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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

The days in Prague seem like they go much quicker then in Burn­aby, its been a month so far, and I really feel like I haven’t been here for more then two weeks. But maybe that’s because the vodka helps me for­get half of it, clearly I need to blog more so I can have the capac­ity to for­get. To sum it up, I’ve done a lot of things, met a bunch of peo­ple, and its been a blast.

Crew from Suit 220, minus me

For the last two weeks, we did a course called “Czech Inten­sive”, which is basi­cally a two week inten­sive course for five hours a week, focus­ing only on the basics of the Czech lan­guage. It was cool, our teacher was awe­some and she def­i­nitely made it really easy (easy enough for me to get an A with­out study­ing). I’ve been up to a lot of things, book­ing trips, learn­ing how to be the great­est cook ever using just a stove, and of course, drink­ing gal­lons of pivo.

When it comes to what I do after the bell rings, its whole dif­fer­ent story. The night life in Prague is pretty incred­i­ble, most clubs are open till around 6am, which is the time I reg­u­larly went to sleep when the Amer­i­can exchange stu­dents got here. Life for that week con­sisted of a week I’d like to remem­ber, but due to alco­hol, I’ll most likely for­get. So far, I’ve been to a bunch of bars and clubs, but I’ll talk about my favorites. One of my favorites, and the first club I went to, was Mecca. It has two floors, one that is strictly elec­tron­ica, and the other one is old school music from the 80s and 90s.

Upper floor of Mecca, taken in the first week of Prague

Another one that I think is pretty decent is Karlovy Lazny, its basi­cally a five story club that plays hip hop, 90s, trance, elec­tron­ica, and some­thing else that I can’t seem to remem­ber. Each floor plays pretty decent music, and I like the vari­ety, plus the best part of it is that if there are peo­ple you feel like avoid­ing, you can run away to a dif­fer­ent floor. I went to a bat­tle of bands type of event at a club called Akropo­lis, and it was a Czech filled club, it was quite dif­fer­ent from a club filled with 20 year old Amer­i­cans. Oh, and prob­a­bly my favorite club so far, is Cha­peau Rouge, it has great music, a fun dance­floor, and tons of cool peo­ple. What I love about the nightlife here is that there are always trams run­ning, there are night ones that come less fre­quently, but if I’m out club­bing, I’m gen­er­ally out past 5, which is when the day tram and Metro resume.

The wall of one of the met­ros in Prague, Hora has a ton of pics of it, click here to see his pic­tures on flickr!

One of the things that Van­cou­ver lacks is a place to go and eat after your fin­ished after a night of drink­ing, danc­ing, or just a mid­night snack. Sure, there is Den­nys, McDon­alds, or Burger King, but these places are dri­ving trips away, and I have taken many trips to these places dur­ing the night when I haven’t been drink­ing (for exam­ple, stay­ing up with friends watch­ing 24), but when I’m slightly intox­i­cated, the gen­eral con­sen­sus is that dri­ving is a bad idea, and thus, its very hard to find a mid­night snack. What Van­cou­ver needs is more night time stands:

These amaz­ing stands are open 24/7, and are always there to sat­isfy my love affair with shmazny syr (fried cheese sandwich).

So, what else have I been up to besides destroy­ing my liver? Well, one of my favorite things I’ve done here is cook. I’ve enjoyed cook­ing immensely, I get new recipes from my Mom every so often so I can try new things. Six months ago, the most I could do was make a bowl of Chef Boyardee, but since all we don’t have a microwave, or even an oven, I’ve resorted to learn­ing how to cook as many things as I can with a hot­plate. So far, its been pretty suc­cess­ful. I can make some pretty solid per­o­gies, grilled cheese, pasta (learned how to make alfredo sauce, its amaz­ing, with mush­rooms and pees as well, damn..), and eggs. Okay, so maybe that’s not a lot of things, but I can def­i­nitely live off that, that’s for sure.

Hora and I have gone to a cou­ple hockey games, one to watch the Czech National team, where they suc­cumbed to a defeat by the Fins, and another to watch AC Slavia play another team from the Czech Repub­lic, where they suf­fered a defeat of 7–1. I would like to go to a game where the team I’m cheer­ing for would win, but it was still an amaz­ing expe­ri­ence. The O2 area has fans that are twice as loud and twice as ded­i­cated then I’ve ever seen it in a reg­u­lar sea­son game in GM place, it was a sight to see.

The fan sec­tion, where every­one fol­lowed along with every chant, cheer, and there were even some drummers.

Another big fac­tor of this trip has always been to travel to var­i­ous parts of Europe, and finally after a month, Hora, I, and a cou­ple other exchange stu­dents decided to finally make it hap­pen. We’ve booked trips to Budapest, Ams­ter­dam, Vienna, Copen­hagen, and finally, Istan­bul. I want to go to Ger­many as well, but after spend­ing all this money on these trips, I hon­estly don’t know if I’ll have the money. I need to have some money saved before I start trav­el­ling in the sum­mer! If any­one has any rec­om­men­da­tions for what to do in these cities, feel free to comment!

Hora and I went to Swan Lake, which is one of the most pop­u­lar bal­lets in Prague. He read the story dur­ing the inter­mis­sion, I failed to do so and thus I had no idea what was going on the entire time, although it was pretty cool. If you want to read up on it, check out Horas blog.

Before going to the Czech Repub­lic, I always won­dered what this trip would be like, and the biggest thing I was curi­ous about is how I would han­dle myself if I had to live on my own. So far, I’ve been suc­cess­ful at eat­ing (although I miss my moms cook­ing, shes so much bet­ter then me its ridicu­lous), I have been a huge fail­ure at doing the laun­dry, because I ruined my favorite shirt, it was the jer­sey from when Italy won the World Cup in 2006, still pissed of about that. Prague is an amaz­ing city, there is always things to do, things to see, cheap food, effi­cient tram sys­tem. Van­cou­ver could def­i­nitely take a cou­ple point­ers from this city (but it could also be said the other way around).

I’m going to see the Charles Cas­tle some time soon, I plan to write about that, its the biggest cas­tle in the world, I’m pretty stoked. Until then, Nasdravi!