Berlin again

Today was officially the end of our class portion of the trip. The last few days were busy with some of the people we were working with in the ecology org in Turnov taking us on more tours including a brewery tour of the local beer called Svijany. The didnt leave us a whole lot of time to work on the project, but we pulled it together and had a good public presentation of our ideas yesterday. One of the guys in the office who was our translater for the last few days put out a press release about the presentation so we had a packed room of local citizens who gave us some good criticism and compliments. After the presentation they took us to a beautiful area with a nature center and arboretum and gave us some good food and drinks as thanks for our work. The group split up this morning with some people heading to back to Prague to fly home in the next few days and the rest of us to various destinations. Harsh and Bhavna for example have the most interesting itenerary. They are flying to Moscow and then traveling from there to Tibet where they will get married in a monestary before heading home to India. Ben and I are in Berlin now for the night but I will be splitting off tomorrow morning on my own to head to Copenhagen (a seven hour train ride from here). We just did a lot of walking around the city after dinner so Im off to bed uhere at the hostel until my feet recover for the next round of walking tours.

More from Denmark soon . . .

Nicole

Exploring Turnov

Dobry Den again,

We've spent the last few days exploring Turnov. There are extensive hiking trails all over the region. Ben and I hiked up from the middle of town to some overlooks in the hills and a castle in just a couple hours. Today our hosts at the organization we're working with for the highway project took us on another day of touring. We climbed up to the Trosky castle ruins, then up to a tower that was used for military radio on the highest point in the region. The weather has been warm but last night a big storm came in and cooled things off. It was quite cold and windy up on the high overlooks. We also stopped at a mine and broke a few rocks to look for precious stones, finding just a few little crystals. Next we stopped by a huge Linden tree that is 800 years old. On the drive back, we pulled off to the side of the road and all of our drivers/hosts ran up to this non-descript window at what looked like someone's house turned snack stand. We found out that this place was known for making a local variety of little cake pastries and they bought us a few boxes as a treat. Speaking of new unhealthy local cuisine, I was excited to try a traditional dish that's actually vegetarian - breaded and fried cauliflower with potatoes on the side. All the dishes tend to be served with great garnish of cucumbers, tomatoes and other veggies, so my latest technique is to collect everyone's garnishes that the meat eaters ignore to get my veggies.

The project is moving along also. The group here seems to want more than anything else to document us agreeing with them that the highway in the northern proposed route would be a horrible idea and the southern route a much better idea. They were pleased when our analysis confirmed this and immediately after our presentation offered to plan a tour of the local beer brewery, telling us it looked like we were working too hard. They are interested in us making a documentary of our experiences and research here to rally some support. We had already been talking about making a website with our work which could be handed over to the locals as a forum about the status of the highway project. Another idea was to make some propoganda t-shirts with logos showing the historical castles getting ground up to pave the highway. We only have four more days here, so considering our busy schedule of brewery and museum tours, it looks like our product for Friday will be a storyboard mock up of work we will continue as part of our seminar class next semester.

I've booked a hostel in Berlin as a stopover on my way to Denmark on the 30th. Then I'll be in Copenhagen until the third or the first.

Ciao for now.

Nicole

Project in Turnov

The group arrived in Turnov, a small town in the northern Czech region of Cesky Raj, which means Bohemian Paradise, on Tuesday. We're working with a local environmental office to analyze a freeway project in the region. The freeway has been in the works for many years now, aiming to connect a direct route through the country. The proposed route will cut through a scenic valley with many little towns and preserved forested hillsides on either side. The local residents have been protesting the project with signatures but some political pressure that thinks the freeway will help develop the industry and economy of the region are pushing for this valley route over a more southern option. The office we're working with is a little bias being located in the northern area, but seem to have some good arguments why the southern route is less impactful. So we're setting out to figure out what our role for the project should be, exploring the proposed options. The first day we went on a driving tour and hiked up to many overlooks (I had mistakenly worn a skirt and flip flops thinking we would mostly be in the car and not having other dry clean clothes after doing laundry in the bathtub). Ben was very helpful taking pictures of Julie and I falling down one of the steep slopes and laughing. On one of the trails, we all bought bas of cherries from a woman that had a table set up. After munching half of them and going on a long warm trail, Julie discovered little maggot-like worms that had either hatched or crawled out of the cherries in the warm plastic bag. We were a little tramatized and unappetized for the rest of the day.

Yesterday we spent way too much time in the office trying to organize the project and were practically brawling across the table in the afternoon over how to go about our analysis. Yes, the group is becoming more like sibblings with immaturity on he rise and occasional yelling matches. Today we have some smaller groups armed with maps and are exploring pieces of the proposed freeway routes. It's hard to believe we only have a few more days until the end of the organized Czech trip. We will leave Turnov on the 29th. From there, Ceci, Ben, and Jeff are heading back to Prague and then back to PA. Ken and Julie have a honeymoon route through Austria, Switzerland, Spain, etc. planned. Mike and Brian are also exploring Europe for another three weeks. I'll be on my own headed to Denmark first to eco-geek out at a couple more ecovillages and centers for alternative technology.

Hope all is well on that end and feel free to send some emails (nicole.a.stern@gmail.com is the most frequently checked).

- Nicole

Decin - Berlin - Turnov (a summary)

Hi,

Sorry for getting behind in the news mom. I'll have to send a more detailed recap soon, but just to summaraise the past few days . . . we spent some long days working in Decin and the project came off very well. The presentation was a hit and the local people there wanted to put our work up on their website and show more of the people in town our ideas. After we finished up in Decin, we had a four day break to split up and travel around. I ended up going to Berlin. Russell contacted one of his friends, Isabel, who lives there. She invited me to join her for the launch of an english literary magazine for english writers in Berlin. Many of the authors did readings and there was music and comedy - a fun night. I went out to an ecovillage just outside of Berlin on Saturday, then came back to Berlin and spent a couple of days looking around the city more. Yesterday the group merged again in Turnov and took a regional tour today to begin our next project. I'll write more on the intermitten adventures along the way soon but have rushed internet access at the moment. Happy Summer Solstice to everyone tomorrow.

Nicole

The Group walking up the Archway road up to the Decin Chateau

Chandelier made of real bones in Kutna Hora

a few more photos from Prague

Here are a few photos from Prague. One is of us listening to a singing fountain in the palace gardens. The water vibrates the metal to make a ringing type sound.

Regional touring

The group had a great little BBQ last night in the back of the dorm we're staying in. I grilled up some good veggies before the many pounds of various animals were Q-ed for hours. There was some great story telling when Ceci suggested we all tell the group something they didn't know about us. Stories ranged from streaking across campus to setting large playing-with-matches fires to diving into a 2-ft deep kiddie pool head first. A good time was had by all, but the good times made for a rough early morning as we boarded the but at 8am for another segment of regional tour time with our guide Jan. We spent a long day stopping in a few small towns around Decin. After a very bumpy and windy drive to our first stop, we hopped off the bus in Kadan to head straight up a very narrow, steep spiral staircase to the top of a medieval tower. After wandering around Kadan which was a beautiful town with medieval and Baroque architecture, we stopped at another chateau with a very extensive garden/park. Every turn in the trail was accented with some little pavillion structure set against backdrops of meadows, forest, and ponds. The last stop was a spa town which was perfectly manicured with ornate, colorful Baroque buildings and elaborate modern fountains showing off water from mineral springs which supposedly has healing properties. Anyone looking for a retirement genre gettaway would enjoy this place, complete with a palacial 5 star hotel/spa. By the end of the day though the major highlight was finding a chinese restaurant for a little variety in my meal choices.

Tomorrow is the start of our major project production mode before the printing deadline on Wednesday and our presentation to the community at the chateau on Thursday. For now I'm off to rest my very sore legs.

PS - Benjamin, I took a great photo of this sculpture of a monk with a monkey on his head for you.

Berlin and back

Berlin on Monday was quite interesting. Axel, an art historian working on the controversial project of how best to preserve reminants of the Berlin Wall showed us around and told us about the history of the city's urban design as influenced by wars and walls. The city was different from any other I've been to. I expected it to be more dense and have retained more of a typical European city feel, but instead works of modern architecture showed themselves off amidst all kinds of construction projects in the works, still working to rebuild from the destruction from WWII. The bits of wall were an erie scar in the landscape with haphazard slicing of buildings and streets - old architectural styles on one side in and new on the other. Most of us imagine the Berlin wall as a single wall, but there was actually a whole gruesome series of barriers on the east side of the largest wall starting with a line not to cross over, progressing to smaller walls, an electric fence, and guarded area with dogs or gaurds ordered to shoot anyone who entered into the area. Most of this is gone now minus a few chunks and small hints or a line paved in stone running through the street.

The Jewish memorial was another dramatic site. Gray blocks of concrete that start at only a couple feet tall and then rise up to about 15 feet tall are laid out in a grid of rectangles that you wonder through in straight paths like a maze. The center is strange with the up and down sloping narrow paths, running into other people at sharp corners on perpendicular paths . . . the space seemed less of a typical memorial to those who died but more an abstract reinactment of the confusion and fear of the time. That uncomfortable sensation still hadn't left me as we walked by what used to be Hitler's underground bunkers.

I'm planning to head back to Berlin for our 4 day break between projects to hopefully explore some of the lighter sides of the city I've heard good things about, well and the Jewish museum by the architect Libeskind. I'll also be going to the ZEGG ecovillage outside of Berlin as part of the start of some thesis research.

For now we're just getting into the real guts of our design project in Decin which we have another week and a half to work on before a presentation at the Chateau on the 14th.

I hope the summer is kicking off well over in that part of the world.

- Nicole

Bohemian Switzerland

Dobry den!

Most of the group headed to Berlin a day or two early so there are just a few of us in Decin today. Ken, Julie, and I took a short bus ride to a national park just to the north of Decin which straddles the Czech/German border which half the park in each country. The name of the park means Bohemian Switzerland, perhaps for the rocky, mountainous terrain and lush forests. We hiked down through a gorgeous gorge, complete with a little boat ride to connect two parts of the trail. It was a foggy, misty day so the atmosphere in the gorge was magical and drippy. We had time to hike up to a large stone arch after the gorge, but the high overlook was almost comically nothing but white with the fog.

The vegetarian fare here is quite sparse, mom. Luckily the hostel we're staying in has a kitchenette in our suite of rooms and there are a few large supermarkets in Decin. Most of us have been cooking at least one meal a day now. There is a good little pizza place in town which has a "vegetaria" pizza. Last night I ordered something off the menu which I could read should have been something with vegetables, and tofu. What came out on the plate was a large portion of canned veggies smothered in cheese, no tofu. All the carnivores on the trip seem to be happy with the large variety of meat dishes though. Laundry has been amusing so far as well. We've luckily had free laundry machines at both of the places we've stayed so far. The one machine here seems to take an average of 2 hours for one load, no dryer. Yesterday after checking back to see if the machine was open all morning and afternoon, a few of us horded the key to do some consecutive loads. I was up until past 1am waiting for my 2 hour spin. I must say the clothes get very clean though!

More on the trip to Berlin after tomorrow!