Prague was one of our required excursions, which means the entire castle goes. So we all woke up around 5:30 to get together last minute things, ate breakfast at 6, and were on the buses by 7. For one of our normal weekend travel groups that would have taken about 30 minutes, but for all of us it was quite a process. We flew out of the Calone airport (about two hours away) on Germanwings and arrived in Prague around 2 PM.
After a city walking tour through the historical center and quick introduction to the city, we were free for the rest of the day. Jeannie, Liz, Courtney, and I had dinner at the Sphinx, which was a beautiful little restaurant filled with hanging lit gourds. We also tried out a casino that night each walking in with 100 CZK (so a little less than 5 American dollars) with the agreement that that was all we would spend just for the experience. After quickly learning that we had no idea how to play fruit poker, we used up the rest of our credits. Somehow I walked out with about 400 CKZ, I have no idea how that happened.
The next morning we were split into little groups each with a professor-guide. First stop was the Prague Castle. We then had some free time for lunch before meeting up with different groups. I went to the Jesuit College with Chester Lee and it was absolutely incredible. The library was filled with beautiful old books and huge globes and after a tour of the inside we walked up a long winding staircase to look out over the city of Prague.
On the third day I traveled with my World since 1914 class to Terezin the former concentration camp. We were able to visit the Fortress, Ghetto Museum, Magdeburg Barracks and the former Crematorium. It was very unsettling to see everything in real life. I guess the holocaust is something that I always knew happened, but the reality of how it happened didn’t sink in until I was standing in a tiny room imagining myself surrounded by 40 other people without showers or proper facilities or even full meals.
In the afternoon we visited the Licia Gallery with my History of Photography class. The gallery was behind a small café and had three rooms of highly computer-edited photographs, which were quite amazing. Afterwards our small class sat down with the professors who attended the exhibit with us and talked about our impressions, we also made notes so that we could write a paper about the exhibit when we returned to the castle.
On the last day we visited the Jewish Quarter, which included a tour of seven synagogues. The synagogues were untouched by the Nazis in order to have a memory of the Jews when the Holocaust was over. After the Jewish Quarter Cate and I went to the grocery store to buy food for London and checked out the John Lennon Wall.
On the last day we visited the Jewish Quarter, which included a tour of seven synagogues. The synagogues were untouched by the Nazis in order to have a memory of the Jews when the Holocaust was over. After the Jewish Quarter Cate and I went to the grocery store to buy food for London and checked out the John Lennon Wall.
The Prague airport was probably the strangest experience that I have had thus far. Cate and I arrived at the check-in with plenty of time to spare, checked our bags and headed to customs. After an easy check-in and new stamp on our passports we entered the terminal and started looking for a place to eat. But something was off … we never went through security? We looked all around us and re-traced our steps in our heads, nope nothing. We began to walk towards our gate, getting a little worried about the fact that no one had checked us to see if we had liquids or ran up and down every inch of our bodies with a medal detector but shrugged it off. It is eastern Europe after all. As we walked through the airport Cate pointed out no one is sitting at any of the gates, well that is strange too. Then we reached our gate, 7A, and sighed with relief the security was individual for each gate.
We then back tracked to look for food and decided on KFC, yep that is right I ate American fast food while studying abroad in Europe. But it was one of two options and as delicious as sushi sounded I have always heard don’t buy Chinese/Japanese off a menu you can’t understand, and fast food was also cheaper. We used our remaining 250 CKZ (just over $10) to buy two “menus” the European word for combo. And apparently at the Czech KFC it is very normal to get two drinks with each menu. So the guy at the counter asked us which bottled drink we wanted as well as a fountain soda from the machine, needless to say we were really confused by this. We quickly chugged these before going through the at-the-gate-security and boarded our short flight to London.
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