On Prague

I went to Prague in search of a connection to my patrimony. The Golden City is the only place I can trace my heritage with any degree of certainty, and I wanted to see it for myself. What I discovered is a place where ancient and recent history is alive. There is something magical in the experience of walking down streets that are hundreds of years older than your own country, and at the same time realizing that The Velvet Revolution occurred when you were 22. The gray cloud of four decades of authoritarian rule still hangs over the city.

I’m not sure how long it would take to truly see all that Prague has to offer. I feel like I just scratched the surface after a week of full-time exploring. Of course, I toured Prague Castle, admired the postcard-perfect spires of Old Town, took pictures of the Astronomical Clock, marveled at the libraries in Strahov Monastery, climbed Petrin Tower, ate lots of sausage and schweinhaxe, and lingered over the Vltava as I crossed the Charles Bridge several times. Oh, and I took the Original Beer Experience tour at the Pilsner Urquell Brewery, mainly because it included two pints of their finest.

The overhang of the Soviet era is mostly noticeable in the architecture. The brutalist concrete block structures that were built for utility and conformity hang on the outskirts of the old town. There are also museums about the period and monuments celebrating the leaders who overthrew the dictatorial regime, but the more meaningful traces of that era are not material; they are emotional, cultural, and psychological.

I found an instinctive caution in my conversations with older folks, a habit formed from years of navigating a world where the wrong remark could have dire consequences. If you want to understand life in an authoritarian regime, go talk to people who lived through it. Reading the essays of Havel and the novels of Kundera is a good start (I traced the footsteps of Tomas and Tereza on Petrin Hill), but hearing real stories from those who were affected leaves a much more powerful impression. One of my new friends escaped through Yugoslavia after being interrogated by the secret police. History is on a continuous loop.

Travel is a perspective-expanding activity, and the emotional effect of Prague on me was confusion. I felt that the city remembered me even though I had never been there. My great-grandfather left Prague over 120 years ago, and here I am asking myself whether I should move back. I left with the suspicion that the city altered me in some small but permanent way, and that it is awaiting my return. Maybe I could get a job at the Pilsner Urquell Brewery.