Bohemia

This past weekend we went to Bohemia, which is in the northern part of the Czech Republic. It was an interesting trip; it was the first time that I really saw the whole group together. I found that I like most of the people that I’m with but of course there are exceptions. There is one group who seems to know each other, only hang out together, and is extremely obnoxious. They were extremely loud, drunk, and explain why so many foreigners hate Americans. That was too bad, but other than that and the cold weather, the trip was good. We were told that we were starting at a castle, but it really turned out to be a château not a very interesting one at that. But the second half of the tour was wine tasting in the cellar; that was awesome. The cellar had huge arched ceilings, giant casks of wine that you could live in, and a giant griffin. We got to hang out and taste six different Czech wines; it was a lot of fun. We then ate in the small town the chateau was in and got to meet some more people in the group. We drove to the hotel we were staying in and then went out on the town, which was not much of an experience, it was a small town. The next day we toured a glass blowing factory which was pretty cool, not at all what I expected. The Czech’s are way more laid back about work place safety. These guys are all just hanging out in sandals and shorts with no safety goggles or hard hats next to liquid glass and 2500 degree furnaces. It was pretty awesome; one of them even had a beer at his work station. We then went to the store where they sell the glass, that was cool too. After lunch we hiked a mountain type thing that was interesting but not everything I had hoped. On Sunday we stopped at one more castle, it was way better than the first one, it was huge and had an unbelievable interior. The carved wood moldings on the ceilings were incredible. One interesting difference between the castles was that the first one was returned to the original family after the fall of communism and the second was still owned by the state. The family that owned the second castle joined the Nazis when they annexed Czechoslovakia and by doing so they renounced their Czech citizenship. Opps, picked the wrong side it seems