Ádám Németh: My exchange in Prague

Hereby I want to start with a huge admiration to all the Cems Clubs and Cems Offices and the whole community for making the whole programme the way it is, as it was and still is an outstanding opportunity for all of us.

I’ve been lucky enough to get accepted to the programme and fly abroad for one semester in Prague. The University of Economics in Prague wasn’t my first pick and even after I got accepted I still had mixed feelings about it for a few hours after I read the e-mail of my acceptance. And now, one semester later I am not sure there was a better destination than this, very similar yet different city (and country).

I never had any contact to any of the Slavic languages despite the fact of our geographic and cultural proximity. By the time of my arrival, however I realised how hard it really is for anyone coming to Hungary without knowing the language, as I started to look around and there wasn’t even a slightest sign of any word I could understand (later, I found some on the streets and many in the Czech class). Despite the language barrier we (Hungarians and Czechs) have many similarities, for example: our capital cities. As a born and raised Budapest-kid I found many resemblances between the two cities. This analogy and contrary went on for the whole semester.

I think that all of us knows that going abroad is not mainly about studying but getting to know new people, cultures and besides all this maybe most importantly: yourself. I had the opportunity to meet people from Germany (because Germans are basically everywhere), France (loved the still ongoing tension between them, just like those all-night debates about calling one region “Alsace-Lorraine” or „Elsaß-Lothringen”), Canada (one of its kind, that’s for sure), Guatemala (more Spanish than the Spanish probably), Italy (with huge brain comes a huge lung), Slovakia (beloved neighbours😊), India (huge country with a huge diversity), Colombia, the Netherlands (not all of them smoking at all!), Russia (whatever you think about them - yes!, but also very kind), Ukraine and of course the Czechs (who by the way are well known for their beer consumption which is 146 (!!!!) litres/person/year). Impressive number, just like the quality of people I had the chance to meet. I started giving away some experiences in the brackets, but even if I wanted to just mention one of these people I better start off writing a book.

Prague turned out to be one of the best choices I made in my life, but that can be any of the destinations. But it’s always going to be YOU who makes the best out of it! I would also recommend thinking a bit about other destinations then the “top picked” ones.