Dobry den! I have been living and studying abroad in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, for almost exactly three months, and it has quickly become my favorite city in Europe. I have lived in a very rural area for most of my life, and Tuscaloosa isn’t much of an actual city, so study abroad offered the perfect opportunity for me to experience city life with an expiration date in case I didn’t like it. I chose Prague because it was one of the only big cities in Europe that I had not been to, and it is also known for being affordable, youthful, and lively. I have not been disappointed. City life bombarded me with a myriad of things to do all the time – places to eat, things to see, bars to explore, parks to walk, etc. Like everyone else who studies abroad, I’ve had to balance discovering the city I live in with exploring the rest of the charcuterie board that is Europe. To do this, I’ve been traveling two weekends out of every month and have visited Poland, Hungary, Greece, Germany, and Austria. I was able to visit a lot of Western Europe and most capital cities this past summer, so I spent this spring seeing some of Eastern Europe and focusing more on beautiful nature instead of big cities (some pictures of such are featured). I’ve traveled to most of these places with the roommates I was randomly paired with in Prague. There are five of us in total, and by now they’re all close friends. As with any random roommate situation, I was a bit nervous if we would all connect and have fun together. What I’ve come to realize is that almost anyone who is brave and open-minded enough to leave the comfort of their home country to study abroad in another is going to be a friendly person. Everyone is in the same situation, and bonds are forged by confronting these new challenges together, like figuring out how to shop at a grocery store when everything is in a different language. The remaining month of my semester will be mostly final projects and presentations, broken up by a trip to Iceland and to the Czech town of Plzen, which is the home of the pilsner. My time in Europe has flown by, but at the same time it feels like I’ve been living over here forever. I do miss the US at times, but I know I have to take advantage of the time I have left while I’m lucky enough to be over here.
