Czech Trek

Well folks, I have been planning and anticipating travel break for the past three months, and just like that, it’s over! Obviously I had such an amazing time the first week traveling to big cities, but I am so glad I decided to do Czech Trek the second week. For one thing, it was wonderful to be away from herds of tourists and the hustle and bustle of a big city. Secondly, it is cool to see an alternative view of a country that a lot of tourists don’t get by just visiting the big cities. Thirdly, I didn’t have to plan it! That’s always a bonus… thanks DIS for doing all of the hard work for me :)

On Sunday, everyone who was going on the trip (40 DIS students total) met in the city around 6pm so we could take an overnight bus to the Czech Republic. It was nearly a 14 hour bus trip, but they put in a couple of movies to pass the time. Also, I have this amazing talent where I can pretty much sleep in any position, so I got a full nights sleep!

Day 1: Monday, April 18

We arrived at our hotel, Hruba Skala Castle, around 8:30am, then we ate a delicious breakfast before starting our activities for the day! Below is a picture of our hotel. It is built on the site of a castle from the 1300s, but the castle was rebuilt during the 1500s as a residential palace for some rich family.

Our big group of 40 students split into two groups each day, and on Monday, my group did archery first. I was really excited to try archery again because I used to be good back in good old days of Girl Scout camp! I think the last time I had done archery was at Camp Io-Dis-E-Ca when I was thirteen haha. My first few warm-up shots weren’t so hot. The picture on the right is just one amazing views we had from the grounds of our hotel.

    

Then we had a competition, and each person got to shoot 6 times. I ended up getting 4th place overall in my group, and I got the highest score out of all of the girls! I knew I still had it.

After archery, we had a break for lunch which was at the hotel, then we swapped activities with the other group and did ice breaker games, which were more like team building activities. I felt like I was at camp again :) It was seriously a ton of fun, and it was awesome getting to know a bunch of new students from DIS that I had never even seen before.

The picture above was taken just shortly before everyone fell over. Below is a game we had to play where groups of 5 had to figure out a way to all be connected and have a certain number of hands and feet on the ground. In the round below we were supposed to have a total of 2 feet and 2 hands on the ground between the 5 of us!

We played a bunch of other fun games too, like a trust fall and a tight rope thing. Then we had a traditional Czech dinner at the hotel: dumplings and Svičková, a weird combination of meat with sauce and whipped cream. The dumplings look like big slices of bread, but I assure you they are not. They pretty much tasted like potato bread, but a little spongier. It was odd, but I ate most of it!

The rest of the night was free for us to just hang out. A bunch of us got some beers from the bar (SO CHEAP compared to Denmark!) and sat on the terrace. One of the girls borrowed a guitar that was randomly at the bar and we had a sing-along. All that was missing was the campfire!

Day 2: Tuesday, April 19

The second day started with rappelling and high rope bridging! We also got to do a zip line, which was definitely my favorite activity of the day because the view was amazing.

I’m the little tiny dot that you can barely see in the middle of the picture. I had my arms out like superman haha. We got to fly over this huge valley. Then after the zip line, we had to take a Barma bridge back to the other side. A Barma bridge is one of those tight rope bridges with two strings to hold onto with your hands. It was a little petrifying, but I just kept telling myself that I have a harness on, so I was safe!

I didn’t like repelling as much as the other activities, but it was still fun. The scariest part is leaning over the drop off!

But after that, it’s easy peasy from there. The harness was kind of digging into my rib cage, so I went as fast as I could. Also, I don’t think I liked it as much as the other two activities because I was just staring at the side of the rock wall instead of the beautiful valley behind me.

After lunch, we went trekking, aka hiking. I chose to do the afternoon hike because it was harder than the morning hike. Our instructor took us through the Cesky raj around our hotel and showed us a bunch of breath taking views. In the picture on the right below, you can see a rock climber in a blue shirt about a third of the way up the mountain. Scary!

    

We hiked for about 3 hours, and I was expecting it to be more intense. The trail was really well maintained, and it even had stairs. I was expecting a more rugged hike, but it was still fun!

The picture above is called the band because the rock in the middle is the band director, and the rocks in front of it are the musicians!

Then we had dinner at the hotel again (meat and potatoes, of course!), and later that night was a treasure hunt. We were separated into groups of 5, then we had to find clues in the dark by only using candlelight to find a message that would lead us to a key to unlock the highest tower in the castle. My team didn’t win, but the first prize was two bottles of wine, and other teams got a bunch of chocolate. It was a blast, and the instructors dressed up as ghosts and made this whole story to go along with it which was pretty hilarious.

Day 3: Wednesday, April 20

This was an early day! We had to meet for breakfast at 6:30am so we could take the bus to a nearby town for canoeing and rock climbing. I went canoeing first on the Jizera River because I had two pairs of shoes and a lot of the other students only brought one pair for the entire trip. Our guides were acting like it was inevitable that we would be getting wet, which seemed weird to me because I have been canoeing several times and never get wet!

When we were driving by the river, our guide pointed out this waterfall that we were going to be canoeing down. I laughed because I thought he was completely joking… but little did I know! I left my camera on the bus for canoeing because I didn’t want it to get wet and break, but there would have been some great pictures if I had a waterproof camera!

At first we got about 5 minutes to practice canoeing around a still part of the river, and the other girl I was with wanted to be in the front of the canoe. I had never been in the back before, and I was absolutely terrible at it! Then our practice time was cut off, and we had to canoe down this waterfall! There was a little ramp that we actually went down in the middle of the water fall, but it was super scary going down it especially because I couldn’t steer us very well! The first group to go was two boys, and they flipped their canoe and went in the water! My canoe went down just fine, but we still got soaked from the huge splash at the bottom! I don’t think anyone stayed dry! The one canoe with three people in it also flipped!

It took us about a half hour of spinning in circles and turning around in order to figure out how to make the canoe go straight, but once we did, it was a nice relaxing couple of hours. I really wish I had my camera because the area around the water was just gorgeous. There were a bunch of little farms and cottages, and the sun was shining. It was peaceful and just so pretty. I wish it was closer to my home in Iowa instead of on the other side of the ocean!

After canoeing, I luckily got to change my shoes, then we went to a nearby town for lunch at a traditional Czech pub. We had Czech goulash which was delicious! Then in the afternoon we went rock climbing and repelling!

I had never been rock climbing on anything but a rock climbing wall, and that was back at camp when I was thirteen (and I was terrible at it), so I was a little nervous! There were only two rock walls and one wall for repelling, so a lot of the time was spent cheering on everyone else and just chatting away with the other students in my group. I sat around for awhile and waited for the line to die down, then one of the girls talked me into trying the harder of the two climbing walls instead of the easy one!

    

I really had no idea what I was doing, and I got stuck in one spot for a little bit. It actually wasn’t that hard though, and I ended up loving it. Plus, the view at the top was one of the most amazing things I have ever seen in my life. I didn’t have my camera while I was climbing obviously, but I don’t think a picture could have ever captured the beauty of the Czech countryside.

    

I had to repel down from the top, and my foot slipped and I almost flipped entirely upside down! That was pretty embarrassing, and I got a couple scrapes on my shin… I’m so graceful. I went repelling as well, but I didn’t like it nearly as much as rock climbing. I think all of the other students agreed with me, and we decided it’s because it’s basically guided falling, and you don’t really have a sense of accomplishment at the end like you do with climbing the side of a huge rock! It was still cool though don’t get me wrong, just not as great :)

After rock climbing, we had a final dinner at the hotel then everyone just hung out at the terrace and the hotel let us use the big dining room to listen to music, play games, and drink beer! It was a great night!

Day 4: Thursday, April 21

One of the reasons I was really excited about Czech Trek was that we got to spend one day in Prague! I have heard amazing things about the city, and I really wanted to visit while I was studying abroad this semester. We left our hotel around 8:30am, then I napped on the two hour ride into the city. The bus dropped us off pretty close to the main squares, and we were free to do whatever we wanted! I ended up walking around with a group of 4 other people, and after looking around for a bit, we went to find lunch. We wanted a traditional Czech meal, so we walked a little away from the main tourists areas until we found a menu with traditional Czech recipes that were handed down from the chefs grandmother. The restaurant also got all of their meat from a local area where one of the kings used to hunt a long time ago! How cool! On top of that, it was pretty cheap! I got a beer and my meal for about 11 USD.

We all decided to try something weird, so I got the deer ragou with dumplings. It was yummy!

Some of the others got wild boar or duck, and their food was also really tasty.

One weird thing they did in Prague was bring you baskets of bread, then charge you for it on the bill without us asking for it or without telling us we had to pay for it. It was cheap, but we still thought it was odd. I wonder what other cities do that.

After lunch we went on a walking tour that DIS paid for. It was three hours long, and I really liked it! I just love getting to know little back stories about all of the buildings and random history. We learned about the Czechoslovakia split, what it was like during WWII and the Soviet Union. We also got to see the main areas like Wenceslaus Square, Old Town Square, the Jewish area, and Prague castle!

View from Charles Bridge. You can see the castle just to the right of the statue in the distance.

View of Prague from the castle, which I realized I didn’t even take a picture of. It wasn’t really castle like, but more like a palace.

This is St. Vitus Cathedral, which is located on the castle grounds. It started being built in 1344, but wasn’t finished until 1929.

After the walking tour, we rested in the gardens nearby, then went to find some dinner. We were so tired from walking around all day, so we had a really long dinner. Then we met up with a bunch of the other students on our trip and hung out until we had to be at the bus at 9pm. I was absolutely exhausted, and fell asleep around 9:45pm. I slept pretty well the whole night, so it wasn’t too bad of trip. We got into Copenhagen around 10am, and I went back home and slept most of the afternoon and just relaxed.

I had a great time in Prague, but since it was Easter, there were so many tourists which made it difficult to see a lot of the sights. Plus, I only had one day, so I want to go back and see more! The buildings in Prague were all so unique, colorful, and had such interesting architecture. The entire time I was just staring up at all of the buildings! I had such a great 2 week break, and tomorrow morning I am heading to my host family’s summer house for Easter. It should be a great way to end vacation. We are going to have Easter lunch, and my host dad said we can go biking and he is going to show me a 5000-year-old Viking grave!

Now it is time for dinner with my host family, then I am going to watch a movie and take it easy tonight!

Hej hej!

Emily