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My last four months have in Prague have been noth­ing short of amaz­ing. I’m not sure if I can describe it in words, but my time in this city is every­thing I hoped for, and more. The trav­el­ing, the dorm expe­ri­ence, the free­dom, Prague was some­thing that I sim­ply needed to do, and thank­fully I did it.

In the last four months, I’ve done more trav­el­ing then I have done in my entire life. Budapest, Ams­ter­dam, Vienna, Malmo, Copen­haggen, Istan­bul, Bradislava, all dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ences, but all great ones. While in Budapest I met a lot of cool peo­ple that were actu­ally study­ing in Prague, so because of Budapest I met them, who I’ve hung out with on a bunch of dif­fer­ent occa­sions (1 per­son in par­tic­u­lar). The hos­tel we stayed at, Carpe Noctem, was also one of the best times I’ve ever had at a hos­tel, they took us on a pub crawl that really let us expe­ri­ence the city’s nightlife. Ams­ter­dam showed me how lib­eral a city can truly be, with its pot stores on every cor­ner, and red light dis­trict, it was def­i­nitely not your typ­i­cal city. We also biked across the coun­try­side, which was a great expe­ri­ence as well, its not often you get to see so many old wind­mills. Vienna had a great charm to it as well, my high­lights being the palace, and the don­airs with mas­sive blocks of cheese. Malmo was alright, it wasn’t that excit­ing when we found out the only place we could get alco­hol was at des­ig­nated stores (just like Van­cou­ver), but we still man­aged to have a great time. Copen­haggen was great, liv­ing at a Dan­ish girls house, fol­lowed by a night of sleep­ing on the street, it def­i­nitely gave me a new found respect for the home­less. Istan­bul was by far the most dif­fer­ent place I’ve every been, with its dense pop­u­la­tion and mer­chants around every cor­ner, and quite pos­si­bly the best meals of all my jour­neys, it was amaz­ing. Bradislava was a great expe­ri­ence as well, thank­fully to Luke, who knew exactly where to go and what to do.

Heineken tour in Amsterdam

Hen­rich, the Dan­ish man we met on the streets of Copen­haggen (and also his girlfriend)

Istan­bul

Trav­el­ing was amaz­ing, but out of all those cities, I can truth­fully say that Prague was my favorite, and for more then one rea­son. Never in my life have I expe­ri­ence liv­ing on my own with com­plete strangers; for me, the dorm expe­ri­ence was every­thing I had hoped for. See, at Simon Fraser Uni­ver­sity, its more of a com­muter uni­ver­sity, mean­ing most peo­ple gen­er­ally live at home while going to school, which is fine and all, but I always felt as though I got cheated out of that core Uni­ver­sity expe­ri­ence, and luck­ily Prague sat­is­fied that crav­ing. The ECES (East­ern and Cen­tral Euro­pean Stud­ies) pro­gram is the pro­gram I enrolled in for my exchange, and thank­fully, the pro­gram rec­og­nizes the impor­tance of trav­el­ing and expe­ri­enc­ing Europe, rather then high forms of aca­d­e­mics. That meant that while it was for school, I spent most of my time going out and hav­ing a good time, trav­el­ing and expe­ri­enc­ing the city at its fullest.

Peo­ple from the dorm Kolej Komenskeho

In my suite, Hora and I lived with eight oth­ers, all of whom were all Amer­i­can. We were basi­cally known as the 220 crew (since our suit was called 220, and was famous for hav­ing the most peo­ple shar­ing one kitchen). There was four from Long Island, and four from Syra­cuse. Oh, and the rest of the dorm was full of Amer­i­cans, mostly either from Wash­ing­ton, New York, or Boston. At least all the peo­ple I hung out with any­ways. Of course, being in a new town, meet­ing new peo­ple, you’re excited and you’re very much want­ing to go out almost every night, and that’s exactly what I did. By the end of the first week after the Amer­i­cans arrived, I seri­ously did not under­stand how any of them got work done, as I fig­ured this is what it was going to be like for the rest of the semes­ter, but in some ways I was right, and some ways I was wrong. Some of the peo­ple toned it down after the semes­ter started get­ting under­way, which some (such as a cou­ple room­mates of mine), had no inten­tion of slow­ing down. Some of my favorite places in Prague were U Sudu, the bar you go before a club, it has cheap wine; Mecca night club, a club that we went to most Wednes­day nights since it was free, one floor of oldies and one floor of techno(walked here once for two hours from a ran­dom bar when no one else wanted to come, because I knew the girl I was inter­ested in was going to be there, it was worth the walk); Karlove Lazne, the clas­sic five story club with all types of music, half the peo­ple I know loved it, and half hated it;  PoPo café, the place we went to every Mon­day night for live Mex­i­can music. But, place that was the most fun in Prague in my opin­ion was Cha­peau Rouge, which was a bar above, a bar/dancefloor below, and a rarely entered strange dance floor at the bot­tom. The bar was a lot of fun because no mat­ter what night of the week it was, it was always filled with both Czechs and tourists alike, it was filled with inter­est­ing stu­dents to talk to from all over the world. It was just always full of char­ac­ter, and always lively, which is why it is above all the rest. I’d say that the biggest enemy I’ve made on this trip has been my liver. But that’s not to say that all I’ve done in this city is gone out and par­tied, that was gen­er­ally reserved for the night.

Get­ting ready to head out for a night in Prague

Us from the Kolej chill­ing in Popo Cafe

Dur­ing the day, there was a lot to see and do in Prague. I think one of the best things I’ve gained in the last four months is my inde­pen­dence, do to the fact that the only one I could rely on to wash my clothes and fill my stom­ach with food was myself, and that’s exactly what I learned how to do. I came into the Czech repub­lic know­ing how to make myself a bowl of cereal, mac & cheese, and per­o­gies. Well, cereal was never ate because peo­ple in the suite always stole milk, they def­i­nitely didn’t have mac & cheese, and sur­pris­ingly no per­o­gies either. So, I had to cook, and in doing so, I learned that not only is it not hard, but its also awe­some, and now one of my favorite pas­times. I’ve learned how to make a great meat sauce, highly raved alfredo sauce, juicy chicken, and a mean steak.  But I started this para­graph talk­ing about what I saw and did in Prague, so enough about how I kept myself fed.

Deli­cious food I’ve learned how to make

Dur­ing the day, when we weren’t attend­ing classes (class atten­dance was manda­tory, each class you missed cost you a let­ter grade), we were gen­er­ally find­ing places to eat, going to some of the national mon­u­ments, or shop­ping at the famous Tesco super­mar­ket. Actu­ally, one of my favorite activ­i­ties in Prague was watch­ing hockey games, one inter­na­tional game ver­sus Fin­land, and one local game, but very excit­ing, both at which my team lost. But the Czech fans were amaz­ingly spir­ited and into it, I’d say even more wild then GM place.  The 220 restau­rant favorite was Pic­colo Mondo, which was a small Ital­ian place that served Pizza, Pasta, and of course, Pivo (Slavic for Beer). Beer was a com­mon­place at din­ner time; with it only cost­ing 1.50 CAD for a 0.5L, it was cheaper to get a beer then water, and you couldn’t get free tap water, so its going to be dis­ap­point­ing not to have a Pil­sner Urquell or Gam­bri­nus along­side din­ner.  Czech food was also very good, gen­er­ally the meals were either cuts of chicken or pork (beef too, but its much more expen­sive, and not very Czech), and you also picked your side of pota­toes, and it’s always served with cab­bage.  I liked to go to Namesti Miru for my Czech food, it’s the area with the most res­i­dents of Prague near the cen­ter, and it isn’t very touristy. Now, in terms of national mon­u­ments, the places to check out are the Prague Cas­tle, with its amaz­ing cathe­dral and great his­tory; the Charles bridge which was made in the 13th cen­tury and is still impres­sive to this date; Petrin Hill is a great hike which at the top, con­tains a scaled down replica of the Eifel Tower with a great view of the city; Wences­las Square, which is sit­u­ated right by the National Museum, and a great place for shop­ping dur­ing the day, and for bar hop­ping dur­ing the night; Old town square, which was great for us stu­dents when it was cold and freez­ing when we arrived, but I found that it was def­i­nitely packed with too many tourists later on closer to the sum­mer, although its def­i­nitely still worth check­ing out. There are a ton of other places to check out, but those are my favorites.

View from Vysherad

First hockey game in the O2 arena

Sec­ond hockey game

View with me and the Charles Bridge

So, that’s all I can think of to talk about from my expe­ri­ences in Prague. I hope you’ve enjoyed fol­low­ing my blog of my expe­ri­ences as much as I have actu­ally expe­ri­enc­ing them, but the four month exchange is now over. Trav­el­ing was amaz­ing, I’ve met friends that I know I won’t for­get, I have a lot of great mem­o­ries in this place in the four short months I’ve been here. But that’s exactly what they felt like, very short months, and I’m dis­ap­pointed to part from all the great friends I’ve made, and from the city I’ve come so accus­tom to, but life goes on, and next up is my back­pack­ing adven­ture in the Balkans. Till then, Na schledanou!

220 crew, miss you guys, as well as the rest of the Kolej

For more pic­tures of my trip, go to the photo link at the top of the page