International Employee's Story Competition Winners
This year, in order to celebrate the Winter Holidays, we have decided to challenge our International PhD students and employees, organizing an online Christmas competition!
Those who have been in Czechia for less than 4 months were asked to send us a picture of their favourite place in Pardubice and explain briefly why, while those who have been here for a longer time had to share a short story about their experience in the famous city of Perník. The topics were diverse and varied: funny stories due to the language/cultural barrier, or about Czech habits.
We are happy to introduce the winners of the competition: Zaan, Nataliia, Yosra and Atilla!
Have a look at their stories below. You can also find and comment on them on our Facebook and Instagram.
Be sure that we will get back to you once they collect their prize! Meanwhile you can have look at the pictures of last year´s Christmas party here.
Zaan's story
When I first arrived, I was impressed that so many famous women were being honoured in the Czech Republic when I saw the names of buildings and streets: I thought that the Faculty of Transport at the University of Pardubice must have been named after a famous woman called Jana Pernera, and there must have been famous women called Karla IV and Jozefa Gabčíka. But then I saw a statue of man, Jan Perner, in the foyer of the Faculty of Transport. And my Czech teacher told us that Karla and Jozefa Gabčíka are merely the genitive form of the male names Karl and Jozef Gabčík!
There are still some words that I must be careful of because they are confusing: I recently got braces, but I kept mixing up the words rovnátka and rakovina. There is a BIG difference between telling someone I have braces and I have cancer!
And just last week I wanted to tell a colleague that the relationship (vztah) between teachers and students is different in online teaching, but I confused it with the word výtah, which means an elevator, and then it became a whole different sentence!
Nataliia's story
The story concerns our good friend Roel who is from Sittard, the Netherlands. One summer weekend Roel was visiting us in Pardubice, he was in the Czech Republic for the first time. As we all love beer, we spent a lovely afternoon at one of the terraces in the old city which is beautifully located but a bit overpriced in comparison to other pubs in the city. When we finished, Roel insisted paying for all of us, so he asked the waiter for the bill. Once the bill arrived, Roel took a glance at the total price which he needed to pay and started to make very unsatisfied moves and exclamations, he then got up and started to discuss with the waiter that there had to be a mistake with the bill. The waiter apologised asking what he did wrong and how to correct this mistake. In the end it turned out that Roel could not believe that he should pay such a ridiculously low amount for all the beers that we drank! Well, that waiter got a very good tip from him, and we a very good headache from all the beer!
Yosra's story
During my first year in Pardubice, I didn't have any basics about Czech language. One day, I went to Germany and one lady came to me to ask me about something, so I said to her "Sorry I don't speak Czech!
Attila´s story: The devil dwells in the details
It is no easy task to remember the first debacles with the language, particularly regards Czech grammar, all the prefixes. And let us forget the almost identically pronounced words with opposite meaning, etc.
When thinking about the story for the essay, my rescue idea was to ask my friends to recall some serious cases… When, for example, hiking in the hills we agreed to turn right… or, we seemed to agree. And I turned left. Or when someone told a long story about the bad health, almost deadly end of a poor grandma who finally came out healthy from hospital.. I was still a bit late in understanding the end of the long report. When my friend wrapped up the story with the happy end – “So she finally recovered” (hardly understandable word to me) - I gave my reflection meant to show empathy, “Oh, how sad.. ” I was surprised to see how stunned my friends were.
There must be an unwritten pocket-Ulysses covering my stories related to misunderstanding.
But it was just a few days ago when a funny episode drew my attention to a minor difference in pronunciation. Shortly, we enjoyed a typically funny “besidka” – to finish the year with the friendly gig. The colleagues started to discuss a case, I guess they had some difficult moments in communication with a person utterly unknown to me. Suddenly, someone emphatically stated that if you have… “pokud máte emoční inteligenci..” -which I overheard and repeated the statement to make sure I correctly understood : “pokud máte moční inteligenci!?”
Sure, the difference between emotional (emočni) and urinary (moční) intelligence was something that made them laugh, even though the correct form is ..a bit different. Anyway, with or without e – the devil dwells in the details.
Sometimes the little devil delivers a funny effect. Unfortunately, however, it is not always the case.
