At Columbia College Chicago, we’re serious about our “hands-on, minds-on” approach to higher education. We like to say the city is our classroom, and our students learn from the creative professionals producing the culture of our time.
This summer, a group of students crossed beyond the borders and boundaries of Chicago with the Prague Summer Abroad Program. The lives, works, and inspiration of some of Europe’s most important writers are inseparable from the city itself, including Kafka, Hacek, Capek, Meyrink, and Kundera. Students of diverse backgrounds absorbed themselves into the literary and cultural traditions of the Czech Republic, experiencing them firsthand, all the while garnering experience to color and shape their emerging voices.
Read on for their blog entries and photos that let us share in their experiences…
Coda for Expectations
Matt David writes, "I don’t believe that I have ever met people like this. I don’t mean the people themselves, though they are unique and wonderful. I am referring to how we have met each other and gotten to know each other. Share so many meals, so many walks, so many nights together—both out and about or just in a room, on a balcony—and you have to know them..."
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Things That Happened
Renee Zambo writes, "I saw a fortress built into a cliff; the wall scaling back into the hills and the castle overlooking red roofed cottages.
I overcame my fear of European outlets.
I made a list of things to do in Dresden; but met a bartender named Joanie and wandered with her friends instead.
I saw a house covered in vines save the window panes..."
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Lost Page
Matt David writes, "Flips, twists, dips and always swaying, always descending. One page of my printed draft that I was not able to stomp on and hold in place, tumbled in the wind off the balcony. All I could do was watch as it seemed to be descending endlessly. I know that is cliché..."
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Terezín
Kody Montgomery writes,"During a five dollar a minute phone conversation with my father the other night, I asked him if he had heard of Terezín, an eighteenth century fortress town turned into a prison/ghetto/concentration camp by the Nazis and just a short drive outside of Prague..."
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Olina
Patricia Ann McNair writes, "'Please, you like your room cleaning?' Olina asks me when I answer her ring at my door. She’s a lovely woman, born and raised in the Ukraine but now living and working in Prague. We’ve known one another now for more than three years, since I first stayed at Residence 4 B & B while teaching in the Fiction Writing Department’s summer session in Prague..."
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Late
Taylor Cowan writes,"You can imagine, after going through losing your political identity—and all other forms of identification the strange sensation of traveling. It’s almost like being a ghost, incognito. I positively love it. With no cell phone, no occupation and almost nothing you must do the absolute freedom to write and live in a foreign country is exhilarating..."
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A Birthday in Prague
Laura Fisher writes,"It wasn’t just that 21 isn’t a big year here in Prague, it’s more that I had already grown up. Before I got to Prague, 21 meant adulthood, maturity, grace, maybe not being afraid of the dark, and knowing which way to turn at each cobblestoned corner. My last week as a 20 year old, I flew across the world to live in a foreign country, began to learn the basics of a different language, saw a concentration camp, the effects of a country controlled by communism, beautiful architecture I never dreamed I would see in person; towering spires, a castle, buildings where artists and geniuses lived and worked and laughed and drank together..."
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Expectations
Matt David writes, "The questions: What do I expect? What do I hope for? What do I want? What makes any of these questions different? To answer the last, little distinguishes one from the other, but in the subtlety is importance, and this kind of understanding is something I hope to sharpen and hone. I suppose that dovetails nicely into the most obvious expectations I have: to read a lot, write a lot, and learn a lot..."
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Bezlepkovy!
Dakota Sexton writes, I've been waiting for someone to ask me a question. On Wednesday, I took the number 17 tram to the Jiráskovo náměstí stop, within spitting distance of the right bank of the Vlatava River, and made my way along the river walk to see a photo exhibition my friend Jara put together with a handful of her classmates...
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Getting Used to Prague
Sooz Main writes,"I find myself laughing pretty constantly here, which is delightful. I think I could get used to this..."
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