PRAGUE: Bohemia is Alive and Well!

Bonjour!

I know I am a little behind in my postings, but I finally have a minute to sit down and write about my amazing weekend in Prague. For starters, this was my first time flying internationally alone, which felt great. I arrived in Prague to be greeted with open arms and a big smile from my best friend Sarah Weiss, who is studying there for the semester. We took a bus and then metro to Old Town Square, which a beautiful historic area located just 2 minutes from her apartment! We had a delicious dinner - thanks in part to the fact that the Crown (their currency) is so much better than the euro I felt like I could dine like royalty there! It was so nice to catch up with a good friend over great food and wine.  

On Friday we walked around Old Town and went to an outdoor market filled with fruits, veggies, puppets (they have a thing for puppets oddly enough in Prague) and postcards - of course I got a few of those. Then Weiss took me on her usual walk to class which took us over the Charles Bridge where we had a beautiful view of the city and a castle off in the distance. We walked up some intense cobble stone streets to the top of the hill where the castle is and got an amazing panorama view. After findings an incredible place for lunch- equipped with a fish tank in the floor - we decided to check out the Kafka Museum since she had not been yet. Neither of us knew much about the writer/artists before the exhibit, but I am definitely interested in reading some of his works now! The exhibit provided a lot of information about his personal life, the history of Prague, as well as some Jewish history at the time. One of my favorite quotes from the exhibit was: "Nobody wants to introduce more reforms as children do." We headed down the hill to the Modern Art Museum, stopping along to the way to visit the Lennon Wall which is so colorful and happy! We signed the wall in various places and even made a little shout-out to Badger lacrosse! The Modern Art Museum was definitely worth a visit since I discovered some Czech artists I had never heard of, and we wandered from gallery to gallery taking it all in.  Feeling a little museumed-out, we headed back to her apartment to make some dinner plans with other Wisconsin friends studying in Prague. We had a great Thai dinner with our friend Alice who also plays on the UW lax team, and then met up with some of their friends for a fun night at a club that only plays 80s and 90s music from America! It was so funny hearing all these foreigners belting out the words to Spice Girls, Michael Jackson, Cindy Lauper and more. 

The best thing after a long and fun night out is a great brunch- so a group of us headed to their favorite spot for some good food. I happened to run into a girl who used to  go to my camp who I have not seen since we were 13! Small world! With a new pep in our step we decided to head back to Old Town Square to see the  Mucha exhibit. I studied art nouveau at school, but we never really discussed this particular artist so it was really great to learn something new and see some beautiful and creative artwork. It was great to be able to read some of the postcards on the wall that he wrote in French, since he lived 

and worked in both Bohemia and Paris.

Our evening plans were a bit more low key on Saturday night- we met up with Alice again and one of her friends who was visiting from the states to go to a well-known Vegetarian restaurant which was amazing! Afterwards Weiss and I hung out at her apartment and got a good night's sleep for my final day of playing tourist.

Sunday morning we got up early and walked over to the Jewish Quarter. The Jewish Quarter contains the remains of Prague's former Jewish ghetto, the Old Cemetery, the Jewish Museum, 5 synagogues, and the old Jewish Town Hall. We bought our tour ticket and explored the Old Synagogue and Cemetery and then went to the museum and outdoor market. The cemetery was a very moving experience. It dates from 1478, and is Europe's oldest "surviving" Jewish cemetery. In Prague, Jewish people were not allowed to burry their dead outside of the ghetto, so they had to establish a way to build the tombs one on top of the other. During WWII, Hitler decided that he would not touch the Jewish Cemetery of Prague since he wanted to leave it as an example of all the killed Jews in Europe and one day make a museum out of it - how ironic. After a good talk about what we had seen, Weiss and I decided to lighten the mood and meet up with our friend Casey (who I went to high school with and goes to UW) for brunch at Bohemia Bagel- a favorite spot for American students and Prague 

residents alike. Parting ways with Casey, Weiss and I headed to the airport for my return to Paris. 

It was an absolutely amazing weekend filled with fun friends, great food, beautiful art and architecture and a newfound understanding and respect for Prague's history and culture! I recommend a trip

 over there to anyone- especially if you want to experience the feeling of holding a 2,000 Crown bill in your hand (equal to 100 US dollars)! 

Bises,

Lauren Jill

A Trip to Champagne and More of Life in Paris

Bonjour!

Due to our internet provider canceling our apartment service for a whole week (with no warning), it has been a rather long time since I updated this blog - so brace yourself, there is a lot to catch you up on! Life in Paris continues to get better and better. Today the sun came out in full force and it was nearly 60 degrees! 

On March 7 we went on a CEA trip to the Champagne region of France. We spent the morning at the Notre Dame in 

Reims. It is a beautiful cathedral that is the site of the baptism of the first king of France, and has since served as the place where every king of France was crowned. The church itself was damaged during the second world war, and one of the major windows was replaced with a stained glass design by Marc Chagall- it is beautiful. In keeping with the tradition and legacy of the region, one of the other stained glass panels shows the production of wine- we thought this was awesome and definitely not what you would expect to see in a formal cathedral. After a wonderful lunch in the town center of Reims, we spent the afternoon at the Cordon Rouge de Mumm museum. Cordon Rouge de Mumm is one of the most famous and largest producers of champagne. We watched a very informative video on the history of Cordon Rouge and the Mumm family, and then took a tour of the underground cellar space. There are 16 miles of cellar space, and we saw the "secret" room of rare and vintage bottles of champagne. We soon realized that the $5 bottles of Andre we buy back in the states can't legally be considered champagne since it is certainly not produced in the Champagne region of France. We were then taken to a taste test room where we sampled two varieties of champagne- one was a sweeter version of their original drink, the other was a more "brute" or dryer and stronger taste. It was a really neat experience.

That same weekend I had 4 visitors! One of my best friends from Wisconsin, Molly, who is studying in Israel came for the weekend. It was so amazing to spend some time with her and show her around le Marais. Three of my best camp friends also stayed with me that weekend- Liz came from Florence, Katie from Copenhagen, and Hank all the way from the states! It was a wonderful reunion of sorts. A jam packed weekend to say the least!

This past week my French class went to the movies to see a new film called Welcome. It was an incredible experience. Part of the dialogue was in broken English, spoken between a young boy from Iraq and a middle aged Parisian man (with subtitles in French), the rest of the film was in French (no subtitles). It was a challenging but extremely fun experience and I loved the movie- if it comes to the states I recommend it to everyone. The entire metro ride home I spoke only in French with my teacher who, I quickly found out, lives 2 min away from me! We talked about our neighborhood, the old man at the Picpus fruit stand and which streets we take to the metro. It felt so nice to be able to converse entirely in French with my teacher about something other than the class lesson. I really feel like I am getting better and better each day and doing more local activities like getting my shoes fixed at the shoe repair store- maybe now I won't feel like I am waking barefoot on the cobble stones!

I will make another post soon about my weekend in Prague, but for now I am off to cook dinner and then celebrate St. Patrick's Day at an Irish bar in the Odeon area of the city!

-Lauren Jill

IAMSTERDAM

Another wonderful weekend trip under my belt! This past weekend my friend Alyssa (my Berlin travel buddy) and I took the SNCF train from Paris Gare du Nord to Amsterdam Centraal Station. After getting a little bit lost, we finally found our hostel "Shelter Jordaan." After an authentic Dutch meal at a nearby restaurant (I had some mushroom soup of sorts), we decided to try our luck at getting into the Anne Frank Huis. We had planned on going early in the morning on Saturday or Sunday to avoid what we had been told would be a 3 hour long line- but when we got to the house we only had to wait about 5 min!  It was an incredible experience. The house has been a museum since 1960, and the renovation certainly paid off. When you fist walk in there is a large screen movie projector and multiple telephone receptors you can pick up in various languages to hear about the history of the house and the museum. From there we moved through the rooms of what was the ground floor storeroom for the Opekta &  Pectacon company. 

All of the information on the walls or next to artifacts are direct quotes from Anne's diary. I read the book when I was in fourth grade, and saw the Broadway play a few years later, but reading those lines from her diary made all the feelings I had so many years ago come rushing back. It is one thing to walk through a large gallery or museum with florescent lighting and formulaic information signs, but it is an entirely different feeling to walking through tiny rooms with slanted floors and have all the information be written by a young girl who really lived through what the exhibit is about. Passing the movable bookcase which concealed the entrance to the annex, we walked up a very steep flight of stairs to the secret annex. Otto, Anne's father, wanted some of the original wall decorations from Anne's room to be preserved. It is amazing how much you can learn about someone from what they have on their wall. I've always been one to put up postcards, pictures and posters on my wall, and seeing this room made me think about what someone could discern about me from my walls. Anne had put up clips from fashion and movie magazines,  pictures of animals and funny drawings. There was a quote from her diary which read, "Our little room looked very bare at first with nothing on the walls; but thanks to Daddy who had brought my film-star collection and picture postcards on beforehand, and with the aid of a paste pot and brush, I have transformed the walls into one gigantic picture. This makes it look much more cheerful" (July 11, 1942). Reading that quote and staring at the very walls she wrote about sent shivers down my spine.

 Perhaps one of the most moving parts of the "museum" was the final video interview with Anne's father Otto who survived the Aushwitz extermination camp - he was the only family member to survive. When he came back to Amsterdam in June of 1945, Miep Gies handed Anne's diary over to Otto Frank. Anne once wrote in her diary, "You've known for a long time that my greatest wish is to be a journalist, and later on, a famous writer. In any case, after the war I'd like to publish a book called 'The Secret Annex'" (May 11, 1944). It is unimaginable what this young girl went through, but it is because of Anne's diary that so many people all over the world know about the crimes committed against the Jews in WWII. Her words do so much more than textbooks could ever do. And in a twisted way- she got her greatest wish to be a famous writer after all.

We spent the rest of the night wandering around the city, taking in the sights and experiencing the unique culture...   

Saturday we got an early start and walked along the canals to the Museumplein where all of the major art museums are located. The Van Gogh Museum was on the top of both our lists so we headed straight for 7 Paulus Potterstraat and waited on a long line to see one of my all time favorite artists. The museum houses more than 200 paintings, including his greatest works done in the Netherlands, Paris, Arles, Saint-Remy, and Auvers-Sur-Oise. The temporary exhibit on view right now is called "Van Gogh and the Colors of the Night" - with the main attraction of course being the famous The Starry Night which is on loan from MoMA (NYC)! I learned more about Van Gogh as a person and artist from this one exhibit that I have in any art history class. Alyssa and I got a big kick out of being able to partially read the postcards he sent to his brother Theo which were written in French. He was such an independent and unique artist, but he openly admitted his love for Millet and the inspiration he drew from Millet's work is visible in many of Van Gogh's sketches that I had never seen before. It is such a great experience to go to a museum without an art history class sometimes because you can really take your time, pause for minutes at each work, read every sign, and not feel the weight of bored and restless classmates who would much rather be somewhere else. I definitely remember being one of the few interested kids in my class when we would go to MoMA back in elementary school, or even in high school AP art history class. 

Feeling inspired and still in the art-viewing mood, we ventured over to an international photography house called FOAM that we had read about in our hostel. When we got there we were shocked to see a line out the door since we had no idea what the exhibit was. As soon as we walked in, I immediately caught a glimpse of a photograph I had seen before- a famous self portrait by Richard Avedon! My heart skipped a beat with excitement- this entire gallery show was devoted to his photographs from 1946-2004. The show exhibited photographs from his days in the Paris fashion world in the 1950s, to celebrity portraits, writers, actors, musicians and artists to portraits of unknown workers in "the American West." There were also portraits of prominent American political leaders that Avedon produced as a series in 1976- which included Edward Kennedy, the first Bush, Carter as a candidate, and more. One of my favorite photographs on view is of Bob Dylan, taken in Central Park on Feb 10 1965- the way Avedon captures the spirit of the young artist is amazing. A quote on the wall reads, "A portrait is not a likeness. The moment an emotion or fact is transformed into a photograph it is no longer a fact but an opinion. There is no such thing as inaccuracy in a photograph. All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth"-Richard Avedon. Wow. His photographs are faithful in the sense that they show the person or subject, but as an artist, Avedon is able to show more than simple superficial reality. 

Finally feeling a bit museum-ed-out, we decided to just wonder the cobblestone streets and see where we ended up. Guided by our hunger, we ended up at Kapitein Zeppos- an adorable cafe on one of the 

most charming alley streets of old Amsterdam. The rest of the day was filled with more sight seeing and later on a delicious dinner at a Thai restaurant called Soen with some of the nicest waiters ever (we have gotten used to the typically inattentive waiters in Paris so the friendly smiles and menu suggestions were greatly appreciated). 

Our final day in Amsterdam we ventured over to the "Nine Streets" section of the city known for its boutiques and art shops. We quickly realized that our ambitious early start to the day proved to be too early for the rest of the city as nothing was really open- so we did, you guessed it, more walking by the canals- we couldn't get enough of the architecture and boat houses. After getting some tea to pass the time at a cute cafe and then  checking out an old church, we explored some of the boutiques and I even bargained to get 2 necklaces for 2 euro instead of 5! Afterwards we went to Bloemenmarkt to experience the city's fascination with tulips and their and love of wooden clogs. After grabbing a cheap and yummy lunch of Turkish falafel (slightly different than the kind we get in the Marais section of Paris), we walked back to Centraal Station to make the journey *home* to Paris. I had the best intentions to study for my French test on the train, but somewhere between reflexive verbs and kitchen vocab I fell asleep- a much needed nap to say the least.

Overall I would definitely recommend a trip to Amsterdam to just about anyone. I really would love to go back sometime in the spring or summer to see the full effect of the Tulip gardens and maybe do a paddle boat on the canal or rent a bike. It is such a fun, energetic and welcoming city. It was also really refreshing to be able to walk the entire time and not have to take any public transportation- it's amazing how much more you can see when you're not underground in a metro! 

I loved the feeling I got last night when I walked out of the Picpus metro stop, looked around and thought how nice it was to be back in my neighborhood. It really does feel familiar and homey now. Recharging my "Navigo" metro pass today (for 55 euro!) reinstates the fact that I LIVE here in Paris and that I am not visiting for a weekend. It is a crazy fact to wrap my head around sometimes. 

Bises,

Lauren Jill