Prague Part I

3 Iowa Staters:  Me, Dan Murphy and Dan Foster in front of the Prague Castle

I've been to Prague twice already now.  Prague is about 2-2.5 hours away by bus.  Round-trip from Brno to Prague is about $15.  My first trip there was my first weekend in the Czech Republic.  Two of my friends from Iowa State, Dan Foster and Dan Murphy, were traveling through Europe before their program started in Spain.  They were in Prague for a few days, so I left on a Thursday afternoon to tour the city with them.  

We spent Friday just wandering around, not really with any particular destination in mind, and not really knowing where we were going.  We saw a lot of the city just by walking around in the old parts of the city and across bridges.  In one part, we found a park, or a "secret garden" as Murphy called it.  Inside was a Russian tank as well as an exhibit of photographs from the Communist days.  Murphy, who was taking Russian, translated many of the words on the photographs, which usually were telling the Russians to leave.  We discovered Czech is basically Russian with a Latin alphabet as Murphy was able to read and translate a lot of Czech things, too.  

We went up to the "Prague Castle," which is actually a cathedral and its surrounding buildings. Saint Vitus Cathedral was very beautiful inside.  Its construction started in the 9th century and continued until the 19th century.  It is also the burial place of St. Wenceslas, who is best known from the Christmas carol and as the patron saint of Bohemia and namesake of many Czech (and American) churches.  The Wenceslas chapel was under renovation, but I could still see his tomb.  

Saint Vitus Cathedral

One of the many stained glass windows in St. Vitus

Wenceslas Chapel above the tomb of St. Wenceslas

Outside of St. Vitus--note cleaned to the left, uncleaned to the right

1370 mosaic The Last Judgment

Guard and me impersonating one

The castle area afforded a great view of Prague, including the Charles Bridge, named after King Charles IV.  Charles Bridge, built in the the 14th century, is the most famous structure in Prague.  They are in the process of cleaning and renovating the bridge and plan to install "authentic" gas lamps soon.  The 1,673 ft. pedestrian bridge is full of many street vendors, selling paintings, photographs, and souvenirs, and doing caricatures.   The bridge is lined with 30 statues of various saints.  Friday night, we went to a concert.  There were people standing in the tourist areas all day advertising various concerts going on that night.  The concert we went to was classical music, including "The New World Symphony," written by Czech composer Antonin Dvorak while he was living in Iowa.  It was a good experience hearing a string octet playing a song that was first performed in the very building we were sitting in.  

View from Prague Castle area

Charles Bridge

The Prague Castle

We walked through Wenceslas Square, the main area of Prague.  There was another photography exhibit about the Soviets in the Czech Republic and the Communist times.  The front photo of the exhibit was of Soviet rolling into Prague in 1968.  I was able to take a picture of the picture, with the same building in the background.  Also, I like the stark contrast, behind a photograph of tanks representing Communism were symbols of today's capitalism, a McDonald's and an advertisement for the iPhone.  

The Astronomical Clock

Wenceslas Square in the background

St. Wenceslas Square, then and now (note McD's in the background)

The inside of a random church

In the "Old Town," we saw the astronomical clock, one of the main things to see in Prague, which can be summarized by the word "overrated." It didn't really do much except ring on the hour, but there were hundreds of people each hour to see it.

Old Town Hall by night (with the race in the foreground)

View from Old Town Hall on the "Old Town" area

Bohemian crystal store

We walked up the Petrin Tower, a 1/5 scale replica of the Eiffel Tower overlooking Prague.  The tower is 194 ft. tall and is at the top of a very steep hill.  Rather than wait in the line to take the tram up the hill, we decided to go off-road.  It was fine, until we were about halfway up where it was almost a 90º angle up (not quite, but close).  We continued to literally climb and then encountered a homeless man living in a cave.  After being creeped out by that, we found the sidewalk again and continued to the tower.  Two of the three of us were fine going up, but one was completely scared of heights and basically hyperventilated the entire time and refused to look over the edge.  It was the same story when we went up the Old Town Hall overlooking the "Old Town" area.  

Charles Bridge with Petrin Tower in background

Petrin Tower

View from Petrin Tower

The Prague Castle

View from the Petrin Tower

The "Fred and Ginger" Building--so named because it looks like a couple dancing

That night, Prague played host to the European International Grand Prix, a 10km footrace through the "Old Town."  We watched this and found some of the race commentary (which was in Czech and English) very interesting.  While we were watching the race, we encountered the new most-hated tourists in Europe--Englishmen on a "stag party," or a bachelor party.  Instead of going to a pub for the night before a wedding, British men now use the discount airlines and go to parts of Europe with cheap alcohol and cause general disturbance for several days.  I have seen several articles in magazines and newspapers here complaining about the new "British invasion" of drunk Brits. 

We traveled around Prague using the metro and tram systems.  While there are ticket kiosks, there are no turnstiles or anything to go through (hence, it was free?).  We rode and hoped we wouldn't be caught.  Our luck ran out the last night we were there.  We were getting off a subway and there were guards at the escalators checking tickets.  We didn't have any.  We also didn't have 700kc ($42) to pay the fine on the spot.  Many tour books stressed making sure the guards are legitimate and it's not a scam.  We spent a lot of time doing so.  We only had plastic on us to pay, and they would only take cash.  They also demanded our passports, which we did not have on us.  They said the police could come and take us to the station, where they would take credit/debit cards, but would probably charge us more.  Finally, we convinced them, by giving over our drivers' licenses, to escort us to an ATM to get money to pay them.  We did so and then felt bad (even though we were technically in the wrong).  So, we ate at a place that would make us feel better--McDonald's.  The menu included the weight of all the food and we figured out that a 3rd cheeseburger had more food for less cost than fries, so we all got 3 burgers and got weird looks from the cashier for being fat Americans, but we didn't care.  

Metro fares--note the cost of a 1 day pass (100kc) and a 3 day pass (330kc) What?

The Prague Castle with my bad night-shot

Classes

I suppose it's about time to talk about the classes I am taking here, after all, that is the reason I'm here.  However, everyone seems to complain that school is getting in the way of enjoying Europe.  I am taking 5 classes, officially.  I am taking two classes in the international student program I am on and I am also taking three master's level classes.  The two classes in my actual program are Remodeling Political Culture after 1989 (4 US cr.) and Development of Ethnic Relations in the Czech Republic (4 US cr.).  The master's classes are The Making of Europe--European System of States since 1648 (6 US cr.), The History of the US Presidential Elections (3 US cr.), and European Union in European Politics since 1989 (3 US cr.). 

The Czech Republic uses the European standard for measuring credits, called ECTS.  The usual conversion is 2 ECTS credits/1 US credit.  I am taking 40 ECTS credits, or 20 US credits, which is more than the average European student (and American for that matter).  I am also kind of auditing the Czech language class.  I'm not signing up for it officially, but I am showing up and learning some (but not doing the homework if I don't feel like it).  I haven't been to many of these classes, though, because they meet at 8 am and the professor had a car accident and has cancelled several of the classes.  

My schedule is Mondays:  Making of Europe 12-1:30, Remodeling Political Culture 2-3:30, and Ethnic Relations every other week from 4-7:30.  Tuesdays:  US Pres. Elections 12-1:30.  Wednesdays:  EU in European Politics 12-1:30.  Since not all the classes meet each week and often don't go the whole time, I have about 6 hours of class/week.  This also means, my weekends go from Wed. at 1:30 until Mon. at noon (or an hour and a half shy of 5 day weekends).  

The classes are run as a type of hybrid between European style and American style.  By American style, we have actual homework.  In some classes, the grades use the US scale and others use the European one.   It is actually much harder to get an A or a B in Europe because they treat C as a good grade, too. 

The European grading scale:

A Excellent

B Very Good

C Good

D Satisfactory

E Sufficient

F Fail

Some of the professors have realized that American/Canadian students taking these credits back home have a hard time convincing advisors that a C in a European class is a good grade.    A professor that I have for two classes uses the scale of A=100-82, B=81-75, C=74-68, D=67-61, E=60-55, F=54-0.  Another uses a European style and out of 50 total class points, one must get 47 for an A and 44 for a B.  

The homework has varied, too.  The classes are worth 3-6 US credits but only meet for an hour and a half because of all the outside reading.  Many students in Europe rarely go to class and cram in all the reading in the month-long break before the final tests.  (All my finals will be in December rather the normal January/February to accommodate foreign students.)   The professor trying to be like an American class requires a short 1-2 paper each week about the reading.  Other classes have 2 or 3 papers throughout the semester and a final essay test.  My first "big" paper is a 3 page paper about JFK for my US Presidential Elections class (the second paper is on Bill Clinton).  

The teachers have been very interesting themselves.  The first week of classes is just an introduction and overview of the class (each class that week lasted about 5-20 minutes).  Two of the professors were late and answered their cell phones when they went off in class.  None of the teachers are native English speakers, but I've had enough foreign TAs to be used to this.  In the Czech Cinema class (that I'm not taking but went to out of sheer boredom), the professor showed a Czech fairy tale movie and in the set-up for the movie, told us he went to see the movie the weekend the Russian tanks rolled into Prague in 1968.  

My US Presidential Elections class is very interesting, seeing it from a foreign perspective.  There is a Pennsylvanian and a Utahn (official term, I looked it up) in my class.  The first day of class, we mentioned the Iowa Caucuses and the professor had me explain about them for about 10 minutes.  That was actually pretty cool.  The class is overflowing because, although it is supposed to be a quasi-history class, there is a lot of talk about the current election.  The professor has also made it clear she prefers McCain, which I found good and very interesting.  

I'll talk more about classes in posts to come as this one is getting long.  Wish me luck on writing my papers, without having a real American library to use for research.