Four Things I Promise to do While Abroad

Alice contributor Nora Wahlbrink is spending her semester studying in Prague, Czech Republic. While she is abroad, she will share travel tips and tales from her adventures. This post has been backlogged from her website.

by Nora Wahlbrink

We’ve all got this grand idea of what it would be like to live in Europe: sitting on the steps of a twelfth-century building, pleasure reading something you would never actually read like Finnegan’s Wake and striking up conversations with foreign strangers. Agreed– that’s a pretty romanticized image, but here are four things I promise myself I’ll do to make my semester in Prague a little more like that.

Give up TV. I guess I’ll just have to binge season two of The Crown before I leave the U.S. I’m going to have a lot more free time than I’m used to, and I don’t want to waste it all watching Netflix in my bed, as tempting as that may sound. But a millennial saying they won’t watch TV is like my family saying they’ll be on time; it might be ideal, but it’s just not realistic. Let’s see how long I can last.
Read the books everyone should read. I’m making a list of all those books I was supposed to read in high school English class but never got to, all those references I didn’t get, and I’m finally going to read them. Think Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein or Dante’s Inferno. Any suggestions are welcomed and appreciated.
Go somewhere new every day. My family has been going to Panera every single Sunday since I can remember, and every single Sunday I get the exact same thing. Occasionally I’ll switch it up and get chips instead of a roll, but that’s literally all the deviation I can muster. That’s why I want to go somewhere new every day in Prague. It doesn’t have to be a huge adventure; maybe instead of frequenting the same coffee shop, I’ll find a new one. By the time I leave Prague, I want to know the city like I know all the lines of Superbad, and this is one way to do it.
Make a local friend. Prague is a huge tourist city, and I’ve heard Czech people aren’t always fond of Americans. I guess everyone hates tourists in their home city (I’m looking at you D.C. Segway tourists), but I’m determined to make a real Czech friend. I need a local to teach me how to act like a local!