"Czeching" In On Eric

2006-02-10T20:40:00.000+01:00

I guess if you haven't realized this by now I'm back in the United States. I'm readjusting as best I can however the beer over here still is an issue. Jan Wiener was right all along, in his words its "chicken pee pee." Oh well. Over the next couple of weeks/ months I'm going to go back through my mind and pictures and try to figure out a few possible posts I can write. I noticed I really didn't talk about my trip to Paris or Madrid so I need to update those. I also feel like writing about some of the other lovely parts of my day (trams, eating in restaurants, Tesco) in the Czech Republic.

Until then,

Na Zdravi.

Eric

2005-12-21T23:17:00.000+01:00

Pictures of the awesome subway stations of Prague. I'll have more to post later when i actually find my camera.

2005-12-14T11:00:00.000+01:00

All right! Done and done. Tests are over with, papers are written now its just a few sweet days left of me and Praha! Today I'm doing some shopping. Tomorrow is "Eric's super communist sites tour," and Friday is everything else that I haven't seen in Prague! Oh yeah, I'll also be drinking my fill of pivo along the way! Its going to be a rude awakening when I arrive home and everything costs double or triple what it does here.

Oh well.

Na Zdravi!

Eric

2005-12-11T11:49:00.000+01:00

Further aiding my procrastination I went to mass today at the Strahov Monastery. It was quite intense. Robes, 30 altar boys, golden statues everywhere, and incense oh the incense! It was a lot of fun (well for a mass) and during the sign of peace you just smile and shake hands, no awkwardness about what the heck to say. It was nice.

Ok now I'm really going to study.

2005-12-10T23:05:00.000+01:00

Tak jo. I should be studying for my czech language exam but I decided to tell the story of Eric's trip to Plzen yesterday. After missing my train to Plzen due to some unfortuanetly timed tram delays I headed over to the 3rd circle of hell that is Florenc bus station. However my stay would not be long as I found a bus going to Plzen just minutes after arrival. After an hour an a half bus ride filled with studying for my exam and watching an episode of the British comedy Mr. Bean (the czechs thought this was hilarious) we arrived in Plzen.

Plzen is a really nice city in western Bohemia. Its the 4th largest city in the country and about the same population as Greensboro. It was primarily the pre-war home to the country's industrial heart. Later it also became the centerpiece of the communist 5-year plan in Czechoslovakia. Just some of the major industries included the Skoda heavy arms factory (the factory that produced the first howitzer cannons in WW1) and of course Plzensky Prazdroj the famous brewery that produces Pilsner Urquell.

This was the first city in the Czech Republic to be liberated from the Germans in WW2. Patton's army took control of the city and held their position there for weeks waiting for the Soviets to liberate the rest of the country. Today Patton's old headquarters is a giant memorial... interesting how Patton's headquarters was literally a block away from the largest brewery complex of the time in Europe.

Anyway, obviously I was in town to take the Pilsner Urquell brewery tour and I would not be deterred. I had gone on the Miller brewery tour in Milwaukee and was expecting something similar to my experience there. The Milwaukee brewery was for the most part old and ugly with giant brick buildings rising 10 stories up into the air. For a company that survived two world wars and communism let's just say I expected much worse.

Boy was I in for a suprise. The brewery complex that produces Pilsner Urquell is modern and beautiful. It still has most of the old structures and components used in the brewing process including the ancient water tower and the old original copper mash kettles which are larger than you would ever imagine. However the structures built around these processes are new and modern with everything computerized. It would make sense however that these would need to be much more efficient than Milwaukee considering that they produce more beer at this brewery in a month than in any other brewery in Europe.

After touring the modern facilities we got to tour the old brewing facilities which were quite complex. Much like wine cellars, beer in the past was kept underground for temperature purposes. One of the major brewing differences between Pilsner Urquell and other beers was that Urquell was aged and fermented for a longer period in huge oak barrels in these cellars.

Today they still produce an unfiltered Pilsner beer in these oak barrels using the traditionalbrewing methods. Luckily we got to taste the unfiltered beer right out of the barrel. It was great! Due to its unfiltered nature it was cloudy (due to the yeast) and also had more of a bitter taste to it. Supposedly there is a bar here in Prague that serves it so I'm going to go back after my tests this week.

After the brewery tour I walked around Plzen before my bus left. I visited the town square (the largest medieval square in Europe) with a lovely Christmas tree and also saw the Skoda works along with the 3rd largest synagogue in the world. All of these were located quite centrally so it made it easy to digest everything in the short hour before I had to leave back to Prague.

For a last trip, I think it was pretty successful. This week I should be done with all work and tests by Wednesday afternoon so I'm planning on doing a whirlwind trip of everything I haven't seen in Prague during those days. I'm even planning an "Eric's Grand Communism Tour" where I spot the best of the communist sites that most people never get to see (this is mainly due to the fact that they are far from the tourist areas) should be a lot of fun.

After that I'm flying back on Saturday and (with luck) should be back in Greensboro Saturday evening.

2005-12-10T03:24:00.000+01:00

Oh cruel fate.... why must you put them together? Tonight I heard more USA bashing than I have my entire time in the country. It was all about soccer though. You may ask why.

The world cup draw was tonight for the first rounds and here is good old group E. Probably the most talented group out there with the number two ranked team in the world ceska republika and the USA along with Italy and Ghana. It'll be tough for any of those teams.

Again, in a more compact format...

Group E
Italy
Ghana
United States
Czech Republic

2005-12-07T07:50:00.000+01:00

I dreamt last night that I met Rick Steves.... Something is seriously wrong with me.
It's currently paper time here in Prague. I'll do my best to update but I'm not promising anything.

Eric

2005-12-01T20:15:00.000+01:00

Sorry for the lack of posting. I've been very busy lately trying trying to get a bunch of papers done before next weekend. I plan on next weekend being my very last trip. This one will most likely be to the beautiful Cesky Krumlov.

Until then, enjoy this picture from when Margaret Hair and her friends came to visit from Paris. We took this lovely shot in Old Town Square after Margaret requested that we "do something czech." Joining me in the picture are Elizabeth and Anna. Anna is in fact from my hometown and lives literally minutes from my house. Small world.

Eric

2005-11-27T21:24:00.000+01:00

Tonight I decided to go to my first European football match. While I have watched "the beautiful" game on TV here many times, but this would be my first journey into the stadium. To answer your first question, yes they are still playing soccer at this time of the year. To answer your second question, yes it was cold, pretty darn cold. The fans were in good spirits however and had some interesting traditions including their post-half-time flare lighting. The game itself wasn't great. Slavia had about a million scoring opportunities and took advantage of none. The fans got quite upset about it and started taunting the goalie of the other team. The goalie I suppose had the last laugh when his team pulled out the 0-0 tie. He actually turned back to our section and made a quick motion of triumphat mockery.

Oh, and at the stadium I bought my first soccer scarf, which means I have officially pledged my alleigance to Sport-Club Slavia Praha. I never really understood why fans wore those scarves until tonight when there was snow in the stands and a brisk 18 degrees fahrenheit outside. As a final note, I lost feeling in my toes about halfway through the second half. However the tickets to the game were a grand total of 2 dollars so I most likely will go back. It was a lot of fun to just yell a lot with the other fans and really get a typically "european" experience where not a single soul speaks english.

One other interesting point: as you may expect there was decent security at the game to prevent a riot in the 18 degree weather or something like that. But anyway I think it was the policemen's night-off tonight or something because half of the crowd was made up of police in full riot gear that were definetly standing on the sidelines watching the game and in no way keeping an eye on fans. I think they just got into the game free with the riot gear on. In fact, some fans threw a snowball at some of them and actually hit one square on the helmet. It was pretty funny. Somehow I have a feeling this was the extent of Prague's version of football hooliganism, England should take a lesson.

2005-11-27T14:14:00.000+01:00

Pictures of the Christmas decorations around Prague...

2005-11-22T23:13:00.000+01:00

It's that time of year again! The release of the 2005 holiday guide to unsafe toys! Unfortuanetly this year's list contains no gems like "Bag O' Glass", "Johnny Spaceman", or "Doggie Dentist," but a fun group none the less. For those that didn't get that reference... oh well don't worry about it. See the report here, the report's name might be the most entertaining thing of all, "Trouble in Toyland 2005."

The cartoon character above is Krtek an anatomically incorrect mole who is a huge mascot here in the Czech Republic and a few other countries with slavic languages. Why he is sailing with Becherovka (a czech liquor) is beyond me. But hey, Bob a Bobek, another major cartoon here features two villians whose downfall always comes at the bottom of a bottle of beer. I suppose the czechs just don't really have the hangups with alcohol that we do in the US. But that's another issue all together.

Oh if you enjoyed my Poland update you'll get a lot more than that when I actually sit down either tomorrow or Friday and write out my adventures from Paris and Madrid. I had a special friend for my travels, my incredibly thin and compact cousin Katherine. So for those who always wanted to see me write a children's book you'll get first crack at the wonders that will soon be "Eric and Katherine take a trip to Paris and Madrid," published by Random House Children's Press.

I really should have done this long ago but a bunch of papers and tests got in my way. I hope my aunt Jill doesn't want to kill me for my tardiness in returning this report, however I will make up for it with my best effort yet!

Who knows, I might even get around to writing that long promised update for my Vienna trip after I am done with Paris and Madrid.

Eric

2005-11-22T11:36:00.000+01:00

So now on to part two of my trip to Krakow. If you missed the first part just skip to the post below.... I'll wait for you here...

Ok, now that we got that out of the way.... On my last day I decided to make the almost two hour trip to Auschwitz far to the east of Krakow. However, as I awoke I realized that the trip may actually take a bit longer than I epected due to the fact that it was snowing; hard. So after a few moments of thought I decided to set off for the Krakow bus station. Today however I would have a companion, Julia, a girl who is teaching Bratislava, Slovakia. On the long bus trip we discussed her experiences teaching english over there. She was pretty down on the experience mainly due to the fact that she has to teach middle-schoolers (she came over expecting to teach seniors in high school) who according to her refuse to learn to use articles and whose conversation strays no farther than Britney Spears and whether or not her baby will be "pretty."

After the two hour bus ride through the beautiful Polish countryside filled with old houses and newly constructed mansions we arrived. For clarity's sake, there are actually two "Auschwitzes." The first, known officially as Auschwitz was an old polish army base that was used primarily to hold large amounts of Polish soldiers. However it was the awful treatment of the Poles there that I guess really inspirational to the nazis and thus they decided to send 9 out of every 10 imprisoned Jews, Gypsies, Soviets, etc. in Europe there.

Obviously these huge numbers could not be held in a relatively small military base that the original Auschwitz was so they built Auscwitz II-Birkenau about a mile and a half from the original camp. There really isn't much to see there however. This was not a camp in any means of the word. It was little more than a giant, and I mean giant complex meant to be nothing more than a holding pen. The only truly memorable aspects of the camp is the giant front railroad station that is featured in Shinder's List and the remains of six gas chamber/ cremetoria ruins at the far end of the camp that were destroyed as the nazis left the camp and tried to cover their crimes.

It's understandable that most people would combine these two camps into one overall vision, especially since they are so close. However their stories are much much different. Auschwitz I seemed to be a place of great suffering and torture and backbreaking work. It was here that many of the nazi doctors carried out their experiments on prisoners and heroes like St. Kolbe were made. However Auschwitz II, while still a place of great suffering and torture was there for one purpose: death. People were not meant to last in Auschwitz II where as those in the first camp had no way to know what would be their end.

Overall it was a good experience to see the camps. One of the most surreal experiences was to see the end of the railroad tracks that began in Terezin the concentration camp outside of Prague. In essence the beginning and end of the last journey that millions would take. Very surreal and scary to think about.

After spending pretty much all day at Auschwitz, Julia and I returned to Krakow. We ate at one of the many "Milk Bars" that are scattered throughout the city. The milk bars are goverment subsidized restaurants serving local polish food for relatively nothing. My whole meal including soup, cabbae salad, globki, a fruit smoothie and dessert pierogies cost something like 4 dollars; awesome! Polish food, in my opinion far beats czech mainly due to the fact that vegetables actually feature heavily in the food. Now these vegetables are cabbage, rice, potatoes, tomatoes, and cucumbers, but hey, better than nothing. Oh, and Polish apples are delicious!

The rest of the night I hung out at the hostel and talked to both staff and other travellers. The whole trip that day had been incredibly tiring and i needed to unwind. Thankfully some of my friends I met from Finland helped quite a bit!

Very late that night I made my way back over to the train station. On my way I walked through the old town square one more time. As I exited the square, the sounds of the city tower trumpeter echoed through the streets making for a quite solemn end to my amazing trip to Poland.

Oh but don't worry, I brought a few memories back. Everything in Poland is so cheap that even though I only had about 85 dollars worth of Polish Kloyties I had quite a bit leftover which I could not exchange back. So did a little shopping before I left.

2005-11-21T22:19:00.000+01:00

Well, I did it. I sucessfully made it back to the family homeland that is Poland. While I did not have the time or patience to make it back to where my family hails from (outside of Vilinus which is now in Lithuania, 22 hour train or bus ride from Prague) I did make it to Krakow, Poland. For this trip I took some of my friend's suggestions and made the trip by night train which saves enough money to compensate for the additional charge for a sleeper car. But it was a good experience none the less and truthfully, the train was a great sleeping situation. It was like sleeping in a car in which you get to lay down. Also, once again the Cesky Drahy national railway service exceeded my expectations. With that said however my expectations are about as low as they could be for such travel.

I arrived in Krakow at about 5 in the morning and proceeded to exit the station and look for the tram service that the city has (no subway systems in a city of 800,000). I got on a tram and after riding around for a bit I noticed that I was going the wrong direction. In fact I was going in the direction of the large communist-era steel plant and the planned city around the plant in Krakow. See, when the Communists came to power I guess they were a little bit nervous about Krakow's reputation of creating a few intellectuals from their world famous university. In a good show of the people's spirit the goverment placed a huge steel plant (with plans supposedly stolen from Pittsburg) about 2 miles from the city center. Continuing to follow that people's spirit they decided to built a whole centrally planned community around the plant. Let's just say there is more concrete, smokestacks, and socialist realist art than I have ever seen in one spot in that little maybe square mile than anywhere else on earth. Well maybe there might be more in Moscow, but whatever. I wasn't able to take any good pictures because it was so dark (still only like 6:30 in the morning and I still had all my bags with me).

So anyway I got on the tram going the other way and made it to the hostel. The hostel was a lot of fun especially since it was situated in an old bunker! You know, in case the capitalists attack. Good food for breakfast, free internet, and a pretty nice place. Still can't beat that hostel in Berlin, but I think that might be the best hostel in the world.

So at this point I was ready for a little rest and took a two hour nap before starting the rest of my first day in Krakow. When I got up I packed my backpack and headed out for Krakow's old town. One of the best things about Krakow is the fact that the city's old town in situated inside what used to be city walls. When everyone realized that the Turks actually weren't attacking anymore they decided to tear them down and build parks where the wall used to be. So what was left is a great little greenway all around the main tourist area of the city.

The main square (read:tourist center) has three major sites: the Silk House, the city tower, and St. Mary's Cathedral. The first, the silk house has an interesting history. I guess Krakow became a big city due to the fact that the city was on a major east-west and north-south road. Well instead of charging a tariff or tax the local authorities would force traders and merchants to stay in Krakow for a day or two and sell their wares at a discount to locals. Well many of these traders were from the east trying to sell silk which is the reason for the name and is also a major reason for the design (you can see it in the first picture).

The second and third tourist attractions are actually a part of the same building. The two towers to the right are at the top of St. Mary's cathedral. The building is one of the many, and I mean many, Catholic churches in Krakow. St. Mary's is absolutely beautiful inside. However they insisted that I could not take pictures inside so I respected their wishes. Another interesting site in St. Mary's, and a real first for Europe was finding people actually praying in a church; and there were many people to boot!

Anyway, the city tower is the tower to the right in the picture. According to a legend the city was raided by some invaders so the local watchman played his trumpet to warn locals to the impending danger. His warning was cut short however when his throat was pierced by an arrow. So today every hour one of Krakow's finest police or firemen plays the trumpet. The tune is quite simple but about halfway through the tune gets cut off abruptly. Its really strange to hear a trumpet over the city, and its loud enough to hear from most of old town. Pretty cool.

After exploring the old town I walked the "Royal Walk" to Wawel (pronounced Va-vel) castle in the south of the city. Seriously, does every city in Europe have a royal/golden/king's walk?Seriously people, let's change it up. How about a peasant's walk or maybe a dissident's walk, I mean please.

So I walked the Royal Walk to the castle. The castle is on top of a big hill that seems to rise out of nowhere. Pretty neat. I went through the cathedral there and also some of the big squares inside the castle. There is a dragon myth and some other stuff. Kinda boring though. However there is one interesting fact about the hill. It turns out that Wawel castle actually is home to one of the seven great points of chakra or something like that. It is supposed to be situated in one distinct corner of the main square in the castle. You're supposed to feel extra energy there or something. I didn't feel anything but it did start snowing as I stood in the corner. Which reminds me, it was cold there. Not just cold, I'm talking COLD! But I did see snow so that was worth it.

Later that night I went out with a bunch of people from the hostel and enjoyed a bit too much of the Polish culture. The next day I would have a bit of a late start.

Despite my late start I decided to make my way to the Wieliczka salt mines about 45 mins outside of Krakow. After desending the longest set of stairs I have ever been on (3/4 of a mile down) we arrived at the first level of salt mines. The tour followed a route explaining the history of salt mining. I guess at one point a third of the country's income came from these mines. But we also got to see the amazing salt carvings done by the miners over time. There were over 50 rooms full of salt carvings of various things from Polish folk heroes to gnomes, to three fully functional churches! You can see an ok picture of one of the churches to the right. Remember all that stuff you see on the walls is salt. Pretty amazing huh?

I will, recount the rest of my trip tomorrow.

Eric

2005-11-14T22:17:00.000+01:00

Today I was walking back from class and I saw an interesting light shining from Charles Bridge. Intrigued, I went to go check it out. It turned out to be a movie that they were shooting on the bridge. They had a whole artificial rain set up and they were using giant smoke machines to create this crazy haze all over the bridge. Then I heard commands being shouted out in english and I knew something cool was up.

It ends up that they were shooting a few scenes from the remake of 1976's "The Omen." Interesting... The scene obviously was recreating a thunderstorm with someone arguing with another person on the bridge. They had extras running all over and had tons of water pouring down. You can sort of see the massive pipe system they had set up in the first picture.

Oh yeah, Thursday is international students day. It marks the day of the huge student protests in 1989 that were violently crushed by the former communist regime here in Prague. This violent incident would bring about the great theatre boycott and a day after that hundreds of thousands of people in Prague would gather in Wenseslas Square to bid adieu to the communist regime.

So long story short, we get off class. So I'm going to POLAND! Should be a lot of fun. After much thought I decided to go to Krakow over Warsaw. I actually decided my destination based on a coin toss. I'm really excited to visit what everyone told me was "Prague five years ago."

So in preparation I made myself dinner. Polish klobasa, sauerkraut, dark bread and mustard. Oh yeah, and a good pivo to wash it all down.

Eric

2005-11-14T12:24:00.000+01:00

So you were telling me you were interested in two of the most important figures in czech history huh? Well I just had to write down my czech homework (ukol) from last night. If there are any horrible grammatical mistakes I'm sorry.

The 12 sentences are about Charles IV and Masaryk (the czech's first president).

Karel IV byl synem ceskeho krale Jana Lucemburskeho. Do roku 1333 zil ve Francii a v Italii. Umel cesky, latinsky, nemecky, francousky, a italsky. Byl ceskym a nemeckym kralem a roku 1355 se stal rimskym cisarem. Mel ctyri zeny a dvanact deti. Zalozil universitu a nove mesto praske, nechal postavit krasne kostely, Karluv most i hrad Karelstejn.

Get all that? It was a good history lesson. Now for Masaryk...

Tomas Garrigue Masaryk se narodil roku 1850 na jizni Morave. Studoval filozofii a sociologii. Ucil na univerzite ve Vidni a v Praze. Bojoval proti falsovani ceske historie, nacionalismu a antisemitisimu. V roce 1918 se stal prvnim ceskoslovenskym prezidentem.

Pretty good huh? I'm sure a native czech speaker wouldn't say it that way but whatever.

Eric

2005-11-13T18:57:00.000+01:00

Ok so I have to finish about 110 more pages of a book for class tomorrow. So no big updates. But check out my new desktop photo. I think I'm ready for the big leagues of photography! Well, maybe not, but I've gotten a heck of a lot better with my camera this semester. I always wondered how people got such good digital shots up online. Three words: light, light, light! Oh yeah the skies cleared for one day to give me just the right amount for this picture.

Eric

2005-11-09T10:46:00.000+01:00

So I am once again delaying my Paris and Madrid posts for this one.

However I will say two words about France, "Nineteen Sixty-Eight" or is that three words. Whatever...

So this morning our Czech history teacher took us to the library at the Strahov Monastery. Aside from teaching our class he is the archivist and historian for the library's 200,000 books including over 3,000 ancient manuscripts. We got to take a tour that most people never get the chance at taking. Well unless you are Bill Gates who came last year and got to take the same tour.

The library is the largest private library in Central Europe and may actually be the largest in Europe if you counted the books that were taken by the Swedish Army during the 30 Years War. However most of these books burned during a library fire in Finland in the late 1600's. The Fins (at that point still a part of Sweden) actually attribute the beginning of their national independence movements to the increased scholarship that came from these books.

Other than touring the whole library, which you can see from the pictures has multiple very ornate reading rooms, our professor showed us some of the "banned books" the library has in its collection from over the years. These books, like the first report from Amerigo Vespucci's trip to America, a first printing of Copernicus' 1543 "On the Revolutions of Heavenly Bodies" and a bible from around the year 580 were just pulled out for us like they were no big deal. Yeah, its nice knowing the head of a place like that. (You can see the books all wrapped up in their protective boxes in last picture.)

The library also has a "hall of curiosities" including a dried elephant's trunk, a lightning machine, and many many other really cool things.

The library is also home to the world's most expensive collection of globes. You can see some of them in the second-to-last photo.

Just another amazing experience in Prague. It may be cloudy every single day here but how can you be down when you get to see things like this?

Oh yeah the monestary is home to the same monks, although techincally they aren't monks they're called something else which I now forgot. But they are part of the Norbertines which is the same order that established St. Norbert's college in De Pierre, Wisconsin near Green Bay. They are one of the smallest orders in the world but also arguably the most scholarly.

Later,

Eric

2005-11-06T12:10:00.000+01:00

Yeah I had a feeling the bugs in the lettuce wasn't normal... No seriously, there are bugs in the lettuce at Tesco. I have probably eaten a combined say, 50 whole vegetables during the last 3 months. I think when I return to the United States I'm going to die of an overload of healthiness.

2005-11-06T10:45:00.000+01:00

Jan leading the group in.

On Friday we traveled with our world war eras class to Terezin. This would the my second visit, however this visit would be a little more intense since we were with our "professor" Jan Wiener. I put professor in quotations due to the fact that Mr. Wiener is much more than that. He is unquestionably one of the most important parts of my study abroad experience. Let's just run through his credentials shall we?

Son of an ambassador to Wiemar Republic Germany.
Brother fought in the Spanish Civil War and later was a professor at Harvard.
Was a part of the "go home" brigade of Czechs formed before the annexation of the Sudetenland.
After Nazi occupation escaped to Yugoslavia and later was captured and released by the italians.
Traveled to England and became part of the RAF.
Was an interpreter at the Nuremberg trials.
After returning to Prague was arrested by the communists and served time along side a young Vaclav Havel.
Moved to the US and taught at Amherst.
Subject of documentary "Fighter."

Pretty impressive and thats not the half of it.

So this was our tour guide for Terezin, the concentration camp in which his political prisoner mother was killed. Let's just say things were pretty emotional. The experience was amazing and very intense. The interesting thing about Terezin was that the majority of those killed in the camp were czech resistance fighters. There were certainly many many jewish men and women killed there, but the overtly political nature of the camp made for a very strange mood about the whole thing. Adding to this was the fact that the whole camp was inside a giant fortress. The fortress itself actually dates back well before the war and was actually used to house Gabriel Principe the yugoslavian assassin of Franz Ferdinand.

Unquestionably the most intense part of the day was a trip down the "last walk" of many of the prisoners. Before their executions many prisoners had to walk down and through a mile long passageway through the outer-wall of the fortress. The passage was dark and cramped and must have been an absolutely frightening experience for anyone involved. The journey ended at an edge of the fortresses moat with a large bullet-ridden wall and a small gallows. (The gallows were reserved for jews only.)

Overall the day was an amazing experience and something difficult yet obviously important to see.

2005-11-06T02:02:00.000+01:00

I know this is supposed to be my "abroad" blog, however considering Oasis is a British band I decided that writing about the band's newest album isn't too far off my general purpose. Oasis, has always been one of my favorite bands. My personal taste for the brothers from Liverpool is made up of a healthy concoction of Brit-pop, Beatles references, awfully awesome lyrics and some pretty rockin' music.

The band's last two albums were big flops however. Their music showed none of the Oasis I knew and loved. Most disappointingly, Noel (the talented brother) wrote some of the worst songs of his career. In fact, I pretty much disregarded the band's 2002 release and in some weird fantasy pretended that the late 90's release of b-sides"The Masterplan" was in reality their new album.

I was all set and ready to hate their newest release when I heard an MP3 of the new single "Let There Be Love." Let me just say... THANK YOU! Having my interest peaked I surfed over to the world's greatest website allmusic and looked at the album's review. Let's just say that this... (review) was quite a pleasant suprise.

Yeah Oasis, good on you boys! I now really regret not making it out to Saint Denis in Paris for their almost sold out concert. Oh yeah, tomorrow I'm writing my big Paris and Madrid wrap-up. It'll be fantastic.

Eric

2005-11-03T12:37:00.000+01:00

A few things. First I will get to posting the full story of my trips to Paris and Madrid soon. Until then here are a few pictures.

I had a really great time. It was nice going to Spain and actually understanding everything that was said. I really felt that the hell Ms. Inscoe put me through senior year paid off. I was able to ask and answer questions and knew almost everything people said. It made it a bit depressing to come back to the czech language. I was completely exhausted when I returned after my 12 days. I think I napped for a combined 24 hours between classes on Monday and Tuesday.

Today is the 26th anniversary of the shootings at Morningside Homes in Greensboro. It's slightly strange not being in touch with any of the people on the commission right now. I'm not sure how they are all reacting to it. Its odd, but when you spend that much time working, researching, and thinking about a single incident it really downplays the realism of it. At least this is the situation in my case. Maybe that is due to the fact that I wasn't alive in 1979...

Classes are still plugging along. We had a Czech history test that totally blew the class away. We were told the test would be three essay questions on major topics in pre-modern Czech history. However, when I picked up the test I quickly noticed this was not the case. The test in fact was made up of eleven fill-in-the-blanks with spaces for dates and years. i.e. "This person was killed in the year .... " and "How many years did King Rudolf I rule?" Let's just say the class was in that interesting human state between shock and panic. I got maybe half of them right. And by right I mean I was within everything from 1-10 years off the correct answers. I have a feeling there might be a new test, a curve, or possibly I don't know, A TEST WITH THE FORMAT WE WERE PROMISED. I truthfully think the professor was thinking he was getting us off easy by giving us what he thought was an easier test. However since we were all expecting major themes and topics we certainly weren't interested in the absolute beginnings and ends to the reigns of monarchs.

Finally, I have to register for Spring classes at Davidson soon. I'm trying to juggle that difficult balance between a normal challenging Davidson semester and flat out hell. I think I may stick with the formula from last semester: 2 histories, 1 econ, and one random fun class. It worked well last spring so why kick a good trend? It will also leave me to take only one econ class to finish my minor and only two history classes to finish the major. Well that is unless I have the opportunity to be a Kelley kid senior year. Then I get a shot at Davidson History Department immortality in the library stacks.

Finally, I don't know why my little sidebar with my friend's blogs is at the bottom now. It makes no sense. I tried to fix it but I've had no luck so far.

Eric

2005-10-20T12:24:00.000+02:00

See you guys in a few days! Maybe I'll try to post from Paris or Madrid, we'll see how things go.

2005-10-19T20:49:00.000+02:00

I just saw this news story today.

I'm sad. I think the building was cool in that Old East Germany way. As I mentioned in my Berlin post way back, it reminded me a lot of the old Burlington Industries building that was destroyed this past summer.

Although I agree it does not fit in with the beauty of the old cathedrals in the same square, calling the building ugly is only a matter of present tastes. Remember everyone thought the Eiffel Tower was the world's biggest eyesore in the late 1800's. I think the city of Berlin should just try and fix it up. I mean since they've already put so much money into cleaning the thing of asbestos.

As the article mentioned, a lot of happy times were had in that building. Our tour guide in Berlin mentioned that for a lot of citizens of the east it was one of the best parts of their lives, especially those who grew up under communism. The idea of having the artist colony space there was also a testament to the avante culture of the city. It was a way to remember the past while still remembering happy memories.

One of the most important things I've gotten out of living in Prague and visiting many cities in the Eastern Bloc is the ability to remember that people still lived normal lives under communism. People still had fun, people still drank, people still laughed. It's not like the minute that the wall fell down rainbows of happiness shot into the east... Now useless goods, yeah, they shot into the east.

Eric

2005-10-18T21:57:00.000+02:00

These are the kind of pictures that make me miss North Carolina in the fall. It just hit me tonight that I'm going to miss Thanksgiving at home, which is sad. They don't really eat turkey here...

However, in other news our big fall break is coming up. This Thursday I'll be going to Paris for 5 days and Madrid for 5. It should be a lot of fun meeting up with the Greensboro and Davidson crews in each of those cities. Unfortuanetly for Paris I had to make three different hotel/hostel reservations. So I'll be moving around a bit, good thing I plan to pack relatively light!

Also it just got really cold here today. Jon told me "Eric one day in the middle of October things will go from warm to really cold overnight." So he's right...yesterday lower 60's, today upper 40's. That's a bit of a switch. Good thing Paris and Madrid are still relatively warm at this point.

They were also shooting a movie up in our neighborhood tonight. They had a big trailer city set up along with giant catering tents. It was pretty cool.

Eric

2005-10-17T16:10:00.000+02:00

You know how I kept writing that my study abroad experience just wouldn't be complete without being beaten up by Russian bouncers at a Euro-trash club? Well check that one off my list!

Yeah so a group of guys from the dorm decided to go out to the Lucerna Music Bar for a nice evening of all awful 80's and 90's music off of Wenseslas Square. I protested on the grounds that anything off of the square is going to be touristy and euro-trash. I wanted to go to another club called Akropolis that has a nice vibe and a much healthier guy to girl ratio. (Most of the tourist clubs are frequented by large groups of drunk British men on cheap "stag-parties" making the whole atmosphere rather repulsing to any female with a little self-respect). However being in the minority I aquiesced.

So as we entered I just counted off the euro-trash checklist:

High Cover --- check
In a basement --- check
Big Russian Bouncers --- check (yeah I'll get to it in a second)
"Grand Staircase" that is missing stairs --- yep
Overpriced coat check --- yep
Expensive Beer --- Oh wait, well that was one redeeming quality and Urquell to boot!
Bad music --- well I mean it was all US 80's music, you make that call
Inability to breathe due to a humidity of 200% --- check
British Guys in Togas --- check
Guys wearing shiny shirts --- check
Anything not shiny black --- check
4 to 1 guy to girl ratio --- check

Just to cover that, thats a 6.5 on the euro-trash meter with a 10 being the country of Italy. The beer really knocked things down.

So after about an hour everyone was done with the club and decided to go to Akropolis.... I remained silent.

As we were getting ready to go however someone mentioned that one of the guys, Mike tried to go out the wrong exit and was thrown out the back. We hurried out the door to see what was up. Everyone arrived just in time to see Mike being slapped by the bouncer at the back door.

With this we decided to grab Mike and get out of there. Mike is a really (tough) New Yorker, weighing all of 135 pounds. So as we tried to talk him down Mike convinced another in the group to go back and push the bouncer around a bit.

(It was at this point that I envisioned Mike being killed by the mafia or something along those lines.)

So Mike and Craig went to go rumble with the bouncer. I think everyone else envisioned the same thing as me and we proceeded to run after them and try to defuse the situation. However we were too late. The now bouncer slapped Mike again and 2 other bouncers appeared. The two sides proceeded to really let go on each other. I will say however that the USA held up well for a little bit.

It was at this point when we moved in to try and break everything up. However as we were running to stop the groups the rest of the club's bouncers arrived. As three of us were in the middle of the two groups, one of the just arrived bouncers decided to punch my friend Steve in the face. He dropped to the ground and another bouncer kicked him. At this point I was punched in the back by the same bouncer that punched Steve. I turned around and I was hit again in the stomach.

Needless to say I just tried to grab Mike and get out of there. It didn't work. Without me in there however things died quickly (the bouncers were all smaller than me, which in comparison with American bouncers seems quite funny).

The rest of the group was thrown back onto the street. However one bouncer decided to follow Craig back out and give a couple of nice swift kicks to the stomach.

I tell you what, when drug dealers on the street try and come to your rescue either you've hit ground bottom or you really were in trouble.

Everyone relaxed, tempers cooled, and we left. The rest of the group wanted to go and get more beer. I decided my night was over and headed back to the dorm with Steve.

Another amazing study abroad experience...

You know, I really think that this post needs to be cleaned up at some point. It would make a great addition to the annual Dean Rusk wrap up magazine! Who needs stories detailing research of ancient mountain goats in China when you have cultural experiences like this.

Still Alive in Praha,

Eric

2005-10-15T08:25:00.000+02:00

More Big Brother uselessness. Just thought I'd pass it along for your viewing pleasure. Oh, most likely going to Plzen today. That's the home of Pilsner Urquell, should be a fun brewery tour.

2005-10-13T23:24:00.000+02:00

Yeah I had a feeling I'd get your attention with that. No, that isn't me in the weird costume there, what is that by the way?

With the bird flu knocking on Prague and the rest of Central and Eastern Europe's door I'd like to give you a better picture of what czechs are really worried about....

Big Brother. Pretty much the only reality show to fail miserably in the US is amazingly popular over here. However I have discovered the small difference that the czech version has over the United States version: nudity; full on male and female nudity.

Now this is not a minor part of the show, no, participants in the czech big brother pretty much are naked, all day, everyday. So you can guess what everyone watches in the pubs during dinner. Not the news. Most newspapers have pages and pages dedicated to the show and its daily escapades of who was in the shower with whom, who is sleeping with whom, and who the public doesn't like to see naked. These people are inevitably voted out of the house. Oh yeah and a local supermarket Albert has specials based on what the members of the house eat. Product placement, BIG TIME. Welcome to Europe indeed.

Oh but Big Brother isn't the only thing people are interested in. Everyone is celebrating the czech national futbol team because they just qualified for the World Cup 2006 in Germany. The czechs in fact are one of the better teams on the continent right now. They secured their spot last night by beating Finland 3-0.
(Update: they didn't qualify all the way yet because of some weird system this year due to the host Germany getting an automatic bid. The number 4 rated team in the world has to beat the Norweigens here in Prague to gain their birth. I may have to get some tickets for that one!)

Oh yeah, I Just got a quite unexpected email in the old inbox.....

Sig ep w/ Turner "Back in Black" With "White Chocolate" Open to all with PCC stickers

Oh yes, we are back. Good on you guys for making it this far on our little probation for bringing freshmen on road trips to awful places like Florida, Washington DC, Richmond, and the North Carolina outer-banks. I'd never want to be brought somewhere like that! Anyway, I'm glad we're back for the lone reason that my meal fees will hopefully be decreased by the possibility of somehow getting new members. But, yeah I'm abroad. No worries about insignificant things like that.

Eric

2005-10-13T18:14:00.000+02:00

We interrupt my inability to post a Vienna round-up for this breaking news story...

http://news.yahoo.com/fc/Health/Bird_Flu

Yeah! Who knew that being in Europe would allow me to possibly experience the making of the first large-scale pandemic since what... 1918?

I should have written my "why do I want to go abroad" essay on this topic.... "I would like to study in the Czech Republic to see the beginnings of the world's next great viral disaster. I am particularly interested in the reaction of a post-communist country's health care system to the unusual strain that an influx of patients would cause." Yeah, that would have gone over quite well.

Anyway, I'm not really worried, its just the flu right? So who is first in line to give me a big hug and kiss when this "carrier" gets back to the states. And you thought I'd just bring you a novelty T-Shirt!

2005-10-12T22:44:00.000+02:00

Happy Birthday to my mom, who really isn't old enough to mention on the blog. Jill and I wish you a great day!

Eric

2005-10-09T23:43:00.000+02:00

Just three pictures of Vienna to tide you over until my next post. 1. Me in front of Freud's office door.
2. Me and another traveller (just saw him get on the subway at the same stop; totally random!)
3. One of the Hapsburg palaces at night (I'll explain the reasons for the cars later).

Eric

2005-10-06T12:29:00.000+02:00

Hey everyone, I'm going to Vienna at 1pm! I'll report back when I return. Again, sorry for the poor quality of the previous post. I'll make up for it with a beautifully written Vienna post.

Eric

2005-10-05T21:56:00.000+02:00

Ok so here is my trip to Berlin in (smaller due to bandwidth issues) pictures. On Friday morning we got up from our day and night at Oktoberfest and we got on a bus for the long ride to Berlin. The trip on the bus ended up being about 11 hours long even though it was supposed to take only 8. However on the trip from the capital of Bavaria to the capital of Prussia we got to see all of the scenery we'd ever want to of Germany.

On our trip we saw the new fussball (soccer) stadium outside of munich for this coming summer's world cup. We also got to see about a million of those wind generating turbines scattered around the countryside. They are huge and silent. They reminded me of the death machines from War of the Worlds! They just hovered over the land like in the movie.

We also drove through the German wine country (or so they said). They had big vine nets all over the place. The drive also allowed me to finish my book "The Devil in the White City." It was amazing, a very very good read.

Finally around 8 pm we arrived in Berlin. At this point the four of us were just too tired to continue so we checked into our ultra-cool hostel "the heart of gold" (http://www.heartofgold-hostel.de/ ) it was amazing, the best hostel I've seen so far in Europe. We went out to dinner at a cuban restaurant near the hostel and went to sleep.

The next morning I arose awake and ready for a long day. I got up really early because I decided to go on the all-day "Brewer's Berlin Tour." The tour was run by a 60 year old man who used to be the British special consulate to west Berlin. Let's just say he had some amazing stories to tell. I talked with him throughout the tour asked him about a million questions. We went to pretty much every major spot in the city from the big touristy monuments to other little visited spots. It was probably the best tour I've ever been on and went into incredible detail about pretty much anything you would want to know about Berlin.

Our tour group was really cool too and very small. I was the only American. The rest of the group, shown eating lunch at the big reunification party near the brandenberg gate, was made up of Aussies and New Zealanders. At the tour ended on the steps of the national museum where the guide explained the entire story of how the wall finally fell in 1989.

That night I rejoined the rest of my travelling party and we went to dinner and later out to a bar were we watched a pretty good band for the rest of the night.

The next day it rained a lot so I went to some of the places we didn't spend long at during the tour.

I went to the "topography of terror" aka the uncovered remains of the underground SS headquarters. I then went to walk around in west berlin and saw a lot of the new construction for the world cup like the soon to be largest train station in the world.

I also went to the memorial to the murdered jews of europe. It was pretty imposing. It was just about 2000 concrete blocks that you walked between. However as you walked between them the groud below you went up and down. So as you walked you could go as far as 30 feet below the blocks. At that point you cannot hear any noise around you and you have this weird feeling of uneasiness. It is supposed to bring out the feeling of uncertainty that the many jews faced during their long ordeal before, after, and obviously during the war.

Like I said, German reunification day took place this past monday so a big party was going on around the reichstag and the brandenberg gate. Food was everywhere, I ate a half meter brat!

I also visited pretty much the best chocolate store ever! Fassbender and Rausch is a Berlin institution, and yes that is the reichstag made out of chocolate. Finally the last 4 pics...

4 the square where the nazis burned books

3 the old east german parliment, looks a lot like the old burlington industries building in Greensboro

2 The big berlin cathedral

1 and finally the last picture is that of the tag mark of my favorite of the berlin "taggers", i think its pretty cool

Sorry for the crazy post. I know its poorly written but I'm getting ready because tomorrow I'm going to visit Vienna for the weekend!

After this weekend it will be 2 European Metropolis course cities down and 3 to do.....

Later,

Eric

2005-10-04T22:43:00.000+02:00

I almost didn't write this post because it's so cliche, but whatever. Before I travelled to Berlin I went to that big mess that is Oktoberfest. With my three compatriots in-tow we braved the world that is the 20 odd beerhalls on the oktoberfest grounds. Unfortuanetly it rained all day, put a damper on things.

For those that do not know Oktoberfest is basically just like a state fair back in the US. However the only difference is the fact that the fairway is lined with buildings the size of Walmarts. Inside each of these buildings are thousands of people singing, dancing, and well, drinking. Each hall is equipped with their own band and they basically sing American pop songs from the 50's and 60's between Bavarian drinking songs. These bands are normally elevated in the middle of the giant mass of humanity in little birdhouses. It is truly a surreal scene.

As you can see, I was not able to get into one of the big halls (since people claim tables at noon and drink until midnight). However we were able to somehow get into one of the side halls that was connected to a big hall. We listened to the party all night while we sat and drank a few beers and had a good meal of chicken and bavarian potato salad.

It was actually pretty nice in the side tent because we got to talk to some locals there. The locals were all dressed in their liederhosen making the atmosphere semi-authentic yet also even more surreal.

The highlight of the night however had to be when the band in the big tent ended up playing that one American "Haaay Baby" song. Pretty much everyone in the big beer hall had a different chant that would come in after the "baby" and before the "I wanna know, if you'll be my girl" part. It was really cool to hear the national sayings after each chorus. It was easy to recognize them all out thanks to the fact that the band kept playing the song for around 20 minutes. However for that one moment in Munich it was like a drunken United Nations.

Eric

PS. Oktoberfest while surreal and fun is definetly overrated. Oh yeah, and drunken Italians can't throw a decent punches. Maybe I'll explain that story later.... Berlin to story (and a million pictures) to follow tomorrow after history class.

2005-10-03T14:41:00.000+02:00

Oh Berlin. Just like JFK I am proud to say that I too am a jelly donut! There is so much more to post and it will happen once I get a little sleep.

Eric

2005-09-26T23:05:00.000+02:00

So as promised a while ago... The pictures from the Sedlec ossuary! Long story short, during the period of the late crusades, a man visited the grave of Jesus and brought back soil from the grave to scatter in the graveyard at his church in Sedlec. So many people believed that a post-apocalypse God would resurrect the bodies in this graveyard first that everyone in Europe wanted to be buried in Sedlec. This included thousands of people from all areas of Europe. The graveyard eventually became so large that the town was in reality just a giant graveyard.

Well as time passed the Nunnery and Monastery that ran the graveyard went bankrupt. They ended up having to sell their land to local people at rock bottom prices. Well unfortuanetly, every inch of the hundreds of acres they owned was filled with graves. So after peasants bought the land and started tilling and planting they would just dig up hundreds of skeletons and would leave them by the side of the road.

The remaining monks, now running only a few small churches, decided that they would place the bones in a small church they still owned in the center of the former property. So after a few months of work they stacked the bones in giant piles like in the second-to-last picture.

Well later in a rich family bought the church to use for their own private masses. They had no idea what to do with all of the piles of bones so they decided to ask an artist to do something with them without removing them.

The artist and his entire family with artistic carte blanche decided to string up the bones all around the church. These works included a giant chandelier made out of every bone in the human body, the rich family's coat of arms made of bones, and many other rather strange creations made out of, you guessed it, bones!

It's all a quite surreal place. In total there are the bones of over 40,000 people in this one church. Pretty strange indeed. However the only thing stranger is that hundreds of people have been married in this church... now those are some wedding pictures.

2005-09-25T17:30:00.000+02:00

Here are some more pics from the trip. Story to come later. Oh, and in case you forgot what I looked like there is a picture from the top of the mountain of me and one of my friends Amanda. I also put up my nice black and white "artsy" shot. Bye.

Eric

2005-09-25T15:19:00.000+02:00

Pictures from the Trip to Terezin and the mountains outside of Litomirice. There are a lot more to post and I'll do that along with write a good wrap up of the trip tonight.

Eric

2005-09-23T23:09:00.000+02:00

2005-09-23T22:44:00.000+02:00

Tonight we decided to go to the unofficial favorite sport of the czech republic: hockey! (hokej) Tonight's game was between HC Slavia Praha and HC Vitkovice. Slavia is kind of like the New York Mets to the big team in town Sparta Praha. Each of these teams also have a corresponding soccer team also.

The game was at the brand new Sazka arena a little east of the city. The arena was built for the world hockey championships a few years ago. It is a beautiful arena with a really nice video and system. In most arenas such things are cheesy additions, however in this arena it was well used to compliment the game.

The game itself was pretty exciting for Slavia fans. The home team won 7-0. It ended up getting a little absurd at one point, literally every time down the ice for about 2 minutes they would score a goal.

The general atmosphere was really cool too. It was basically a soccer game brought indoors. Each end of the arena was home to the fan clubs of each of the teams. Each side had a group of drummers that would beat out rhythms for the fans to do different cheers to. The favorite for Slavia went "Slavia To Doho" and Vitkovice was "dum dum Viiiii-kovitz-saaay".

It was a really nice night. European hockey is a little more finesse and less hard hitting. However there were some really cool moments like when the whole Slavia team clapped for the fans in endzone at the end of the game. They also do the old middle school routine of shaking hands at the end of the game. You'd never see such a thing at the end of a game in the NHL or any other pro-league in the US. In the last picture you can see the Slavia fans taunting the Vitkovice fans by holding up their scarves. However other than a little joking, things were pretty civil.

The other pictures are of the group that went outside the arena. Its not a very clear picture. I'll work on my night action shots.

Oh yeah, and you think advertising is out of hand in the US. Just look at the ice. I think that is more ads than I've ever seen on one surface in my life. If you look at the jerseys they are no better either.

Eric

2005-09-23T11:06:00.000+02:00

Hey everyone,

I added a new little toy on the page. Its a counter that basically logs the country's IP address of visitors to the site. This way you can see what countries are viewing the blog. You can see it on the right side of the screen below the I power blogger logo. I think it's pretty neat.

Last night I went with a guy to a thai restaurant here. I had a good dinner of noodles and chicken in a semi-spicy sauce. It was good.

After that we went to a small bar off of the tourist section. There was a local group of musicians playing (two guitars, accordion, clariet/recorder, and bongos). It was all great music; nice folksy songs. They also played some Neil Young in czech, which I thought was interesting. I talked to one of the musicians on a break in the action. He was a nice guy and invited me to hang out at his apartment with the same group of musicians next week. I may very well take him up on that offer.

Also met a very cool Frenchman at the bar. He was from Paris and taking a small break before school starts in October. We discussed education in Europe and the US. He was under the impression that the US education system was a joke because one of his friends went to Brown. He visited last year and said that no one studies there. Big suprise, the one school a foreigner visits is one of the only schools you can take every single class pass/fail and still graduate. The fact that this school is still part of the Ivy league gave him the impression that even the best schools in the nation are by no means at the level of European institutions.

It gave me a bit of a flashback to meeting that group of Brown students who I hung out with for two days at Mardi Gras. They just kept telling me how no one in the world of the northeast, and especially those in academia took Brown seriously. Then they went on to explain that everyone at Brown just banks on the name and tries to get a job in the South, Midwest, or out West. I thought it was funny, but still couldn't believe that the ivy league's golden pillar of excellence might be, in some cases, little more than a pillar of salt. Now obviously the kids that get in worked themselves ragged in high school so I'm not downplaying the kids intelligence.... I better stop while I'm ahead.

Anyway, no class today. I may try to go read in the park and practice more czech. We'll see. Tomorrow we have a trip outside of Prague with the group again. We're going to Terezin, the old jewish holding ghetto along with a nazi concentration/work camp for political and captured resistance fighters. Should be interesting. We're also going to hike in some of the hills outside of Prague.

Eric

2005-09-22T16:02:00.000+02:00

Today after class one of my friends and I decided to take the "end of communism" self-guided tour through Weseslas Square. It would have made more sense to do it on next Wednesday's St. Wenseslas Day. The day is a national holiday similar to that of maybe president's day in the United States. However since it is Europe it is another excuse for a national holiday here in the Republic which means no work and no class.

But anyway, on with the photo tour. The first photo is of Wenseslas square from the stairs on the national museum. That back end of a statue is St. Weseslas on his horse. He carries the national banner of the Czech lands; which is actually the same as today's Polish flag. However thanks to the addition of the Slovak Republic in 1918 they added the small blue triangle that you see in the czech flag today. They just decided not to get rid of it after the velvet divorce between the czechs and the slovaks in 1992. It probably didn't help the situation that Poland had adopted its flag at this point. (You'd never want two nations to have the exact same flag if they border each other. Might make things confusing for football teams among other things!)

The history of the square and the fight against communism started in the 1969 when a young philosophy student from Charles University set himself on fire on the very steps where I took those first two pictures. He was generally protesting the Soviet crackdown after the Prague Spring of 1962. (At some point I'll explain the whole story of the ommunist regime in this country when I have time. It is in fact much much more complex than other countries in this area.)

Well the death of this student eventually became a beacon for freedom loving czechs. Many would meet on the steps of the national museum to talk and discuss the news from the west. This in fact would later be a quite dramatic protest statement when the communist government built the new parliament building (shown in the third picture) directly to the right of the steps. Its a pretty typical late communist building. It kind of looks like the old Burlington Industries Building in Greensboro. Lots of glass and steel.

Anyway the final end to the story comes in 1989 when giant protests rose up throughout the square and after the word from Moscow, the revolts were not put down by Soviet Warsaw pact troops. Thus at least popularly kicking out the communist regime.

Well finalizing the mini tour, the old rubber-stamp parliament became home to Radio Free Europe. That group is the US funded radio network started in WW2 to broadcast to occupied areas of Germany, France, and other such countries. Years after the war, Radio Free's audience became the Soviet controlled states. Their home right after the fall of communism was Munich, however the czech government was so thankful that the network broadcast the "real world" news so much that they offered radio free the old parliament building for a total rent of 1 crown a year.

Today however radio free is ending most of its European language news broadcasts and programming in favor of Arabic programs. The building might be the one of the tightest secured buildings in Prague (behind the czech government buildings, the US, and Russian embassies). It has large walls to stop people from driving up to the building and guards stationed at posts 24 hours a day.

There is however some reminder of the old use of the building before radio free europe entered. As you can see in the last picture, outside the front is still a lovely "soviet-realist" statue.

2005-09-19T16:00:00.000+02:00

I just re-posted my story from the weekend. I read it again and decided there were far too many grammatical errors to keep up without at least some editing. I apologize to all my readers that had to see the first post. It is a little better now. I hope.

Here are those pictures of sunset over Prague.

Also real classes started today. I had my Czech history class along with my semester long czech language class. They were good, but certainly nothing to write home about yet.

Eric

2005-09-18T22:36:00.001+02:00

Pictures from Konopiste castle. See the long post below for full story.

2005-09-18T22:36:00.000+02:00

Photos from Kutna Hora, (see the long post below). The first pic is at the enterance of the bone church. The second is the view of the old cathedral. The third is an old monastary and the fourth are the buttresses at the new miner's cathedral.

2005-09-18T21:11:00.000+02:00

Hey everyone, I know it’s been a little while but it was an adventurous weekend in Central Europe!

On Thursday night I brought a big group of people to U Malena Glena (The Little Glenn). It is one of the few real jazz clubs in Prague. Most of the other clubs either play rock music or have a nightly mix of either blues music or a Kenny-G Jazz kind of thing.So on Thursday night we saw the "foremost jazz saxophonist in the Czech Republic." I forgot the artist's right now, and that's understandable.

The jazz was pretty good. The pianist was especially on top of things. The group however lacked something in terms of their soloing ability. Their compositions (all originals except for one standard) during three long sets were technically and compositionally brilliant. Their blazing fast tunes had more changes in one song than most people write in their entire careers. The solos just lacked soul even with their technical brilliance. I attribute this lack of soul to the European scholastic emphasis on classical music. This is particularly present in the unique musical situation here in Prague. These musicians were certainly products of the communist school system and were most likely were trained as classical musicians. Thus you get the amazing compositions with the cold sight-reading skills of a classical symphonic musician. The night was amazing and certainly worth my 150 crown cover fee.

I later learned that other nights at the club are by no means as expensive or crowded which makes me feel a lot better about really getting into the jazz scene here in Prague. That night in the club I also met a couple from Scotland. They were in their mid 30's and were only partially into jazz. We talked between two of the sets and the husband bought me a beer. It was a nice experience. As I left for the night they thanked me for being part of the "intelligencia" in the United States and not a "septic statesman."

Friday I had to get up early because I was going on a group trip to a town about an hour and a half outside of Prague. The town, Kutna Hora is built on top of now exhausted silver mine. During the days when Prague was the political hub of all of Europe, Kutna Hora was the continent's economic center. This was due to the fact that the town made the only truly standardized monetary system of silver coins in all of Europe. In fact a few of the kings preferred Kutna Hora to Prague and decided to hold court there and not in the dirty city.

Today the town only has about 30,000 a far cry from when the city was Prague's equal. Despite the small population, there are two truly magnificent cathedrals there. The first, rather boring looking cathedral was built by the official Catholic Church. The second cathedral was constructed by the major mining families in the town. Guess which one is today's tourist Mecca? You can see the old cathedral in the pictures. The other cathedral was on top of a big hill and that’s where I took the pictures from. I however only took pictures of the remarkable flying buttresses on the miner’s cathedral. I tried to sneak a few photos in inside the miner's church but none of them came out looking that good. Believe me, it was pretty amazing inside.

We also visited the famous bone-church in the nearby town of Sedlec. Sadly I didn't take any pictures of that for the pure reason that better photographers were taking far more pictures than I could even imagine. Once I get a hold of some of them I'll post them up here. At that time I'll also post the amazing story of the church.

We left Kutna Hora about 4 pm and expected to be back in Prague at around 6 or so. This plan was delayed by the rush hour traffic into Prague. It seems kind of strange that there would be rush hour traffic into a city on a late Friday afternoon. Well people come into Prague during the weekends from other parts of the Czech Republic to shop and buy goods that you just can't get anywhere else in the country. It makes sense, just not to an American "let's leave the metropolis for the weekend" mindset.

So we got back into Prague at about 7 and at this point I was ready to pass out. Which I promptly did after a long hearty meal at one of the pubs or (hospodas) in our neighborhood. I slept knowing I had another mission for Saturday...

Saturday morning I woke up and went down to an empty breakfast room in the dorm. No one else was up as early as me, but no one else had the mission I did. The mission: to visit the Archduke Franz Ferdinand's castle; Konopiste.I took the subway to the national train station in the middle of Prague and easily ordered one ticket to Benesov. "Prosim, mohu dostat jeden listek por Benesov U.P." I paid my 64 crown fair and walked into the station.

The Prague railway station is a really cool mix of turn-of-the-century architecture and modern design. It makes for a well executed old meets new vibe. I made it all the way to the last platform that was way outside of the station and boarded the train. This was for all sakes a commuter train as most of the others that got on boarded with bags full of new clothes, shoes, and other such things to bring back home to their small towns.

The train started moving; however just as soon as I thought we were really getting up to speed we stopped. We proceeded to make about 15 of these stops letting people off in their own towns with tiny little railway stations for about an hour and a half until I reached my stop in Benesov.

When I got off the train my excitement was quickly extinguished by the fact that I had no idea where to go. None of the others on the train were tourists like me so I figured I was in for a bit of searching. According to my guidebook there was supposed to be a yellow trail from the station to the castle. But there was no yellow trail anywhere in sight and I had a moment of pure panic and terror. In this moment I realized something very important that may very well send my father into tears: Rick Steves is not always right.

I walked for about a mile north of the station when I finally saw a sign that pointed in the direction of Konopiste. I followed such arrows for about 2 miles until I reached a long wooded road. At this point I knew I had made it.

After another mile hike up a steep hill I reached the castle's outer gardens and perimeter. It was kind of like discovering a hidden castle. There was no one else around and the whole thing was deathly silent. I walked through some small gardens and over a moat until I got to the front door. I entered the door and into a large courtyard where about 20 other people were mulling around. I went into the ticket office and got a ticket for the next English tour. Luckily the next one was just starting, because I was the only one in the tour! So for a grand total of 83 crowns (the student rate) I got a private tour of Franz Ferdinand's castle!

The castle itself was pretty amazing. Ferdinand was a big collector. Just a few of his collection included: portraits of royalty through the centuries, boxes from around the world, statues of St. George killing the dragon (the largest collection of such things in the world), and then, oh yeah, there are his hunting trophies. Now there is nothing wrong with having a real life passion. Some people paint, some people exercise, others travel. Well Franz Ferdinand had a very unhealthy obsession with hunting. In his life the archduke and heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire's throne killed just over 300,000 animals. That works out to about 15 animals per day for everyday from his 16th birthday to his assassination in Sarajevo. Oh yeah remember, his death was the spark that really got World War One going.

But back to hunting... Ferdinand took a number of world trips during which he killed pretty much everything that you could put a bullet in. On the walls of this castle, and I mean every wall in every room that wasn't his wife's or his daughters' there are mounted animals. Every space on every wall there was some kind of dead animal. There were lions, tigers, jaguars, stags, buffalo, bison, elk, pheasant, platypus, elephant, ducks, gazelle, etc, etc. Like I said, pretty much anything you could fit a bullet into. It was all pretty morbid, yet pretty cool too.

Unfortunately I can't show you any pictures from the inside of the castle since there is a very strict no photos policy and being that I was the only one in the group, the tour director kind of had her eye on me. I actually tried to bribe her for a single picture of a hallway with about 800 animals in it but she wouldn't budge.

After the tour I walked around the gardens. There was a very large rose garden that smelled really good. I was amazed because there weren't that many roses in bloom. At the end of the garden there was a small bark covered pavilion that is known as the Kaiser's pavilion. This pavilion was home to one of the more interesting occurrences in the castle's history. About a year before WWI the German Kaiser met with Ferdinand here to plan a war with Russia. The two powers each would fight for the mutual interest of taking a huge chunk of (where else?) Poland. The two powers had very different reasons for fighting. Germany wanted to take the Polish Corridor along with the ability to attack and claim some of the Russian colonies around the world (including possibly Alaska). The Austro-Hungarians wanted to bring together a failing empire in which a many of its minority groups were clamoring from freedom from their Austrian rulers.

The Germans and the Austro-Hungarians would have their war, but not on the terms that were planned in this little pavilion. In this war the Germans would have their attention split fighting a two front war, a war in which Russia was certainly the least of the two countries' problems. The Brits and the French were a much bigger threat in the First World War. After my visit to the castle I went back through Benesov and back to the train station.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot, you know what Benesov's major export is? Its yogurt! Benesov is home to a huge Dannon yogurt plant. It makes pretty much all the yogurt for Germany, Poland, the CR, and Austria! Pretty cool huh? The plant was massive, far bigger than any food processing facility I've ever seen. Well that was pretty much my weekend. I spent all of today, Sunday, just recovering and doing some reading in a park overlooking the city. I took some nice pictures of sunset in Prague; I think you'll like them.

Eric

2005-09-15T14:12:00.000+02:00

Today was out last czech intensive class. We all took out final exam and after we were done were given about an hour off. I took the time to explore the other side of the University farther down the Vltava River. I started walking and got the opportunity to take some really nice pictures. In fact I think I may have taken my two best pictures yet today!

I also got to take some pictures of one of the jewish cemeteries here. The cemeteries are really cramped and in many cases people are literally buried on top of each other. You can see the results in the pictures.

After the exam the whole class went to a cafe to enjoy some drinks. I along with many in the class decided that 11 am was just as good a time as any and we ordered some svetle pivo (light beer). I had a puliter (half liter) of Gambrinus. Gambrinus is turning out to be my favorite of all the Czech beers, however I really haven't drank all that much Pilsner Urquell or Krusovice to really make much of a distinction. I have however had a lot of Gambrinus and also Prague's own Staropramen.

By the end of the semester I think I will have made up my mind.

After our cafe time. I decided to go back with a few people to one of the other student cafeterias. This one, in the philosophy building was pretty good. I had a czech all star lunch of smazeny syr (fried cheese). Smazeny syr is much like a big fried piece of American white cheese. Its good because its all warm and melty.

Eric

2005-09-13T21:46:00.000+02:00

Here are some lovely pictures of the gardens at the national legislature at the base of the hill before you cross the bridge into the main part of Prague. The gardens are kind of a hidden gem. They used to be part of the royal gardens. You may notice the large gray wall on the right side of the third picture and a close up of the wall in the 4th photo. This was a huge faux stone wall that while looking out of place (it certainly is) adds a really cool acoustic quality to the gardens.

If you sit on the fountain that you can see in the second photo and talk, everyone in the garden can hear you. This helps out when many of the musical groups in Prague practice at the fountain. This afternoon a man with a guitar was belting out songs in Portuguese at the fountain. He was amazing and the acoustics even made it better.

This is all for today. Laundry day tomorrow.

Eric

2005-09-11T10:44:00.000+02:00

Many apologies to Taylor for not posting a link to his South American blog. It's up there now. Last night was pretty wild. I'll try to find the pics from the people's cameras and post them up here. Happy Birthday to my sister Andrea! Yes, she was born on September 11th. Its a pretty funny scene to see people ask her what her birthday is. Everyone's all happy and they find out and the happiness continues for like two seconds when something clicks and their smiles go away. Then something like "oh, I'm so sorry" comes out of their mouth.

People, the girl wasn't born on September 11, 2001! She's a little older than four (although sometimes my parents might think she's four).

Either way, happy birthday sis. I tried to send you something in the ceska posta, we'll see how that goes.

I'll update later with the story from last night.

Eric

2005-09-10T19:29:00.000+02:00

Here are some pics from the park. It's on the same hill that the castle and I believe it used to be the royal orchards. Everywhere around you there were pear, apple, and plum trees. All their fruit was rotting on the ground which made the park as popular a hangout for bees as it was for locals. The fountain in the first picture made a very nice bath for about 20 dogs throughout the hour or two we were there. Sorry about no photos from IKEA, I was in shock at the sheer enormity of the place.

2005-09-10T19:16:00.000+02:00

Today I decided to take a break from my tourist day and hang out with Iris and Alex. We went to the park, practiced our czech and ate a small lunch. We also enjoyed the unexpected sunny weather. However it is raining now, which explains why I am posting so early. Iris decided she needed to get carpet from IKEA so we took to subway all the way to the last stop and got off way way beyond the city limits. There we and another 50 people were met my a bus that took us to by far one of the biggest stores I have ever seen in my life! Much bigger than anything in the United States maybe like a Home Depot and a half. IKEA is a really cool store. They have all these pre-designed rooms with very hip furnishings and such. Its basically and avant lifestyle store. A great place to outfit a bachelor pad.

When we left IKEA it started raining so we hustled back to the dorm. Tonight I think some of us are going to a hip little vegetarian restaurant called Radost. Until then enjoy the pics from this afternoon.

Oh and by the way, I finally did the conversions. Gas all around Prague costs 29 crowns per liter. After the metric and currency conversions that comes out to about $4.46 a gallon. I guess prices in the US aren't so high even with the hurricane! Although, the gas tax here I'm sure is something outrageous since it partially supplements my three-month tram/bus/metro pass for $27!

2005-09-10T10:01:00.000+02:00

I'm all better today! That means its time to go out and explore. I'll try to hit some of the high points that I haven't already seen. I may do it in a group or just with my camera, we'll see. Either way, I'm hungry. To use some czech "Mam hlad"!

Eric

2005-09-09T18:29:00.000+02:00

Here is a picture of two of my classmates Brooke and Keiko looking over a map of Europe during a break in class.

I'm still not feeling all that healthy tonight so I may stay in again tonight and catch up on some sleep. Staying in however may actually give me some time to memorize a lot of the words and phrases we have learned this week in class. We'll see how that goes.

Eric

2005-09-09T18:24:00.000+02:00

This is the view to the right from my classroom. Its one of the major theatres (divadlos) in Prague. It is home to a good portion of the Czech National Symphony's concerts. Supposedly the symphony is pretty good and battles with London's symphony for top billing in Europe annually.

2005-09-09T18:22:00.000+02:00

Continuing the trend of the previous post, this is the view from the left of my classroom. That building is some gallery or something. It has a connection to the university but I'm not sure how.

2005-09-09T17:52:00.000+02:00

I know I have already posted a picture of the ubiquitous Prague Castle (or Prazky Hrad). However this is a picture of the castle from the small porch off of my classroom at Univerzita Karlova. Pretty sweet huh? According to our Czech teacher it is the largest castle complex in the world. Somehow I think there might be something bigger in China, but I'll give her the benefit of the doubt. The whole castle is certainly quite big. It runs from that large triangular tower on the right of the picture to about a thumbnail's length from the large cathedral in the middle. And that's only the front! It goes way, way back.

People say that it takes days to tour the whole thing. However thanks to Vlacav Havel you might actually have a shot at least walking the whole thing on a Saturday or a Sunday. See, during the communist-era the only party in the land decided that it would be wise to take over the whole complex. They then closed the castle to the public and kept it that way until the fall of the Czech communist government.

Now obviously if such an huge building were kept closed to the public for generations people might start wondering what actually was going on in there. People would start talking and, well, we know how that goes.... People wondered who might actually be in there and what was happening to then. Kind of like a even creepier scene than the interpretation of the outside of the Willy Wonka factory in the movie. Except this time the place was a whole lot scarier since the whole thing was so damn beautiful! I suppose its kinda like having the govenment close Central Park or Disneyland and never allowing anyone see what was going on inside.

So when the Velvet Revolution rolled around the new Czech parliament moved their headquarters into a small building across the bridge in the picture. They also made sure that the castle stay open as long as possible. So today you can visit the hrad from 8 am until midnight. Pretty good hours huh?

2005-09-08T19:51:00.000+02:00

A collection of my ID's. Well except for my new favorite treat a coko tatranky. Its basically a really thick kit kat.

Below that to the right is my meal card from yesterday. To the left of that is my Kolej Komenskeho dorm pass. Below that is my university ID and to the right of the University ID is my three month Tram/Metro/Bus pass for the city.

Not the greatest resolution but the lights in the room are not the world's greatest for photos.

2005-09-08T19:49:00.000+02:00

The hallway to my room. Pretty sterile.

2005-09-08T19:48:00.000+02:00

The view from my window. Beautiful isn't it? Notice the freshly cut grass? That grass had to be over a foot tall yesterday.

2005-09-08T19:41:00.000+02:00

For those who wanted to see my communist digs.... I woke up this morning as sick as I've been in years. I think it was caused by the 5 hours of sleep that I have been getting each night.

During Czech intensive we played a game where we had to tag people and use an adjective in Czech to describe them. I luckily did not lose my lunch during the whole thing. This, due to the fact that I had eaten nothing but some cherry yogurt in the morning. I'll be better tomorrow though. I have a feeling this is nothing but a 24 hour bug. Well enjoy the pictures of my lovely abode.

Eric

2005-09-07T21:26:00.000+02:00

Well today was an all-together exciting day. After my czech intensive class from 9 to 1 (or 13:00) I went with three truly "international" students to lunch in the communist-era cafeteria at Charles University. The three students: Alex from Armenia, Iris from Finland, and Keiko from Japan are really all very cool kids. They also were interested in getting the most authentic czech food we could find. After standing in "queue" as they called it, I approached a middle-aged woman in a caged room. I was instructed by Alex to give her 250 crowns and she would give me a card worth 100 crowns in meal dollars at the university. The other 150 covered the magnetic card that can be returned for its full deposit at the end of the semester. We then proceeded to enter the "kitchen" where one very stern looking man swiped cards and asked "Maso?" or "Ne Maso?" (Maso being meat). After responding quite in favor of maso I received a card with a number and a “J” written on it. I learned from Alex that the meal cost 25 crowns and that would be deducted from my 100 dollars added to the card.

At this point I began to worry. In Prague you can barely buy a slice of pizza for 25 crowns, let alone a lunch. So I really wasn’t sure what I would be in for. At this point Alex took us up some stairs, down another set of stairs and down a very bland and dark hallway under the faculty of arts building. After entering a small door we arrived on what I recognized to be the other side of the same room that we ordered in. So let me repeat, we walked for a total of maybe 200 meters up and down stairs to arrive on the other side of the cafeteria with slips of paper that could have easily been brought 12 steps by the stern man at the register. They wonder why the Czechs revolted so many times against the unfriendly and completely unnecessary bureaucratic mess of planned soviet communist economies.

As I entered the line I gave another woman my card and she began to heap my plate full of bread dumplings. The plate was then given to a man who filled another space with a large piece of pork. Finally, another woman heaped my plate full with what looked like creamed spinach and then topped everything off with thick brown gravy.

I then went to the next station where I got a piece of dessert bread and a huge bowl of chicken-noodle soup.

I proceeded to sit down in a daze of total shock. This was more food than I had eaten in a single sitting my entire time in Prague all for $1.06!

Oh and we had a boat cruise tonight where I met a lot of new people. Alex and I were going to go out to a pub tonight to see the Czechs play Armenia in soccer however these plans were scrapped when the game was unexpectedly moved up three hours due to what Europe considered a more important game: Ireland and France. So unfortunately the game finished before we ever left the boat. Pity, I really wanted to cheer for Armenia in front of a raucous crowd of Czechs.

Well that’s all for now. I post pictures of the food at the cafeteria when I get the photos from Iris. Until then enjoy the picture of an average corner in Prague 1. Oh yeah, the Czechs won 4 to 1.

Eric

2005-09-06T23:41:00.000+02:00

A picture from on top of the hill near the dorm.

2005-09-06T20:41:00.000+02:00

Well everyone , here is my first real "Prague-post." There is so much to talk about that I am sure I will forget something. I will do my best to touch on many aspects of everything I've experienced so far in Prague.

First, the dorm. When I first entered the dorm I had a few reservations. The dorms were obviously built during the communist era. While this means they are quite up to date and wired for such luxuries as the internet; the building is by no means beautiful. My room itself is sparse. Its contents include small bed that feels as if its padded by only a few shabby towels, a small desk, a small dresser and a night table. I have spiced things up however by adding some new blankets on the bed along with a new pillowcase that I bought at the lone department store in Prague: Tesco.

The dorms may seem like the worst part of the whole package; which they probably are. However their one redeeming value is their location. The dorms are at the far edge of Praha 6 literally three blocks from the castle and about a twelve minute walk downhill to the major tourist areas including Charles bridge and the Old Town Square.

Now that I'm bringing it up, that hill, it's hellish. While it's a twelve minute walk down the hill, its a twenty-five minute walk up. But again, the location is worth it. The castle, which lies on top of the hill, was certainly protected in all cases of attack. There is no way that any invading horde could have approached that thing without giving at least a ten to fifteen minute warning.

I would wager that protection of the castle must have a major reason why the Czech language would have survived this long. Otherwise I cannot figure out how such a language would exist in a sea of things such as italian and spanish that are so simple in comparison. Luckily for me the program give us a czech intensive program that we started on Monday. The classes are small, maybe 15 or 20 with a single teacher that permits a pretty high level of learning for only 5 hours a day. The only problem with the language remains in the pronunciation of words. Unlike for example a language like spanish that has relatively easy pronunciation, czech is a monster. Words that look exactly the same can be changed completely by a small accent mark or another mark called a "hocheck."

I really want to continue learning the language because of its complexity. However it may be hampered by the class schedule. While you would expect many many scheduled classes of the "basic czech 1" class there is only one each week. I would be all scheduled for this class if not for the fact that it is at the same time as what many people say is the best class in all of Prague; a history class taught by a man named Jan Weiner. The professor is 80 years old and is a veteran of the second world war. He survived a nazi concentration camp and went on to fight in the czech resistance and also fought with the RAF in Britan. But again, this class intersects with the basic czech class that I would imagine is the second most popular class in the program.

This leaves me with two options. The first option would be to go to attend one of the two czech intensive classes a week. While this will mean that I miss one lecture a week in the basic czech course I decided that I could very well just audit the course and thanks to taking my accounting class this summer I would be able to stick to an "official" ourse-load of 4 courses while in reality taking four and auditing one.

The second option would be to try and either find a private tutor that I could work with one-on-one maybe twice or three times a week, or enter into one of the many language schools in Prague and hopefully get an afternoon class. I guess there is a third option which would be to get a czech or maybe ex-pat significant other, however my own lack of interest and the difficulty of such an endevour might prove too much for me to handle.

Other than that my classes look good. Along with the audited language class, and the 80 year old prof course I'm registered for an econ course dealing with the transition from communist to free-market and another history course on czech history from the 15th century to the first world war. I'm also weighing taking either a czech politics class, a czech art, a czech music, or possibly a czech literature class. If anyone would like to offer a vote on those choices leave me a comment below.

Now onto a topic far closer to my heart. The food here is great! While I'm still in the process of finding a really good czech restaurant, the food I've had has been amazing. People here truly have not met a meat that they did not like. On menus I have seen duck, venison, pork, chicken, beef and rabbit; to mention a few.

I'll have to discuss czech beer in another post, for it is worthy of its own post.

Other than that, everything has been good. I'm meeting a lot of people and getting into their vibe. While a few are the "let's get drunk and go to find as many girls as possible" types, most of the people are quite cool and really want to make the most of the experience. I even found a girl who wants to take a trip up to both Poland and Lithuania. Oh, which reminds me. This semester the Charles University program decided to switch to a four day class schedule. That will allow for a three-day weekend every weekend and should allow for a great amount of travel while here. Luckily right now my last class on Thursday ends at 12:15 so I could possibly be in another country by dinnertime Thursday!

Well that's about all I can post tonight. I'll be back tomorrow night with more aspects of my life so far in Prague.

Eric

2005-09-06T17:36:00.000+02:00

Old-Square.... aka "Disneyland Prague" according to one of the Czech literature professor.

2005-09-05T15:15:00.001+02:00

After flying Lufthansa over night from Charlotte, I landed in Munich in enough time to catch absolutely nothing going on at the airport. I sort of wished that I could have stayed on the plane and had the flight attendants serve me more Becks beer in the bottle (a fact that amazed me in this post 9/11 world). For the record, I was feeling quite squeamish about the flight and decided to down two cups of wine, two beers, a cup of cognac, and a cup of Bailey’s in hopes that they would put me to sleep. No such luck however since all of this was gratis you cannot say that I did not get my money’s worth.

However, my three and a half hour layover in Munich allowed ample time to explore the wonders of German airports. The terminal in Munich was the newest on the continent and was made to look as futuristic as possible. While this is a noble goal in theory, in practice it ends up just looking silly.

The first and unquestionably most noticeable of these “future” touches were the giant “M’s” that constantly surrounded you (you can see at least two in the picture looking out at the plane). I think the designers were going for “M” being the international symbol for the city, or at least its airport. This idea, while quite forward thinking, runs into one major problem; there are other major cities in Europe that start with the letter “M”. While I knew that I was not in Moscow, Madrid, Manchester, or Marseilles I could at least see some poor soul very confused about his whereabouts, especially since there was just as much English being blasted over loudspeakers as German.

After a few delays on the Munich tarmac and snacking on a few bags of some austrian "Happy Mix,"I arrived in Prague at 1:30 local time . (At this point I had been up for 23 hours straight) went through passport control, grabbed my bags and headed out the door. I found the "correct" non-mafia taxi service and headed to the dorm. The ride took about twenty minutes and cost only 250 crowns (I later learned this was about the right amount). I got into my very much communist-era dorms and after a few minutes of trying to explain my purpose for being there I received the key to my room.

The room itself is pretty sparce. A bedside table, a desk, a small dresser, and my quite thin bed make up my little space for the semester. I will post pictures of everything soon.

Upon entering my abode I met one of the other program participants and we went out for a little time on the town. We ate lunch at a cafe near stare mesto (old town) where I devoured a plate of goulash and drank my first czech beer "Budweiser"... that would be the real Budweiser from Budveis. After walking around for a little while I noticed it was getting close to 7 PM and decided that my long long day was over.

I'll have more to report soon along with more pictures!

Eric

2005-09-05T15:15:00.000+02:00

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