First Field Trip

We finally have had our first “field trip” of the semester! We got up early on Thursday morning to leave for Prague to get some guided tours and to have some free time to ourselves to explore the city. On the train ride there, I was separated from the group and had to sit in a “box” with five other people—none of which spoke any English. It was an extremely uncomfortable situation because I don’t know if I have mentioned this before, but a lot of Czechs do not like Americans at all. Once they hear you speaking American English, or see that “deer in the headlights” look when they speak to you in Czech, you are treated differently (in a lot of cases—of course there are a ton of friendly Czechs as well). So for two hours I sat silently on a train while they obviously talked about me in Czech and constantly gave me dirty looks. It was pretty frustrating because the announcements on the intercom were also in Czech and the attendant who kept popping in and asking us questions barely spoke any English either. I know that I can’t expect anyone to speak English here because that is not their first language, but it definitely can make things uncomfortable. I’m experiencing what it feels like to be the outsider, and my ride on the train helped me understand what foreign exchange students coming to America must feel like. It was pretty difficult, and I can now definitely sympathize with what they must go through in their first few weeks in the United States. It was not very much fun, but truly a great learning experience.

Thursday afternoon after we made it to Prague, we went on a guided tour with a few of our professors from Palacky University and learned about various statues and old buildings. My memory is so awful, and I wish I would have written about all of this immediately after it happened. We got to see the famous John Lennon wall and it was really beautiful. I forgot my camera in the hostel that afternoon, so you’ll have to Google it to see how great it was. After that, we went to eat lunch and I had amazing roasted duck with Czech dumplings and cabbage. I’m getting so spoiled here concerning food. (Although nothing quite beats my Grandma Cook’s cooking.) I’m going to have to make a ‘before’ and ‘after’ picture showing all of the weight I’ve gained. Seriously. After lunch, Kaitlyn Taylor and I wandered around the city and did a little bit of shopping. Later that night, we met up with the big group and went out on the town.

On Friday, we continued to go through more guided tours into the Prague castle and multiple cathedrals. The stained glass in these cathedrals was absolutely stunning. A few months ago, my mom taught me how to make a stained glass angel for one of my friends, and let’s just say she ended up doing most of the work! Stained glass is very difficult to work with, and now that I’ve attempted to make something out of it I have even more respect for these gigantic windows within these churches. My favorite was St. Vitus cathedral of Prague—it was amazing. Once again, pictures will never do any of these places justice. After we went through the cathedrals and castle, our tour guides led us to a part of Prague that was once the servants’ living quarters long ago. They turned all of the tiny houses into really cool little shops with handmade goods from Prague. Later that night, I tried sushi for the first time and we headed to bed pretty early so we could catch our train to Germany in the morning.

St. Vitus Cathedral full of tourists and some stained glass pictures

The next morning, we were on our way to Dresden, Germany. I found it somewhat difficult jumping from one country to the next, and caught myself saying “děkuji” (thank you) and “dobrý den!” (hello) to German-speaking people on multiple occasions. (I’m not quite as bad as my friend Jess who said “sí!” instead of “yes” or “ano” to a Czech lady in a store :) ) I just had to laugh at myself in these situations. I’m trying my best! In the afternoon, we got to choose between an art museum and a castle. I chose the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister (Old Masters Picture Gallery). I got to see very famous and beautiful art that I had learned about in my art appreciation class my freshman year of college. My favorite was the legendary Sistine Madonna, also called La Madonna di San Sisto, that was completed in 1512. This is a ginormous oil painting by the renowned Italian artist Raphael. It has so much symbolism and meaning behind almost every detail in the painting, and I had studied this painting in class so it was pretty amazing to be able to see it in person. We weren’t allowed to take pictures in the museum, so I will be attaching a photo I got from the Internet. 

Sistine Madonna by Raphael - My favorite in the museum

After we took our time through the art museum, Jess Vettel and I wandered around Dresden for a few hours, found an interesting mall, and had a really amazing lunch at a small German restaurant. Then, the entire group met up in the town square and climbed to the top of the Dresden Frauenkirche—a beautiful church that was destroyed by bombs in 1945 by the Allies in World War II. The church has now been completely reconstructed, and gives an amazing view of Dresden from the very top.

View of Dresden, Germany

After that, we met back up in the square and realized we only had 5 minutes to run across town to catch our train. If only I could’ve seen from another perspective how ridiculous all twenty-seven of us looked sprinting through the crowds. At one point I realized I had just ran straight through a dance competition! It was pretty embarrassing—especially because the entire time I was holding a half-eaten ice cream cone and had an overstuffed backpack on. Though some of our group was pretty stressed out about getting to the train on time, the entire time I could not stop laughing at how stupid we all looked. Unfortunately, our sad attempts at running were not enough, and we missed our train by just a few minutes. We had a couple of more hours to kill in Germany, so we chilled at an outdoor pub and walked around the train station. Though it was somewhat inconvenient at the time, I think it’s a pretty funny memory and a good story. Also, I decided a while ago that I am going to collect children’s books from different countries, so with those two extra hours I found a great book to add to my collection. It all worked out in the end.

The next day we headed back to Prague, which you can read about in my last blog post titled “The Jewish Ghetto of Prague.” Overall, it was a really great weekend and I can’t wait for my next adventure.