Beautiful skin hides Prague’s interior

Prague is the sweetheart city of central Europe. Host to thousands of tourists from all over… Prague is the sweetheart city of central Europe. Host to thousands of tourists from all over the world, the capital of the Czech Republic is distinguished by time-tested monuments like Charles Bridge, Prague Castle and its famous astronomical clock.

With such a beautiful skin, Prague hides its heart.

My search began in the Vysehrad, a complex of buildings and courtyards on the site of an ancient castle near the Vltava River. The high walls of the Vysehrad protected it from the noise and business of the outer neighborhoods. At first, I was afraid to cross through the gate into a place where I could not speak the native language — where I would be stared at, no matter how hard I tried to look inconspicuous. I waited until evening to begin.

It was early July, and the streets were warm and inviting. With the gates of the Vysehrad behind me, I walked a bit before stopping at a small bar. I was only looking for a soda, but a man heard me attempt to order in Czech with an American accent and insisted on ordering me a beer. Stout and smiling, he wore an aged face and blue coveralls. He introduced himself as Tomas. We talked for a while, as I tried to avoid the towering glass of Staropramen lager that had been placed before me.

“It won’t hurt you,” Tomas told me in his thick Slavic accent. “It is very good for the stomach.”

His English was nearly perfect, as it was for many Praguers. Anyone in a bank or store near the Old City would speak English, although a few words of Czech from a tourist would unleash a flurry of the language, too fast to understand, from a native speaker. Tomas told me he also spoke Russian, and I offered to attempt conversation in it. He said he would rather not, at least not in the bar.

The rule of communism in Czechoslovakia and the 1968 Soviet invasion of the country created deep animosity between Czechs and Russians, though some places in the Czech Republic, like the resort town Karlovy Vary, had a close connection with Russia. References to Russia sometimes evoked nasty looks and muttering from Czechs, and I asked Tomas who would object to hearing Russian.

“Anyone with good memory,” he replied.

Tomas recalled the times when beer, now 25 crowns — about $1 — would cost eight. He thought people had been better off under communism, when everyone had less, but enough, money. Prices in the Czech Republic, still low by American standards, have doubled or tripled since the fall of communism in 1989. With the nation’s recent accession into the European Union, many believe prices will only get higher.

“I had to quit smoking because I could not afford cigarettes,” Tomas told me.

As Tomas drank more, he laughed harder and spoke English less. I offered him an awkward goodbye in Czech and left, leaving my beer untouched.

On the next afternoon, I took the subway to Wenceslas Square, the entrance to Prague’s old town. The sun beat down on me as I emerged from below the National Museum and walked toward the astronomical clock. I bought an ear of corn for 30 crowns from one of the food vendors and sat, eating, in front of the clock. As the hour drew near, a crowd of tourists congregated in front of its giant face, waiting for it to sound off. With the click of levers and the toll of bells, it was over, and the people dispersed.

I walked to the Jewish quarter, where the old synagogues were open for visitors. The city’s Jewish community is slowly dwindling in numbers, and is now no more than a few thousand.

“We are now only old men,” a man at Maisel Synagogue told me. “Soon, we will die, and there will be no more of us.”

The Holocaust decimated Jewish communities all over Europe, and many young people in the remaining communities do not want to carry on the lifestyles of the survivors. The only young men in the Jewish quarter were selling wares to passing tourists.

As evening came, barkers for strip clubs and loud groups of drunken tourists began to prevail over the old town. I fled to Charles Bridge, which was packed with people looking at handmade crafts and listening to performers. Prague Castle, lit above us on the Lesser Quarter of the city, glowed ethereally next to a gray sky. I found a quiet spot near one of the bridge’s religious statues and began to read The Prague Post, the city’s English newspaper. Its lead story told of crisis in the government after the prime minister had resigned two weeks earlier. One editorial warned that the Czech Republic might again fall under the rule of the Communist Party. A nearby man admonished me for taking the news so seriously, saying it was just a routine government shuffle.

As the man predicted, there was no revolution that night, nor has there been one any night since. The bridge I stood on that night has survived for hundreds of years, through flood and fire, with only minor damages. Prague had maintained its beauty through riots and wars by sometimes favoring concession, and even surrender, over fighting. So, in the spirit of Prague, I surrendered myself to the city, returning to the Vysehrad but leaving it many more times, waiting for the city to reveal more of its tortured, resolute soul to me.

Michael Mastroianni studied last summer at Prague’s Charles University, but he found out quite a lot by buying drinks for Czechs. He can be reached at realityfactory@yahoo.com.