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Category: Prague, Czech Republic

Talya Phelps | Prague, Czech Republic | Post 5

Talya Phelps | Prague, Czech Republic | Post 5

Featured Image: Swans always gather in droves in this particular inlet on the Vltava. On this particular afternoon, I also saw a muskrat accepting treats and scratches from passersby. What was the most important outcome of your time abroad? When my study abroad program emailed me the final evaluation questionnaire, I didn’t even know where to begin. Since I touched down in Prague, the questions constantly in the back of my mind have been about personal growth, independence, and everything else…

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Talya Phelps | Prague, Czech Republic | Post 4

Talya Phelps | Prague, Czech Republic | Post 4

Featured Image: My friends and I spotted this toy store on a shopping street in Amsterdam’s city center and our inner children couldn’t resist taking a peek. The smell of wet dog flooded the room as Miloslav entered, his brambly gray beard trembling above his plaid-clad potbelly. He parked his huge rolling suitcase in the corner and painstakingly tied the leash to a table leg. Immediately, the hound began leaping up on his lap, its enthusiasm belying the fact that…

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Talya Phelps | Prague, Czech Republic | Post 3

Talya Phelps | Prague, Czech Republic | Post 3

Featured image: “Submergence” installation at Signal Festival. When I picked up a book on the Danish art of hygge for my parents last spring, I had no idea that, only a few months later, I would be experiencing it firsthand. Hygge is to Denmark what freedom is to America—it sort of defines who we are. Rather than being exemplified by screeching eagles or getting hammered and setting off illegal fireworks, though, it’s about being cozy. While there is no English…

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Talya Phelps | Prague, Czech Republic | Post 2

Talya Phelps | Prague, Czech Republic | Post 2

Featured image: Prague Castle (Pražský hrad), St. Vitus Cathedral, and the iconic red roofs of the city viewed from the Petřín Lookout Tower Have you ever been minding your own business on your way to work or school, allowing the tide of commuters to buoy you along as you board the metro, when you suddenly experienced a total collapse of your subjective self-identity? Because I haven’t. In fact, I had no idea this was a normal thing for anyone to experience…

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Talya Phelps | Prague, Czech Republic | Post 1

Talya Phelps | Prague, Czech Republic | Post 1

If I had to sum up my first three weeks in Prague with one word, it would be “trdelník.” My Czech pronunciation leaves a lot to be desired, so I can’t tell you how to pronounce it (I’m still saying “turtleneck” in some type of undefined accent), but I can explain what it is: a cylindrical cake, cooked on a spit, dusted with cinnamon sugar and nuts and sometimes brushed with Nutella or filled with ice cream. In the tourist-packed…

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Kayla Miron | Prague, Czech Republic | Post 5

Kayla Miron | Prague, Czech Republic | Post 5

Let me start the way you’re never supposed to start and the way that women always seem to. Let me start in the cliche of all cliches and the best way to make your reader remember their spinning laundry or burning toast. Let me start with an apology. I’m so sorry that what comes next is not an original idea and I’m sorry that I don’t have the words to tell it the way Joan Dideon or Alice Munro did,…

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Kayla Miron | Prague, Czech Republic | Post 4

Kayla Miron | Prague, Czech Republic | Post 4

Snow is not only one of my absolute favorite things, it’s my middle name. It’s my mom’s middle name, too, and the middle name I’ve always wanted to give to any future daughter I might have. Whenever it snows it feels a little bit like it’s a present just for me. It’s not just snowing—it’s Kayla Snowing. Every night this week Prague has been dusted with snow. Four days ago was the holiday celebrating the first snow, and on that…

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Kayla Miron | Prague, Czech Republic | Post 3

Kayla Miron | Prague, Czech Republic | Post 3

A package of bleach in Prague will cost you about a hundred Czech crowns. It can be purchased from any drugstore or Tesco. It won’t look like the bleach you would get back in the U.S., but maybe you’ll think it’s kind of exciting that all the little things are different here. Purple hair dye will cost another hundred crowns. While the box says purple and the people on the front have violet locks, this dye will turn your dark…

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Kayla Miron | Prague, Czech Republic | Post 2

Kayla Miron | Prague, Czech Republic | Post 2

At age nine I once crawled into my mother’s bed crying because I didn’t know what I was the best at. Everyone else had their thing, I said. My brothers made movies. My cousins made music. She told me that I was a dancer; I told her that the other kids were better. She told me I was an artist; I disagreed. Eventually she told me that my thing, the thing I was best at, was that I could put…

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Kayla Miron | Prague, Czech Republic | Post 1

Kayla Miron | Prague, Czech Republic | Post 1

“It’s not much farther,” Nina promises me as we climb another centuries-old cobbled hill. Thirty minutes later my hands have begun to blister from my unforgiving Czech crutches. Nina is a Prague native and student at a local university, and she doesn’t notice the sweat beading on my forehead as she rants and rails about her “almost boyfriend.” I should have listened when my program director told us how much the Czech love to walk. We’re now on our way…

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