Frostbite & Bones: the Kutna Hora trip

Today we went to Kutna Hora, a town about an hour and a half outside of Prague. The town dates back to medieval times, so there was an interesting mix of baroque, neo-gothic architecture, with some communist-built buildings thrown in for good measure. It was bitterly cold, so my fingers and toes went numb pretty fast, and the first part of the tour - a visit to a gothic cathedral called St. Barbara's, and a silver mining museum (The town has a really rich history of mining - it initially prospered as the first site of currency production in the Czech Republic) - dragged on a little bit, although everything was still really interesting to see.

St. Barbara's Cathedral. This was built sometime in the 14th century.

After that, we went to lunch at a Czech-Mex restaurant. The fajitas tasted good, but the chips and guacamole consisted of...Doritos. I kid you not. It was an interesting, interpretation, to say the least. We then continued onto the Bone Church, which was the reason I signed up for this trip in the first place. Basically, the church is decorated with the bones of about 40,000 people. I think it's best to let the pictures speak for themselves. (Note: I'm not exactly sure why photobucket/blogger refuses to display the whole photo, or why that photo of the chandelier is sideways. If I can fix it, I will.)

Snow and other things

We got somewhere between six and eight inches of snow over the past few days. Everyone has been raving about how gorgeous Prague is in the snow, and I was inclined to agree with them for the first few hours that the snow was actually sticking to the ground. A day later, the snow has turned into half-melted New York-esque sludge, and I feel like I'm back in the city. It's a good thing my boots are waterproof.

I'm slowly adjusting to being here, although I'm starting to wonder when I'll be brave enough to eat out somewhere that isn't one of the vegetarian restaurants we found by campus. We've got a few big cooking projects in mind though (goulash, lasagna (with GF noodles!) that kind of thing...) so I'm definitely able to get by without going out, if I want.

Tomorrow we're going to Kutna Hora, which starts my next few weekends of traveling. The 3 weekends after that it's Western Bohemia, Budapest, and then (tentatively) Vienna, which should be exciting, but I'm going to be exhausted by the end of February. Budapest is definite now though, which is something else to look forward to.

Welcome to the Czech Republic, how may I not help you?

So after my two classes today (International Reporting seems like it's going to be great, and I'm sort of excited for History of Nationalism, but not as much) I set out for a trek out of my little Old Town bubble to the post office where the package I received was being held. I managed to find the post office without a problem, although it was about a 25 minute walk. However, when I got there, I get sent to four different lines before they refuse to actually give me my package because I don't have my passport on me. Apparently the 4 other forms of photo ID I had on me didn't count. The lady behind the counter knew exactly one English word - "passport" - and I can successfuly use about four phrases in Czech (one of them being "ice cream") so I'm now extremely thankful to the person behind me in line who was nice enough to translate. I still left extremely frustrated with Czech bureaucracy, although not as much as I was after I applied for my visa. Oh well. It was an adventure.

what if I don't want to let it snow?

After roughly three months of complaining that it isn't winter if I can go outside jacket-less, while wearing shoes with no socks, I checked weather.com this morning to find that it's expected to snow in Prague tomorrow. It's January, so this is expected, right?

Why am I suddenly not looking forward to it?

I feel like I've gotten very used to global warming, but I guess I was wrong. Part of me secretly wanted a winter without snow, one without cold. I wanted winter without it actually being that. I guess that won't be happening this year.

Classes started today. I only had one this morning, my Varieties of Contemporary European Culture class. It seems like it'll be really interesting, and it's nice and small - only about 15 people, which I'm certainly not complaining about after a semester in a 150 person lecture on Zionism. I'd rather not be a number if I don't absolutely have to. After lunch and a Tesco run with Emily, I'm killing time in the computer lab until my Travel Writing class at 4:30. I'm looking forward to this one, because it's one of my two journalism classes. Supposedly they're splitting it into two sections because so many people wanted to take this class, and if one is a little earlier (assuming it doesn't conflict with this other class I'm in) I might switch into it to make this gap in between classes slightly less awkward. We'll see.

Tomorrow I have International Reporting, my other journalism class, and History of Nationalism. I got to meet the IR teacher the other day, and the class sounds really interesting, because it's going to be a little less theoretical and a little more hands-on, which seems right up my alley. We'll see how those two actually go tomorrow though.

Tonight is the big group welcome dinner in the castle, and while my experiences with Czech food have been less than stellar so far, I'm really looking forward to actually seeing the inside of the castle, seeing as we didn't actually get to do that on the tour.

Greetings from the new Windy City

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/18/world/europe/18cnd-europe.html?ex=1326776400&en=c5dad3a3fd3b5703&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

We didn't get a lot of the rain but the winds from this did hit the Czech Republic, and they were really intense - I kept thinking our kitchen window was going to blow in, and I almost got blown up against a building a few times when we ventured outside to go to the grocery store, but everything is a lot calmer now.

Yesterday we went on a tour of the Prague Castle area, but we didn't get to see the actual castle since it was closed, as was the cathedral that was attched to it, although that was gorgeous from the outside. The castle is up on a hill on the other side of the river, which made it even more windy and cold up in that area, although it was absolutely gorgeous, and we got a beautiful view of the other side of the city of Prague (the part where classes are, and where we live):



That view was easily one of my favorite parts of Prague so far.

After the tour, we went to a hockey game - it was our "cultural event" for the week (as opposed to going to the opera or the philharmonic) and it was a lot of fun as well. I wasn't sure what I was expecting, but the stadium was really nice - definitely nicer than where the Islanders are. Everything seemed really new. Slavia, the Prague team, lost, mostly because they didn't play well at all, but the game was still fun to watch. There was much less fighting than American hockey (I think I saw two fights total) and a lot more advertisitng. At first, I kept trying to figure out why both the icea nd the players' jerseys looked different than in the NHL, until I realized that there was a ton of advertising on both. Even the referees' jerseys and the cheerleaders had ads (both were sponsored by O2 and yes, there were cheerleaders/dancers, and they performed during the break between the first and second periods - I was shocked that they could stunt on the ice, even if it wasn't that complicated.)

Everyone wanted to go out after the game, since it was only 9:30 or so by the time we got out of there, a group of 20 or so of us headed up to Holešovice, the neighborhood where one of the other dorms is. After a brief detour in which we accidentally left one of the guys we were with on the train when we had to switch lines, we went this bar/club, Crossbar, that a lot of the kids who live there (and some people who live in our dorm) had recommended, but we were all thoroughly sketched out by it, and left about 5 minutes after we got there. It was full of all these crazy scupltures, and a lot of people who seemed much more at home there than we ever would have, and it wasn't because we were American. Emily said something about it being a place where they'd film a horror movie, and she was definitely right. It was like something I would have had a nightmare about. I'm not sure what those Osadni kids were talking about, but we couldn't get out of there fast enough.

We got back on the metro, which was thankfully right there, and headed back towards our side of town. Everyone decided to go to a club, so Emily and I just headed back to the dorm, since that's not really our kind of thing. We hung out in the suite with a few people, and I learned how to use Skype, which was really awesome, and it's free, which was cool in itself. Needless to say, if you want to talk to me, that's probably one of the best ways to do it.

We're going bowling tonight. Let's see if I'm as bad as it in Europe as I am in the U.S.

Tours and Trips

Yesterday we went on a tour of the Old Town. I've spent the last week or so walking through the area every day, because that's where our classes are located, but learning about the area from a historical perspective was fascinating. It was founded around the 1400s, during the reign of Charles IV, so there are layers and layers of history, and some really cool architecture - anyone into that would have had a field day on this tour. We also got to go onto the Charles Bridge, which I definitely want to try and walk all the way across this weekend.


Astronomical Clock


One of the Cathedrals on Old Town Square


View from the Charles Bridge. I feel like this would be really gorgeous at sunset.

We're about to leave for a tour of the Prague Castle, so there will be more pictures of that later.

Also, I skipped my last day of czech class because we had to sign up for trips, and we had to get to the NYU Center early to line up so we could get the ones they wanted, becuase they all had limited spaces. (And after that, I wanted to come back here and sleep.) After a mad dash to all the sign up lists to get what we wanted, the beginning of my travel list is:

Kutna Hora (the town with the Bone Church) - January
Western Bohemia - February
Cesky Krumlov (small town in Southern Bohemia) - March
Terezin - April

I think that's everywhere I'm traveling in the Czech Republic as of now. There's also a tentative trip to Budapest in the works for February, so I'm looking forward to that.

Jewish Prague

Today after Czech class, Emily, Rachel, and I went on a tour of Prague's Jewish quarter, which is just off Old Town Square. It was interesting to see, because Prague has a rich and storied Jewish history, which was all but wiped out during World War II (the Terezin ghetto is not far from the city) so now, aside from the surviving synagogues and the old Jewish cemetary, the area looked like 5th Avenue in Manhattan, with it's Louis Vuitton, Hugo Boss, and Lacoste shops, among others, albeit it looked like a 5th Avenue with fairy tale-like buildings. It was an interesting dichotomy.

Our tour guide was a walking encyclopedia of the Jewish history of Prague and Eastern Europe, which was kind of fascinating in itself, but the synagogues and cemetary we visited were incredible. The first one we visited, the Maisel Synagogue, was built in 1590, and was an interesting mix of Renaissance, Baroque, and somewhat Gothic architecture, from all the times int was renovated and destroyed, and there was an exhibit detailing the eary history of the Bohemian and Moravian Jewish ghettos. The Klausen Synagogue, also from the 1500s, was interesting to see as well, as was the Pinkas Synagogue, which was turned into a Holocaust memorial, with all of the names of Czech Holocaust victims written on the walls. There were at least 80,000 names, and they covered the walls of the synagogue. It was extremely moving, and it reminded me of back when Dad and I did the readings in the middle of the night for the Yom Ha'Shoah ceremonies at the temple.

The most fascinating part of the tour, and one of the spookiest, was the Old Jewish Cemetary, which was built in the 15th century. There are at least 12 layers of people buried there from the 1400s-1700s, one right on top of the other, and there are at least 12,000 tombstones, and that's not even one from everyone there. It was a little spooky to be there, just thinking about how many people had been buried there, including some prominent Jewish figures from that time period.





This last one isn't in the cemetary, but it's a picture of the Old Jewish Town Hall. You can't really see it here, but on the other side of that clock is a Hebrew one, which moves in a counter-clockwise direction to follow the Hebrew letters.

Czech Class, Day 3

I don't have a good ear for languages, which consequently means I'm not particularly good at Czech. I know we've only been learning it for 3 days, and that it's a really hard language, but it's a bit frustrating at times, since my mouth just can't seem to make half of the sounds it needs to. There's a lot of diacritical marks over the letters, which completely change the pronunciation of the letter, and in certain cases, such as the difference between R and Ř (note the little mark on top), where it changes from a normal, English-sounding pronunciation of "R" to some sound I can't even quite describe. It's more of a "rjjjzzzzhhh." I'm not quite sure where they got that one from, because it doesn't even sound like what you think any kind of R would.

At least now I can remember certain words, even if they are the really easy ones. I was kind of proud of myself when I asked for a "voda" (water) last night when we went out to dinner, even if that's one that sounds reasonably like English, or barring that, some kind of romance language.

Now as soon as I stop saying "excuse me" to people in English when I'm on the metro, it'll all be okay.

getting lost is the only way to find your way around

Note to self: Next time I'm on a tram, make sure that I get on going in the right direction, because I shouldn't cross the Vltava River, gorgeous as it may be, when I'm on my way home from class. That was an experience.

Orientation has been interesting so far. We went to Old Town Square yesterday, which is the big tourist center. Classes are in a building located just off the square, and that's really nice too. I seem to be learning my way around, but not knowing Czech is getting kind of interesting. Today we started intensive classes, but there's only going to be so much I'm able to pick up. At least now I can say please and thank you.

I felt particularly lost when Emily, Rachel, and I went food shopping yesterday at Tesco, a British import which seems to be analogous to Wal-Mart. I don't think I've ever been so excited to see American toothpaste and shampoo brands in my entire life, even if most of the labels on them were in Czech. Food shopping was a bit challenging, mostly because we didn't know enough Czech to tell what certain things were. Groceries are cheap here though, which is always nice.

On the same food note, I was super excited today to find Schar, this really good (and very European and not really available in the States) GF brand at this pharmacy near our dorm. It made me feel a little better about surviving in a country where everything seems to involve bread.

Today I finally got a hair dryer, which was a bit of an adventure in itself. I didn't want to get one at Tesco, where they were about 1000 crowns (roughly $50 American) so I went to this Radio Shack/Best Buy-ish electronics store next door. Nobody there spoke English very well, so it was a lot of pointing and sign language. Easy enough, until I paid and went to the back of the store with my receipt to actually pick up my hair dryer, where I proceeded to wait on a line for at least 15 minutes, while everyone else patiently waited for me (which I felt kind of bad about) with no one around to help the rapidly forming line of people waiting to get whatever they'd just purchased. It felt a little bit communistic, in a way.

I also got a phone, which I'm super excited about, because I feel a little more connected to the world. It was also cheaper than the U.S., which is a good thing, since I'm only using it for four months. It's with a company called Vodafone, which doesn't service the U.S., and all of the students on the program had cleaned the store closest to the Center out of the cheaper phones, so we went to Wenceslas Square (the center of the tourist area) to find another Vodafone outlet, and just took the metro home from there, after a detour to Citibank, because the other bank refused to cash my traveler's checks.

Tomorrow we have more intensive Czech, and I need to buy a metro pass, since I didn't get around to doing that today. Emily and I tried, but it didn't exactly work out, since the crazy lady running the booth tried to send us to a station that was on a different train line, and we didn't feel like heading all the way there when we'd been running around all day, and I don't think either of us were in any mood to find our way there after such a long day.

not as delirious, but still jet lagged

It's 8:31 on the morning of my second full day in Prague, and as far as my body's concerned, it's 2:31 a.m. and I should still be sleeping. I can't quite adjust to this whole time change thing. I couldn't sleep for most of the plane ride to Paris, and I napped for a few hours yesterday afternoon, even though everyone said you shouldn't, if you're trying to adjust to a new time zone. This led to me sleeping for about two hours last night, and then waking up for another almost-three before I could fall back asleep (for not as long as I'd like) because I'm still on New York time, even if I'm an ocean away. A full day of orientation activities should be fun when I'm running on this much sleep.

I'm here!

So after a very blurry day of travelling, I'm finally here. Still very jet lagged and kind of disoriented, but I'm here. It hasn't really registered with me that I'm in Europe yet, even though all of the signs are in Czech and everyone outside of the dorm isn't speaking English. I guess it takes a while - maybe once all the jet lag wears off.

I got to JFK around 2ish yesterday afternoon, met up with Emily, went through security, and spent the next two hours waiting at the gate so we could board. Normally, I'd be calling everyone in my phone book, but I left my American cell phone back in New York, so I wouldn't call me on that until I get home in May. I won't be getting back to you anytime soon if you do. Verizon doesn't get service in the Czech Republic, so I'll be getting a cell phone here.

Since that wasn't an option, we mostly just hung out, got the requisite slightly trashy magazines, and I discovered just how bad I really am at sudoku. Really - the puzzles were easy and I kept having to start over. Maybe by the end of this trip I'll actually figure out what I'm doing.

The flight from JFK to Paris wasn't bad, it was just really long. The six or so hours dragged on for quite a while, especially since I couldn't sleep. My body was still on New York time, which meant that it was really confused when I was trying to fall asleep around 8:30, because I was trying to get on a European schedule, which meant that it was 1 a.m. or so. I spent most of the flight reading, watching bits and pieces of Little Miss Sunshine, and playing the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire game that came on the TV. I kept losing, because it was the UK version of the game and I only know so much British trivia, but eventually I won the million.

Transferring through Charles de Gaulle airport was kind of tricky. It wasn't that everything was that hard to find, it was just that we had to take two separate trams to get where we needed to go - on the exact opposite side of the airport from where we had landed. No one had any real idea of where we were going, so you had a bunch of really tired NYU kids wandering around the airport at 5 a.m. It was fun. We had to go through security again to get on our flight to Prague, but once we got on the plane, I slept for most of the flight, seeing as I still thought it was around midnight.

Customs went fairly quickly - all they did was check our visas. I now officially have a stamp in my passport, which is very exciting to me, even though it seems a lot of people in the program have been to Europe before. It took us a while to get out of the airport though, because some people lost their luggage, and they had to figure out where it was and when it could be delivered to the dorm before we could get out of there. The bus ride to the dorm is kind of blurry, mostly because the jet lag was starting to kick in.

We got to the dorm and found our room, which is all the way at the top. When they told us it would be on the fourth floor, I thought they meant it would be up four flights of stairs, but each floor has two separate landings, so if the elevator is always this slow, it looks like I'll be getting quite the workout this semester. We apparently have the smallest double in the building, but we get charged less for it, so it's okay, and the stairs up to the study lounge (which has the only accessible balcony I've ever seen in an NYU building) are right outside our door, which will be nice and convenient when I need to print something.

The dorm as a whole is nice - really clean, pretty spacious - and from what I've seen of the neighborhood, it's nice too. I napped for a few hours, even though I know that's not what you're supposed to do when you have jet lag, and then we went on a walking tour, which basically showed us where the subway is, as well as a pharmacy, grocery store, and some of the local bars. After that, Emily and I went back and checked out the grocery stores with a few guys from our dorm. I bought some gum, for under a dollar. Czech crowns still feel like monopoly money to me.

Spent the next part of the afternoon getting to know some people on the program - everyone seems nice so far, and there were a few people I knew from beforehand, which is always good. I'm still a little disoriented and confused, mostly because I didn't really sleep last night, so as far as I'm concerned, I'm still on the same day as yesterday. Everything is just running into one.

Orientation is jam packed with tours and Czech history, and of course, learning Czech. So far, the only thing I've learned is that none of the letters actually sound like what they look like, or how they're pronounced in English ("ck" makes the "tz" sound, to give you an example.)

This could make things interesting.