Day Trips!

So between last weekend and this weekend, I have gone on 3 day trips!  They've been great fun, and very interesting (2 of them were for classes I'm taking, so they were also informational!).  In between I've been working my ass off, and had 5 midterm tests this week.  It was.. miserable, to say the least.  But it's over now!

Last Saturday, I went to a town called Most, in northern Czech Republic.  It is a town known for strip mining, and it was absolutely devastating to see the amount of land they had ruined.  But part of the trip was fun, as well.  We went to a crazy castle that was decorated 1/2 with stuffed animals of sorts (by which I mean taxidermy, not children's play toys), and 1/2 with what they called "fairy tales".  It was.. bizarre.

So this church was actually moved from its original location to the spot it sits now, because the coal companies of Most decided that they needed to literally tear down the ENTIRE town, and move it like.. 2 km away.. in order to get at the coal that was below it.  So this church was moved, in one piece.  It was a huge feat of engineering, actually, and is pretty damn cool to think about.  It was also gorgeous inside, but they charged 100ck to take pictures, so alas.

We actually hiked to a look-out point so we could see the scope of the damage done by the mining.  I thought it was particularly sad in contrast to the beautiful castle/chateau thingy sitting so nicely on the hill.  Also, through the process of strip mining they ruined a lot of the surrounding hillsides because of acid rain etc.

Badger!!  Inside the castle.  Also, at the castle, I got to pet a goat.  That was definitely the highlight of that trip.  Haha.

Sunday, I went to Třebič with my History of Jews in Bohemia and Moravia class.  It has I believe, one of the most well preserved Jewish ghettos there.  (not a Nazi Ghetto.  A Ghetto that the Jews lived in in the Middle Ages).  It was altogether an interesting trip.  It was beautiful, and the Jewish cemetery there was absolutely fascinating.  It was a really really interesting and extremely insightful trip.

This is the Rear Synagogue in the Jewish Ghetto.  In the Medieval Period, the Jews painted their prayers in Hebrew on the walls of their synagogues and the congregation would walk from prayer to prayer reciting them at their services.

Not the best picture, but we went into this lady's house in the Ghetto, where a wealthy Jewish family had a well dug in their living room when it was built.  It was really interesting, so of course I stood on top of it!  :)

This was the oldest part of the Jewish Cemetery.  They were forced to bury their loved ones over this hill so that they weren't in view of the church in the center of the town.

After WWII, many Jewish families returned to their family's burial sites and scraped the German off of their grave stones.  They sometimes just left them blank, or replaced them in Czech.  Also, a lot of Jews who had German last names translated them to the Czech equivalent.

Yesterday, Martha, Rachel and I visited Karlovy Vary!  It is a Russian Spa Town about a 2 hr. bus ride from Prague.  It was absolutely gorgeous, though the day was extremely foggy.  We saw the center of the town, which is in a valley, and was just beautiful with all the fall colors.  So the town is known for its hot springs.  There are 16 of them around the town, and we found 6 of them.  We also bought really cute mugs so we could drink the spring water (which was fairly disgusting, it tasted really metalic, but considering how cold the day was, drinking natural hot mineral water from fountains wasn't a terrible thing).  We walked around and encountered a couple churches, a theatre, and then we went to the Jan Becher museum.  Jan Becher was the creator of Becherovka, which is a Czech hard liquor that was originally manufactured for medicinal purposes-- stomach issues specifically.  Anyway, it was really interesting, and for only 100ck, we also got to try 3 different kinds of Becherovka.  It was really cool.

Gorgeous Fall colors!!

Dvorak statue!

The first colonnade that we found with a fountain!

Martha and I with our mugs!  Yes, my mug is a giraffe.  :)  Also, it has a straw built into the handle.  It is awesome.

Pretty building.

Gorgeous church we ran across randomly as we kind of traversed around the town.

Russian Orthodox Church (as the town is mostly populated by Russians)

A statue of TG Masaryk, a huge symbol of Czech nationalism.  It was one of the Czech Republic's many independence day things on Friday, thus the ribbons at the base.

At the Becherovka museum!

And that's pretty much all that's happened in the last week!
Much love!
Alyssa