Living in Europe? - Page 3 - Calgarypuck Forums - The Unofficial Calgary Flames Fan Community

rockstar · 10-23-2009, 06:58 AM

trout, I will investigate. M.A.K., I'll have a look.

BBB, it's true. I don't think there is a better way to experience another country/culture (outside of living there, naturally).

cgy2london · 10-23-2009, 07:21 AM

i played two seasons in the Uk. I lived in a small town (75,000) about 30 minutes outside central London. It was pretty cool, to my surprise i found out how much hockey history the uk has, and how much they actually liked it. The overall consensus was well there 60,000,000+ people and being so close to scandanavia and continental europe there is actually a lot of hockey infulence.

it was great.....but there was a lot of stuff that made me miss Canada. the weather for one, you have no idea how fortunate you are to live with Alberta sunshine, till you move over to that little island. I found the winters extremly tough as they consisted of eternal darkness and constant pouring rain. ahah if i herd "you should be use to this, your from Canada, its way colder there" one more time I was gonna kill someone!! I missed simple things in Canada though like, driving place easily, banking, convience, service in resturants, FRANCHISES resturants, SUNLIGHT, friendly people.....

my second season we had our main camp in the Czech republic (Blansko, not far from Brno) I stayed there for over a month, so I would say i have some pretty good experience living there. The thing i remember most about Czech was the people, when you think about it there really not that far removed from communism.....they appeared to be very sad, sad, people. not a lot of ha ha in the czech republic. My coach was from Czech republic and he gave us the impression that they still have a major fear of the governemnt. he mentioned how hard it was to adjust ( in the late 90s early 2000s mind you) when he came over to America to play. Saying all that though, beautiful country, absolutly gorgous and CHEAP. If i remember correctly a pint of beer was something like 38 cents canadian......

icarus · 10-23-2009, 07:30 AM

^ What team did you play for?

Hockey in the UK is a bit bigger than I expected, I didn't realise there were different tiers of leagues (like with football) and they even televise Elite League games on Sky Sports sometimes.

cgy2london · 10-23-2009, 07:45 AM

i played for bracknell, yah im my second season they started to broadcast the games on sky...they wernt live though....the Elite league is a shamble anyways, I never liked the concept of the lack of britts playing......I like that Basingstoke and Manchester have moved down to the EPL ( especially since Tony Hand is staying with Manchester lol)

troutman · 10-23-2009, 08:41 AM

How safe is couchsurfing? How do you know your host isn't the Cannibal of Stuttgart? Is there any screening?

burn_baby_burn · 10-23-2009, 08:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by troutman

How safe is couchsurfing? How do you know your host isn't the Cannibal of Stuttgart? Is there any screening?

I was kind of wondering the same thing. I'm sure for the most part it must be pretty safe. Still, you know some sicko is going to ruin it by hacking somebody up or raping some poor woman.

FlamesAddiction · 10-23-2009, 08:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by icarus

^ What team did you play for?

Hockey in the UK is a bit bigger than I expected, I didn't realise there were different tiers of leagues (like with football) and they even televise Elite League games on Sky Sports sometimes.

OT, but I thought I would mention it///

Hockey is starting to pick up in Croatia as well. This year, they have a team in the Slovenian league and the games are televised. And no fewer than 3 times when I went to a bar, they were showing games and people were paying attention and cheering. Another time I was at someone's house and they were watching a game (and the Zagreb team wasn't even playing). According to my cousin, it is gaining a lot of hype.

cgy2london · 10-23-2009, 08:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction

OT, but I thought I would mention it///

Hockey is starting to pick up in Croatia as well. This year, they have a team in the Slovenian league and the games are televised. And no fewer than 3 times when I went to a bar, they were showing games and people were paying attention and cheering. Another time I was at someone's house and they were watching a game (and the Zagreb team wasn't even playing). According to my cousin, it is gaining a lot of hype.

i actually had a cab driver once who drove me and a few guys from our team home from a night out at the bar, he was polish and once he found out we were hockey players all he wanted to do was talk about hockey, he was a BIG fan of Oliwa, lol

he told us he would go back 2 poland at least once a week to watch his club play, so i guess you could say hockey in poland has a lot of interest as well

icarus · 10-23-2009, 09:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cgy2london

i played for bracknell

Wow, we have a former Bracknell Bee on CP? I'm starstruck!

FlamesAddiction · 10-23-2009, 09:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cgy2london

i actually had a cab driver once who drove me and a few guys from our team home from a night out at the bar, he was polish and once he found out we were hockey players all he wanted to do was talk about hockey, he was a BIG fan of Oliwa, lol

he told us he would go back 2 poland at least once a week to watch his club play, so i guess you could say hockey in poland has a lot of interest as well

That's funny. Oliwa is probably a hockey god there.

I met some Hungarians a while back and when they found out I was Canadian, the first thing they asked me was if I followed hockey and if I knew who Levente Szuper was. Apparently he is like a national hero there.

4X4 · 10-23-2009, 09:54 AM

Woah. I could swear that the OP had a different name. Am I crazy? OP did you change your name?

FlamesAddiction · 10-23-2009, 10:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 4X4

Woah. I could swear that the OP had a different name. Am I crazy? OP did you change your name?

Haha... yeah, it was different before.

icarus · 10-23-2009, 10:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 4X4

Woah. I could swear that the OP had a different name. Am I crazy? OP did you change your name?

Formerly Called Aaron Vickers?

Berger_4_ · 10-23-2009, 10:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cgy2london

my second season we had our main camp in the Czech republic (Blansko, not far from Brno) I stayed there for over a month, so I would say i have some pretty good experience living there. The thing i remember most about Czech was the people, when you think about it there really not that far removed from communism.....they appeared to be very sad, sad, people. not a lot of ha ha in the czech republic. My coach was from Czech republic and he gave us the impression that they still have a major fear of the governemnt. he mentioned how hard it was to adjust ( in the late 90s early 2000s mind you) when he came over to America to play. Saying all that though, beautiful country, absolutly gorgous and CHEAP. If i remember correctly a pint of beer was something like 38 cents canadian......

I think the same is true for Slovakia. In fact, we met up with a couple guys who we billeted for the Viking Cup, and when we met the one guy's parents, he said he wanted to go back to the communist system. It was really weird to see the difference between the two families. The one family was all teachers and said communism was a horrible thing, but the other family (whose father was a machinist) said it was the best thing around, and that they should go back to it.

I'll never forget driving into Topolcany for the first time, and seeing all of these apartments that were exactly the same, and just surrounded by a cement sea. The apartment complexes were so creepy. Poorly lit, tiny elevators...just freaked me out a little bit.

cgy2london · 10-23-2009, 01:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by icarus

Wow, we have a former Bracknell Bee on CP? I'm starstruck!

hahah im flattered, been down to the hive lately??
looks like the boys are having a rough season this year......ohhh how i miss the uk/hockey life style

FurnaceFace · 10-23-2009, 04:51 PM

I worked in Finland for 4+ months on an AIESEC internship after university and then traveled for a month around continental Europe and then spent ~3 more weeks in Paris.

I haven't read the whole thread but add me to the "Just go" crowd. Have a loose plan of what you want to see and do but go with the flow. If you're in the Salzburg hostel after watching the afternoon showing of Gone With The Wind and a couple of people you met and get along with say they're going to Prague in the morning and you hadn't planned on hitting Prague, but going down to Italy, just go with them. Italy can wait a couple of days.

The beauty of the Eurorail pass is you can go basically anywhere and unless you go in the height of tourist season, I think you can always find a hostel. Pack light, figure out what you absolutely don't want to miss and then figure everything else out while you're there. Any where you're there enjoy every single second. Even the crappy things that will inevitably happen to you will weave together as part of the whole experience and those negatives will likely be the most talked about and memorable parts of the trip.

I still have vivid memories of sloshing through the flooded streets of Venice on my way to buy rubber boots so I could go back to the hotel and give them to Mrs Furnace so she could go buy herself a pair. Or the time in southern France where we were waiting for the bus and decided it wasn't coming and we needed to get moving if we were to make our train. We spedwalked/ran to the station, jumped on the train, put our bags down and said "whew, we made it" and at that second the train started moving.

JohnnyB · 10-23-2009, 06:06 PM

I'm surprised more people haven't heard of couch surfing. I haven't travelled with it myself yet, as I've always been going somewhere to live for a while, but I've known many people who have used it. It's a great travel idea.

FurnaceFace · 10-23-2009, 08:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by troutman

That is the best thing about Berlin. Be prepared - it might get weird.

Is there still a pub/bar called M.A.K. in East Berlin?

Trout speaks the truth. We met a former AIESEC member in Germany and we went to Berlin with him and met us with his friend. His friend took us to some bar in a warehouse in East Berlin (this was 93 so it was still pretty "East"). The two floors above the bar were gallery space for some pretty funky art. A really cool experience we would never of had if it wasn't for local knowledge.

Kswiss · 10-25-2009, 10:17 PM

I lived in Czech Republic and for sure there is a transition period still going on. I was one of the few oriental guys in the city I was staying at and also had a few stares taking the tram to work. What got even more stares is dating a white girl and holding her hand on that tram... even got punched in the face by one because of it...But the good thing is, is that the younger generation is so open minded. In fact their open mindedness got me to become less ignorant to the world. I learned so much living there and the memories are definitely priceless.

And by the way my friend and I found Czech Beer (in a bottle 500ml for 2Kc). At the time that was like 10 cents. It did its job and I didnt go blind

PyramidsofMars · 10-26-2009, 06:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by NBC

I think the only great sport they play in parts of Europe that gets decent coverage is rugby. Soccer has become a hobby-horse for mega-rich Russian oligarchs and Arab sheikhs. It is too bad, because I think that before this influx of ridiculous sums of money, soccer used to be a decent and affordable sport to watch.

Absolute rubbish, there are literally thousands of football clubs in Europe (SEVEN HUNDRED AND NINETY-TWO in England alone, albeit only 92 in the Football League), in hundreds of divisions, and to only a few do such descriptions apply.