If you have seen the macabre thriller Hostel—which I stupidly watched the night before leaving for Prague—you understand the chills that ran down my spine as my taxi from the airport pulled up to the gloomy Hostel Propoka. Located in an eerily quiet district outside the city center, the small building’s dingy exterior and echoing stairwells seemed straight out of a bad horror movie, and an ominous setting within which to begin my four month immersion program in the Czech Republic.
