Week Five: Vienna and Venice

Since we have been working so hard since we have been in Europe, we were given two weeks off for spring break.  The first week we went to Vienna, Austria and Venice, Italy.  When we first got to Vienna, I could tell that it was different than any other European city that I’ve been to so far.  Walking down a main street that connected our hostel to the city center, I almost felt like I was in New York City.  The buildings were all newer and full of mostly American stores.  The palace there was probably one of the nicest buildings I have seen since I have been in Europe.  It is obvious that Vienna was where the rulers of the Austria-Hungarian Empire once lived.  The Habsburgs (the old royal family) decided a few hundred years ago that they wanted Vienna to be known as a “modern” city, so they basically demolished the entire city and rebuilt it.  Churches were the only buildings that they didn’t tear down.  The city is laid out in circles, so it is much easier to get around that in cities that haven’t been reorganized since the medieval times.  It is crazy to me that the city had enough money that they could just start over and build everything from scratch.

Palace in Vienna 

The second day in Vienna we went to the Vienna Imperial Treasury Museum.  The treasury contains many artifacts from the Habsburg family over the years.  There are traditional clothes that were made in year 1,000 that were preserved so well they still look the same as they do in old paintings.  I also went to the museum of natural history.  There were a lot of displays of stuffed animals, and even the skeletons of dinosaurs and other pre-ice age animals.

After visiting the museums we were free to do what we wanted for the rest of the day.  I went wandering around the city with a couple of friends and we found a park to relax in for the afternoon.  The park was full of people just laying around in the grass hanging out.  I wish that more people in Nebraska spent their time outside in parks instead of inside all the time.

We have been eating a lot of schnitzel since we have been here, but were told about two places in Vienna that had the best schnitzel.  The first place we went to had loaded schnitzel.  It was normal schnitzel, but was stuffed with ham, cheese, and mushrooms.  The second night we went to a restaurant that is considered the “King of Schnitzel.”  This restaurant made theirs very thin, and it was amazing.  It is typically served with potato salad, but the way the potato salad here was more liquidly like a sauce.  As much as I like schnitzel, I always have thought it would be better if there was some sort of sauce or gravy to put on it, and it definitely made it a lot better.

Schnitzel from "Schnitzel King"

After two days in Vienna we left and headed for Venice.  Stepping off the bus in Italy was like feeling the first day of summer, because the Czech Republic is always so cold.  Once again, Venice is a city that is different than any other city we had been to before.  There weren’t really any roads, just outside hallways that ran between all the houses and shops.  I ate a lot of seafood during the two days I was in Venice, even though it was pretty pricy it was worth it.

A view of the gondolas in Venice

Here are some more pictures!

Vienna:

Venice:

Week Four: Auschwitz

I don't really know how to express the things that I saw this weekend at Auschwitz, but I will give it my best attempt.  When I first started thinking about going on this trip to Europe I saw that one of the places we would be going was to Auschwitz. It was a place that I had always heard about but somewhere that I never thought I would go to.

Saturday was a cold, rainy, and gloomy day, which was only fitting for being at Auschwitz.  The first thing we saw was the infamous gate that reads "ARBEIT MACHT FREI" which translates from German to "work makes you free."  One thing that I was unaware of before this trip was the lie that the Nazis were telling the Jewish people to keep them controlled.  The Jewish people thought they were just being relocated to all Jewish settlements and many of them thought they would be better off there than back home, where they weren't welcomed by their neighbors.  They were under the impression that if they went to these settlements and worked hard, they could make a better life for themselves.


Gate that reads ARBEIT MACHT FREI

Over one million people, mostly Jewish people but also Pols, Gypsies, and Soviet Prisoners of War were brought here and killed.  When getting off the train, Nazi members would decide if the people were to become slaves or if they would right into the "showers" to get disinfected.  This is what they told the people so they would cooperate.  Once they got to the showers, up to 2,000 people would be shoved inside and Nazis would dump Zyklon B, which would cause everyone inside to suffocate and die.


Zyklon B, the chemical used in gas chambers

When the Ally armies were closing in on the Nazis at the end of the war, they decided to blow up the gas chambers as a way to get rid of the evidence that the Holocaust ever happened.  Out of all of the gas chambers that used to be there, only one small one is still there today. We went inside of it and you could still see the fingernail marks on the walls where people tried escaping when the gas was poured in.  They also had re-made the furnaces that were used to get rid of the bodies.

Scratch marks on the wall

One form of intimidation that the Nazis used to control prisoners was the "Death Wall."  They would line people up there and shoot them, sometimes they would even make people watch.  The Nazis would make the people strip naked and walk out to the courtyard to meet their fate.  Over 3,500 people were shot and killed standing against this wall.  The building to the left of the Death Wall (see picture below) has black boxes over all of the windows, because that building was used by German doctors to conduct experiments on prisoners.


The Death Wall

Although I am glad that I went to Auschwitz, it is a place that I never want to go back to.  You get an eery feeling right when you step inside the first gate.  Since words can't describe what happened there, I will just show pictures of the rest of the camp instead of describing it.




















The only standing gas chamber







Train car that held more than 100 people for multiple days

Week Three: Cultural Differences

Through my first three weeks in Olomouc I have noticed that there are a lot of cultural differences between people here and people in Nebraska.  The first thing that I noticed is that people here don’t tend to smile as much as people back home.  In Nebraska, when two people walk past each other, they often smile as a way of saying hello.  I was talking to a girl who goes to school here and she said that it is a joke that they can tell who the Americans are because we are the only ones who smile at people for no reason.  On the same lines, in The States it is a common greeting to ask someone “how’s it going?”  Most people reply by simply saying they are doing fine.  If you asked someone in Czech Republic the same question, they would tell you a literal answer, and I am told it often is a negative remark.

The students are a lot different here than back home.  I have barely met anyone who can only speak one language.  In The States it is very uncommon for someone to be fluent in two languages, but a lot of European countries teach foreign language from a young age, so by the time they are in college they are fluent in two or more languages.  Another thing that is a lot different here from home is that students go to the bars on weeknights and leave the country to travel on the weekends.  I was so surprised to see the bars full of college students who had to be up in the morning every night of the week.  The first weekend we stayed in Olomouc and the bars were almost empty.  That is completely opposite from The States, where most students go out one night during the week and then go out on the weekend.

A typical Wednesday night at Belmondo night club

Olomouc and all of the other towns in Czech Republic that I have been to are full of huge beautiful churches, but I am told most services are almost empty.  Since the country just escaped from communist rule in the last few decades, they still aren’t very religious.  All of the churches were built before the communist rule, but are just sitting empty now.  I went to a church service in Prague and it seemed like almost everybody who was attending was a tourist, and hardly any local people.

Just one of the many beautiful churches sitting almost empty in Olomouc

There are cross-walks in most intersections in Czech Republic, but only a few have signals that tell you when you can or can’t walk.  For the ones that don’t have any signal, you just walk out into the street and the cars slam on their brakes to stop for you.  I felt so weird just walking out into the street at first, but now it is just so normal for me, I think it will be hard getting used to waiting for a walk signal when I get back to The States.

One of the other things that I noticed when I came to Czech Republic was how dogs are treated here compared with back home.  Here, people walk their dogs without them on a leash all the time.  Dogs are welcome in trains, stores, and restaurants.  I have even noticed that the people who work at restaurants are more willing to fill up a dish with water for the dog to drink than they are to give customers free water.  Someone who has never seen a dog in a restaurant might think it would be unsanitary, but I don’t think so at all.  All of the dogs here are so well behaved.  It is not uncommon for a dog sit next to its owner the whole meal without walking around.