The Plus3 trip to Prague is so awesome that it is hard to have a bad time. That being said, I think that if a student wants to get the most out of the trip there are useful strategies. First and foremost, it is important to get enough sleep. There is lots of exciting nightlife…
Tag: Joshua Frantz
Thanksgiving in Czechia
There are a lot of great things going on throughout the Czechia trip. The two that I am most grateful for are the immaculate way our trip was planned and the beautiful Catholic Churches. Every day throughout our two weeks has had an exciting trip to either a cultural destination or a company visit. The…
Engineering in Czechia
Engineering in Czechia seems to be much like Engineering in America. The only differences I can imagine would be dealing exclusively with the metric system, needing to communicate in multiple languages and having more government supervision. Dealing with the Metric system is certainly easier when considering that everything is base ten, but I would struggle…
Local Czech Customs
My favorite Czech custom is the polite respect with which they treat each meeting. When one Czech walks into a store, greets an acquittance or in any way meets in a formal setting the person is expected to say, “Dobry den”. It is the formal way to greet someone, and it means “Good day”. The…
Amazing Czech Food
While visiting a coal power plant our group got to experience a Czech meal from some caterers. It included beef in gravy, beef that was really red, ham, little cupcakes and an assortment of drinks. The different kinds of meat were what made the meal special. Most of the meals here have been pretty light…
Misconceptions of the former Soviet Block
Today we went on the best company trip yet. It was a coal burning power plant and the adjacent brown coal strip mine. The proportions of everything were incredible. The top of the coal burner was the highest building in the Czech Republic and the strip mine was absolutely ginormous. What surprised me about the…
Czech vs Pittsburgh Universities
Overall, the college life between Prague’s Universities and Pitt seems to be pretty similar. They have dorms, semesters, exams and university social events much like we do at Pitt. One physical difference between the University here in Prague and at Pitt is that here the University is spread out over the entire city while at…
Little Czech Things
Throughout our amazing journey I have been noticing subtle difference from America alongside the massive ones. One is that people do not acknowledge each other when eye contact is made in the street. I smiled at one or two people today that I passed by, and they just looked away. It’s not necessarily a bad…
Fish out of Water
Today was awesome. We got to visit a university, learn about a company called TechTest and go on a scavenger hunt in Prague. The best part of the day was our walk to the university. On the maybe 20-minute walk we passed a playhouse where Mozart played, a big square where a man named Jan…
Ups and downs of Prague
Today was my second day in Prague and I am loving it. The highpoint of the day was visiting the beautiful St. Vitus’s Cathedral. Words cannot begin to describe how amazing it is. I added a picture in the description, but I don’t think that it does the Cathedral justice. Plus, while we were admiring…
First day in Prague
We landed today in Prague at 2PM and I have had maybe three hours of sleep in the last 24 Hours. None the less, we got an awesome whirlwind tour of the old part of Prague. In the space of maybe a mile we walked past several beautiful churches, a castle and the Charles Bridge….
Let’s go Prague!
Hello, my name is Josh Frantz, I am a Mechanical Engineering student at the University of Pittsburgh, and I am from Bethel Park, Pennsylvania. While at Pitt I have managed to gain two semesters of professional experience working at a company called SMS Group. It is a German engineering company dedicated to designing steel mills. …