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Prague 002
The Chateau at Konopiste Today some of us went on a trip to Konopište, which is a chateau a little ways outside of Prague that was a favorite property of Franz Ferdinand. It was an optional excursion, so it was probably only half of the students here at the summer school who went. We had to ride an actual train to get there, which was pretty cool. It’s interesting to see just how much public transport is utilized here (and in Europe in general) compared to the US. The ride there took us a while, I’d say maybe around an hour and a half. Some of us made a few jokes in reference to Eurotrip right before we went through a rather large tunnel. Then again while inside the tunnel. I guess you had to be there. The train ride itself was fairly uneventful, just a lot of looking out the window (we actually saw corn! Up to this point I think I’ve only seen maybe one or two corn fields here). We had to walk to the chateau from our stop, which is typically no big deal. Except the Czech students hadn’t been there before, so no one knew where we were going. Some
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The main hall inside the Chateau people were quite unhappy about wandering around for an hour, but I really liked it because the chateau is surrounded by woods and a lake so it’s all very pretty. I was kind of surprised by the fact that none of the Czechs had ever been to the chateau, but it made me realize that there are a few things at home that are decent “attractions” that I’ve never been to. So I think that might become a project of mine later in the summer.
The interior of Konopište is very nice, though we weren’t allowed to take pictures. The main hall is decorated with trophies taken by Ferdinand. Our guide told us he killed something like 250,000 animals in his lifetime. I’m all for hunting, but that’s ridiculous. What did he do with all of them? There’s no way you could actually make use of that many carcasses… Shooting things just to shoot them isn’t appealing to me. I mentioned that we weren’t allowed to take pictures, but I did manage to get a few of the hall, so I’ll put those up somewhere. The rest of the chateau was decorated very ornately, much like Česky Krumlov was.
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View from the chateau Each room had a huge chandelier (by normal standards, I guess they weren’t obscenely large for a castle) made of crystal. The guide told us that Ferdinand had the wax candles replaced with electric lights when he took over the chateau. Could you imagine having to clean melted wax off of all of the pieces of an elaborate chandelier?
After Konopište we went back. I’m sure some people went out, but I read more of my book and did some laundry in the sink. Seems like I’m just as boring in the Czech Republic as I am in Ohio.
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