Thursday we took a short tour over St. Charles Bridge stopping by a couple of statues along the way to the John Lennon Wall and the Lock Bridge. Here are a few pictures.
Friday we went to the Prague Castle with our class leaders, Jan and Martin. Following them around is the best thing ever, they know so much and I always learn so much. After the tour was over we were free to do whatever we wanted for the rest of the afternoon and night. Most of us just walked around Prague and ate at local pubs or restaurants. One of the best things a group of us decided to do was to just sit in the center of old town square and just hang out and people watch. The square is so lively with people and street performers. Tara and I ate our trdelnik, a cinnamon and sugar donut type thing. So. Good. Then we all went to bed fairly early for our trip to Dresden, Germany the next day.
Saturday we spent the day in Dresden. We took a train out in the morning and we toured a couple of the buildings. Some of us chose to go through the art museum and some of us chose to go through the castle. I chose the castle. There were many floors and each showed a different display. My favorite floor was the third, where all the swords, armor and jousting gear were. There was a two handed sword that was seriously the same height as me. It did not even look real. Another detail I noticed with the armor is that a majority of the outfits were smaller. The men back in those days must not have been as tall as most men are now. It looked like the average height was close to maybe 5 feet and 9 inches. There was also armor for young children, one was depicted as being worn by a two year old. Incredible. Everything was also meticulously made! Then after this we were allowed to roam for a bit for lunch. A group of us walked over one of the bridges to the less touristy part of Dresden. It resembled an outdoor mall kind of. We stopped by and outdoor restaurant where I ordered some sausage soup. I wasn't quite sure how it would turn out, but I and everyone else loved it! (Sidenote: it's kind of an unspoken thing, but whenever someone gets food we are all allowed to try it and then we all end up sharing our food for almost every meal. It's very beneficial! haha) Then we headed back to the town square to climb the tower and get a beautiful birds eye view of Dresden. Once everyone was down we casually made our way back to the train station, until Jan mentioned we only had 5 minutes to catch our train. Mind you, we were at least a solid 15 minute walk away. So then everyone proceeded to gradually pick up the speed until we were all full on running to the train station. So just picture a group of 25 American's running through the streets of Dresden, looking like idiots. To top it all off, we missed our train. Luckily, there was another one only two hours after. We made it on that train and made it back to Prague. Thankfully, we made it back in time for a group of about eight of us to get to our reservations at a pub called "The Pub."This was an awesome pub. It kept track of your tab electronically at the table and you poured your own beer at the table as well! Which was amazing because here the Czech reeeeeally like their foam on top of their beer. Sometimes I've seen beer glasses half foam and half beer. Not very appetizing to us Americans. So I was able to pour my own beer without foam. It was wonderful. We all went back to the hostel after that and then woke up the next day for a tour in Prague of the Jewish Quarter.
Sunday was probably one of my favorite days from the weekend trip. Jan and Martin took us to the Old Jewish Quarters of Prague. First we walked through the synagogue where over 80,000 Jewish names were written on the walls. It said their name and the date they were born and when they died. This was overwhelming. The writing was so small, but if you focused in you could read the names and dates and realize how young some of these people were. The moment that struck me the hardest was when I read the name of a young girl, totally random name I picked off of the wall. Her name was Anne and she died at the age of 21, my age. To my surprise my immediate reaction was just to cry. If I am able to cry at only names on walls I am not sure how I will do during our trips to Auschwitz and Terezin. Then we walked through the old jewish cemetery where tombstones were literally stacked on top of each other. Following Martin through the cemetery was a great decision. I learned about symbols on each of the tombstones and what they mean. Also, people leave little prayers and coins on significant tombstones. They also leave little pebbles or stones on the tombstones, which was something I had never heard of. After the cemetery we were taken to different museums where there were many other different artifacts dating back to the time period of Nazi Germany. Once all the tours were over we all headed back to the hostel and got onto our train back to Olomouc for our first FULL week of school!
Next blog should be up shortly about my weekend trip to Brno, CZ!
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