Becoming Czech
Door: Samantha
Blijf op de hoogte en volg Samantha
27 Oktober 2015 | Tsjechische Republiek, Praag
Becoming Czech
1. Learn to drink. Beer is no joke in Czech Republic and consumption often starts before noon.
2. Did I mention beer? It's in general cheaper than water, plus, in water the fish shit, or so I've heard.
3. Learn to deal with contradictory information. Doors may tell you to pull, but secretly you have to push. Seeing people faceplant the door is quite common, and funny.
4. Learn to find side streets in order to avoid getting your eyes stuck out by selfie-sticks in popular tourist areas. Unless you enjoy the experience of getting your eyes poked out, of course. Other option is to photobomb said tourists with selfie-sticks, at least you will still have some fun.
5. Learn Japanese and/ or Chinese. Chances are, you will find more people in Prague that speak either of these languages than Czech.
6. Speaking of languages, learn to recognize when Czechs are discussing you. And the appropriate reply, of course.
7. If you are not used to alcohol, do NOT go drinking with Czechs. Chances are that your hangover (kocovina) will be the worst you've ever experienced. Training by natives before trying is recommended. You will thank me for this advise later!
8. BureauCRAZY. Digital forms? Ha. Ha. Think again. Also, paper books (blue book) for grades are still used. Yes, with handwritten results in it.
9. Shoes. As a woman it is recommended to not wear heels in Prague city center. Unless you enjoy the experience of faceplanting the pavement, that is.
10. And lastly, as in every tourist area, know when you're being screwed. Overprized items that are "local" or "traditional" are found on every corner of the street, and are expensive. And 9 out of 10 times they are neither local (made in China) or traditional. If you want traditional, take beer. The liquid bread is the Czech pride. Did you know Czechs have the highest beer consumption per inhabitant?
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So! First month is over!! And this bullet list indicates the knowledge I've gained in this month. Other than that I've started "real life" (school) with a healthy dose of scepticism. The lessons are quite interesting, however, not in content unfortunately enough. I don't really think that the anatomy of an egg (as indicated on the right) adds to my knowledge. Also, the wikipedia knowledge on the number of eggs as produced by different species leave me a bit indifferent. Czech lessons
Picture
however, are a lot of fun! Though the most interesting experience was a practical class in tropical animal sciences that started with the statement "I will be speaking Czech, because my English is not that good." uhm, what?! And you think our Czech is? Cool. For your imagination, we were 9 foreign students and 3 Czechs. This resulted in one of the girls having to translate the whole lecture. I was also surprised that common breeds in animals are "czechified" (trianta rabbit = Czech red rabbit, Holstein-frysian cow = Czech red cow) uhm, well, if everything is Czech red, the exam will be easy! What will be fun are the excursions; we will go to the zoo and we will visit the ostrich farm! Bird cuddling! The other subjects, I don't know yet. Because of the bureaucracy it took a lot of time to figure out an appropriate timetable, therefore I didn't start all my classes yet. Also, one of them turned out to be a bachelor course, so the professor redirected me to the master version of it (Psychology!) it looked quite interesting and he has a nice way of lecturing. And then some other courses will start November 9th, so we will see! I'm actually curious to epizootology in the tropics.
Other than school, let's see. Of course I have been exploring a bit, during the moon eclipse the brilliant idea arose to visit it from one of the most beautiful parks of Prague. It was cold, but also SO worth it! However, as you can see, the clouds were not very cooperative in letting us see the actual eclipse.. So we did stay up all night to see it, but due to the clouds we didn't really. The pie is also a funny story, it was the birthday of a Greek girl who we were supposed to visit before going there. That didn't happen, so the cake was brought so it could be given to her later. But.. she never showed, so we just lit the candles, sang a birthday-song and ate it. We did film it to show it to her later, up until today I never met the girl. Of course exploring nature is part of the fun! Until just now, the weather was AMAZING. Here are a few pictures to illustrate the nature around campus, in the album you can find more!
And there was a volleyball tournament! That was really awesome! I saw a message from a random guy on facebook, he was asking for players and I decided to react. Since the weather was amaaaazing we were playing beach volley, it was like being at the beach. We didn't win, and due to wrong count we officially got 5th, but after the finals we appeared to have 2 points more than the team that did get to the semi-finals. En fin, we played for fun and we had fun! After we decided to go for a boat party (party on a boat) which sounds nicer than it was, since it was too crowded to even walk around. I think I will leave it at that! There are so much more adventures to write about, but I will do so in smaller chunks, because it's quite a lot to read in one go ;)
--> find the pictures on worldadventuresofsam.weebly.com
1. Learn to drink. Beer is no joke in Czech Republic and consumption often starts before noon.
2. Did I mention beer? It's in general cheaper than water, plus, in water the fish shit, or so I've heard.
3. Learn to deal with contradictory information. Doors may tell you to pull, but secretly you have to push. Seeing people faceplant the door is quite common, and funny.
4. Learn to find side streets in order to avoid getting your eyes stuck out by selfie-sticks in popular tourist areas. Unless you enjoy the experience of getting your eyes poked out, of course. Other option is to photobomb said tourists with selfie-sticks, at least you will still have some fun.
5. Learn Japanese and/ or Chinese. Chances are, you will find more people in Prague that speak either of these languages than Czech.
6. Speaking of languages, learn to recognize when Czechs are discussing you. And the appropriate reply, of course.
7. If you are not used to alcohol, do NOT go drinking with Czechs. Chances are that your hangover (kocovina) will be the worst you've ever experienced. Training by natives before trying is recommended. You will thank me for this advise later!
8. BureauCRAZY. Digital forms? Ha. Ha. Think again. Also, paper books (blue book) for grades are still used. Yes, with handwritten results in it.
9. Shoes. As a woman it is recommended to not wear heels in Prague city center. Unless you enjoy the experience of faceplanting the pavement, that is.
10. And lastly, as in every tourist area, know when you're being screwed. Overprized items that are "local" or "traditional" are found on every corner of the street, and are expensive. And 9 out of 10 times they are neither local (made in China) or traditional. If you want traditional, take beer. The liquid bread is the Czech pride. Did you know Czechs have the highest beer consumption per inhabitant?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So! First month is over!! And this bullet list indicates the knowledge I've gained in this month. Other than that I've started "real life" (school) with a healthy dose of scepticism. The lessons are quite interesting, however, not in content unfortunately enough. I don't really think that the anatomy of an egg (as indicated on the right) adds to my knowledge. Also, the wikipedia knowledge on the number of eggs as produced by different species leave me a bit indifferent. Czech lessons
Picture
however, are a lot of fun! Though the most interesting experience was a practical class in tropical animal sciences that started with the statement "I will be speaking Czech, because my English is not that good." uhm, what?! And you think our Czech is? Cool. For your imagination, we were 9 foreign students and 3 Czechs. This resulted in one of the girls having to translate the whole lecture. I was also surprised that common breeds in animals are "czechified" (trianta rabbit = Czech red rabbit, Holstein-frysian cow = Czech red cow) uhm, well, if everything is Czech red, the exam will be easy! What will be fun are the excursions; we will go to the zoo and we will visit the ostrich farm! Bird cuddling! The other subjects, I don't know yet. Because of the bureaucracy it took a lot of time to figure out an appropriate timetable, therefore I didn't start all my classes yet. Also, one of them turned out to be a bachelor course, so the professor redirected me to the master version of it (Psychology!) it looked quite interesting and he has a nice way of lecturing. And then some other courses will start November 9th, so we will see! I'm actually curious to epizootology in the tropics.
Other than school, let's see. Of course I have been exploring a bit, during the moon eclipse the brilliant idea arose to visit it from one of the most beautiful parks of Prague. It was cold, but also SO worth it! However, as you can see, the clouds were not very cooperative in letting us see the actual eclipse.. So we did stay up all night to see it, but due to the clouds we didn't really. The pie is also a funny story, it was the birthday of a Greek girl who we were supposed to visit before going there. That didn't happen, so the cake was brought so it could be given to her later. But.. she never showed, so we just lit the candles, sang a birthday-song and ate it. We did film it to show it to her later, up until today I never met the girl. Of course exploring nature is part of the fun! Until just now, the weather was AMAZING. Here are a few pictures to illustrate the nature around campus, in the album you can find more!
And there was a volleyball tournament! That was really awesome! I saw a message from a random guy on facebook, he was asking for players and I decided to react. Since the weather was amaaaazing we were playing beach volley, it was like being at the beach. We didn't win, and due to wrong count we officially got 5th, but after the finals we appeared to have 2 points more than the team that did get to the semi-finals. En fin, we played for fun and we had fun! After we decided to go for a boat party (party on a boat) which sounds nicer than it was, since it was too crowded to even walk around. I think I will leave it at that! There are so much more adventures to write about, but I will do so in smaller chunks, because it's quite a lot to read in one go ;)
--> find the pictures on worldadventuresofsam.weebly.com
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Je kunt nu ook Smileys gebruiken. Via de toolbar, toetsenbord of door eerst : te typen en dan een woord bijvoorbeeld :smiley
