From Praha to Decin

After some spotty internet availability, our group is finally set up in our first project destination, Decin (prounounced something like Ydeschen). We're staying in what was once the Chateau stables, now newly renovated into student housing. These accomodations are a big upgrade from our communist era dorms at a university outside of Prague. Being the only other female in our group besides the professor and Julie who's newlywed husband is also a grad student in our program and on the trip, looks like I get my own rooms on the trip - not too shabby. My third floor corner room has hardwood floors which I found are good for yoga, and two huge windows overlooking the town and lush forested hillsides.

Just to orient you, there are ten in our group. Ceci is the professor leading the trip with interests in historical landscapes and cultural landscape preservation. Ken and Julie are the newlyweds who had a lovely PA wedding the Sat. before we left. Then there is Jeff, my former Canadian roomate; Drew, Mike, and Brian - all fellow landscape architecture grad students; and Ben and Harsh - both tag alongs from the architecture grad program.

We spent a few days in Prague, or Praha (it always seems strange to me that the same place has different names in different languages. shouldn't places all just be called by what their name is in the local language?). We've been picking up a few Czech words. Dobry den is good morning. Prosim is please and excuse me - good for getting waiter's attention. We're still mystified by how to prounounce the word for thank you which is either daqui, diqui, dakuji, or some similar form. I serendipidously learned that laundry is prochka when following a local student I happened to spot carrying a bag of clothes down the hall in our first dorm who then helped me explain to the grumpy old man at the counter that I wanted the key to the laundry room. Now I can happily go up to any front desk and say "prochka" as I point to my room key.

In Prague, we toured around the main points of interest - the old town square, Charles bridge, and the castle. (I'll attempt to post pictures soon). A few of us splurged on a Carmena Burana concert in the Municipal House (my favorite art nouveau building in prague) theater. Stay tuned for my one minute video recording (using my snazzy new digital camera) of the opening song. Yep, so far this class isn't too bad at all. Besides some sketching in the castle gardens, it's quite a vacation.

The real work is beginning soon though. We met with our guide, Jan (a native who went to grad school in landscape architecture years back in the US and now works as a landscape architect out of Prague) yesterday after arriving by train in Decin. Decin is a medium sized town of 60,000 people about an hour and a half north of Praha. A historical Chateau here is the focus of our project. The Russian Army camped out here using the Chateau as their base. They actually used the basement for sewage and they longer they were here, the more floors filled up as a big outhouse. They also covered all the beautifully painted buildings up with gray paint and generally trashed the place. There is a major restoration effort underway. Our main project though is to create a master plan to connect the Chateau, main squares, river, and parks together which are all the places the local public should be making use of but are all disconnected and hard to get between. Should be an interesting project.

I'm off to spend some more crowns ($1 = 20 kc) on lunch and explore the town.

Best wishes,

Nicole