jack checks czech

an NYU Gallatin junior living, studying and traveling from Prague in the Czech Republic for Fall 2013. (the "z" in czech is pronounced subtly like the "z" that makes up the pronunciation of the letter "j" in jack)

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and then it hit me... i've been in Europe for a year

Obviously I knew this, and technically speaking it has only been 11 months so far, but it finally, truly sunk in.

I was adding an event to my calendar for next week. Next week is December…. I left the United States in January… Save six days and a morning trek to the airport, my 2013 life has been lived in Europe… 

It’s crazy!

I feel fortunate. I feel distanced. I feel traveled. I feel too many emotions, and that is while I still have two and a half weeks left!

I hope my flight home stays half full so that I can have a row to myself. I don’t want any companions on the emotional roller coaster that will ensue on my return to the United States!

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thus ends the onslaught of photos from my time with my parents...

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Amsterdam - Code Orange 

We happened to be in Amsterdam during a storm with nearly 100mph winds! Fortunately the only consequences we witnessed were fallen trees and stopped trams. Even with the bad weather I loved the city, and would definitely go back.

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Rhine River Gorge Castles

[jaknathan]

View from lunch in Monterosso, part of Cinque Terre, Italy. Too bad “lunch” was a bag of potato chips due to lack of time, and most things being closed in the off-season, let alone gluten free! (à Monterosso)

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Crossed another place off my bucket list yesterday :D

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Central European Fall

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Fall in Central Europe is too beautiful. Here are just the pictures that feature water, some of the most famous waters of the area (Danube, Vltava and Rhein river)

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while photos from my trip with my parents are queued to keep posting, I am getting ready to embark on my last (big) hurrah, a ten day trip through Italy and random parts of Eastern Europe! I'm so excited, and nervous, and happy, and sad, and every emotion.

Also, it is weird to be back in the big back pack! I feel like I am missing things because I have extra room, but I have to keep reminding myself that I am only going for 10 days this time... not 90...

here goes nothing!

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Even Berlin's two-dimensional works are impressive, preaching messages for all generations, some more popcultural, some more political.

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Berlin Statuary

Some of its beauty is just the lighting, but from the modern installations to the memorials Berlin's sculptural art is impeccable. 

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While I am loving having class with the chief architect of Prague castle, studying Berlin's Architecture would have been another kind of blessing. With 90% of the city damaged during WWII (and some scars still showing like in the last image) Berlin is a truly modern city, and I love modernity. Even the buildings with classical styles attract me more due to their penchant for the more refined greek classicism as opposed to the flamboyant romans. 

Perhaps one day I will be back to study it all in depth ;)

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My travel companions, supporters, believers, leaders—My amazing parents. 

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¿Eurents / Paropeans?

After nine months of being 1.5 continents and an ocean apart I finally got to hug my parents! Together we made a giant road trip loop of central Europe. In hindsight doing so much driving wasn't the best idea, but we still saw some pretty incredible things, especially the fall colors of the european countryside, the best of which I will post over the next couple of days.

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Class perks:

Being in an architecture course with a leading architect of Prague has its clear perks. Beyond just teaching us about secret hidden czech beauties like Wallenstein Palace and its gardens (the first three pictures) and the variety of architectures in the Prague Castle Gardens (the next three), he also takes us on private tours of places off limits to the public, like the Spanish Hall in the Castle (the next two) and the roof of the Rudolfinum (the last two)! Even ignoring my love of architecture, this course is extra-ordinary!

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This doesn't even begin to capture the multi-color, multi-dimensional beauty that was the break from rain last night.

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The fog in Prague deserves a blog. The first week of October was met with clear skies and bitterly cold (34*) mornings which made for beautiful days but unbearable morning walks to the metro. Now it's hard to tell if I'll even make it to the metro before something ominous descends from the end-of-the-world like weather above, especially on days like yesterday when visibility is only like 20 feet. Fog though traps warmth. So if it means I don't have to wear gloves and earmuffs everyday, I'm fine risking the improbability of fog monsters ;)

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Candy-Coated "Concentration Camp"

I never thought I would think of the expression "concentration camp" as watered-down or candy-coated, but like a large majority of expressions used in American media and particularly American education, it is. The education system that failed to teach me about the genocide of Native Americans as a part of Manifest Destiny or about the unjust internment of Japanese Americans during World War II also failed even to thoroughly villainize the enemy, the Nazis. 

After visiting Aushwitz in Poland, it has become clear to me how real the expression "extermination camp" is. I had heard it before, but never realized its overarching validity – the truth that no one who went into those camps was intended to leave. Whether the day or arrival by gas chamber, or months later by exhaustion, starvation or illness, death was the only option for the persecuted captives foreseen by the Nazis.

And yet, despite this intended morose inevitability, we have chosen to focus our attention on the much easier to accept fact of "concentration." This is not to say that the act of genocide has been overlooked, and in fact I am not quite sure that this realization is as profound as I found it, but for me, it took visiting Aushwitz – a respectable and respectful, well-curated museum and memorial to 1.1 million exterminations – to understand more holistically the truth that humanity, at least in the United States, is afraid to bare witness to such violent facts of life, of human history.