Prague: Exchange Student Stories

August 19th, 2000 was my second time in Prague. I was there for a whole few hours and saw the airport and train station. Fascinating stuff! I was 15 and was going to the Slovak Republic for a year as an exchange student. My day started very early as my plane left from Amsterdam at 8am and I had to be there 2 hours early and the drive took some time as well. As this page is on the Prague fanlisting, I'll skip most of the year. The west of Slovakia was my home from the summer of 2000, till the summer of 2001. Prague was 6 hours by bus which was quite doable. I went there several times during my exchange year, and each time was awesome, amazing and fantastic.

There was only 1 other exchange student in Slovakia, and 3 in the Czech Repulic (with the organisation YFU that is) so we had our meetings together. In each country the exchange students of the same organisation have a few meetings organised by YFU a year. I met some great people in Slovakia, but it was nice to talk to fellow students from abroad. Our first meeting was in Blankso/Brno but all the others were in Prague. 4 of us became the best of friends and we would sometimes ditch school and go to Prague for a few days together. We had so much fun!

When another meeting was coming up, 4 of us decided we would go to Prague a few days before the meeting started so we could do whatever we wanted to do. Caroline and Tale both lived in Blankso so went to Prague together. Mareike lived close to me in Slovakia so we did the same. We ended up staying in a different hotel then Caroline and Tale but we spent most of our days together. Mareike and I were staying in a hostel near the Florenc bus station, Hostel Elf.



We shared a room with a bunch of other people and it was a great and friendly place. One evening I met up with Caroline and we got hopelessly lost. We ended up getting a cab from the Hilton hotel which was seriously expensive (we didn't know where else to get one) and ended up being in the cab for only a few minutes. We sure felt like idiots. It was fun though. On the day our official meeting started, YFU provided us with a hotel. Mareike and I spend the entire day around Prague looking for the hotel. We couldn't find it so we called the guy that was in charge of the meeting (he was going to take us to the opera, show us around the city and such things) and we met him and the 3 other girls (Martha arrived as well) at the Florenc bus station. We walked to the hotel and you could actually see Hostel Elf from there. Needless to say Mareike and I did not find this very amusing. Walking around a city with a massive travel bag in the heat trying to find a hotel isn't all that fun. The next day we couldn't stop laughing about it of course =p. It was a cozy little hotel and we didn't sleep a whole lot. We went sightseeing and went to the opera. It was a beautiful building and it was great to have this experience but Caroline and I decided to sneak out during the break and have fun outside. We met some guys outside of the opera house and had an awesome time. Our evenings were spent outside and when we got back to the hotel we would just talk and laugh the whole night. And just an FYI: Eating Chinese food in Prague isn't the greatest idea ever. It's quite bad.

At the end of the exchange year there was something called YES. This is a meeting organised by YFU and all European exchange students who went on exchange within Europe go there. It's in a different country every year and you don't know where it is until very late. I was hoping it would be in a great country I never been before but no.. it was in the Czech Republic. I was a bit sad at first as I knew the Czech Republic quite well but it was the best week of my life and I'm very glad it was in the Czech Republic. The meeting was in a small village near Prague called Volyně and it was very big and there were about 300 exchange students. Mareike, Tale and I got to go there but Martha and Caroline weren't allowed as they were American and this was only for European exchange students.


the school where YES was at

We sneeked Caroline in though and it was pure awesomeness. Before the meeting we spent a few days in Prague together, then we were driven to Volyně. It was so much fun to see the Dutch exchange students again as I hadn't seen them for a year and it was also cool to meet the German girl who lived with my family in Holland as an exchange student. During the day we got to participate in workshops (I did acting) and in the evening we all went mental. I partied all night with my Dutch friends and Caroline, Tale and Mareike. We also sneeked Tale's boyfriend in so our room was pretty crouded. I only slept a few hours that week. I had too much fun having parties in a small kitchen, singing a song about fishes in Dutch with Caroline and some Russian guys. We also played volleyball, sang songs with a guy who had a guitar, got lost in the massive building we were staying in, flirted with some guys from Moldavia, were stalked by a Russian guy with green hair and saw many different bedrooms. We also had to laugh a bit when the first Czech meal was served. Most people gave it a weird look and we loved it as we were used to it by now. A truly fantastic week. It was really hard to leave though, sure everyone was excited to go home and see their own family for the first time in a year again but it was very hard to say goodbye to everyone. Many tears were shed. The first part of the bus drive everyone was very quiet as we had to catch up on some sleep and it was very strange to leave the exchange year behind. The last part of the trip was a party though. Our first stop was in Brussels and all the Belgian people + most of the Dutch people got out there. There were only about 5 people left (including me) and the drive from Brussels to Utrecht was great. We danced and when we saw Holland for the first time in a year we just danced outside the gasstation and had a cheese sandwich =p.