Final Days in Ostrava

On Sunday we wrapped up our time in Ostrava. Several of us were surprised that it kind of felt like coming back home after the district conference since we had already spent some time in the area. Out last few days in the area were action packed as always.

On Wednesday we spent time at the Tatra Museum, several other sites in Stramberk, and time at the Ostrava International Rotary club.




























Thursday was another unique day. We started our day in a coal mining museum, spent some time by the pool, ended up changing clothes in a bar, and finished the evening at the symphony. An interesting day...
The coal mining museum was a fun experience. Coal, steel, and the auto industry have been important in the Ostrava region. This is one of the more industrial areas of the country. It was nice to see such an important part of their history. The concert in the evening was a very fun night. It was a great change in pace and something a little different. I believe Andrea may even have a new facebook friend...she went and met one of the guest performers.






































Friday was another interesting day. We spent our day with the members of the Opava International Rotary club and two exchange students from Columbia and Charlotte, NC. We ended up with some free time in the afternoon and had a chance to stop in on an old WW II bunker. Fascinating space.

Comenius University

A little late...but finally finished...
My vocational day in Bratislava was with Vladamier Frecer, with the Pharmacy faculty at Comenius University, and Jakub, a PhD student in the department. Comenius University is Slovakia's largest University and was established in 1919. The university currently consists of faculties of medicine, pharmacy, law, philosophy, education, management, physical education, social and economical sciences, natural sciences, theology, and math, physics and informatics.
We started our day with lots of information about the school. It sounds like there are good things happening on their campus. Jakub is actually working on research on new drugs that impact cellular growth in cancer patients. I don't know much about the research (over my head), but I am sure one day I will be able to say "I met them once" as they continue to do great research in the field.




Main building for the University. The buildings and faculties are actually scattered across the city like many of our urban campuses.




Lecture/assembly hall in the main building. Such a beautiful space. This is actually a photo from online. There were presentations in the room while we were there, so I didn't take any photos.




University library in the old town of Bratislava.
Overall, an excellent day. I have learned so much about higher education in both countries. I think there is a lot we can learn from them in our country. One of the major differences is the cost of higher education. Even the costs for those from other countries to attend public Universities is less than our traditional in-state tuition. Fundraising at the Universities is very different...even between the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Schools in both countries do work with grants for research, but there is still some concern from many in the systems about partnering with corporations on research grants. Individual giving is another story. I already explained that it is an emerging idea in the Czech Republic, but it is still very uncommon in Slovakia. Here, individuals are able to assign up to 2% of their taxes to charitable organizations. I don't know if much or any of that goes towards higher education.
This was not my only encounter with education in Slovakia. I was fortunate to also be staying with Blanka Schellingova and her family (thank you for everything...I had a great time). Blanka was formerly with the Ministry of Education and was one of the key players in the start of adult and continuing education in Slovakia. We had great conversations during the week about her work with the program.
Next stop on the vocational tour...back to VSB in Ostrava to continue meeting with their staff about fundraising and to learn more about the University.
Joey

Ostrava...week 2 - Dave

Its a bit difficult to use the computer this week as I have to type it on my comouter and then to jump drive, then to my host's laptop for upload etc.  I will be posting some new pictures so please if you have the time, take a look

We of course back in Czech Republic in Ostrava again, but the guest of the other club that exists here  To night we gave another presentation and so far the technology is working out OK.  I am trying to phonetically speak Czech and I guess its mostly humor time for them till I switch into English. 

We enjoyed Slovakia and returned via a different route on sunday than when we went down.  I am staying with the former president of the local university of 24,000 students.  Definably a high powered and well respected professor.  We have have many discussions about the differences in US college education.  He has been all over the world, from Southern Ill University at Carbondale, to Saudi “Arabia, China, to mention but a few.  My team member and I are sharing a house he owns and really does not live here, he has a flat downtown about a mile away.  Today we also went sightseeing and went to the TATA automobile museum.  I have vaguely heard of them, but they started making cars in 1898, all through both wars, and have trucks that were specifically designed for military application and dump trucks.  I think they are now owned by an Indian company.

We leave Saturday morning for Prague, change trains and head south to Pizek till later in the week.  One of the sightseeing  trips is to a nuclear power plant.  We also will visit the ORIGINAL Budweiser brewery.  Needless to say, I am looking forward to that side trip.  Then Thurs we head to Prague via Pilzen and another brewery visit and arrive in Prague for the final 5 days.

Rotary has only existed in this country for 20 years, and this club tonight celebrated their 10^th anniversary. My vocational day was with  RPG properties who own and manage 44,000 apartments!  Talk about a big operation.  They are redoing the former Soviet butt ugly 8-10 story buildings by replacing the windows with new energy saving models.  Given, there is at least 4 windows for each flat, that's a lot of windows.  Fortunately, they are mostly the same size.  This cost is projected to be $250 Million US$. Then, they are covering the buildings with about 4” of polystyrene and painting them in attractive colors.  Its still the old Soviet building, but sure looks a lot better.  Its complicated, but RPG has been able to raise the rent about the amount of the savings in energy.  Typical rent for a nice 700 sq ft 1 BR is about $1000/month as near as I can tell, but the energy for heat and electricity pops that up to about $1500.  Supposedly..... the energy savings is a wash so the owner gets the savings to rationalize the expenditure for the energy savings.  It's actually a bit more complicated than that but generally, that is what is happening.  So much better than in Slovakia because the government has not allowed to raise the rents by the owners. 

Thanks for listening

Vocational Day - Ostrava (Leslie)

Today was our vocational day in Ostrava and I visited the regional television station and the regional weekly newspaper. Both were very interesting! I got to go behind the scenes at the tv station to see their recording studio with green screen, production, editing, graphic design and final cut. I was also able to talk with their animation producer who is working on their first animated series (about two frogs) and got to see some of his work thus far. They have two episodes finished and are working on the third one. It is going to be a series of 6 episodes. It was also interesting to compare how they do ads to how we do ads. When we think about commercials, we think about 30 second clips. At this station they have these, but they also create longers "ads" (5-10 minutes)for their clients to be used for their marketing. This is a more profitable product for them than the 30 second commercials. I thought this was interesting that they would do this at a television station instead of the client using a seperate production company.

The newspaper was interesting and very similiar to what we have in the United States but I found it odd that they don't receive or use many press releases from companies. He said a lot of companies in this region have the mind set of "no article, no problem" meaning that either positive or negative, they would rather not have the articles written about them. I explained this was much different from the United States in that companies like to have positive articles written about them to promote themselves pretty much for free.

In other happenings - yesterday we visited the Technical University in Ostrava and saw many research labs. We also split up in the afternoon and Aaron and I saw they research they are doing for Hydrogen cars and electric cars. Joey talked with University representatives about fundraising and Andrea and Dave visited a WWII Memorial close by. Later in the afternoon, we attended a concert for children with handicaps sponsored by Rotary. It was a very humbling and emotional evening seeing the children sing. They were an inspiration to us all.

Music Concert Photos