Picharffs: Czeching It Out

How We Came to Move to the Czech Republic...

Our adventure began in the Minnesota winter of 2007. I was in my cube at the office when my phone rang. “Mn/DOT design, this is Peter.” “Hi Honey. Life's short. Carpe Diem! let's move to Europe!” “Okay!”

There was a bit more discussion, then I went back to work. We started talking earnestly that night about the possibility of moving our family of five overseas. We had daydreamed about this before, but never with the same kind of energy.

Living in Europe was not a far out idea for us. We belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) and had served missions prior to getting married. Kristine served in (what was then) Czechoslovakia. I served in the Argentina Resistencia Mission in the northern parts of Argentina. Kristine had visited the Czech Republic an additional three times already, most recently in 2005 with our two older children, Caleb and Lucy.

So, we knew we could handle living most anywhere, but needed to figure out how to make a living. We wanted to be in our new country long enough to really live there, not just be tourists. However, we also didn't want to up and leave our home forever. Finally, we didn't want to move for a couple of years because our youngest, Silas, had just been born in October 2006. The challenge then was to find employment in a foreign country for just one year, but not starting until two years out.

We started looking into the British Isles, Spain and the Czech Republic. I speak the language in the first two. Kristine speaks Czech, plus we have friends there from our previous excursions. We searched the web for the next several weeks trying to figure out where I could get a job and how we could make this work.

We were soon daunted. Immigration laws are rather complicated and I had my head into training for a big 12-hour Adventure Race. Silas wasn't even close to sleeping through the night so Kristine was perpetually sleep deprived. Then there was the whole problem of getting an employer to commit to hiring you for a job two years out. We laid the idea aside and focused on other things.

The idea wouldn't go away though and in June we were starting to get serious. On July 1, 2007 we held a family council. We determined that we could save enough in two years to allow us to live in the Czech Republic for 11 months. We resolved as a family to do what it would take to cut our expenses. I would still look for employment, but our plans would not entirely depend on it.

I immediately started telling everyone about our plans. Am I glad I did! As time went on, the whole idea seemed more and more outrageous. I was going to leave my job, pack up my wife and three kids, and live in a land where I didn't know the words to sell somebody a loaf of bread? I couldn't back out though. Once I had told people that we were doing it, not just thinking about it, my credibility rested on following through with this.

Already two years from departure, I asked my employers at the Minnesota Department of Transportation to grant me a one year leave of absence starting in the summer of 2009. They said they'd get back to me.

I manage highway design projects during the early stages of project development (scoping and preliminary design). I had some big projects. Hwy. 60 was a four-lane expansion over about 10 miles from Bigelow to Worthington, Minnesota. Hwy. 169 in Saint Peter was intended to add medians for pedestrian safety in downtown and deal with the deteriorating pavement (either as a mill and overlay or as a reconstruction). Hwy. 14 New Ulm to North Mankato was a four-lane expansion for which we were preparing an Environmental Impact Statement. All super cool projects, but none of them funded. So I expected it would be no big deal to hand these over to someone else while I was gone.

In Spring 2008, out of the blue, the Hwy. 60 project was identified for special funding by the Minnesota State Legislature. Suddenly, we needed to have the first project ready to go by March 2010. That included finishing the preliminary design, buying right of way, and preparing final plans.

This became the next big challenge to our decision. Hwy. 60 was my baby. Could I walk away during the most exciting time in its development?

Well, I could have postponed the trip to 2012 after the last of the three Hwy. 60 projects was let, but then Caleb would be 15 turning 16, Lucy would be a teenager. No, there are always important things to divert us away from our dreams. That's what this had become. It was no mere idea, but a major purpose around which our lives were revolving. We would go.

In late 2008 I reiterated my need to know if I would be granted a leave of absence. At our house the debate raged. I was ready to quit if they didn't grant the leave. As the economy melted down, however, the mother of my three kids was not willing to take such a risk.

For me this was big. I couldn't let "the man" tell me what to do. If I caved on this how could I look people in the eye.

We learned to not talk about it. We waited.

Meanwhile, the federal stimulus package passed and, out of the blue again, my Hwy. 169 Saint Peter project was going to be built in the summer of 2009 as a design-build. I was working my tail off and loving it. The combination of these two projects getting funded was a great blessing. A year in the Czech Republic was going to cost more than I had thought. Fortunately, I get paid for my time and was able to make a little extra money.

In the midst of all this work, we put a deadline on the leave of absence, February 2, 2009. The day approached. The day came. The day ended. At 4:31 p.m. I went to my manager's office to get the final answer. He was expecting me. He informed me that my leave would be granted. We shook on it. We were off to the Czech Republic.

Now we really set to work. What to do about the house? Need to get a visa. Need an apartment there. A bank. School for the kids.

Things really started to fall into place then. Some friends who are grad students in Mankato agreed to house sit for us. Our friends in Ceske Budejovice (the city to which we decided to move) found us an apartment about half a block from their house. The public school said they would take the older kids. We found a violin school for Caleb. A too-perfect-to-be-luck encounter at the bank helped resolve money transfer concerns. We found plane tickets at a reasonable price (but it meant shortening the trip to nine months). Only the visa remained.

And it still remains. We fly to the Czech Republic on August 24th. We will either have received visas from the Czech government allowing us to stay for up to a year, or we will be moving to the British Isles in late November for three months, after which we would return to the Czech Republic.


- Peter