Prague, saying goodbye to Olomouc, and London!

*Thank you to the anonymous reader who corrected my history about the beginning of the Velvet Revolution. I knew the correct facts, but wrote this too quickly and didn't proofread. I know better now to check and double check!*

I last left you in Olomouc, and now I am back in Riihimäki, Finland after four years! It is kind of hard for me to comprehend being back here, but it actually feels like coming home. It even smells the same as I remember it… But more on Finland later! I have lots to write about, including my trips to Prague and London!

One day in Prague was, once again, not enough! At least it was an improvement from the three hours I had there four years ago. I just keep saying that now I’ll just have to come back yet again, and extend my time to spending a night there! My friend Zohre (Turkish) and I left Olomouc very early and took the train to Prague at 6 am. We were there before 9 and immediately started on our busy day! We first walked past the National Museum and found the Dancing House to take some pictures. My travel guide said that Americans see it as representing Fred and Ginger, which I suppose it could. It was a cool sight nonetheless. We then made our way down the Vlatva River and to the Old Town Square for a free tour, which was fantastic! We had a really great guide that told us the history of Prague, all the way from medieval times. It was fun for me to listen to him because he had some really great anecdotes, and I could follow right along with him once he got to 1945… I really learned some things this semester! ;-)

He took us through the Jewish Quarter, the New Town, and the Old Town. After the tour we decided to head across Charles Bridge to see the Castle and the St. Vitus Cathedral. We didn’t feel like paying for the tour, so we just let Rick Steves and his travel guide be our guide! That ended up being great and we really enjoyed the castle and the views of the city from the top of that hill.

We then walked some more, found the American Consulate for me, and went to see the Petrin Tower and get another great view of the city. We rode the funicular up the hill and found a beautiful rose garden, and found our way to the Petrin Tower that resembles the Eiffel Tower in Paris. We were quite tired from walking around the city all day, so we decided not to climb to the top, but the area around the tower was beautiful anyway.

The last things I wanted to see in Prague were a few memorials of communism. The first was one on the side of the hill near to Petrin that gives an eerie representation of the effects of communism on the human. The statues of the man begin to deteriorate as the go up the hill, but they never really die.

The other monument is a small and discreet plaque commemorating the students that protested on November 17, 1989 on the street that was filled with people asking for freedom peacefully, but were unfortunately attacked by the police (This was the beginning to what would be called the Velvet Revolution). Seeing these monuments and walking the streets where the revolution occurred was an amazing experience for me after studying the events all semester. I have been so consumed with the history of these places that it was like coming full circle and fulfilling a dream to actually stand in the places I had learned so much about.

I then found a place to drink my last glass of my favorite Czech beer, Staropramen, and we ate our last fried cheese sandwiches (best Czech fast food, as far as I’m concerned) and we caught a train back to Olomouc just past 8:00. We were exhausted, and very proud of ourselves! We saw just about the entire city. Next time I go to Prague I will make sure I spend the night and see some live music, or a concert of some sort. I am sure I can accomplish that, though. I really feel that I will be back in Central Europe soon!
That next day was my last in Olomouc, and even though it was kind of sad, I really had a good time. I went out with a few of my closest friends that were still there and ate Olomouc stinky cheese, drank Czech beer and Moravian wine, and saw the city at night for the last night. Olomouc is such a beautiful city, and I’m so thankful to have lived there for a few months. The friends I made are also very beautiful people and I will think of them and remember them for a very long time, and I truly hope to see them again some day.

It was hard to leave them, and to make my way to the airport in Brno alone… especially with all of my things from the whole semester! I was sore and tired when I finally arrived in London, but was so happy to see two good friends from high school, Josh and Calder!
Calder has been at the London School of Economics all year and he invited me to come spend some time with him to see London, and Josh happened to be coming at the same time. It was such a cool thing to be in London with two friends I hadn’t seen in such a long time! We had fun catching up, talking politics, music, and philosophy, and of course seeing the city – which without me they probably would have seen much of! We walked a lot, but also saw a lot. I regret that I was not very prepared to see London at the time, since I had focused my travels on Eastern Europe (and only had travel guides for Eastern Europe and the Czech Republic!). Since I hadn’t really read much on London, and only knew things from the movie “The Queen” and what my friends had told me, I had to do some reading and thinking when I first got there. Looking back, I’m quite happy with what I saw! And it’s true, 4 days is not enough to see all of London, but it was enough for a big taste.
We saw all the main tourist spots like Big Ben and Parliament, Westminster Abby, Buckingham Palace, Hyde Park, Sharkespeare’s Globe Theater... and we went through Greenwich Village, Soho, and other districts of the city… but it’s so huge it is hard to keep track of everything! Calder’s dorm was right in Central London so it made it easy to get to some places, but we did take the tube quite a few times. London has a fantastic transportation system, though it is very expensive. That was definitely a change from being in Central/Eastern Europe – everything is more expensive, but labeled better and seems safer - as far as transportation goes, at least. It was interesting for me to go to London from living in the Czech Republic… I will probably comment on some observations of West and East at some point in time… so maybe you can look forward to that in the future ☺.
Josh and I were really lucky, and a friend of Calder’s had two tickets for standing at the Globe Theater! We rushed to get them and were delighted to see a performance of “All’s Well That Ends Well”. It was absolutely incredible seeing Shakespeare at the Globe (though it is a recreation, the original was burned down). I had never seen Shakespeare performed professionally, and this was the real deal! I’m so thankful to have had that opportunity… and for only 5 pounds! Totally worth that small amount, and standing the whole time!

It did rain the day we went to Buckingham Palace and Parliament, but it wouldn’t be London without a day of rain. We did our best to stay dry, and luckily it was still pretty warm outside. That night we ate delicious Indian food… because again, it wouldn’t be London without Indian food!
The next day we saw the British Library, which had an awesome exhibit about science fiction, and I was lucky enough to meet up with a friend from MSU! Mike has been studying in Lancaster this semester, and we ended up going to London at the same time. I’m so excited about how many friends I saw from home while I was over here! It’s such a small world! We walked around the city and saw Hyde Park and had a few beers in a nice pub before making dinner and going to a great jazz club. I was very excited to see some good jazz in a big city like London, and I wasn’t disappointed! Despite the expensive drinks, there was no cover for student night and the club had really great atmosphere. The next morning we met up again at the gigantic and fantastic British Museum. There is so much to see there, so we decided to download a Rick Steves guide to our iPods and see the ancient Egypt, Assyria, and Greece exhibits. It was great having the audio guide, and the exhibits were great. It’s always fun to see mummies! It was a beautiful day so we sat in a park near to Calder’s dorm and ate burritos before heading to an open mic night. I had never been to one before, but Josh prepared us for the best and the worst… and it was fun the majority of the time! I give a lot of credit to everyone who got up on the stage, but I will admit that a lot of it was pretty painful to watch. Some of the people were really funny though, and the audience was really forgiving and laughed a lot. After the show we went to Calder’s favorite pub that was decorated in typical English style, so it basically looked like the inside of a really nice Victorian/English house! And the beer was great and pretty cheap too.
For my last day in London, and before Calder and Josh headed to France, Calder’s parents insisted that we go on the London Eye. We weren’t planning on it because it was quite expensive, but they decided to treat us to it so we went. I’m really glad we did! It is basically this huge Ferris wheel that has capsules that hold about 12-15 people. You get a really amazing view of London, so it was a really great time to take pictures. It was a great end to my short stay in London… and now I am back in Finland! I will trail off here because this was such a gigantic post… and I will write again soon…

Krakow, take 2! And the last days in the Czech Republic...

I have arrived at my last few days in Olomouc… it’s amazing how fast the semester has gone! It feels like just yesterday I was arriving here after struggling to get my visa, and in three days I’ll be flying to London. I will write a “reflective” post after I’ve left the Czech Republic, but for now I’ll tell you about my great second trip to Krakow and the past few weeks in and around Olomouc.
My second trip to Krakow was a bigger surprise than my first, and I was thrilled to be going the second time! A great friend of mine from MSU, Spencer, announced on Facebook that he would be stopping in Poland on his way to Tajikistan for a project with James Madison. When I saw that he’d be so close to me, I jumped at the chance to see him! Luckily we were able to meet up for almost 4 amazing days in Krakow. He was an exchange student in Poland the same time I was in Finland, and he lived in Krakow for a month last summer, so it was really fantastic to be in the city with him. It was also really great to see someone from home to remind me that I really have a lot to look forward to when I return to Michigan and MSU.
We stayed in a great hostel in Kazimierz (the Jewish District) and spent almost all of our time there. Krakow is even more alive in the summer and there are beer gardens everywhere! It was so great to be in the center, or in Kazimierz, and just go from garden to garden having a beer or a drink here and there.

Spencer and I drank a lot of Polish beer and ate a lot of yummy Polish food from the grill… I went running soon after I got back to Olomouc I felt so guilty! But it was so delicious and wonderful at the time. Since this was my second time in Krakow, what I really wanted to do was to relax and enjoy the city. The first time I was there we were really rushed because we spent one whole day at Auschwitz, and not to mention the fact it was really cold. Spencer and I did do some touristy things, though.

During the day on Tuesday we went to the Wieliczka Salt Mine, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and was an operating salt mine from the 13th century up to 2007. It was really incredible to see… we went 300 meters underground! It’s a fantastic museum and shows how salt was mined in the past, but there are also a number of beautiful statues carved out of salt and amazing supports that are hard to imagine being built. And, in true Polish form, there is a church! It’s beautiful, with amazing statues and carvings… even a statue of Pope John Paul II carved out of salt! It was definitely a cool thing to see. The next day we went to the Schindler Factory museum, which was something we had really wanted to do the last time we were in Krakow, but didn’t have time. And let me tell you, this museum was the most amazing museum I have ever been to. Yes it was in Schindler’s factory (I am assuming most of you have seen the Holocaust movie, “Schindler’s List”), but it brought you back in time to Krakow during the years of 1939-1945. It was amazing how they set up the museum. Each room was incredibly done; even the floors and walls were decorated and built to make you feel like you were in Krakow during those years. For example, in the section of the museum about Nazi occupation the floor had Nazi tiles and there were Nazi banners hanging from the ceiling. I gasped when I entered the room… it was a crazy feeling. They even recreated the cement wall that once surrounded the Jewish Ghetto in Krakow. Throughout the museum there were videos, and things to read, and interactive computers… We spent nearly three hours walking through it and didn’t even touch the majority of it. To see it all you would have to separate the museum into sections, and take a day for each. Another great thing about it was something Spencer brought up – Even though the museum covers years of war, murder, and destruction, it doesn’t make you feel depressed the whole time you’re walking through it. It was really different from the Holocaust museum in Washington DC, at least for me, because I didn’t feel like crying the whole time. Instead I was just in awe and learned so much about Krakow during these years. Instead of feeling depressed, I felt reflective and like I had gone back in time. So I will have to say – If you are ever in Krakow, you must go to this museum!
I headed back to Olomouc the next day excited, but sad, to spend my last days with the best friends I had made here. There was a big barbeque outside of my dorm when I got home and it was a lot of fun to listen to music, eat, and be with my friends. It’s been kind of hard to be in Olomouc the past week and a half because each day more people leave for home or on trips. All semester I have been saying that we aren’t really saying goodbye to each other, it’s more of a “see you later!” Although, when the time came for my friends to leave, it was harder to believe what I had been preaching. I’m not focusing on the fact that they’re gone now, but on the amazing time I had with them this semester. I will miss so much being with people from all over the world with all of our talks about language, culture, and politics, but it was so great while it lasted that I can just be thankful for the time we had.
This past weekend was pretty fun, and a nice distraction from having to say goodbye to my friends. I went with two friends from Poland, one from France, and one from Spain to a music festival in Třebíč, which is south and east of Olomouc, kind of near to Brno. This festival had all kinds of music from rock to reggae to drumb and bass, and it was situated between a river and a castle - so beautiful! It reminded me of the Muskegon Summer Celebration, and really got me excited about summer. Though this festival was only two days and had music basically all day and all night. It had two stages, a tent for the drumb and bass, and even a kind of club with a dj, bar, tables, and couches. We camped in the area set aside for tents... and were really surprised to find that we basically had to rock climb to get to our tent! It was really quite dangerous, and we were sure someone would get hurt coming back drunk one night. We had a great time people watching the whole weekend. Something that made this festival really different from ones I’ve been to in the US was the amount of alcohol consumed. Beer was the typical price of 25 crowns (around $1.50... for a pint... gosh I’m going to miss the prices of this country...) as opposed to $7 beers at festivals in the States. So you can imagine that people were drinking a lot. There’s definitely a lot more public drunkenness in Europe than in the US. The good things was that there really wasn’t any violence, just some really funny things to watch. I don't have any pictures, however. I didn't want to bring my camera and risk losing it or having it stolen! You'll just have to imagine everything :-).
Today I have been doing laundry and starting to pack and clean up my room. I am finally going to Prague tomorrow! My Turkish friend and I are going early in the morning and coming back at night. After I post this I am going to go through my travel guide and make a list of things I have to see... Even though I’ve waited so long to see Prague, it seems fitting that it’s the last place I see. It’s almost like I’m coming full circle! I’ll post about that and try to reflect a bit on my semester before I fly off to London on Friday!