News Editor- Jenna Anderson
This spring, I happened upon the opportunity to study abroad in Prague. As someone who never expected studying abroad to be part of their college experience, I was surprised how quickly it became one of the best things I’ve ever done.
My original plan was to study profile writing in a small village in Italy. I had already paid and met my program leaders and students I’d be traveling with, when the program was cancelled due to low enrollment. I mourned the loss of my Eurosummer for a few days, thinking studying abroad probably wasn’t for me, but then something in me decided that I needed to travel this summer.
With the help of the study abroad office, I ended up in Prague studying post-communist media systems. Studying with a large program in the capital of the Czech Republic was almost the complete opposite of the small journalism program in an Italian village that I was expecting, but something in me was drawn to it.
As a person who has never spent much time in cities, I was initially shocked at how large Prague was, but I grew to love the city. I was mesmerized by the architecture, which I had been told was one of the things that draws tourists there, as Prague is one of the few European cities that faced very little destruction in the World Wars. You could look at one city street and see a gothic, baroque, modernist, and communist era building all in a row.
Remnants of communism shaping life in the Czech Republic was fascinating to witness. I quickly noticed that Czech culture is very quiet and stoic, realizing we were seen as annoying Americans for talking at all on public transportation, and nobody was smiling back at me on the street. The cultural expectation to keep to yourself in public, I learned in class, is one of the many remnants of communist-era Prague.
My class was titled ‘America’s Influence on Post-Communist Czech Media.’A few times throughout our class, we held panel discussions with communism survivors. They often brought in pictures of themselves from that time, and one even brought in the wheat cereal-like coffee substitute they drank during that time because real coffee was too expensive.
One story that really stuck out to me was from a woman named Lucia. She lived through communism as a teenage girl and was part of the Velvet Revolution, the student revolution that perpetuated the end of communism. She left the Czech Republic to study English in Canada, and told a story of breaking down in the grocery store when she had to buy shampoo for the first time, because there were so many options to choose from and she was used to only two.
This anecdote, along with countless others (and tasting the “coffee” people were drinking at that time) made me thankful for the freedoms I’ve always had. I was inspired by Lucia especially. She described what she does now, 37 years later, to not take her life for granted: traveling to places she wasn’t allowed to visit in her younger life, keeping in touch with family members she wasn’t allowed to see, and even drinking her morning coffee with gratitude. Not only that, but she also talked about the ways she works to help ensure continued freedom: keeping updated with politics, supporting citizen led media systems, educating younger generations, and talking freely about her beliefs.
We also toured Radio Free Europe, a program that brings news to places across the world that don’t have freedom of press. Radio Free Europe started in Washington D.C. During the communist era in the Czech Republic, RFE broadcasted radio into the country that contrasted the propaganda the country was being fed. They even dropped balloons into the country with pamphlets describing the state of the country and world from an outside, unbiased perspective. By the time communism fell, over 50% of the population was listening to RFE.
Being such an instrumental part of freeing the Czech Republic from communism, President Václav Havel offered to hold the new headquarters of RFE in Prague, so it could be closer to the countries it was broadcasting to. There is still an office in D.C., but the program now operates mostly out of the Czech Republic, bringing press to citizens of countries that are now facing a similar situation that they themselves were pulled out of by RFE.
I never expected to love and learn so much from Prague, but that’s what made it one of the best things I’ve ever done. I got my typical “Eurosummer” that I was hoping for, spending hours in cafes, dancing in underground jazz bars, swimming in the local quarry, and having the most interesting conversations with strangers from across the world.
On top of all that, I got to learn from people who have a deep sense of gratitude for their lives that I can only hope to understand, and be dropped into a culture with a fascinating history I previously knew nothing about but was able to experience firsthand. My advice to anyone who is on the fence about studying abroad is to go for it, you might end up in a place you never expected but were always meant to experience.