karly's blog

Even though this blog is due today, there is still a part of me that is debating whether or not I should put it off an hour.

I am leaving on a plane for Paris tomorrow at 4am and need to pack/confirm my flights, I have to contact(aka continue to stalk their mobile phones) four people for my final international reporting feature, I have another class paper  to finish, a Czech final and presentation to prepare, a radio package to record, write, and edit, finish my internship’s final project,  not to mention attend the presentation by a speaker that NYU in prague is hosting tonight, research cheap tickets to dublin for next weekend, grab a bite to eat, and call my grandma to wish her happy birthday…and maybe try to email my sister back.

That pretty much defines my semester.

A whirlwind.

I can’t believe its been four months since I arrived confused in this city where I didn’t even know how to say “Thank you”. Now I “mluvim trucho cesky” (speak a little czech), have a busy academic and social life. I actively juggle staying in touch with those back home, having an internship, traveling and having fun with my “new” friends here.  As much as I think of my current “To do” list as daunting and I can’t wait for it to be completed, there is a part of my brain telling me to stop, take a deep breath, and both enjoy and relish every moment of these next impossibly busy two weeks. Because as much as I complain, I will miss this place more than I can possibly think.

Prague.

Who knows when I will be back? Or if I even will? I will never see my dorm room again. I will never be inside my classrooms of the NYU center, nor will I see my professors ever again. Will I live with my roommates in the future? Will I ever find myself just blocks from where I need to be in  Prague, but with absolutely no idea of how to get there? Probably not.

I didn’t visit Prague. I, instead, studied and lived in the Czech republic for four months. Something I will always be able to say, but am still just believing myself. I have begun to understand the effects of Communism on a former Soviet Union country. I have coped, and remained, being a vegetarian in a country known for meat. And, I have lived miles away from all those I love.

And while it was both harder and easier than I imagined, its an experience I will miss. Physically or emotionally, I know I will miss being in Prague. I  will miss people not speaking english, I will miss my constant fear of pickpockets. And I will also miss walking down the cobble-stoned streets of Prague and going to  my favorite local shops. 

And in truth, upon my return to the U.S, a country I actually do miss, I believe I will my miss my (even tiresome at times) position as the constant “foreigner”.

The main tool for Blogging

Over the course of a semester this course becomes a sort of a love/hate relationship.

On the one hand, the permission for reflection and forced documentation of your travels is a gift, and one I enjoy and appreciate.

Yet, on the other hand, if you are taking four other courses, traveling on the weekend, grappling with poor technology that differs from your home country, writing epic emails (that might as well be blogs) to friends and family, traveling on the weekends (and often the weekdays),  starting skype conversations at 9pm (New york time..[3am in Prague]), and also plain allowing yourself to “go native” in the Prague sense, and letting the Czech procrastination and relaxed work ethic to over come you….the course, can logistically be a struggle.

So frequently I would pass others in the class in the NYU center and who would begrudgingly moan “Oh no…we had a blog due yesterday didn’t we??” And jointly commiserate  “My internet just won’t work and I have to do my art of travel "thingy"..”

However, in a way, these grumbling signs of struggle, created a virtual and physical community between us bloggers. Just as much as I loved reading everyone’s blogs and the comments my posts received, I also came to feel comforted by the Prague’s  Art of Travel contingent.

For this course, in my mind succeeded in its goals. I wrote (or will write) 18 entries about my time in Prague. That means that among all of the other amazing things I have done this semester, I have learned how to reflect about them on a public platform. In addition, I have learned more about what it means to study abroad by reading about the journeys of my peers. And last, whether its because of borrowing each-other’s laptops, helping to brainstorm ideas, or even just rolling eyes at another deadline missed…This course helped me to form a community in prague.

Arriving in Praha

Four months after I first stepped on Czech soil and I can proudly say, I do not regret my decision to go to Prague. While I have definitely discovered the city’s flaws since living here, I have come to learn that some of what I initially viewed as Prague's shortcomings is, in fact, some of its greatest traits.  I would not change my decision in the least. And I would definitely urge others to study abroad in this central European city (Especially if you are like me—and on your first excursion to Europe.)

My Advice-

Come in the Fall Semester:

Prague’s winter is cold, grey, snowy, and all around dismal. It’s empty streets, silent nights, citywide curfew, and overall quiet demeanor make for a harsh change from New York City’s bustling Christmas season. If you are someone who likes to see the sun every day…or even every couple of days, then I would definitely advice against coming to Prague in January and February. That being said, the quiet grey, lackadaisical vibe that exists during Prague’s winter is one of the city’s traits many people also enjoy. However, as I look outside now to see the streets chock full of tourists embracing the warm (actually hot) sunny Prague, I cant help but be jealous of their initial impressions of the city that I had to learn to love. However, since April brings about tourist season (and its more like a flooding in these parts), the tourists in the spring replace the quiet Prague of winter with one loud with German, Italian, Japanese, and shouts. In summary, I would recommend coming in fall so that you can see Prague at its physical beast before learning about its true more interesting, but slightly harsher self. In truth, studying during the fall semester may allow you to see the city’s face before understanding its personality.

Get Lost

Prague’s winding roads easily become recognizable for any person with a decent sense of direction. However, since four months really do fly by…I would advise any student here to try and get lost once a week…sometimes “getting lost” leads you to your new favorite restaurant!

Travel

This would have to be my number one reason for choosing Prague. I don’t believe any student on a very fixed budget could go to Europe for 4 months, visit nearly 40 towns or cities, and seven countries…while still eating, and sleeping (most of the time) horizontally. Prague’s currency is 20ish crowns for the dollar. That means groceries are about 15 dollars a week. While London, Paris, and Madrid are all probably fine cities, If you are coming to Europe…for Europe opposed to being culturally immersed in a single city (Which could also be a good thing), then Prague is the best location. For not only is cheap, its central location allows many countries to be an inexpensive bus, train, or flight away!

Make it Your Own City

While I could now list the restaurants, pubs, streets, and shops that have become my favorite in Prague. I think that may defeat the point. For my utmost favorite part of Prague, is that it has become familiar and I have even caught myself taking it for granted. For, I believe there comes a time for every student abroad where you purposely or accidentally call this foreign city home. And for what its worth, it will become one once you allow it to be yours.

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.

from the inside out a prague nail salon

From the time Monika Ngo entered high school, she knew she would one day live in Prague.

Growing up in Haiphong, the third largest city in Vietnam,  her Aunt Quyen used to brag to Monkia’s mother about the new trendy clothes, steady stream of money and pictures her husband would mail back to her of his life, house, and new nail salon in Prague.

“You can earn more in a day there, then you can in a life here”, Monika remembers her Mother’s other sister telling her mother in an effort to persuade Monika’s own father to move to the Czech Republic. But, 5 years ago, when Monika was 16 and her father decided not to leave and join his brothers, Monika knew it would be her who would someday make it to this “Better city”.

Monika is just one of many Vietnamese who emigrated to Prague before the global economic crisis, in hopes of making more money and a better life in the Central European cultural and political capital.   Monika, in particular, came to study economics.“Prague has opportunities for economists and business Vietnam doesn’t” She says.

“I want to work in business or work as an economist. Europe is much better for economists than Vietnam and the Czech Republic is welcoming to us” She adds.Monika’s experience as a Vietnamese in Prague has its advantages and disadvantages. Since she is able to live with her extended family and other Vietnamese, she says she “rarely gets homesick”. Also, while on trams and metros she says she “is always seen as Vietnamese”, she has never felt that her race has made her vulnerable.

However, one time when Monkia was shopping in a Prague’s Tesco department store,  she says that a  man came up to her and asked her, in Czech, why she didn’t shop at a Vietnamese store instead.

“Sometimes I think people want to stay apart from each other. But Czechs shop in our stores, and we shop in theirs.” She says/.

Beginning in the 1990s, the Vietnamese immigrant population in Prague has blossomed to a sizeable community of just over 60,000.  The Vietnamese have also since seized a firm grasp on the corner grocery and nail salon markets as well as a representative seat in the city's National Minority Council.

However, with the economic downturn, racial differences, and the realities of earning money for both herself and her family back home, Monika, like many others in this economy, is struggling with the daily reality of living in a perhaps falsely promised land.Wearing black pants, and a white T-shirt, with her dark hair cut just above her shoulders, and while fidgeting with the leather band and thin gold buckle of small wristwatch, Monika’s waits behind a glittering cosmetic counter in her uncle’s salon. Her understanding of Vietnamese, Czech and English make her an asset to the Salon and its customers.

“I studied so I could move.” She recalls regarding her acceptance to Hanoi’s University of Agriculture and her subsequent acceptance into the school’s abroad program at the Czech University of Agriculture in Prague two years later.

“Some students at my school asked me why lots of Vietnamese come to the Czech Republic. When I tell them to make money. They laugh at me because in their mind Asia is where you make money. But then they come to our nail salons and our grocers anyway. And I tell them that’s how we are able to make money” She states with a grin.

“The Vietnamese are skilled and smart. We work hard.”  Monkia says.

“I want to go home to visit, but after I get a degree and more money” Says Monika. Yet she seems “unsure” of whether she would like that visit to be a permanent return, or just a temporary visit to Vietnam.

When asked about her specific future plans as an economist and businesswomen, she says “I don’t think that much about exact plans about later. I have work and school now.”

Looking at her watch and taping her pencil rhythmically on a calculator behind a cosmetic counter, she adds “I don’t have time to.”

taking the shot

Prague is not the same.  If you had asked me a mere four, three, or even two weeks ago to describe Prague, most of what I would have said would no longer be true. The city, where it snowed the day I left for spring break, has seemingly evolved into something else in a matter of hours. 

The once cold and grey streets are now illuminated with golden spring light and warmth from a sun I wasn’t sure existed in Eastern Europe. Except for the occasional large Asian tour group, or young cluster of teenage tourists, Prague’s tourist, while definitely a part of the city, used to, mostly, blend in with the serene and quiet atmosphere of Prague.  Leaving most of Prague’s streets, alleys, and open squares, nearly empty and silent.

However, just as one my professor’s said when he opened the window and proclaimed “ah! The Italian teenagers are back, and they have brought us good weather”, Prague has become not only a much warmer and post-card pristine city, but also a tourist metropolis. Walking to the NYU center, always located just off the main “old town square”, is now a feat much like navigating through Rockefeller center during Christmas time. Literally, hoards of tourist and tour groups (identifiable from the flags their guides hold on a stick (a Swedish flags for the Swedish tourist, Italian for the Italians and so on) block all pedestrian traffic. Male namesti, the small square that NYU is located, is no longer a square but an open-air restaurant. The street’s cobblestones are now covered with long wooden planks and patio-esque furniture where tourists can dine and eat “traditional Czech food”. The formerly open Old town square looks like Union Square’s Christmas market- Czech style.  In all honesty, while I realize my lack of authority on the subject (after all I am still a tourist of Prague), this recent surge in tourists is ridiculous and Prague’s old town, has become a type of Disneyland. 

This new Prague is not the one I have learned to live and appreciate over these past three months. This Prague is not the one where I learned to slow-down my “New-York-style” fast pace self, and where I learned to understand the quiet hours and post-communist “hangover”. That Prague is no longer here. With the abrupt change of seasons, and influx in tourist it would appear that my next and final month here is going to mean adjusting, once again to a new city. 

The Poster for One Word 2009

Babies are crying.   A nurse pushes a stroller of newborns down a long hall.   Stopping, the nurse places each infant in its own crib and removes his gloves.

The nurse is Vaclav Havel. And it is he who states, “Twenty years ago you were born into freedom, now is your time.” He’s calling to the audience from a promotional film trailer for the Czech “One World 2009”, the Film Festival of Human Rights Documentaries that just opened in Prague.

The Velvet Generation has come of age.

On opening day of “One World 2009”, Terez Pestova, 19, a One World organizer, said from behind the ticket counter in Prague’s Lucerna Cinema, “I work with the film festival because I want to help people who can’t help themselves.” Pestova, born the same year as the fall of communism in the Czech Republic said, “ I have never lived under the regime but my grandfather was a political prisoner”. Pestova is currently working with the largest Czech Republic human rights non-governmental organization, People in Need, on a campaign to provide money to the families of Burmese political prisoners.

While only 214 political prisoners were executed under the communist regime in the Czech Republic, 250,000 people were imprisoned, 8,000 people died doing hard labor, 600 died under police interrogation, and 500 died trying to cross border to flee the country. With the current population of the Czech Republic just over 10 million, under communism, two of every 10 adult citizens would be imprisoned.

So far, my experience in the Czech republic has allowed me to see the complicated and intrinsic connections contemporary Czech culture has it with its former communist self.  A popular term used to discuss the current climate is the“communist hangover”. This term, in my experience, does sort of accurately describes the joint denial and understanding of the communist regimes repercussions.

On the one hand, between Prague’s shopping malls, supermarkets, and capitalistic enterprises, communism seems to be a thing of the past, however, with quiet hours starting at 10pm, cars that aim for pedestrians, and a government recently given a vote of no confidence, the past and the present political atmospheres within Prague are very closely connected.

And as the one world film festival shows, this connection can sometimes lead to a heightened awareness and sensitivity towards other nations currently facing difficulties with those in power.

People in Need’s co-founder Jaromir Stetina explains such a phenomenon when he states in his organization’s mission statement, “When the Czechs needed a helping hand from the world, we got one. Now that we are better off this is our moral responsibility.” As Pellsova says, “for those of us have grown up in a democracy, it is our responsibility to take advantage of the freedoms our parents and grandparents gave us.” 

Hidden Cityscape: A Sudek Photograph of the Czech landscape under fog

One book I have been reading for this class is John Banville’s Prague in Pictures. A book which is a collection of self-deprecating and exploratory observations inspired by Baniville’s experiences in Prague and the people and events he encounters. A sort of “literary scrapbook” that attempts to capture a Prague not discussed in guidebooks.

In Sudek City, the first section of the book, the author discusses his city guide (a visiting professor) who introduces him to the photographs of Josef Sudek, who after losing his arm in WWI, became a photographer whose work studies the texture of Prague light. His most famous work including sweeping panoramas of empty namestis (squares), and silent cathedrals, all shot in starkly contrasted black and white that capture and illuminate a haunting Prague for Banville.

As Banville writes,  'All day I had been walking about the city without seeing it, and now Sudek's photographs, even the private interior studies, showed it to me in all its stony, luminous solidity and peculiar, wan, absent-minded beauty.”. This theme is particularly relevant, a Banville a jet lagged traveler copes with his own sense of place in Prague, a place where the people are both inherently connected to their surroundings, and at the same time completely oblivious to them.

At the end of the book, Banville writes about the book’s ironic title (there are no actual pictures in the book other than the Sudek gracing the cover). He notes that his book is actually a retelling of his memories from Prague and he feels it is, in fact, these memories that give travel its greatest meaning.  As he states, “It as if we were to focus our cameras on the great sights and the snaps when developed all came out with nothing in them save undistinguished but manically detailed foregrounds." (83).

As both a traveler in Prague, and as a photographer, I have come to terms with this sort of evolution that Banville discusses. My photographs and experiences when I first arrived in Prague were centered around the popular “tourist” destinations, or popular “non-tourist” destinations (because there is, in fact,  a subculture of travel that stems from a traveler’s own wanting for “nontourist destinations”).

Regardless, I have witnessed my familiarity with Prague allow me to go places, and take photographs, a tourist,  on even a three week journey would probably not venture to. No longer do I take panoramas of the Charles Bridge, and Vltava river…now that my pace in Prague has seemed to slow down I am able to focus beyond the “manically detailed foregrounds” and us a more macro lens to discover my surroundings. Like Sudek was able to do with his empty landscapes, and Banville with his literate ramblings, now that I am more familiar with Prague (the castle, the bridge, the squares) I, as both student and photographer am able to discover a new Prague void of tourists, travelers, and often other people.

Hair flew into her face while she continued to sit on the cold cobblestone overlooking the Vltava River. Couples clutched each other’s hands as clusters of onlookers meandered across the bridge ignoring her. No one, including herself, rushed. Yet, while those around her seemed preoccupied by their surroundings, clicking their cameras and posing in front of the sinking sun, she, instead, appeared oblivious to her place on the Charles Bridge. Slowly smoking her cigarette, her confident identity set her apart—she belonged.

Amidst the crowded bridge, where nearly 70,000 tourists a year are reported to pass over, this woman slowly enjoyed a bohemian sunset on her own accord. Her sense of ease and normalcy secured her role as a “local”. Her confident, and almost somber attitude fed off of the fragile egos of those whom, like myself, are still coping with their own status as a “tourist”.

Before coming to Prague I would never have thought a bridge could be a cultural activity. In New York, bridges, even the Brooklyn Bridge, seem to be only utilized for transport or the occasional photo of the landscape on either side. But in Prague, the Charles Bridge is itself, a destination.  A foot bridge whose views are some of the most picturesque Prague has to offer it is both ‘authentically Prague’, and the utmost ‘touristy’. It, like Manhattan’s central park, is that rare place where both native, and foreigner come together to  experience  and appreciate  in their own unique ways.  

“Prosim?” I enter a shop. “Prosim?” I enter a restaurant. “Prosim!” I get run over by a man rushing past me quickly.  “Prosim.” The clerk states after I pay for my groceries.

 The Czech word “Prosim” translates into English roughly like Italian’s “Prego”. The word bearing multiple meanings including (but not limited to): “Please”, “excuse me”, “you’re welcome” and “May I help you?”.

In his article, “Staged Authenticity: Arrangements of social space in Tourist Settings”, Dean MacCannell writes, “Social structure itself is involved in the construction of mystifications that support social reality…Just having a back region generates the belief that there is something more than meets the eye; even where no secrets are actually kept, back regions are still the places where it is popularly believed the secrets are” (591). Authenticity, I, in fact,  defined by the concept of  what is “Real”, “honest” and “True”.

When someone says ”Thank you” in Czech, an appropriate reply is “Prosim”, meaning, again, “Please”. Is this an “authentic response”? When I pay for my groceries does the grocer really mean to reply with a sort of nonchalant phrase implying “really…it’s okay”? If I bump into someone on the subway, do I really mean to tell them (without sarcasm) “Please”?

As a traveler, tourist, and student living in Prague this semester, I am constantly on the search for the “authentic” Czech experience. However, with the beautiful building facades, and the multiple dimensions of any society, Czech or otherwise, perhaps “authenticity”, itself, is overrated, and might, perhaps, not even exist in the first place.