complete the circle

30512 we woke up early, hoped on a minibus to head over to Teresienstadt, and Lidice, which were a ghetto, and concentration camp during World War II. but first we stopped at a cemetery, and the crematorium which was used to dispose of the bodies from the camp. the cemetery area is split up, the city cemetery, which is in active use, the memorial to the Soviets who died liberating Czechoslovakia, and finally the largest area, the mass grave for the victims of the holocaust. the crematorium which we wandered through was rather unimpressive considering the number of bodies that went through it. after this we went into the city-fort proper, the city had existed for a number of years before it was converted into a classic 18th century star fortress, named Terezín after Maria Theresa (who also appears previously in this blog). the city was pretty cool, though it felt a bit empty, i mean, it was turned into a Jewish ghetto by the SS after the Nazis rolled into Czechoslovakia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terez%C3%ADn_concentration_camp ), so not surprisingly the population was devastated, but then some ten years ago it suffered a pretty nasty flood, driving the people out once again. the guide that walked us through all this stuff was very knowledgeable, and had second hand accounts (first hand to her) of people who lived through the ghetto here, and the Lidice bit which will come up later. the guide told us about how the SS put on a show for the Red Cross that came through to inspect these Jewish resettlement camps, the SS did such a good job, that the Red Cross deemed it a happy place, and that there is clearly nothing fishy going on with the disappearance of millions of Jews...in 1944. the place had an old Austro-Hungarian barrack, turned holding pen for Jewish families, turned musuem that was pretty interesting. the section that i liked the most was the art, visual art produced by the inmates? victims? prisoners? people in the ghetto. my favorite being Bedřich Fritta ( https://www.google.cz/search?q=Bed%C5%99ich+Fritta&hl=cs&safe=off&client=firefox-a&hs=w3p&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&prmd=imvnso&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=g3nGT8HfDcTC0QXI8NT3BQ&ved=0CFoQsAQ&biw=1600&bih=704 ). he was a caricaturist prior to his internment, and then he was put to work making propaganda, and he did more satire in his free time. we then wandered into the little fortress, where we learned that the entire city was turned into a fort because it seemed to serve as a good defensive position against the Prussians, cause you know, they were rather aggressive, and the Czech lands were right there, the little fortress was the garrison when it was a fort. The town in total was built for 7000 people including the garrison. In the 1940s the whole city was turned into a Jewish ghetto, housing at the most 58000 people. The forttown was chosen because it could easily be converted to a ghetto, also it was near appropriate railways to get the supplies in and the people out to the death camps up in Poland and Eastern Germany. at the small fortress was used as a prison for Czech prisoners, political dissidents, intellectuals, and homosexuals, generally unsavory characters like that, and an SS barracks. At one point the prison housed 1500 prisoners. as cool as all this WWII and holocaust stuff is, i was honestly more excited by the fact that cell 1 of this little fortress housed Gavrilo Princip. I dont mean to belittle the tragedies visited upon the people of the ghetto, or the other prisoners of the fortress, or the massacre at Lidice (which again, ill get to in a second), but the fact that the man that put much of the violence of the 20th century into motion was housed here is really cool. I have been to the place where he shot Franz Ferdinand, ive seen the car Ferdinand was riding in, the now bloody jacket he was wearing, as well as the pistol that shot him. so this kind of completed the circle for me, Princip was held here till his death as he was too young to be executed.

we then watched a film which was a mashup of real footage from Terezín before the war, the reality of the ghetto, and the German made propaganda, it was neat seeing all of it side by side, and to top it off, we viewed the film sitting the theater that was used to entertain the SS guards. Lidice Nazi reprisal for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinhard_Heydrich ). he rolled into Czechoslovakia in September of 41, as the Stellvertretender Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia, immediately quashed any Czech resistance, as ordered to do so by Hitler, within his first month, over 1500 Czechs were arrested. He was infact one of the chief architects of the Final Solution. The Czech government in exile hatches the plan to assassinate said Heydrich ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Anthropoid ), dropping Czech soldiers into the region, with poor results. Finally in December, they dropped 2 catz in, they met up with the what elements of the local resistance that still around. They planned to kill him in his car on his way to airport to Berlin. They hit him, almost botched the job what with one of their operatives' Sten gun failing, but they wounded him with an AT grenade, which ultimately led to his death. Reprisals kicked in, rumors flew as to what the Nazis were gunna do. Hitler calls for the death of 10000 Czechs, ultimately they settled on completely eliminating this town of Lidice, because there was some thin strand of connection(according to our guide an unconnected letter from lover to lover) between the operative which killed Heydrich and the city. All men over 16 were lined up and shot, all the women went to a concentration camp, and a few of the children were chosen as good Aryan stock, the rest were shipped off to other concentration camps. now all that survives of the city is a large park with the foundation of the town church trace out in stones, along with a memorial to all the children killed during the massacre. the museum to Lidice was very well done, with various bits of archival and documentary footage, it was another one of those experiences that conveys wholly the experience and feelings, without beating the hell out of you emotionally. the whole day didnt lend itself to picture taking too much, hence the lack there of. we are visiting a Communist work camp tomorrow, i will likely have more to say regarding my "feelings" and "reflections" with the contrasting bit tomorrow, and after some of this has sunk in a little deeper. until then enjoy the wiki links.

slow days

29512 squat, we did squat today, we had class and thats about it. the class didnt fall into my area of interest, but i see the pertinence to the history. the class was led by a Charles University professor that had a rather eclectic collection of degrees under his belt, but he gave us the rundown of the History of the Jewish people in central Europe from the early modern to modern times. much of the stuff we went through we had gotten bits and pieces of on our wanderings and guided tours through the Jewish sections of the cities we have been to, the special clothes they had to wear to be marked out, the development and institutionalization of the ghettos, the kings always relying on the Jews for revenue. he also talked about how the thirty years war and the development of the nation-state made being a Jew harder, cause of the rise of nationalism, and the abolition of the autonomy the Jewish communities had. by the modern era, monarchs began to realize they could better exploit the Jewish population by letting them take up new professions and go to school n whatnot, but things didnt necessarily get better. The discussion kinda petered out before getting past 1900, so we didn’t talk about the modern nationalism and racism stuff, but then again, that is something we (I atleast) have gotten lots of before. after said class, i went home and napped, for like 3 hours, woke up, ate a lil bit, a handful of us wanted to go find food at a place that was closed again, we then walked back to our neighborhood to try a place that wasnt taking anymore costumers, so i came home, and did this, will work on my paper now. tomorrow we are seeing stuff, so there will be pictures and discussion n whatnot.

capstone flashbacks

28512 slow day, good for recovery after the weekend of travel. class today was led by a guest lecturer, who i then spoke to after class for the oral history presentation thing we gotta do later. he was an economist, undergrad for econ, masters in international trade, and PhD in European Studies, he knew what he was talking about. his lecture was probably the longest one so far, and i was willing to sit there for double that time and listen to him discuss the transition of the economy. i mean, my Capstone was about more of the political and governance transition so the econ side was interesting. i must note, the guy was an ardent Keynesian neo-liberal economist, a big proponent of the Washington consensus ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_consensus ). which certainly isnt a bad thing, i think a big reason he was so happy with neo-liberalism is because it worked so well for his country. he pointed out that alot of times, transitional and developing economies dont follow all the rules set forth by the Washington Consensus, they half-ass it, and its bites them in said ass. he pointed out that the proposed Shock Therapy worked for the Czech Republic, the first few years after communism were awful, significant inflation, unemployment, restitution issues, some manipulation and abuse of the system took place, but it was all limited to the first 2-3 years. after that they were on the upswing as transitioning into the global market, they had successfully navigated through the transitional phase from a command economy to free market, and the issues through the late 90s, and 00s, were results of globalization. he pointed out that Hungary and Poland had such issues because they didnt jump in head first, they sat in the shallow end and waded in, hence they are still having economic issues (and of course being an economist, all political and social issues are thus engendered) to this day. on a personal front he said that he is very happy with the transition, in that it has afforded himself, and his students m any opportunities for learning and experience. the free market in the Czech Republic today, will help them tomorrow, smart people wont be relegated to janitorial positions as "potential enemies of the state" they will be extolled, and help to improve the nation as a whole. after that we had pancakes, real murican pancakes, with sausage patties, and bacon, and maple syrup, and an irish coffee, for dinner, it was fantastic, as you can imagine, such a heavy meal kinda made me tired, i read my happy fun time scifi book, did some laundry and perused the internets. i think ima meeting some catz for a beer or two, and then bed. i plan to finish my write up for the Under a Cruel Star assignment tomorrow afternoon. sorry for the bland update.

more rich people money-pits

plenty of travel today, 530ish kilometers of bus ride, though of course we couldnt pass the trip without stopping for something or other. we stopped at what was described as a castle, though i immediately noted it was more of a chateau. it was the Lednice Chateau, which i just accidentally deleted my notes for, so we will see what i can remember. it was built some time in the 1200s, and was rather shortly after its construction handed over to the House of Lichtenstein ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princely_Family_of_Liechtenstein ). the various princes of the Lichtenstein house (being very rich) were avid hunters, traveling to Africa, Asia, and in the 17th and 18th centuries to the Americas to hunt exotic game. so all over the place were antlers, and heads, and bird and stuffed stuff.

this is a banner from the battle of Austerlitz, you know the battle were Napoleon beat the shit out of Tsar Alexander I and Holy Roman Emperor Francis II

the fancy staircase is actually all from ONE tree, unfortunately its not carved from a single tree, but all the pieces of wood came from the same tree, it took 3 artisans 5 years to finish it (or 5 artisans 3 years, im not sure i deleted the notes, same amount of man-hours though so whatever)

that last picture, of the greenhouse is pretty cool, cause the guide mentioned that the greenhouse involved a whole bunch of new technologies (again dont remember specifics, and the internet is kinda lacking) for the time it was built in the early 1800s. other than that we got back to prague, a few of us went to a shitty restaurant, and paid waaaayyy too much, like, a half litre of Pilsner Urquel, (which normally goes for 25-35 CZK) was 89, and the chicken burger which i wanted, but they didnt have it, but then they wanted more money, and then, i dont know what happened, but i ent up paying like 15USD for a shitty meal, i went home, did some laundry, wrote this, and now wanna go to sleep. laters

poor business model

26512 first full day in Budapest, the only thing we really did was the Museum of Terror. first off, i need to communicate how excited i was to go to this, as the first time i came through Budapest, it was Easter, and the place was closed. anyways, the museum was very cool, it was very very well done. like ive been to a good handful of museums dealing with such heavy topics, and some time you come out very sobered, like almost feeling like a collective human guilt for letting this happen, while other times youll end up confused, like the museums were disingenuous or something. this had neither, i got done, and it seems like the Hungarians have a good handle on their rather ugly history. so Hungary, after WWI became its own country for the first time in a while, and subsequently they lost plenty land to Croatia, and Romania, and Italy and whatnot, and they, like the rest of the losers of WWI were generally upset, and then the depression hit and it got worse, and eventually by the breakout of WWII fascism was lookin pretty sweet. they sided with the Nazis, and by '44 after the Nazis rolled into Hungary, their own National Socialist party, the Arrow-Cross party ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_Cross_Party ) popped up. and the museum went over how they did all kinds of awful things to their own people. then the museum went into how Soviet Communism rolled in, and did even more terrible shit. as the communists were in power alot longer more of the museum was dedicated to that. they also in the basement recreated the various kinds of cells used for torture, and confession extraction, and murder and whatnot, so that was crazy. i dunno, i cant really describe, there was lots of information on everything, but it was definitely something you need to see, to wander around the cells used (though this building only had holding, and maybe mild confession extraction cells, rather than the killing n stuff), was sobering. after the museum we wandered around a lil. we followed one of the girls, who had been here before, with family in the area, and we got a lil turned around, walking an unnecessary 1000m or so, i was cool, but one of the other girls in the group was lame (like literally lame, too sick to be wandering aimlessly), eventually we found our way to the fancy indoor multi-story market ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Market_Hall_%28Budapest%29 ) over by the green bridge ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Bridge_%28Budapest%29 ). that was cool, had some fried dough, covered in nutella and fried bananas, it had more than enough calories to last me the day, and it was equally delicious. after the food, we hopped the tram (we really, truly wanted to pay, but the machine was broke) and got ourselves home. most of the group wanted to head to the baths, which is apparently the thing to do in Budapest, and then me and one of the girlies (the one whose foot i mended), had a romantic (haha) dinner at the only restaurant in the area that was OPEN, apparently Budapest shuts down round 3pm on a Saturday, cause you know, no one wants to go out to dinner, or shopping in the mid-afternoon of a damn Saturday. got to bed early, read some books, and sleeped hard

another few nights on the Danube

25512 so last night we did end up going out, to a very characterful club, the place was originally some kind of bunker, or bomb shelter cut into the mountain, the place was full of blasting club music and lasers and smoke and all the disorienting things normally found in such establishments. some catz went elsewhere after a while, but i made my way home with one of the girls, who stumbled onto something unpleasant toe first, requiring my expert first aid/improvisational skills to patch her up right. i didnt really talk about the hotel yesterday, but it dawned on me that something was off. it reminded me of a lot of the hotels down South, in the Balkans, like they were the crown jewel hotel, like 15+ years ago, and nothing much has been done since then to spruce it up. anyways got up, and hopped in the bus for the ride to Budapest. for the first half me and one of the girls chatted, till the back half showed up, and i passed out, sleeping very hard. i woke up after we were already in the city, so i missed the Roman ruins that are allegedly visible. after getting to our tiny hotel, we dumped our stuff, and wandered around the immediate neighborhood. we are in a residential neighborhood, which kinda sucks, cause we are far away from everything, and actual residents dont seem to be too fond of tourists. after this we went on a rather long bus and walking tour of some of Budapest. we wandered through the big castle that overlooks much of the city, Stephen I who was king in the latter portions of the 10th century, looked upon the hill, and decided it was time for a castle, thus spawned the beginning of Budavári Palota ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buda_Castle ). it was built up further at various points throughout Hungarian history.

Holy trinity square, you can see the plague column built in the 18th century to commemorate those that have died of the plague, every city we have been through, all of them looking about the same. Mathias church, main parish church, first was built after Tartars left, it was later rebuilt in a Gothic style, and renamed after the king Mathias. When the Turks rolled in, they tore out all the frescoes and statues, and when the Turks were kicked out, it was rebuilt as a church in baroque style. It acted as a coronation church for a handful of Hungarian kings. This was covered in scaffolding last time i was here. This view is from the citadel built in the 19th century as a military outpost, built by the Hapsburgs after the Hungarian revolution in 1848. It was built on top of the hill to better control the rebellious Hungarians.

Parliament building. Is new, considering Budapest is only recently the capital of Hungary, many of the buildings, including this one, were built to commemorate the 1000 year anniversary of the Austro-Hungarian kingdom in 1896. And as such they put a bunch of symbolism in here, with shit being 96 ft tall, or having 96 steps.

Original crown, of Hungary, Stephen I got it from the pope, crowned on Christmas of 1000, it is made up of parts gifted from the byzantine emperor, and pieces made locally.

During WWII the Regalia was taken west through Austria and Germany by the Crown guard, and eventually handed over to the US, cause they knew what the Commies would do with it if they got their hands on it. the US kept it in Fort Knox for a buncha years and returned it in 1978 (cool point: i met the Foreign Service Officer that worked as Chief of Staff at the Embassy at the time of this event). The Hungarian parliament was bicameral, hence the 2 symmetrical wings in the original design. But nowadays, its unicameral, so one wing is used for the primary parliamenting, while the other side is for tourists to gape at, and international conferences n such. All of it is furnished in slavonian oak. a you can see in the pic (that will be posted eventually) the place is pretty awesome (in the most literal sense of the term), everything is covered in marble or gold, or fancy scrollworked wood. There are currently 386 members of parliament, and only 4 parties, with a 5% minimum, right now the young democrats have an unprecedented 2/3 majority. which is kinda shitty cause having a 2/3 majority means the party (who is kinda Right) can force through any legislation they want, and the opposition can seldom do anything about it. the building is infact the third largest parliament building in the world, behind the one in Buenos Aires (stick around and youll see that one too) and the one in London. im tired now, tomorrow, i should have the where-with-all to give you some description and comparison of the city to the other cities we have been to. also, we are hitting the museum of terror tomorrow, so thats exciting. I must also note, that this pics were gotten from a friend with a very nice camera, though she is big into "sky" and apparently the "sky was pretty yesterday" so...

foot prints of Napoleon

24512 Bratislava is tiny. like we hit all of the major things in town, on a 20 minute walking tour, we saw the main square, the main square, named Main Square, we say the St. Martins Cathedral

this church serves as the Cathedral of the Archdiocese of Bratislava, it was actually the coronation church for a bunch of years, including the reign of Maria Theresa ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Theresa ) on the top there, though you cant see it very well is a scaled up model of the Hungarian crown it weighs some multi hundred kilos, sits on a 2m square bronze pillow, and has over 9 kilos of gold leaf covering it. other than that, there isnt much to see here, apparently (according to wikipedia) only like 20ish% of the visitors of Bratislava stay more than one night, its a small town, welcoming, not too expensive, very quaint, but you could prolly exhaust the city in a day and a have worth of touristing. myself and a few others went to dinner with our TA Malcolm, the beer historian. we went to a brewpub that has won gold awards or some such for the last couple years. i had their bratislavský ležiak which is a lighter lager, it was delicious along with some spicy fried chicken wings, i know chicken wings arent nearly as exotic as some of the other stuff ive had, but it was genuinely spicy, which was good, cause that is generally lacking in the rest of Europe. prior to getting to Bratislava we stopped in hrad Devín. which is a castle outside the city. the castle started as a settlement in the dark ages, and then the Romans rolled in and made it a real fort, and bout the time of the Hungarian kingdom developing in the 1200s, it turned into a right and proper castle. and it stood dominating the area till Napoleon rolled in and dominated it, turning it into the ruins it is today.

other than that, most of the day was burned by travel, it took us a solid 5.5 hrs to get here, not too much knowledge to drop. ill have more stuff to talk about tomorrow in Budapest.

Not so green fairy

23512 I am pretty sure today is like the midpoint of the trip, it passed by rather unremarkably. woke up again later due to the lack of Czech language class, which is cool, but then the sun rises here absurdly early (like 5 am), and there are very few curtains in this region of the world capable of doing anything but looking like crappy lace. anyways the discussion was some more intro on Hungary, im excited cause its a REAL old city, with Roman-time ruins stuff, while i dont immediately recall seeing any last time around, im sure they were there (being as the Romans pre-date my international travels by a few years). the class was then picked up by our English major-PhD student guy discussion of the Under A Cruel Star Book. he kinda fell into the trap of being an english student, he analyzed the bejeezus out of the text, pulling meaning and metaphor, and symbolism and reasoning out of everything, like during his leading of the discussion i thought "shiet, (colloquial term i use all to frequently in my inner monologues) i read this book very wrong". and to make it doubly concerning, he will be the one grading the papers. so i have resolved to dig deep into my educational archives, and dredge up the know-how on writing about literature, i mean, this is a personal account, it actually happened, but it reads very much like a story. in the past 4 years i have been reading thousands of pages a week for history and poli-sci type classes, all of which very cut and dry, not really open to interpretation, so whenever i read anything else (namely sci-fi) i read it for consumption, i dont want to think and absorb and analyze and reach, i want explosions and boobs and aliens and FTL and then more explosions. so i kinda read this as another of my sci-fi stories, (again not to diminish the reality of this woman experience, but it was fantastical). ill peruse through it again to write up a good paper about how this book provides a micro example of the appeal of communism to a post-war Europe, and particularly post-war-European-Jewery. that was the class after which i went home to nap, cause you know, sleep is awesome. we went here

a good number of us enjoyed the symphony. it was Leif Ove Andsnes, who is i guess some kinda bigshot composer? and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra? i dunno, its what it says on the ticket. i dont know nearly enough about symphonies to tell you whether they were good or not, i enjoyed it. the music was pleasant, and the musicians seemed to be into it and know what they are doing, my limited concert experience on the trumpet didnt help me much. though i did notice a classic brass in a symphony moment, when the two trumpetlike (i nor my buddy could identify the instrument, it had the 3 keys, and the bell and whatnot, but it was like longer, like 3/4 size valve trombone. anyways, when everyone was applauding and whatnot, and the violinists were bowing, and the conductor was waving his flowers, the brass players in back were chillin, caring very little, so little infact, that he took the occasion to empty his spitvalve. it was awesome. anyways, after that some of the troop wanted to try absinthe, and we found a place nearby, i did not try any, as i had not done my research yet. not that i am afeared of the hallucinations and all that, cause i know damn well absinthe isnt supposed to do that (i could go into a huge diatribe about why people who think that are wrong). i have a distillery in Milwaukee that produces pre-ban style absinthe, and now that i have researched it is of the French/Swiss type, so you can do the whole icewater dropping over a sugar cube into the fancy glass to get the Ouzo effect and blah de blah. but apparently historically bohemian absinthe is different, in that it has less anise, so it doesnt go all milky like that, so thats where the fire thing came from, it was a gimmick thought up in the 90s. ANYWAYS, i have found a few local made absinthes, i just gotta find a place that sells em now. others continued out for a drink at another bar, i bailed and went home before they found a place (and now they got home somewhat disappointed with the evenings turn of events, i guess i do make the party). tomorrow to Bratislava, fingers crossed for good internetz

GEWD DAY

22512 without the Czech language class we got to sleep in a lil bit, which was welcomed, as myself and much of the clique went out last night, had a good, albeit late night. class today was mainly discussion of the film we watched yesterday, and some preliminary briefing on Hungary by Harlow, and then a discussion on the reading led by TA Malcolm. after the class we hopped on the train, travelled like 30km south, to Karlštejn. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl %C5%A1tejn_Castle )

so this castle Karlštejn was built in 1348 by not surprisingly Charles IV ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_IV,_Holy_Roman_Emperor ), considering he built like everything in Prague, and you know, it had his name and everything. So this cat was the Holy Roman Emperor for a while, and at that, it was when the Holy Roman Empire was like the most powerful state in Europe, he was second only to the Pope in Rome. the castle was a (medieval) days travel outside Prague making it close enough to get to easily, but far enough to be safe from all those urban peasant uprisings, Charles IV had it built for his summer home, the castle also acted as his primary treasury for safekeeping of the imperial regalia, and relics, so the fingerbones of saints, to keep the stuff safe outside the city, it was also used to a lesser extent to weather out revolutions and plagues and whatnot. pictured below: various relics, including THE head of the dragon which St. George killed ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._George ).

So i dunno if you are aware of this, but the Holy Roman Emperor is actually elected, not just divine right of kings type stuff, there are 7 electors, met to appoint the new holy roman emperor, 3 archbishops, and 4 princes, with the prince of Bohemia being the most prominent. after said electing, he went to Rome to be crowned by the Pope. interesting note in siege defense, all the stairs have a left turn when going down, to make them easier to defend, as you can imagine most people were right handed, so the defenders would run up the stairs, and harried the attackers on their way up while their sword arm was pinned against the wall. after this castle tour with the cool (i say cool cause he was the one that told the story in the ossuary about how "when you couldnt make it to the Holy Land to kill Muslims, you would find heretics to kill in your neighborhood, also you would kill some Jews" i loved the sarcasm) Czech history professor we made our way back home at some food, and i plan on an early night of reading my sci fi, and sleeping. the title is cause i learned the management company to my Boston apartment has issued my reimbursement check for the security deposit and whatnot, AND i got to fill out a survey about my co-op advisor

socks

back in prague, last day of czech language class, but for some reason, our class was annexed by one of the professors, and we were kicked out. our language teacher walked us across the river to a lil park, also, she had us practice Czech along the way. at one point one of the girls was assigned to ask the door-guard of the university (who was sitting in front of a rather large clock) "kolik je hodin?" and another girl was told to ask a student on the street, (standing next to a metro stop) "kde je metro?" i pointed to stuff along the way expanding my vocabulary "whats that?" id ask loď, pták, and kámen were some of the answers i got. after wrapping that up we combined the classes to discuss our experiences of Vienna. the opinions were a little more consistent across the board. I like Vienna, its not too expensive, its very clean and orderly, thought the "rich history" is alot of fancy facade work, i still like it. it clearly was, and is the West, fancy shops and everything, it clearly wasnt as depressed as Prague or Budapest was under communuism, and because it was never split like Berlin, it was able to recover from WWII more wholly. though as someone pointed out, there was very little addressing of the whole Nazi thing, and the Holocaust. Harlow kept pointing that the Austrians tend think of themselves as victims of the Nazis as well. when in reality, Hitler did quite literally walk in under waving banners of welcome. though this bit of conversation allowed me to discuss my feelings on the relationship between Berlin and the Holocaust and Nazis. as i said a few kids where unhappy with how the modern Berliners address the history of the Nazis and the Holocaust, but i pointed out that it is a marked contrast with Vienna. Berliners have at least attempted to address it, openly discussing it from a historical context, and less openly feeling a sort of national guilt over what happened, where as in Austria, they just kinda leave it alone, i suppose they have had an extra 50 years to get over it, but i still think that seeing the difference, cats should appreciate the effort Germany has put into addressing these issues. there was a brief discussion of the readings, and we quickly meandered to the national film archive to watch a film. a buddy of Harlow's, a film critic and historian gave us some info on the theater we were in before the screening. In the 19h century, the theater was an integral place for the gathering of Czech intellectuals, and artists, because at the time the Hapsburgs were attempting to Austria-fy the Czechlands by introducing German in school, and imperial art n stuff. Before WWI , this place was the first fulltime movie theater in the Czechlands. Then after WWII, this became imortant center for animated films, due to the historical tradition of puppetry and marionettes here in the Czech lands. Then during the times of communism, the entire neighborhood was turned into the HQ of the secret police, everything was open, but no one wanted to be here, so it wasnt until after 1989, that the artistic nature of the neighborhood returned. The family which owned the area prior to WWII was given the property after the commies left Czechoslovakia, donated it to the governmeent for the film archives. We will now be wathcing The Loves of a Blonde, by Miloš Forman ( Miloš Forman ) on 35mm film (this is the first time i have ever seen a film from FILM to my knowledge), to maintain the film experience. the movie is Czech Avant Garde, so it was weird, it had both professional actors and amateur? actors (people literally pulled off the street). i wont ruin it for anyone that intends to watch the movie, but its a working class girl gets involved with some kid, from Prague, and then she goes to his home. and thats it, kinda had to be there. somehow, over the course of doing my laundry in the sink, i ent up with an uneven number of socks. anyways, its early, there may be an update later as to what i end up doing, i do wanna try some of the local absinthe, compare it to what i get from MKE.

Hapsburgs in all their glory, also topiary

20512 full day in Vienna (read: half day), they got us all checked out of the hostel, and we were quickly carted over to the museum quarter. this area was part of the Hapsburg's plans to beautify the city for generations. cause you know, when you have a huge empire, your capital better be pretty bad ass to match. anyways there are tons of museusm around there, the group of girls and i, though i dont think that title works anymore, as there are some other dudes in the crew now. so the group (myself included) went to the Hofburg palace, which is a huge complex of, you guessed it, museums.

we wandered through the actual palace bit, which included a wander through the kitchen/tableware/silverware purchased by the Hapsburgs to throw their fancy gatherings, pictured below >5% of the stuff.

after which there was a section about Sisi, the Empress of Austria, married to THE Franz Josef, (whose sarcophagus can be seen in a previous post). she was married to Franz when she was relatively young, though he loved her completely, and based on the audio tour she was never too keen on him, or the whole "being a member of the richest families in history" thing. when her son Rudolf killed himself, she became even more reclusive and depressed and whatnot, ultimately she was killed by an Italian anarchist while she was on vacation (those anarchists really had it in for the Hapsburgs).

Above: a crappy picture of a replica of the kinda jewelry she wasnt happy with wearing. after that section we wandered through the palace proper, it reminded my much of Versailles, or the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, i suppose thats cause they were (as mentioned earlier) constantly in pissing matches, hiring the same architects, and goldsmiths and topiary artists to make them something bigger and better than the last emperor, or king or whoever. this is the austere bed on which Franz Josef slept most nights (cause his wife was depressed and no longer could stand to sleep near him).

after that the girls and everyone wanted to go into the butterfly house. i woulda gone had it been a butterfly house installed by the Hapsburgs, the Austrian government made it, cause you know museums and kids and stuff. so i went to the Ephesus museum. first off, i thought it was awesome, it had old arms and armor and stuff. the tradition of the joust or tournament long outlasted the military relevance of knights, but there was still cool exhibits like this:

that last thing, is a big pillow that would lay across the horse's chest, to protect it, cause jousting horses are expensive, apparently its the only one in existence dating back to the 15th century or some such. there was also a section for old instruments which i zipped through as it didnt really interest me, but the end of the museum had the Ephesus stuff, which is really cool, cause i have been there, like to the real Ephesus in Turkey.

also, the building all this stuff was housed in was big and marble and imposing and cool. after this all of us met up again to wander through the Schönbrunn Palace, it was again, much like the Hofburg palace and all the other ones ive been through so ill spare you the rehash, however it did have a HUGE awesome garden in back. the word garden doesnt do it justice, this was a park, a large park off the back of a palace.

also pictured: some of the girls clearly disobeying the rules. after this we piled in the bus for the hours of ride back to Prague, on the "oldest road in the czech lands".

MOAR Bones

19512 we left Český Krumlov in the not-so-early morning, which is kinda shitty, cause it limited our time in Vienna, but the travel was pretty. Harlow admitted we got turned around at some point during the journey, and we also stopped at a "small border town" in the Sudetenland. (sudetenland pictured in black beow)

The Sudetenland basically hugs the lands of the Czech republic. The high German population in said Sudetenland is a result of the Bohemian kings being friendly to immigrants. The kings invited peoples from abroad to come and live in his lands, to develop and improve the economy and whatnot, and being that German speaking people surround the Czech lands, they moved right in. many of the population centers in this area started out as monasteries, which worked well towards the whole internal colonization agenda in that these monks provided education (beer) and spiritual health to these new towns. When Czechoslovakia proclaimed its sovereignty in 1918, there were Germans in the Sudetenland which agitated for either independence, or annexation to Germany and Austria. Despite this being the time of Wilson's "national self determination" it was decided that these people would remain part of Czechoslovakia national self determination only worked when the badguys were being picked apart. this helped to lead to the problems of the beginning of the second world war what with Hitler rolling in under showers of roses. This particular little border town (whose name im not sure was even mentioned), popped up as a salt trading post in the middle ages, made up of majority Austrians, the square, and city overall was planned, as part of that colonization campaign by the bohemian kings, hgence is nice orderly nature. (not depicted below)

This town was almost entirely empty due to the expulsion of the Germans after WWII, as the Czechs were rather upset with what the Nazis did with the place, and then with the fall of the Iron Curtain, the town was left abandoned, because it was so close to the border with the West. after that we made our way into vienna, we got a very brief driving tour, and were then released upon the city. myself and the clique i have become an integral part of wandered around a lil bit, went into St Stephans cathedral. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Stephen%27s_Cathedral,_Vienna ). I have been in here before, but they had colored cellophane over the windows with crazy colors, so the inside was full of color, we could not determine why the different colors, there was a huge festival Life Ball, which was to raise money to fight HIV/AIDS ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_Ball ). so you can put toegher what you will from that.

the guide was mentioning some back story to this church, and actually lots of the stuff in Vienna. for a while, Prague was actually the capitol of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and as such the prince of Vienna, who was at various times the crown prince to the Hapsburg throne, and there were often pissing matches between these royal cousins and uncles, and brothers and in-laws. and that is how Vienna began its ascent. a brother in law was ruling Vienna, while the Emperor sat in Prague, and for every church built in Prague, to keep up the Viennese monarch threw up his church, or University, or what-have-you. this church is a result of one of those pissing matches. after this we wandered through the Hapsburg imperial crypt ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Crypt ) which was pretty cool.

it had all the big famous ones, that last picture Franz Josef, he was a bad ass, working real hard as a genuine civil servant to an archaic and atrophying multi-ethnic empire, lead said empire into the first world war, died before it ended, but hey, he was well into his seventh decade of rule at the time, so we can cut him some slack. after this we ate at a vietnamese place, and me and my buddy ordered "extra spicy" and it didnt manage to tickle my throat, imagine eating a food, while smelling Sriracha ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sriracha_sauce ) its not on the food, just in the general vascinity, so you get a moments hesitation when you think "maybe this is spicy" but then, its not. yeah it was like that. we found our way home, and on the way one of the girls in our group managed to throw away her wallet. yup, into a trashbin, or rubbish bin, or garbage or whatever they call it in Austria, it was in a bag which cake was in, they finished the cake, and tossed it away. she another one of the friend-circle and myself luckily recovered it before the bums rummaged through for returns, or the carrot-bins (or some such nonsense name for the orange garbage trucks)picked up the trash. went to sleep shortly thereafter.

Not Vienna, but still an awesome medieval town

18512 well, i was mistaken, apparently we are stopping in Český Krumlov, it is a really cool little town, surrounding a castle. the Castle is up on the hill, making it very very hard to assault. technically the castle covers much of the surrounding area so the town and the castle kinda blend together, including a brewer, the town dates back to the 800s, the houses around go back to 1200s, the town is named after meandering rivers.

This used to be a jesuit brewery, the jesuits manage to burn down the the surrounding area while brewing, however now, it is a library. You can see the arch connecting the church to the brewery, there were iron walls installed to protect the church from the conflagration of the breweries the fires.

Church goes back to 1300s, to st vladislav, like many of the churches round here, it has frescoes that date back to 1400s unfortunately i have only one crappy picture, as there were no pictures allowed in the church. The schwarzenburgs buried their hearts here, to emulate the hapsburgs burying their bodies in disperate parts (they would bury the heart in one place, the body in one place, the intestines? in another.

Princiess elanor is fully buried here, other than that, thats the only info we got from the tour guide ( http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ASearch&profile=default&search=princess+eleanor&fulltext=Search ) we then wandered through a Gothic church it had a baroque alter which, according to our tour guide has a good story behind it, the rosenburgs wanted a new alter in the church, they pulled out the gothic alter, and then they built an alter with a horse on it, and they worshiped it (im not sure what she meant by this, did they pull some idolatry and worshiped the horse? or they worshiped the alter that had the horse on it, and it wasnt sanctioned by the supreme pontiff in Rome, or what, but the jesuits didnt like it so, after the rosenburgs died out (see previous post about copulating cousins) the jesuits got rid of the paganesque alter and replaced it with the baroque one not seen in any pictures as we got yelled at, but it was there, ill see if i can dig up some pictures. our guide also pointed out that originally the town was two, split accross the river, cause back in the day that happened, towns developing within earshot of eachother, they had different privelages and writs according to the Hapsburg empire, and the Catholic church, including brewing practices which is obviously a big deal around here, they were ultimately united in 1555. and now they have only one town beer that i know of, Eggenburg beer, i had the light beer of theirs, and it was quite tasty. we wandered into the Castle area, the moat was filled with bears, let me type that out again, the moat was filled with BEARS... allegedly it was a symbol of the Rosenburg connection to Orsini ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orsini-Rosenberg ).

the top of the hill of the castle, has a Baroque theater, it is apparently largest castle theater in europe, one of two with exetensive sets and costumes recover, the other being somewhere in Switzerland. the stage dates back to the 18th century, it ultimately closed in 1898.

after this we found an italian place to eat at, i had some kind of alfredo pasta dinner thing, and we found a medieval restaurant bar pub thing. they had mead and grog and porridge, and all that great stuff. I ordered the cinnamon mead, the light eggenburg beer, and then the almond mead, others in our group had the moravian mead (which had moravian wine mixed), and one of the ladies of my friend group had grog, which was much like rum, but not as sharp, as its cut with water. the waiter was really cool, and recommended stuff to us, and it was an all round good time of conversation with kids from our trip, and the drink. going to sleep shortly, and TOMORROW heading to Vienna, hopefully i can snipe some interwebs to post pics

winners all 'round

17512 we went to watch the Czech vs Sweden Quarterfinal hockey game in old town square. it was pretty crazy, the game was tied till the last 30 seconds when the Czechs put one in, everyone went nuts. for a second, it didnt matter that i was a student from the US, or the dude next to me was a tramp holding a puppy, or the girls drinking behind us were clearly 15, the Czech National Hockey team is going to the Semis of the International Ice Hockey Federation championship, its time to jump around and scream, possibly light off road flares, and pop smoke grenades and sing Queen. it was a good time, the crowd cleared pretty quickly and the drunkeness did not lead to anything beyond gibberish and cheers, and we wandered around a bit, some cats found their way to a bar, i went home, showered, and bout to sleep.

the Sublime Strategist of All Nations and Times: Stalin

17512 the day started out innocuously enough, Czech language class in the morning, we practiced more of the restaurant conversation bits, then went on to discuss the Austro-Hungarian empire. Harlow went into a little bit the history of Vienna, as we will be heading over there tomorrow. i do like talking about all the court intrigue, and empire-maneuvering the Hapsburgs did, so i was entertained. the classes were in the main building of the university, and it reminded me much of any other university building over 40 yrs old (so mostly not like northeastern). after which me and a few others got burgers, i had a "mexican" which had lettuce, tomatoes, a slice of cheese, home made ketchup, and "guacamole" the guacamole was the consistency of drinkable yogurt, and had hunks of cucumber in it. regardless, it was tasty, we went home, reconvened and headed to the KGB museum up the hill. HOLY SHIT. the museum was ok, a bunch of stuff that he "bought, changed (i think he meant traded) and stole, filled this rather small space. the guy that runs it is russian, spends half his time in "the City of Lenin" (Leningrad {now known as St. Petersburg}) and the other half here in Prague, running this museum. so we walk in, he speaks russian, and poor english, and immediately hands me a PPS ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PPS-43 ). and puts a hat on my head, explaining that this machine gun was designed during "second war". he put a hat on my head, and then went to the wall and pulled a WWII era CZ pistol, and some kinda Makarov to one of my party, a WWI era Nagant revolver to hand to someone else, and then a German MP-40 to the last of us, and takes pictures... all the while explaining briefly what each of the guns was now, i am comfortable with guns, but im not about to accept a firearm from some strange dude operating a tiny KGB museum in Prague, without checking it. i started racking the slide to ensure it was clear, it didnt budge, the safety didnt move, the mag release did nothing and while i have never handled one before, it seemed to be oddly balanced, i still never attempted to pull the trigger. i eventually got my hands on all of the guns, and all of them were misbalanced, with slides that didnt move, they were rendered thoroughly inoperable.

he showed us around and pointed out stuff, "this was the camera used by the NKVD for spying, it was made by NKVD orphan children" "this was the uniform used by NKVD, they had read star, it was not until later that whole red army had red star" there was a womans sniper uniform, covered in what i thought was hay, apparently it was horses cut from the tails of german horses, so the german dogs, who were often trained by officers on horseback, wouldnt smell the snipers out.

pokin around, they had some cool stuff, the guy seemed very knowledgable and very interested in what he was doing. it wasnt until later that myself and Alex (a history major) start to notice he is a little off. he briefly talked about how Trotsky was an American agent, working for US banks... the next section was talking about gulags, how the NKVD was used by Stalin to liquidate the rich Kulaks that refused to give up their land. he explains that Gulag is an acronym for Гла́вное управле́ние исправи́тельно-трудовы́х лагере́й и коло́ний, Chief Administration of Corrective Labor Camps and Colonies. he insisted that they were labor camps, and not concentration camps, that "no one killed anyone there". he extolled the White Sea - Baltic Canal, how the soviet workers dug 140 miles of canals, by hand in 21 months. he also talked about how Khrushchev demonized Stalin, saying that Stalin murdered millions of Soviet citizens, and our guide ardently claimed these were lies, that the great and beautiful Stalin would never do something like that. we meandered through more of the museum. and we decided it would be AWESOME to talk to this guy more, and we approached him as we were leaving, to see if we could get more out of him, he was very nervous, and blamed his reticence on his poor english, he ultimately accepted our email so he could send more info on the KGB and its incarnations, "not the defamation, lies, propaganda and slander like Алекса́ндр Иса́евич Солжени́цын. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn this was bananas. this guy genuinely believed in Stalinist Russia, at one point he mentioned how the higher ups ruined the Soviet Union, that Gorbachev and Kissinger worked together to unmake the country. I really really want to talk to him more, maybe we can get Harlow to come with and translate and ask questions. it was absolutely fascinating, i knew people still idolized Stalin, especially in the post-communist Russia, it was a shit hole, Russia became a superpower under Stalin, i get it but to claim subsequent historians are lairs and propagandists? thats PLANTAINS.

dunno whats goin on for the rest of the night, as i said, we are off to Vienna tomorrow, so i dunno how the internetz will be over there. if you dont hear from me, the internets shit, or the bus esploded or something.

BONES!!!

16512

On the bus early to Kutná Hora, a silvermining town about 100km outside of Prague, firstly i want to note that on this drive, and our drive up to Berlin, the terrain reminded me very much of home, its no surprise there were so many Germans that settled in the midwest when coming to the US. first stop was at the Kostinice Ossuary,(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedlec_Ossuary) it was designed as a knock off of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, this was built during the crusade times, some dirt of jerusalem is spread on the grounds of the chapel, making it a part of the holy land, this then led to many many people wanting to be buried there, hence the abundance of bones. in addition to the Holy dirt, various relics from jesus were deposited here, splinters of the true cross, thorns from the crown, maybe a few of the nails with which he was crucified, stuff like that. These bones are older than the decorations themselves. The chapel was decorated in the baroque era with those piles of skulls, and then the rest of the wall decorations were put up in the 19th century.

The geographic area, has lots of silver mines, and thus this was a major money making for the king serving as the royal mint, he gave special support to the monasteries in the area, until the 14th century, when the city took over these lending purposes from the monasteries. The Templars (who had a monastery here) were eventually hated by the kings of Europe cause they owed too much money to the Templar order, eventually the Templars were declared heretics, and subsequently killed. The Cistercian monks werent big on lending money, or ostentatiousness as can be seen below, survived a but longer, up till the Hussite Wars ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hussite_wars ). we then wandered our way into a Gothic Cathedral.

( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_Assumption_of_Our_Lady_and_Saint_John_the_Baptist ) Cathedral built in 13th century, the eastern most cathedral type church in Europe, Cistercian, they were missionaries of the Gothic style however they could not over decorate, hence the planness of this cathedral. However the greatest Czech baroque artist was forced to paint for the church, they locked him in to keep him sober and paint, cause he owed the church money but he managed to find drink, and did drink, and subsequently some of the paintings of his tend to lack appropriate scaling and perspective. Ultimately he died, drunk on the stoop of some pub in the town.

also pictured is a reliquary of some saint. his skull has a wax face put onto it so you can stare upon his long dead visage. The Czech museum of silver, small castle, 15th century, seat of the rich families, over 100 silver mines have existed in the area, however today, only one of them is currently accessible. we wandered around 500 year old silver mines. there were points were it was as low as 70cm tall, and only 40cm across, some claustrophobic cats had difficulty, other than my needing to pee real bad, it was pretty cool. the walls looked slick, covered in wax almost, but it was actually just mineral deposits. it was pretty bad ass. We the went to another church which our guide claimed was a cathedral, but wiki says otherwise, ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Barbara%27s_Church,_Kutn%C3%A1_Hora ) began in 14th century, finished in 16th, the Hussite wars delayed the construction, as such, the style changed, making it in late gothic style. here there was a fresco of coin making dating back to 1460, as this was a silver mining town...

these churches were nice and big and awe inspiring so, i liked them, i have a soft spot for Gothic architecture. the busride back was uneventful, came home read, ate some food, will likely go out to sample more of the Czech Republics number one national product and go to sleep.