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.

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.