And boy, did this local deliver. I'm confident we learned more in a day's walk through the city with A--- than we could have in any museum. Her English was excellent, but she still radiated the worldly air of a European, informed by a much denser history than our own. A few hours into our conversation, we learned that her childhood had been spent in the final years of the country's Communist regime.
"What was that like?" I asked, intrigue overriding eloquence.
A--- laughed. "Full of absurdities. My uncle used to build bicycles here in the country for export, but if he wanted to purchase a bike himself, he had to go out of the country to find a shop that sold them. Then there was all the propaganda... I think I was six when my teacher directed us to draw pictures of tanks."
I asked what she remembered about the dissolve. "It was slow," she said. "It took time. But I remember how color started showing up everywhere. Before, everything seemed gray. There were suddenly eight brands of yogurt, instead of just 'yogurt.' We bought a car, which was a huge change, and eventually we could just drive straight across the border."
A--- also spoke of the Czech sense of suspicion as a byproduct from these years. "When the government encourages its citizens to denounce their own relatives for misconduct, you learn not to trust anyone too much."
I'd never given Communism this much thought before. A--- held me captivated with each deeper musing.
"We are not a fighting country. We haven't had the means or the will to defend ourselves in the past, and we haven't been given a chance to recover for the future. Immigrants come to Europe looking for work, and we want to help, but they come too many and too fast. Their job expectations are not met; they get frustrated. Maybe some grow violent. Changes came to us so quickly in the past, and no one registered until it was too late... If something happens again, I ask myself, could I leave my family behind? in exchange for a chance at life?" A--- sighed and rubbed her eyes. "I don't know. It's complicated."
There was nothing to say in response. Things were complicated. Not just here, but across our modern world. It suddenly struck me that as a US citizen -- and I should check my privilege here by specifying as a white US citizen -- I have the liberty, for better or worse, to disregard these kind of fears. The US is bordered by Canada and Mexico, neither of which I've ever been taught to regard as a particular threat. South America seems light years away, especially if you live in a northern state. We are not haunted by past dictatorships. Invasive dangers have an enormous country to cross. And finally, our nation is so young and so diverse in its cultural history that we scarcely have a distinct identity to protect. (The US was in fact built on the bodies of the only people who can rightfully claim ownership to the land.) I've spent my life wishing I lived in a place with an older, more clarified history, and for the first time I feel thankful for America's juvenescence.
Conversation lightened up as we moved west of Vyšehrad. A--- then showed us two of the coolest places we've seen so far on our trip (we have her to thank for the Catholic cemetery, too.)
The first stop was was Viniční Altán, a hillside restaurant with its own vineyard and gazebo. I had a good spin about the top balcony, fantasizing about waltzing to Dvořák by the light of the moon....
A--- then lead us through a park behind the vineyard and into a Disneyland-esque structure which she called "the man-made cave." I'm not sure what it's actually called or when it was constructed or who designed it, but I could have spent an entire afternoon exploring all the nooks and crannies for the perfect book-reading spot. As it happened, I had just enough time to snap these pictures before we moved north to another district.
We left A--- a few hours later with a promise to meet up again the next day for dinner and further life chats.
Jay and I made an easy time of our final days in the city, strolling through the west bank beyond the Charles Bridge. We passed hours writing and relaxing in the sunshine. We caught a classical music concert at the city Music Hall. We stumbled into something called the John Lennon wall, which seemed to appear out of nowhere as we searched for a place to eat. (We ended up dining at the John Lennon Pub, at my insistence.)
It was during these peaceful, "nothing" hours that we decided to completely rearrange our travel plans, just for the hell of it / because we could. We'd planned to hit Austria on our way down to Venice, then move through Croatia to Bulgaria, putting Bucharest and Budapest at the end of our journey, before Paris. I suggested swapping Austria after Venice, then stopping in Budapest and Bucharest on the way to Bulgaria. This left us with a whole week of extra travel time to fill before Paris.
After several delightful dramatic propositions (Southern Italy! The French Riviera! Istanbul! Zurich! Bruges! Corsica! Sardinia!) I threw caution to the wind and asked, half-day-dreaming, "What about Santorini?" (I'm not even ashamed to admit there were Mamma Mia fantasies rolling through my head at this point.)
"Greece?" I saw Jay weigh the question in his mind.
And then he smiled.
"I mean, why not?"
We booked our plane tickets that evening. Because some things just don't have to be complicated.
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