Risha Rufaqua
Brno: A city to be in love with
When I saw the name “Brno” for the very first time, I didn’t know how to pronounce it. I am from Bangladesh, a tropical South Asian country. There is not much bilateral relation between Bangladesh and Czech Republic. Bangladesh does not even have an Embassy of Czech of Republic and vice versa.
Five years ago, I landed in this unknown city. I was not scared, but curious to know a lot of things. It was snowing here and for the first time of my life, I saw snow. I always used
to imagine how it could be snowing, from different pictures or movies I watched since my childhood. Yes, it is far more beautiful than my imagination. Then the spring came, which is even more amazing right after the winter. I started falling in love with the polite gesture of the people of Brno. I had a neighbor then, was an old lady with whom I started communicating only by signs at first, as we did not know each other’s language. Soon I started a Czech language course and she helped me more to learn the language faster. She also taught me what should I eat in different seasons to keep myself healthy, once in a while she made český dort for me. As I said before, I am from a tropical country and the seasons here were quite new to me. I sometimes took a tram and seat in a cozy place in the tram and stared through the window, going through Česká, Hlavní Nádraží, Mendelovo naměstí and many more stops it touched. I used to watch beautiful Czech ladies in “kabáty” and “klobouky”, mothers with their cute babies in strollers, old people with shopping trolley bags going up and down in bus and tram. Sometimes I just wanted to walk through Lužánky park or city center and listening to the tune of guitar from the street. It felt like most of the people here are very peaceful and calm like nature here.
After my entrance exam and other protocol finished, I entered the life of a PhD student in VUT. We were sharing an office with five colleagues from my department, who are younger, funnier and full of lives. Working all day with them was so enjoyable and delightful. They are also very helpful and cordial. I won’t be able to solve all my issues (I had a lot, as a foreigner) if I won’t have such an open-armed Supervisor and all the colleagues, who helped me out. Doing PhD itself has lots of frustrations: when you know your methodology may have chances of not working, sometimes you will have unpredictable results and you don’t know what to do with them and you are away from your family and old friends and so on. But if you have colleagues who are also in the same boat as you and you can share things with them with cups of coffee, it is really a relief. Not only sharing disappointment but a talk with a coffee cup about science may also conclude a successful paper, that we deserve. And I am lucky to have some coworkers in VUT like that.
Day by day I realize I am in love with this city named Brno. I would like to finish this writing by admitting the truth that Brno has turned in to my second home. If I would like to stay somewhere else other than Dhaka (the city I born), it would be surely Brno.
