Buda

On Friday we arrived in Budapest at about 2:30 pm and I was not impressed. In all honesty I totally counted out this city and was just waiting for Vienna the following Monday. After we arrived at the hotel the entire group went for a walk around the area we were staying and then I went with Brianne, Jamie and Liz to get sushi for dinner. None of us felt very safe in the area at first. Part of it was that we didn't know the city at all.
There is a very different feel to Budapest. It does not receive many tourists in comparison to Prague, Paris, London, Munich, etc... so there is no main "tourist" area of the city like Times Square or the Champs-Elysee. Hero's Square is one of the biggest attractions in the area. It is a huge square with statutes called the Millennium Memorial which depicts the founding of Hungary by its seven tribes. The memorial was constructed in 1900. Several museums border the square as well.
On Saturday we took a tour of the House of Terror. This museum is one of the best museums I have ever been too. The House of Terror is the building from which the facists regime ruled (the Cross Arrow Party) in the 1940s and then the communist regime. The Nazis arrived in Hungary in 1944. The Jewish population in Budapest at the time was 300,000. After the official end of the war 100,000 would return. The Arrow Cross Party is a form of Nazism that was created by Hungarians in the 1930s but was outlawed by the current government. After Nazi occupation they handed Hungary over to the Arrow Cross Party and legalized the party again. We visited the Jewish Ghetto the following day.
After the end of World War II the KMP (Hungarian communist party) took over and would officially reign from 1945 to 1956. Communism would not end in Hungary until 1989. The last of the Red Army did not leave Hungary until 1991. The KMP did not trust its citizens and had secret police called the AVO (a lot like the Gestapo) that worked all over the country. "Ordinary" people would spy on their neighbors, wiring peoples apartments and homes was quite common. Those who were suspected of or actually were planning against the government were taken by the secret police in the middle of the night to the House of Terror where they were tortured from 3 months to X amount of years for information, killed, or tortured and then sent to prison for life or for X amount of time. The prisoners were kept in an intricate dungeon-like system underneath the block that the House of Terror was located on because the KMP offices had expanded into the surrounding buildings on the block. There were different types of cells for different types of torture. About 2,000 people were executed during this time and over 100,000 were imprisoned. 44,000 were sent to concentration camps where they were worked to death or until their release. Interestingly a lot of the people involved in the KMP are still alive and out of prison despite the atrocities they committed. Personally I felt that the KMP reign was a lot worse than learning about the Nazis in some ways because all of the torture was done a very direct, one-on-one attack. If you are interested you can look up the different forms of torture used, but I wouldn't recommend it. We were also shown a hanging tree that had been in use during the regime as well as the cells and what not.
After the museum Katie, Ashley, Gentaro, Mimi and I went to Hero's Square. We took photos and walked around the park behind the square where the Vajdahunyad Castle is. There were a bunch of stands selling things and we got street corn which is corn on the cob from the a street vendor, naturally. Katie and I also got Hungarian candy from this vendor and we could not figure out how to take the candy without touching all of it with our fingers. And the lady kept trying to trap our hands in these bags and we were like WHY ARE YOU TRAPPING OUR HANDS? But then we put two and two together, bag = glove. These types of things happen to us a lot. We have embraced the stupid American stereotype quite well. I have also noticed that people call us stupid probably because Americans generally have a happy disposition. I conclude that many people judge our smiles for stupidity, but it's really just because we are happy. No one really smiles in Europe too much, a few here and there, but it's rare. For example, today we went to Schonbrun Palace in Vienna and this group of German teenagers were literally glaring at everything thing, and standing with such an attitude despite the fact that they were surrounded by the glory of Schonbrun. I. don't. get. it. . Asians smile. Americans smile. Australians smile. Canadians smile. Europeans don't. Oh when they do smile at you it's because they are your father's age and hitting on you. So it's a creepy smile. Sorry Europe, doesn't count. Then again it's been raining here for a month and flooding so Europe may just be a bit blue. Anywho, the candy was really good and we peeked in the baths at the most popular bath house.
That evening we went on a dinner cruise which was SO COOL. The views of Budapest along the Danue were the best I've seen on this trip. The buffet was the best buffet as well for dinner, but dessert was a little disappointing. But that's okay because I stuffed my face for dinner. Katie and I had so much taking photos and looking at Budapest shine in all its glory. DON'T WORRY MA (shout out woooo) I GOT SOME GREAT SELFIES ON DA BOAT FOR YA.
Gotta go get gelato. Photos to come!

Kepler's Tower

On Thursday we visited the Klementinum in Prague which houses Kepler's Tower (an astronomy tower), the national and university libraries, and the Mirror Chapel. And yes it is the Kepler, as in Johannes Kepler of the Kepler's Laws. The astronomy tower had a lot of the original tools that Kepler and his assistants used. The main library is the most beautiful library I have ever seen, however we were not allowed to take photos so I recommend googling an image of it. It has all of these original globes and thousands of books. The book shelves have beautiful molding as well. When we climbed the tower the stairs were also original. This means they were old and creaky and awkward heights and were a little nerve wracking to climb. However it was nerd heaven.
The mirror chapel was really cool too because MOZART PLAYED ON THE ORGAN THERE. NO BIG DEAL.
Later that day Katie Baum and I went exploring and found a market and I ran into my friend Heather again which is wonderful as always. She is working on her final project/paper now. As we were making our way to the Communist Museum it began to pour and Katie and I couldn't find it and we ran into a few members of our group who couldn't find it either so we were soaked when we got to the museum. I didn't find the Communist museum to be particularly interesting. It was rather sad to see the amount of propaganda and lack of creativity the government attempted to put its citizens under.
On Friday we took a seven hour bus ride from Prague to Budapest and walked around a little bit. I was not very impressed by Budapest at first, but after being here for the weekend I must say I completely underestimated the city. It is a very cool city.
 

Heather!! (and me) 

View from Kepler Tower

View from Kepler Tower

Mirror Chapel

Organ at the chapel

Lidice and Cyril & Methodious Cathedral Photos

Exterior shot of the crypt window. Flowers are always placed outside year round.

Inside the crypt

Memorial/ Stairs into crypt from the trap door. A different entrance is used for the crypt now.

Children of Lidice Sculpture

Entrance to crypt from the cathedral.

The only original structure left of Lidice that could be uncovered.

Memorial and mass grave for the men of Lidice who were executed.

This Past Week...

Right now I'm in Budapest in Hungary. I never thought I would ever be able to say that. We traveled here by bus and tonight we have a dinner cruise on the Danue River which also runs through Vienna and Prague. This city is not quite as pretty as Prague but it's Europe so it's still pretty.

Tuesday - Ss. Cyril and Methodius Cathedral
We visited the church where men who assassinated the Nazi officer Heydrich were hidden for months from the Nazi regime. These men were Czech soldiers who were trained in England and were sent on this mission to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich. The mission was called Anthropoid. This has been one of my favorite things we have ever done on the trip so far. In all five men were hidden in the church, and a sixth who fled the scene of Heydrich's attempted murder, gave up their wherabouts to the Nazi regime because he believed he was protecting his family by doing so. The two men assigned to kill him were Jan Kubis and Jozef Gabcik. The two men were dropped off (literally jumped out of a plane) near Prague, but due to weather landed 70 miles off course. The mission took six months of planning and did not got as planned, one gun jammed and the clean shot they had of Heydrich was missed. Heydrich died because of blood poisoning a few days later in the hospital after the attempted assassination, caused by infected wounds from the hand grenade that was thrown at his car. More on his assassination can be googled if you wish.
After words both men fled the scene. Gabcik was able to shoot the driver who began to follow them and went to a safe house. Kubis did not follow protocol and fled to his mother's home. An extensive funeral service was held for Heydrich by the Nazis in Prague and Berlin. Hitler punished the Czech Republic with the liquidation of two towns, Lidice and Lezaky as well as the arrest of many citizens of Prague. More on that later.
The Nazis searched for three months to no avail. The people of Prague paid the price heavily. Finally the Nazi party advertised that if anyone with information about Heydrich's death came forward, they would not be punished. This pushed Kubis who wanted to protect his family from the Nazis to come forward. 
Along with Gabcik, four other soldiers were hidden in the crypt of the church. After Kubis gave away there whereabouts 800 gestapo surrounded the church and open fired on the church and filled the crypt with water in an attempt to flush out the soldiers. The Nazis blasted their way into the crypt. All five soldiers committed suicide rather than be captured and held by the Nazis. The bishop of the church at the time, Bishop Gorazd, was put on trial and eventually killed as were others who helped and the families of the soldiers.
When we went to the church we were allowed into the crypt which still has the bullet holes on the interior and exterior of the church. The interior of the church was repaired and it still functions today. There is a memorial outside one of the windows of crypt and there are busts of the six soldiers in the crypt as well with their names and biographies.

Wednesday - Lidice
On Wednesday we took a day trip to the liquidated town of Lidice. This town was chosen by the Nazis due to false information from the Gestapo for helping Jan Kubis and Jozef Gabcik hide there. In reality some Czech officers stationed in England had come from there, however there is no proof that there were safe houses located in that town or that Kubis and Gabcik had ever been there. Hitler wanted these towns to be liquidated with no survivors, buildings, grave sites, etc. He wanted no record of this town to remain. All 184 of the men (ages 16 and older) were shot. The women and children were sent to Chlemno concentration camp and most were gased to death. 7 children were picked for germanization. After the war 153 women and 17 children returned. The town of Lidice was rebuilt a mile from the old site of Lidice.
The memorial site is organized as a layout of the town. There is a beautiful grave site the mass grave that holds the men who were shot at the Horak family farm. The outline of the church, school and other family homes as well as the grave yard are there. The Nazis were so thorough that they exhumed the bodies of the original cemetery of Lidice and had them destroyed. The famous sculpture of the 87 children who died is based on the many descriptions of the personalities of the children. They are not made to look like the actual children since the artist did not want to inflict more pain on their surviving mothers. The museum has photos of most of the people of the town prior to the liquidation.

Photos to come soon!

Kutna Hora & the John Lennon Wall

This past Monday we did not have class since it was Memorial Day in America and this program is run by a US school, not a Czech school. A few of us decided to take a day trip to the village of Kutna Hora by train. The train was so cool because the interior looked like the train from Harry Potter. The village is an hour outside of Prague by train. Katie Baum really wanted to go see the bone church that was there. The actual name of the church is Sedlec Ossuary. According to the legend, in 1511 a half blind monk decorated the church with the bones from the destroyed graves surrounding the church. He regained his sight afterwords. There are 3 large bone structures, a chandelier, a coat of arms and numerous wall decorations made of human bones. The chandelier is constructed with every type of human bone that can be found in the body. It was cool, but really creepy. It's also creepy that these bones were peoples' prior to 1511.  I also don't understand how someone can be half blind. Is it just one eye that is blind? Or that he just had really really bad eye sight to the point he was legally blind, but not truly blind? Half blind is just fishy. He's either blind or he's not. Whatever floats Kutna Hora's boat I guess. I've been so busy that I haven't had time to update recently!!

Later that day I went on a walk around Vin Hirodui (our neighborhood in Prague). I just walked from pretty building to pretty building and found a lovely park about a mile from our hotel. I also went into this gorgeous church in Namesti Miru (the square near our hotel). However there was a service occuring so I did not take any photos because that would have been rude. And I didn't want to be noticed and get roped into an awkward situation because I don't understand Czech at all. Except for Dobredun which means good day.

That evening my roommates and I walked across the Charles Bridge to the neighborhood where the John Lennon Wall is located. This wall was painted on during the Velvet Revolution in 1989 to piss off the Communist government and was filled with quotes from John Lennon's music as well as portraits of him . It has been painted over many times since then and is the most beautiful piece of graffiti I've ever seen. I left a little something for my deephers as well :). Initially we couldn't find the wall in the neighborhood and wandered around and found a beautiful park alongside the river and a bridge with all these locks on it.

For my unicorns <3

So. Many. Locks.

Tomorrow (Thursday) we are going to Kepler Tower and the Communist Museum. On Friday we leave for Budapest and then VIENNA!!!

Weekend Endeavors

Friday Night
Friday we saw some pretty churches and had dinner in the old town district. Nothing to cray for Europe.

Saturday
During the day my roommates and I went wandering in Prague. We got lunch at a cafe. First Katie wanted to go to the Museum of Medieval Torture so Mimi and I begrudgingly joined her. It was gross and disturbing as expected, but Katie enjoyed it. I took no photos because I don't want to remember it. It's sick. It's also weird that all this stuff was saved and there was enough to open a museum with it. To each their own I guess?
Afterwards we went to Prague Castle area again. We crossed the Charles Bridge and wandered farther up into the area. We bought these yummy doughnut things with sugar. We found a playground on the way and the Czech children have such fun playgrounds. There was this seesaw thing and these little carts on a circular track that you could peddle around on. SO FUN. There were also hiking trails on the other side of the park.
We made our way up to the castle and a bride and groom were taking wedding photos and I was so excited. They top my lists of favorite Prague couples that I've spotted. It's a hard list to get on. Most of the Prague couples here do too much PDA though. Way too much. Especially in the metro station and you're all excuse me I'VE GOT TO GET ON THE METRO. Find a less public area please&thank you. Or at least out of the general walking way. Anyway back to the bride and groom. They were adorable. And she had pretty flowers in her hair. I also feel really bad for the guards who stand outside the palace, because they can't talk to anyone and people are always trying to make them talk and take photos with them. It's just weird. Get out of their personal space. Afterwards we navigated the tram system back to the metro and to our hotel. That evening a bunch of us went out to get to know each other a bit.

Sunday
I met my good friend Heather for lunch in the old town square. I hadn't seen her in a while and it was lovely seeing such a friendly face in a foreign city. She is studying abroad in Prague as well. We walked around Prague too despite the rain.
I met Mimi and Katie at the clock in the square to work on our metro station project for school and now its 11:11pm (make a wish) and tomorrow we are going to the bone church in Kutna Hora.

PLAYGROUND

Not a good time. A gross time.

One end of the Charles Bridge

Couple of the year

Prague!

Wandering finds

The Jewish Quarter

Today's lecture consisted of visiting the Jewish quarter of Prague and learning about the history of the Jewish people of the Czech Republic. We visited four synagogues and the oldest Jewish cemetery in all of Europe which has graves from the 1300s.
One of the girls in our group got a pretty bad concussion and had to be taken to a doctor to be checked out. I felt so bad. She was a walking zombie for the rest of the day.
The first synagogue we visited is called the Pinkas Synagogue. Today it is not used for worship and is a memorial for all of the Jewish citizens of Prague who perished during the Holocaust. Inscribed on the walls are the names of every person who died from Prague in alphabetical order in Hebrew. It is a very different experience to see every name listed instead of just a single number of the amount of people who died. I do not have any photographs of the interior as no photography was allowed. On the second floor there is artwork created by the children who were contained in the Terezin concentration camp that depicted what they had been through. I'm not sure how the artwork was preserved or who saved it, but it was disturbing to see how these young children were able to draw scenes of their experiences.
Outside of the Pinkas Synagogue is the Jewish cemetery which is now closed (no more people are buried there). It holds many Jewish people who died between the 1300s - 1700s. The last burial was in 1718. It is quite crowded.
The second synagogue we visited is not used for worship and houses many pieces used during Jewish holidays and went through the rituals used during the death of a family member.
The third synagogue we visited was the Old New Synagogue and it is the oldest active synagogue in Europe.
The last synagogue we visited was the Spanish Synagogue. This is the most ornate synagogue in all of Prague and it is breath taking. I sneaked some photos.
The architecture of the Jewish Quarter is the prettiest in all of Prague in my opinion.

Second Synagogue

part of the Jewish Cemetery

The Spanish Synagogue

Ceiling of the Spanish Synagogue

The Jewish Quarter

The Jewish Quarter

Tonight we are going on the church crawl. All the churches in Prague are open from 7-10pm with free admission.
Have a good Memorial Day Weekend to those in the USA!!!