wheat beer, and it is amazing. I also got a bowl of soup to tide me over before lunch.

We then met back up with our group and headed to eat lunch at one of the university campuses in Dresden. We had a meal of dumplings and meat, not all that different than Czech food really. 

After lunch we went back to the old part of town as a group and met up with some ISC people from Dresden. We split up into groups and did a city tour/scavenger hunt with them. Basically they walked us around the city and we had to guess where to go next, and do different challenges once we got to the different places. For instance we went to the only remaining phone booth in Dresden and had to see how many people we could fit in it, and we ended up getting other people from the street to join us. We only fit about 6 of us in. We also had to answer trivia questions about Dresden, so we started asking random people we saw around town, I’m sure people thought we were insane. One of our other tasks was to join hands and make a ring around a statue in front of a church in the old town. We couldn’t quite get enough people, but we joined forces with another team and made a ring around. 

With our group and our guides, Felix & Sven.

After freshening up and recharging a bit from the scavenger hunt, we headed to the new part of town for dinner at a kebab restaurant. In the States when you say kebab, that means a skewer with different kinds of veggies and meat that is grilled, in Europe when you say kebab, it means something more like a gyro, but equally delicious, just not exactly what all of us Americans were expecting. After dinner we headed to a little place called Magnolia. It was a lounge type cocktail bar with couches and beds all over. They also had shisha, which is what they call hookah in Germany. So we hung out drinking long islands and smoking shisha for a couple of hours, and then the exhaustion set in again so Caitie and I headed back really early.

For lunch the next dat we ate at a German brewery. Caitie, Patricia, and I decided to order a Mass bier, which is a liter of bier. That is insanely huge. And on an empty stomach, it makes you feel really happy! The bier we had was yet another wheat beer, and it was so delicious. 

With my huge bier.

The beef stew/soup we ate for lunch.

After lunch we kind of all split up and did our own thing, but the group of people I ended up in decided to walk around New Town.

This was a little building in a courtyard that had been restored, every hour in the summer they send water down the pipes.

We got soft serve ice cream at this little place by the park and it was so delicious. And then we went to the park and watched theses people walk on make shift tight ropes, it was pretty crazy. 

We thought this guy was going to be good because he was really intense.. He fell off really quick, it was dissapointing.

After walking around all afternoon, it was time to bid our goodbyes to Dresden and the people we had met from their ISC. Everyone from our school headed back towards Prague, but Patricia, Eeva, Disa, and I headed on to Berlin.

More photos from Dresden

Wien

We (Caitie, James, Jason, and I) left for Vienna on Tuesday morning around 10:30a by way of Student Agency bus. Student Agency busses are one of the cheapest ways to travel around Europe. We had a 2 hour bus ride to Brno, and had to switch busses in Brno to get to Vienna. From Brno to Vienna we had another 2 and a half hours almost, and drove through Mikulov, which is a really small Czech town that I had visited the first weekend in the Czech Republic. There were also some really beautiful wind farms on the way. Once we arrived in Vienna we bought metro passes, after a little trouble figuring out how to buy them, and made our way to the hostel to check in. By the time we had done all of that it was time for an early dinner because we hadn’t ate all day. We made our way to the city center and started wandering around for something delicious. Jason spotted a steak place, that was obviously very American-ized, but we definitely didn’t care because a steak and baked potato sounded AMAZING. We proceeded to eat there, ordering a French baguette, side salads, and a bottle of merlot for the four of us, and steaks and baked potatoes. It was the most amazing meal I have had in a long time, at least the most amazing meal of food that I am used to. After dinner we were exhausted so we just walked around the city center a little bit, passing by the State Opera House and the House of the Secession. We went back to the hostel to plan out our sightseeing for the next two days, and headed to sleep before midnight.

State Opera House.

House of the Secession.

The next morning we woke up pretty early and got ready for our day, and ate breakfast at the hostel. We headed out to see the sights, and we saw quite a lot of Vienna that is for sure. We started out by trying to go to the Schonbrunn Palace, but couldn’t figure out where it was from the metro, so we decided to head towards the Museums Quarter and go to the modern art museum. All of the museums in Vienna are in this pretty large area of town all really close to each other, it is actually pretty cool. 

The Museum of Modern Art. Or the Museum Moderner Kunst (MUMOK) in Deutsch.

The modern was so amazing, the art as well as the architecture of the building were all worth looking at for quite awhile. We spent a large portion of our day here perusing and enjoying new art and artists, while seeing some of our favorites as well. After the museum we decided to go find a late lunch. Tuesday night when we were walking around we found an open air market, so we headed back there in search of some typical Viennese food. We found a small restaurant in the market and all got some Austrian beer and Wiener Schnitzel. Then we decided to find a dessert and found a delicious bakery, I decided on a chocolate croissant and it was amazingly good.

After lunch we had a slight problem of finding a place to buy our bus tickets home, we assumed we could buy them at the place we got dropped off, but no such luck. We had to exert our resources in Prague, and call Michal and have him help us find the place to buy them. He is our saving grace when we are traveling. Luckily we got bus tickets, but had to leave earlier on Thursday than originally expected so our trip was cut a little bit shorter than we wanted, but no problems. 

This is a cool mirror installation we found in one of the metro stations, it had the number of pi etched into it that stretched for a long while. We spent a little of time taking goofy pictures.

After we got the bus fiasco figured out we headed to St. Stephens Cathedral to climb the spire. There are 343 steps going up the spire all in a very tight spiral staircase. It was quite the workout, and was very nauseating, but it was definitely worth the view once we reached the top.

 

View from the top of the spire.

After St. Stephens we wondered around the town some more, coming upon what we thought was the National Library, but then realized after walking all the way around it, it was the State Opera House that we had seen the night before. We decided to find the National Library the next morning, and headed for dinner and a beer. We ate at a quaint little restaurant close to the city center, and then headed to a little pub for a few more beers. It was a fun evening spent in the pub, and then we headed home quite early so we could take the metro.

The next morning, our last day there we awoke, ate breakfast, and checked out of the hostel by about 9a. We then went to find the actual National Library, and succeeded, although it was rainy and gross outside, so we didn’t stick around for very long. By that time it was almost time to catch our bus so we found a Subway (I can't believe they have them in Europe), and got sandwiches for the road, then headed to the bus station. We boarded the bus around 11:30a and began our almost 5 hour journey home, again passing the beautiful wind farm, and finally making it back to Prague and to our dorm by 5p.

Wind farm we passed somewhere close to the Austria/Czech border.

More pictures from Vienna.

Narodni Divaldo & Slavia Praha

As promised, although a little late, a blog about my night at the opera and my first Czech hockey game.

Fridays, I don’t have classes. So those days are always quite great. This particular friday evening we attended the opera. I went with Carles, my Spanish friend, his friend from Brussels, Thomas, Rachel, Sarah, Caitie, Anna, Diana, and Winifred. We went to see Carmen, which is a French opera, thankfully they had English and Czech subtitles on a screen above the stage. The subtitles were kind of hard to see though because we were sitting n the last row, behind a column. We can’t really complain too much though because our tickets were only 50 Kc, which is roughly only $2.50. It was quite an experience since it was my first opera, but I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Caitie using her opera glasses.

Our view from the last row. Pretty amazing actually.

After the opera we ran around town following Carles because he was trying to take us somewhere nice to eat, but it was getting late and everyone was hungry so we ended up grabbing pizza and gyros from a street vendor. Half of our group decided to go home, but me, Caitie, Carles, Thomas, Rachel, and Sarah decided to go to a pub. We ended up going to Nebe, and it was a lot like a New York bar, pretty posh with good drinks. We hung out there for most of the night talking and dancing a little bit. It was fun to not go to a dance club playing techno music for once.

This is me and Sarah enjoying some wine.

The next week two of my roommates, Holly & Danielle, invited Caitie and I to go to a Slavia Praha Hockey Game. Since I have never been to a hockey game in my life, I figured I should definitely go to one in the Czech Republic, since they are very well known for ice hockey. It was definitely a really fun time, we also went with 4 of our roommates Costa Rican friends. Caitie and I decided to get some Slavia scarves to represent, they are pretty awesome.

 I couldn’t believe how much people get into the hockey games, there was a huge fan section right next to where we sat and it was awesome to watch and hear them chant, I wish I could have chanted along, but alas I don’t know enough Czech for that! 

Slavia ended up winning, kind of last minute and it was awesome. Everyone went crazy!

Our group!

The metro ride home was definitely one of the craziest experiences I have had in Prague. Since the metro stop is the one for the stadium, we had to cram on trains to fit enough people on them. While this was happening, people were also jumping up and down, making the train sway, and also chanting and getting everyone to join them. The train started moving and people were still jumping up and down, the train was swaying from side to side and also moving.. It was definitely scary. Caitie and I finally made our way back to Dejvicka and had to pack and get ready for our trip to Vienna the next day, more about that later, I promise!

So this is what I'm here for....School

The whole reason I am actually in Prague is for school, and it finally started two weeks after my journey began. I am taking six classes here at Czech Technical University: Studio (of course, only because I have too), Computer Graphics, Figure Drawing, History of the Interior, Sculpting, and Color and Composition.

Studio meets on Monday afternoons and Thursday mornings and it is a completely different experience than I have ever had, it’s not stressful and it’s not a big deal if I don’t get my work done. He told us the first day that if we are going to miss school because we are traveling, just to let him know and he will recommend places for us to visit where we are going, and he said not to miss for a month and then come back and say we were sick because he will know we are lying. So I can tell it will be great. Our first project was to design a logo that represented ourselves in 2D, and then we made it into a 3D logo. Our second project is to design a piece of jewelry for someone in our lives. Our third project is to design a chair in the style of Thonet. Thonet invented a system of bending wood and used it in his chair designs to make beautiful works. Our final project is to design an armchair for a building here in Prague. We were to visit four spaces in Prague, all built in different styles and to choose one space to design the chair for. There is a Gothic church, a Baroque Church, an Art Noveau space, and a Romanesque chapel. I still haven’t decided what space I’m using, it will come with time I am sure.

Computer graphics meets Tuesday afternoons at 3, for this class we are working in groups to come up with a new-age legend about Prague, a way to see Prague in another way, not as a tourist. We then have to either show our new legend with photos or illustrations that we do and manipulate them in Photoshop, and then put them together graphically in Illustrator or InDesign. Our group has just started work on our story board, but I think it’s going to be good, I will definitely keep you posted! After this class I have figure drawing until 7.

Figure drawing is probably my favorite class, and I had no idea that it would be. Drawing naked people for an hour and half didn’t exactly seem appealing to me in the first place, but I knew that it would immensely improve my sketching skills, something I know I need to work on. Our teacher is quite a precious older man that doesn’t speak much Czech, but he gets his point across about your drawing pretty well considering this fact. He doesn’t make me feel so bad about myself, and it’s always great to have him help out.

On Wednesdays I have History of the Interior at 1 in the afternoon. It is almost exactly like my History of Furniture class I took at KState, but with less organization, and with a really precious teacher. He is probably in his eighties and told us he learned English before World War II, so he gets frustrated when he can’t express to us what he wants to in English, we try to help out as much as possible, and I know he appreciates it. After history I have a couple hour break before heading to sculpting at 4:45p

Sculpting is something I have never done before so it is an interesting experience. Since most of us have never worked with clay before we have to start out by making a skull, we have a model to copy. After we make it out of clay, we get to cast it in plaster. Then if we have time, we are to make another piece of our choosing.

On Thursday mornings I have studio at 10a, which is the earliest I have class, so it makes it hard to go to sometimes. But then I have the rest of the day free because Color & Composition doesn’t meet until 5:45p.

Color and Composition is like my Visual Communications class I took at KState because we get to experiment with different media and then create one piece for the end of the semester. Our piece has to be about our experience in Prague as an Erasmus student. I still don’t know what I am doing for this project yet, but I really want to do something with ink & watercolor on different languages, since I am surrounded by so many friends that all speak different languages every day. We shall see, I will also keep you posted on this project!

Fridays are my free day which makes me absolutely ecstatic because I have never had a Friday off in my four years of college because studio is ALWAYS on Friday.

In the next post: the night at the Opera, night at the hookah bar, and my first Czech Hockey Game.

Love you all!

Xoxo-S 

2 More Weeks & South Bohemia

So I know I promised I would blog more often, I'm really trying to work on it, but I also realize that it's been two weeks since my last, and I have no idea how that happened. I mean I guess it's true what they say, time flies when you are having fun.

Well I left off at Moravia and the end of my first weekend.......Week 2 was definitely non eventful other than a few parties here and there, and the partying and staying out late finally caught up with me and I got really sick for a couple days. And then came the second weekend, and another trip with ISC, this time to South Bohemia. Only a two day trip this time, but visiting three cities. It was quite an amazing trip filled with some great memories and beautiful towns. And so the story begins.......

We departed from Prague and headed to the small town of Hluboká. Upon arrival to Hluboká we were let loose to find our own lunch, and were told to meet at the top of the hill at the castle later in the afternoon. So we wound our way around the town and found a small little restaurant that mainly served different kinds of game. Sarah had the duck, and it almost made me puke because they served it with the neck on it still. Disgusting. I stuck with fried cheese and fries, always a good choice. After lunch we walked around the cute little hillside town for awhile and finally made our way towards the castle, curving around and up the hill. It was quite a trek, but it was beautiful outside with blue skies and sun, so I couldn’t complain. Once arriving at the castle, it was pretty breathtaking so we walked around the grounds and took some photos of it, the white façade almost seemed to beam with energy in the sun. 

We then had a guided tour of the interior, although sadly we couldn’t take pictures. This particular castle was owned by the Schwarzenberg family, they own a lot of castles throughout the Czech Republic, including Prague Castle. This family was very into hunting and would have massive hunting parties gather at this castle in Hluboká. Almost every square inch of the castle was covered with antlers or other animals that had been preserved by taxidermy. The architecture of the interior was completely amazing. There was so much detailed woodwork and beautiful ceramic fireplaces. We only got to go into a few rooms, but it was definitely a very cool experience. After leaving the castle it was back to the bus and on to České Budějovice for the Budweiser (Budvar) tour.

All of you State side people know Budweiser as the great American brewery complete with Clydesdales and the largest brewery in America, well in all actuality the Budweiser name was coined to this Czech beer long before Budweiser in the States existed. We got to tour the brewery and see where they brew the beer, bottle it, label it, and wash the recycled bottles. It was very cool. And then of course the best part came at the end when we got to have a tasting! The beer was so cold and delicious because it had just came out of the refrigerated storage tanks. After the brewery we headed on a walking tour of the city of České Budějovice. This city was so quaint and adorable I quickly fell in love with it. 

We just spent a couple of hours strolling around. One of the trip leaders, Petra, had friends that lived in this city, two brothers that were amazingly nice enough to show us around the town a little bit. They told us a few little stories about the town, such as in the town square there is a stone and it’s called the lost stone, it is said if you step on it after 10p you will get lost and not make your way home that evening. So I stepped on it, but it was before 10p. J They then showed us a great place to get coffee and gelato and joined us for good conversation. It was a great afternoon spent with great people. Then again it was time to head back to the bus and on to our final destination of the trip, Český Krumlov.

By the time we arrived to Český Krumlov, it was dark, and we somehow had no idea where our hostel was. We wandered around the city for just a little while, on the way we crossed the Vltava and turned slightly on the bridge and were struck with the beautiful image of the castle built into the rock, it seemed to be all lit up just for us. 

We finally snaked up a couple more roads and discovered our hostel, and were glad to drop our bags and have promise of food in the near future. Once we got a little settled and paperwork was taken care of, we chose our roommates and went up to make our beds and put our bags in the room. This may have been the cutest hostel I have ever stayed at. You walked upstairs to get to the rooms and it was almost like a little dollhouse. I ended up sharing a room with Disa, Anna, Rachel, Sarah, Christoph, Daniel, and Torbjörn. We made our way back downstairs and it took forever to be served dinner, and it was cold and not good, so we quickly ordered big beers and started having a good time. After having a few beers at the hostel, our trip leaders took us to a little night club just a block or so away from our hostel. It was your typical small town Czech night club; we are coming to know them a little too well. Slightly creepy, filled with townies, and not fun until you have had a few. At this point I will mention our awesome bus driver who came to the club with us. She was probably 40 or so and hilarious, she kept dancing on everyone and buying everyone shots, and was completely wasted! So basically our group took over the club by dancing in a huge circle on the tiny dance floor and kept requesting ridiculous American music like Katy Perry and Lady GaGa. At some point us girls from my room decided to make our exit and head back to the hostel, we ended up staying up late and having girl talk while the boys were still at the club. At some point we all fell asleep and Christoph came back and woke us up by somehow breaking the door handle, and then we all fell asleep again, and then Tobbe and Daniel woke us up by the door handle falling again. Morning definitely came too early, but we were excited to walk around the beautiful little town. We had a guided tour that morning of Český Krumlov. 

It was so incredibly beautiful that it’s so hard for me to put into words! It is my new favorite city, second to Prague of course. The cobblestone streets just weave in and out as the Vltava beautifully curves back and forth carving the city into its little shape with the castle at the top of the hill looming over the city, but beautifully built into the hill. The walking tour took us all around the city, and then up to the castle and through the many courtyards there. The view from the castle was absolutely breathtaking, just looking down on all of the little red roofs, with the river curving around, and the mountains in the distance. It was definitely nothing short of amazing. 

After our tour we were set free to walk around the city for a few hours. We found a great Italian restaurant to eat at, and then just moseyed around the town enjoying the wonderful sunshine and discovering little niches of the city. We hopped in and out of little shops finding some great things; my first find was a Czech cookbook that was actually in English! I was so excited. As we made our way back to the hostel, we had some time to kill and realized there was an art gallery right down the street. We wandered in and discovered they had some really small prints of local art all matted and ready to frame. We rifled through the stacks, finding some really great prints of Prague and Český Krumlov. I always love finding local art from the city I am in, and this made my trip ten times better. We then met back at the hostel to get our bags and headed back to the bus and back to our beloved Praha. It’s always nice to get back to Praha, I can’t believe how much it feels like home these days.

When I returned to Prague I was definitely excited to have a package from my mom! Of course the most important part of the package was the medicine she sent me, but let’s not forget the 2 boxes of Girl Scout cookies! And of course my favorites Thin Mints & Peanut Butter Patties! I love you MOM!

Here's more photos from the trip.

South Bohemia

Until next time.....I love you all, miss you more than you know, and am still having the time of my life.

xoxo

S

26 Days, a Laundry Mat, and Moravia

So now I find myself 26 days into my adventure, and I haven’t blogged since the 5^th day. I still feel like I just got here and almost can’t believe I have been here for nearly a month. So much has happened since my last blog, so I won’t make this one extremely long, I promise to post a new one every couple days. Let me just talk about the rest of my first week here and my first trip away from Prague.

I would not say that this day was my worst day since getting to Praha because I don’t think I can have a completely terrible day here, but it was on the top of my not so fun days. After being here for a week, and getting ready to go on a weekend trip, Caitie and I decided to venture out and find a Laundromat. Well it seemed easy enough. We loaded up our rolling suitcases because that seemed to be the smart thing to do. We then went one stop up on the metro….And proceeded through some crazy construction, to only find the laundry mat that we found online abandoned. So we hauled our stuff back to the metro to try Plan B. We got off the Metro at the right stop, but then got confused and went down the wrong street, then turned back…Finally found it in this really posh mall. Which confuses the hell out of me why a laundry mat would be in a mall, but anyway, at least we found it. We then waited on everything to get done, and it cost about $15 which isn’t too bad considering I actually got to dry all of my clothes. I was worried I wouldn’t be able to dry my jeans and that upset me greatly. After our laundry fiasco we decided to just get a snack. So we popped into McDonalds, with our luggage mind you, just to get a sandwich or something. Well the menu was in Czech and we couldn’t figure out how to order just a sandwich, or just fries, so we ended up ordering a value meal. Although I mistakenly ordered two number twos because I was gesturing that I wanted a number two and she thought I meant two of them. And then Caitie ordered another value meal, so we had 3 for 2 of us. We felt like fatties because the lady supersized our order, which means we got a large coke, a sandwich, a large fry, and an order of fried cheese. Needless to say we took most of the food home with us and decided to not go out the rest of the day because we decided we would just screw something else up. But by the way, McDonalds fried cheese is AMAZING.

The next day we left for Moravia, which as I mentioned before is in the eastern part of the Czech Republic. Quite a few people I already knew went on the trip, and I met so many more amazing people. On the trip we visited four towns and many different sites along the way as well. The first day we left campus at around 7:45a and headed to the town of Kutna Hora. Once arriving there we visited the Italian Court, which was the main silver mint back when they started making Czech money. It had some beautifully painted ceilings and wall frescoes and was interesting to see the different coins that each King put into circulation. They actually had a guy reenacting how they stamped the small pieces of metal. When we were done there we went to a small restaurant and ate lunch. I am still so in love with the food here, especially this red cabbage that they make and serve with meats and dumplings, it is delicious. After lunch we made it towards St. Barbara’s Cathedral. At this point I must mention there were about 4-5 inches of snow on the ground and it was still snowing. We had had a mini snowball fight when we got off of the bus, but walking to the cathedral became an all out war. Everyone was ambushing everyone else. Even another tour group of French students joined in. But they waved a white flag and called a truce. We finally made it inside of the cathedral and walked around looking at the absolute beauty of it. I still can’t believe how beautiful all of these old Cathedrals and churches are. After that, our trip leaders, Martin and Tomas, decided we should have a snowman building competition, so we split into teams, preferably into teams of people that didn’t know each other. So we spent about 45 minutes making snowmen…My groups sort of looked like ET. After that we headed back to the bus and on through the town to Kostnice. Which roughly translated means the Bone Museum. It is an old church that has all of these bones arranged in chandeliers and into interesting shrine like things. All of the bones were from people that died during the plague in the 14^th century and there was a high demand to be buried in the cemetery the church rests on. So they were all piled in this church. In the 18^th century a half blind monk was hired to assemble the bones of the 40,000 dead people into sculptures. And that is what you see today. Kind of eerie and morbid and ridiculously cool all at the same time. After Kostnice it was off to Olomouc.

We didn’t arrive to Olomouc until around 7p. We arrived and dropped our bags at the dorms we were staying at, which were a lot like ours, but a lot nicer. After that we ate dinner at the Olomouc Town hall and enjoyed a few beers. It was nice to sit and chat and get to know people a little better. Around 10 we made our way to a small club in town. The walk through town was quite beautiful after dark and we found a very beautiful spot in the middle of town. Almost every town in the Czech Republic has a Plague Column, they are tributes to the many people that died in the Czech Republic from the Black Plague. We turned a corner and were greeted with this beautiful column that was lit just right and also from behind, so it just became this beacon of light. We took it as a photo op and came out with a great shot from Diana’s camera. We finally made it to the club and it was a little sketchy, but we weren’t too worried so we started to enjoy ourselves. Like most clubs here it was completed with techno music and a stripper pole. But we realized that upstairs there was more of a lounge type setting and we went up there and waited on everyone else to show up while enjoying Heineken and the conversation. When everyone else showed up we hit the dance floor and got a little crazy as usual. Somehow by the time we left me and Caitie remembered how to get back to our dorm and realized that we had some interesting roommates. Our roommates happened to be the trip leaders, Martin and Tomas. And when we got back from the club they decided to run around our flat in their boxer briefs and boxers respectively. Needless to say we made it to sleep by 4a and woke up at 7a.

The next morning, day two of the trip, we awoke and had a walking tour of the city of Olomouc.  The town was very pretty, but I enjoyed walking around it more at night. After the tour we all piled on the bus and drove forever to a cave called Macocha in the middle of nowhere in the mountains. It had continued to snow so there was probably about 6 inches or more of snow on the ground. On the way to the cave there was a car stuck in the ditch so our bus driver stopped and we pulled the car out. I will take the time now to say our bus driver was amazing. He didn’t speak English but he just smiled at all of us really precious like. At Macocha there is an underground river called the Punkev that runs through part of the cave. There were these really fabulous rock formations within, all kinds of stalactites and stalagmites. Once we got to the river we got into a boat and road it through the rest of the cave, nearly missing many low hanging formations. The reflections from the top of the cave to the water were absolutely breathtaking. After we were finished at the cave we made our way to Mikulov.

Once arriving in Mikulov we dropped our bags at the hostel and got ready for the evening. We went to a wine cellar on top of the hill in Mikulov. It was in this old little house that was built into the side of the hill so there was rock on the inside of it that met with the man made walls, it was pretty amazing. They then served us a delicious dinner of pork and potatoes, and a red and a white wine. After the main course they brought out potato pancakes that were absolutely delicious. During this time we were testing many different wines. I think we tasted around 6 or so, most of them were pretty good. After the potato pancakes and during the wine tasting they brought us some smoked ham and cheese. I swear we ate so much that night. We left kicked the winery at around midnight. Diana, Lauri, Tobbe, and I decided not to go with the group back to the hostel, so we wandered around and found a little hole in the wall pub to get a few beers at. We stayed there for a couple hours enjoying ourselves and our conversation. We then were walking back to the hostel and found a dance club. We ran into a few people from our trip and stayed there until they kicked us out at 5a.

The next morning we didn’t have anything scheduled so we slept in and took our time getting ready because we weren’t leaving for Brno until 11:30 or so. So we finally left for Brno and it was only about a 45 minute drive. We got to Brno and ate lunch and walked around the city a bit. After that we made our way to the top of the city to Spilberk Castle. We toured the dungeon there and it was pretty cool. And it was still snowing so we were examining all of the snowflakes and they were so perfect it was unreal. After the tour we made the short trip back to our bus, and got ready for our return to Praha. All of us exhausted and ready to be back in our dorms.

I know this is incredibly long, but I hope you made it through it. I will hopefully fill you in on more of my adventure very soon, there are many other things to catch you up on! So stay tuned for another installment. Until then…..Here are some picture from the city of Prague, and from Moravia, and some of my incredible friends. And don't worry, I'm really not drinking all that much! :)

Prague

Moravia

Friends

More Friends

xoxo

-S

It's Finally Real

I'm finally here and have been for 5 days now. It's hard to believe that we are here, and at the same time it's hard to imagine not being here. I've already fallen in love with the city, my school, and the people. So much has happened in the past six days that it's hard for me to write it all here. 

I suppose I will start with the beginning of my journey. I like to call it delayed flights and lost luggage. Our first flight was delayed, making us almost miss our first connecting flight. Then that flight was late getting to London, so we almost missed our flight to Prague. I think the most funny part of my travel is a tie between getting made fun of by Brits on my transatlantic flight and running through the London Heathrow airport without shoes on. It was a long journey to say the least and we finally arrived in Praha, about 16 hours after leaving Kansas City. I traveled with Jason, and we met up with a lot of other friends on the flight from London. Baggage claim was a nightmare. My worst fear of losing my luggage actually happened. Jason and I's were both lost in Philadelphia, so we had to fill out some paperwork with a sort of unpleasant Czech lady. 

We then met up with our Czech buddies who were preciously waiting for us all in a little group. We then made our way to our home for the next four and a half months by way of bus. We are all living in Masarykova Kolej. The next few hours were full of paperwork and running around campus. Filling out dorm agreements, getting student id cards, and metro passes. My buddy was very helpful with all of this! :) I had intentions of a nap after so much commotion, but came back to find my roommate Caitie, who I know from KSU leaving for IKEA with her buddy, so of course I tagged along. We just went for necessities such as sheets, hangers, a blanket, and a towel. Once back from shopping we went to dinner not far away from campus at a sandwich type place called Boulevard Crocodile. This was my first attempt at ordering food in Czech, I failed miserably. I have plenty of time to practice though! We then got my first Czech beer in the pub in the basement of our dorm, it was delish, but I was so tired we went to bed by midnight.

We slept for 13 hours, and awoke ready to venture out into the city. I went to the city center with my two roommates from KSU, Caitie and Winifred, and two French boys both named Cyril that Caitie had met already. The city center is beautiful. 


It’s so hard to explain what it’s like walking around such a beautiful old city with cobblestone streets and sidewalks and buildings from the 9^th century passing you by. We found a perfect restaurant that served traditional Czech food. My first Czech meal was potato dumplings with smoked meat and cabbage. And of course a beer. My favorite beer is dark Budvar. 

Me and Winifred then made our way to the Vltava River, which runs through the city. It beautifully curves along the streets revealing glimpses of the red roof buildings. 

That night we went out with a few of our KSU friends Czech buddies to a place called Image Bar. A bunch of international students went out that night so I met people from Germany, Finland, Netherlands, and France. And also more students from the Czech Republic. In Prague they love 80’s and 90’s American music. We danced to it at Image bar for awhile while downing delicious Czech beer called Gambrinus. I also experienced a new shot called a B-52. It’s Baileys, Kahlua, and Absinthe and then you light it on fire and stick a straw in it and take it as fast as you can because the straw catches on fire. Scary, but so fun and delicious. We then made our way to Lucerna Music Bar. They were having an 80’s & 90’s Video Dance party. It was ridiculously fun and sweaty. We danced on stage the whole time we were there…For about 4 hours! We then made it home by way of tram at around 3:30 am. Thankfully our Czech friends show us the way home since we are not familiar with the tram system yet. 

When we got back to Masarykova I looked in the office and realized my luggage had been delivered and was very ecstatic to get it the next morning!

Day 3 was uneventful because I caught up more on sleep. Although we did go to a really delish Chinese restaurant that is really close to our dorm. My KC friends think Kin Lin! It's very good and cheap, which is always nice.

Day 4 was the beginning of orientation week. We had a meeting introducing us to the college and International Office. I know that I chose the right place to study after this meeting. Me and Diana ate lunch at a restaurant that afternoon, and the whole menu was in Czech. Thankfully we know how to ask if you speak English and our waitress did and translated the menu for us. We ended up ordering the same thing and it was delicious. I haven't tasted anything here yet I haven't liked. That evening we went to a welcome party for the International Student Club. It was at PM Bar and all of us traveled from the dorms together. It was quite an interesting journey getting 40 people on the same train at the metro. At PM Bar we had dinner and of course. We stayed until almost 1 so we had plenty of time to meet lots of new people. I met more people from all over the world and am realizing this is going to be even more of an experience than I originally expected. I’ve met so many great people, and although some of their English is broken, it’s fun to be able to communicate and find out where everyone is from and what they are studying and everything. We made our way home again by tram, thanks to our Czech friends. 

Our morning meeting came way too early. Although it was good to find out what courses we can take. They do things a little differently here in the Czech Republic with their courses. You can go to any classes you want in your faculty the first week of class, and then at the end of the week, you register for the classes you liked. And also there are over 20 studios to choose from. I am going to take the interiors studio, although a couple of the architecture studios seemed interesting as well. It may be a tough decision. Later today we had a presentation on Czech culture and also all of the activities that ISC does. And they also presented the trips that are offered during Orientation Week. I am taking a trip to Moravia, which is Eastern Czech Republic, and also a trip to South Bohemia which is the area south of Prague.

And this ends my ridiculously long post. I have been able to Skype a lot today with family and that makes me happy. And also makes me realize that I am living in a completely different world right now. But I also couldn't be happier. Until next time. 

-S