Czech Yourself Before You Trek Yourself
Even before the semester started, I signed up for two trips with DIS: the Czech Trek and the Sweden Canoe trip. This weekend I went to the Czech Republic, and in two weeks I will be going to Sweden.
It all started with a bus ride. We left from Copenhagen at 19:00, and boarded the long, awkwardly silent, overnight bus ride to the Czech Republic. Not only was it absurdly long, but in the middle of it we were told to wake up and evacuate the bus in order to board a ferry across the water to Germany. It was a rough night filled with little to no sleep, but it was all in the spirit of adventure! When we had almost made it to our hotel in Hruba Skala, we were greeted with "Goooooooood morning Czech Republic!" from our guide Will. Other 'Will-isms' included:
-Goooooood morning Germany!
-Guess who slept well last night! I only woke up 3 times! That's all I really had to share
-Does anyone else feel like we are driving through a magical fairytale land? Because I do
-I just put my hands up to my face and was shocked. I forgot that I had a beard for a minute there...
When we eventually got to Hruba Skala, we checked into a massive castle that was going to be our home-base for the next half-week. It was a beautiful castle with an amazing view, an awesome climable tower, and no hot water.
That day, coming right off the bus, we were led into some activities for the day! In the morning we split into groups and my group started out with icebreakers first, then moved onto archery. As we all know, I am the KING of icebreakers. This held true even in the Czech Republic. I didn't take pictures that day because I guess my tired mind was too exhausted to think of anything. Afterward, we had some swanky lunch and then moved on to a low-ropes course for the rest of the afternoon.
The next day, we were blocked for Rock Climbing and Caving. My group did rock climbing first, and it was a blast. They had three walls to climb on (easy, medium, and hard) and I got the chance to go up to the top of all three... In the opposite order as intended. There was also a place for rappelling , where you were in charge of your own fate as they dangled you over a ledge and expected you to lower yourself down. It was a beautiful time, and something that I have been used to because of the Boy Scouts. Other people were not so amused.
Afterwards, we departed for the Czesky Raj, a mountain range in the CR. We, again, split up into two groups and set out on the Caving adventure. When we go to the entrance of the area, our group was told to wait while the other went on ahead to start. We had nothing to do, so our guide Honza suggested that we play some games. He gathered us into a huddle and said we were going to play some "Bear Games." Of course. Bear Games. Classic Czech. Here are the rules to the Bear Games:
-There are two teams of more than two people, and each team claims a tree for their team
-When told to start, the first player in line for both teams must jump onto the tree and hug it for as long as possible (to escape the attacking bears, of course)
-When the player touches the ground, the next player in line for the team must jump on the tree to continue the game
-The game is over when one team goes through all of their players on the tree
-The team who collectively holds on the longest to the tree wins
And so we played Bear Games for 30 mintues straight. New classic.
We then went on into the Czesky Raj, and were told of gypsies hiding in caves, and the tresure to be found there! YAAHH-ARRRRGGG! The inner pirate in me was ready to burst. We made our way through caves and trails until we made our way to the end of the line. I was given the map because I was a Boy Scout. It was the worst map in the entire world. Six people tried decyphering it, to no avail. So the guides practically walked us through the entire trail! Once we came to the end of the line, there was no treasure... Boo. But the treasure we DID get is a story told by a lovely fellow trekker. It was one of those stories that took entirely too long and ended with a bad pun. We were in the final cave for about 20 minutes listening to that. I got bored pretty quickly.
The next day we got up early to go ziplining and rappelling! It was a fun time, but a little bit short. I still enjoyed going through those two, but it was nice to have an easy day after the long one before. Later in the day we had a bit of time to ourselves, so a crew of friends and I went into the town below the castle and explored a bit! It was a VERY Czech town with almost nothing in it but houses, sheep, and fields. We walked down the mountain to a convenience store and marveled at the variety of czech chocolates they had in the store. The Czech are all about wafer cookies. Also, they had this candy labeled "Confused? Skittles" which was a poor english translation, but I'll take it.
Honzaaa
Uh... Too far zoomed in
Then we went on a hike with the rest of the group and trekked through the mountains near the castle. We hiked for about 3 hours, so maybe we covered 7 miles or so, if I'm being generous. It was a lovely hike through the forest and had plenty of wonderful views out into the country.
That night we had a huge scavenger hunt by lantern light to look for clues around the castle. While walking around the castle at night, the guides were around hiding and trying to scare the groups. My group had a very very frightened person, whose shrieks in the night were both hilarious... and a bit terrifying.
In the morning we started the drive to Prague, to spend the day in the city! When we got there, the group of 40 of us walked to the center of town and they just kind of let us all go... I, unfortunately, did not look up the city beforehand and had NO idea what I was doing. Still, our group wandered around and found a place to sit down for some much needed coffee. Unfortunately, this coffee place was apparently the most expensive part of the city. We had no idea, and were only warned hours after the cafe incident... Tragedy strikes. After that we explored a bit on our own and traveled around the city until our guided tour time came, provided by DIS.
We went on the walking tour around the newer part of the city and walked all the way up to the castle square. We passed the Lenin Wall, which was a demonstration site for grafitti against communist censorship in Prague. We walked through famous landmarks like the Astronomical Clock, the Charles Bridge with lucky statues, the St. Vitus cathedral, and the castle gardens. We also so the most famous window in the ENTIRE WORLD. Yes, a window. If you are familiar with the second Defenstration of Prague, we were toured by the other side of the hall where the events took place. I fangirled pretty hard.
The window is on the other side of the hall from here!
Finally we met up with the bus after sitting in a bar grabbing $1 beers, absynth shots, and getting bottles of wine and chocolate for the road. We were pretty late, but we all made it before the group left. Just in time to sit for the bus ride back to Copenhagen. Over night. For 12 hours. Needless to say I passed out as soon as I got back home.
