and Prague has proven amazing so far.
it is just no Geneva though.
I miss the internationality. the English, French, German, Spanish, Portugese, Russian, Dutch or Arabic in the tram. here you only hear Czech. except for the evenings, when some Americans decide to go out. then you can definitely hear them in the whole tram ;)
enough whining, Prague is really cool!
and cheap. concerning certain things e.g. groceries, beer, clothing or monthly tickets for the public transport. what I paid for 1 month in geneva, I now pay for 3 months in Prague :)
But let us begin with my journey.
yeeee. that was pretty much it so far.
I actually don't think that anybody made it this far, cos it's quite a long post.
anyways,
love from prague, city centre
anna :)
I miss the internationality. the English, French, German, Spanish, Portugese, Russian, Dutch or Arabic in the tram. here you only hear Czech. except for the evenings, when some Americans decide to go out. then you can definitely hear them in the whole tram ;)
enough whining, Prague is really cool!
and cheap. concerning certain things e.g. groceries, beer, clothing or monthly tickets for the public transport. what I paid for 1 month in geneva, I now pay for 3 months in Prague :)
But let us begin with my journey.
TUESDAY. after 4hrs of sleep, I was allowed to drive a BMW to the railway station in Graz. after saying thousands of goodbyes and standing at the window, I got to Vienna, where I had to change trains. 5hrs later (aka at 6 PM), I was in Prague.
I got out of the train, down the escalator, there already was the first guy to ask "taxi, hotel, hostel?" in broken English, cos frankly, I had a lot of stuff and looked like I needed help ;)
just went away to wait for the taxi my landlord had ordered for me. yeeeeh. the driver didnt even find my street at first, so he waived it off and I had to pay only ~7€ for 15mins drive :)
then came the 1st shock: instead of ONE Spanish flatmate (as told by my landlord) I had three (+ two 30+ women from NZ & AUS).well, my room is big and I don't have to share (I also pay a lot more than the others), so I actually don't mind. and they are both on vacation in Egypt, so just me and M. (:
WEDNESDAY. first exploring the area around my flat. Charles Bridge is 3mins away, Old Square 2mins. as starbucks. yeeeeeeeeeh. I had slept as long as I could (until well after noon :D) and as M. proposed to go to the other Spanish people for a pre-party, I was happy. and voila, what a surprise, the only non-Spanish speaking person. I actually liked that, cos I could understand bits and pieces and everybody could speak very good English, if I was in need of an explanation.
then an ERASMUS-party (much much much bigger than in Geneva, also a bit more gross LOL) happened, where I finally lost everybody and luckily found my way to the Metro-station :)
THURSDAY. looong sleeping day. I think I got up at 3PM or so. I then proceeded to unpack a bit and to cook myself a huge meal and catch up on TV-shows ;) in the evening, another party was on, called "nation2nation" - basically just a party in a bigger place so everybody could fit in and I met future working colleagues from Spain, Hungary and the Netherlands LOL
FRIDAY. loooong sleeping again. I pitied M. cos she had to go to work at 7 AM every day. but well, she had no problems at all, cos she wanted to go out in the first place ;) in the evening I was skyping like crazy, and discovered also that my MS Outlook is STUPID as it downloads my emails from the gmx-account but doesn't send them. I checked everything but something is just wrong T.T
SATURDAY. well rested, I was motivated enough to go for a long run, wher I carefully avoided the touristy places and went to a big park with benches etc to test my parkour/freerunning skills - I DEFINITELY need more indoors-training... I fell flat on my back a few times... indoors it wouldn't hurt so much ;) no party, but going out with the Spanish crowd and it was soo much fun. also convinced German people that I was from the UK :D
SUNDAY. another sleeping day. and then the boiler crashed. no heating, no hot water. DANG!! freezing in my flat, as well as the others. we must've killed our landlord's mobile, email & skype, cos we all four sent messages and called all the time, cos there was also the warning light on, red and blinky, and we didn't wanna hurt the thing LOL
MONDAY. yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh. met my Czech friends for the first time since June :) :) I originally planned to shower at their place as my internship began on Tuesday, but as one of our landlord's guys surprisingly showed up to repair the boiler, I then just met them, talked aaaages and we ate quite a lot ;)
TUESDAY. start of internship. windy but sunny. I might've worn a dress a bit too cold, cos the wind nearly killed me in the evening when on the way home. was pretty interesting first day, nice people, and although I'll be working in the call center of an aviation-company at first and later probably in HR, all the people I've met so far are nice and lovely :)
It didn't hurt knowing lots of people beforehand even though they're working for another part of that company!
interesting thing is, although the language of work (except for calls, there it is French, English, Danish, Spanish, Portugese, German, Italian and Dutch) is supposed to be English, everybody speaks French all the time, cos most customers are from France and a lot of my colleagues as well!
I will NOT forget any of the French I acquired in Geneva! I'm sooo happy about this!
WEDNESDAY. 2nd day of training. we did more stuff. were lectured on a lot of things that were heavily redundant (but better twice said than never!) and we were allowed to listen to older "workers" and how they do it.
THURSDAY. 3rd day of training. again listening to older co-workers how it's done. pretty excited as I was allowed to do stuff with the programme that is being used while the other person was taking the call and I had my headset put so I could hear, but not talk.
still a bit insecure with French, cos I just don't have the aviation voc yet...
I finally made it to the post office, where they only give you your post if you have a Czech ID or a passport, cos an Austrian ID is apparently not valid... tsssss.
I got out of the train, down the escalator, there already was the first guy to ask "taxi, hotel, hostel?" in broken English, cos frankly, I had a lot of stuff and looked like I needed help ;)
just went away to wait for the taxi my landlord had ordered for me. yeeeeh. the driver didnt even find my street at first, so he waived it off and I had to pay only ~7€ for 15mins drive :)
then came the 1st shock: instead of ONE Spanish flatmate (as told by my landlord) I had three (+ two 30+ women from NZ & AUS).well, my room is big and I don't have to share (I also pay a lot more than the others), so I actually don't mind. and they are both on vacation in Egypt, so just me and M. (:
WEDNESDAY. first exploring the area around my flat. Charles Bridge is 3mins away, Old Square 2mins. as starbucks. yeeeeeeeeeh. I had slept as long as I could (until well after noon :D) and as M. proposed to go to the other Spanish people for a pre-party, I was happy. and voila, what a surprise, the only non-Spanish speaking person. I actually liked that, cos I could understand bits and pieces and everybody could speak very good English, if I was in need of an explanation.then an ERASMUS-party (much much much bigger than in Geneva, also a bit more gross LOL) happened, where I finally lost everybody and luckily found my way to the Metro-station :)
THURSDAY. looong sleeping day. I think I got up at 3PM or so. I then proceeded to unpack a bit and to cook myself a huge meal and catch up on TV-shows ;) in the evening, another party was on, called "nation2nation" - basically just a party in a bigger place so everybody could fit in and I met future working colleagues from Spain, Hungary and the Netherlands LOL
FRIDAY. loooong sleeping again. I pitied M. cos she had to go to work at 7 AM every day. but well, she had no problems at all, cos she wanted to go out in the first place ;) in the evening I was skyping like crazy, and discovered also that my MS Outlook is STUPID as it downloads my emails from the gmx-account but doesn't send them. I checked everything but something is just wrong T.T
SATURDAY. well rested, I was motivated enough to go for a long run, wher I carefully avoided the touristy places and went to a big park with benches etc to test my parkour/freerunning skills - I DEFINITELY need more indoors-training... I fell flat on my back a few times... indoors it wouldn't hurt so much ;) no party, but going out with the Spanish crowd and it was soo much fun. also convinced German people that I was from the UK :D
SUNDAY. another sleeping day. and then the boiler crashed. no heating, no hot water. DANG!! freezing in my flat, as well as the others. we must've killed our landlord's mobile, email & skype, cos we all four sent messages and called all the time, cos there was also the warning light on, red and blinky, and we didn't wanna hurt the thing LOL
MONDAY. yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh. met my Czech friends for the first time since June :) :) I originally planned to shower at their place as my internship began on Tuesday, but as one of our landlord's guys surprisingly showed up to repair the boiler, I then just met them, talked aaaages and we ate quite a lot ;)
TUESDAY. start of internship. windy but sunny. I might've worn a dress a bit too cold, cos the wind nearly killed me in the evening when on the way home. was pretty interesting first day, nice people, and although I'll be working in the call center of an aviation-company at first and later probably in HR, all the people I've met so far are nice and lovely :)
It didn't hurt knowing lots of people beforehand even though they're working for another part of that company!
interesting thing is, although the language of work (except for calls, there it is French, English, Danish, Spanish, Portugese, German, Italian and Dutch) is supposed to be English, everybody speaks French all the time, cos most customers are from France and a lot of my colleagues as well!
I will NOT forget any of the French I acquired in Geneva! I'm sooo happy about this!
WEDNESDAY. 2nd day of training. we did more stuff. were lectured on a lot of things that were heavily redundant (but better twice said than never!) and we were allowed to listen to older "workers" and how they do it.
THURSDAY. 3rd day of training. again listening to older co-workers how it's done. pretty excited as I was allowed to do stuff with the programme that is being used while the other person was taking the call and I had my headset put so I could hear, but not talk.
still a bit insecure with French, cos I just don't have the aviation voc yet...
I finally made it to the post office, where they only give you your post if you have a Czech ID or a passport, cos an Austrian ID is apparently not valid... tsssss.
yeeee. that was pretty much it so far.
I actually don't think that anybody made it this far, cos it's quite a long post.
anyways,
love from prague, city centre
anna :)
