I've Got A Bad Feeling About This...

View from the train

Although the scenery was beautiful on our Journey to Prague, getting there was a little bit of a nightmare. Me and a few others accidentally wound up in the wrong car, and were too confused to figure out what to do. There were people sitting in the seats we thought belonged to us, but in reality, they didn't. It was a stressful and fast-paced situation, and we were told to kick the poor Europeans out of the seats. We were all very confused because they spoke very little English, and I felt really bad, but soon they left and we sat in their seats. It was dark when we got there, and soon after our arrival we were forced into the deep end of figuring out how the local trams worked. We crammed into our train car like sardines, confused about ticket validation. Me and others around me decided better safe than sorry, and validated our tickets. However, others weren't so lucky. They were caught with invalid tickets by a sketchy looking man holding a badge just seconds before they would've validated their tickets. In a rush of confusion, we were all forced to get off and stand in the cold and dark while our fearless chaperone tried to deal with the man, neither speaking each other's language. It was a very scary and stressful situation. From where I was standing, I heard the words, "1,000, cash" from the Prague man. We all wanted nothing more than to just be at the hostel already. Soon Dr. Powell showed up and saved the day, paying 1,000 Czech Crowns (about $45 USD) to the officer. Finally we arrived at the hostel, to another surprise. This part didn't wind up being a huge deal, but the room me and my roommates were in was the smallest room we'd ever stayed in. My first impressions of Prague weren't great.

The Worst Feelings

The church building in Terezin

On our second day in Prague, we took a 7-8 hour tour out of town to historic Terezin Transit camp. Having learned about the camp before through a documentary, I wasn't super jazzed about going there, but it was an opportunity to see some very important, ugly, and hardly mentioned parts of history. For context, Terezin was originally built as a fortress, but during WWII taken by the Nazi's and used to imprison Jewish people as well as anyone the Nazi's didn't care for. It is an interesting bit of music history as many notable artists and musicians from the area were imprisoned here, and continued to practice their respective crafts while living in the camp. It was a very rough and intense tour. We saw how the people lived. We learned about how they were treated. We learned about the horrors of the smaller fortress adjacent to the main fortress, where all of the nastiest, cruel, vile, and downright evil things happened. It was a hard a heavy day. That night, we went to a Czech folklore dinner and saw live music and dancing in an attempt to enliven our spirits again. However, I don't know if the atmosphere or food enlivened our spirits, or the actual spirits in the bottomless wine they served us all night long.

The Best Feelings

My first impressions of Prague were fairly bad. Two intense days with negative emotions and coming back to a cramped room wasn't great. I'd say my mood improved after our tour of Prague castle. Our guide was funny and nice, and we saw a lot of interesting parts of the old town plus the castle. It was extremely cold though.

Super old library

The Eiffel Tower!!!!!

View of the city

Huge Church in the Castle

Also the church

Huge nice looking room

My mood improved all the much more with the performance from the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra. The concert hall was immaculate, and we sat just three rows away from the front of the stage! As a saxophone player, none of the music we'd listened to thus far was in particular interest of me. However, we had the pleasure of sitting up close to a world premiere of a double trombone concerto. It was awesome. I enjoyed that concert the most of the whole trip so far. One of the trombonists was pointing at me the entire time. It was a really awesome experience and the music was really cool too.