I just got back from a trip with a friend to my Prague. We went there with an excuse to show Nemo and since I have been missing Prague for so long and she had never been, we thought that we would sneak over for 2 days. What can happen in two days, right?
But as I was sitting in the restaurant Cihelna by the water overlooking Charles Bridge and those beautiful buildings lining up like heroic soldiers on the other side, I realised that I thought of this place as part of my family. There in Rudolfinum, my grandfather, who always bought season tickets, took my mum as a child to concerts. Across the street, in Umprum, my father studied and I knew which window was his studio. Further up stream, at the place where the New Stage of the National theatre is, my mum grew up, with her window facing the long corridors backstage at the National Theatre. Defying sleep she used to watch the actors rush through the corridors in full costume and then slowly walk back exhausted after the performance. It was then, she was about five, that she decided to become an actress. How can Prague not be the obvious place for me to live?
I have lived in different places, including Prague, and in every place something was missing. In Sweden it was the warmth of every day interaction, in England it is the lack of roots and family and in Prague it was the small minded view on the possibilities in life. But then it was ten odd years ago I left and I was also ten years younger and in ten years Prague has changed, I have changed.
Since I have left Prague I have only come back twice, making this last visit the second and altogether in the ten years of separation from Prague I have only spent a week of visiting it, so my view in the changes in Prague are very naive, unfounded really. But during this last visit, meeting an old friend and seeing the business he is building up, a lovely coffee shop called “Friends”, not to be missed, seeing that it is possible to have ideas and realising them, ie living a life of ones choice makes me think that maybe during our 10 years Prague and I have developed in a direction where we can create my life together. But then I walk down Narodni, a boulevard de facto, that in its prime was filled with coffee shops and book stores and galleries, with Klasterni Vinarna as an exclusive spot, where the street lead you through these elegant spaces down to the culmination which was the river and the view of Hradcany. To now see the street filled with gambling shops, thai massage offers and cheesy (sorry for the pun) fast food pizza places , makes me realise, that the Homo Sovieticus people that I fled from the last time, still exists and their mission to make other peoples life as grey as possible, is not completely failed.
So can I live there? Should I take the leap and pack the family and go back? Or is it just a nostalgic dream? Would I be accepted? Would I be able to create a life for me and my family?
The problem lies in that I sincerely do not know the answer to any of the questions. If I did I wouldn’t have a dilemma. But then there is the fact that sitting on the plane back to England I felt that I was leaving home. And that is an argument that is really hard to beat..
Yours in Confusion
Veronika
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