In 2018, Amanda Meyer Barkley left her home in Louisiana for what was supposed to be a short vacation in Prague. She planned to stay for a few weeks, then return to the United States and then take a teaching job in China.
Nearly a decade later, she is still living in the Czech capital, now in her 30s, married and raising two young children.
Prague, often called the city of a hundred towers, became my home.
Berkeley and her husband spend their summers with their children in parks such as Letna, Stromovka, and Rieglovy Sady, or at the National Agricultural Museum, which is a short walk from their apartment. The city has a number of children’s play areas set up in cafes and public spaces, making daily life with young children seem manageable and even easier.
“It really is the most beautiful city with so much history…” says Berkeley.
“Between the architectural beauty. The city itself, all the parks, outdoor spaces… It’s clean. It’s safe. It’s a really great place to live. I feel really lucky to live here.”
Eight years ago, Barclay couldn’t have imagined a life like this. When she arrived in Prague in January 2018, she was in the middle of preparing to move to China for work. Knowing she needed a qualification to secure her position in Asia, she enrolled in a face-to-face course teaching English as a foreign language in the Czech capital.
But she was so captivated by the city that she missed her flight home the following month.
Prague was nothing new to her. She first visited the area in 2015 during a trip to Europe and admired the famous sights such as Prague Castle and Old Town Square, but felt more drawn to Berlin. “Maybe I could live in Germany,” she remembers thinking.
Upon returning to the United States, she continued to travel while working as a teacher, including a year in Australia. When the opportunity to teach in China came up, Prague seemed like a real destination, a place to get my qualifications and move on.
It was an action that would change the entire course of her life.
She arrived in the city with just a backpack and planned to focus on the month-long course. However, things started to clear up when she learned that she didn’t need any additional qualifications for the job in China since she already had a teaching degree.
Initially, she was frustrated and upset that she had wasted money on a flight to Prague and a month’s accommodation. However, she soon found herself enjoying the city by “hanging out with cool people.”
“So I kind of switched gears and said, ‘What does it take to stay here now?'”
A few weeks later, Mr. Barclay sent an email withdrawing from his assignment in China. Then came the hard part. It was about finding a job and a place to live in a city she never intended to call home.
She held a number of part-time jobs as a teacher and bartender before securing full-time work later that year. Starting a new life on the other side of the world also meant buying new clothes “so I could wear something other than the six shirts” I originally brought with me.
It wasn’t easy at first. The move to Prague wasn’t planned, she says, so she wasn’t prepared for the low season. Required to travel for multiple jobs but lacking money, she lived frugally, sometimes resorting to a diet of eggs and potatoes to keep expenses down.
“It was definitely the toughest time financially,” she says.
However, my life has opened up socially. She formed a close-knit group of friends, many of whom she met through her teaching program. One of them was Blake, also an American.
“We’ve been just friends for a long time,” she explains. “But after about three and a half years, we said, ‘Maybe we’re not just friends.'”
The two got married in 2022. Their two children, now 1 and 2 years old, were both born in the Czech Republic. Berkeley currently has an employee card, a long-term residence permit valid for up to two years, for non-European Union nationals who are in the country for work for more than 90 days.
Over the years, the couple discussed returning to the United States. For now, they have decided this is the best place for their family and have chosen to stay.
They live in a two-bedroom apartment in Holesovice, a laid-back neighborhood north of the river, and are grateful for the ease of traveling around Europe. Road trips through Austria, Germany and Italy are part of family life.
“Had we lived in a different part of the world geographically, it would have been much more difficult to provide these opportunities and experiences,” Barclay said.
Living in Prague required some cultural adjustment. Barclay, who chronicles her life in the city on her Instagram account @mandameybar, said she quickly learned how to put off her “American smile.” Czechs “don’t do that at all,” she says. All there is is a “blank gaze.”
“I’m used to it now, but I’m from the American South, where everyone smiles and everyone talks to you,” she said, adding that she has to remind herself to smile when she visits the United States.
“I think Czechs are generally much more reserved than people from many other parts of the Western world,” she added, stressing that she found them to be “really warm and kind and generous,” even if that warmth took a while to become apparent.
Barclay says most of the couple’s friends are fellow foreigners, although she has some Czech friends. Berkley believes this is due to the language barrier, as well as working in a predominantly English-speaking environment. She has been taking Czech lessons “off and on” and said that although the bureaucratic job remains difficult, “I can definitely get by.”
One of the most meaningful differences, she says, is the country’s approach to family life.
Mothers in the Czech Republic are legally entitled to 28 weeks of paid maternity leave, which can be taken for up to three years with the consent of their employer. Berkeley has been on maternity leave since 2023 and plans to return to teaching at the end of 2026.
“It was just incredible being home with the kids…” she says. “To have the option of staying home with them for a little while…I was single when I moved here, I was still in my 20s, so I never thought about it.
“So just the fact that I ended up in this place, giving us the opportunity to spend so much of their young lives there, is really amazing.”
She also describes a different pace of life that is not driven by what she calls America’s “hustle culture.”
“I think some people feel that way,” she says of her adopted country. “But I feel like I’m more focused on people and family and enjoying life.”
Barclay said that in the Czech Republic, “everything is a little more minimalist” and this “bleeds into different areas of life”.
I feel like raising children is different too. She points to more hands-off approaches that give children greater autonomy and higher levels of trust, including those traveling alone on public transport at an early age. As a teacher, she also sees great respect for educators.
Berkeley loves living in Prague, but she still feels a pull toward the United States that has grown stronger over time.
“Being far away from family was difficult before, but having children takes it to another level,” she says. “And they are growing and changing rapidly.”
Questions arose after seeing her children with their grandparents and cousins after a recent Christmas visit. But she suspects they will disappear as warmer weather returns. “I will never leave Prague, because it is a wonderful place,” she imagines herself saying.
She still sometimes wonders what would have happened if she had gotten on that plane to China.
“I can’t believe how much my life has changed,” she says. “And, to be honest, I don’t think it lasted long in China…Maybe it would have ended up here.”
