HELLO POLAND.

First reaction of Poland, by the entire group: Wow. Poland doesn't suck? This is awesome! As American students, we were really quite prepared for the dreary, sad country that is always presented to us as the down-trodden, borderless little brother of Europe. I mean, can Poland ever keep a strong border? Sorryyyyy. But the landscape is beautiful (see pictures), the people are relatively nice, and the sites of medieval Krakow were gorgeous. More on that later.

After quite a stressful night* we got there at a horrifying 6:30am and immediately realized that we had no idea how to get to our hostel. Whoops. We did finally get there after some very kind English speakers in an upscale hotel gave us the 411. Our hostel was soooo cool! The decoration was like spray paint on the walls, all peace love and Lenin. Obviously a post-soviet era hostel. They fed us breakfast and were able to get us in early, into our summer camp room of 12 bunkbeds. Needless to say, we all immediately passed out.

Our say in Krakow was full on tourist. Maps out in the street and everything. We saw the old Jewish quarter, which consisted of several beautiful synagogues, as well as the Old Town which still has the fortification walls from medieval times--the Florian Gate is the center attraction there. The most beautiful thing, the "must see" of Krakow is Wawel Castle. There is a gorgeous cathedral there with a bunch of royal tombs and such. The Castle is the typical Polish Catholic, over the top cathedral, but it is so pretty. I'm not a huge fan of all the silver gilded crap, but their were several royal tombs from the 1300s that were painted in the old Slovanic style that reminded me so much of Russia and were so beautiful. I like the simpler one's so much better.

The next morning we all rose at o' dark thirty to take the bus to Auschwitz. Our tour guide was this little woman named Anya who grew up in the town of Auschwitz and had been leading tours there for 3 years after working at the museum while she was in school (sound familiar?) and she was fantastic. We started at Auschwitz proper and went through several buildings were they had exhibits. We saw 2 tons of real human hair, hundreds of shoes and several other devastating exhibits. We were all nauseous from the shear inhumanity of it all. We ended that half of the tour with a walk through the first crematorium. Like we walked through the room where people actually died from being gassed with cyanide. I was devastated. It took several minutes for us all to compose ourselves after that. Next we went over to Birkineau, or Auschwitz II. That is where most people lived and where the other 4 gas chambers were. Two buildings have been reconstructed by the museum, and we walked through where the victims slept and bathed, and often died. There are hundreds of chimneys all over the grounds marking were wooden housing barracks used to stand. It was just mind-blowing.

I credit my group greatly for pulling themselves through that with the most mature, respectful attitudes I could imagine. One of the most striking things for me, was how my group, intelligent and snarky as we all are, were so able to continue our lives and our conversations that evening without ever offending anyone's reaction to the mornings tour. We were able to maintain the rest of the day without jolting anyone from the little dark cloud that necessarily follows a person for a few hours after that experience, but also without ever discrediting that dark cloud--it was appropriate. We needed that dark cloud to make it real, but we needed life to go on as well. As we walked out of Birkineau, as so many were unable to do, we quietly and slowly resumed our conversational habits: talking about food, sibling rivalry, clothes. We had to continue to live our lives, and not dwell on the fact that we had just walked through the most emotionally draining experience together. Needless to say, I think this weekend was one of the most important tours of my life, and will influence me for years to come. My day there will never be forgotten, and I hope that I will be able to share my experience in order to enrich my own teaching of their stories.

We used our evening in Krakow to celebrate the birthday of one of our girls, who anti-climatically turned 21 in a country she could already drink in. We bought her an individual sized bottle of champagne and a chocolate cake, which we enjoyed trying to force on each other on the train ride home. After a serious nap, I am now ready to power through the paper I have to write this afternoon, and check on my laundry that is currently being spun around an Eastern European washing machine at approximately 600 miles an hour.

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Emily

*One of our number, a loner who always seems just 3 seconds behind the ball and 2 inches from normal missed the train to Krakow. Knowing how excited he had been to join us, we were all a little concerned. We had no way to get in touch with him and our professor wasn't answering his phone so we had to resort to calling the program director from Charles University and trying to get her to contact her. He was eventually found, though the only real reasoning we got out of him was that he had "gotten lost. really lost" which made no sense since we had all gone to the train station together only 24 hours before. Ah well. He made it to Poland and found his way to Auschwitz were he found us, miraculously. It was all quite strange.

LIVE from....Versailles?

So I met my first peacock yesterday. Christina, Jen and I stumbled into a garden full of them! Just strutting around, acting like they own the place. Oh the wonders of Prague. I asked my professor today where we might have been and he said we found our way into the Senate gardens. That's right. The Senate keeps a flock of free range peacocks. In their own garden. The SENATE. Oh, Eastern Europe, how I love thee.

The last few days have been otherwise uneventful. I purchased the tickets for Krakow this weekend today, which was quite an interesting venture. Eleven of us will be venturing to Krakow tomorrow evening on the sleeper train (it's an 8.5 hour train ride straight from Prague to Krakow). We'll spend Friday touring Krakow and attempting to get around without knowing any Polish. Friday night we're staying in the "Good Bye Lenin-Let's Rock!" Hostel/Pub/Garden. Yup. NBD. Their front door has a picture of Lenin in peace glasses. Note: LENIN, not LENNON, who peace glasses would be appropriate on. Hilarious? I think so. Saturday morning we are going to Auschwitz-Birkineau Concentration and Death Camp. Though their website looks like it was designed by a 5th grader, the tour should prove to be interesting. I booked the tour for all of us through the official Auschwitz people, so hopefully the guide will be knowledgeable. Unfortunately, it is also one of our girls birthdays...As Billy Madison would say, "That's craptastic."

We're taking the sleeper train back to Prague on Saturday night and we'll get to Prague on Sunday morning around 6am (ew). I can only assume I will sleep through most of Sunday. I will upload pictures and blog all of our adventures in Poland when I get back!
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Emily

Mailing Address

Anyone who wants to send me mail may send it to this address:
Emily Sample, 216B
Kolej Komenskeho
Parleřova 6 160 00 Prague 6
Czech Republic


I don't know how fast the mail is, and I'll be czeching out of here June 26th. Anything is welcome if you want to send it my way!
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Emily

Sparkle on, you crazy diamond

Today was our first day of class! We started the day early with a class about the literature and cultural history of Prague (I thought our Holocaust class was first of the day, apparently not. oops) Ou professor is from the Czech Republic and works for the University, which makes is sometimes interesting to understand him....But the class looks like it's going to be really interesting. He has us reading several older texts and we have a paper (booooo) at the end of the semester comparing fact to fiction.

The Holocaust class is going to be difficult for me. I have a bad habit of playing the peanut gallery when I know something extra about the subject matter, so I think I'm going to sequester myself in the back row and struggle to keep my mouth shut. The Professor (this is the one we brought with us from WM) knows that I'm pretty well versed in Holocaust history, so he told me to relax in the back and "take a little snooze" if the class was on something I knew. While I think I'll try to avoid that, it's nice to know that I don't have to pretend like I'm learning this for the first time.

The highlight of my day was at a little tourist shop. We were just kind of poking around and we said hello, etc to the shop keeper. She asked if we spoke Czech and the girls I was with both said no and I just smiled. I said something else in Czech to her, and she told me that she would be willing to negotiate prices. I thanked her and she asked if I was Czech! When I said no she told me I spoke perfectly! I mean, I think I hardly strung together more than 3 or 4 words, but it's nice to know I have the accent. It was quite compliment.
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Emily

Fakt, yo? (oh really?)

This weekend was quite adventurous.

Friday morning we had another Czech class, which several of us were late for because we were lost in the city buying cell phones. Who knew that would take 3 hours? I mean, really. After class, we went on a tour of Prague castle and the surrounding areas. The entire 700 or so years of history can be summed up in: All their politicians live in this castle. They don't have much power, but they do have several mistresses. When the political situation gets rocky, some people get thrown out the windows, this happens often. Inside the castle they have 2 churches, take that separation of church and state.

Friday night, we hit the bar scene for the first time (oooooooooh jetlag!) and found quite and interesting array. Almost all bars close around 11pm (or 23 as they say here) because they are weird. But the clubs stay open all night. Literally. We met a very intoxicated gentleman who was peeing as he walked down the street. *shudder* As three of us tried to find our way home, we discovered that not only do the tram numbers and tracks change at night, but we had no idea what stop our home would be. SURPRISE! So we rode the tram to the end of the line to try to see if we saw anything familiar. Nope. So at 3am we were in the suburbs of Prague with no idea when or how we would get home. See? Adventurous. Needless to say, we made it home. But it was only because of the divine intervention I felt a pull to get off at a certain station and BAM our dorm was around the corner.

Saturday Christina (my roommate) and I really just needed a break, so we went to the zoo! It's apparently like the 6th best zoo in the world (Disney is the best, duh). There are pics up on facebook (the link is in the left hand column). We saw lions and tigers and 2 polar bears. Oh my! It was a lot of fun to just relax and not have to learn or look like a stupid tourist or anything. I mean, everyone looks like a tourist at the zoo (look at the locals!). The one issue was the bat exhibit didn't really have what we in the United States call an enclosure. Yeah. Bats everywhere. It was horrifying. They were technically like tucked into a cave and we were outside the cave, but they kept dive bombing our general location and then flying up that the last minute! Needless to say, we got out of there. But the zoo as a whole was great, and we really enjoyed a relaxing day. We finished with a nice pasta dinner outside Wenceslas square at The Green Tomato. It was delish. Unlike Russian restaurants, they actually give you really food sizes. In Russia, the worst thing was that when we ordered, say, a chicken breast it came on the plate by itself all lonely. But here is more like American restaurants that give you a bigger portion. For pasta at least, the food is genrally inexpensive. We can usually eat out, a good meal of pasta, for about 140 Kč, which is about $7. That's including the water/beer/Coca-cola light (which all run 20-30Kč) and the bread and condiments that you are charged for. Of course, I usually eat vegetarian, so that helps. My roommate's chicken dinner tonight was 178Kč and my vegetable one was 138Kč total, so life really isn't bad.

Today, I went to the Holocaust Memorial in the Jewish History Museum that I am writing my thesis on. There sure is plenty of material to write about! It's almost totally visual (which is what my thesis is specifically about: visual representations). Since it's a memorial, not a museum, about the Holocaust, I think I am going to reframe some of my thesis because I can't really compare it as well the the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in the exhibits, but I'll figure that out when the time comes. The same $10 pass gets us into 6 synagogue/museums for 48 hours. Who says Jews are cheap?

The highlight of the day was when Christina and I went to the train station to price out tickets to Krakow for this weekend (!!) and we had no idea where we were besides what metro station. By our superior navigation skillz we found our way to Wenceslas square, which is very central in the city and easy to get home from. BAM. We literally high fived in the street. TOURISTS. From there, we went on an epic wander to find a supermarket call Albert. Not Albert's. Just Albert. Most of the grocery stores here are really small, family run things that only have the necessaries. (Like kiwis, oddly enough, which are everywhere). Albert is more like an American grocery store, which has everything. It's 2 floors! We bought 1 pot to cook things in, some spaghetti and sauce, apples, eggs, almonds, butter, tea, milk and cereal, and bread and jelly to partner with my American peanut butter (they don't sell peanut butter in Europe usually. Cuz they crazy). We discovered this amazing cookie called Mila, which is basically a chocolate covered sugar wafer and these potato crisps (more like a cheeto than a chip in texture) called Super Hearts. SO GOOD. We also invested in some dish and clothes detergent (2 separate things) and a little spatula. Split down the middle, the shopping trip cost us each $18. Win. I love Eastern Europe.

Tomorrow we start classes. Holocaust class starts at 9am, which I think is the crime against humanity here. "Reading Prague", our cultural history through literature and art class, starts tomorrow too, which I'm really excited about. We don't really have a lunch break, but rather 2 half hour breaks between our 3 classes (Czech language being the third). I think I'm going to just pack a PB&J, if I can find a little baggy. None of us can believe we've only been here 4 days, it seems like we've been here forever. I'm already making rude comments about the number of tourists in "my" city. I think the only place I heard Czech on the street was in the grocery store! European tourists are on this place like the Czech people on beer. Like Russians on vodka. Like white on rice. I mean, all over it.
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Emily

Do Toho! (Let's Go!)

Today was our first day touring Prague. We looked at the Jewish center (the old ghetto), the old town including Old square, Wenceslas square, and Republic square. The main city is split into old and new town, the new town is a a mere 700 years old. PSH. And there is still a delineation, but luckily the moat is gone, that would have been awkward with the invention of, I don't know, the carriage...

We also started taking Czech classes today. I feel like I'm secretly cheating because I know the Russian, which is similar in vocabulary and almost identical in grammar. So far it's coming quickly because of that, but it's very hard to write, I keep slipping into cyrillic (there is a phrase I never thought I'd say...)! Our teacher is very enthusiastic, speaks English well and really seems like a very nice woman.

For dinner, the university took us out to a nice German restaurant off of Wenceslas square. The portions ended up being HUGE and I know have about a jar and a half of red cabbage in my mini fridge in the dorm. Yum! I'll try to get some pictures up tomorrow, I have some great ones of the old town buildings, almost all my pictures are of architecture!

Don't get used to this posting everyday thing....I'm so tired from walking and learning. Ug.
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Emily

Home sweet PRAGUE!

After hours on a plane, and one very odd interaction with a pair of travelers on their way to happily ever after, I have reached my destination: the dorm room, Eastern Europe edition. It's small and boxy with a large rock that I can only assume is a bed. The shower is a glorified hose attached to the wall and we were issued a hot plate, which I can only assume arose from the ashes of some Soviet trash pile. But it's home :) I'll take pictures as soon as we unpack the clothes we forgot we brought and find a place for those giant suitcases. Oh, and grab a Praha beer. (Praha is Prague in Czech) I am quickly picking up the alphabet and trying to sound my way through the ads we flew by on a 5-speed minibus of doom. I hope I'll learn it quickly, as no one in the group seems to have any real knowledge of the language. Now, I really must take a shower. I don't know how long it's been since I showered, but I do know that I am a grubby monster and I am very ready to shampoo my hairz. (Which is possible due to my begging with my mother to let me bring my shampoo-- I slid in riiiiiiiight under the weight limit on my bag. I am by no means the worst, one of the girls simply paid the overweight fee and has a suitcase the size of, well, my dorm room.)

To all those following my blog, living in my blogosphere, or drunkenly clinking the links on my facebook page--get ready. This 6 week rant/diary/calendar/letter home is going to blow your mind. Or something.
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Emily

On my way!

I'm leaving for Prague in T-5 days. Tuesday night I head to the airport and Wednesday morning I arrive to start my stay in Prague. Check in here and I'll try to update every few days or so, put up pictures and tell amusing stories--travel guide style. Share it around to anyone you think would be interested, I hope you enjoy!
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Emily