Ok, we left off on April 15th ... Hm, that Monday wasn't that notable. We had two lectures in the Albertov lecture hall (the entrance and building in general are really pretty- I need to take a picture of it). The first lecture was on Czech demography. Basically, Czech people are dying out and no one is having any kids. In 300 years, if current demographic trends continue, there will only be about 60,000 Czechs (there's 10.2 million now). Why? People are too busy persuing a career and its very difficult to obtain a living situation that would be conducive to raising kids. Bummer. But the government is brainstorming ways to raise the fertility rate, including debt forgiveness and building more day cares. We also had a quick lecture on medical geography (the study of how disease and health care are distributed). For the afternoon, Katie and I went to one of the islands in the Vltava river to do some reading and enjoy lunch. This was our view.
Prague is great. In the afternoon we wrapped up demography with a lecutre on demographic transition. On Tuesday we visited two places that, as Prof Sneddon would sat, "gave flesh to" Czechia's demography: a maternity ward and a senior center. The maternity ward was very beautiful, and was one of 12 such wards in Czechia. It serves all of Prague and only has eight delivery rooms- while we were there seven were being, um, 'used' to make new Czechs. The senior center, in the city center near the National Theatre, offered social services and physical therapy to seniors on a walk/call-in basis. The aging population is going to place a lot of strain on the economically active population (people aged 14 to 65) and places like this non-profit are trying to ease the transition and make life more enjoyable for an oftentimes undervalued part of society.
Wednesday we rolled out of bed early and boarded a bus to Slovakia. They didn't even bother checking our passports at the border. Overall, Slovakia seems like a ... milder version of Czechia: the food is less severe (gnocchi with sheep cheese and pork crackling is a typical meal) the language is easier to pronounce (no 'r's with haceks), and things just seemed a littled more laid back. How's that for broad sweeping generalizations? We stayed in communist-era dorms at the local university; I was lucky and scored the one single. After dropping our things by the dorm, we headed off to Castle Devin.
Originally a Roman depot, then as yet another castle from the 14th century this place was probably one of the cooler castle visits of the trip. It was situated right at a confluence of the Danube and from the tippy-top you could see over into Austria. (Just a little farther down the Danube from Bratislava is Vienna). The best part about the whole day was that it was Renee and Elsa's 21st birthday- ON THE SAME DAY.
They were pretty happy campers. After Castle Devin we took a quick drive-by tour of another car factory and some Slovak (should I say Slovak or Slovakian?) housing estates. After that we headed into Bratislava proper and straight to what Ivan (our prof du jour) called the 'Bratislava Beverly Hills'- a set of terraced rich-people houses which also included the US Embassy, housed in a building not so subtly reminiscent of the White House. Right at the very top of the 'Hills' was some sprawling WWII monument which must have been constructed post-1968 because everything was in Russian (and the whole point, it seemed, was to remind people who had liberated them from the Nazis).
It also offered a fairly decent view of downtown (old town) Bratislava.
The cross you can see in the foreground is the Slovak take on the Crucifix and has become such a distinctly Slovak symbol in these post-1993 days that it now adorns the flag and all the currency. After that we stopped by Bratislava Castle (which was so unremarkable that I don't want to waste any of Google's storage by uploading a picture of it) and then were set loose in the Old Town.
We all headed to a guidebook-recommended restaurant to celebrate Renee and Elsa's joint birthday. The food was good and the beer as cheap (if not cheaper?) than Prague's. After that it was off to Tesco (the British equivalent of Wal-Mart) to stock up on breakfast supplies and cheap booze then off the a public square to continue the festivities. Unfortunately this is where I was a huge wuss and turned in early- Elsa and crew headed out to a bar and, before long, she was engaged to a Slovak gun-runner (named 'Archie') who also owned a yacht in Croatia. Right. Even though Archie got his fake 'green card' Elsa got a little antsy and sent her engagment ring to the bottom of the Danube. One of the better stories so far.The next morning we set off in our super-van (an extremely compact bus which barely held all of us) to Gabcikovo- a really big dam on the Danube. Originally planned as a joint venture between Czechoslovkia and Hungary, the Hungarians went broke half-way through and pulled out of the project which left Czechoslovakia and eventually Slovakia up the proverbial creek (Czechoslovakia took Hungary to the International Court of Justice for the first ever international ruling about a dam on an international waterway). In the end, Slovkia managed to finish it on their own and now it boasts a whitewater course, an oddly out of place modern art museum (built by a Dutch philanthropist ... the Dutch have a special affinity for dams), power generators, and lone concessions stand which makes really salty popcorn. Even though the dam has eight generators they only run three of them at any given time because if all of them ran simultaneously the water would back up so far that it would actually flood Budapest- something Slovak politicians still threaten if Hungary ever tries to short-change them again. Prof Sneddon is really big on dams; their his main research interest. He's written extensively about dams in Southeast Asia and the faculty at Charles planned this trip because they wanted to align their excursions with our professor's speciality. After Gabcikovo we headed back to Bratislava for our last Slovak meal and then headed back to Prague by train.
On Friday Ivan lectured on land-use in Czechia and the changes the landscape underwent during the transition. The communists, with the goal of all things equal in mind, heavily subsidized agriculture and in fact used the profits from productive land to prop up production in less-productive pieces of land. The result was the heavy, heavy use of chemicals, pesticides, and fertilizer which had devastating effects on water-quality and the environment. The afternoon lecture focused on pollution in Czechia and tried to complicate the notion that the environment is 'healthier' under the market economy/ democracy/ open society. For example water quality has improved drastically, not only because farmers are no longer forced to cultivate unproductive pieces of land but also because people had to start paying for water- from at the tap to its use in heavy industry. Because it cost something people started conserving. However, air pollution, while MUCH cleaner by some measures (mainly due to SOx scrubbers in coal plants), could also be seen as getting worse as private transportation takes off- not only are the streets clogged with traffic but overall petrol-burning emissions are skyrocketing. We had learned in an earlier lecture, much to our dismay, that the metro stop we use to get to school (IP Pavlova) is the most polluted place in Czechia because of its poor air quality- I can't stand to be there for longer than 15 minutes or else I get a headache.
On Saturday, in preparation of Prof Sneddon's departure, 'the boys' got together to play soccer (or should I say football?) in Vitkov Park, the great park right behind our apartments. Prof Sneddon was an adept player and had some pretty slick moves. However, MVP definitely went to Eric, who not only scored the most goals but also had a massive nosebleed early on and used grass and leaves the clog it up. Eric Cates: Hard Guy. That night we had a 'progressive dinner' in our apartment building, where Eric and Dan made appetiziers (nachos and guacamole), the girls in room 33 handled the salad (mozz., basil and tomatoes), our room prepared the main course (stir-fry) and the girls in room 32 made desert: chocolate fondue. Pretty good. Each room also had a particular libation, progressing from ... well, some form of tequila to mojitos to beer to White Russians. We finished off the night with a trip to the club Lucerna, where a mostly international crowd enjoyed pop hits from the 80s and 90s, and when those songs ran out from the 70s. A great day overall. Sunday was spent doing laundry (as always) and cleaning up in the wake of the progressive dinner.
And that's one week down! Three more to come ...
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