Go Global with Kate Yapp: My Semester "Going Global"

By Kate Yapp

You may have noticed my “Go Global” column was missing from The Wheel this fall. That’s because I was busy “going global” myself!

I just spent the fall of my senior year in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic. I was studying abroad through the Council on International Educational Exchange (CIEE), completing their Central European Studies program.

When most people think of studying abroad in Europe, the following things come to mind: French croissants and the Eiffel Tower; Big Ben and red double decker buses; Greek islands and crystal clear waters; bratwursts and Berlin. Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, does not seem like the obvious choice. That’s because it’s not—for most people.

Some friends and I in front of the CIEE Center on the first day of classes.

CIEE has a variety of offerings, but the Central European Studies program in Prague felt specifically tailored to fit my majors, minors and personal interests. I was able to take classes such as Central European Politics, The Rise and Fall of Totalitarianism in Central Europe, American Media’s Impact on Post-Communist Czech Republic and International Reporting, all of which took advantage of the rich political history of Prague and the surrounding area.

I have always taken an interest in grassroots political organizing. For a high school history class, I wrote a research paper on the Velvet Revolution (and the subsequent Velvet Divorce) of Czechoslovakia in the late 1980s and early 1990s. I learned about the underground anti-communist movement in the then-Soviet-controlled country and how average people succeeded in establishing a democracy without any armed conflict (hence the name “Velvet Revolution”). This had been done almost nowhere else in the world and largely inspired my current personal philosophies around politics.

It’s common for students to explore their historical ancestry while studying abroad and the same was true for me. I have Czech heritage from both my mother’s and father’s families and grew up as a member of the Western Fraternal Life Association (WFLA, now known as Better Life Foundation), a group committed to keeping Czechoslovakian culture alive and being a community for immigrants from the region and their children and grandchildren.

I remember eating delicious kolaches (pastries with fig, cream cheese or apricot filling), dancing the polka, hearing stories acted out by traditional Czech puppets and consuming a lot of sauerkraut. I greatly cherished being able to visit Cedar Rapids, Iowa—home of the U.S. National Czech Museum—during a national convention for the organization.

So when I landed in Prague last September, fresh off the plane—or rather a bit smelly and exhausted from two international flights—I was comforted by how familiar the crowned lion with two tails motif from the Czech national coat of arms felt. I passed by multiple renditions of it on everything from signs to pieces of clothing during the taxi ride to the apartment I would call home for the next four months.

During my program, I was excited to take advantage of my interesting classes, the life experiences and professional networks of my professors, the relatively inexpensive cost of living and nightlife, the diversity of cultures present in Prague, the chance to look into my own ancestry and the glimpses of history throughout the city. My parents were enthusiastic about all of these things but especially the fact that Prague is one of the safest cities in the world as I, their oldest child and only daughter, decided to move a whole ocean away from them.

Me in front of the train station in Prague.

Because I had been surrounded by Czechoslovakian culture in the United States and had practiced some basic Czech language skills in the four months leading up to my study abroad, I was lucky to not experience a lot of culture shock. But beyond my personal connections to Czech culture, Prague reminded me a lot of the Twin Cities.

Like our treasured Mississippi, Prague has the beautiful Vltava River running between Vysehrad Castle, where the CIEE center was located, and the iconic Prague Castle, which is the Czech Republic’s seat of government and one of the largest and oldest castles in the world. It was a comforting landscape feature to admire on my walks down to the tram station after class.

The weather in Prague was pretty similar to Minnesota. I was able to enjoy a snow-dusted Christmas when my family came to visit and could put my puffer coat to use. One thing I did not count on was an unseasonal rain that lasted for the first three weeks of the semester and made everything unusually cold and damp, while back on the St. Kate’s campus my friends enjoyed 80 F days.

Prague is quite an international city despite its landlocked location in Central Europe, much like Minneapolis in the Midwest. I didn’t realize until I started going out and exploring how often I would run into other international students and Europeans on short weekend holidays visiting the fun getaway spot. I met several expats from the U.S. and across the world who had built lives in the Czech lands. On top of that, the variety of restaurants was incredible! I enjoyed trying dishes that were not only traditional to Czechia but also Ukraine, Georgia, India, Indonesia, Italy, Mexico and Vietnam. One of my favorite spots was Malika Indická Restaurace next to my building.

Like I said, Prague is one of the safest cities in the world. Crime rates are low and public transportation runs 24/7, something I took advantage of frequently. Prague strikes the right balance between having enough exciting things to check out any night of the week against a stunning historical backdrop while not having every street be clogged with tourists. This meant I was able to experience a lot more of what makes the city so wonderful and lively without having to worry about long lines or dangerous areas as a woman alone at night.

I would recommend CIEE to other Katies interested in studying abroad. It’s the oldest study abroad program in the world—and since being founded in 1947, it has grown to also be the largest, with the most programs worldwide. The staff in Prague were all fabulous and helped myself and other students get comfortable relatively quickly in our new community.

Studying abroad can also help you get to know a place better than if you were to just travel there on vacation. CIEE staff made sure we had various exciting opportunities to learn more about where we were studying and its unique history. I went on several of the CIEE-offered day trips to surrounding towns, such as Terezín (a feat of achievement for military fort technology and former political prison and ghetto for Jewish victims during WWII), Kutna Hora (home to Sedlec Ossuary “Bone Church,” beautiful St. Barbara’s Church, and a historical silver mining industry) and Bohemian Paradise (incredible hiking and landscape views). Additionally, all-inclusive trips were offered twice during the semester to Berlin, Germany.

A friend and I at the Signal Light Festival.

We also had the chance to participate in events across the city, like wine tasting, hockey games, cosmetic workshops, cooking classes, seeing a ballet in the same opera hall where Amadeus Mozart once performed, touring a gorgeous library at a historical convent and seeing all of the different installations for Prague’s annual Signal light festival. This feature of studying abroad with CIEE made it very affordable for me to fully take advantage of the new place where I was living.

In addition to the guest lectures hosted at the CIEE center, my professors did a great job facilitating immersive learning experiences. My International Reporting professor introduced us to different journalists she knew. She also got us in for tours of both Czech Radio and Radio Free Europe, two organizations that have played active roles in resistance against authoritarian regimes in many countries including the Czech Republic.

Me and an international reporting classmate during a fieldtrip to RadioFreeEurope.

My Central European Politics professor was an older man who always gave us travel trips because he had traveled extensively, including working a summer in Rostock, Germany, the city where I applied for a Fulbright after graduation. He walked us through different neighborhoods of the city to show us monuments and historic places, like the dorm building where Nazi troops detained college students for protests in 1939 before ordering the closure of all Czechoslovakian universities.

My American Media’s Impact on Post-Communist Czech Republic professor brought us to a shopping mall to observe all of the ways American culture and business practices had influenced Czech society and another time, we visited the Museum of Communism.

For an assignment, my Rise and Fall of Totalitarianism in Central Europe professor required that we visit the Cathedral Church of Saints Cyril and Methodius to see the crypt where four Czechoslovakian paratroopers hid out after completing the highest-profile assassination of a Nazi official during WWII.

I particularly enjoyed my International Reporting class as my professor was also a working journalist and provided us with a lot of great tips, feedback and contacts for interviews. I felt a lot more empowered in my journalism skills after practicing the difference between a profile and a feature article, and I built up my portfolio with content I wrote about real-world issues like challenges faced by transgender people and the energy crisis. I cannot wait to demonstrate what I have learned for The Wheel and serve the St. Kate’s community even better as a student journalist.

I had some more nuanced experiences during my time abroad that I could not have anticipated beforehand. An example was the value of living in a formerly Nazi- and Soviet-controlled state while the current Russian regime is attacking Ukraine. In my Rise and Fall of Totalitarianism in Central Europe class, the importance of learning from history was profound as we studied the parallels between Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in the 1930s and Vladimir Putin’s military campaigns in Crimea and now greater Ukraine.

At one of the opportunities my International Reporting professor set up between my class and the students she taught at New York University Prague, during which we interviewed a member of Czech Parliament, I met a Ukrainian student on scholarship at NYU Prague. She and I formed a close friendship throughout the rest of the semester, and it was really valuable to hear a firsthand account about how the war in Ukraine was affecting everyday people, especially from someone my own age. She told me how her dad had been recruited to the front lines and was doing alright but had not been able to go home for months. Her house was on the same street as a hospital, so her family was relatively lucky when it came to having power, but one time her mom called to say that they were without water or electricity for three days in the middle of winter. It was important to hear the takes she and the other Ukrainian students had on the assumptions and opinions that their professors, other students, Czech people, Americans and different media outlets and politicians had on the conflict.

The Nord Stream Pipeline explosion in the Baltic Sea happened while I was abroad, which meant the real effects of the energy crisis were present while I was living in Prague. As a result, I understood in multiple ways how Putin’s actions were impacting the lifestyles and wellbeing of millions of people around the world, not just those in Ukraine. The Czech Republic also served in the role of president for the European Union during my term abroad, so my peers and I would often find out from news articles the day after about various world leaders who had been at the Prague Castle discussing energy caps and how to deal with Putin.

CIEE staff members told us not to be wasteful with our energy usage—as Americans are known to be—because the Czech Republic still had to rely on Russian oil and natural gas. By reducing our energy consumption, we were not only decreasing our carbon emissions but also Putin’s available funds for his war of terror. They warned us that maintaining a high usage of Russia’s greatest export would lead to inflation for the Czech people, who were already living with relatively low levels of personal wealth.

Czech society was already well adapted in several ways to handle this current challenge, as clothing dryers are rare, public transportation is widely used and many Czechs are self-reliant and resourceful, ironically as a habit from scarce and ineffectively distributed resources during communist times. Still, the Czech government implemented policies to collectively curb energy usage. When I was in Prague, public buildings could be heated as low as 18 C (about 64.4 F). It wasn’t uncommon to find people wearing winter jackets at their office desks or see blankets passed out to students in schools.

As a Midwesterner, I was somewhat prepared—I brought my ankle-length puffer and had some long underwear from home. But as a student abroad, I was not immune to shivering in my dorm with drafty windows, cold wood floors and thin insulation without the comforts of rugs and extra blankets that I had in my dorm at St. Kate’s. Because Americans are known to be relatively unaware and even ignorant of international issues, I think it was important for me and my classmates—many of whom are also majoring in politics and economics—to personally experience what it looks like for life to be tangibly impacted by world conflicts.

Last semester, I gained a lot of knowledge and perspective not only in my fields of study but also in my personal interests and education as a global citizen through these various experiences. Going abroad during the fall of my senior year of college greatly helped prepare me for post-graduate life.

I came home much more empowered and equipped to live on my own. I know I am capable of establishing a decent standard of life for myself while navigating the norms, challenges and resources of a new community. I practiced building a support system and asking for help while still maintaining my relationships long-distance. Living in a major international city like Prague trained me to view any other large city as a puzzle with its own landmarks, currency, language and public transportation, which has made me excited to keep traveling after graduation and feel confident in my ability to live in a larger city again.

I also had the incredibly important opportunity to just rest, something I have not been able to do in several years. It was nice to get a glimpse into what life will be like after college with more time on my hands, more freedom and independence to structure my days and the ability to decide what balance and fulfillment look like for me. I always loved school and used to dread the end of my time at this university, but I think going abroad the first half of my senior year of college and then immediately jetting off to India for a J-term class helped me normalize what it looks like to exist outside of our little village that is St. Kate’s.

In Prague, I lived without being able to see my best friends every day. I survived and I will survive after graduation. There are also exciting parts about graduating so soon after studying abroad. For example, knowing I will have the freedom to visit Europe again soon made it easier to leave Prague and return home. While some things were challenging to manage while being abroad the fall of my senior year of college (i.e. Fulbright applications and my honors project), I would not trade the unconventional timing of my experience for anything and it has made me cherish my last semester even more.

*I will also be serving as the CIEE ambassador on campus this spring and would love to talk to anyone who is interested in doing one of their programs! You can fill out this form to get in touch with me.