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.

ne'er do good

15512 slow day, one of those days where the less you do, the less you want to do, hence my not posting anything. we woke up for Czech language class, after that we had a discussion session with our professor Harlow over the reading, and our experiences in Berlin. a good number of the kids found Berlin dark, and oppressive, or blase. this dialogue has alot more not international affairs/polisci/hist type kids than my last one, so there are lots of people that really have very little knowledge of what went on here. here being Europe in the last 200 years. the unification of Germany, the German empire, WWI, WWII, the spread of socialism,, reunification all that stuff. Berlin is a new city, it was bombed out of existence 70 years ago, and then split in two between competing super powers, so any rebuilding took place disparately. almost all of it was rebuilt in the 60s and 70s, which were not a very good time in architecture, everything is big and cheap, and in the east it was designed to be oppressive, to remind the people that they were but cogs in the machine. the conversation on the reading also had a bunch of introduction to marxism, and soviet communism, so i got to prove my worth there. the readings were personal accounts, primary documents type things about the early days of communism in various countries. while i didnt really learn anything new, it did serve to remind me that my general perception of the "communist empire" that of Russia and Eastern Europe isnt all there is, and even still Eastern Europe's communism wasnt exactly home grown... the Peruvian and Cambodian and Chinese communisms were domestic endeavors. sorry for the light post, tomorrow will be better...