A Love Letter to Prague on Our One-Year Anniversary of Meeting

Ahoj (Hello) Prague,

It’s been a year since I stepped out of the taxi and opened the front door of the apartment I would call home for the next four months. I remember how difficult it was to get used to walking on your cobblestones. The toes of my shoes kept getting stuck between each crack.

Walking up to the Prague Castle

After dropping my bags off, my roommate and I walked down the street in awe at the intricate details of your buildings. I stumbled over your cobblestones more than I’d like to admit.

“Pick up your feet, pick up your feet,” I thought to myself as a walked next to my roommate I had not met a mere 5 minutes before.

Prague, it’s hard to express into words what you meant to me during those four months away from home. You taught me how easy it is to fall in love with traveling and with cities I had never been to.

Overlooking the Vltava River

Maybe most importantly, you taught me what it means to truly miss something. There hasn’t been a time or a place in my life that I ache to go back to more than this whirlwind adventure you put me through. I could write a never-ending list of what I miss about you, but in the interest of time (and in the interest of preserving my own tears), I’ll name a few of my favorite things I miss every day.

Bonding in Berlin

In one month, February 2nd to be exact, a full year will have passed since my plane landed at Václav Havel airport in Prague, Czech Republic. 365 days will stand between me and my tearful goodbye from a city I called home for four months during my study abroad adventure.

My heart aches just thinking about it.

How I act the second my mind wanders to my time spent overseas. I’m sorry if I sound like one of those annoying people who start every sentence with “When I lived in Europe…”

Image courtesy of zap2it.com

Now that it’s 2016, I’m embracing that “new year, new me” bullshit and tackling the last of the blog posts I have to write about my European adventures. They say you shouldn’t live in the past, but this feeling of nostalgia I have for the continent I fell in love with has propelled me into the new year. I’m much more grateful for this past year than any other ones before it.

My gratitude for 2015 not only stems from the fact that I was able to visit 10 countries while living abroad, but it resides in the friendships I forged with my four roommates. Our randomly assigned living arrangement worked out unbelievably well. We rode the Prague trams to class together, went out and danced until 5am together, and even traveled together.

And let me tell you. Nothing bonds individuals better than traveling together.

My journey to Berlin, Germany in April of last year (it’s still weird to think that much time has passed) is a prime example of the bond that can form when you’re thrown into a both a new city and a new country at the same time.