Weeks 2 and 3 in Praha

Sorry I haven’t written in a long time—it’s been an incredibly busy two weeks in Prague! I literally haven’t had any time to write, and when I do get a free second I nap because we never sleep.

So, I guess I’ll start from two Mondays ago. On the first day of our second week of class, we decided to spend the afternoon at Vysehrad, one of the old castles on the south end of the city. After a brief period of not being able to find an entrance (Stephen tried scaling the castle walls), we finally got in and saw the castle cemetery and, of course, another beautiful cathedral. The guys really liked this because they got to see the headstones of lots of people they had learned about in history class this year-but I didn’t know who any of them were. It was really pretty though, so it was definitely worth the trip out there! After the cathedral we saw the Vysehrad gardens and what I think used to be a cellar. It ended up not really being a castle (or at least not a princess castle like some of the other ones I’ve seen) but more like a fort that some of Prague’s nobility lived in centuries ago.

Cemetery at Vysehrad

Church at Vysehrad-oops, forgot to crop out my finger in the corner!

View from Vysehrad

On Tuesday the entire BHP and MPA groups hopped on a bus out to the Skoda Factory for our first company visit. Skoda is branch of Volkswagen, but its cars aren’t sold in the United States. After a very boring talk from one of the managers there about the company and how it does business, we went to the Skoda “Museum,” where we saw all of the old models of its cars from the early 1900s on. Finally, we got to go inside the factory, which was bigger than the entire country of Monaco, so we obviously couldn’t see the whole thing. We had a really sassy tour guide (so obviously my favorite so far) who took us to the warehouse where they make the engines and other parts and then the building where they assemble the cars, which was the best part of the company visit.

On Wednesday, we went to the Communist Museum of Prague, where Agnes and Jaro, our program liasons, gave us a tour. You can definitely see the communist influence in the city, especially in parts of its architecture and the attitudes of the older people.

With Courtney on the way to Wenceslas Square

Finally, of course, we went out some nights and enjoyed the city’s nightlife! They have such a variety of things to do at night here, from competition bars and clubs to simply seeing the city lit up at night, which is always wonderful.

Last weekend the plan was to travel to Budapest. Everything was all booked, and our bus (which lasted 7 hours) was scheduled to leave Thursday night at 11 p.m., so  we were just going to sleep on the bus. However, the bus wasn’t there at 11…or 11:30…so we went to ask the guy at the counter (who only spoke very broken English…but that is a definite trend here), to which he replied “it’s broken down.” Great. We found it and tried everything; the guys tried even tried to push it. We made a new friend, Rudy from Slovakia, who helped us communicate with the bus driver and even gave Holland, Morgan and I his email address in case we wanted to visit Bratislava instead if the bus didn’t work. Nice. Eventually they told us another bus would be there around 5am; that was when Holland and I decided we were just going to spend the weekend in Prague. However, they had locked us in the broken down bus and also locked us in the closed train station by this point. I ended up forcing the door open (my friends informed me later that I did indeed break the door, and the bus driver spent forever trying to force it shut again). We ran out of the station after begging a guard to open it for us and eventually took a cab back to the dorms in Prague (because it was 1 a.m. and the trams were sketchy).

So, we spent the day on Friday at the Prague Zoo! I also got like 11 hours of sleep each night that weekend, which is great because we only get like 5 max during the week. On Saturday I walked around, saw the dancing house and St. Nicholas church, and then just walked around Charles Bridge and the big castle. At night Connie, Pranitha, Holland and I went to dinner and then met some others in the square for the Czech Republic vs. Poland game, which would determine who made it to the next round of the Euro Cup. The Czech Republic won-unexpectedly! The fans on both sides were SO crazy; everyone was chanting and screaming (in Polish and Czech haha). Sunday the others came back from Budapest and we all just relaxed and did our homework for the week. 

With Holland and the flamingos!

Tiger-This pic isn't zoomed in; it was actually this close!

Dancing House-It's supposed to look like a couple dancing

Beautiful view of Prague from Charles Bridge

The end of Charles Bridge-it's like Medieval Times but the real thing!

Street with the U.S. Embassy

In Old Town Square watching the game!

Pranitha and I on a giant screen in the square

This week was super busy as well. On Monday we all studied for our finance test that was on Tuesday-ugh. On Tuesday we all (BHP’s and MPA’s) hopped on a bus to Krusovice Brewery and took a tour as a “company visit.” Our tour guide barely spoke English though, but everyone was thrilled because at the end they had endless beer for an hour, and they gave us all glasses as souvenirs! 

On Wednesday we had another company visit from the Czech Savings Bank, where we learned all about (or slept through a presentation about because it was so boring) the European debt crisis. Learning about the crisis is actually interesting, but they showed us literally 50 graphs and explained each one so we all had a super hard time staying awake.

Last night (Wednesday night also), we took a 3-hour jazz cruise around the city-which was GORGEOUS. We had a three course meal (which consisted of Duck liver, Chicken and potatoes because that’s like all they eat here, and fruit sorbet, but I substituted Caprese for the duck liver thank goodness). It started raining, but the boat was covered and we got to listen to some uh, interesting, jazz music—the singer was crazy and literally would insert screams into random places in her songs. Everyone had a great time though, and I loved getting to see the city lit up at night from the Vltava River!

Anyways, enough about Prague—just got back from London! But I need a nap, so I'll write about that later!