FInal Post

Unfortunately all good things must come to an end, and I am back in Nebraska.  I have been back for a week and am back at work.  I was living out of a backpack for the majority of my last month in Europe, so I thought I was ready to come back to Nebraska, but on my last day in Prague I definitely was sad that I was heading home the next day.  It was easier than I expected it to be to get back into the swing of things back home.  I am in a summer class and am back at work, so it is kind of nice to have a routine again. 
Studying abroad was probably the best decision I've made since being in college.  Although I spent a whole lot of money, I traveled the world and met so many amazing people.  I traveled to 12 different countries in three months and I will never forget it.  I left to go on the trip and didn't know anyone, but I came back with 23 close friends.
The food in Czech Republic is one thing I won't ever forget and will always miss.  The large portions and cheap prices are something you can't find in Nebraska.  I ate schnitzel every day for lunch for close to my last month in Olomouc.  When we were in Poland, all we ate was pierogi, and that was really good too.  They were little ravioli type food that were fried.  In most restaurants in Olomouc the beer was cheaper than water, so that always gave us a good reason to drink.  There was a restaurant that was right by our school that we stopped at about once a week.  We made friends with the owner and he would give us extra food and free drinks most of the time.  He was from Croatia and moved to Czech Republic with his brother to open the restaurant.
One of the main cultural things that I found so different was that people in Czech Republic and all across Europe seem to be more active and spend more time outside.  All the parks are full of people sitting around talking or playing yard games.  There are also a lot of people who are riding bikes and running.  I liked using public transit instead of always driving myself everywhere.  It would be nice to not have to worry about buying a car and paying for gas and insurance every month.  Most people live in apartments there and I don't think I would like that at all.  I like to have my own place and have the ability to do what I want without worrying about my neighbors.

Week Nine: Bohemia

For our last week of the program our whole group traveled around Bohemia. We stayed one night in Litomyšl, one night in Kutna Hora, and two nights in Cesky Krumlov.  

When we were in Litomyšl we toured a church that was there. The church sat empty for many years when the Czech Republic was under communist control. After the communists left the people of the town decided they wanted to restore the church so they could keep using it. Now the church is used as more of a multipurpose building than a church. There is a photo gallery and a children's museam in the upstairs and a stage for concerts downstairs.  Although it seemed like an old city to us, Litomyšl is concidered a modern city for the Czech Republic.  Instead of having a big square in the center of the city, there was just a main street that had a lot of shops on it. 

When we got to Kutna Hora the first thing we did was stop at an old church. This church was different than any church we've ever been to because the church was made of bones.  The reason why they made the church from bones was because they ran out of places to bury people when they died, so they dug everyone up and decorated the church with their bodies. There normally is a big chandelier hanging in the center of the church that has everything bone in the body, but unfortunately it wasn't in the church because it was taken out for restoration. 

There was another church in town that we went to see. Construction started when the city was very wealthy because of the silver mines in the town. Eventually between the decrease in the value of silver and the mine running out of silver, the town became very poor. Since there was no more money, they were unable to finish the church all the way so they just put up a wooden wall on one side to close it off. Many years later they replaced the wooden wall with a stone wall to match the rest of the church, but it was never built as big as it was  originally designed to be.  

Cesky Krumlov was the final town we went to, and my favorite. The town reminded me a lot of Venice without the water, because all of the buildings looked very similar. We went into an old theater that they used to have plays in. It was one of two European theatres that has all of the original pieces that it had when it was being used. We went rafting on our last full day there and that was a lot of fun too.

I'm on the road now and don't have access to a computer, so the pictures will just have to wait for those until I can get back on my cumputer!

Week Eight: Paris

For the last free weekend of study abroad trip I went with some friends to Paris. Paris is somewhere I have always wanted to go and see, mainly just because it's so popular and so many people go there to see the Eiffel Tower. We stayed in an Air BnB That was just a 5 minute walk from the Eiffel Tower. On our first day we Went to the Palace of Versailles. This was a palace That was built by the French King Louis XVI in the 17th century. The palace was huge and very beautiful. I do not really understand why the kings Spent so much money on having very extravagant living quarters, I could think of a lot better uses for my money than having five different bedrooms.  

Outside the Palace was the gardens, which I enjoyed much more than the palace itself. The garden is so large that you can rent bikes or golf cart rides to make it all the way to the other end. The garden was mostly made out of big bushes that were around 2 stories high. Amongst the rows of bushes there were many openings that had little fountains and music playing. My favorite water feature was a little pond that had and a bunch of jets in the middle that created and water show that went along to the music. At the end of the garden there is a long skinny body of water called the "Grand Canal". King Louis called himself the Sun God and he wanted everyone to believe he could control nature. That is why he created this huge garden surrounded by big lakes. Also he planted tropical fruits in his garden that normally would not be able to grow in France.

 

Garden of Versailles

Sunday morning we went on a group walking tour. Our tour guide was a history fan, and he definitely told us way more history than any of our previous history guides have. We only saw a few famous sites but he told us so much about then that I feel like we got a lot out of the tour.  He told us how when the Palace of Versailles was built, the government decided to only tax the poor, and didn't raise the taxes on any of the noblemen.  This caused the majority of the citizens of Paris to go into extreme poverty, and ultimately was one of the first causes of the French Revolution.

After the walking tour was over we walked down to the financial district of Paris. It was full of tall skyscrapers, but they weren't anything like the skyscrapers in America. They all had some interesting design to them, and everything seemed very futuristic. There was a big open park area connecting all of these buildings and it was full of kids playing and adults hanging out.  We saw a building that looked like a big arch, so we walked up to see what it was. It ended up being a campus of one of the universities in Paris, and it looked like the whole campus was inside that huge arch shaped building. 

          Paris Financial District 

Week seven: Krakow

This weekend we took a class trip to Krakow.  The first day we went to the salt mines. They started mining the land there for salt in the 14th century, and it is still used to a lesser extent. We walked through the tunnels for two hours and still only covered less than one percent of the entire mine.  Since electricity is relatively new, they had to haul everything up to the surface by hand. There was a pulley system set up that allowed blocks of salt to be brought to the surface while supplies were sent down. They used horses for horizontally moving salt to get it to the lifts.  Some of the horses that they used were brought down to the mines as young horses and then lived the rest of their lives without ever seeing sunlight again.

Saturday we had a little tour of the town and then went to the castle. The castle was very big and pretty from the outside. We had a tour around the inside of the castle but it was really hot and I couldn't hear the tour guide so it wasn't much fun.  After the castle we walked down to the city center where there was a festival going on.  There were a bunch of little stands set up that were selling food and little souvenir items.  We walked inside of the big church that was on the square and it was one of the prettiest churches I have been in.  A lot of the walls were painted red and it just looked different than most of the other churches we have been in so far. 

St. Joseph's Church

Castle in Krakow 

Sunday morning we went to Schindler's factory. I had seen the movie in a high school history class but I didn't remember anything from it, so I learned a lot from the tour. He was a Nazi soldier who wanted to help the Jewish people. He basically spent his fortune bribing Nazi leaders to allow him to have an all Jewish workforce throughout the war. Schindler chose intelligent people to work in his factory, like professors, doctors and musicians. The factory was ran by around 1,000 Jewish workers. While they did still have to live in a "concentration camp" in the factory grounds, these Jewish people were able to live without constantly being fearful of persecution.  All of the people who worked there made it through the war safely. After the war was over Schindler didn't have anywhere to go because he technically was a Nazi, even though he saved all of those people from the death camps. He eventually found some of the Jewish people who he saved and lived the rest of his life with them.  

            It is crazy that this upcoming week is going to be our last week in Olomouc.  I feel like we just got here a few weeks ago, but our time is almost up.  Next week we are traveling around Moravia with the whole group and then we are free to do whatever we want to for the remainder of our time in Europe.

Week Six: Spring Break

We spent our second week of spring break traveling around Italy and Greece.  Our first day we left Venice and headed for Verona.  All I knew about Verona was it had the Romeo and Juliet balcony, so I wasn’t all that excited for it.  We got there and walked around the town for most of the day.  There was a festival that had a bunch of stands that were giving out free samples. 

After Verona we made our way down to Rome.  We used Rick Steves podcasts as our tour guide for the forum, the coliseum, and the Sistine chapel.  I was very surprised with how nice the podcasts worked, and I liked it a lot more than walking around in a big group.  The forum was basically the center of the ancient Roman empire.  The Roman empire lasted for 1,000 years, from 500 B.C. to 500 A.C.  They controlled basically all of Europe and did it all without any way to easily communicate with people in other parts of their empire.  After the fall of the empire, the city of Rome was almost completely abandoned, and stayed that way for a long time until people decided to return.  The main reasons why the empire fell was because of Germanic tribes always attacking their borders and corruption.  It was crazy that we were able to walk in buildings that were made over 2,000 years ago.

The coliseum was another place that we toured during our time in Rome.  I knew they had jousting competitions in the arena, but I didn’t know how many other things that happened there.  They would put different kinds of wild animals in the arena together and watch them fight to the death.  When Romans would conquer a new land, they would bring back some of the people as slaves.  They would put a slave in the arena with wild animals like lions and bears and watch the animal eat the slave.  Not only was the slave be unarmed, they also were put in a big maze type thing that was put on the floor of the arena and have no idea where the animals were.  They would also put a knight in the area to fight the animals.  There was one festival that they had where people had to walk around the coliseum with bottles of perfume to mask the smell of all the blood that was around.  I can’t believe people back then went to events to watch things like this. 

Our final (and my favorite) stop was in Santorini.  Santorini is a little island off the coast of Greece.  The island is so small that in most places you can see the water on all sides of you.  We rented ATVs to get around since there was no public transportation running during the off months.  We spent most of our time there just laying on the beach relaxing.  The weather was amazing there, and it made it really hard to come back to cold and cloudy Olomouc.  

Oh and there were cats all over the island, scroll down to see them.

Verona

Rome

Santorini