Czech Lessons

It’s been almost a week now since I went to Prague to visit my friend Cait and to get a taste of Eastern Europe, but I find myself still having difficulty collecting my thoughts on the experience. This semester I felt as if I was behind in the whole “backpacking through Europe college experience,” but now that I have left Italy once and seen how much I missed it, I’m glad that I am keeping my travels outside of the border to few.

Prague was immediate culture shock, the Czech airport was sleek, modern, and pristine, at baggage claim towering, pale faced Czechs surrounded me, and on the bus no one smiled or said a word the entire thirty minute ride into the city, I was definitely not in Italy anymore.

As I wandered through old town the next day while Cait was in class I couldn’t stop taking photos of the buildings. Living in an Italian Renaissance city is architecturally incredible, don’t get me wrong, but the style isn’t something you could describe as diverse. Prague’s architecture reads like a history book of the city’s struggles through regime changes, wars, and political strife. The skyline looks like patchwork, like a little model gingerbread village complete with pink, red, green, and yellow buildings lined up beside incredible gothic cathedrals.

That first day I sat by the Charles Bridge and noticed how perfectly the cloudy sky reflected the dark history hanging over Prague—casting a slightly cold, misty shadow on all of the beautiful buildings and on my sentiments. As the days went on, however, I made my way to the Franz Kafka museum, the John Lennon Peace Wall, Prague Castle and cathedral, and Vysherad, an area above the city housing the Church of Apostles Peter and Paul, and one of the most famous cemeteries in Prague. Learning about the intricacies of the past of the city helped me to see Prague not just as a melancholy, suffering, post-communist city, but as a city that has struggled through many occupations only to come out twenty years ago with their country, pride, language and culture intact.

I was happy to return to Florence at the end of the weekend, back to the foreign comforts, culture, and lifestyle I have grown accustomed to, but the appreciation I found for the Czech culture in only four days there has opened my eyes to the innumerable different histories, cities, cultures, and ways of life that occupy this world, and how few of them most of us have attempted to understand.




Gothic architecture!


The cathedral at Prague Castle


The Frank Gehry "Dancing" building in Prague


Pretty Czech architecture


Franz Kafka museum, very trippy, but very interesting


The John Lennon wall!


Czech folk music on Charles Bridge with Prague Castle in the background


The View of Prague from Vysherad

Quando sembra troppo vicino.

Last Saturday we took our second day trip with the school to a little town in Le Marche (a mountainous region East of Tuscany) called Urbino. They took us there because it is small but beautiful and home to a huge palace, but practically impossible to get to by means of public transportation. After three hours on the bus through winding mountain roads we were introduced to Urbino, a tiny walled city nestled within the hillside. We took a tour of Palazzo Ducale, but then were let loose in the city, to explore and eat for the rest of the afternoon. The town was small, there was lots of brick, we had pizza and drank wine for lunch, lost ourselves in tiny alleyways, took pictures of hanging laundry and vast vistas, before heading back to the bus.

The day in itself was nothing spectacular. Driving home however, watching the sun set as we descended the mountain on switchback roads, facing the Italian countryside spread open before us, leaving the little walled town behind, the three short months I have ahead of me finally seemed entirely too short.

I have since taken to waking up a little earlier, and staying out longer during the day, reading on church steps, watching people in piazzas, chatting with baristas. When days pass this quickly its all I can do to try and slow them down a little.
This afternoon I decided to climb the cupola of the Duomo for the first time. The monument that stole my breath when I first drove into the city in September has since become just one of the many churches I pass on the way to school in the morning. Every now and then I take the time to look up and see the façade just as striking against the blue Florentine sky as it was my first day here.

The view from the top (after over 400 steps and no elevator) was incredible. I fell in love all over again with the panorama of the city that I now consider my home. The red terra cotta rooftops littered the horizon up until the hillside in all directions, and I could pick out the streets, the churches, the towers, and the piazzas that I walk on, past, and through every day. I couldn’t bring myself to leave my post up there, at the top of my world, for over an hour. Even though the days rush by and the beauty all begins to look the same, I continue to be mesmerized by this place.

Beautiful Urbino:


Palazzo Ducale in Urbino:


The sunset from the bus:


Top of the Duomo:

Photos from Carnevale

The foggy view of Venezia.


View from the Rialto Bridge on the long walk to San Marco.


My "mask".


The first of many "maschere."




Having lunch, anonymously.




Piazza San Marco.

Carnevale in Venezia

After a week of exams and checking every train schedule in Italy I rewarded myself yesterday with a daytrip to Venice for Italy’s most extravagant celebration of Carnevale. Knowing from my quick trip there with my family over Christmas vacation how magical the city on water is, but also how expensive the trains are to get there I decided I had to find a better way to get there besides the 75 Euro round trip Eurostar train. A little internet research and I found it: leaving at 6:30 a.m. from Florence’s Santa Maria Novella station the cheap train runs to Bologna where you can catch a regional train to Venice for about 16 euros one way. In order to avoid a steep hostel price I opted for the late train back the same night, getting in a little after midnight, and ended up with 10 straight hours of Venetian Carnevale fun for a little over 30 euros in transportation.
My first trip to Venice the sun shone the entire time and I was introduced to the labyrinthine city bathed in an intense winter sunlight. Yesterday I was not so lucky. The weather forecast called for rain all day long, and for once the Italian meteorologists were right. I discovered though, that some fog, clouds, and a little more water doesn’t detract from the spell of Venice, and that the magic of Carnevale proceeds just the same.
I spent the entire day on my feet, wandering the streets with a friend of mine from school, finding the famed San Marco piazza despite the confusing signs and winding alleyways that litter the city. Once we were there neither of us knew exactly what to expect but Carnevale found us. Within a few hours we both had our masks painted on by the many makeup artists by the water side, we had toured the inside of the beautiful golden San Marco Cathedral, seen a marching band completely in costume, and witnessed the Maschere (masks) of Carnevale.
Venetians and other Italians use Carnevale as a time to put on their masks, hide their identities and indulge in sinful behavior before Lent begins. Unlike most European street performers, these people are for the most part just locals, Carnevale is a serious event for them, and their costumes prove it, they walk through the piazzas parading their work through the masses, posing for pictures, without asking for anything in return. It is the one time out of the year that the Venetians themselves become the spectacle of their city, instead of the miraculous city itself.
After a full ten hours of overstimulation, nonstop walking, eating, drinking and neverending drizzle, the train ride home was full of Italian University students making their way back to Bologna, under their masks, glitter, and confetti. A group in our car filled the entire two hours with singing every song they could think of at the top of their lungs. I kept thinking someone would ask them to stop, but the train operators just kept walking through, ignoring the scene of minor chaos, I guess that’s Carnevale.