Prague day 6!!! And we are off to CEZ bright and early for a company visit with one of the largest company’s in the Czech Republic! CEZ is a leading energy group so getting to visit one of their many power plants was a great experience! After a long bus ride through the countryside we arrived at the plant, where we could see it towering about all other small villages within the area! Once there, we received a small lecture on what CEZ is all about and how they operate, afterwards, it was onto the fun part, plant tour!

Walking around the power plant was such a surreal experience, all of the equipment is huge and loud, and even though this is no where close to my area of engineering expertise, it does make you take a step back and appreciate all that is involved in other fields. One of the coolest parts of the plant tour was going all the way up to the 28th floor and getting the most amazing view of not just the plant, but also the surrounding villages and bright yellow canola fields.

We were served an absolutely amazing lunch filled with all sorts of Czech cuisine. I don’t think I’ll ever get over how well they cook beef here, it always manages to melt in your mouth no matter what kind of cut it is. And the day was still going!!! We were off to the mine after that!

After lunch we took an off-road bus all the way over to a very large open pit mine, at first I just thought we were going to look at it from a distance and observe all the machines from up on top of the hill, but no, we actually got the chance to travel down into the mine! I know I had wayyy too much fun walking around in the coal dust and stepping on any piece of coal within my reach. Not only did we get to see the material that they are drilling for, we even got to see some of the drilling in action! Huge machines were eating away at the walls of the mine in order to extract the coal as a power source. Again, even though this is not my field of study, it was so interesting to learn about how they harvest the coal as well as some of the conservation efforts in place to help preserve the area after drilling had been done! I am very thankful for this experience and even though my shoes will definitely never be clean again, I can’t say I regret jumping all around the coal one bit

To end the night we grabbed a quick dinner of traditional Czech sausages in order to catch a Black Light show! This was a traditional show that The Czech Republic is known for and it was such a pleasure to see their art form. I really enjoyed the show and found myself laughing at many of the hidden references.

This has definitely been one of my favorite days of the trip and I cannot wait for the rest!

Until tomorrow

Emma