10 September, 2009

And It All Ends With Beer

I've got to hand it to myself. In under a week, I'm starting to be able to communicate with the locals in Czech. I know enough to get by...you know things like, hello, how are you?, my name is..., how much does this cost?, what time is it?, thank you, excuse me, etc.,etc. And it is all due to my Czech class. This picture is of my Czech book, by the way. It's a great book. One of the best I've ever used to learn a language.

Alright, so Tuesday we went on a walking tour of Prague that was supposed to last three hours. Yeah right! Three hours, I don't think so. This tour lasted at least five. But, I did take a whole bunch of pictures which I will now so graciously show you.

Starting from the top, these pictures are the religious memorial in the center of Old Town Square, the Powder Tower, Prague Castle from a distance, the Charles Bridge (which does not cross the Charles River contrary to popular belief), the John Lennon Wall, the men peeing statue by David Cerny, the Mission Impossible stairs (which we climbed to reach the castle), the Cathedral at the center of the palace complex, the giant metronome which replaced a statue of Stalin, and finally the beer garden where we ended the tour for dinner.

These are definitely not all of the photos I took on the tour. If I were to put them all up, it would take a very long time as I went a little camera happy while we were out. It was a really cool walking tour and I learned a lot about the history of Prague and the different stuff that has happened to the country.

On Wednesday, my friend
s and I took a stroll down to the Cubist Museum. Cubism was a very prominent style of art in Prague and there are still a lot of Cubist buildings left within the city. Like the museum building itself.

Then today, after our Czech class, we went to the exhibit by David Cerny of t
he EU entitled Entropa. This guy has become my new favorite artist. His stuff is rather hysterical and I just love looking at it. I'm only going to put up a few of my favorite pieces from this sculpture, but it was so funny. And I understand why the EU got mad at him for creating it.

For those who are a little confused, let me help. You see the Czech Republic holds the presidency of the EU at the moment, so they commissioned David Cerny, a famous Czech artist, to create a sculpture representing the EU. Well, this is what he did. He broke Europe up and made a complete satire of it. These are not all of the countries, but these are some good ones.

The first picture is the entire piece...mostly, it is rather large. Then we have the UK, which is sort of in the EU, but not...so Cerny chose to leave a blank spot. We then have France which is a nation on strike and Sweden which is an IKEA box. I'm sure you get the idea now.

Well, he caused a lot of controversy with this because a) its satirical and b) he said he was going to get artists from every country to do their own country, but instead he did them himself and then made up fake biographies about these people. Genius!

Ok, well...I'm sorry this is such a long and picture heavy post. More to come later. On the agenda for the weekend...row boating on the Charles River, football (soccer) game on Saturday night and Cesky Krumlov from Sunday to Monday. Keep watching! More updates soon!

2 comments:

  1. Oh lol, is that Vampire one supposed to be Romania? Very funny.

    I added you on Skype! Also pleaseeee send an email/fb message of your cell phone number so I can text you. Steven texted you the other day and I was like "yeah, she probably didn't get that since she's out of the country."

    Also I laughed at that peeing fountain, that is really something you'd never see over here.

    Unrelated to this post, but cute flat! <3

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  2. That's a great piece of art right there. Prague is a really beautiful city, as I'm sure you'll agree.

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