Adventures in Prague

Throughout my time in Europe I have made two trips to Prague, one right when we arrived, and the other one, two weeks later with our professors. Prague itself was absolutely beautiful and has so much history all throughout the city. We had a few mishaps throughout our Prague journey such as a few stolen/lost items, a run in with some mean homeless people, and an uber that ran out of gas and made us walk the rest of the way on our very first night there…but nothing too serious and through it I have gained a great amount of knowledge about how to handle different situations and also an immense amount of gratitude for our professors and all they put up with!

A day before we left for our field trip to Prague we watched a movie in class called, Anthropoid. The movie takes place in the 1940’s, in the height of the Nazi reign. It follows two young men named Jan and Josef. Their job is to kill Reinhard Heydrich, who was one of Hitler’s top men in charge, and if they could succeed, this would completely change the war. They end up succeeding in their mission which of course causes negative repercussions for the two men and all who have helped them. In the end of the movie they are hiding in the Orthodox Cathedral of Saints Cyril and Methodius, and the Nazi soldiers find their place of hiding and attack the church. Jan, Josef and the other Czech resistance hold the Nazi’s off for 6 hours, which is incredible considering they were extremely outnumbered. The Nazi’s fire round after round into the church walls and put fire hoses in a small window that leads to the basement of the church where they were hiding, trying to either make them come out or drown them. The movie ends with all of the Czech Resistance fighters all taking their own lives, which was sad and hard to watch however they completed their mission and made such a large impact on the war as a whole. Watching the movie was very eye-opening and I learned a lot however it wasn’t until the next day when we actually visited the church in Prague, and went into the basement, and saw the bullet holes and the window they put the firehouses in that I truly appreciated the story of these soldiers and the magnitude of what they did for the war.

On a happier note, Prague was having an Easter festival while we were there! I was feeling pretty homesick because my family celebrated Easter this past Sunday, and I was sad I couldn’t be there for it. However, seeing all the little Easter stands all throughout the different town squares uplifted my mood quite a bit! In the Czech, as a whole, they are not very religious but they still have some very prominent Easter traditions. Decorating eggs is probably the most common Easter tradition. They poke two holes in the egg and blow out the insides of the egg, then they paint the most beautiful designs on the outside shell! Everyone throughout the Easter market seemed so happy and excited and it was a fun atmosphere to be around! There was a man with a giant string contraption making huge bubbles for all the little kids to run through. There was various street performers all around, just making people laugh and enjoy their time in the city, and THE DESERTS!!! They were all over! Ice Cream, chocolate, and trdelnik’s (a cinnamon twist pastry)!! I had a few chocolate covered strawberries, and I would consider myself a chocolate connoisseur, and it was most definitely the BEST milk chocolate I have ever had!

On Saturday we got to take a day trip to Dresden, Germany… which still blows my mind that you can just leave the country and return in the same day! I honestly had no idea what to expect from Dresden, but after going I am in awe of the city. In 1945 the American and British Army Air Forces bombed Dresden in another attempt to end the war. The war did end shortly after, however, my professor said that in his opinion it would’ve ended with or without the bombing. Because of the bombing, half of the city is “old” and half is “new”. You can tell what buildings have been reconstructed and which ones are original. The Frauenkirche church was reconstructed with a light colored brick but they tried to use as many pieces from the old church as possible so the dark blocks are from before the bombing. Another fun, more universal fact we learned was that when you see statues or monuments with someone riding a horse, if the horse has both feet on the ground then the rider died from natural causes. If the horse has one leg up, the rider was wounded in battle but lived and later died from natural causes. But if the horse has both front legs up the rider was killed in battle. Our professors said that this holds true with most monuments all throughout the world which I thought was a cool little fact that most people probably don’t know when looking at those monuments.

As our day in Dresden concluded, we all met up to then walk to the train station and as we were waiting for everyone to show up we heard chanting coming towards us, and I had also noticed an influx of police officers around the area in the past 10 minutes. Off in the distance there was a large mass of people holding signs and banners all singing a song in unison. My professor had a grim look on his face and explained to us that these protestors were neo-Nazi’s… which was not exactly what I was expecting. He said that they were singing the German anthem but it was the old Nazi version. I was completely shocked to be witnessing this. I looked out at these protestors who were literally 10 feet in front of us and saw a mixture of age groups but a lot of young 20 and 30 year olds. I could not understand how someone who didn’t even live in the time period of the Nazi’s, didn’t live then to see the horrors that the Nazi’s caused, could be supporting a group like this. All of the people in this protest truly believed that this was the right thing to do. I am thankful that I saw these protestors because I don’t think I realized that there were this many people in the world who still held this horrible horrible idea of how the world should be ran. It breaks my heart to know that these people will probably never change their mind and their hearts will always be full of hate and anger, but then I remember just how many good people there are in the world, and how many people who are educated on WWll and who understand just how gruesome and awful what the Nazi’s did was. There are so many more people in this world with good, kind hearts than there are with bad and for that I am grateful.

The last day in Prague we visited the Jewish Quarters, which yet again I had no idea what to expect. I found my understanding of the magnitude of the Nazi reign over the Czech growing even more. We went into a Jewish synagogue and written on the walls were 85,000 names of Czech citizens killed during the war. When you hear that 85,000 people were killed that sounds like a lot of people but when you see walls filled top to bottom with hand written names on them…it is a surreal feeling of sadness. Also in this synagogue were pictures that the kids that lived in the Jewish Quarters drew. They were put into groups, for example, the first group of pictures was titled, “Transport to Darkness”, and it showed pictures that children had drawn of the train ride after they were taken from their homes and they have a very dark and sad mood to them. There was another group titled, “Dream of Returning” which showed the hope that these children had inside their hearts that one day they would get to go home and their lives would be happy and free again. Looking at these pictures really made me think about how hard it would have been to be a mom and not have any control over where they took your kids or what happened to them. I loved seeing the hope that these children had in their pictures but it made me tear up looking at some of the drawings of different things they were forced to experience during the war because some of them were pretty gruesome.

The Jewish cemetery is right next to the Jewish synagogue in the Jewish Quarters and all the grave stones are literally on top of each other because there wasn’t enough room for how many people there were. Instead of flowers there are little rocks on some of the headstones that people had put there throughout the years to pay their respects. This was yet again a very sad and eye opening experience that I am glad I got the chance to see.

Although on our trip to Prague we saw many sad and heartbreaking sights, I think I took away so much from this trip. It is one thing to learn about all these things in a classroom but to physically see places that such horrible things took place and to see artifacts from back then really helped me reach a whole new understanding and appreciation of the war and all that went on during the 40's. I am so thankful I had the opportunity to experience Prague and all of the mishaps along the way!

As a total, the things we lost in Prague:

• 1 Phone

• 1 Passport

• 1 Wallet

• Trust in uber drivers

• Various people at various times

But on the other hand, the things we GAINED in Prague:

• Closer friendships with one another

• Better relationships with our professors

• Much more insight and knowledge about the history of Prague & it’s role in WWll

• Life lessons such as:

• Never go anywhere alone (which all of our parents have told us but of course we had to learn the hard way because we’re kids)

• Always hold your belongings close to you

• But most of all, no matter what goes wrong, there’s a hundred other things that go right

I am so grateful to have three professors on this trip with us who know every little detail about anything and everything history related. I love learning about history but have never gotten a chance to take many history classes because my major is very science heavy, so I am incredibly happy I have the opportunity to study Czech history, involvement in the war, and various other European countries histories for 3 months with so many amazing people!!