PRAGUE, CZ (1994) “The New Paris”
Every time I came home to my dorm room, I prayed no gigantic, hairy Slavic person would be in the bed next to mine.
I went to Prague in the summer of ‘94 because my first novel was coming out in September and I didn’t want to sit around Portland for three months checking off the days on my calendar.
As you can imagine the waiting period before your first novel is released is a unique time in a young writer’s life. You only have one first novel. And you only get to wait for it once.
As exciting and suspenseful as those final months were, it seemed imperative that I find something else to think about. I had all this nervous energy flowing through me. I needed to use it.
*
Another factor: 1994 was the year that large numbers of young people started venturing into Central and Eastern Europe, to the dirt-cheap and still unsettled former communist countries.
Prague, Budapest, Warsaw were just sitting there, waiting to be explored. Western business was moving in. Fortunes were being made (supposedly).
If nothing else, these cities were an exotic place to kill a couple years after college, maybe start an ex-pat magazine, write a novel, or open a bar.
It was like Paris in the 1920s. Time Magazine had published a big story about it.
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*
I arrived in Prague during the first week in July. I was traveling light: a shoulder bag with changes of underwear and extra socks.
The airport was a little scary. I remember the confusion of trying to get the right bus into the city center. The language was indecipherable. The infrastructure was old and worn out. There was little guidance for tourists. Prague hadn’t had Western tourists in decades, though that was obviously changing.
I made it downtown and found a room in an empty school dorm (because it was summer). Very few people spoke English which made everything difficult: figuring out the money, finding something to eat.
*
That first night—because of the time difference—I couldn’t sleep and went for a walk at 4am. The city looked like a 1930s horror movie: the spires and the gargoyles and the spiked iron fences everywhere. A graveyard in the middle of town. The Charles Bridge seemed to be shrouded in gloom, even when it wasn’t.
The cobblestone streets were deserted. You could hear every footstep. Every cat’s meow. Every sweep of a street cleaner’s broom.
And then a beautiful woman appeared. Out of the darkness. She started following me down the street, talking to me in Czech. What did she want? She tried English but I pretended I didn’t understand. She stayed right with me. She touched my arm. She was maybe 40. I got the idea she was a gypsy. Not that I knew what a gypsy looked like. She was gorgeous though. Bright, shining eyes. Nicely dressed. Was she a prostitute? She sure didn’t look like one.
*
The next day, groggy from no sleep, I went out to see Prague in the daylight. I found my way to the Charles Bridge which was packed with tourists taking pictures and blocking the sidewalk. It was hot and humid. I got to the other side of the bridge and started walking uphill on the hot stone street. I was hungry and thirsty and roasting in the sun. I had to stop and rest on the curb. I had to figure out how to buy water.
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*
At one point, on that first day, I saw a line of people, standing beside a hole in the side of a building. They were buying small sausages wrapped in fresh dough, through the hole. Apparently, the sausages cost “one coin”.
So I got a coin that looked like what the other people were using and stood in line and when it was my turn, I offered the coin into the hole. And out came a sausage roll.
Well, it was about the best thing I ever put in my mouth. So I lived on those for a week. I made sure to always have the right coin. And to not forget where the hole was.
*
*
I had my Walkman with me, and during the sweltering afternoons, I would lay in my dorm bed and listen to Czech music on the radio. It was terrible. It was basically polka music or bad Euro Disco.
Every once in a while they’d play a Western song. Always the worst one’s imaginable. “Have You Ever Been Mellow,” by Olivia Newton John.
*
My tiny dorm room was a double, there were two beds, and every time I came home, I prayed no gigantic, hairy Slavic person would be in the bed next to mine.
Then I came home one evening and a teenager was in the bed. (I was 33 at this time).
Amazingly, he could speak a little English. He had come to Prague for the weekend to take a test to possibly get into the big University there. I asked him about the test. I asked him about his life in general.
He was a smart kid and very serious. I could tell this test was super important, so I tried not to bother him too much. I made sure to be quiet when he was sleeping. It was weird to meet someone who had grown up under communism.
*
That was something you were always thinking about in Prague. You were walking around in a former communist country. That was probably why the music was so bad. And why you bought your sausage rolls through a hole in the side of a building.
That was also why everything was falling apart. And the supermarkets were so dirty. And the old people were so grumpy.
The young people too. They had this hardness to them. There was a weird, lingering misery to things. Even now that they were supposedly “free”.
*
*
Gradually, I acclimatized to the strangeness of the city. And then I started looking around for the American ex-pats I’d read about in Time Magazine.
I found a poster for an English speaking open mic reading at a bar. I went there and read something from a journal I was keeping. I got a few laughs.
Afterward, an older American woman came up to me. She liked my piece. She said, “I know good writing when I hear it!” She asked me questions. She told me about herself.
Then she pulled her daughter forward and introduced us. The daughter’s name was Christine [not her real name]. She was very shy, the opposite of her mother. The mother suggested we meet for lunch the next day. I was like, “okay.”
*
So we met for lunch: the mom, me, and shy Christine. They were from Maryland. But Christine—who had thick glasses and hid beneath her bangs—had recently moved to Prague.
The mother did all the talking. She was great. Very funny and sharp. And always trying to include her daughter in the conversation.
It was like something out of a Merchant Ivory movie. The highly social mother dragging her mousey daughter around Central Europe trying to coax her out of her shell. It was hilarious. I really liked the mom. As for Christine? She never talked so I couldn’t tell. But she seemed okay.
*
*
I don’t remember how I made first contact with the other ex-pats but I did. There was a clique of maybe 10 people who seemed to be the literary crowd, the “cool-kids”. They frequented certain bars and cafes. They were mostly Americans, from fancy liberal arts colleges, mid-20s mostly.
And then there were other, more random groups that orbited around that first bunch. Backpackers, couples, friends of friends, other recent graduates of fancy colleges who were checking out Prague to see if they might want to move there.
One guy, a Brown graduate, was the ring leader of the core group. He seemed to know everyone and understand better than the rest, how Prague worked.
*
Naturally, there were some aspiring writers among the ex-pats (since Prague was “the new Paris”). I met several people who were signed up for writing classes at a suspicious sounding Creative Writing Program that had sprung up just months before.
Was this Program affiliated with the University? Sort of. Did they have real teachers? Maybe. Were there actual classrooms? They were working on it. Could they take your cash U.S. dollars? Yes they could!
One pair of women (Oberlin grads) were the self-appointed mean girls of the cool-kids group. I made the mistake of telling them about my novel coming out. They ignored me after that. I couldn’t tell if it was because they didn’t believe me (lots of ex-pat liars), or that it was uncouth of me to announce (brag about) such a thing.
I shouldn’t have said anything. So that was on me. But they were still mean in general. That was their role in the group.
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*
There was also a group of rowdy American frat bro types, who had their own ex-pat scene of raves and clubs and partying. Just out of college, these guys were constantly having wild drunken escapades, some of which got them into trouble with the local authorities.
At one point, these guys decided to travel by direct train to Moscow, which you could still do from Prague. There was a lot of talk among the other ex-pats about this trip. Should they go? Wouldn’t it be dangerous? What would they do there?
Prague was considered the easiest of the former communist cities to deal with. The further east you went, the harder things got. Moscow was considered the worst. After the collapse of communism, it was total anarchy there. People described it as the wild west, on steroids.
But these guys were young and bold and fearless. They’d careened their way through Prague’s party scene. I guess they wanted the ultimate challenge.
They threw one last blowout party before they left. Then they got on the train to Russia and away they went. I, for one, forgot all about them.
Two weeks later they were back. They were changed men. You could see it in their faces. And they had horrific tales to tell.
They’d been drugged, robbed, beaten, arrested, imprisoned and who knows what else. They’d somehow got back on a train and then had to beg, borrow and steal their way back to Prague with no money. Now, several of them were returning to the U.S. immediately. They couldn’t get home fast enough.
*
July turned to August and I continued to hang out with the literary cool-kid group as best I could. They were younger than me and annoying at times and the Oberlin girls were still shunning me. But there wasn’t anybody else to hang out with.
That’s how I got to know Christine. She was in the same situation. She was closer to my age, but ended up hanging out with the cool-kids as well, since she worked at The Globe which was a popular English Bookstore and Cafe.
So I’d see her and we’d chat. She had been so shut down around her mother, but now I saw that she was actually very articulate and funny in her own right, though a bit neurotic and overly self-deprecating.
Anyway, we hit it off. Which was a relief. We could follow the cool-kids around, but have each other to talk to.
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*
One day, Christine took me to a Hari Krishna compound on the outskirts of the city. Here, you could get a filling and delicious vegan meal for the equivalent of one U.S. dollar.
So then Christine and I got into a routine of riding the bus to the compound to have lunch with the Hari Krishnas. I remember enjoying these bus rides. By now it was mid-August and the sun was getting lower in the sky. I was experiencing my first changing of the seasons. It made me feel like I was a real ex-pat. Like I lived in a foreign country.
*
Occasionally we hung out at Christine’s place. She had rented an apartment downtown. A nice apartment, since things were so cheap.
She was probably nervous to have me over at first, but she got over it. She probably made us dinners. And there was wine. It became comfortable and fun for both of us.
And then, at some point, the slightest hint of romance began to enter into our relationship.
It was really the best way for such a thing to happen. We’d gotten comfortable with each other, realizing over time that there was a real compatibility between us. It was nothing either of us had pushed for, or planned on. It just slowly became the reality of our relationship. We got along. We liked each other. We could speak freely in each other’s presence. We valued each other’s opinion. We missed each other when we were apart.
We might have even kissed. Or something. I don’t remember exactly. I think I slept over a couple times. We didn’t have sex. But there was some physical manifestation of what was happening. Again, it came about so gradually, so naturally, it was as if in a dream.
*
Then one day, Christine told me about her American friend, Antoinette [not her real name]. She’d also lived in Prague but had been away for the summer in Poland. But now she was coming back.
Antoinette was an artist, an illustrator, and very talented. She had been one of the first Americans to come to Prague immediately after the fall of communism. For a time had lived with a young Czech newscaster from their newly de-communized local TV. She was bold and cool and weird. She was a real artist.
“I told her about you,” Christine said. “You guys will probably like each other.”
*
And so the day came, when Christine and I met up with Antoinette. It was in the big park, in the afternoon, over beers.
I can clearly remember seeing Antoinette for the first time. Close cropped hair. Some sort of skirt or dress. Skipping down the walkway toward us, all bright and excited.
She was glad to meet me. And I was glad to meet her. And the three of us had a great time, drinking and lounging in the park, during the last of the summer heat.
And what followed between the three of us, was definitely one of the most unusual and interesting situations I’ve ever been in.
It was the kind of thing that only happens during particularly dramatic and propitious periods of your life. Like when you’re waiting for your first novel to come out.
*
Nice cliff hanger ...
This would make a good movie.
The guys going to Moscow ... Bad call. But I wouldn't have gone to Prague, either, so I am not the best judge. There is an optimal amount of risk aversion ...
Very cool.