After returning to Prague from Berlin, it really felt like coming home. I got back to the gym, cooked dinner for myself a couple of nights, things you do when you adjust to living in any new place. It's been kind of a quiet week (needed that), so this blog post will not be nearly as interesting as the last, sorry. Classes are finally underway as well, and proving to be an interesting mix of subjects and difficulty.
Many study abroad programs have the reputation for being "less than academic," where classes are more or less a joke. One of the reasons I picked this program, through Michigan, was because it was pretty legit as far as abroad programs go, and all the grades transferred. That started to show a bit this week, as my economics classes actually involved some math and, well, economics. I'm very glad I took Econ 402 before I came, which is a more advanced macroeconomics, because my Central and Eastern European (CEE) Growth and Development class is not looking so easy.
My other classes are going well. Czech language and Prague as a Living History (walking tours) really interest me. I never thought I would want to learn Czech so much. Environmental Policy in the EU is going to be an interesting mix of policy and economics, and European Integration is going to teach me all I want to know (and probably more) about the European Union. So, my classes actually relate to the place I'm living, which is kind of cool.
Friday to Saturday, my program went on a trip to Cesky Krumlov, a castle-town in the southern Czech Republic, almost at the Austrian border. With a population of about 15,000, Cesky Krumlov really is a town/village, but it was beautiful and almost like a mini Prague. On the way, we stopped to visit a communist concentration camp where they held political prisoners. It was pretty bad, with solitary confinement cells and brainwashing and pictures of Stalin everywhere. The tour we got was pretty interesting, although the video we had to watch for 45 minutes to start the visit put everyone to sleep.
We had lunch upon arrival in Cesky Krumlov at a medieval restaurant, got a tour of the city, and checked into our hostel for the night. The challenge of the evening was finding a place to watch USA vs. Finland, but we found an extremely local bar that had satellite tv and they allowed us to watch.
Me, Ahbra, Sophie, and Sophie's boyfriend Mike (visiting from USA) in Cesky Krumlov
A word about this bar: while they had menus in English, I'm pretty sure no one spoke English, and there was the most intense match of darts going on in the room. Many places in the U.S. have bowling leagues, but this place obviously has some sort of dart league. With such a small town, it was fun to watch these Czechs compete with each other and get so emotional (something I hadn't seen yet from them). The bartender/waiter was also funny, and luckily we knew just enough Czech to take the edge off and allow ourselves to have a great experience. It was also nice to see that Czech is spoken somewhere outside of Prague, even if it is a small town.
The next day, we toured another castle on the way back to Prague. It was beautiful, and looked like something out of a book with the beautiful weather we had as well. On the walls inside the castle hung hundreds and hundreds of antlers and prizes from hunting. The castle, which, like the one in Cesky Krumlov, once belonged to the famous Schwartzenberg family of southern Bohemia and Austria, was pretty much in the middle of nowhere but very cool to see. We stopped at a nearby McDonald's (yes, McDonald's, but by far the fastest one I've ever been to) and made our way back to Prague.
Our second castle of the trip
Saturday night (last night) we celebrated my flatmate Doug's 21st birthday by picking up some dinner, cake, and going out to Karlozy Lazne, the five story club. It was a lot of fun, and I ran into a bunch of Michigan students, who didn't go abroad due to our 'wonderful' business school, who were traveling through Europe over spring break. What a small world, and really, when I saw one of them was my friend, I was pretty much speechless.
Today was pretty slow up to the game. We went to brunch, I figured out some spring break plans with my friend Jake who is studying here also, and then I hung out with some of the Michigan kids visiting for a while. We went to a really authentic Czech pub called By the Golden Tiger (they had to see something really Czech while they were here). Then, it got a little more interesting.
I made a reservation for everyone to watch the hockey game at a local sports bar, and it turned out that half the restaurant was for USA and the other half for Canada. Right before overtime, chants of U-S-A competed with Go-Canada-Go (doesn't quite have the same ring to it does it?). It will be a great memory, would've been even better had we won, but it was cool to experience all these people coming together halfway around the world.
That's about all I got at this point. My family comes to visit on Friday, and I'm so excited to share this experience with them. Dobry noc!
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