THE HOME OF THE HUSKERS

The Huskers or The Cornhuskers is the name associated with a football team  (for the Europeans: 'football' here means American football. 'Football' is called soccer in the USA... and the UK) and the home of The Huskers is the US state of Nebraska. You will see this logo and the coulours everywhere.







Nebraska and its capitol city of Lincoln became also my home for one year.

This state was crossed by many historic trails and the most important was the California Gold Rush trail, but before that many Native American tribes lived in Nebraska : Omaha, Missouria, Ponca, Otoe, Pawnee, Lacota (Sioux). Nebraska became a state in 1867.

Ethnically, the largest group of people in Nebraska are German-Americans and Czech-Americans which I have to mention because I am Czech.
Well, I would hear so many times "I am Czech too!" when I mentioned I was from the Czech Republic, but don't expect the person to speak Czech or know much about the Czech Republic, many of them still call it -Czechoslovakia-. To be fair, I did meet some people which knew a lot about their ancestors' origins, even visited the country, but there were not many.
On another Czech note, there is a town in Nebraska called Wilber, it is the official 'Czech Capital of the USA' and it hosts an annual Czech festival.

Lincoln was my first home here in the USA as my husband worked there on a project.
I had visited other parts of the USA before I moved to Nebraska, but it was on the east and the west coast. So, what was waiting for me here was a big shock.
It wasn't so much of a cultural shock ( I love to explore other cultures) as it was an 'environmental' shock for me. I will not be lying, it was a very traumatic experience.
Nebraska is part of the region called the Plains and it is part of the Great plains region that can be described as a land covered in prairie, steppe and grassland.

 

I come from the region of the Bohemian-Moravian Highlands and lived in the wooded mountain range region of the Black Forest in Germany, Midi-Pyrenees region with its range of mountains The Pyrenees in France etc. In other words, totally different environment.
What I am trying to say is that I am an outdoor person (...with many other interests) who loves hiking, cycling etc. and I wasn't settling well in this part of the world. Some locals called it a "cows and corn" place and that pretty much describes it. The only outdoor activity that you could possibly participate on was hunting and fishing and I am not big on these.
The summer and winter temperatures are not pleasant and get ready for possible tornadoes and violent storms too.
Also, I am sorry, but Lincoln isn't particularly an international hub either and after living in London for example, it wasn't an easy transition in any sense. Not to mention that everything/anything was so far away....I felt like a prisoner, from many angles.

It was definitely the most difficult relocation for me (for other reasons as well) and I don't want to remember much about that time, but I tried to make the most of it and do have some amazing memories even from Nebraska.
One of them is the Annual Spring Migration where estimated 500 thousand, about 80% of the world's population of  Sandhill Cranes pass through the Platte River valley when they are heading north every year and make a stopover near Grand Island and Kearney. I was lucky to witness this spectacle.

I will add more pictures from Nebraska in my next posts.