First, several weeks ago my parents were in town and i met them in Berlin. Berlin, simply put, was a really new and modern city and I really like it. Since pretty much everything there was rebuilt after World War II its totally different than Prague, but I am a fan of the new, clean look of a city like Berlin. It was nice to travel with my family since we hadn't seen them in a few months and because it was nice to stay in a beautiful hotel. All in all Berlin was a really good trip and easy to make on the train. While we were there we saw things like the Brandenburg Tor, Humbolt University, the Parliament, Checkpoint Charlie, and the East Side Gallery.
The east side gallery is the longest remaining part of the wall and still stands in its original location. The gallery has a number of paintings done on the wall by famous artists and this above was one of them.
At the end of the weekend, Maude and I and my family all boarded the train back to Prague. My parents would spend the next or so days in Prague, seeing all the sites of Prague and making a day trip to Terezin. We took a 1 hour bus ride outside of Prague to the small town of Terezin, this town was once a fortress but during World War II served as a ghetto and prison. It was not actually a concentration camp, though many people did die here. It was more of a halfway house through which Jews were shipped to Auschwitz. The town as a whole, specifically the small fortress where Jews and political dissidents were housed, was still a pretty depressing site.
At the end of the week, right before my family left, Maude's mom and brother arrived to Prague. We all had dinner on old town one night but then shortly after my parents had to return to the states. The rest of that week we spent some time with Maude's family and seeing any sights we had missed until then. Right after they left I was scheduled to go on two day trips through my school CIEE. On saturday I travelled to Most and Osek, Czech towns on the border of the Czech Republic and Germany. Honestly, there wasn't much in these towns except in Most we saw a church that the Communists actually spent years moving before they destroyed the entire town to turn it into a coal mine. On the whole this trip really wasn't very exciting except for the lunch, which was free and quite tasty.
On Sunday I then travelled to Jachymov and Karlovy Vary. In Jachymov there was a camp for political prisoners of the Communist regime. We met and spoke with a man who was a political prisoner in this camp and we took a tour of the Uranium Mine that he was forced to work in while he was a prisoner.
This is the front of the Uranium mine we went in, the day before we came they actually had to ventilate the mine to make sure that the levels of radiation within the mine would be low and the mine would be safe for us to enter.
After we finished in Jachymov we got back on the bus and travelled to Karlovy Vary. Karlovy Vary is a hot spring town. There are natural hot springs running through the city which are funneled into like faucets where you can fill up a cup and drink it for its healing properties. However, it has a lot of iron in it and it tastes sort of like you are drinking blood. The town is most famous for a major film festival that is held there every summer and for its Grand Hotel Pupp where the James Bond film Casion Royale was filmed.
This is the Grand Hotel Pupp where Casino Royale was filmed.
Another weekend is approaching, though I am not going anywhere, I just plan to do some work and go pedal boating on the Vltava river in Prague. However, over the last weekend that passed I went to a small town in South Bohemia called Cesky Krumlov. Maude, Jena, and I made the 3 hour trip on Friday to stay 1 night there. We stayed at Hostel Skippy, which was a little far from the town square however it had a terrace that was sitting right about the Vltava river that flowed through the city. We saw all the sights, including the castle that is in the town, within a few hours of being there. So we got a few bottles of wine and relaxed on the terrace of our hostel where we met a cool Australian couple who were spending about 5 months just travelling through Europe. We hung out with them for awhile and got dinner with them. Then the next day we got lunch and had a little time to kill so we just went down along the river and read and slept because the weather was beautiful. Overall, the town is was really nice and the trip was relaxing.
So these are the last few trips I have taken in a nutshell. I have a lot of work to do in the next week and a half so I won't be doing too much that is interesting. However, after my school here is over Maude and I will take a trip for about 12 days. We are going to Brussels, Amsterdam, London, and Dublin before we return back to the US. I will try to put some brief updates on here about the trip as its happening but if not I will at least make sure I get a lot of pictures for after.
