Today began with a three course cooking class featuring traditional Czech dishes. We learned how to make a mushroom potato soup, a bread dumpling and beef, and sweet potato pancakes for dessert. From these dishes, it was easy to tell that the potato is a staple of Czech cuisine. We also learned that mushrooms are a favorite, where Czech people compete to pick the biggest and best mushrooms, so it makes sense that they appear in many dishes. This experience was very fun and helped me feel more comfortable with some of the more intimidating looking dishes by making them from scratch.
After cooking, we started a walking tour west of the river in what is referred to as the Lesser Town. Among the many landmarks we visited, my favorite was the St. Vitus Cathedral. We learned that it took over 1000 years to build due to a civil war and restorations. This was greatly reflected in the style of the castle. While the more recently build side of the cathedral was a gothic style, the other side was a starkly different baroque style. This showed the difference in engineering at these times due to the great details present on the gothic side. The cathedral had hundreds of intricate figures carved into the stone on the side. It was interesting to see that some of these figures were more religious looking, while others had a cultural significance. This shows that although religion is important to the Czechs, they value their culture almost equally.
Swanson School of Engineering 