Zizkov

So today was pretty cool. We went to another part of Prague, zizkov (pronounced sheeshkov) that none of us have been to yet. It was definitely a local place, no tourists, and there was more of a sense of relaxation there. People just enjoying the park, walking there dogs, children playing in a fountain, definitely different from where we are. Also a note about dogs here, they are the most behaved dogs and rarely do I see a dog on a leash, they just follow their owner and don't really stray, it's awesome.

We went on another architectural tour with vatslav cilek, a very well known professor in Prague. He pointed out how this area has architecture from all different time periods and talked about some key buildings. Here are some pictures of where we were today... Sorry if my pictures are blurry, my lens broke!

First, here is a picture of a little coffee break I took before the tour...



Here is the tv tower in zizkov. This was built somewhere between 1985 and 1990?? somewhere around there and it was one of the most hated buildings in Prague for a while. People have come to terms with it today, but they hated it for a long time, Mostly because it was built on top of an old Jewish cemetery, and it clearly sticks out from the rest of the buildings. In order to "humanize" the building, they asked an artist to work on it, so the artist added "black babies" crawling up the side of the tv tower. Most find them creepy, because they have no faces. I think it is kind of cool though.





Here are some of the other buildings we saw...






This is an old bomb shelter now just used as a tunnel...










Grafiti is everywhere, but it's all student grafiti, never gang related or violent



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Kutna Hora

Today we did our first small day trip to Kutna Hora, a town about an hour away by train. It is the day before Easter, so there was a carnival there which made it a very populAr place for today. There are also two churches we were supposed to visit, the bone church, and st. Barbara. The bone church was built in the 14th century originally I believe but it was burned down sometime after that and rebuilt. The reason it is called the bone church is that there are bones from over 40,000 bodies that decorate the inside. About 30,000 bodies were from the plague, and the remaining bodies were from the 30 years war. There is a cemetery in front of the church where the bodies and bones were thrown so the family that owned the church asked a carver to clean the bones, carve them, and decorate the inside. It sounds really creepy, but it was actually pretty cool.



Sorry if the pictures are small by the way, I accidental changed a setting on my camera that changed the image size.










Here is a pictures of one of the girls, Liza, on the abroad while we were on the train to Kutna Hora. We were stuck in the train hallway, because all of the other seats were taken.



Tomorrow is Easter, which is a huge deal here, so I'm going to go to a bunch of the easter booths and take a lot of pictures.

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A very good day

We went up to Petrin Tower today, it is a small version of the Eiffel Tower. We could see the entire city, which was pretty amazing. We had the entire afternoon from 12 until 5 off today, so I went out to get gelato with Isabelle, and then went to old town square where the astronomical clock is and all of the Easter stands. It was insanely busy so I got out of the mess and wanted to find a place to sit and work on a couple poems that were due tonight. I got lost though and wound up on the edge of the city so that ended up taking a couple of hours and I had to go grocery shopping before 5 so I ended up just eventually finding the right tram and going to the market. I still can't believe how cheap everything is here still. I got so much food today for around 300 kronu, that is about 17-20 dollars. And not to mention all the fruits, vegetables, and bread are all so much better here, it is way more fresh.

Tonight we had another roommate dinner, we made omelettes which vegetables, pesto, and balsamic vinegarette and sat outside and ate. Then we went to our favorite dessert cafe, the choco cafe and all got coffee and chocolate cheesecake. After, we wanted to find the Lennon Wall, a famous wall in Prague where people freely write anything they want, mostly about love, peace, and anything regarding John Lennon and the beetles. I took a bunch of night pictures which turned out pretty cool.

Here are some pictures from Petrin tower, the park that it is in, and some night pictures of the area we live in and the Lennon wall.

On our way to Petrin tower..












Petrin tower...





View from the top










Dogs are everywhere here and so well behaved, always off leashes!



Beautiful lighting on the walk home, we live just around the corner


The church right next to our hostel...






Charles bridge is straight ahead











The Lennon wall




















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Busy last couple of days

We have been very busy these last couple of days attending the Prague writers festival. We have seen readings from writers all over the world, some US writers you probably recognize are Don Delillo and Junot Diaz. The festival is held at the Nova Scena right next to the National Theatre...I'll add pictures of it soon.

Besides that we have just been having class at our studios and taking every hour of free time to basically get lost in the city. There are so many small alley ways and small side streets that are all filled with shops, cafes, restaurants, and bakeries which are all so good. Even though it's so easy to get lost, we always end up coming out of the small streets into a familiar area which is nice. Its actually been my favorite time so far when we get to go off on our own and get lost in the city. That and I love that every time we have a break we always go somewhere and get espresso. Yesterday I had 6 cups of espresso throughout the day and somehow managed to go straight to bed fairly early. I think I'm getting used to this lifestyle...


This morning me and a friend went on a walk in a huge park by the Hrad Palace. Here are some pictures from the morning walk and a beautiful view of the city at around 715 AM.















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Yesterday we had our first "Prague is your teacher" day, which means we get the day to go off on our own and explore different parts of the city doing whatever we want. I decided to go to a place we had been to before and just go sit at a cafe and people watch for a while. It was the first real sunny day in a while so everyone was out, and there were a ton of people to see. I met up with Isabelle later for dinner near our hostel and we also discovered a couple of really cool pubs, a dessert cafe, and a nightclub that all look really fun. We actually went to the dessert cafe called choco cafe and had really really good tiramisu and coffee for really cheap as well. After all of that all the girls decided to go out dancing, so we found a "disco" (dance clubs are not called clubs in Prague, because clubs are brothels here) right in the middle of the most touristy area, so we met people from all of the world. Note to self, Italians are crazy. It was fun though and a very different experience.

Today we went on a four hour architectural tour with a guy named cristof. He took us around mainly old town the whole day pointing out the different styles of architecture and what time period they came from and their historical significance. All of the Easter booths are set up in all the squares here so it's really fun right now. The Easter tradition here is that men buy whips and hit women with them and women will through water on them in retaliation. Apparently men do this to any girl they see so I'll make sure to have a bucket of water on me all day on Easter. Here are some pictures mainly of buildings that we saw today and of the Easter booths!




Old town square












Pastries everywhere...



The astronomical clock is on the front of the stone building


16th century powder tower...


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Classes

Did some grocery shopping this morning in Prague! Even at a major grocery store, there was no English on any of the labels, so I had no idea what I was really getting half the time. I just stuck with what I knew, bread, meat, cheese, milk, coffee, and a few other things. I still become a deer in headlights a little bit when someone comes up to me and starts speaking Czech. After the grocery store a guy came up to me and said something and I just smiled embarrassingly and shook my head no and walked away... I'm still working on it!

After that, as a group, we all went to have our first official class at our studio in Divas. Our class this afternoon was our writers and artists combined course, so we read a poem and created a drawing using only text from the poem. We are still working on it, so pictures will come later.

My roommates and I ended the night by looking for gypsy music that we thought would be playing, but no such luck. We ended up just taking the metro to nove mesto and getting gelato and coffee. Its finally supposed to be sunny and warm up tomorrow, so I'll be getting more pictures finally!

Below are some pictures from the metro, getting coffee with friends, and roommates making dinner!
Ahoj!


















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