ERASMUS LIFE IN PRAGUE

Did you discover any place which we should show future Erasmus students?

  • Vyšehrad
  • Kasárna Karlin – Awesome, perfect place, multi space, has coffee, bar, outdoors space, beach volley, outdoors cinema place, honestly 12/10
  • Park Letná
  • Troja and the way alongside the river are pretty nice and I don’t think a lot people go there
  • Kutná Hora could be nice 🙂
  • Cafe alchemist
  • The Georgian bistro on the opposite side of dead fish
  • Kavárna Karlín
  • Thrift shops far away from the city center (in Prague 9 and Prague 6)
  • all the parks
  • Gabriel loci
  • National Memorial to the Heroes of the Heydrich Terror
  • CAMP – Centrum architektury a městského plánování
  • Strahov Monastery Brewery
  • Metronom
  • Prague Markets
  • City Library
  • Radost rooftop bar
  • I am also going to say the obvious, Dog’s bar, it was supposed to by like a “hidden” place in Prague but like everyone knew it, there was a queue of more that 1h most of the times, still awesome place, during my stay they increased the entrance fee from 200czh to 250czh but it is still better than any other bar/club thing in Prague because you actually get to eat that money inside
  • you already showed nice places during the walk through the city
  • you guys already did a great job, I feel like besides all your recommendations it is also necessary and a nice experience to discover Prague on your own 🙂

Did you watch any HONEST GUIDE video? If yes, was it helpful for you? What did you take from it?

  • NO                6 x
  • YES              8 x
  • Thanks to this I knew how to use the public transport since the very first day.
  • Exchange offices
  • Yes, they are pretty helpful
  • Some recommendations for places (eg Cafés) + what’s going on in the city
  • yess, these videos are very nice, for example the ones about recent changes in prague and funfacts like how the sidewalks are constructed, it’s very fun knowledge
  • Yes, it was helpful. General info
  • I did watch some videos of him and I think especially if you’re new to the city they might be quite helpful.
  • Yes but not that many, was kinda useful but not too much

What would you like to tell the next group of incoming Erasmus students? How should they tackle their problems? Would you like to warn them against anything in particular?

  • Go to therapy if needed, make friends with people in your class, study and go out
  • Take the chance and sign up to every plan or activity, you are gonna study the last days (as always) anyway. Also, they should know they have an institutional email (I found out yesterday).
  • Look at your submissions
  • Yes. Do not use a degoogled phone. Do not finish your master thesis abroad
  • Changes to the learning agreement have to be handed in very quickly, which is quite stressful and unusual, so it would be great to know ahead of time 🙂
    Also the exam system in biology is super shocking! Neither good nor bad, but very different. Multiple exam dates and that they get announced so late was very foreign to be and it was hard to foresee when you would be super busy or have nothing to do. Maybe you could let the Bio people know, that they don’t need to worry because exam dates are more flexible here.
  • They shouldn’t loose their heads if they don’t have everything organized before they arrive in Prague. The Erasmus related people here in Prague are really nice and will help them with everything. Overall the most people here are really nice and happy to help 🙂
  • Choose field courses
  • Go to the events and be careful of your liver
  • Take the opportunity to travel around the country
  • Get your litacka from day 1 – the inspectors are huge assholes.
  • Stay at the student accommodation, even if it’s room-sharing and not nice. Any accomodation outside is overpriced and hard to find.
  • Eating out is not much more expensive than the supermarkets. The best humus is in billa and the best smoked tofu in Albert.
  • Vietnamese restaurants!!! Huge yes.
  • Talk to your professors. They’re awesome people and they’re very approachable!
  • I feel like the biggest thing is: search for your accommodation as soon as possible, the rest will come somehow 🙂
  • Have an open mind, be calm, everything will be solved. Enjoy this lifetime experience
  • Don’t be afraid to ask for help, you’ll have much fun, the hours of peace and quiet are from 10pm to 6am, the dorms are disgusting but you’ll get over it and they are actually fun
  • I think one shouldn’t worry too much, as everything was explained quite well in the beginning and I didn’t have any major problems with my my studies in Prague.
  • Always keep an eye for the tickets of the trams, never forget the ISIC.
  • don’t get discounted tickets in tram; don’t order food in death fish, but drinks!

Erasmus club didnt want to shorten this answer.
==> If you can manage, don’t get sick, don’t need any doctors whatsoever.

Be kind of careful with food, quite a few people I knew (including myself) had stomach issues or food poisonings.

If you are from the south, please be prepared, it is COLD, during December we had snow for 20 days straight, high temperature -3 and low -12, it was COLD DUDE, layers and layers and layers

It was snowing in March, like mid March.

It honestly depends on your luck but I absolutely loved the entire thing, I would have stayed forever if I could.

I met people that couldn’t wait to return home and people that had a good, okay experience that didn’t really stand out and I honestly feel a little sad for them because my experience was life-changing and had me bawling my eyes out every time someone left, and yes it SUCKED and it SUCKS MORE now that I’m also back home but also I was incredibly lucky to have met the people that i met (mostly winter semester tbh, summer semester was not my cup of tea, at least the first half) and formed such bonds that they took my.heart with them when they left and after a semester away from each other we still speak regularly and with some of them we already have met again (more that 2 times) and I consider actually family.

The goodbyes don’t get easier.

Don’t fall in love in Prague, or do I guess because it is a magical city and a very cool place to fall in love.

Maybe it will last, but prepare to get your heart broken.

Either way, it will be a fairytale.

Go to Cesky Krumlov for rafting if you are summer semester, it is so so so so fun, please do yourself a favour and trust me. Again, for summer semester people, do a pedalboat on the Vltava, super cool.

Oh lord, go to Karlovy Vary for a spa day in the thermal waters, it is worth it, especially if you are a somewhat big group, it will be so fun (this is possible both semesters)

Travel around czech republic as well, transport tickets are cheap, hostels cheap as well.

I didn’t get to do it, but go for the river sauna, you get a view over Vltava and it is such a vibe.

In general, travel czech republic if you can, flixbus is ridiculously cheap.

Castles, they have so many castles and all of them are beautiful. My personal favourite is Hluboká, that one was magical.

Also, RegioJet, please, USE IT, they give you a free water bottle and you can order FOOD inside, cheap good food, that they bring to your seat, also usually they have free coffee, favourite train company.

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, BUY THE PUBLIC TRANSPORT TICKETS AND ACTIVATE THEM, control dudes are everywhere and VERY INCONSPICUOUS, you’ll never know who could be one and the fee is like 1000czh, 40€, not worth it, the tickets are cheap and once you get your ISIC it’s practically free.

If you stay at Hostivař, organize a Halloween party in the common room, and if you’re lucky, maybe the doors will be unlocked. Then you get to explore 2 floors worth of haunted basement and I’m telling you, it will be magical.

Go to the theater, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, go see operas, ballets, whatever, they have student discounts and it is so so worth it, it is not easily accessible to do it in my country (greece) and I absolutely loved Prague for it.

Also, if the erasmus club does it again, please, participate in the amazing race, it was fire. In general, the erasmus club events we’re fire during summer semester, during winter i couldn’t attend most of them but summer semester i was more active and they were very cool, you get to learn actually stuff about czech republic, their customs etc, 10/10

What no one tells you about erasmus, or at least what no one told me, is that you will have to say goodbye. I mean, you know that from the start, but no one is really prepared or understands the intensity this will have until you are forced to experience it yourself. I think it is easier if you stay only for one semester, because if you stay for two, you are going to be forced to say goodbye to most, if you’re lucky, or all your friends while you have to stay and do it all over again. Second semester i mostly met people that were staying for a year from the start, or they prolonged and all of us were left sad and lonely because our first semester people left and left us behind. Almost all of them I hadn’t even seen during winter semester because there were so many people that it would be impossible to know them all.

So yeah, the breaking of the erasmus bubble is a very violent one, because you WILL have to go back to “real life”.

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. MAY THE ODDS BE EVER IN YOUR FAVOUR.

My wish for you is to be absolutely crushed by leaving Prague behind because it means that it was worth it.

It means that you did it right.

Please, list your courses here and write your experience (positive and negative) with them. Did you notice any differences compared to your home university?

SECTION BIOLOGY:

  • Advances in Separation Science
  • Botanical Field Course: 
    – 3400 czk, great course if enough Erasmus students join and an easy exam
    – was a great, well organised field course where we met a lot of czech students and learned a lot about plants 10/10
  • Chronobiology:
    – good lecturer but she doesn’t upload the slides so I quit the course
  • Cryosphere – positive
  • Cytometry
    – Incredible bad teaching. Very unstructured, very hard to listen to the teacher.
    – Incredible bad teacher.
  • Experimental Plant Ecology:
    – great course, very relaxed and helpful teachers!
  • General ecology – meh/negative
  • Insects and conservation – positive
  • Imunology – – Incredible bad teacher.
  • Machine Learning for Bioinformatics
    – exam in the end of june. Pretty though one for a person not coming from informatics faculty
  • Experimental plant ecology
    – theoretically a very cool and relaxed course where you develop and conduct an experiment but due to various mistakes we couldn’t finish our experiment so me and my group are probably not going to pass.
  • Skills in pedagogy, communication and self confidence in science
    – very time consuming, but worth it as you get a lot out of the course especially because it is very different to usual uni courses
  • Model organisms in developmental biology
  • Molecular Cloning:
    – fun, short practical course, very english friendly
  • Molecules of Life & Mutations
  • Molecules of Life and Mutations:
    – short course, then presentation, valuable skills learned but one Prof is super rude and not the best organization
  • Parasitology – meh/positive
  • Plant Ecophysiology:
    – broad range of lecture topics with mostly great presenters, practical course better suited for BA than MA but still fun
  • Plant Immunity:
    – very sweet lecturers and nice practical course, but hard to follow lectures
  • Plant systematics – positive
  • Plant, fungal and bacterial viruses:
    – bit boring lecturer but easy exam and short lectures

SECTION GEOGRAPHY

  • Analysis, mapping and visualization of urban and regional development
    – the proffesors weren´t very sympathic with the ones that didn´t have proper level.
  • Applied Geoinformatics:
    – I learned a lot and used programs I’m not able to learn with back in my home university. The teachers slowed down to help those which weren’t familiar at all with the taks, I appreciate that.
    – took too long to grade us.
  • Discussion seminar on Contemporary Urban Studies – good
  • European Perspectives on Regional Development and Inovation Policies
    – the professor was really good
  • Forest Geography:
    – Really interesting, I loved it
    – was good but I normally study geology so I had some problems with catching the main messages from this course
    – positive
  • Geography of World Economy
    – was way to hard the professor was too strict
  • Global Population Challenges
  • Human geography in Czechia – positive
  • Human Geography Research of Czechia II
  • Landscape Changes and Society:
    – interesting but maybe the exam is too short in relation with the amount of information acquired.
     –  Selected chapters; very good professors.
  • Selected Chapters from Physical Geography and Geoecology:
    – it’s hard to do such a long project if you’re not used to it but it’s worth it. Since we had many different teaches, sometimes I feel like I learnt a lot, sometimes not.
  • Urban Health – was really fun course and the professors were very cool
  • Urban Social Geography
    – Contemporary… (not that good organized)
    – were nice

SECTION GEOLOGY:

  • Applied geoinformatics (summer):
    –  Lord this course was chaos, we had to submit 4 exercises over the semester but we could only do them in the faculty computers because of the special programs we used so this was already difficult the entire class (almost 20 people) procrastinated the entire thing so last week we literally speedran the entire thing, we had to submit the exercises before the 18th of may and we got the results literally less that a week before the semester ended (23rd of june, half the people had already left)
    Apparently the different profs didn’t care at all because everyone passed with 1 and i know for sure that at least half of us did not deserved it but i am definitely not complaining
  • Evolution of global ecosystems in geological past
    – really nice course, very informative, really nice teachers
  • Fundamentals of Structural Geology (summer):
    – The most effort I put for summer semester, we had to do an exercise and a quiz each week and if we passed those with more that 55% we didn’t have to have an exam at the end which was totally worth it, not that difficult, we did help each other out though. The prof was very good, explained stuff well.
  • Geological field trips (summer):
    – It was 3 days course for Erasmus students where we took short trips around Prague to see geological stuff around, we got to find fossils, it was incredible, I honestly enjoyed it, the walking wasn’t that much (no more than 15 km) and it was genuinely interesting to learn about the rocks in the area 10/10
  • Geological field trips for Erasmus students
    – interesting and really nice walks in the nature
  • Groundwater hydraulics (summer):
    – I do not vibe at all with that field, the course was difficult to understand, the entire time we did math that was so crazy, we had to submit exercises for.the course credit and we were all so stupid that.the prof literally almost solved them entirely for us.Reminded me of my grandpa, very kind, very sweet but unfortunately the subject wasn’t for me
  • Igneous Processes (summer):
    – Same prof as geochronology, equally difficult sub although the prof this semester wasnt that bad, he was actually kind of warm and funny but we had started off wrong so it was difficult for me still
  • Laboratory training in analytical chemistry (summer):
    – Boy that course was the reason I almost lost my mind second semester, I had to do 5 experiments and submit protocols about them and as a geologist that has barely done any chemistry the last 4 years it was tough, the main prof . didnt seem to care, I literally begged him to fail me because i couldn’t do the protocols and I had to have a result and HE PASSED ME so yeah if i knew that I wouldn’t have stressed over this course so much
  • Metallic Deposits: geology, mining and environmental impact (summer):
    – Honestly it was a good course, I would have never passed it back home so I am very happy about the outcome, we went for gold panning with one of the profs (just because we asked him, it wasn’t part of the course) and I really really liked it. Fairly easy, the profs were good.  10/10
  • Quaternary Paleoenvironments:
    – was also good it just wasn’t really nice that we only got told in one of the last lectures what the type exam will be like
    – maybe too much content but it was really interesting as well.
    – the professor was really helpful
  • Seminar in Petrology and structural geology
    – interesting presentation, really nice people. The exam was oral and he was very helpful, I think he pity passed me but I am not complaining

SECTION CHEMISTRY:

  • Chemistry of Organoelement Compounds
  • Solid State Chemistry
  • Waste geochemistry

SECTION OTHER:

Czech language course

– great
–  was really fun but I still don’t speak Czech but I guess that kind of my fault because I didn’t really learn the vocabulary or anything at home…
– good language course for beginners

Internship for Erasmus students – very nice

Insights into Czech Literature, Language, Culture and Mentality

– very nice course to get to know something about czech culture, at a different faculty of cuni but worth to put in the extra effort to get in the course

First Aid Course for Foreign Students
– very nice course over one weekend where you learn the first aid basics, also 10/10
– Absolutely loved it, it was the highlight of the second semester honestly perfect, 2 days course over the weekend easy and super useful, 10/10 would highly recommend

Python course ‘for beginners’
– led by mirek slouf, great course, but credit number (3) does not im any way correspond to the amount of time required for beginning programers. Credits should be at least 5.

Positive experience regarding the field courses that i did: geological field trip, zoological field excursion (Havraniky) and botanical field course (Dobronice). All very well organised, teachers have been amazing and very patient and relaxed. Some improvement could be made in terms of presentation quality for some of the excursion leaders to make it more variable and clear to participants.

Overall notes:


==> All together teachers are very relaxed here and like to do things last minute, more than in Germany. Also a lot more frontal lectures for Masters and interesting that they put BA,MA and sometimes PHDs in the same class.