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Living in Czechia: What Free Tour Companies Don't Want You to Know!

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  Tourists watching the Astronomical Clock chime   After my mom left Prague, I put all of my time and energy into getting a job as a tour guide. This meant studying the history of the Czech lands from 600 B.C.E. to now, all the significant names and dates, and more importantly, all the enthralling stories and how to tell them. It also meant learning the streets, what establishments to recommend, what to warn tourists about; compiling a list of bars, cafés, restaurants, and pubs based on cuisine, location, price range, dietary restrictions, atmosphere, etc. Then you need souvenir shops, museums, music venues, night clubs, theaters, tattoo parlors, crystal shops, and so on. You patch together a tour with two parts where you combine a little history, a little legend, a tourist tip here, a humorous anecdote there. Then, perhaps most importantly, you build your sales pitch into it, because ultimately your income depends on a very delicate balance of showmanship and solicitation. I ...
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Living in Czechia: Don't Let the Bed Bugs Bite

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"What I love most about my home is who I share it with" When I first arrived in this country, I stayed at a hostel, waiting to get a flat I could move into. Rocking up to the New Town of Prague’s historic center with a bulging backpack and puffy eyes, I mapped my way through the architectural collage to find my worn down temporary lodging: a five story structure with a large wooden door, and some taped up paper beside a buzzer with shaky calligraphy that read “Art Hole” — the name of my new temporary home. The place had been recommended to me by another traveler in Vienna, and since I enjoy the small surprises of spontaneity, I decided to book a bed there. I did not stay long, but long enough to leave a mark. When I was tucked into bed as a child, my mom would sweetly rhyme good night, sleep tight, don’t let the bed bugs bite. In my imagination, these bugs were the stuff of fairy tales, just like other bedside stories told to lull you to sleep. After moving to Prague, I dis...
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Living In Czechia: Introduction

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  “One's destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” - Henry Miller “You don’t find yourself when you travel, you lose yourself and suffer greatly for it.” - Me Travel , they said. It will be fun, they said. When adults say it’s good for young people to travel, do they mean it’s important to get lost in a foreign train station and eat some funny looking food? Or do they mean it’s important to spend time in another country so your home no longer makes sense to you, and you’re still no closer to making sense of any other place either? The first seems shallow and insignificant, the second is so earth shattering it cannot simply be called ‘good’. It seems both essential and tragic. I apologize to my readers (all 10 of you) for failing to write since I arrived here in my new home. Like many blogs, what started with great ambition came to an abrupt end once real life got in the way. In 2018, I was traveling through Europe as a Linklater protagonist, drinking in each d...
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