Is that SHANNEN DOHERTY on the wall?!?!

At the Peach Pit: Image courtesy of Molly Jo Gorevan.

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“If travel is about the meeting of realities, it is no less about the mating of illusions: You give me my dreamed-of vision of Tibet, and I'll give you your wished-for California.” ~ Pico Iyer’s “Why we travel”

On our very first night in Prague, we were taken out to dinner by the program. Where did we go? Not to a traditional Czech restaurant, not to a pivnice or a restaurace, but to a pizzeria. Clearly, they were trying to keep the stress of move in as little as possible by not shocking our systems. There is something to be said for the comforts of home abroad. On our way home from the pizzeria, we were accosted by the sight of a basement bar called “Peach Pit.” There were immediately screams scattered throughout the group, and we knew who our fellow 90210 fans were. We didn’t go that night (though some did), but the next night, when we were searching for a chill bar to have a beer or two in and relax into our orientation week, the Peach Pit immediately rose to my mind.

Going into the Peach Pit is an experience that’s hard to describe. Pictures of the stars of the popular drama from the 90’s surround you, their smiling faces almost creepily idolized. There is a jukebox stuffed with Czech and American pop music and a room with a mirrored ceiling and disco ball. Yet it is a low-slung, distinctly Czech place, with the unfriendly stares of the locals eyeing you on your way down the entrance stares. We went for a feeling of home, but they came for the dream of a shining California represented by the tan, smiling stars of a television show that we often ridicule as some of the most distorted soap opera prime time that has ever passed through the airwaves of American TV.

That night, we met two Czech men who were also in the Peach Pit. Honza was a half-Finnish tour guide who leads around Scandinavian tourists for a living, and Louie, well, we don’t really know what Louie does except be friends with the bartender, who has since come to recognize our enthusiastic faces. We were embarrassed to hear their English, so perfect compared to our hastily glanced-over Czech phrases, but somehow we made a connection and quickly realized exactly what Iyer talks about when he talks about finding a new personality that is both more true and more false than the way we see ourselves at home. We could tell these men anything and they would believe it, and they could do the same and at the end of the night we would all leave happily bonded, if only in the most ephemeral of ways. It was an exciting and liberating experience, and it has drawn us back to the Peach Pit whenever we need a bit of home and a bit of Prague together.