Mungkee's Blog, Czech Edition

I am writing this from my quiet room in Slavonice, Czech Republic. I do not have internet here, so I am writing this in Word to be pasted into my blog tomorrow.
Anyway….
Today is my second full day here in Slavonice. It honestly feels like I have been here much longer. Both days have been loooong, and I have seen/experienced a lot. However, I know that a week from now, it will feel like I haven’t been here long at all.
Yesterday (March 7th) was our first full day of activities. We started the day with a locally made breakfast comprised of various cakes, and some odd dishes I didn’t really understand. (Neither did our Czech student that joined us.) We spent the morning getting a general tour of Slavonice. We visited the well regarded vault inside the building:

Vault pic:


From there, we were told about the structure of the city including the underground tunnels that wind through the town. We prodded them to allow us to go into the tunnels briefly. Here are some shots of that tunnel:

Entrance to tunnel:


Tunnel:


(Honestly, I must be old. Today, my thigh still hurts from crouching in the tunnel and walking that way.)
After the tunnels, Sascha continued the tour of the city, which while small, has very many conflicting aspects to it. Here are some of the major highlights:


After we ate lunch (I had a chicken leg/thigh with some rice), we went back to the school where we had another tour of the city. This tour took us through the main square. The tour guide was Czech, and the interpreter apparently left out some words, as I was talking to Jana (the Prague student) that told me she was not repeating everything.
The tour concluded, and we were assigned our groups for working. I am paired with 3 Landscape Architecture students from Penn and the student from Prague, who is doing sorta the equivalent of a duel LA/Arch degree. We grouped later in the day to tour our portion of Slavonice, the North end.
At 6:00, we returned to the school to be greeted by the city. Wines, hors d'oeuvres, some small talk, then off to dinner. There were about 5-6 of us that needed more food. We went to the one local bar/restaurant. I asked Jana her opinion on local food, and they had a special called Skokova,a beef dish with cranberries and dumplings. It came out on a plate, with the meat topped with a lemon and whipped cream.

Dinner:


After dinner, we had been invited to go to the “Rough pub” by Sascha. As a group we went, expecting a horrible time. We arrived in this cellar pub, to find it smokey, but otherwise beautiful. Brick arches, nice tables, clean atmosphere. We stayed, played fusball, finally leaving around 1 AM. Once we returned, I was not tired, so I transferred pictures, took some more, and stayed up until 2:30ish.

DAY 2 TO BE CONTINUED...