Bratislava, Brno, Plzen & BEYONCE

Bratislava
As soon as we got off the bus, we knew we were in Eastern Europe. It just has a much different feel than Prague, and the pretty center is so small that I'll mostly remember the not-as-nice surrounding area. But I still really liked it. We had a great hostel with a "Chill Out Room" (where I worked late into the night on Friday on my Italy camp application).

For lunch, our hostel suggested the Slovak Pub, which is a gigantic place where every single chair looks and feels like it's about to break (again, it felt like Eastern Europe). They had a really funny menu with lots of options for student. According to the menu, their homemade beer is only available to students. Here's a picture of my favorite part of the menu...

We went to two castles in greater Bratislava... Devin Castle and Bratislava Castle. Devin is a bit north, and it's where two rivers meet. It was SO beautiful. Napoleon destroyed it, so now it's mostly ruins, but the setting was amazing (pictured).

We coincidentally went to Bratislava during the weekend when all museums and tours were free (or at least they were supposed to be). We did take a free city tour, but the rest was a bit disappointing. We waited in line for a free boat cruise... only to have half of Slovakia just walk up to the front of the line and get on before us. So we went to the National Museum, where every exhibit cost money. Remember this was free museum day.

Brno
We really only went to Brno, which is the second largest city in the Czech Republic, to see the Fed Cup match between the Czech Republic and the US. It's the women's equivalent of the Davis Cup, so it's a huge international tennis tournament.

We were the only vocal USA fans in the entire arena. Our seats were in the last row of the arena, but after the first set (and after I spilled my beer onto the woman in front of me) we moved to the first row on the other side, pretty close to the American team.

Because it is a national team competition, the crowd was really loud. They were louder than the crowd at the Czech Republic vs. Finland hockey match I went to in February. And they had thundersticks. So pretty much, before every point the drummers and thunderstickers would make noise until the chairperson quieted them. Then there would be absolutely no sound during the point. If the Czechs won the point, the crowd would immediately scream and beat everything in sight. If the Americans won, my friend David and I would scream and clap our thundersticks (we were the only people making noise in the entire place at this point), and then a few seconds later the Czechs would start making noise again.

The American players (and I think their boyfriends/husbands) noticed us and one other group of Americans who actually had a flag (but made no noise) and occasionally cheered at us. So that was fun. Unfortunately, we had to leave early to catch our bus back to Prague so we missed the American comeback win.

Plzen
On Tuesday, Yael and I went to Plzen for the day since our only class was cancelled. Plzen is the home of Pilsner Urquell beer, and the origin of pilsner beer in general. It's also home to the world's 3rd largest synagogue.

When wandered around when we first got there, and found an "American Center" that was also a restaurant. I was curious about it, since it had screening times for American movies on the window. But the restaurant menu was in Czech, which I thought was strange. I walked in and the guy asked if I wanted to eat, and I told him that I didn't, that I was just interested in the American Center. So he pointed to a woman in the back and said "It's there. But she speaks no English. Do you speak German?" So much for that.

We met up with a cousin of Yael's internship supervisor so that Yael could give her gifts on behalf of her cousin. We expected to chat with her for a few minutes and get some recommendations for lunch. Instead, she showed us around the synagogue (and paid our admission), went to lunch with us, walked us to the top of the main church's tower (and paid our admission), and walked us to the brewery. It was wonderful.

The stairs of the tower were probably the most difficult stairs to the top of anything I've ever had to climb. When we got to the top, our unexpected guide told us about a statue below that honored the victims of "a disease with rats." I asked if it was the Black Plague, but she didn't understand, so I asked if it was the Bubonic Plague. She erupted in laughter because she couldn't believe that "Bubonic" was a real word.

The brewery itself was cool. While we were observing the factory, a pipe burst and beer started spewing out. The can producing section of the factory quickly became overtaken by a fast-moving current of beer (pictured). Our guide said she'd never seen it happen before.

BEYONCE
She's performing in Prague tonight. I wasn't going to go, but a friend on my program decided not to go at the last minute, so I'm going instead! I'm really excited to hear thousands of Czechs sing along.

Summer Plans!

I'm going to be blogging a couple months longer. This summer I'm going to be working as a tutor at an English day camp in Italy! I'll be starting the second week in June, and rotating to different camps around the country after every one or two-week session.

This means I won't be going back to the US until around August 8. I'm sad that I won't get to see everyone for a couple months longer, but I think it'll be a great experience and I will be home for a few weeks in August.

Studying in Prague has been great, although it really hasn't been much of a challenge. I think working at a camp will be much more difficult in a lot of ways, and I'm looking forward to that.

Prague Winding Down

Some things I want to to do before I go, and somethings I've recently done that I wish I'd done all along:

What I've done:

Paddleboating on the Vltava
I apologize to those of you who visited me before... I should have take you paddleboating on the river. I finally went last week with my friend Harris and Andrew from my program, and I think it's the best thing I've done in Prague so far. For a one hour boat rental, it was about $10 total. We went under bridges, around an island, and almost were swept over a small dam (oops). I'm definitely doing this again before I leave.

Eating at Radost FX
I've gone to Radost many a Thursday for the club part of the property, but I hadn't tried the delicious vegetarian restaurant on the street level. I went last Monday, I'm going tonight, and I'm going next Monday.

Visit Karlstejn Castle
I did this with Harris and his friend, Ben, while they were visiting. It's less than an hour from Prague and it's super-medieval.


Need to do:

Climb Petrin Hill
Petrin is the hill across the river from me, that looks pretty out of place because it is a patch of wilderness surrounded by city. I've heard that climbing it is an incredible experience, and that view from the top is amazing.

Visit Plzen
I'm doing this tomorrow with Yael. It's where the Pilsner Urquell brewery is, and it is the origin of the word "pilsner." It also has the third-biggest synagogue in the world.

Go to the base of the scary communist TV Tower
The tallest thing in Prague is this TV Tower that looms over the whole city. It looks really scary, especially at night, and there are sculptures of babies crawling up the tower.

See the inside of the Estates Theatre
I'm doing this on Wednesday. When I saw the interior in January as I was reading up on Prague, I gasped. It's a really old theatre (late 1700s) and Mozart's Don Giovanni premiered there. Yael and I are going to see a junior ballet there, which should be interesting.

See a ballet
See previous item

See a rock concert
I'll have to find a way to do this. I missed out on weekly free concerts at Reduta Rock Cafe, and a couple weeks ago the government shut it down for health reasons.

Go to the Charles Bridge at dawn
I think this would be a really cool last-day-in-Prague activity.

Budapest

This past weekend my program took all of us to Budapest, about 7 hours form Prague by bus. Before I came to Europe, I'd always thought of it as an Eastern European city that used to be important but now was just old. Now I realize that it's a modern, beautiful city with a center much bigger than Prague's.

The funniest part of the trip was the abundance of the letter 'z' in Magyar (their language). As soon as we got out of the bus after we crossed the border, I saw the word 'busz' and started laughing. Later I would see szupermarkets and szex shops. It turns out that 'sz' is equivalent to the English 's' and that 's' is equivalent to the English 'sh'. This explains why it's prounounced Budapesht.

The most interesting part of the trip was learning about the city's Jewish Community and the present state of anti-Semitism in Hungary. The Dohany Synagogue in Budapest is essentially a Jewish Cathedral. I have never seen anything like it, and I don't know if there is anything like it. It's a massive hall with a huge bimah, a choir seated above the bimah and out of sight, an organ, and two pulpits. Yet, during services, men and women are separated. We were lucky enough to attend Friday night services there, and there were probably about 70 or 80 people there (the most in any shul I've been to in Europe) but I really, really want to go to High Holiday services there at some point in my life, just to see it full of Jews. I also ran into a friend from home here, my second huge coincidence encounter of the semester.

Today, there are 80,000-120,000 Jews in the city. Keeping in mind that Prague has a Jewish community of less than 3,000 Jews, and that is larger than any community in Poland, Budapest's community is insane. Most of them do not identify as Jewish, but they are 'technically' Jewish. I assumed that with such a large community, and with the vast majority of the Jews assimilated, anti-Semitism would not be a problem at all. But actually, it's much worse that anywhere else I've been. Recently a sort of neo-Arrow Cross Party has become more public. The party led Hungary in the interwar period and was actively anti-Semitic. We were told about these people, who wear the Arrow Cross flag on their arms, but I didn't expect to actually see any of them. Well, on our tour of the city, we ran into one of their rallies. I wasn't sure exactly who they were at first, and then I noticed that a man walking in our direction had a shirt with a Nike swoosh, but instead of saying "Nike," it said "Nazi." I was too scared to take a picture of him, but I did take one of the group gathering.

Aside from this frightening experience, Budapest was an amazing city. My favorite part was wandering around by the Danube, which divides Buda from Pest. I went with a group to the river at night, and then returned by bike the next day. I was really excited to see the Parliament Building, and it lived up to my expectations. The Chain Bridge was also incredibly beautiful at night.

My adventures were full of incredible views, many of which made me question of Budapest might actually be more beautiful than Prague. But I can't decide.

This weekend I'm traveling again. I'm going to Bratislava on Friday morning, and then to Brno (the second biggest city in the Czech Republic) on Saturday night. On Sunday I'm going to see the US vs. Czech Republic in the semifinal of the Fed Cup (the women's Davis Cup), which I'm pretty excited about.

Passover in Prague

It's not easy. Usually in the US, I stock up on tons of kosher-for-passover food including candy, snacks, and drinks. But here it's much harder. I was able to order matzah from the Prague Jewish Town Hall, but that's about it. The hardest thing has been not having any sweets aside from two pieces of chocolate-covered matzah Harris brought from Israel.

On the upside, I've learned how to make quinoa, which is a tasty and healthy pseudo-grain that my mom makes, and is kosher-for-passover. I'll probably continue to make it after the holiday ends, which I think will make my mom very happy.

I think the worst thing to miss during Passover in Prague is the beer. I'm used to drinking it with most meals, it's just what people do here. So I feel like an idiot going to a pub and not getting beer.

But thankfully it ends on Thursday night and so I'll be free in Budapest for the weekend. 2 more days!

These are Some of My Favorite Words

Zmrzlina (Ice Cream)
Jedí (They eat, although it's pronounced yedi)
Host (Guest)
Blbost (Nonsense)
Ctu (I read, funnier for 24 fans)
Vzdycky (Always)
Divali (I watched)
Smrnc (Stylish.... there are actually no vowels)

I'm sure I'll have some additions over the next few weeks.

Presidents

This past week began with an unexpected return trip to Terezin, where I got to see a ceremony involving Shimon Peres, the President of Israel, and Vaclav Klaus, the President of the Czech Republic. The Israeli Embassy invited the Czech Jewish Youth, which includes the students in my Jewish Studies Program. It was a small ceremony and neither speech was particularly exciting but it was cool just to be in their presence. We stood out as a group of Americans, mostly because we were all taking pictures. And the newspapers that reported on the ceremony said that there were about 100 people, mostly from the Czech Jewish Community, with some foreigners. I guess we stood out. In the picture, Peres is speaking and Klaus is on the far left.

But the more exciting part of Presidents Week was the arrival of Barack Obama. By coincidence, he came at the same time as my brother, Adam, and by coincidence, my brother's friend is working for Obama and helped coordinate his Prague speech. So on Saturday, the day of Obama's arrival, Adam and I offered to help at the Hilton (where Obama stayed). The hotel was a fortress, no surprise there. We arrived at 1 and told that we'd be needed at 3, to prepare to assist the staff when they arrived. But then our boss heard that the plane was delayed 90 minutes. And by "the plane," he meant Air Force One. So we were watching Obama on CNN speaking at the NATO conference, hoping that he would stop talking so that he could fly to Prague! It was absolutely ridiculous and pretty cool that our day depended on Obama's schedule.

While we were waiting, we were part of a discussion/briefing(?) with secret service agents about the plans for the motorcade's arrival, which made me feel really important until I sat on a couch for the next two hours waiting for something else to happen.

Finally, sometime around 6, one of the secret service agents said that they were "wheels down" and about a half hour later one of the motorcades arrived. My job was to press the button for the elevators and then swipe a hotel key and press "6." Pretty exciting stuff. There was never the massive rush of people I was expecting to see, and I'm sure that the President and his senior staff went in a back entrance. But after I swiped one guy into the elevator I turn back into the entry hall and there's Hillary Clinton! She'd just come out of the elevator next to me, surrounded by five or six people, and she walked right out of the hotel. Our only other sighting was David Axelrod, Obama's Chief Strategist (and not Campaign Manager, I apologize Adam), who was roaming around the hotel as we were leaving. His guide (I don't know what the right word is), who we'd met earlier, ran up to us and said "David Axelrod is using my cell phone and he won't get off!"

The next morning was the big speech in front of Prague Castle. Since we helped out for eight hours on Saturday, we got VIP tickets. We got to the castle a little after 8 for the 10am speech, and there was hardly anyone in the VIP area. We were surrounded mostly by Americans, who dominated the entire crowd. While we were waiting for it to start, Adam and I noticed Bubbles from The Wire walk by, so we went up and got a picture with him. And if you're a fan of the show, he actually does talk like Bubbles. And he's a really nice guy. Michael from The Wire was there, too, it turns out they're both in the George Lucas film about the Tuskeegee Airmen that's being filmed in Prague right now.

But the speech. I'd seen him 4 times, so I was used to hearing the same thing over and over. This was a nice change, although it was still definitely an Obama speech. He wove together Czech history with his own history with his message. It was pretty cool, and the 20,000 person crowd seemed to enjoy it. Everyone was saying how huge it was but for those of you who were under the Arch for the 100,000 person rally in October, it was relatively small. He spoke more about Czech history than I was expecting, and which our Czech Professor told us impressed everyone she talked to.

Immediately after he finished, Michelle came back out and they walked down the stairs right to us! We were two or three people back from the rail, so I got to shake both of their hands. They came so fast that I couldn't think of anything to say. It was really exciting and they walked all the way around the stage, slowly, shaking hands with everyone that could reach them.

It was quite a thrilling week. My future travel plans are to go to Budapest with my program next Thursday for the weekend, then to Bratislava and Brno the next weekend, and Olomouc (a college city in the eastern Czech Republic) the weekend after that. And hopefully some day trips mixed in.

Poland

I'm sorry!! I have been really busy with visitors for the last week or two so I haven't had a chance to post. But I wanted to tell you a little bit about my Poland trip.

Krakow

I mentioned how I really enjoyed this city. The market square in the center of the old town is gigantic, and there is an awesome church on the corner of it. It's my favorite church of those I've seen in Europe so far, both because of the asymmetry and because of how colorful it is inside.

The other great thing about Krakow was that we got to meet some Polish college students who are studying European Studies and taking classes on the Holocaust. The guy that I spent most of my time talking to did not speak the best English but we still managed to talk about our countries' governments. He was telling me about how Poland is run by the President and his twin. I asked him how he felt about Obama, and he said that he thinks he's "pretty good." so I asked about Bush and he said that he, too, was "pretty good." I was already confused before he added, "But neither of them are as good as Reagan or Clinton." Now that's something you would never hear from the mouth of any American.

Warsaw

I'd heard that this city was pretty boring. And for the most part, it was. But the Old Town was beautiful. It's not really Old since it was reconstructed after World War II, but it looks centuries old. Here's my favorite building (or is it 4?).

On our last night, we went to a reform Jewish dinner in an apartment-turned-synagogue. It was pretty random but probably the most surprising part of the trip. We had a really nice dinner with an American Dick Cheney-look-a-like rabbi who really should have been a character in A Mighty Wind (he talked about singing Hebrew prayers to Appalachian folk songs). And the other rabbi insisted on everyone drinking vodka. While we were there, they had a small concert, and to pretty much everyone's surprise, the concert room was packed, so we couldn't stay to watch. Today, Poland has an extremely small Jewish population, but there were dozens of people who just came to see a nice concert in this apartment/synagogue on Shabbat. It was a really interesting conclusion to a Jewish-focused Poland trip.

Auschwitz

It's really hard to sum up what I thought about Auschwitz. It's important to realize that there are two main camps, one that is relatively small with lots of barracks (Auschwitz I), and one that is unbelievably huge (Auschwitz II - Birkenau). The thing I'll remember most is just how huge Birkenau is. It's something you have to see in person. But to try to make grasp a bit of it, just imagine an open field with barracks to house 200,000 people.

Majdanek

On our last day in Poland, I went with two friend on my program to Lublin, where the Majdanek concentration/extermination camp is. It is the most intact camp, and it is also only a few miles from the city center, and there is a residential area surrounding it that shares the same name. It was pretty shocking to take a bus a few stops from the center, and see a break in the apartment buildings, and there is a massive, massive camp. Only 20% of the camp plan was every actually built, so while there aren't that many barracks, the land is huge. Seeing a intact gas chamber was absolutely terrifying, and I couldn't look at it for more than 10 seconds.

Overall it was an amazing (and very cold) trip.