kutna hora: churches, bones & frostbite

on friday we took a trip to kutna hora, a town 90 minutes outside of prague. despite the fact that i couldn't feel my extremities for the majority of the trip (it was absolutely freezing out, and our tour guide apparently didn't realize that we aren't used to the central european climate just yet), i had a great time. kutna hora was, at one point, the second-most important city in the czech republic next to prague. silver ore was discovered there during medieval times, and the city became a huge mining center, and eventually became the main coin-minting center in the country.

this is saint barbara's cathedral, the construction of which began in the 14th-15th centuries and was completed after the second world war (bombings destroyed the stained glass, so they had to recontruct a lot of it). i wish they would have allowed us to take photos on the inside because it was absolutely breathtaking.

i'm not sure what church that is in the background, but i think this picture gives an accurate portrayal of the town; the skyline is dominated by church spires.

ok, now for the infamous bone church. the land this church was built on was deemed a holy site, so thousands of people wanted to be buried there. not surprisingly, they ran out of room in the cemetary. so, they dug up the remains of thousands of people to make room, and used the bones to decorate the entire inside of the church. all in all, there are the bones of forty thousand people in this church. try to forget that all these bones once belonged to actual people; it makes looking at (and being in the presence of) this much, much easier. behind that coat of arms in a giant pile of skulls and other assorted human remains. there were four such piles in the church, containing the bones of god-knows how many people.

this chandellier includes every bone in the human body - even toes and the tiny bones of the inner ear. macabre? perhaps. really, really cool? most definitely.

this is where i live

it's about time i posted pictures of where i'm living this semester. so, without further ado, welcome to machova:

the hallway into our apartment on the top floor of the building. those stairs lead up to the study lounge/computer room, so there's always people traipsing through to get upstairs.
the kitchen. it's pretty big, and has a dishwasher! (i'm obviously a little more excited about that than i should be, haha)
me and whitney's room. as you can see, we've got bunk beds which is lame. i have the privilege of having the top bunk. and by "privilege", i mean it sucks - but i'll get used to it. hopefully.
whitney's armoire and my desk. my armoire is next to the bunk beds. we don't get dressers here, so all my crap is precariously perching on shelves in the armoire. it has the potential to get very messy very fast.

and here's the view from the study lounge balcony:

travelling

a huge part of the study abroad experience is travelling - not just around the czech republic, but around europe. as part of our tuition, nyu pays for several trips around the area. we signed up for these trips on friday, and i am happy to report that i'll be going on all my first-choice trips.

next friday we'll be going to kutna hora, a town in the czech republic, where there is a church furnished entirely out of human bones. we are only spending one day there, but i'm really psyched about it. i've heard crazy things about this church. but more on that when i get back - with the requisite gruesome pictures.

the following weekend i'll be travelling to western bohemia (sidenote: the czech republic is separated into two region, bohemia and moravia. they used to be two separate kingdoms before they were united into "the czech lands) for three days. i believe the place we're going is a spa town where the rich and famous go to rejuvinate. should be a blast.

at the end of march the plan is to go to cesky krumlov, another czech city. i haven't heard that much about the area, but i'm excited nonetheless.

we're also going to terezin, a former nazi transit camp an hour or so outside prague. despite the fact that it's going to be a sobering experience, i am still looking forward to seeing a part that history. when i was younger i had a bizarre holocaust/ww ii fascination, so trips like these are right up my alley (so to speak).

all these trips are nyu-sponsored, but we're also planning on travelling on our own. our first trip is currently in the works: budapest on february 9-11. right now we're figuring out who exactly is interested (it looks like it's going to be a pretty big group, which could either be really fun or really miserable. we'll see) and trying to find a cheap-yet-classy hostel. and by "classy" i mean "not sketchy."

i'm also thinking about planning a trip to vienna for my birthday weekend. we'll see how that goes.

old town, prague castle, czech hockey, etc.

over the past couple days i've really been exposed to czech culture and history. it's really fascinating stuff, especially when you're living amongst it. on thursday we went on a tour of prague's old town, where the nyu center is. this is the tourist hub of the city, and has been referred lovingly to as "prague's times square" by one friend of mine. despite the overflow of tourists, old town is still gorgeous, and it is definitely worth fighting off the tourists to walk around.

yesterday we went on a guided tour of prague castle and the surrounding neighborhood. despite the record-breaking winds, the tour was beautiful. prague castle is the largest castle in all of europe, and it is breathtaking. the cathedral's spires are visible from most parts of greater prague, and the hill it is perched atop affords a spectacular view of the entire city. i will most definitely be returning on a warmer day when i can appreciate the view without being distracted by my numb toes.these last two pictures might seem a little random, but they are from one of the streets surrounding the castle. the houses were built when people were shorter, so whitney got excited when she found a her-sized house!

last night a group of twenty-ish of us went to a hockey game as our "cultural event." we were told the prague team that was playing, hc slavia praha, was really good, and that it would be a good match-up. unfortunately, slavia played like crap and lost. some of the guys in our group got a little rowdy, but i think that was to be expected by a bunch of slightly-drunk american college guys (fyi - the drinking age here is 18, so it was legal, albeit a little stereotypical, for them to get drunk at the game).

tonight is nyu-sponsored bowling somewhere on the outskirts of prague. i'm excited because a) it's free, and b) even though i'm terrible at it, i love bowling.

random fun czech culture fact of the day: grocery stores do not hand out bags unless you know the secret handshake.

in all seriousness, though, walking home with groceries hastily packed in those thin produce bags (you know the ones i'm talking about) is no fun. all i'm asking for is a bag that's sturdy! no more, no less.

my mouth can't form these sounds!

today was our third day of intensive czech classes. this language is as hard as you think it is; there are sounds (and letters!) that exist in czech that do not appear in any other language in the entire world. crazy, huh? my czech teacher is really understanding about how much we are struggling with the language, and praises us when we get even remotely close to pronouncing things correctly. for example, there is this ridiculous letter "r" with an accent above it that looks like an inverted "^". one would think that the sound of an "r" is pretty similar across languages, that when you hear it, you think, "oh, that's an 'r'." not this one. it sounds like a combination of the english z and j (that's not even an accurate description). and the kicker is that this is really common letter in the language, too! it is present in the numbers 3 and 4 (tri and ctyri - try pronoucning those! nearly impossible), the words for "well," "chicken," and "pepper," and pretty much every other word i encounter. this letter does not make our lives as novice czech speakers easy. not at all.

after class 25 of us went on a guided tour of the jewish quarter of prague, josefov. i went because i had heard great things about the guide, and that one of the sites is the old jewish cemetery. this graveyard is like nothing i've ever seen; it contains approximately 14,000 bodies (yes, i said fourteen thousand bodies - they are buried in eleven or 12 layers that go down 10 meters deep) that were first interred there in the 14th or 15th century. it's really hard to believe that there are layers upon layers of people buried there:





tomorrow and friday we are going on two more tours - one of the old town (where the nyu center is) and prague castle. i'm really excited for both; i've seen snippets of old town just by virtue of going to class each day, and prague castle is supposedly gorgeous. i'll post pictures of those tours this weekend.

na shledanou a mejte se hezky! (czech for "bye, and have a good one!" my repetoire of this language is rather limited, haha)

the next time i'm in stare mesto (old town), i need to have my camera with me. this neighborhood is incredible, with old buildings, open squares, and cobblestone. walking around today, i felt like i was in some james bond movie, and was half-expecting pierce brosnan in an expensive german car to come flying down the narrow streets in the midst of a car chase. seriously, old town is gorgeous and is exactly what you picture when you think of prague (albeit filled with western european tourists).

anyway.

today whitney, our friend rachel, and i had an adventure going grocery shopping. let me tell you, trying to figure out which czech-labelled product is shampoo and which is conditioner is an experience. we realized how little of this language we know when whitney was reading the label of some noodles and we didn't know the word for water. hopefully one of the first things we learn in our intensive czech classes is food words (after manners, of course. not knowing how to say "excuse me" and "thank you" is surprisingly frustrating. i pretty much panic whenever someone says anything to me in czech because all i can do is stand there with a dumb smile on my face in response.).

we also had a little mishap when we got on the tram to get home - we boarded the correct tram, just in the wrong direction. we were crossing the vltava river when we realized that, oh shit, we're going the wrong way - machova is on the same side of the river as tesco, the grocery/department store, so there should not have been any crossing of the vltava involved. whoops. we just got off at the next stop and got on the next train going in the opposite direction.

like i've been saying, the only way we're going to learn our way around this city is to get lost a few times - whether it's getting lost in conversation with a czech or lost on public transportation, it's the only way to really orient yourself with a new place.

praha welcomes you... with jet lag.

if you had told me four years ago that i would be living in this strange city where the locals speak a language that i cannot even begin to understand, i probably would have laughed in your face. honestly. but, nonetheless, i'm here, i'm alive, i'm jetlagged, but i'm ready to take on this city (and this contintent) with full force.

we arrived in the czech republic on an airfrance flight, ready to get off the plane, move into our new digs, and, most importantly, take a nap. i've been jetlagged before - on my trips to australia/new zealand and greece - so i knew what i was up against. but, since my version of jet lag usually involves a loss of short-term memory, i had forgotten how miserable it actually is. i emerged from that airfrance plane on two hours of sleep, and knew it was going to be a long, long day.

the bus ride from the airport to our residence at machova 12 (the numbers come after the street names here) was relatively painless, and we got to see bits and pieces of the city. not unremarkably, maybe five minutes after leaving the airport, we see a mcdonald's. seems like we can't get away from american consumerism even in a place like prague. the coach dropped us off down the block from our building, which blends in nicely with the rest of the street. it's impossible to tell from first glance that this building is home to several dozen american students (this is a nice perk - we want to blend in with the locals as much as possible).

machova resident hall is set up in suites of four-to-eight people, with two suites per floor. each suite has several bedrooms, a bathroom, and kitchen. whitney and i are living together again in a double. our suite is on the top floor of the building, with stairs up to the study lounge in the attic. the study lounge has several computers, a printer, and some couches. it also has a balcony that overlooks the city with a fantastic view (especially at night).

i have been surprised at the number of students who are studying here but are not from NYU; we've met kids from tufts, amherst, south carolina, hamilton, and a bunch of other schools. now the requisite first conversation has morphed from "so, what school are you in (meaning which NYU school)?" to "are you with NYU? where are you from? what year are you? what's your major?" it's an interesting twist to the traditional initial conversation. it's a nice change to have students from schools other than NYU; being all NYU all the time can get pretty exhausting, so i'm definitely welcoming meeting kids from other places.

we were taken on a walk around the neighborhood by one of the resident assistants; she showed us all the important local spots - the 24-hour grocery store, the pharmacies, the metro station, the bars. our neighborhood is very cute; the buildings are all really beautiful, and the streets are cobblestone. the only downside, i think, is the dog poop. apparently czechs don't have to clean up after their dogs.

on the agenda tonight is dinner at some pizza place on NYU's tab. like most NYU students, i'm all about the free food.