Back to Bohemia:
Study Abroad in the Czech Republic
John M. Coggeshall
Department of Sociology

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Imagine what the streets of a thousand-year old city might be like.  Imagine the sounds of voices muffled by narrow, cobblestoned streets.  Imagine the light from lamps casting shadows on gargoyles glaring from churches.  Imagine standing in the royal courtyard of Habsburg emperors.  Then imagine emailing these descriptions to your friends back home from the corner Internet Café.

Once again, Clemson students discovered the amazing contrasts of old and new that are the hallmarks of life in the Czech Republic and its capital, Prague.  Along with our local guide, Jasan Burin (an English-speaking Czech architect), we spent four wonderful weeks in this beautiful Central European country.  Nestled between Germany, Austria, Poland, and Slovakia in the heart of Europe, the Czech Republic offers a perfect place to launch a study abroad experience..  As required, all students paid Clemson tuition and registered for either social science or humanities credit.
 
As we did for our previous trips, we wanted students to experience Czech culture as intimately as possible: meet Czech students their own age, eat local cuisine in typical restaurants, take public transportation, and stay in youth hostels.  Having traveled to the country five different times now, my colleagues and I have fostered numerous Czech contacts, including university professors, business people, and students.  By combining informal lectures with tours, museum visits, and meetings with our Czech friends, we were able to offer Clemson students a very enriching and diversified academic program. We also try to keep down costs.  For example, because of the positive relations Clemson students had established on previous trips, our Prague hostel (five minutes from the heart of Old Town and two minutes from an Internet Café) continued to offer our lodging and breakfast at the same price as two years ago: twelve dollars/day.  Meals in good local restaurants might cost six dollars (drinks and dessert included).  Prague’s subway costs about 30 cents/ride, and inter-city busses and trains might cost several dollars, depending on the distance.  In fact, the total costs for almost four weeks in central Europe, lodging and round-trip airfare included, amounted to about $1400 per student.
 
To help orient the students to Czech culture and the city of Prague, Jasan once again led a three-day tour through the heart of the Old Town, a glorious mixture of Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque palaces, building, and houses.  Eventually we crossed the Charles Bridge, a 14th century link to the opposite bank, a jumble of red-tiled medieval buildings and cobblestoned streets constituting the Lesser Quarter.  Rising on a hill above is Prague Castle, “modernized” by the Habsburgs in the 18th century, with a skyline marked by the twin Gothic spires of St. Vitus Cathedral and the smaller Romanesque spires of St. George’s Basilica.

As the crossroads of Europe, the Czech Republic has seen important human activities for tens of thousands of years.  Outside the little Moravian village of Dolni Vestonice, for example, Clemson students visited the site of a 28,000 year old prehistoric hunting camp and saw artifacts, including the world’s oldest ceramic figurines, in the town’s small anthropology museum.  Later, invaded by Celtic and Germanic tribes, the Czech Republic remained on the fringe of the Roman Empire, and we viewed the site of a frontier outpost and artifacts from that period in the National Museum.  By the 9th century, several early Slavic kingdoms had developed, and we heard a talk by Dr. Leos Satava (my friend and colleague) on the historic and legendary founding of the Bohemian kingdom.
 
By the 14th century, the Bohemian kingdom had grown rich from trade.  Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor, ruled from Prague; we saw his magnificently ornate burial casket in the national cathedral.  Much of the kingdom’s prosperity stemmed from the thriving silver-mining town of Kutna Hora, where we toured the royal mint and explored the silver mines themselves – narrow, dripping passages hewn from solid rock, honeycombing the hill beneath the city.  Another bustling medieval city was Cesky Krumlov, with its imposing castle perched on a cliff above the town, surrounded almost completely by the Vltava (Moldau) River.  Today Krumlov is a perfectly-preserved medieval town, a UNESCO World Heritage site, and Clemson students spent two days exploring the castle and tiny streets of this architectural gem.

By the early 15th century, a hundred years before Martin Luthor, Master Jan Hus of Prague preached against the excesses of the Church; we toured his restored chapel and saw his Art Nouveau statue, its back toward a huge, Baroque Catholic church.  Hus’s execution in 1415 sparked the Hussite Wars, and we viewed skulls from victims of those wars in an ossuary near Kutna Hora.
 
By the early 17th century, the Czech kingdom had begun to escape the religious persecutions following the Hussite Wars and the subsequent Austrian Habsburg control, until Imperial representatives were tossed out a window in Prague’s castle (which we also toured).  This Second Defenestration of Prague triggered the Thirty Years’ War, culminating in the complete absorption of the Czech kingdom into the Roman Catholic Habsburg Empire.

By the 19th century, and despite the heavy weight of Habsburg rule, education and industry flourished.  In Brno, for example, Gregor Mendel conducted experiments which eventually led to the science of genetics.  Clemson students visited his monastery and the small museum there (the bathroom doors were marked X and Y).  Under the Habsburgs, art and music flourished as well, although often reflecting the struggle for Czech independence.  At the National Cemetery, Clemson students visited the graves of two Czechs who used art as emblematic of national identity: Anton Dvorak and Alphonse Mucha.

After World War I, the newly-independent nation of Czechoslovakia became one of the strongest economies in Europe.  One Czech international company, Bata Shoes, built an ultra-modern department store on Prague’s main square.  On their own “reconnaissance” trip (also known as shopping), Clemson students discovered for themselves the excellent comfort, style, and price of Bata shoes.
 
Although economically prosperous and politically stable, Czechoslovakia could not prevent the turmoil in its neighbor to the north and west – Germany.  When the Reich occupied the Sudenten without Czechoslovakia’s agreement, Jews, Romany (Gypsies), intellectuals, and other “enemies” were sent to the old Habsburg military town of Terezin (Theresianstadt), which became a concentration camp.  Students viewed the museum (including a poignant collection of Holocaust children’s art), several barracks, the prison, and the crematorium.

In May 1942, Czech patriots assassinated the Nazi leader in Prague; Jasan and I viewed the bullet-riddled car in the Army Museum.  Outraged, Hitler ordered the obliteration of the little Czech village of Lidice, including the execution of all males and the incarceration (in death camps) of the women and children.  By design, we visited the site on the 60th anniversary of the atrocity, and the toys and flowers left on the bronze children’s monument moved us to tears.
 
Besides the museums and historical tours, students also had numerous opportunities to meet Czechs of varied ages and backgrounds.  Besides Jasan, recently returned to the country of his birth, we met several times with Dr. Satava and his wife Vladka, both university professors at Charles University in Prague.  An independent film-maker, Ondrej Soukup, introduced the students to Prague’s secretive, underground, non-touristic pubs.  Through previously-established contacts, we also shared Moravian wine in the studio of the famous Czech sculptor Olbram Zoubek.

One of the most relaxing weekends was spent in the little village of Krompach, on the German/Czech border, as guests of Karel and Barbora Spalovi (Barbora is Ondrej’s sister).  We hiked through beautiful, tree-covered mountains (resembling North Carolina’s) into eastern Germany to view a museum exhibit on the Habsburgs, sipped beers with the locals in the town’s Renaissance-era pub, and biked through tiny villages along winding country roads.

We plan to return next summer (2005), to visit the same places, meet the same people, and expand upon new contacts we made this year.  We feel we can offer Clemson students and faculty a truly authentic cross-cultural experience, in a country rich with history, and at a price much less than trips to other Western European countries.  Off the tourist track, in tiny Czech hamlets and in local Prague pubs, our students thoroughly explored another culture.  That experience is always a transformative one, and we were proud to have offered our students an important learning opportunity.


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