It was incredibly nice out the other day, about 50 degrees and the bridge was empty, as it was the middle of the week. Anyway, after some searching, I found the Romanian Embassy and stood outside of it in awe for a moment before I went in. My thoughts at the time basically consisted of: 1. why is the Romanian Embassy so large? (it spanned about half a block) 2. am I seriously just nonchalantly about to ring the bell at the Romanian Embassy? 3. what happens when you knock on the door of an Embassy in central Europe? I guess I was expecting a more formal entrance, open to the public, like a foyer to a library or post office or something, not just an eighteen-foot door and a giant old-school knocker on it. So, anyway, I knocked and a man answered, checked my name of the list, and then he and two others escorted me throughout the embassy. I had only a few moments to sneak a look into the rooms. Everything was incredible; decorated in beautiful old Romanian and Czech art and furniture, every corner absolutely sparkling clean, and just a feeling of authority. I put on a nametag and was taken into the conference room by security. Well, it turns out that this isn’t so much a lecture as a roundtable discussion. I squeeze into the meeting about 20 minutes late and took a seat besides another study abroad student, the ambassador of Finland to the Czech Republic, across from the Israeli ambassador to the Czech Republic, a Washington Post writer, and a guy who I think was the Czech equivalent to a U.S. Supreme Court Justice. Meanwhile, I was fully convinced I would be a fly on the back wall, so I’m dressed in sneakers, jeans, and a hooded sweatshirt. Also in the room are about eight other ambassadors to or from the Czech Republic, a handful of former ambassadors who now just are referred to as ‘world diplomats,’ and 40 or so study abroad students. When I wasn’t sitting in awe of the place I was in, I listened to some very intelligent and knowledgeable people discuss the Muslin world in Western society and the hidden implications of the cartoons power. The discussion ended with the ambassadors moving into the next room for a lunch and a few study abroad students were able to join. I put my hand up, but unfortunately the event organizer just choose the people seated directly near him. It was a great experience I won’t soon forget.

A friend and I walked around Lesser Town for a little while as it was so nice out, grabbed a quick lunch, and then I headed back home. For my Alternative Czech Culture class, we meet one day in the classroom and the other on a field trip. That day, we were meeting on Wenceslas Square at five o’clock and then walking over to a secret jazz hangout. The place was definitely hidden. It was about 2 blocks off the square, in an apartment building, and identifiable only because of a tiny, 1-inch sticker on the buzz-in panel along with the fifteen or so names of the apartment residents. We buzzed in, walked up six flights of stairs, and ended up in a bar on the top of an apartment complex. The place was like a speakeasy of the 20s. It had a tiny CD and record store, community chess sets and board games, and a backroom full of Czech music and culture magazines, each title dating back fifteen years. One the great aspects of the class is that on these trips we basically sit around, people watch, drink beer with the professor, and discuss what we are seeing at the moment and what clubs or pubs we have been to since we last met. Our professor usually always begins class by writing on the board the names of the week’s big shows, greatest clubs, and secret spots that only she knows about.

A few of us skipped out early as we had scored tickets to Don Giovanni from the school. Some people, who pay a lot of money, only have the opportunity to see the ceiling of the Estates Theatre, we, however, have the opportunity to see and feel the ceiling of the Estates. That is the best way to describe our seats. We had the nose-bleeds of the nose-bleeds, but we were seeing Don, Mozart’s most famous opera, in the exact theatre in which he premiered the show 200 years before for about $8 (well free because CIEE paid). It was a very traditional performance, and the subtitles on a flat screen above the stage made it very simple to understand. The show was great, a little long, but very well done and the theater was of course incredible.

A bunch of us headed out to a new Greek restaurant we had found a days before after the show and then called it a night.

So all in all, a pretty great day. I don’t know the next time I will have such a diverse day culturally. From sitting next to ambassadors and diplomats, onto have a drink with my professor at a secret jazz hangout, and then straight to a Mozart opera, I can’t claim. I’m in Prague for the next 11 days straight until I head off to Bratislava, Spain, and Ireland, and I can’t wait to keep exploring the city. So many great art exhibitions are around, particularly as April 1, the official start of the tourist season (a dreadful day for me), comes around. Have fun and enjoy.

Our first stop was Lidice. Today, it is just a monument and a museum dedicated to an entire Czech town that was completely destroyed by the Nazi regime. After one of the members of the town was suspected of helping in the assassination of a Nazi general, the entire town was wiped out. Men were killed immediately or sent to Auschwitz, and women and children were sent to camps as well or to live with new families in Germany. Where there was once a large city of almost 400 people, today there is just a hill and valley and a few monuments. One of them is a statue of many of the children who were killed in Lidice. It is a bronze statue of children starring at the area where the town once stood and now only grass grows.

No more than 45 minutes from there is Terezin. Originally a small fortress and then a prison in the late 19^th century and during WWI, Terezin was used as a holding camp for people all throughout Europe, but mainly Czechoslovakia. Political opponents, Jews, gypsies, many different groups were housed here and a great majority of them were later sent to Auschwitz. It was an odd experience being in Terezin just one week after spending an entire day at Auschwitz. In truth, I felt desensitized in many ways throughout the day. Just eight days prior, I roamed Auschwitz, a much more storied camp and larger space. This is not to say that Terezin is any less significant; it simply caught me very off guard to not be as emotional or moved by Terezin. Part of the reason may be because Terezin is so well preserved, looking much the same as it did sixty years ago, while Auschwitz is ruins, destroyed barracks, and demolished gas chambers and crematoriums. With that, Terezin looks like any other fortress with high walls, lots of crammed sleeping areas, and areas for prisoners and guards. Auschwitz, however, is unique in its complete and utter destruction as well as the feelings you expect to encounter as you go there from the hundreds of stories, books, and movies that detail the story. Additionally, going through Terezin as a group of 70 felt like I was touring the place more than experiencing it, as Auschwitz felt.

From the fortress and prison, we went to the town of Terezin that was turned into a ghetto during the war. Jews were kept within the city, crammed in close quarters with limited amenities and even less knowledge of their situation and fates. We toured two museums while there, and both were well done and interesting, but I wish the tour would have included more of a walk through the city than a museum dedicated to the city. Again, I just think it was the size of the group that hurt the trip because the program, CIEE, did a great job with it, but large groups tend to lessen the experience a bit.

Sunday is the Oscars and I hear John Stewart is hosting, but they don’t come on here until 2 a.m. and I have no interest in staying up until 7 a.m. just to hear who wins, so I’ll wait until the next day to check them out. Plus, I’m pretty convinced no bar, not even the best expat bar, will care to stay open for the Oscars.

On the movie note, there is a great film festival in Prague right now called the One World Film Festival. It is an international festival featuring documentaries and full-length features that deal with human rights. I plan to catch a few of them on Tuesday and Wednesday.

I’m getting to sleep early tonight, try to store some hours for the coming week. Traveling next weekend is up in the air right now as it is the weekend before spring break and we are guaranteed to be out of town for the next five weekends in a row. I’d like to stick around and catch a soccer, sorry football, game on Saturday in the city if I can. Anyway, see you later, have fun and enjoy.

I stayed in town for the first time in 4 weekends and explored a lot of the city that I haven’t been able to see since classes started. The weather was awesome, the snow that had fallen the night before made the city beautiful, only problem was the people. People everywhere. Tourists everywhere.

Walking through Wenceslas Square and Old Town on the weekend as the weather gets warmer is frustrating to say the least. Of course, I was the tourist like them only five weeks ago, wandering slowly around town, not knowing where I was going, making it a mess for everyone to walk as I gazed at anything and everything. It seemed like over half the people I walked by spoke perfect English and were American or British. I wanted to stop and give directions and ask where they were all from and how their visit was, but it would have taken days to walk from my flat to lunch.

I started at noon and walked around until about 6 p.m., racking up about 10.5 miles before I met a friend of mine for dinner in Old Town. When we went out later that night, the American-tourist fest continued as all the bars were packed with study abroad students in from Barcelona, London, and Florence. It was great to see how much visitors loved the city, but I wanted Prague to be just mine. The attitude in the Czech Republic, and all of central and Eastern Europe, is different from other areas in Europe, especially other large cities. Everything is very relaxed and easy here. Like I have said before, pretentious is not part of the vocabulary around here, even in the nicest of restaurants and best of clubs. The word ‘cover charge’ is an odd term too. It has been great to be removed from any type of ‘scene’ that exists in the states; to just go out and not worry about anything has been one of the greatest parts of living in Prague. The vibe was definitely different this weekend around town, but I guess I need to see the city in both lights in order to appreciate the Prague I have lived for almost two months.

Two months. Crazy when I think about that. I still am fascinated each time I jump on the tram and dive into the metro that I live here and have the chance to travel around Europe and study with some great professors and incredible friends. When I aimlessly walk the city I still find new corners, another square, ten more parks, and hundreds more buildings with incredible architecture and colors.

On Friday, I turned in my first presentation for classes. It was for an economics course on European Union enlargement and my focus was Kaliningrad, an oblast of Russia. I’m presenting on Tuesday, so we’ll see how it goes, but I’m not too worried. It’ll be my first true assessment by a Czech professor, so I’m more curious about how grading works and what professors expect than anything else.

Coming up this week, I am going to see Don Giovanni at the Estates Theatre. Don is Mozart’s most famous opera and the Estates Theatre is where the show premiered over 200 years ago. This year also marks Mozart’s 250^th birthday (or would be), so there is a lot of added attention to his work, especially in Austria and Prague, where he lived and worked. I’m really excited to see a professional hockey game on Thursday night as well. There are two professional teams here and from what we understand, Thursday’s game is the annual inter-city match-up. I say ‘from what we understand’ because the tickets are in Czech and I can’t fully navigate the website or read most everything written online about the teams, the leagues, and the game.

So that’s about all, but I’m headed to Terezin on Sunday, a ghetto an hour northwest of Prague that served as a holding camp for many people in central Europe during the Holocaust. The Sunday trip is part of an academic program from a few of my courses and is hosted by my program here, CIEE. I’ll fill you in on that when I get back. Have fun and enjoy.

So I’ve just returned from Poland. Yes, Poland. I don’t think I thought about touring Poland when I dreamt of Europe when I was younger; after this trip, I don’t know why. Poland is incredible.

I’ll try not to run off course as I slip everything I did in Poland in less than 72 hours, so here it goes.

My trip to Poland is a story of seconds. We made trains, trams, buses, museums, shops, and exhibits by literally seconds. Fortunately, we were able to do absolutely everything we had hoped to do in Poland, but we were always cutting it close.

We left class on Friday and ran to the tram station in Prague in order to catch a ride to the train station. As the doors were closing, literally (one of the five of us actually got caught in the door) we got on the tram. Now, this isn’t all that exciting considering the rides come every four minutes at that time of day, but that foreshadowed the rest of the trip. There were seven of us going to Krakow together, but other study abroad students we knew were on the train as well. From Prague to Krakow is not the easiest route because there are no direct trains. In fact, it took two transfers and three trains to reach Poland.

The move from the first to the second train was flawless, but border control on the second train slowed us up 28 minutes and our lay-over was only set for 29 minutes. Needless to say, in broken English, the conductor warned our cabin that we’d have to “move very quickly” in order to reach Krakow when we wanted. So we lined up at the door as the train readied for its second stop and darted to the next train, about 15 of us together, getting on the train as it pulled away no more than 3 seconds later.

When we arrived in Poland, my first thoughts were how much the city looked like the Eastern Europe I had imagined. Sure Poland is a developed EU-member country and Krakow is home to dozens of top businesses, a great university, and is a modernized city, but it still possessed the cold, old, war-destroyed, dark feeling of the storied eastern countries. None of the buildings had any color to them as they do in Prague and in other areas of central Europe. All of them were gray, hidden behind inches of dirt and pollution. The city has not modernized in architecture much since the end of WWII, but from that comes its great charm and character.

We walked from the train to the hostel, threw our bags down and headed out to grab some dinner. Not knowing too much about Polish food, we quickly came to the conclusion that although it has its small differences and unique dishes, much of the food was similar to Budapest, Vienna, and Prague.

Part of the reason to visit Krakow, for us and so many other millions of travelers (something like 4+ million annually), is to see Auschwitz, the largest and most horrific concentration camp of the Nazi regime. We made plans at dinner to head to Auschwitz at 7:10 a.m., and so our group quickly shrunk from 9 to 4.

After some dinner, a little bar, and a very early night, we were asleep for only a few hours before the 6 a.m. wake up. Again, we planned out about 40 minutes to get to the train and bus station and figure out the place. However, when we got there, it being Saturday made the place a little barren and made for no English speaking people on staff or in the station. Thankfully, at about 7:08 a.m. an English-speaking French expat directed us toward the bus an elevator ride down and we boarded the bus with no more than 30 seconds to spare.

Auschwitz opens at 8 a.m., but the first bus from Krakow doesn’t get in until about 8:30 a.m., so when our small group arrived, we literally opened the camp. To be at Auschwitz is one of the eeriest feelings in itself, but to be at Auschwitz I (one), a huge 100 acre camp (and this is the smaller of the two camps) with only three others is very eerier. We agreed that we wouldn’t walk around with one another, so at times there was no one to be seen. No tour guides, security, or visitors, I walked Auschwitz for nearly 90 minutes without seeing a single person.

Auschwitz I (one) survived the war very much in tact and many of the remaining barracks and facilities are now miniature museums within the larger complex. Some barracks show the daily life of prisoners, others the transportation and relocation of Jews, the sick ways in which doctors used Jews and others in experiments, and the ways in which prisoners were killed. Other barracks are museums dedicated to victims of specific countries, like Denmark, Italy, Poland, and other European nations. You can just freely walk around, in and out of each building, and it would probably take 3 or 4 full days to really stop and look at each picture and read each paragraph and caption. The museum is direct and real; no image is too horrid to show, as the events of the Holocaust are real and so the pictures are to live on as memories of this time.

As we finished at Auschwitz I, near 11 a.m., four bus loads of tourist groups flooded the camp. The presence of these large groups, roaming together like herds was very odd. Of course it is a historical museum, a ‘tourist’ attraction of sorts (although by no means do I imply attraction, simply that it draws millions of tourists and is the largest museum and most frequented in Poland and all of Eastern Europe by hundreds of thousands of visitors), but it was very odd to have large tours cramming the area.

We took a taxi the 3 kilometers to Auschwitz II, the second and larger of the two Auschwitz camps that was built later in the war and made specifically for killing Poles and Jews, not for labor at all. In fact, nearly 1.5 million people died at Auschwitz in less than two years. Of that 1.5 million, 70% were killed immediately as they got off the train, as they were sent to the gas chamber upon arrival. Other numbers that were just astonishing was that before the war, there were 3.5 million Jews in Poland, today just 6,000, less than 0.2% of the original population.

Auschwitz II is the more famous of the two camps. It is the camp of so many photographs that show 700 acres of flat land covered with the remains of over 1000 buildings. Most of them were destroyed by the Nazis at the end of the war to cover their crimes, but many survived, along with some of the ruins of all four gas chambers and mass crematoriums.

3 of the barracks are open to the public, and again, for nearly an hour, the four of us were the only visitors, and it was quite scary and extremely emotional. Crammed into a little more than 1000 square feet of space were up to 700, 800, or even 1000 prisoners. The images of Schindler’s List and pictures in the history books do not lie.

Amazingly, there are no tour guides or security at Auschwitz, and visitors are encouraged to get up, get next to and touch, smell, see, and live the barracks and the camp. Only a few arrows point the way around the 700 acres, but for the most part, we just slowly roamed. There were moments when I remember just continually thinking how incredible the sights were. “Holy shit” came out my mouth over and over as I thought about the monstrosity of Hitler and the Nazis just viciously killing millions of people, entire villages, families, generations, countries for no reason. Seeing the gas chambers and the ponds still full of ashes was just awful and shocking. The shock is continuous and painful.

We walked around the camp for another three hours before heading back to Krakow. We thought we had the bus schedule figured out pretty well, but we were wrong. The buses weren’t running as planned for whatever reason that day, so we stood in a ‘bus line’ on the side of the road simply because that was what a few locals were doing. Anyway, about ten minutes later, a man driving a small van-type-bus stops and when we say Krakow he nods and asks for $2 US (not bad for a 90 minute ride). It turns out that these small buses run all over Krakow in competition with the public transportation system. Whatever the case, it worked out well for us, as we were able to sit among the locals or a tiny, overcrowded bus all the way back to the city. Whether that is your style or not, it was still awesome and definitely one to chalk up as an ever-so-talked-about “cultural experience” of studying abroad.

Back at the main bus station, we had about 30 minutes to grab a quick lunch before finding another bus to take us to the Salt Mines. Outside of Krakow, it is fair to say that the salt mines are not well known, but any tourist in the area quickly hears about them or reads of them in any travel book (Let’s Go, Lonely Planet…whatever your pleasure is).

Saturday night, we headed to the main square for some dinner and to go out. We found an awesome little vodka bar and settled there to start the night. Turns out, this tiny bar was one of the coolest bars I have been to. After a little wait, the bartender, and only person working in the place, came over and started to tell us a story of his life and his vodkas. After some tasting, a discussion with him, a few laughs and some excellent Polish vodka history, we headed out back to the square. The not so well-kept secret of Krakow is that the nightlife is insane. With a bar and very chill club on every corner, each one less pretentious than the next, the city is alive at night. We jumped from an underground music bar built in the caves of the city from hundreds of years ago serving liter beers to a Mexican themed dance club to a few random clubs that we just passed by, heard the music coming up from under the streets (as all the clubs are underground, through incredible entryways and staircases), and had an unforgettable time.

Sunday was reserved for seeing Krakow only. We did the castle, the main museum, the great park that circles the entire city, the storied Jewish Quarter and Jewish cemetery, the university quad in the middle of the city, the main square and beautiful church within it…everything. Again, all these places have official names, all of which I knew last weekend and have in a guide book somewhere, but I can’t remember, but I have all the pictures for you.

Our train left Sunday night at 11 p.m., so we grabbed some authentic Polish dinner in the main square and saw a great jazz singer for an hour before heading off to the train station. In every guide book and from every tourist backpacking Europe, you will hear the same thing about Krakow: BEWARE OF THE TRAIN, BEWARE OF THE TRAIN. To tell the entire story, all the legends, and myths too would take forever….but it comes down to mass amounts of theft involving not only the criminals, but many times the people working on the train and the police as well. Okay, huge generalization there right? Well, I guess, but the stories are true (some of them at least) because we have seen it happen and hear stories not from friends of friends of friends, but from people within our program and others in Prague as well. Just be careful on the train of theft when you fall asleep, because as the guide books assure, you may be gassed, increasing the heaviness of your sleep and making it very easy to go through you bags and pockets (yes, they stand right over you and dig through your pockets and you just sleep right on through it). So, I hugged my backpack, took my belt and strapped it around my chest and clipped the top of the bag to a necklace. It was probably overkill, but the stories alone will scare you. I should add that the day trains are a lot safer, but we were taking the midnight Krakow-Prague direct train, the most storied and famous of them all. Thankfully, nothing happened on the train and we must have looked absolutely foolish, but the memories of us preparing for the nine hour ride are priceless.

We arrive back in Prague at about 7:30 a.m. Monday morning, took a quick nap, and headed right to class. A great weekend. Have fun guys, enjoy.