Prague...the "New York" of Czech

Well we are back from our long weekend in Prague and Dresden, Germany and although it was fun I can't help but find myself happy to be back in little Olomouc and in my dorm room bed. The best way to describe Prague is the New York of the Czech Republic. It's packed with tourists. When we first arrived in Prague I thought I loved it, but after four plus hours of walking around and being pushed around as I walked, constantly being bombarded by salesmen, and weaving my way through all the tourists I was over it. I do like Prague because I was able to get many souvenirs for my family and friends and bought and a souvenir Garnet ring for myself. Garnet is a native Czech Republic gemstone and I figured it would be a momento of my studying abroad trip. Below mine is the hand in the bottom left corner. 

Being around all those tourists however makes me very appreciative of our little, small town Olomouc.

On our day trip to Dresden we left in the morning and took the 8:30 am train. On the train Katie and I met a very nice younger English man that was backpacking across Europe and his two week break from school classes. I think he got quite a kick out of Katie and my "English accents." Let's just say they aren't very good. Ha! We are practicing though. Once in Dresden we took a tram to the German Military Museum. The museum was just recently built and it was awesome. The building was five stories packed of historical information. I learned some very amazing things, and I never thought I'd say this but the two hours we had in there flew by. The following are just a few things I learned...

These are pictures of some of the shoes taken off the dead bodies at Auschwitz Concentration Camp. The description talked about a 12 year old girl that was one of the few women who had the horrible job of collecting and matching all the shoes of the dead Jews. Her poem is below and if you can’t read it, the name of it is “Shoes of the dead”.

Then one other interesting thing they showed in the museum was different animals and how they were used for war communications and other various purposes.

After the museum we walked to the new market and saw a church Dresden citizens reconstructed after the bombings that completely destroyed the city. For lunch a couple girls and I went to a cute little restaurant and had German food while sipping on wine. The ride home, however, was probably my favorite part.

 

A couple of the girls and I bought some more wine at the train station and drank it all the way home. We were feeling pretty good ....well good enough for Katie and I to race down the up escalator. :) Neither of us fell though so obviously we were still doing ok. 

That same night most of us went to the famous Czech club that is five stories tall and on every floor there is a different theme on each floor.

This is a picture of the front door that lists the floors and what song is playing at that time.

Most of our time was spent on the "hip hop" floor. There were tons of Spanish and Italian men (like literally the ratio of men to women was 9 to 1), and in Spain and Italy they don't have a lot of blondes so the guys would literally grab and touch your (referring to myself as a blond) hair. People touching my hair is one of my biggest pet peeves so I wasn't a huge fan of this.

As you can kind of see….mostly dark haired men.

Overall it was a very fun night, and I was really happy about everyone being able to get home safely. 

Reflecting back on my weekend in Prague and Dresden I would NEVER say I wouldn't do it again. I loved it! I am very happy however to be back in my little city of Olomouc. Katie and I are currently working on making plans to meet up with some fellow Nebraskans in Croatia this coming weekend. Stay tuned for more of this girl's European adventures!