A Changing Face

on the road

My relationship with Prague changed dramatically upon my return after spring break. The city, despite the fact I had been living there for nearly 3 months, continuously felt like a “foreign” place. However, after a week of traveling to a different place everyday, when my flight landed in Prague’s airport, a part of me felt as if I had come “home”. And, for me, it was the realization that Prague has become my home that has allowed me to appreciate the city in a new and amused way.

Just as de Botton writes that when we travel, we are “receptive [as] we approach new places with humility. We carry with us no rigid ideas about what is or is not interesting.’ (242), I think, in my mind, the reverse statement is almost truer.  For when I am home I am not constantly evaluating everything around me and I am less easily disappointed or amazed by my surrounding. Instead, I understand my place in the context of my own actions.

Whether this is a more sincere connection with one’s location is debatable.  As de Botton warns, when a person is at “home”, he or she easily “ fall[s] into the habit of considering their universe to be boring—and their universe had duly fallen into line with their expectations’ (243). Yet, for me, the state of something “boring” and perhaps even, “imperfect’ is what allows me to appreciate at it at a greater level.  I know longer feel myself striving to see something “authentic” or “perfect’.

Before spring break, I found myself getting annoyed and cynical about some of Prague’s flaws. However, after bus-ing around Andalusia and Portugal and   seeing something ‘new’ everyday, Prague’s inherent flaws, allowed me to appreciate it on a much more sophisticated level than any of my spring break destinations. For perhaps, as de Bottom writes, travel allows “to notice what we have already seen’ (249). And it is through this new lens that we are able to understand a place more.