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Published: July 26th 2006
The train ride to Olomouc took about 3 hours. The teachers, Marketa and Malvina, who are about 30-ish and very very nice. They went with us, and had made all of the arrangements. It was nice to have someone else in charge so we wouldn't have to worry as much.
Anyway, we arrived to Olomouc and I was pretty unimpressed. The city looked very "communist." (Marketa uses communist as an adjective to describe the architecture--or lack thereof--of places. For instance, when she met us at the airport, she said it was new and better than the "old communist block of lead," she said that the rickety old train car that she thought we were going to ride in was a "communist train," and our dorm in Olomouc was another "old communist block of lead.") Anyway, we took the train to our "communist block of lead" dorm, which wasn't too bad on the inside, except for the bathrooms, where the sink was in the showers and there were holes in the wall and the whole time I took a shower I was afraid that cockroaches were going to crawl out and, I don't know, terrorize me or something. Maxine and I shared a bedroom, which was very nice and it had a balcony.
After getting settled in the dorms, we went to lunch at a little outdoor restaurant. After that, we went to class in a classroom at Palacky University, which is the 2nd oldest and 2nd best University in the Czech Republic (Charles University, where we are studying, is the oldest and the best, apparently). The university buildings were closer to the city center, so they were older and nicer and not "communist." By the way, universities here are a lot more spread out. There is no one central campus like at Mizzou or most American Universities. The faculties (which are basically schools or colleges within the universities) are in different buildings at different parts of the city.
Anyway, we had a lecture on the 20th century in Central Europe. It was a pretty busy century over here. There was World War I and after that things were pretty good until the Nazis came, which was bad, and then right after that whole ordeal the communists took over, which was also bad, and stayed until 1989, when they started creating democracy, which is good. So there's your history lesson for the day.
After that we had a lecture with the Vice Rector of International Affairs, who Rachel thought was hot, so that gave us about 10 minutes of entertainment and giggling (but later she changed her mind because he had a safari hat on and he smoked, which is gross). Anyway, the lecture was just about the university, but it was in a really pretty room, so that was fun. He took us on a little city tour after that. The city was a lot nicer that what I had seen by the train station and the dorms, so I was no longer unimpressed.
We were free to do our own thing after that. The only problem was that there was not a lot going on. A lot of the stores closed at about 6:00 pm. Olomouc is a college town and there was no college in session, so it was pretty much dead. We had dinner and drinks at a nice Italian restaurant.
After that, I went back to the train station with Rachel and Malvina because she had accidently left her camera on the train. Luckily, she noticed it at the station before we left (but after the train had left, unfortunately) so from the station they called the conductor, who grabbed it and said he'd bring it by when the train came back that night. We had a lot of time at the station because the train was running really late, so we got to talk to Malvina a lot, which was really interesting.
Rachel and I went back in town and met up with the other girls, who had passed the time by drinking cocktails. We pretty much sat in the city center by a huge statue and talked for a while, since it was nice outside. Then we made our way back to the dorms and crashed.
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Mom
non-member comment
?!?!?
Unimpressed...impressed...you're having a hard time making up your mind. Sounds like you had a good experience, though!