When I first found out I was staying in Prague for the summer, I calculated my summer job's earnings by how much pivo (Czech for beer) that would buy me. That number ended up being more than 1,500 half-liters worth. Needless to say, it was an awesome summer.Prague, where I studied last spring semester, is loosely known as the heart of Europe. The most amazing part is that it looks exactly how one would imagine: an old cobblestone 13th century capital. Virtually unscathed by either of the world wars, Prague maintains the grandeur of an empire city-the winding Vltava river separates two banks, connected by solid stone bridges, with quaint island parks and dank, underground pubs scattered everywhere. Green hills, old clock towers, cathedrals and the castle lit majestically at night compose the landscape of a city that's breathtaking, even dizzying, and not just because you're wasted.

This gets to the heart of what is commonly known as Prague, and what most likely brought the majority of my fellow American studiers-abroad there: its low prices (of beer), due to the fall of Communism in 1989. This doesn't capture why Prague is the coolest city on earth, because it's easy to get drunk with a group of American college kids. When I think of Prague now, I mostly think of my summer there, after all my study abroad friends had gone home.

I moved to my own apartment (easy to find online), got a job at an international preschool doing "summer camp" (also found online) and got an internship with a magazine, which I like to call the "Harper's of the Czech Republic."

The camp job was funny because in addition to expatriate children, many of the kids were half-Czech, half-American, or all Czech and really cute, and I could actually understand their very elementary speech. Taking them through walks in the forest composed some of my favorite memories: a small half-Czech boy, all dressed up in yellow rain boots, runs ahead in a huge dank forest (it's so damp that looking for edible mushrooms is a popular past time in late summer) and as a summer storm comes he turns around and whispers, frightened, "Bourka!" which means storm in Czech. All very cute and funny until it's pouring rain, we're running back to school and he's fairly hysterical-but it still makes me smile.

Summer was also really important to me because I was finally hanging out with real Czech and Slovak students. We'd listen to music or frequent our favorite bar or club. One night they made this traditional Slovakian potato and cheese food which you're supposed to drink with curdled milk, and it actually wasn't as bad as I anticipated. They all spoke at least three languages (their English often being better than mine) and they were really well-read and fun to be around.

Surprisingly, it all felt normal. After a certain point, people are basically the same despite vastly different upbringings. And toward the end, I could hold a basic conversation in Czech and sometimes even understand what my friends were saying.

I'm pretty much obsessed with Prague now. The coolness of the city and the country as a whole is all-encompassing. The Nazi occupation of the Czech Republic and the forty years of communism that followed didn't hinder the multiple artistic booms that occurred during this time. I took a class at FAMU, the film school where author Milan Kundera taught, and Milos Forman, director of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, attended. He was only one of a generation of filmmakers in the 1960s who created subversive and stylized avant garde films known as the Czech New Wave. These films are smart, funny and fairly sobering considering the backdrop of totalitarianism that influenced them.

Finally, I enjoyed my time in Prague because it promoted an entirely
different pace of life, one that makes the stress of American life seems ridiculous. During the summer, outdoor Cafs buzzed and parks resonated with life-young people strolling and making out, or drinking casually in one of the many outdoor beer gardens. There are things I missed about America, but I highly encourage anyone to go abroad, especially to Prague. It pretty much makes Waltham seem like... Waltham-which is all fine and good until you realize it's entirely possible to live most anywhere, even very far away, comfortably and happily, and usually with better beer.