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In English

1.12.2019
Pekka Korhonen,

Cultural Treasures workshop in Prague

Students' experiences from the workshop in Prague

Sunday 24th nov

We started our trip to Praha by walking to school in the morning. It wasn’t that cold, and there was next to no snow either, but we were all looking forward to our ‘trip to the warm South.’

On to our trip came three teachers, and nine students, part of whom we picked up as we drove past Pattijoki as we drove (with our Schools white minibus) to the nearest airport in Oulu.

We got to the airport without any problems, and the last three students were already there waiting for us.

Despite the random drug tests and malfunctioning ticket machines we got to the other side of the bag drop and security check in good time and were all ready to get to the plane and get going.

We got to Praha, the capital of Czech Republic, in the evening, and left our things at the Hotel.

Prague at our 1st night
Prague at our 1st night

The hotel itself was a surprise, we got paired in rooms just like we had been promised, but the rooms themselves were much larger than at least I had thought to even think about. (what exactly is a dressing room, who needs a dressing room?)

After looking through our hotel rooms we went to the large metro station on the opposite side of our street and went to eat at the Burger King there, and to buy water and snacks from the Billa market at the same station. (It was a very large station, just so you know. )

After shopping the ones who weren’t too tired and still wanted to go look around the city went for a walk. Our aim was the river and we got there, though the walk was a bit longer than we had anticipated, but we didn’t really care as the large city had so much to see all around us.

After finding the river we walked all the way back to the hotel to get to sleep, so we could get up for our first day of school the next day.

By Janica Kamutta

Monday 25th Nov

We woke up at 7:15am and walked to our breakfast place, that luckily wasn’t far away from our hotel. It was a very chill and atmospheric place, and we’d eat here for the time we are in Prague. After breakfast we went to the subway, our stop was Optov, where the Skola Michael was located.

Buildings in Opatov
Buildings in Opatov

We were welcomed to the school and given a tour around the departments there. I felt like the school was a maze compared to our school, but ai guess if you went there daily, you’d learn it easy.
After the tour we were put in 5 international groups and we did an assignment; chose a random object in the room and gave it a price, a slogan and a poster and our goal was to get it ‘sold’. Objects that were chosen were for example scissors, a window, Lenka (a teacher who was with us during the program) and a photograph. Scissors won.

We went to eat lunch to a pizza place near the school (it was amazing by the way) Then we went back to the school and had a lecture about Pro Bono “Advertising for good causes”. It was interesting and I liked what Pro Bono stood for. We then got an assignment on making an ad using pro bono adverting. Our team (Janica, Anna, Jane and Me) chose to do something that would help older people who are lonely (or lonely in general) with a slogan ‘no one has to be alone’.

School ended and we went to chill and relax to the hotel, some of us went to see Prague castle. Later in the evening we went to roam and adventure to the city centre and ended up eating in an american restaurant (i think?)

By Riikka Majaranta

27th of November

Today we started the day in Skola Michael with a small lecture on architectural photography. The photography teacher told us about what type of lighting flattered buildings the best, what’s the difference between historical and modern architecture, and how to work with what you have weather -wise. Afterwards each team was given a specific building to shoot. Our team got the Dancing House, built in 1996 by Frank Gehry and Vlado Milunić.

Dancing house has got inspiration from the dancers Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire
Dancing house has got inspiration from the dancers Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire

After lunch, we hopped on the metro and a tram to go snap some pictures. Only the Czech students had proper system cameras with them though. So me, another finn and a hungarian student used our phones to the best of our abilities and chatted together. After taking pictures of not only the building but also some seagulls, we left for coffee. Another group joined us, and we met another finnish student. After drinking, talking and eating some cake, our little finnish group separated from the other students to go save a roommate who got lost from their team on the streets of Prague. We took the metro and headed into the District of Florenc, which none of us had been to before.
We idled around the metro station for a few minutes, waiting for updates. But another group found the lost student before us. And so we headed back to our hotel and laughed about it together.

By Eemil Holappa

My Wednesday in Prague

So my day started like any usual schoolday. My alarm was set to 7 am local time so I that I’d have enough time to shower before we had to head to eat some breakfast.

At 7.45 am me and my roommates headed to the place where we had eaten breakfast every morning before school.

I ate the same thing I had eaten every morning before. My favourite kind of breakfast was a toasted bread that had cheese, ham and a fried egg in it.

My breakfast
My breakfast

We always traveled to our school with a metro. The metro was usually really full on the mornings because people traveled to work.

We arrived to the scool a little late, but nobody didn’t really mind that. We started to study and we got taught about the use of Photoshop when shooting pictures of architecture. We got a mission to go shoot pictures of some local cultural landmarks in our international groups.

After finishing up with our photos my group and I started to look for a good place to have some coffee. Finally when we found a good place to sit down at I decided to order a piece of a white chocolate cake and a double espresso. It was kinda expensive but it was worth it no doubt about it.

 a white chocolate cake
a white chocolate cake

During the relaxing coffeetime one of our members from the finnish group sent a message that she got lost in the city. We started to worry and decided to go look for her, but after we got to the place where she had been at she messaged us that Sami had found her. So we decided to go to the hostel.

I was so tired after getting to the hostel that I just jumped on my bed and took a deep breath and started to watch Netflix.

After some time we went to get some food from Subway with the younger Sami.

I accidentally picked a sauce called ”sweet onion” and I slightly regretted it. It was alright but at the same time way too sweet to have in a Subway sandwich. After we finished eating we came back to our hostel and started watching some Niilo22.

The final adventure we did with younger Sami was that we traveled across the town to find a good candyshop. We walked like 5 kilometres for nothing and when we finally found a candyshop I figured out that 400 grams of candy costed 14 euros.

I decided that I was too tired to look for another candyshop that I just bought those 400 grams of candy. We walked from the candyshop to a McDonalds and I ordered my first ever Big Mac.

Then we walked back to our hostel and i started to sleep right away. This was my Wednesday in Prague.

By Vincent Hotti

Friday 29th nov

On friday last squeeze in Prague workshop began. Breakfast started at 8.30am and routinly i went there little bit late. After the breakfest our destination was subway station. From subway station we headed towards Škola Michael.
When we got there we were ahead of schedule and we had to wait for the rest of the groups.
After a moment of waiting, other grops began to arrive.
The plan for the day was to present our advance assignments. After that we had to give presentation about the architecture photoshoot.
The presentations came and went, there was no bigger problems.
After the presentations, the final seminar began.
At the last seminar, certificates were distributed to those who attended the workshop.
In addition to certificates, we received pencils and Czech Christmas treat.
After the seminar we had to wait little moment and after the waiting we had to fill feedback form. In it we were able to express our own opinions on the success and implementation of the workshop.
After completing the feedback form, i went directly to the hotel, thus skipping lunch.
In hotel i spended little bit time, after that i decided to go touring the city.
I was touring the city by subway.

Prague subway station
Prague subway station

I visited in Balladi shopping center and the christmas market.
After touring the city my next destionation was to go back to the hotel.
After spending some time at the hotel. The feeling of hunger began to increase.
We decided to be original and go to mcdonalds. After a meal, I decided to go to the hotel to rest
After all, tomorrow is going to be the last day in Prague. By Sami Riihiaho
Friday

Today we all gave our presentations of the culttural landmark, from our homecountrys and also the presentations about famous czech building and their architecture.

Other than that nothing much happened, since we were going to leave tomorrow, so we wanted to get some rest before the day of travelling, also we had been walking around the city, for an whole week by now.

But on the trip as a whole, it was really cool ot see what much bigger city looks like, learn about their way of life, cultture and also it was pretty great to see an old europian architecture myself and not just in pictures.

Speaking of architecture the old buildings of czech (that really are old, since they were not destroyed during the war like so many other cities and buildings in other countrys.) were just awesome and to think about the time period those were build in, meaning that they did not have any of the moder building technology that we use today, really makes you appreciate them even more.

Other thing that was really interesting was the actually working public transport, since here in finland it,s much more difficult to arrange that because of long distances and harsh winters but czech being much smaller country, there was just trains and metros everywhere and the wait times were practically non existing.

By Sami Kemppainen

Saturday 30th November

It was Saturday. We woke up, packed stuff and went for breakfast at 7.00. It was raining snow, but the snow melted soon. After breakfast we jumped into metro from Hlavni Nadrazi. From there we travelled to Museum, and continued by the yellow line. Finally we got out on different stop to travel to Prague airport with airport bus. It was full of people…

At airport we waited in long line for about half an hour to get in Finnair plane from Prague to Helsinki.

We arrived to Helsinki at 13.35 or 14.35 Finnish time. It was -3°C. Then we headed to Burger King. After that we sat waiting at port 23. Everyone was either tired or giggly.

We landed to Oulu. Clock was 18.11. It’s -5°C outside.

Our car was waiting for us at the Oulu airport
Our car was waiting for us at the Oulu airport

Pekka drove us back to Raahe. There was so much snow everywhere! Incredible. Finally back at my flat at 20.30. What a long and emotional day.

By Iida Tornberg