Even though it's an extremely sad and dark topic to talk about, I really like this photo I took at the concentration camp in Auschwitz.
It shows a former wagon and the train tracks in Birkenau, visitors have left roses and other flowers as well as candles there to remember the victims of the holocaust...

Yesterday I saw that Kristin ( http://kristinsta.wordpress.com/, thanks for the inspiration! :) decided to do a christmas calendar on her blog meaning she will publish a new photo every day.
I really like the idea, so I decided to do something similar and post something small every day (hopefully I will finish my two half-finished posts about my trips to South Bohemia and Poland as well :P ).

So here we go (just pretend it was posted yesterday, I will post another entry for today later on today):

Yesterday I went to the christmas market in the city centre together with my friend and travel mate Vaida from Lithuania, it really made us feel like we were in some kind of fairytale, it looked simply magical:

Time has passed by so quickly, I can't believe that I have been here for almost three months now...
Just to let you all know:
I'll take the night train to Poland tomorrow and will arrive in Krakow early Friday morning. There we will visit the old town and Wawel Castle as well as the Jewish Museum and the Schindler Factory.
On Sunday we will go to Auschwitz to have a look at the concentration camp.
I won't take my laptop, so if you want to reach me, just give me a call or text on my Czech (!) mobile (the German number doesn't work anymore).

I'm sorry that you haven't heard from me for so long, the blog entry about the trip to Český Krumlov is still half-finished...
You will hear back from me once I'm back from Poland - take care in the meantime!

It's been a while since my last blog entry which is partly due to the fact that I'm sick (again! :( ) and also because I have just been busy doing a lot of things (also again ;) ).

Due to the fact that I haven't blogged about any parties here in Prague yet, I decided to catch up on tat:

At the end of November I went to a party that was called "4 Universities Mega Party" and which was held... IN A CHURCH! Yes, you've read it correctly - the church is called Sacre Coeur and is usually reserved for weddings, but this night it was occupied by more than 1000 students.. ;) It also offered two stages, two DJs and a live band.



My Czech tandem partner Petra, Marta and me enjoying the welcome drink (hot wine punch), I don't know the guy, but he begged to be in the photo ;) )

some impressions from the interior of the chapel:







Since the photographer told us that only the top 10% of photos would be uploaded on the internet, us girls decided to do "something crazy" and lift our skirts just the tiniest bit... and what can I say... Marta sneaked out of it, but we still made it... :P


A few days later I followed quite a spontaneous invitation (it was decided upon on the very same day) to organize a surprise birthday party for Ruben, a German guy I got to know at the intensive language course in Brno. One of his friends came up with the idea and about 20 people from the course decided to join! Isn't that awesome? :)
Ruben's friends had told him that they had baked a cake for him and wanted to celebrate a bit in the evening - so that's how they lured him to their flat where we were all waiting.



Ruben's table for presents - I bought him an Advent calendar (even though the chocolates are most likely gone by now... :P ) and some German sweets



Preparations...

When Ruben finally made it there (with about an hour delay), all of us (apart from the people who live there) hid in the bedrooms, the walk-in cupboard and the bathroom. As our code word 'The smeagle (no idea why smeagle and not eagle, but it seemed to be some kind of private joke ;) ) has landed!' resound, we all left our hiding place.
And Ruben couldn't believe his eyes:





It was definitely a night to remember and I still think it's amazing how we managed to organize a big buffet, a table full of presents and lots of guests within such a short amount of time - we rock! :)


We also had the first snow in this season here in Prague and everything looked like in winter wonderland - it only lasted a day though... :(





snowman at Náměstí Míru

Now the weather is back to normal, it's not too cold (not colder than in Germany I guess..) and usually it only rains towards evening / at night time and I love to fall asleep to the sound of rain splashing against my garret windows... ♥
(and in case it doesn't rain there's always http://www.rainymood.com/ - do you remember the page, Lisa? :) )


Talking about plans - I decided to apply for a scholarship next summer that is issued by the IFMSA (International Federation of Medical Students' Associations). They offer part-time scholarships for professional clinical exchanges all over the world. At this point in time it is not clear if I have to go through the application process of Germany or the Czech Republic - unfortunately different people keep telling me all sorts of things, so I hope this gets figured out soon... :(

Nevertheless, I took a compulsory English test this Tuesday - it was the first national English test, so I assume it was harder than in previous years. So much for national test: That meant of course that all universities should start the test at exact the same time - however, Charles University started 45 minutes later due to the fact that apparently someone didn't save the latest changes of the powerpoint presentation they showed us at the very beginning... ;)

To me, the English test itself felt appropriate - for sure not too easy, but I hope I did alright. The test was not about passing, so I could score anything in between 0 - 100 points. Most questions aimed at specific phrases, grammar, rather sophisticated expressions (as in 'Choose the word that fits the best!') and there was also a part where we had to fill in the blanks.

Oh, I only just realized that I didn't even tell you yet where I would like to go (the placements get assigned to us according to the overall score we achieved (consisting of the English test and some other things, though the test itself is quite important) - right now my favourite destinations include countries in Africa (Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Rwanda, Sierra Leone) as well as Baltic States (Estonia, Lithuania) and maybe Thailand.

Of course that's not the only thing I have planned for the next couple of weeks / months:
I will also take part in some more activities organized by the International Club (they really offer awesome activities for us International students! :) ) including a 15-km-hiking-trip to the Czech Central Mountains next Sunday, a trip to Poland from the 22nd - 25th of November (we will be visiting Krakow and Auschwitz) and a trip to South Moravia (Mikulov, Perna, Brno, Olomouc) from the 7th - 9th of December. Since my friend Sarah from Bonn will be here at that time, she decided to join me - yeah! :D

So there are lots of things coming up for me in the near future and I'm really looking forward to that... :)

How have you all been and what are you up to? Is anyone even reading this blog still? :P
Looking forward to hear from you...

Last Saturday I went on a day trip to Kutna Hora, another event that was organized by the International Club.
Kutna Hora is a town in Central Bohemia, well known for its long history as a mining town. In the 13th century the town provided about one third of silver in Europe. Historical City Centre Area, along with St. Barbara church and the Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary in Sedlec has been since 1995 UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The town is most famous for its "bone chapel" called Sedlec Ossuary. The ossuary is among the most visited tourist attractions of the Czech Republic, attracting over 200,000 visitors yearly.

Four enormous bell-shaped mounds occupy the corners of the chapel. An enormous chandelier of bones, which contains at least one of every bone in the human body, hangs from the center of the nave with garlands of skulls draping the vault. Other works include piers and monstrances flanking the altar, a large Schwarzenberg coat of arms, and the signature of Rint, also executed in bone, on the wall near the entrance.



Entrance







Chandelier made of bones and skulls





Schwarzenberg coat-of-arms made with bones









I found the bone chapel fascinating and impressive in a cruel way - you couldn't take your eyes of what was displayed in front of you and some of it actually looked like a beautiful piece of art, but at the same time it's quite brutal to know that those people who died during the epidemics of plague or in the Hussite wars never gave their consent for this.

After visiting the chapel, we continued on walking to the city centre:



We stopped several times in between to look at the following sights:



the Stone House, a richly decorated house dating back to the 15th century



the "Plague Column", raised in 1715 and dedicated to the virgin Mary in gratitude that only half the population had been wiped out by the dreaded disease, rather than everyone



The old well where all the people used to get clean water



Barborská Ulice which is often compared to Charles’ Bridge in Prague for its collection of regularly-spaced and beautifully detailed statues







St. Barbara Church, one of the most famous Gothic churches in central Europe and it is a UNESCO world heritage site. St Barbara is the patron saint of miners (among others), which was highly appropriate for a town whose wealth was based entirely upon its silver mines:



















In the city centre:







international photo - Sara from Sweden, Karel from Ecuador and me :)

At the Italian Court, formerly a royal residence and mint, which was built at the end of the 13th century, currently the building serves as a museum of coin minting:









the Chapel of St Wenceslas, who is one of the four patron saints of the Czech lands.
It was created in 1386 and is among the best surviving examples of Bohemian gothic architecture.



the Italian Court from the outside

Last but not least we did an underground mine tour:







I really enjoyed this tour and I already made plans on travelling the Czech Republic a bit more, it really is not all about Prague... ;)

I've again been very busy and engaged in a variety of things over the course of the last week:

On Wednesday evening I went to the Czech Film Club to see the film "Loners" (Samotáři), "a story about seven Prague-based characters, all in their mid twenties. Each reflects a part of the chaos in our own lives, and the mess in our heads. Almost all of them attempt to forge and sustain "serious" relationships, which in turn become a series of clashes and lead to disappointment, and finally back to loneliness."
I found the movie a bit... let's just call it different ;), but I'm glad the International Office offers activities like this, so I'm not going to complain and I will probably go there again next week. :)

This week was "Das Filmfest" on, a festival with more that 40 acts from Germany, Austria and Switzerland as well as guests like Corinna Harfouch and Hauschka (if you're interested in the films etc. that were shown you can check http://www.goethe.de/ins/cz/prj/fdf/deindex.htm ).
Together with Marta from Poland, her roommate from Slovakia and Steph from Australia I wanted to see the movie "Was bleibt" (German trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAphxmktzO4 ).
I had checked the available seats on the internet beforehand to see if we needed to reserve tickets, but there were lots of free seats, so I thought we would be fine.
When we got there half an hour before the film started, we had to discover that the movie was sold out and we couldn't get in... :(
Therefore we decided to go to another cinema that showed the film "Tabu - Es ist die Seele ein Fremdes auf Erden" (German trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxNkONlZCBo ). I have to admit that I didn't really like the film - to me it seemed full of nudity, drugs and violence.

The cinema itself looked quite pretty though:



On Friday Marta, Joris and I went to the operating room and as you can see we had a lot of fun just fooling around:





In the afternoon I went on a Free Walking Tour through Prague together with my Czech buddy Thereza and Joris, one of my German fellow students.
It was really interesting and even though I knew most of the things they told us, I learned some new facts as well and it was nice to just go for a long walk through the city centre.
Afterwards Thereza showed us "what has to be Prague's best ice-cream shop" and we went to the Franciscan Gardens to enjoy our ice cream:



I had to get up early on Saturday as I went on a day-trip to Kutna Hora that day (I'm going to tell you about that in a separate blog entry).
When I came back in Prague in the evening, I quickly went home to get changed and then met up with some of the Erasmus students I knew from my intensive language course in Brno as well as some of my fellow students from uni:



On Sunday I enjoyed a delicious brunch at the Globe Cafe and Bookstore with my former roommate Maria from Estonia and I also showed her around the city:



At Wenceslas Square

Yesterday I went to the Erasmus Welcome Party where we were officially welcomed by the faculty and also got a lot of nice gifts including pens and mugs with the logo of the faculty and a postcard and map of Prague.
As you can see here, they also prepared some nice appetizers for us:



Joris, me and Marta from Poland

Last Monday I started with my first course: Surgery, which will continue until the end of this month.
I also had "Czech for Erasmus students" (where I'm in the advanced group after taking part in the Intensive Language Course, only 7 students showed up and I'm afraid I'm going to be the only one this week...) and "Tropical Diseases" as an elective subject.

All my subjects are organized in blocks, so I only have one subject every day for a couple of weeks, then I take the exam and after that I start a new course.
In Surgery I only have lectures on Monday, all the other days are "practical days" and on Friday uni starts later than usual "because it's a Friday" ;).
Every day we can choose whether we want to go to the ICU, the ambulance, the traumatology ward or the operating room - depending on our choice we either have to be there at 8 or 8.30 am.

On my first day I went to the ICU (= Intensive Care Unit), the standard is about the same as in Germany - in fact they use a lot of German products, too.
Unfortunately the doctor's English wasn't very good, even though he kept trying, it took him several minutes to form a single sentence which I found very frustrating.

Therefore I decided to go to the ambulance on Wednesday which proved to be a good choice as the doctor who was assigned to us explained us a lot, he also kept asking questions and seemed really enthusiastic about what he was doing. :)
We were even allowed to perform single tasks like taking the stitches out, cleaning wounds or assisting in day surgery - one day I even got a cast (see attached photos) ;).

Today I went to the operating room, but just as I expected it to be there were about 20 other students and employees in a tiny room, so we couldn't see anything at all and therefore concluded to leave after about 10 minutes.
We then strolled to the ambulance, but again the doctor's English wasn't extremely convincing and there were some Czech medical students there as well, so he kept talking to them in Czech for quite long periods of time. :(

Much to my surprise I found that the hygiene standards are quite different compared to Germany and on my first day I thought I was going to faint (would have been the first time in my life at the hospital and I've already seen quite a lot of operations ;) ): they don't have a lot of single-use products - e.g. the linen on the stretcher is not a paper roll that gets exchanged after every patient, but rather a sheet that is replaced once a day (if at all).
Moreover, they have something they call the "sterile box" which in my opinion is not sterile at all - they take the instruments and band-aids out without wearing (sterile) gloves, mostly even with their bare hands.
Then they pass them on to the doctor who also doesn't wear gloves most of the time - once we had a patient who suffers from Hepatitis A, B and C and the doctor just said "Normally we don't do that, but now I'm going to wear some gloves." - Niiiiiiice.
Last but not least it's not very common to disinfect the hands - sometimes you can't even find disinfectant in the room.
I also believe that even though the disease patterns are about the same, the stages are often much more advanced and money plays a bigger role, too - e.g. they use bandages instead of compression stockings as a prevention of thrombosis ("It's a lot cheaper.", one of the doctors told me).

My Czech Class was not really interesting as the pace was rather slow, but since I already bought the text book I think I'm going to stick to it. Our homework is to write an essay about our family - that is to state the names and talk about their professions.

In contrast to that, "Tropical Diseases" really sparked my interest in the course - we talked about the differential diagnosis of fever after returning from the tropics.
Since I would like to go to Africa for an internship I think the knowledge I will hopefully gain in this course could really come in handy. :)

As I didn't feel like I was working to full capacity with just two days of afternoon classes ("Tropical Diseases" is just once every two weeks), I added another course called "Clinical Empathy" to my schedule.
This course concentrates on the proper rhetorical and body-language techniques and is meant to teach us how to treat our patients empathically without getting emotionally involved as well as how to improve our communication skills in general.
It's a brand new course and the instructor is a communication skills expert, corporate soft-skills trainer and coach from the United States, so I think it could really be interesting. :)


I've also planned quite a few trips / activities for the next couple of days and weeks which include going to the Czech Film Club tomorrow night, an activity that is organized by the International Club - tomorrow they are going to show a movie called "Samotáři" (Loners); taking part in a trip to the town Kutna Hora this Saturday and attending the "Erasmus Welcome Party" next Monday where we will be officially welcomed by the faculty.
In addition, I will go to Český Krumlov, a small city in the South Bohemian Region that's also a Unesco World Heritage Site from the 2nd - 4th of November.



the lecture theatre





Oh, I just remembered a nice compliment I got the other day:
When I went out for dinner with a German and a Spanish guy, an American couple that was sitting next to us interrupted our conversation: "So whereabouts in die US are you from?" I just grinned at them and said: "Try again, I'm not from the US..." They seemed extremely surprised and asked: "England? Australia?" Naaaaw.... It's awesome to hear that English native speakers actually think I might be from their country! That really made my day! :)

What have you all been up to? I'm looking forward to hear from you! :)

Last Sunday my parents arrived in Prague!
It was so good to see them again, I think I only realized then how much I had actually missed them...
We met at my flat as I had asked them to bring some things over from Germany for me (a big pillow, a bar of my favourite chocolate and some photos to decorate my room).
I didn't expect them to bring over anything else, but then I realized that they brought me a lot more than I had asked for: a digital frame with lots of photos on it, all the calendar sheets until September of the calender my sister and designed last christmas, German cheese (the cheese you get here tastes like rubber... :/ ), German bread rolls and LOTS of German chocolate!!! Oh my god, I nearly cried, I was just so overwhelmed by that!



...and this is just a part of it! :)

Shelley (my Irish flatmate) and I then accompanied my parents to their hotel to check in and afterwards we showed them around the city centre.
We ended the day with some delicious traditional Czech food called Svíčková (Marinated Beef Sirloin) with houskové knedlíky (bread dumplings).

Monday was my first day of uni (I will tell you about my first week there in my next blog entry), so I had to get up early, but met up with my parents in the city centre after my surgery lecture. Together we walked Karlův most (Charles Bridge) and looked at some of the main sights. In the evening we went to a Concert in the National Museum where songs of Mozart ("A Little Night Music"), Bach ("Air"), Vivaldi ("The Four Seasons: Summer, Winter"), Liszt ("Love Dreams"), Dvořák ("Humoresque", "Waltz in D major", "Slavonic Dance No. 8"), Smetana ("Vltava: My Country"), Tchaikovski ("Andante Cantabile") and Brahms ("Hungarian Dance No. 5 and 6") were performed.
Usually I don't react too emotional if it comes to music, but when the orchestra played "Air" in this amazing setting, I had tears in my eyes - that's how much I liked it. :)

On Tuesday we got together at the Castle area where we enjoyed the great weather, the free entry to Katedrála svatého Víta (St Vitus Cathedral) and the grand view over the city. Afterwards we walked through Valdštejnská zahrada (Wallenstein Garden) and discovered the John Lennon Rememberance Wall which I found rather disappointing, the photos are quite nice though ;).



















Can you see the TV Tower in the far left corner? I live quite close from there... :)



the Castle Gardens





Wallenstein Garden



Charles Bridge

John Lennon Rememberance Wall:















Wednesday was spent with a long walk through the district Hradčany:



Písecká brána (Písek Gate), a former city gate of Baroque fortification



Cubist Houses designed by Josef Gočár

In the Royal Garden:







Belvedere - Queen Anne's Summer Palace and a prime example of Italian Renaissance



Ball Games House



Castle Square:



the German and the Czech flag in front of the official residence of Czech President Václav Klaus as part of President Joachim Gauck's inaugural visit to the Czech Republic

Link to a German article regarding his stay: http://www.welt.de/politik/ausland/article109749417/Bundespraesident-Gauck-setzt-in-Tschechien-Zeichen.html





a statue of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, the first president of Czechoslovakia



Archbishop's Palace





Kostel sv. Jana Nepomuckého (Military Church of St. Jan Nepomuk)



Nový Svět (New World), a country lane of quaint cottages dating back to the mid-14th century





Pražská Loreta

view from Strahovská zahrada:





It was great to see my parents here in Praha and to show them around all the places I like, I'm already looking forward to see them again for Christmas (as well as the rest of the family of course :) ) - if you want to visit me, feel free to ask me about it, I'm sure we could work something out! :)

I have been very busy (and also sick...) over the last two weeks, therefore I didn't have the time to write another blog entry.

But now I will fill you in on some of the things I did:

Last week was Prague Design and Fashion Week, so I decided to go to one of the exhibitions together with my Czech buddy ( = someone who is meant to help us with problems, show us around the city, etc.) Tereza. I thought it was really interesting and also inspiring to see all those designers presenting their work, here are some of my impressions from that day:



































After spending about six hours at the exhibition, Tereza and I took a ricksha to a Puma store (it was part of their sales campaign) where we designed a T-shirt for ourselves. It was so much fun to do that ride through the city centre, we had a blast! :)






Last Thursday Eric, a German guy I met at a activity organized by the International Club, asked me and Shelley, my Irish flatmate, to accompany him to the Europe-League game AC Sparta Praha - Athletic Club Bilbao.
Needless to say - Praha won (3:1) and since there were nearly 14000 fans in the stadium (400 from Spain ;), the atmosphere was really good, too.











By the way: My German mobile number doesn't work anymore, I only have a Czech number.
So in case you want to reach me just ask me for my number or send me a postcard.. ;)

I'm also really excited that my friend Sarah from Bonn will be visiting me in December for five days, it's going to be great, I can't wait! :)