A Cat in Paris (and Prague)

College student spending the summer studying art and architecture in Paris and Prague

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Prague being Prague aka perfect (moonrise over the Charles Bridge)

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Pretty suhweeeet art at the Narodni Galerie, from the top: Kupka, unknown, unknown, unknown, Leger, unknown, Picasso

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Terezín

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The monument to the children of Lidice. The artist used a photograph from the school that survived to reproduce accurate representations of each of the children. People left stuffed animals and toys in front of the monument.

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Lidice and Terezín

I've waited a while to write this post because I wasn't sure what I wanted to say. I still don't really know but I'm going to give it a shot: On Monday, we took a field trip to Lidice and Terezín, two towns of special significance to WWII. I guess I'll go with facts first. When the Nazis invaded the Czech Republic, Hitler installed his number two, Heidrich (?) as the ruler of the "protectorate". Heidrich immediately declared martial law and began to suppress any resistance to Nazi rule. Meanwhile, the Czech government had escaped and was partially ruling from England. They set up a plan and successfully assassinated Heidrich. The men who assassinated him hid in Lidice, a small farm town north of Prague. Hitler decided to make an example out of Lidice to show what would happen if anyone else challenged Nazi rule so he had the entire town burned to the ground, then had the remnants bombed. All the men in the town were lined up and executed, while most of the women and children were sent to concentration camps where most died. Children that looked German (or Aryan really) were sent to German families to be raised. Most of these children were never found though a few survived and some of the ones that were sent to German families were able to reunite with what remained of their czech families. The village of Lidice was chosen completely arbitrarily;Hitler could have chosen to destroy any village. Terezín is an old fortress that the nazis turned into a concentration camp and prison. It is actually very remarkable because in the town itself the Jews living there were able to secretly establish schools, and there were many artists, musicians, and playwrights that produced work while they were there. A lot of it was preserved, miraculously, and we went to go see it. Lidice has a very powerful museum exhibit and a monument to the children who died there on the sure of the destroyed town. It was really upsetting to see. We watched a video where the few survivors talked about their experience during the war and it was very difficult to watch. Terezín was less upsetting because seeing all the art and they cultural activities they managed to have there was actually quite inspiring. Despite the fact that most of the people who lived in Terezín died in Auschwitz it was nice to learn that they managed to bring some entertainment to the concentration camp. While we toured I kind of got annoyed because I didn't want to see all this sad stuff, but then I remembered that the reason people go to visit those places is so that events like the ones that occurred in WWII will never happen again.

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Living in a Country with no Government!

I figured that's kind of an interesting topic for the Czech Republic right now and I haven't mentioned it yet....honestly I don't know that much about the situation except what my professor told me.  She explained that the prime minister's mistress (? also lol that that's like a very known thing...might have been lost in translation though the other day she said "western art" and I thought she said "melting pot") was apparently in touch with all these super corrupt people so the prime minister Petr Necas was forced to resign but the rest of the government is all of his friends (that's what they refer to their corrupt government as, "The Friends of Necas") so its still a big mess.  My professor, who is pretty old and lived here all during the Communist era said she really wishes she had left the country which is pretty sad.

Other than that brief conversation, though, I haven't noticed anything not running smoothly because of the governmental crisis.  Honestly I think the flooding in June caused more problems and I've only seen one place that was affected by that.  So that's about it.

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Today I FINALLY got to sleep in for the first time the whole time I've been in Europe.  Considering I love sleeping a LOT this was a wonderful occasion.

I then went to the Kampa Museum to meet some friends but they got there earlier than I did so I ended up going through by myself which was really nice.  The museum houses a collection of mostly Czech contemporary artists that a Czech couple collected.  The couple (whose names I can't remember) wanted to promote and support the arts in the Czech Republic under the communist regime, so a lot of the art is related to that.  They also have an exhibit of Klimt, Mucha, and Kupka drawings and paintings centered around Klimt's Judith.

Klimt has always been one of my favorite artists, but after seeing so many of his paintings and drawings in person I've fallen completely in love. They're absolutely incredible.

Mucha is very famous in France for his art nouveau illustrations and posters, but he is actually Czech.  (Sidenote: Czech people are aware of and make fun of their irrelevance as a country, and it's actually pretty funny.)  Mucha's drawings were really amazing, and the way he uses line variation and the patterns he creates are so impressive.

I'd really like to learn more about art nouveau so hopefully we'll study that in my class here.

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Highlights from Jewish town, from the top left: the old Jewish cemetery, where the graves go down twelve layers because there wasn't any room to expand the cemetery; a Romanesque revival church; massive crowds with Old New Synagogue on the left; the interior of the Spanish Synagogue, decorated in the Moorish iconoclastic style

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View from the Ferris wheel

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The Hundertwasserhaus

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Schönbrunn

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Sorrz for the super janky quality of the art photos but I wasn't technically allowed to take them...1st is Klimt, 2nd Schiele, 3rd David. They also had a ton of German and Austrian expressionism.

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The Best Day Ever

Today I fell in love. With Vienna. It's absolutely beautiful, with a wide range of architectural styles from baroque to art nouveau and the jugendstijl (def didn't spell that right). It's unbelievably clean and the people are super friendly. We started off the day going to breakfast at this adorable little place called corn n nuts (I think) and then took the hop on hop off bus (which is actually great) to Schönbrunn palace. It lived up to all of our palatial expectations, and the gardens were beautiful. After Schönbrunn we went to the Belvedere palace to the Oberes Belvedere, a museum housing te largest collection of Klimt paintings. We had lunch at the cafe there, and i had a delicious salad topped with baked goat cheese wrapped in bacon and nuts drizzled with honey (going to have to try to make that one at home). I didn't realize that two of my favorite artists, Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt, were from Vienna. We all agreed it was by far the most incredible museum experience we've had the entire time we've been in Europe. It was one of those experiences where you realize that seeing certain paintings in person makes an incredible difference. Seeing Klimt's 'The Kiss,' along with his other works, was surreal. I also had no idea that the museum had one of the copies of Jacques-Louis David's 'Napoleon Crossing the Alps,' which is so monumental photographs can never do it justice. After our amazing experience at the Belvedere we went to see the Hunterwasserhaus (underwater house real original German), this crazy multicolored house with mosaics and a bunch of plants growing on the top and stuff. I don't know anything about it so I'm going to do a little research. You can't go inside because it is private residences, though. When we got off the train yesterday we saw a Ferris wheel and other exciting looking carnival things so we went today, and it was the perfect ending to a perfect day. We got some gelato on the way there so we were still feeling great. We rode one of those giant spinning swing things, which gave us amazing views of the city, and a Ferris wheel. I had an awesome hot dog for dinner, and then Chris, Jade and I went on the haunted house ride. Jade had to go through by herself and we felt terrible. I laughed so hard my abs hurt because it was so funny and homemade, but I did get scared when the guy running the ride grabbed us right before we came out. Everywhere we went today was not crowded at all and it made everything so much more enjoyable. Like I think we might be the only tourists here its absurd. Needless to say, though, I don't remember the last time I had this great of a day, even though I was with people I've only known for a month. Hopefully tomorrow is great too.

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Tančící Dům (Dancing House)

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Paddleboating on the river today with the Charles Bridge in the background!

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Prague > Paris

Yep. I said it. Other than missing all the immaculately dressed and very attractive Parisians, I couldn't love Prague more. It's a very quiet city, I don't have to worry about getting run over by angry Parisian drivers (I've had people stop and wait for me to cross before I even got to the crosswalk), and the metro doesn't smell like hobo pee (though Czech people aren't really into deodorant...). Everything moves at a much slower pace than in Paris. I didn't realize how much I missed the quiet until I got here. Oh and not to mention everything is insanely cheap. You can get a half liter of pivo (beer, probably the most essential Czech word to know) for 50 Kč (about $2.50). It's like ikea in an entire country—so cheap it's free but you don't have to assemble it yourself. Don't get me wrong, Paris is amazing and unlike any other place on earth but Prague is meeting all of my needs right now and I'm so happy.