Czech DJ Out!: September 2013

Even though classes have officially started and I am beginning to settle into a routine, I can’t help but continue to feel like this entire experience is unreal. I am truly on “cloud nine” here in Prague, and the view is great.

Grant, James, Grace, Postman, Dani, Chelsea, Rachel, Me, and Andy enjoying the view
from the Castle

Last weekend, we went to Český Krumlov (aka “Sexy Croutons,” “Crispy Croutons,” “Creaky Kremlin” and a variety of other nick names by my friends and I due to our inability to pronounce anything at all in Czech). It was the culmination of our two week UPCES orientation. The town is in the south of the Bohemia region of the country and is a beautiful medieval town and a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Castle Tower

Český Krumlov

Although the weather was far from ideal, it seems to have been raining pretty much nonstop for the past two weeks in the Czech Republic, I thoroughly enjoy my time there. We did a lot in twenty four hours, including eating at a local brewery, exploring one of the Hapsburg’s castles, and climbing to the top of the castle tower—I won’t let a knee injury keep me down! The view from the castle tower was breathtaking. It felt so good to be able to climb up and to have that experience, considering I had thought that my knee injury would be holding me back a bit.

The View from the Castle Tower

Me at the Castle

One of my favorite parts of the entire weekend was getting to know our new Czech friends who came on the trip with us Ondřej and Adela. While they were not in the same tour group as us, we had lunch and went out together at night. We spent the night talking about everything from differences in our everyday lives, to our schooling and personal values and beliefs. It was great to get to know both of them and I am looking forward to hanging out with them more over my next few months in Prague.

Grant, James, Grace, Me, and Dani at Dinner in Český Krumlov before meeting up
Ondřej and Adela

While the town of Cesky Krumlov was incredible, the thing that surprised me the most was how much I enjoyed the bus ride there. The views looking out the window of the country roads of the Czech Republic were breathtaking and pictures do them no justice. It is nice to know that, going forward, bus rides to faraway places will not only be a time to reenergize, but to also see a part of the country I would not see otherwise.

The Countryside of Southern Bohemia

Like I mentioned earlier, classes started this week. On Tuesday I have my first session of Comprehending the Holocaust (which as my professor pointed out is an unfortunate name for the class, considering the incomprehensible nature of mass murder—he suggested that “Comprehending the Holocaust?” might be a more suitable name). The class was quite heavy (as most all of them will be, I presume), and I needed some time to chill after before heading back to my apartment. So after a necessary trip to Tesco (a large convenience and food store in the center of the city, just a few blocks from school—I needed a travel coffee mug for the mornings), I decided I would experience the freedom of having my knee brace off and take the long stroll home instead of taking a tram. The timing of the walk was truly perfect because it happened to be about 17:00 (5:00 PM if you’re speaking American) when I left Tesco, so by the time I reached the bridge that crosses over the Vlatava to get to my neighborhood of Prague, the sun was just starting to set. With no real urgency or destination, I stopped for a bit to take it all in. The bridge offers incredible views of the entire city, and while, like every good view, a photo never does it justice, I took a snapshot to capture the moment. This is my home for the next three months. After so many plans, and so many worries, and so many thoughts, I am actually here. Living the dream I have had of studying abroad literally since I was a small child (yes—I was the type of kid who thought about these kinds of things as a small child).

The street that my tram stop is on

A beautiful sunset over the Vlatava

Sometimes all it takes is a nice walk and some great views to put you right back up on cloud nine.

It is really so hard to believe that I have actually moved into my apartment in Prague and I will be living here for the next three months. Time has flown in a complete whirlwind for the past two weeks. But, even though in some ways it feels like I stepped off of the plane wide eyed (well...as wide as jet lagged eyes can be) just yesterday, in other ways I feel like I have been here for months.

A view of Prague from Pražský hrad ("Prague Castle"

Playing the "Haha Game"Dani introduced to us in Letna Park

The city, for one, is even more beautiful than the pictures make it seem. There are parts of the city like Old Town Square and the Jewish Quarter that, despite the large number of tourists, seem to take you back hundreds of years. And there are other parts of town that have all the perks and characteristics of the most modern of cities. My neighborhood, Letna/Holešovice is just across the Vlatava River from the popular tourist sites and sits between two of the largest parks in Prague, Letna (which means "summer" in Czech) Park and Stromovka Park. Although the weather has been less than perfect, I'm sure I will be enjoying the luxury of living by these places while it is still relatively warm outside. Last weekend, I spent some time exploring Letna Park shortly after moving from the hotel I was staying in to my apartment. The park is really cool and has some sweet views of the city (since it's across the Vlatava) from "the metronome," and a beer garden.

The Metronome is an area in the park where a statue of Lenin used to be during the reign of USSR. After it's fall, the statue was replaced with this metronome. The area is now popular with young people hanging out and skating.

Chelsea, Grace, Dani, Grant, Postman, and I taking some typical tourist selfies at the metronome

We started intensive Czech this past week and I will be starting my regular class schedule tomorrow. It was nice to have the first two weeks to settle in and explore (we also visited another town, which I will talk about in my next blog post). And while I would usually dread the start of classes, I am actually really looking forward to this semester's course load. I am taking Elementary Czech Language, European Integration (a political science course about the European Union), Comprehending the Holocaust, The Rise and Fall of Communism in Central Europe, and Prague as a Living History (a class which is pretty much a walking tour of the city). They all are very pertinent to the city that I live in and it will be awesome to be able to understand some more of the story behind Prague.