By Jay Skelton Everyone has been a victim of something, of someone; and, because of that, everyone feels sorry for a fellow victim. Everyone can respect a fellow victim. Everyone can trust a fellow victim. But what if that person that is respected, that is trusted, is not the victim at all. What if those […]
By Mia White Budapest is known for its many gorgeous and unique landmarks that are scattered among the city from one block to another. Buda and Pest, once two different cities on opposite sides of the Danube, have two very different lifestyles and cultures. Buda’s skyline is dominated by castles, cathedrals and residential villas, while […]
By Clare Toner Part of what drew me to the Central Europe Program offered by Syracuse University is its focus on the Holocaust. Prior to beginning this semester abroad, I considered myself to be well-versed on this subject. I studied it throughout my elementary, middle, and high school history courses in small doses and felt […]
By Kyra McDermott In every corner of the world, monuments and memorials are created to commemorate pieces of the past that need to be remembered. During our travels throughout Europe, I began to pay closer attention to the effectiveness of each of these memorials. Before this trip, I tended to take memorials for what they were […]
By Rody Conway Can a city be out-of-place? Vienna and Budapest, the two capitals of the former dual-monarchy of Austria-Hungary, don’t feel like they belong in the 21st century. The abundance of intact gothic, renaissance, and baroque architecture places these two cities in a sort of limbo in time. Despite the recent explosion in popularity […]
By Taylor Krzeminski In Central Europe, memorialization of lost life during and after the Third Reich rarely centers on how to remember, but who is worth remembering. Places of remembrance often engage in rewriting history – distancing citizens from complicity under fascist and communist parties as times of ‘foreign occupation’. Besides small acknowledgements of the impact […]
By Anthony Russo During all of our travels the one thing I was most taken back by was the synagogues we visited. I was raised in a very catholic/Christian household. I had been to a number of different churches from a variety of different denominations of Christianity. Baptist churches were much more laid back and […]
By Hanz Valbuena “Asgard is not a place, it’s a people.” Thor: Ragnarok may have been heavily and rightfully criticized, but when I heard this line, it hit home. My concept of nationality and identity is ever so inconsistent and fluid, but I want to believe that a nation lives through its people, not its […]
By Alexander Wilgocki Depending on your age, it may be difficult to imagine a world where the Czech Republic and Slovakia were one nation. Today, two nations exist with their own flags, languages, currency in use (Slovakia uses the Euro while the Czech Rep. has the koruna), and beautiful cities and landscapes. However, when the […]
By Tayla Myree “We need a Malcolm X,” said Ladislava Gaziova, a Romani activist and one of the founders of Prague’s Romafuturism Library. She went on to describe the many acts of discrimination that the Romani people have had to face such as unequal access to education, unemployment, housing discrimination, colorism, and many other issues. […]