•November 14,2006•
Our sixth day in our apartment in Prague on Vinohradska Street. It's seven a.m., blue-gray and wet outside. We live in a well kept, five story building and aside from the creaking floors, soft footsteps of our upstairs neighbors or the occasional shriek of laughter from the child one floor down, this building is silent most of the time. Our third floor apartment is spacious with typical high ceilings, a large living room with a wall of windows looking out on busy Vinohradska, a bedroom with two armoires, exercise cycle, and a kitchen with room for a pony.
How can I describe the bathroom? A toilet and bidet, small sink, washing machine and a deep triangular shaped tub with a semi circular shower curtain rod all in miss matched shades of blue and green. At least once a day the odor emanating from the toilet, probably due to outdated plumbing, forces us to spray copious amounts of air freshener and keep the bathroom door closed. So far everything works and that's what matters most. The furniture is ugly at best and torturous at worst. The bed is basically a three inch foam mattress on top of a hard platform. The television works but a former tenant stole the remote control and the landlady hasn't replaced it. The inconvenience of having to get up and change channels doesn't much matter since there are only four t.v. stations in the Czech Republic and not much worth watching on any of them.
There is nothing apart from the luxury of space and the good location that makes the apartment worth the price we pay every month. In our desperation for a place to live, we overlooked the deficits of this apartment because of its superiority to others we had seen for the same rent. Having stated the worst, the upside is that it's quiet, clean, functional, warm and directly across from a streetcar stop.
When we stayed in Prague in 2004 we lived one month in an apartment next to the Vltava River behind the big boulevard, Narodni trida, and the majestic National Theater. On the ground floor you could still see the tide line from the flooding of the river during the disastrous storms of 2002. Everything then was inexpensive except for petrol. Two years later the value of our dollar has declined and the Czech currency, the koruna, has strengthened. The cost of many things here has doubled with the exception of petrol. Beer and bread, the staples of life here, are still cheap.
When we told our friends we were moving abroad, almost without exception, they said, "How great! I wish I had the courage to do that." I realize now that it wasn't courage but rather desperation that motivated our move. We were sick of Oakland, California, couldn't bear the idea of breathing the toxic fumes associated with painting restoration one more year and as two people looking at the downhill slope of middle age, we figured it was our last chance to start a new life in a new country. From our previous trips here we found the country and culture different enough from our own to be fascinating and yet similar enough to be comprehensible.
So here we are, thousands of miles from friends and family in the U.S.A., in a country where the language would take me a lifetime to learn, winter and the holidays rapidly approaching and clueless of what comes next. When I stop to think of it, that's what life is really about. We're all clueless of what comes next.
•November 16, 2006•
We're living an aimless life for the moment. We're so physically and mentally exhausted from the hard work and upheaval of the last several months that we sleep a lot. We even nap during the day and this is new to me. I've never been a daylight sleeper. It used to amaze me that Paul could fall asleep any time, anywhere. Of course, then I would hear him up in the middle of the night, pacing and worrying about one thing and another. I think that worrying is a natural by product of aging. Paul and I have decided to take worry duty in shifts. He takes the night shift and I take the day, however I'm consideringt retiring from worry as it doesn't seem to be very productive. The reality of what we have done is sinking in now but the excitement is keeping panic at bay.
We try to communicate with people in Czech as much as we can. We've studied the language back in the States but anything other than the niceties gets dicey and degenerates into gibberish. I find that the Czechs, knowing that their language is difficult, appreciate even a half hearted attempt. Even foreigners who have lived here a while can still make glaring errors. Eva, Paul's cousin, told us a story about her French mother's struggle with the language after years living here. Eva, her mother Malci, and Eva's infant son, Petr, were in a store when a woman looked at Petr and said, "What a beautiful little girl." Malci replied, "Madame, he is not a she. She is a he." It sounded even funnier in Czech.
My mother used to tell me that I was born with a little gray cloud over my head. That's the impression the Czechs give me. On the streetcar, in the shops, going about their daily lives they seem perpetually gloomy. Maybe it's a hold over from the Communist era or maybe it's cultural. I don't know. I do know that they are not overly demonstrative, are deeply family orientated, culturally proud and naturally private, unlike the average Californian who will tell you their life story without hesitation. These, of course are generalities, something my husband tells me I'm prone to.
Certain very old Czech customs prevail. One is the country cottage or chata. On the weekends the Czechs head out of town to their chaty, some of which have been in their families for generations. They can range from shacks with outhouses to chalets with all the modern conveniences. This tradition is something the Czech people treasure. The countryside takes your breath away with its little villages and golden fields of safflowers merging with low rolling hills of bright, green grass. In the winter it is a sea of snow with herds of fallow deer in the woods and families ice skating on the frozen Brno reservoir, when viewed from the surrounding hills, become a living Brueghel painting. It must break hearts to have to head back to the city on Sunday night.
