day trippin'

The past two days ECES organized day trips for us to go out of the city and see what’s in the Czech country side. It turns out there are a few cows, naked billboards, and that’s about it.

Yesterday I went to Cesky Krumlov which is a town 2 and ½ hours south of Prague and close the German boarder. The town is really quaint and charming and we set off to explore it with our Very Attractive Charles Grad Student Tour Leader. He had never visited the town before, but he was very enthusiastic!! We started at the Schwartenberg Castle, but the inside is closed for renovation so we just wandered the grounds. We also went to the studio/home/museum of Josef Siedel who was a famous photographer. We also went to an architecture museum, but most of the museum was closed so it was more of a lecture about architecture. After cappichino (obvi) we headed back to Prague and watched a documentary about a popular 70s Czech rock band. There were no subtitles so I have no idea what was going on, but a few times I heard them say “good day”.

Today I went to Terezin, which was a Jewish Ghetto used by the Nazis to house Jews from Czechoslovakia, Moravia, Bohemia, Austria, and Denmark before they were transported to the concentration camps. We went to the Small Fortress which was built during the Hapsburg Empire and originally used for prisoners of war. We also saw the children’s home and school and there was some information on Raja Iganderova (of QuantUM’s “I Never Saw Another Butterfly” fame). All of the original buildings remain and have pretty much not been touched except for a few. One barracks has been converted into a museum so we looked at exhibits on how the Jews in the ghetto still composed operas and wrote novels and performed plays- most of which have been lost since. The whole day was pretty hard and despite having been to Yad Vashem and the holocaust museum in DC, I was not prepared for how powerful and emotional an experience it is to physically stand there where it really happened. We had a guide who kind of spoke English, but we’ll probably go back at some point with Jan Weiner, our “house father”, who was actually imprisoned in Terzin when he was 13 and was assigned to build the train tracks to Auschwitz. (He’s a good google).

And tonight we’re going downtown to explore the nightlife at the Eurotrash clubs!