A New Decade - Part I

If I were to fly away on the wings of the dawn, and settle down on the other side of the sea, even there your hand would guide me, your right hand would grab hold of me. -Psalms 139: 9-10

After spending a little time with the Lord on my quick bus ride back from Brno yesterday, this verse hit me like a ton of bricks. Since my last update, I've been on several trips, and I've also reached a new decade in life- 20. God has been present through it all, even when I'm an ocean away from every familiar thing I've ever known. He has been the one guiding me through this entire experience, and He's taken me to some incredible places recently! If you plan on reading all of this, prepare yourself because this might be my longest blog yet!

Prague/Dresden: Our group departed from the train station in Olomouc last Thursday. We arrived in Prague, dropped our things off at the AZ Hostel, and began our adventure led by our intelligent and kind guides Jan and Martin. Our first stop was the town square. Although we had been there a couple of weeks earlier, it seemed like an entirely different place. The whole town just felt more alive than the last time we had experienced it, and I would have been content with sitting there all day watching all of the tourists, bubble blowers, mimes, and other sources of entertainment. After being torn away from the town square, we were led to the Charles' Bridge which was also bustling with people. One of my favorite parts of the day was seeing the John Lennon wall just on the other side of the bridge. The John Lennon wall started out as a tribute to Lennon (hence the name), but today it is more or less a huge graffiti wall. I loved the artistic, mellow atmosphere. There was a guy singing in front of the wall, and a girl came up and started singing a duet with him, then everyone joined in. The whole thing gave me goosebumps! My only regret is not having a marker to write on the wall with, it is my goal to make it back and leave my mark on the wall before I leave. :)

The John Lennon wall

After the John Lennon wall, a smaller group of us went out to lunch followed by one of the best afternoons I've had on this trip. One of the guys on my trip, Thad, has a sister living in Prague. She was kind enough to meet up with us and take us to the mini Eiffel Tower. The tower was built a couple of years after the original in France, and it sits on a hill over looking the town. It is the same height as the actual Eiffel Tower when measured from the bottom of the hill that it sits on to the top of the tower. After some extremely steep hills and stairs that seemed to go on for eternity, I finally found myself at the top of the tower taking in an incredible view. It was well worth the climb and $3 it took to make it to the top!

View from the top of the "Eiffel Tower"

I also need to add that we had a blast on this journey. The park we walked through was absolutely beautiful- it even smelled incredible with all of the blooming trees. Our main entertainment came on the trip down. Taylor got pooped on by a bird and didn't have anything to wipe it off with. Just when we thought things couldn't get any more comical, Molly wiped out after running down a small slope in the park. I'd say that we laughed for a good 5 minutes, and everyone around thought we were crazy- I guess that's nothing new. After our little journey through the park, we went to eat supper at a restaurant called the Tavern. The Tavern served American food, and we were all incredibly excited. I shared pulled pork fries with Jessica, and it was amazing. I'm pretty sure we all zoned out on our food and the entire table was silent which doesn't happen too often. It was the perfect end to the perfect day!

Sunset view outside of the Tavern. I still can't get over how pretty the sky was that evening!

We toured the Prague castle on Friday. The "castle" was not like the castle I was expecting. There were many different buildings within the gates, and we were able to tour a few of them. One of my favorites was the St. Vitus Cathedral. Although there was some construction going on inside, it was still a beautiful church. I also thought it was neat that the patron saint of Prague, St. Wenceslaus, is buried there. Another neat thing we were able to see at the Prague castle was the changing of the guard. It kind of reminded me of the changing of the guard in Washington D.C., and we tried to fight the crowd and get as close as possible to see it!

The very first view of the cathedral after walking through the tunnel. 

On Saturday, we went to Dresden. Ahhh Germany, I liked it there much more than I anticipated! The town holds so much history, and it was such a fun place to explore. My fondness of Germany also may be due to the fact that there was a Starbucks right by the train station. After going without a familiar coffee shop for the last few weeks, I was very happy and content with my caramel macchiato! There were also ladies on the street passing out free samples of cheese. In my enthusiasm for free things, I eagerly took one. After examining the package, I realized that the dipping sauce that came with the cheese was peach flavored... My next mistake was opening the cheese and trying it and then regretting it and trying to wash it down with coffee. Needless to say, I had a bad taste in my mouth, and I will never take free cheese on the street again!  

I believe that the museum we went to was called Residenzschloss Dresden which translates to Dresden Castle. This museum was an old castle containing some of the most expensive treasures in the world. My favorite part of the museum was the jousting/weaponry room. We weren't allowed to take pictures in any part of the museum, but the displays of the horses and armor suits was pretty cool to see. After the museum, we decided to journey across the bridge for lunch. We came across a nice little restaurant with a friendly waiter, and the soup we had there was delicious! After lunch we headed back to the church. We were planning on taking a tour, but it was unfortunately closed, so we climbed to the top, took a few pictures of the view, and headed back down.

 At the end of our trip, we were strolling back through town with over a 10 minute walk to the train station ahead of us. All of a sudden one of our guides, Martin, casually announced, "We might want to pick up the pace, the train leaves in 5 minutes". So, picture this: Half of the group frantically deciding to sprint through town in a desperate attempt to make it on time and the other half jogging along already knowing that none of us are going to make it. I found myself in the group jogging along- partly because I was laughing too hard and partly because I'm too smart to waste all of that energy for a train that was going to leave us. I should also mention that the streets were crowded with people. I can only imagine how silly a huge group of Americans looked running through this town. We even ran through a break dance performance... Lucky for us, another train was scheduled to arrive in a couple of hours, so we had a little extra time to explore the train station and the surrounding area, and I guess I got my cardio in for the day. 

The church in Dresden that was destroyed during WWII. The church was completely rebuilt. The dark stones are
original while all of the light stones are new.

Sunday was our final day of this trip. We were able to tour the Jewish museum in Prague which included the cemetery, a synagogue, and several museums. This was by far the most humbling part of the trip. The first building we entered listed every Holocaust victim from the Czech Republic. There was over 80,000 names with the birthday, death date, and place each person was from. After walking through this area, we went upstairs to see art work created by the children in Terezin-a concentration camp in the Czech Republic. A woman who taught art lessons to the children in the camp packed suit cases filled with their work and hid them in the walls. The art was discovered later on, and it was very sobering to see the Holocaust through the eyes of the Jewish children. We also had the chance to walk through a Jewish cemetery which depicted just how unfairly they were treated. The Jews only got so much room to bury their dead, and they literally had to layer the bodies on top of eachother to save space. The headstones in the graveyard were also very disorganized, and it broke my heart that their final resting place was in shambles. 

One of the walls with names of Czech Holocaust victims. 

The Jewish cemetery in Prague. 

I think we're all ready for a break at this point in the blog.  I feel like I've done an overwhelming amount of things since I've been here, but I'm doing my best to keep everyone up to date! I will have a post about the past week by tomorrow, but this is definitely enough information for now!