jumping the border

Fair warning, lots of the photos in this one! Last weekend, myself and the rest of the #pivo14 crew ventured back to the big big city of Prague, because once just wasn't enough, and then made a day trip to Dresden to explore an amazing city that rebuilt itself from the ground up after it was devastated in WWII. Let's get started, shall we:


To begin, I love trains. So I deeply enjoyed making the journey to Prague and then Dresden on the rails. There were some wonderful sites to see, too, since we stayed alongside the river most of the way. Some beautiful villages were nestled among the hills in between Prague and Dresden and I could see kayakers and fishermen along the river on the way. It really made the travel go by fast.

Since I had already spent a little time getting to know Prague, I was able to relax this time and really get a good look at the city. It's largely dominated by the expanse of the Vltava River which divides the city into two sides. The west side is home to Prazsky Hrad (or Prague Castle, more on it later) enclosed around the lavish St. Vitus Cathedral and was formerly the "noble" side where all of the royalty and noblemen lived. The buildings are large and flamboyant to show the wealth of their former residents and most of them now act as international embassies (whaddya know?). The east side was the commoner side and holds the town square, the famous clock tower and pretty much the rest of the city. They are separated by many bridges, the most famous, and oldest, being the St. Charles bridge. It is always full of people during the day and many vendors and musicians line the outside edges along with some exquisite baroque statuary.

I already wrote a little bit about the Lennon wall in a previous post (its on the noble side by the way), so this time just enjoy the pictures:

After visiting the Lennon Wall, we were free to explore the city so a small group of us climbed the hill for an excellent view, then made our way slowly back across to the river.

Click here for large version

We got a great view of the St. Charles Bridge on our way back.

Click here for large version

The Prague Castle was one of the main focuses of our trip. We got up early on our second day and trekked up the hill to see it. The most enjoyable experience for me was viewing the interior of the St. Vitus Cathedral. It's a massive gothic style church with a glorious interior filled with Baroque sculptures and garnishes. It houses the tombs of all the old kings of Prague as well as the relics of St. Wenceslas, a legendary figure in Czech history. The castle is apparently the most expansive in all of Europe. It's more of a chateau than what you might think of as a castle but it was still quite spectacular. Inside we saw a room where apparently all sorts of events were held and on one side was a window that had an interesting bit of history about it. According to our guides, for a long time in Prague's history there was a peculiar tradition of "defenestrations" (throwing people out of windows) and this window was a favorite for such a task. The first of these defenestrations even began the breakout of the Hussite war, and it just kept happening after that. It got so popular, in fact, many officials that were "fired" and allowed to leave through the front door considered themselves lucky to be doing so.

Dresden is only a couple hours by train away from Prague. We got there in the late morning so we had plenty of time to explore the city. Completely destroyed by the Allies at the end of WWII, Dresden has been almost completely rebuilt based of photographs of the old structures. The parts of the city that survived the firebombing are clearly marked by their charred exteriors making it impossible to forget what happened here. Clearly the most incredible monument of the rebuilding campaign is the Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady in German). After the bombardment only an exterior wall was left standing, but in 1993 after much promoting, it was decided to reconstruct it using original 1720's plans. The views below are from the top of its great tower and provides an astounding 360˚ view of the city.

One more quick anecdote about Dresden– and if you're reading the blogs of anyone else on the trip than you may already know about this one. On the day of our trip, there just so happened to be an unexpected stampede through the city... of Americans (and our Czech guides). Apparently, we were all a little confused about the departing time of our train back to Prague, so when we realized it left in five minutes while we were in the middle of Dresden 20 minutes from the train station, we decided to pick up our pace, and then we picked it up again and so on until eventually most of us were sprinting through intersections, crowds of people, and even a street breakdancing performance at one point. Unfortunately, we didn't make it, but fortunately we did make the next one 2 hours later and had an unscheduled pivo break in while we waited. Not bad for only our third week here.

Thanks for reading and more to come!

Trav

impressions

First off, no I will not be doing my Morgan Freeman impression for you all. This post will strictly be in reference to my cultural, emotional, psychological impressions of Olomouc and the Czech Republic so far. It's actually more like a journal of some of my thoughts and experiences, so these impressions will probably evolve over the course of my time here or perhaps change entirely. Therefore, I will try to write these kinds of posts periodically to provide updates and additions. Here are just a few things to start off:

1. Environment

First up are my impressions of being in a place with such rich history and having evidence of it all around. I really feel like having such old and beautiful architecture has affected the feel of these modern cities and towns in a lot of ways. Obviously, the buildings here are much older than most in the US, but that history and the fact that they're so well maintained not only provides easier navigating around the city (because there are so many interesting buildings and landmarks) but also seems to affect the quality of new building or, in most cases, refurbishment of the older structures. Simply put, I'm used to a modern building style which, most unfortunately, holds absolutely no beauty or craftsmanship because it's all built with the cheapest materials for the cheapest price to hold the most people and usually to last a very short amount of time. And its but ugly to look at. It's very different here in that most buildings are beautifully designed and crafted, and very old so they've clearly lasted a long time. They have character that they impart into any business or human that chooses to reside there and I think in some ways they positively affect even newer buildings which seem to have a little more time an effort put into them. In some places in Prague there is an amazing mixture of new buildings that bend and mold themselves around the old ones. It's nice to see this cooperation that allows for the beauty of the past to remain present (cheesy, but I'm going to stick with it).


2. Dogs

This is a dog ignoring me.

I can't help but gawk at/be jealous of all the dog owners in and around Olomouc. Dogs are EVERYWHERE and all the owners show off their adorable dogs so that everyone else goes and adopts one too. I heard a statistic that 40% of humans in the Czech Republic have canine companions which is really digging at my dog-lover soul. They seem to be for the most part incredibly well-trained (by American standards). Many owners don't even leash their pups, but the dogs stroll alongside them generally ignoring passersby. And if they do wander ahead a bit they come right back if master calls. Many are quite friendly though and will stop and look up at you with giant saucer eyes until you involuntarily lunge to pet them until your both in a furry stupor (too much? I don't care.). It just seems like great treatment of dogs to me since they are being frequently being walked and cared for and not being couped up in a house or a yard somewhere for most of the time.


3. Czech Beer

Technically, this is a beer from Dresden but you get the point.

I hate to say it but I really love the beer here more than in the States. It's delicious, incredibly smooth making it so easy to drink, and dirt cheap compared to beer in America (if you go to the right places that is). Honestly, I'm beginning to think the low cost contributes about a third of what makes a beer taste so good, but it's damn good on it's own and I would probably buy my favorites if they were available in the US. Speaking of favorites, here are mine so far (limited to only Czech brews): the Staropramen pivo is very popular and served just about everywhere which is great, and the Rychtar 11 pivo is also great but I've only found it in one place so far, for a short time I believed that I liked Gambrinus but I was informed by a Czech local that I was wrong about that (in a slightly more colorful way) so I might as well take his word on that. There's also a rumor about Czech beer worth mentioning. I first heard it before my trip and a few times since: "Czech beer (pivo) leads to a longer life, doesn’t negatively affect your body shape, can alleviate menopause and is so pure that it’s impossible to get a hangover from drinking it." It seems pretty outlandish but I've not yet proved it wrong so I guess the jury's still out!



As I said before I'm sure many of these impressions will evolve over the course of my time here or perhaps change entirely. I think one of the trickiest things about being dropped into a new culture is not getting hung up on first or even second impressions. Coming from an entirely different set of circumstances can easily compromise one's judgement about a place or the people in it. This has been something that I've had to put some self reflection into as I catch myself making snap judgements. I am very lucky to be here and experience how other humans live and think.

Thanks for reading, and be on the look out. There should be another post very soon about my recent trip back to Prague and hopping the border over to Germany for a spell.

All the best,
Trav

I know you're all wondering now, so here's a video of my Morgan Freeman impression:

I know, I know. I look a lot different on Youtube.