Prague: Settling In (Not Too Introspective Today)

A month and a half ago I moved to Prague, the capitol of the Czech Republic. My intentions were to come here, take a course on teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) and then find gainful employment.

TEFL Certified: Check.
Gainful employment: No check yet.

As a result, anxiety has started to mount a bit. However, there are plenty of language schools to apply to, and I've already had an interview at one, so there is no need to panic yet.

In the meantime, I also had my hands full with finding a flat. Now, by a strange twist of happenstance, I've never had to find my own flat before and neurotic mind turned it into an ulcer-inducing nightmare before I realized that it's actually pretty straightforward.

I looked at four places, and ended up with a very nice apartment, with a nice view of the city (it's in a high-rise) but it's a bit of a jaunt into town. I'll be keeping my eyes open for something closer but due to where I was living while I had my month-long course I am used to commuting.

Regrettably I have not yet studied much Czech. I wanted to get settled before I start making that time-investment, but I should in fact get rolling on that because often I'll be out in public at a store or something and feel like a horse's ass because I can't understand anything except "yes" and "no" and a few other words.

A recent example of where this would have been nice was when I was at Ikea getting some utensils for my new flat. The store is designed so that you can enter it only one way and then you have to go all the way through it before you can exit. There are no aisles to roam about or anything like most stores. If you want to use the restroom, you have to go through the store and then go all the way through it again to get back to where you were.

As it turned out a couple of employees thought I'd trying to make off with a bag of loot and I couldn't explain that I'd simply made my purchases in a decidedly legal fashion, had some Swedish meatballs in their restaurant near the entrance of the store, and then walked through their deadly fire-trap of a store just to get to the exit.

But not all of Prague is a pain to navigate. For a person like myself who has almost never needed to use public transportation, the metro and bus lines are thankfully quite clear. And despite being the largest city in the country, it does not have an urban feel to it at all. There are no skyscrapers and the city is not overly noisy.

It is very touristy and I'm wondering how I'll be able to make any Czech friends. I'm sure there's a way, but contacts are hard to find so far when all of your associations are with fellow expats. Hopefully learning the language will help open their world up to me; on the other hand, having contact with them will obviously serve as a wonderful way to learn more about their culture and language.

I have not been to any other place outside of the city with the exception of a very quick trip to the Czech Embassy in Berlin to get my visa worked out. I'm happy to get my German out and use it; it's gotten quite rusty over the years but it's still there and still serves me well. I even had a chance to use Esperanto today while briefly meeting up with an acquaintance of mine I met while in Germany four years ago.

So. Here I'll leave you. Let's see if I can't get back into a regular writing mode such as when I was last on this side of the pond, and also in my more common, theme of the week style of blogging rather than these easy but dry laundry list entries.

Till next time!