Cesky krumlov

We are in our last town of the trip, Cesky Krumlov. This is the best place to end the trip, it is so beautiful, and it is definitely the picturesque small European town I've been waiting for. I even have to say it is more beautiful than Prague. We are surrounded by small mountains and rolling green hills with tons of trees. We are also surrounded by a river that kind of snakes through the area, so there are small bridges everywhere and tons of restaurants that line the river. The castle here is the best one I've seen this trip, it is so big that you can actually walk through the entire castle from one end of the town to the other end. There are original painted frescoes everywhere dating back to the 1500's on many of the buildings in the town. It's been very warm and sunny everyday, and there has also been storms that roll in every afternoon, but it's really pretty. Pictures won't really do this place justice, but here they are!

The view from my window





Our hostel door! We live in a hobbit house pretty much


The street our hostel is on


A lookout over part of the town and the castle











They have a bear at the castle!


Part of the palace from below


More palace






View from the palace








Town square





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Vienna

Last week we had our second day trip in groups of three again. I was with Lauren and Angela and we decided we really wanted to go to Vienna, Austria. We found out this would be our only opportunity to go so although it was complicated traveling, we thought we should try and make it work. We had to take the tram to the bus station. A bus an hour away to a train station, and then the train to Vienna. On the way back we had to take two trains and transfer somewhere in the middle. The hard part is that we had very short layovers pretty much everywhere so we were running from bus to train and train to tram and metro, etc. We left at 7 in the morning and missed our tram, then got off at the wrong stop twice and when we finally got off at the right stop realized the bus station was across a highway...so we sprinted to the bus and as soon as we got on the driver closed the door and we left. At the train station an hour later we didn't have time to buy tickets, so we got on the train hoping we could buy them onboard. We really had no idea what was going to happen when the conductor came around because we thought since it was international travel that we would get kicked off for not having a ticket but we were able to buy tickets no problem and it was cheaper. It was pretty funny though, somehow we made everything, but just barely. We were only there for about 6 hours so we decided to take a horse carriage tour to see most of the city, so that was a lot of fun. Besides that we just walked around and explored the city. Here are some pictures from Vienna


Here is the Hofburg palace in vienna, unfortunately there was a lot of restoration going on, so a good part of it was covered up, but it was still pretty cool to see


Corner statue on the palace


The dome on the inside of the palace


Streets of vienna


Stevens cathedral...I think that is the name but it might be wrong














Some of the architecture






Another church



Schonbrunn palace- unfortunately we only had about 20 minutes here because we had to catch a train, but this place was amazing. There are over 1300 rooms here and there are tons of acres of royal gardens behind the palace tht go on forever it seems like.





















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Graffiti project done! Hello Olomouc

We finished our graffiti mural with point on Thursday! Here are some images from that.

I couldn't really stand far away enough to get the whole wall in the photo, it's a huge wall. But this is it:








Now we are in Olomouc, the old capital of the Czech republic. We took a 3 hour train ride to get here on an old train that was pretty crammed with with a lot of people. It is definitely smaller and more relaxed here. Everything closes on the weekends except for restaurants. It feels kind of like a ghost town, but it is beautiful still. Our hostel is amazing too. It's called the poet's corner and it's run by an Australian couple. They are really fun and the hostel is very artsy and cozy.

A little dark, but here is our living room















Some balcony seating





The kitchen


Olomouc square


Olomouc astronomical clock


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Lidice and Czech paratroopers

Just a bit of a warning, this is a pretty grim entry- visited two WWII sites in the past week.

Our last week in Prague was pretty laid back, but we did do a couple of really cool things. We went to a museum in the crypt of a church in Prague where seven Czech paratroopers hid from the nazis for six weeks after they assassinated Reinhard Heydrich, the nazi officer in command of the bohemian lands. After one of the paratroopers betrayed them and told the nazis where they were hiding, the nazis stood outside of the church for hours shooting at the church and trying to figure out how to get in. They tried to dig a hole in the wall to escape another way but when they realized it would be impossible, they decided to take their own lives instead of being captured by the nazis. The museum was really interesting and very visual. It showed pictures of the paratroopers right after they killed themselves, and had articles of clothing and other items that they were wearing and had in their possessions.

In retaliation for the paratroopers killing Reinhard heydrich, the nazis decided to blow up the entire town of Lidice. Lidice was a town of 500 people in the bohemian region of Czechoslovakia. The nazis came in and immediately killed the men and boys over 15 years of age. They never read anything to them or gave them and explanation, so they had no idea why they were being killed. The women were sent to concentration camps. 9 children were chosen to be germanized while the rest were gassed in transport when they thought they were just going away to school for two days. It was all done in the timespan of a few hours and no one had any idea what was going on. So here are some pictures from the museum, and then the town of Lidice.

The only window the paratroopers had to the outside. You can see bullet holes from where the nazis shot at the window



The entire crypt











It's a little dark, but the bottom right is where they tried to dig a hole to escape.



Lidice-



Memorial - statue relief depictions of the day the nazis destroyed the town






What's left of Lidice


A memorial to all 62 children who were gassed







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