I've got 99 problems...but making new friends ain't one of them!

    Settling in Prague in terms of formalities and technicalities did not go as smoothly as I had hope for. During my 2 first weeks here there were a number of things I had to do, which were tedious and sometimes it got a bit frustrating. Do not get me wrong: I really like the city, the people that I have met so far and I am glad that I came on Erasmus here. I am just going to mention a number of issues I had so far.

1- My place

   I am extremely lucky that I have a studio in probably the prettiest, safest, best located and best connected area of Prague, besides the fact that it is a touristic hotspot, I love my neighborhood  However, I had troubles getting used to my studio because it felt very empty and the disposition is a bit awkward. Explanation: To go from the bathroom to my room, I have to go through my kitchen and an entrance hall which I share with other people; therefore, if I walk half naked between my bathroom and room I might bump into a random person entering/exiting the building.

    I was a bit surprised when I moved in because I realize that a few things are missing in the flat. There is no washing machine at my place and no launderettes nearby so it is going to be a real challenge to wash my clothes: hoping for a charitable soul to help me or I’ll have to do it all by hand! The phone line and the internet were not working for the first 10 days, so I really felt disconnected and alone when I was in my studio at the time. Living on a street where there are at least 25 security cameras and guards day and night, I should probably feel safe. However, knowing that there is a serial stabber loose in Prague who has murdered 3 people not far from my place, that someone already broke into my neighbour’s place and that I’m defenceless girl living alone, I have started to become slightly paranoid.

 

My street with the numerous security cameras

The view from outside my entrance door- a view of Prague Castle

2-Money

   When I went with my father to open a Czech bank account, it was all very easy, the staff spoke good English they were warm, nice and helpful. The next Monday when I went to pick up my bank card, things were a little different. When I asked if my card had arrived, the lady was wondering if I got robbed or if there was a problem with my account. When she understood the purpose of my visit, she went to another room, came back confused, checked my details and disappeared for 15 minutes… Then she came back with an envelop looking even more confused. The problem was that instead of spelling my name “Helena O’Rourke-Potocki” the name on the card was “M. H. Rourke O’ P.”…they very nicely explained to me that my name is too long and complicated for the computer system, that the card was therefore invalid and had no pin for it, that they had to cancel it and make me a new one and I had to wait another week. I walked out of the bank, feeling down and quite annoyed, wondering what’s the problem with my name and why does it cause problems. A week later when I came back, they managed to resolve the problem, helped me set up my pin code and internet banking, really making sure that everything is in order, and they were extremely apologetic. I walked out with my fist up in the air feeling victorious.   

   The Czech money is traitorous, it is very hard to get a feel for the money and you think that everything is so cheap so you just end up spending more. Life is quite cheap here, but it is very easy to go over budget.

The Czech crownes- a weird currency that consists of big notes or small coins

3- Telephone  

   The plan was to register with a phone company instead of getting a prepaid sim and having to top-up all the time. We went to a small shop near the Florence metro stop in a Mafioso looking street. The staff there did not speak a word of English, literally, so with a mix of polish, google translate and sign language, taking over an hour we managed to sign a contract and I got a sim card. As the sim needed a few days to connect to the network during that time I was using my Belgian number which was really not practical to contact other Erasmus students. It was fun for a week to be living alone with no internet and having a phone number that did not work. After a week, as the card still did not work I went back to the shop and showed them the sim. The people at the shop inserted the sim into their phones, had a look at my phone, searched the internet, again we had to communicate using google translate, we had a good laugh because the situation was just too ridiculous. They came to the conclusion that the chip had a default, so they filed a complaint against their provider, told me that they will try to contact me when they get a new sim card for me. When I walked out of the store, I just went to buy a prepaid sim card.

A few days ago, when I was on my way to the metro I realized that my bag was leaking, I opened it to discover that my bottle of water had spilled and my phone and camera were in a pool of water. I ran back home, put my camera and phone in cuscus hoping that it will absorb the humidity out … it was too late water had entered in the devices and destroyed them. For the phone, I lost all my phone numbers which was really annoying and I had no choice but to just buy a cheap phone. For the camera, I am furious because I lost a whole bunch of pictures that I took of this beautiful city and I have to wait a few weeks before I can buy a new one... :'(     

4- Paper Work

      Since I have arrived in Prague, I registered with the foreign police, filled in forms for the Erasmus office, queued 2 hours to get my student card, got my student travel pass, register for the online portal, discovered that some classes that I initially was going to take are no longer available, I had to choose new classes, discovered that I need a permission to take political science classes, send emails to ask if I can follow certain classes, went back to the Erasmus office to get some documents stamped, filled in forms to send back to Trinity, etc… All were necessary to do, all absolutely boring to do.

     When moving to a new country and settling in a new place there are always a number of things to do, plus getting used to the new environment can be quite disorientating. Having problems with my bank, with my telephone and breaking my camera and mobile were a bit much to have all in the same fortnight and made me wonder if these things only happen to me. I feel that I have gotten use to living here but I don’t feel quite settled yet. I know that most if not all the paper work is behind me, so now I have more time to enjoy the place and my stay. The reason probably why I didn't go insane in these 2 weeks trying to deal with all these different things, is because I have met other Erasmus students here from all over Europe and the world, I have socialized and truly started to enjoy my stay here. Moving to Prague I had a few “problems” but meeting my fellow Erasmus student is not one of them! 

My first erasmus party- a memorable one

That's all folks for now! 

Helena 

8 days to go ... What's on my mind?

    
    8 days to go before moving to Prague… I know the fact, but I am not really realizing it for the moment. It is only when I will be over there, unpacking, or in the first lecture that it is going to hit me. At present going on Erasmus seems to be only one of my many vague plans in the back of my head that is never going to see the light of the day. It is: it just hasn’t happen yet, I just haven’t made it real yet. This exchange that I been planning for months is about to become real in just a matter of days.

    What I do realize now is that this going to be a big step for me: I have already lived 2 years outside the family nest, abroad, in a student hall and then with friends; but this is going to be the first time ever that I am going to be living alone. This adds quite a bit of stress to this move. There are obviously some advantages to living alone: no need to state them, I’ll let you come up with them. However, I am a bit nervous about it: imagining all those worst-case scenarios, all that can possibly go wrong being a girl living alone in a studio in a foreign country. I will admit that I am scared of fire alarms: the sound of them gets me panicky, so I can just imagine myself freaking out in the middle of the night, crawling into a corner, rocking back and forth just because an alarm when off somewhere in the neighbourhood and having nobody to tell me that I’m just overreacting. I have a few friends that were living alone and they seem to have managed just fine, so I should be ok. I am a bit nervous now, but I know it’s going to fine once I’ve moved in and then I won’t worry any more.  

     Growing up, whenever I was about to start a new school year, move to a new place or when I started university, I always made resolutions. I guess that everyone does that when they undergo an important change in their life, right? I always made wonderful plans about how hardworking I was going to be, how disciplined I was going to be, how healthy, how friendly, how sportive, how …. Those resolutions never really last, do they? While anticipating my new life in the Czech Republic I was making all these ambitious and great plans for myself, and then I realized that there is no point making all these promises to myself if I will not keep any of them. So I came to the following conclusion. There are a lot of things that I want to do during my year abroad and I really want to make the most of it. However, there will be so little time: I am only going to be there for a few months and I will be busy with college so I will not be able to do everything. Therefore, I came up with this golden rule and my unique resolution for the year: “everyday on my Erasmus I’ll make the most of the day”. So no matter how lazy I feel or hangover, I’ll push myself to do something so I will come back with the feeling that I took advantage of my year abroad as much as I possibly could and enjoyed this year.

    Will I learn any Czech? That’s something I’ve been wondering about. I am not planning on taking lessons, but I would still like to pick up the basics for practical reasons and because I think it is always cool to learn to a new language. I have lived in Belgium a grand total of 13 years and I find it disgraceful that I only speak one of the 3 national languages. In all that time I haven’t picked up any Flemish or German, I can understand a little bit but can’t speak them. In a way as I am an expat there, living in Brussels where most people speak French and I was in schools were Flemish was non-compulsory, I’m sort-of excused. Once I was talking to Belgian, a native Flemish-speaker, who told me that what he finds frustrating about French-speaking Belgians is not so much that on average they don’t speak Flemish well but more the fact that on average they do not really seem to make the effort to speak Flemish. That made me realize that no matter how poorly you speak a language, people will always appreciate if you make the effort to try to speak their language. Coming back to Czech: knowing another slave language, Polish, I think I should be able to pick up a bit of Czech without too much problems. I just think that learning a bit of Czech can add a whole new dimension to my experience in Prague, as I would be able to get to know Czech people as well as foreigners. Plus it might be appreciated by locals that I’m not constantly imposing English. I’m curious to see how much Czech I will actually pick up after a year. We’ll see in June. 

These were my thoughts that I wanted to share,

Bye for now!

Helena

    

     

To Summarize the Past Year: Getting Ready for Erasmus!

Hey Guys !

As you probably know, Jan (tall Polish guy) and I are going on a year-long Erasmus exchange to Prague, to study, to get to know the city and the nearby area, to discover another culture, make new friends, and most importantly: HAVE FUN! As we both know that this is going to be an interesting and memorable experience, we decided to create this blog so our friends can easily Czech what we are up to, throughout our year abroad. We hope that you will enjoy reading this and that we will keep you updated as often as possible!

This first article is quite long but necessary to understand my whole preparation to going on Erasmus and to sum up my attitude before my grand departure. So to summarize the last few months and how come I’m going to Prague:

Step 1: Finding an Erasmus Destination.

Since I started at Trinity I was keen on going on Erasmus and I got quite excited when I saw online that my course offered the possibility to go to Poland or to Spain (because I was hoping to improve my weak polish, or my fake Spanish). Last October I started to investigate the different possibilities by asking around Trinity and emailing a couple of universities. Very quickly I was disappointed to discover that it was not going to be possible to send me to Poland or to Spain for both my subjects, and that in general it would be tricky to organize an exchange where classes would be in English and that would satisfy the requirements of both the Geography and Political Science departments. I knew then that I would not get one of my initial choices in terms of destination and I thought that I was not going to go on Erasmus at all...

Until one sunny November day, where after a night out Jan was laying in his bed surfing the internet from his Mac ©, like he usually does, and I was just hanging around the house in my pyjamas. Suddenly, Jan came out of his room with a proud look on his face and announced “I have found the perfect Erasmus exchange!”- I was very surprised: Firstly: I was surprised that Jan would come out of his room before 2 pm after a night out and, secondly: I was surprised that he was looking up universities on a hangover, but thumbs up for that. “Hein?” I replied. He continued “Charles University in Prague has very similar geography modules to those in Trinity, all of them in English and more than 40 politics modules in English”. My first reaction was: “Prague??? …”. At first I was not really thrilled by the idea because I don’t speak any Czech, I didn’t think that our Erasmus Coordinator would be willing to open this exchange and it wasn’t a destination that even occurred to me. But very quickly Jan managed to convince me to give it a try and dragged me into this. It was his idea: if I’m not 100% satisfied I’ll blame Jan. At the end of the day it didn’t really matter where I was going as long as I was able to study both my subjects somewhere in Europe. So after a bit of research we found a destination: Prague, Czech Republic.

Step 2: Playing the bureaucratic game and tough negotiations.

Setting up an Erasmus exchange is no mission impossible but can become frustrating as it’s a bureaucratic process. Our flatmate Kate managed to set up her exchange to Copenhagen within a few weeks and she was repeatedly telling us that if we show enough motivation that we will be able to set up our new Erasmus link. The different coordinators to whom we were suggesting Jan’s idea were glad to see students coming up with new Erasmus links and seemed happy enough to send us to Prague. For several months we had to chase around Trinity our Erasmus coordinator, a certain Dr. M.H., to check how the agreement was coming alone and strongly encouraged him to do his job. There were all the different requirements of the different departments making the opening of this exchange quite tricky. At certain moments I had a bad feeling that this exchange wasn’t going to work out, plus, I wasn’t sure that I really wanted to go to Prague; partly because I started to realize that I will miss living in Ireland : the place and the people there.

The daughter of my parents’ friends contacted me telling me that she heard that I was applying to Prague; she went there on Erasmus in 2007 and was strongly encouraging me to go. She told me how much is liked her stay, that she loved the retro aspect of this beautiful city, that I didn’t need to worry about not speaking Czech because everyone there understands English; and so on. Her enthusiasm about Prague was partly what re-motivated me to continue on with my Erasmus application. There was quite a bit of paper work to do for both universities. And then came the time to pick the modules I wanted to do at Charles University. It was a tough decision because there was a large choice of modules to pick from; on top of that we had to make sure to have the right number of credits for each subject: a real puzzle. When it was pretty much confirmed that we were going on Erasmus… Exams were coming alone and we had an extra pressure to study even harder as we were only going to be sent to Prague if we had at least a 2.1 for our year’s overall mark. To be honest, none of us wanted to screw up the exams after running after Dr. M.H. like we did during several months.

Step 3: Mental preparation.

After several weeks of stress because the exam preparation, several weeks of stress due to the exams and several weeks of stress because we were impatiently waiting for the results: everything turned out fine and it was confirmed that both Jan and I were going to Prague. On one hand I thought: “wow I’m going to C.U.N.T.!!!” … --->To Charles University Next Term” being really proud of myself that I got the Erasmus and about to live a whole new experience abroad. And, on the other hand I thought: “what the hell I’m going?” meaning: realizing how crazy it is that I’m going to live for a year in a country that I barely know – It was then, in my parents’ house in Brussels, that I realized that there is no turning back: I am going on Erasmus to Prague for a whole academic year, and have very mixed emotions about it.

On one hand: I am afraid and sad. I realized that I will not go back to Ireland for a long time, maybe for a year and a half, meaning that there are people that I will not see for a while, realizing how much I like Dublin and will miss it. Charles University having its different faculties spread around Prague, I will not have the advantages that Trinity has of being a campus university and having everything at one location: (OMG: having to go to different libraries around town to find the books I need instead of having the whole TCD library on campus #Heartbroken); also that I will have to adapt to an entirely new academic system that I’m not used to, which might be tricky at first. Furthermore the fact that it is the first time that I am moving to a country where I don’t speak the language at all, that I don’t really know the culture of – (even if I’m slave it doesn’t necessarily mean that I’ll understand the Czech culture and ways of life), that I have no connection to, where I don’t know anyone (besides Jan, but it doesn’t really count); made me realize that this might be the first time ever in my life that I might experience home sickness. This is true a paradox because I have no home country. This feeling of jumping into the unknown is what thrills me but also what scares me.

But on the other hand: I am very excited and really looking forward to this new experience: I’m having itchy feet. A number of my friends from Dublin are also going on Erasmus so I’m looking forward to hearing about their experience (Hint: Agata, write on your blog) and seeing how in a year’s time they’ve changed. I'm obviously looking forward to meeting new people there: checking out the people out on the Prague Erasmus page. Throughout my life I’ve lived in England, Belgium, Poland and Ireland, thus at this stage I’m used to changing country. When I first went to university in Ireland, I didn’t really know the country that well and I didn’t know a whole lot of people: but I’ve managed to very quickly fit in and feel at ease in Ireland. Even if, no matter how hard I’ve tried to claim that I’m Irish- no Irishmen would ever believe that I am Irish (maybe that I might be a wild geese)- it doesn’t really matter because I do feel comfortable on that Island, and realize what a wonderful experience I had there so far.

This makes me realize that I shouldn’t have too many problems trying to settle in Prague because I’m used to adapting to a new environment: it’s a challenge that I gladly accept. Moreover, it is more exciting to go somewhere that you know nothing about, that you have no preconceptions or prejudice, so you can truly get to know the place from scratch. Also, I am looking forward to travelling to nearby cities (Munich, Budapest, Vienna, Krakow, Bratislava etc...) having the possibility to go see friends that I have in Krakow, having people visiting me over there (one has already booked dates). Even if I’m a bit nervous about this now, deep down I know that I am going to enjoy it and I want to make the most of my stay there and take advantage of the fact that I’m young and have this chance to travel and life a crazy experience.

The picture above is a picture of my two older brothers, me and my father in Prague, I’m not sure what year it was but judging how young we look it was most probably more than 10 years ago: the first and last time I was ever in Prague and I don’t remember much, … expect for a big colourful clock, ... and a fountain? When I knew that I was going to Czech Republic, I realized how little I know. This summer I read a few short student guides to Prague plus had a look at a guide’s book that my friend Chloé gave to me, where there was a brief history of the Czech Republic to update and refresh my knowledge of the country: to know who Kafka is, King Charles after who the Charles University was named after, what year Czechoslovakia split; that the film director of “One Flew Over the Cuckoos’ Nest” is half Czech etc…

But also to discover what is worth visiting in Prague and I started to make this surrealist list of all the museums, and bars, and restaurants, and clubs, and markets, and shopping centres, and castles, and theaters, and film festivals, and concerts, and beer factory, etc..., I want to see in Prague. Realistically : if I wanted to do half of what I’ve planned to do in the Czech Republic: I will not be going to college. So reading about the city and country really sparked a great curiosity and opened my eyes to how culturally rich Prague is and how many things they are to do there.

Throughout the summer, I told people that I was moving East and gathered a whole range of reactions and advice from different people of different ages: All said that it is a beautiful city; many said that it is a fun city with a great nightlife; a number of them said that it is a city with a great History to it and culturally rich. I got very different reactions ranging from people saying “Praha is a wonderful city for all music lovers, throughout the year and all over the city there’s classical music concerts everywhere” to people saying “Great city for guys: alcohol and cigarettes are cheap and the girls are easy” This gave me the picture of a city that suits everyone’s taste, making my curiosity greater.

Step 4: The physical preparation

It is J-15 before my grand departure and I’m starting to wonder what will I take with me. To take or not to take my Bucket, that is the question. How many dresses, what jewelry, should I take some books, etc… I know that I should take loads of warm clothes as in the winter I need to survive pretty freezing temperatures: The point being is that I haven’t even started packing and I’m not too worried! ... for the time being!

All this to say that it took us almost a year to get this Erasmus organised: in terms of paper work, doing formalities and mentally, so we've anticipated this for a while now, and the fact that we're now so so so close to leaving for Prague is making me very very very excited and very impatient to move!

Bye for now!

Helena