Moravia, Witches, and Vampires (2)

I'm studying in the birthplace of the legend of vampires.  I suppose that's kinda cool isn't it?  Today we had a lecture about witch hunts, vampires, the Black Death, and the old Catholic Church, and it’s really interesting how all of those topics tie in together.  I always knew that witch hunts used to actually happen, but I never really knew on how large of a scale they took place.  Beginning in the 17^th century, 50,000-60,000 people were burned at the stake as “witches”, with groups of these “witches” sometimes exceeding over 100 people.  However, after the witches were burned, the villagers then had to worry about them turning into vampires, as vampires could only come from witches that had rose from the grave. Moravia, the region of the Czech Republic where Olomouc located, was the place where people first started to believe in vampires, and I am told that some places and some events that took place here made it into the book Dracula.  It was really a very interesting lecture. 

The classes that we are taking here are without a doubt the most interesting classes that I have ever had in my life. I can honestly say that I have learned more since I have been here than in years of being back in America.  Not only am I learning things in class, but also literally everywhere I go.  Our classes are set up in a unique format, we have one over basic Czech language, another which is entirely based on blogging, and the other class is a collection of different lectures, from several different lecturers, on many different topics.  Over the last few days we have learned a lot about US foreign policy, the European Union, and NATO.  While I wouldn’t consider topics like these as boring, I never really thought that I would think of this type of stuff as super interesting, but honestly I think I could take years of classes like this and never get tired of it.  It's very interesting to see first-hand how things like WWII, communism, and the Soviet Union / Russia, still have huge impacts on life today.  Back home I really never would have thought of these topics as something that are still really impacting life, but after coming here I can see that without a doubt these topics still have a HUGE effect on today’s life.  All of our different lecturers have put a pretty big emphasis on the actions of Russia and how there are so many parallels to what is happening now to what happened during WWII and the Cold War.  It’s actually very unnerving, and you can tell that all of these unbelievably intelligent professors have the same consensus about how Putin and Russia are becoming a huge threat for this region and for the rest of the world.  When our professors talk about this topic you can sense that they have a true sense of fear about what is happening, and I really think that Americans should start taking this much more seriously than we currently are.

                Tomorrow morning my classmates and I will be taking a weekend field trip to Prague, and Dresden, Germany.  Keep posted for more in the next couple of days!