Job Discussion Forums

[jaskas]

I'm just a Nashville girl looking for clues. I am really hankering to move to Prague or Krakow while I'm TEFLing in Europe. I have read a lot of postings about cert. classes and job possibilities in these cities, but I want to know more about the cities themselves.

What's the general cost of living? How much is rent going to be if I'm doing it month to month? Basically, how much money do I need per month... maybe that's hard to say. Maybe that's a stupid question. How safe is it? Is there a music scene to be spoken of?

If you know anything about either of these cities, let me know. Thanks a million.

[counpk39]

There are two excellent resources on costs that I can recommend:

The Czech Statistical Office

http://www.czso.cz/eng/redakce.nsf/i/home


and Tefl.com's survey (free registration required)

http://www.tefl.com/home/col_survey.html

Hope this helps.

[spiral78]

You might also take a bit of time to read through some of the earlier threads on this forum. Many of the specific questions you ask regarding wages and cost of living have been recently asked and answered.
I'll note here briefly that you should have some certification that includes supervised teacher training (there are a lot of qualified teachers in the Czech Rep and Poland - you can't compete without qualifications). You should plan to have a few thousand dollars in reserve before you come (it takes a little time to get established with paying jobs in any new place).

Both cities are relatively safe (probably safer than Nashville!). The average teacher's salary allows you to live all right, but you shouldn't expect to save much or be able to finance a lot of travel out of the country on a teachers salary. Housing is at a different standard than in North America. But rent will be by far your greatest expense. The average teaching salary for Prague (for example) is around 18-21,000kc monthly. You can pay as little as 5 or 6,000 monthly for a shared flat, or as much as 10-15,000 if you want to live on your own.

I don't know about Krakow, but there's all kinds of serious music going on in Prague.

[gregoryfromcali]

The difference is that in Cracow people aren't deliberately rude to foreigners and you'll actually hear people speaking the local language.

You can actually walk through Prague without hearing a word of Czech.

That's not the case in Cracow.

Prague's lost all it's charm to me. In fact now I try to avoid it when I'm travelling through.

On the other hand there are a lot of other beautiful cities in the Czech republic yet they're much smaller and the pay is lower than in Poland.

Also you can't beat the Czech beer.

Good times.

[spiral78]

I have to agree that there is a Prague (I don't mean a part of the city, but a Prague experience) that fits gregory's description. Another poster who complained that Prague is all about expat parties, and of course that can be true too.

But the Prague experience is largely what you make it. If you're traveling around the city in packs of loud, English or German or Italian or other speakers, it's obvious that you are a tourist, and you should expect to be treated like a tourist.

Prague's been inundated by packs of brits come to drink their minds away in the past few years, along with all the other varieties of ugly tourists, so it's understandable that people who work in service professions in the centre might not love tourists, and if you appear to be one, they are known to have a capacity for rudeness.

But those of us who actually LIVE in the city have a different experience, as can people who travel quietly and inoffensively. Obviously I'm not going to hear much Czech spoken on Charles Bridge on a Saturday afternoon simply because nearly everyone there IS a tourist, but even just one block away from the major tourist routes, Prague's quiet and Czech again.

I absolutely agree that the huge tourist population can be a drag and that there are parts of the city I prefer in February (about the only real off-season Prague has these days!). But there is so much more to the city than that!