Summer Abroad in Prague: Glass Blowing

We got back from the 5 day trip on Wednesday and on Friday we had our glass blowing day trip. We took a bus to northern Czech Republic. The Czech Republic is known for glass blowing. They've been doing for an incredibly long time. They have bountiful amounts of the material needed to make glass. The area where the glass is made was once the border area of the Czech Republic given to the Nazis by Britain and France in hopes that it would be enough for Hitler and there wouldn't be a WWII. The Germans gave the Czech 24 hours to move out of their homes in that area for Germans to move in. During WWII Britain and France scrapped the treaty giving the land to the Germans because they did not follow the rules of the treaty. After WWII Czechoslovakia gave the Germans 24 hours to move out of those areas. The areas have high unemployment because the areas are not as populated as they used to be before the war. The glass blowers do not get paid a lot, but they are happy to have a job.
All of us watched the glass blowers from a balcony looking below. All the glass blowers were men. They all drank beer while they blew glass. A lot of them also smoked. I noticed some of them would light their cigarettes on the glass they were about to blow. There were also calendars throughout the room with woman barely wearing any bikinis. It was definitely a boys club. But half way throughout the time I noticed two people came out, I'm assuming they're designers. One of the people was a younger woman informing the men what she wanted from them when blowing the glass. It was fun watching this woman tell these burly men what to do.

Everyone in our group got to blow their own vase. You got to pick a color and a design mold. The man would put the glob of molten glass into the furnace, you close the mold shut and he puts the glob of glass in and blows a little bit to get the mold. Then you go up and blow the glass and spin the stick until they let you know it's done. The guy told me I did it perfectly and that I must be a glass blower :-). I'm just really happy mine turned out well. I'm really hoping my glass wont break on the way home.

We also got to see the gallery of the finer pieces they made. They make pieces for American hotels, they made a huge lighting sculpture for a subway in Dubai, and they've done many other things with famous glass blowers. They made one glass sculpture and got permission from Mick Jagger to call it the Mick Jagger. They gave it to Mick Jagger and then made only 10 more for a limited edition event. They had a picture of Hilary Clinton with a piece of glass in the gallery. I don't know the story behind that though. Then we got goulash at the restaurant across from the glassblowing warehouse. We could watch glass blowers make things in the restaurant while we ate and could buy things. It was a pretty cool experience.