Closing up Shop

This entry will cover from the last time I have had time or energy to write until today. My classes are becoming less hectic so there might be a few more entries before I am back in the United States . . . Enjoy!

On Wednesday, April 8, not only were we were assigned to Slovak families to spend the Easter holidays with, but we also left three hours later travel to the assigned villages via train. We were divided into a group of 4 who traveled to a small city, 1 who traveled to a small town, and 2 who traveled to two villages. So Matt and I were chosen to go to the small villages and stay with a family and their cousins. It was, by far, one of the most interesting Easter celebrations I have ever been to. They have a tradition here for Easter Monday, which is bigger here than Easter Sunday, where they make whips from sprigs Sunday evening then on Monday, the boys travel from house to house and hit (gently) the girls with the whip or throw water/perfume on them. The girls then respond by giving the boys decorated eggs, chocolate, cakes, or even money. It was quite the experience. . .I spent the day with Matt's host family because mine did not participate in the Easter Monday traditions. So while I was with Matt's family, we visited one of their relations and the older gentleman had a whip with which he hit me and Matt's host mother. The rest of the day was spent at their grandparents' huge farm . . . they have their own herd of deer . . . where we ate a ton of food and toured their farm and just chilled for the rest of the evening. After such an eventful day, Tuesday was spent repacking and a short visit to the nearby town where we later caught our train and headed back to Bratislava, which is a relatively quite city but seemed extremely loud after spending a week in the countryside.

The Friday after we returned was supposed to be a trip to Vienna, but thankfully, our professor changed the date to the following weekend so we had an unexpected free weekend in Bratislava. We are all coming to the realization that our time here is almost up and we have been discussing what we will miss the most about this city and this country . . . I think I will miss the freedom of movement the most. . . living in the country, I have never realized the pros of public transportation. The affordability and safety of the city buses and the trains is just unbelievable (three of us traveled to one of our Slovak professor's house and for three of us it was less than 4 euro round trip!). The second thing I will miss the most is the food, they cook the most amazing food, not only in our faculty's cafeteria, but also the street vendors and the restaurants. The Slovak students took us to a restaurant with "the cheapest restaurant with the best food" and they were dead on right. I have never spent more than 7 euros there and I get a drink, and a meal, which consists of meat, vegetables, and rice or fries.

So after our free weekend in Bratislava, we spent the week preparing for finals and writing our final papers, unfortunately, we still have a few due this week too. This weekend was spent on a day trip to Vienna on Friday and a trip to our professor Batka's house on Saturday. The day trip to Vienna was very laid back. We only spent a day there because it is only an hour's train ride from Bratislava. In the morning we had a quick walking tour of the city and then we were left to explore as we pleased until that evening when we would meet back at the train station to head back to Bratislava. We spent the whole afternoon in a royal park reading books we had found in a bookstore or just chillin' so it was a great day in Vienna. Saturday, two guys and myself traveled to our professor's home on the outskirts of Bratislava because he had invited us all to come and join him during a festival being held in his town. He met us at the train station and gave us a short tour of the town and his church then he let us go explore the festival on our own. The festival was surprisingly set up in a very American style, with the mix of hand crafted items and the cheap items from China and with all of the booths of food to choose from. So we walked around and ate for a couple hours then decided to head back to Bratislava to finish some papers.

So here I am, less than two weeks to go and not even close to being ready to leave this beautiful city and go home.

Giant Update

I am coming down the home stretch of this semester with only a month left to go. The constant snow and rain that has covered the city since we have been here has finally lifted and we are currently enjoying warm, sunny weather and our first clear view of the city. For the past four weeks we have been on the move traveling to Munich, Budapest, Prague, and Wittenberg.

Munich was our official last free weekend before we started our weekend travels for our classes so six of us decided to travel to Munich. I went with the motivation of seeing one of my friends who lives right outside of Munich. Her name is Johanna; she was an exchange student at my high school my senior year and we have kept in contact since then. I stayed with her along with two girls from my group, Amandalynn and Hayley, and the three guys who came along stayed in a hostel in Munich so they could be in the city. Johanna's family was a breath of fresh air from being in the city and lack of family dynamics. Johanna's family had prepared a weekend of activities for us in which we traveled to Salzburg, Austria for a day and was able to take a relaxed self-tour of the nearby castle and the town. We also went to the Alps the day we had to leave for Bratislava. Her mother cooked us some traditional German food such as Bavarian sausage and a fish casserole and we were taken to a local traditional Bavarian restaurant one evening. All in all the weekend ended much too soon. As the six of us reconvened at the train station the looks on our face were mostly of depression at the thought of leaving Munich and heading back to Bratislava.

The following weekend we traveled as a whole group, along with our professor, to Budapest, Hungary. Here the program was not as leisurely and we had only one afternoon to explore the city on our own. This weekend seemed extended by the fact that we left Bratislava at 5:53 Friday morning and were in Budapest by 9am. We began the day with finding our accommodations at a Lutheran theological faculty that was closely related to the faculty we stay at in Bratislava. After we were given rooms and some time to unpack we then attended a lecture on the basic history of Hungary and more specifically the history of Budapest (actually was once two cities Buda and Pest each part on one side of the river Danube but were later combined) and how Communism impacted its politics and religious views. We then had a surprise added to our schedule and were able to visit the Bulgarian ambassador to Hungary. This was a special treat for me since I am planning on majoring in International Relations and the gentleman talked extensively about the difficulties, especially politically, of being a diplomat. The second day we spent in Budapest we were taken sightseeing on a small bus and then we were taken to a small Holocaust exhibit. The theme of most of our classes revolves around the Holocaust so it was only to be expected that we would eventually visit a Holocaust themed event. However, the perspective on the Holocaust here is extremely different from the perspective taken in America. Here, for one, it seems more real; I was look through some photos that were taken of Jew being persecuted in Budapest and in one of the pictures I recognized a building I had been standing next to and had taken a picture of earlier that day. Unlike America, there is no escaping it here, you can't just go to a Holocaust museum here and leave without seeing the same streets and buildings that you had just seen inside the museum. The whole group was very subdued after this exhibition and was quite until we split for dinner in the main square of Budapest. On Sunday we headed home in order to catch up on the homework we still had to do for class on Monday.

The weekend after, we left Bratislava, again, insanely early, this time around 5:30am and we reached Prague by 9:30am. Again we were able to unpack and have lunch before we traveled to the old district and to the NYU of Prague to listen to a lecture on civil society versus Political culture and how they were affected by Nazism and Communism throughout the twentieth century. We were then given an hour of "free time" to explore the old district of Prague and the surrounding open air markets. After the hour was up we were then taken on a short walking tour as we walked to the only Slovak Lutheran Church in Prague. Here we listened to another lecture about the history of the Church and how a Slovak Church is able to function within Czech land. This lecture was followed by a walk to dinner which was extremely good. I decided to try a traditional meal and ordered the knee of a pig. . . It was huge and had a ton of meat on it but it was soooo delicious!!! After dinner we walked along Charles Bridge, which unfortunately is under reconstruction, towards our metro stop where I proceeded to be clumsy and fall on an escalator :D The next morning we were taken on a walking tour of the city castle and of Charles Bridge. Afterwards, we were given the rest of the day to explore Prague on our own. Our group split into a few smaller groups and the group I was in mostly stayed near Charles Bridge and the surrounding area.

We all headed to bed early that night because we were up and running at 3am the next morning to catch a bus to Wittenberg (where Martin Luther posted his 95thesises) so we could be there in time for the morning service. The service was interesting but was in German so I understood none of it. After the service we were shown our rooms, were given lunch, then heading out on a walking tour of the town. Our tour guide was excellent and humorous as she showed us the many historical sites of Wittenberg. However, even on this trip we were unsuccessful in escaping the shadows of the Holocaust. On the back of the town church there is a small stone structure that was created to insult the Jews as they walked past to the local ghetto. The structure shows Jews suckling from a female pig and a Rabbi standing behind the pig. Below this structure there is a monument that has been recently put there that is an acknowledgement of and an apology for the suffering of the Jews at the hands of Christians. By the end of the tour we were in Martin Luther's house which has been turned into a Reformation museum. Many of the documents were interesting due to the fact that we had talked about or mentioned some of them in our "Martin Luther" class taught by a Slovak professor. After we were done at the museum, we were given the rest of the day to relax so a few of us decided that it was warm enough out to eat ice cream. . . It was a brilliant idea! We then went to a small diner on the edge of town and had some fries before heading back to our lodgings. The next day we had a couple hours of free time to pack and walk around the town one last time before we were gathered to listen to a lecture about the mission of the ECLA, the Lutheran foundation that funded the hostel where we had been staying. Immediately following the lecture we were given lunch then loaded back onto the bus to travel back to Prague to catch a train back to Bratislava. After the 4:30 hour bus ride to Prague we jumped onto our train and then spent another 4 hours traveling to Bratislava where we arrived at 10:30pm.

This weekend was the official last weekend we would be spending in Bratislava so I invited my friend Johanna to come and allow me to return the hospitality that her family showed me. After some miscommunication and delays, Johanna, her brother, and his girlfriend arrived in Bratislava Friday night and stayed in a nearby hotel. Saturday was spent on a whirlwind tour of the city with breaks both at her hotel and in my room at the faculty. Saturday evening was spent eating dinner then playing cards before it was time for Johann to head back to her hotel. I was able to catch her briefly Sunday morning to say goodbye before she left.


So, this is a condensed version of what I have been up to for the past month . . . sorry it took so long to update everyone, it's been hectic and I'm not very good at keeping up with these types of things.