Eleanor Parker
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Innovative Learning Week seemed to be some device costume for holding a week off of university to go home or go on holiday. we was propitious adequate to take advantage of a second and, along with scarcely forty other students from a Edinburgh University History Society, flew to Prague for 6 days of scrutiny and (mainly chronological and partly food orientated) learning.
Our outing gave us a event for 3 full days of journey in a city centre of Prague. It’s a sincerely tiny executive area and with a hostel good positioned on a corner of a executive attractions, we were good placed to travel out a doorway and douse ourselves immediately into a Old Town. It took us 5 mins of walking to find a Trdelnik mount – this presumably normal Czech sweetmeat is done by rolling brew around a stick, barbecuing it on a rotating separate over prohibited coals, dousing it in sugarine and cinnamon and afterwards cloaking a vale inside in a accumulation of salsas such as apple, caramel or a many popular, Nutella. Our debate beam after told us that this fritter provide is indeed from Hungary- not a Czech Republic during all- yet this didn’t relieve a delight or unrestrained for eating them.
Food was an constituent component of this outing for me. The Czech Republic as a whole is really inexpensive with 34 Czech Koruna equalling one British pound. With large portions of food and ordinarily dual to 3 courses costing us usually 200 CK, we ate like Queens for a whole week. Breakfast during a hotel was a feast of pasta (yes, pasta), bread, hotdogs (yes, we know, hotdogs, insanity), cheese, ham, yoghurt, cereal and a toastie appurtenance if a elementary ham and cheese sandwich only wasn’t enough. With adequate carbs to penetrate a tiny ship, breakfast bland was no genuine hardship on a part.
By lunchtime, we were still partly fuelled by breakfast, yet with a morning of raging sightseeing behind us, I’m never going to contend no to a cut of cake and a crater of tea. The circuitously religiously sacramental routine of holding tea and cake is really critical in Prague, only as it is good appreciated by me during home in bland life. Their chronicle of black tea is their generally homemade brew of lemon and ginger. Often served with a tiny pot of sugar and a uninformed cut of lemon, this libation was a ideal prohibited snack and ideally complimented a array of cakes on offer. The Municipal House, a pleasing art nouveau building in executive Prague brings turn a installed trolley of cakes for we to select from and my layered chocolate and vanilla consume with cream, topping and a covering of summer fruit and hiss preserve was positively delicious. Another renouned cake is their sugar cake (or medovnik) that is layered sugar consume with a abounding caramel cream and crumbled walnuts. It was tough to contend no.
We would have a categorical cooking late afternoon and a many common dishes offering meat, potato and mostly some component of melted cheese. On one day outing to a Medieval city of Cesky Krumlov, we dined during Krcma V Satlavske, where beef is baked on an open glow in front of we in a cosy caverned room with a Gothic theme. This and a final dish in Prague, in that we had a possess personal accordion player, were clear culinary highlights.
The outing was good offset between organisation activities and giveaway time to do as we please. Our guided debate on a second morning supposing us with a chronological credentials to a city we so desperately craved as story students and took us from a hostel, by a aged town, opposite a Charles Bridge and down onto Kampa Island. Here we were left to explore, entrance opposite a John Lennon wall, a constantly elaborating wall of rainbow graffiti to remember a male himself and a barbarous Beatles. We had two-day tickets to Prague Castle- a formidable obstruction of palaces and churches sitting atop a mountain giving pleasing views opposite Prague. We also climbed a circuitously Petrin Lookout Tower during dusk, that gave us even improved views, done some-more enchanting as a object had begun to set. Another prominence within a city centre would be a libraries. Our debate beam endorsed saying a inside of a open library, where there is a cylindrical sculpture done from books. Look inside and deftly positioned mirrors give a sense that we are about to tumble into a never finale blank of reading material. Across a way, we can compensate really small to revisit a Klementium library complex. You can see both a aged Baroque Library Hall, housing 20,000 works from a early 17th century onwards and stand a Astronomical Tower giving 360 grade views among a really heart of Prague’s Old Town.
Our day trips to Cesky Krumlov and Karolvy Vary combined movement to a differently entitled ‘city break’ and showed us a panorama closer to a borders to both Austria and Germany respectively. In Cesky Krumlov, we explored a castle, unsuccessful to mark any bears erratic turn in a palace tray (though there was an tangible enclosure), found an intriguing nunnery muster that we unsuccessful to know as a information was all in Czech (still no thought as to because there was a hulk 3 headed dog sculpture) and played pooh-sticks (I won, of course.)
Karlovy Vary is a sauna city and therefore attracts a generally wealthier conspirator to us students. Surrounded by Prada and Versace, we wondered a pleasing streets aimlessly for a while, surrounded by pastel shadowy buildings with exuberant frontages. After tea and cake (did we mention, we ate a lot?) in a pleasing café named Elefant, we got together a diversion plan, done a approach to a funicular and took ourselves adult a hill. It had already been snowing during a bottom, so during a tip there was a full on snowstorm and we felt most some-more during home frolicking about in a snow. The Diana Tower we climbed during a tip gave us violent views down over a city and around a surrounding countryside- all blanketed in snow. We even found a mini plantation with dual ponies, 3 goats, dual micro pigs and a white peafowl named Frosty and done a snowman. On a approach behind down, we found a statue of Karl Marx. It was a sundry day, to contend a least.
Thank we to a History Society, in sold Brittany Serafin, for organising such an extraordinary trip. It was a ideal approach to spend a week immersing ourselves in a new enlightenment and some-more importantly, we were also really innovatively training during a same time.
[Image: Ellie Parker]