Study Abroad Fall 2013: Exploring the Country

This past week was tough. There was a lot of recovery from the trip to Auschwitz-Birkenau that I had to make. Although not immediately affected at the sites, as what I had seen settled in it made me really want to get up and take action. It also caused me to feel like I was not doing enough to better the world at the moment. It reenergized my love of service once I was able to trace the feelings though the help of talking with some friends from home. I had a lot of work this week as midterms are coming up, but I was still able to take the time to explore and take a couple trips!
Friday was the zoo. We slept in a bit and then met up with everyone at the CERGE building and headed off to see the animals in the zoo. There were so many baby animals from a baby elephant to a baby giraffe. It was absolutely amazing. The weather was a bit foggy, but isn't it always in Prague? We even rode the chair lift up above the park and saw a beautiful view of the city. Afterwards we headed to our respective homes before gathering for a bit in the evening before sleeping and preparing for Saturday!
This Saturday, 11 of us ventured up into the north of the country and may have ventured into Germany at one point. We hiked in České Švýcarsko. This happens to be where they filmed scenes from the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. The scene when the Beavers say that this is all Aslan's realm, that is exactly what we looked over. Let me just say it absolutely was Narnia. You could see why the filmmakers chose that. But it was not easy to get there. Not that it was physically demanding, but there were a couple other hiccups along the way. In the morning our friend Leah almost missed the train and our other friend Grant woke up just before the train was meant to pull out so he was unable to make it. Then we arrived at the town that we needed to catch the bus to in order to hike up the mountain. Well we missed the first bus because our train came in a little late. But we didn't know until it was too late. We then read the board and saw the next one came in 40 minutes so we wandered a bit and then met back at the bus stop. There was still no bus to be seen. Then I read the schedule and saw that it only went until the end of September and was not up to date as it is almost November! After then asking several people including a woman in a russian specialty store, people in the train station, and numerous drivers of other busses one was finally able to tell us there would be one! ...In nearly 45 minutes. But once we got there the hike was beautiful. Words can not describe how beautiful nature is. Once we all got to the top of the hill and stared over the land and at the longest footbridge in Europe, and NARNIA all we could do was smile. Everyone looked awestruck with a huge grin on their faces, myself included. It is amazing how beautiful our world is. On the climb down all of us could not believe that the place is not more popular among visitors and how the Czech Republic as a whole is so underrated outside of Prague. It was possibly one of the most beautiful experiences I've ever had. We took the train home and then Leah, DJ, and I wandered around Prague 7 until we came to this great Indian restaurant and had a delicious, well deserved meal after our hike.
Sunday, I tagged along with Leah and some of her friends from Erasmus (the European version of my program) and we went to the small central Bohemian town of Kutna Hora, a UNESCO world heritage site. We were meant to leave earlier in the day, but there were some sleepy heads and we got off to a later start allowing us to arrive there by noon. Our first excursion was to the Bone Church. This church literally has the bones of 40,000 (at least) people. The chandelier in the middle of the chapel is made of every single bone in the human body. It was so crazy. I took pictures for a little while before it really dawned on me that those were people. Apparently the bones were placed there to remind the church community that they are mortal and to cherish life and follow God's laws. Then we traveled through the city and saw two more churches. The first, The Cathedral of Our Lady was really cool in that as we walked around we were able to go up this long spiral staircase into the attic and walk across a platform with beams all made without metal nails. This led to where the choir sings and happened to be the most amazing view of the church. The second was St. Barbara's Cathedral and it was massively later gothic in style with a beautifully ornate interior. Then we headed back to our train. We expected there to be a bus, but apparently there were not many running in town that day! So we had to walk slash run to make our train. We watched the time slowly pass as we headed around the town back to the station getting more and more nervous by the minute. The time we were meant to be on the train came and went and we continued hurrying just hoping it was late! While we were doing this the sun was setting and allowed us to see a double rainbow that we could see nearly the entire rainbow of on the bottom and the most colorful sunset. The sky looked like a work of art. It was impossible to catch a proper image of it on any camera. It just would not have done it justice. Once we returned Leah, her friend Emma, and I all grabbed some delicious Prague 7 gyros and then headed home.
Overall it was an incredible weekend. I was able to really explore the country that I am studying in rather than traveling off elsewhere. I have loved discovering all the hidden treasures that the Czech Republic has to offer and I can not wait to continue doing so! But for now I have two full weeks of midterms and hopefully some smaller tours around Prague. Should be another wonderful week in, "the golden city of a hundred spires!"

The ZOO!!!