Prague: The City is a Lover

When you meet "that person" in your life, there is something that draws you to them that encompasses their appearance, their tone of voice, their humor. You come to realize that it is their “atmosphere” that makes you remember them. It hits your senses – not your mind or your heart but your physical and psychological senses. The atmosphere of that someone that you can't get enough of. It is as if your small world was black and white for a long while without you noticing but when you met that person, colors infused your surroundings and your memories were laced with a feeling that you ponder and long for when they're away.

I feel this way about a city. I only lived there for four months but the atmosphere of that place holds strong since I journeyed away. I always think that an author has accomplished something remarkable when they write a book or a short story that leaves you with an unshakeable sense you had while reading that you can remember years afterward. A lover, a book, a city – there's something about that sense. It is not necessarily anything specific that you remember but you can call up a feeling which can be better than any words spoken.

I remember the unswaying uncertainty of that city – an uncertainty that simultaneously terrified and enthralled me. It was unfamiliarity that made every day, every moment, ebb with waves of self-consciousness which is a feeling we tend to abhor. But it was that feeling that necessarily pushed me past the breaking point, out of confines of myself, to a place where relief rushed in because control was no longer an option. This made me free to speak with people I'd never met who grew up in a culture I knew nothing about who spoke a language I did not know. This made me free to board trams, the direction of which I always forgot, the destination of which could change at any moment. This made me free to laugh hysterically, to burst with the excitement of "journey," to attach myself to people I'd known for perhaps an hour.

The city was my home at some point. After three weeks, when the awe of a vacationing existence was replaced with the resignation of life in a home, I struggled to gain back the honeymoon experience. I felt guilt for becoming accustomed. But to be accustomed should be what we long for when we travel. The ability to pass from tourist to resident – to recognize a park, a tram-stop, a memorial, a face – this all becomes a feeling of "I belong."

I remember the atmosphere of dressing with my roommates for a night out – all four of us cramming in our bathroom before the mirror, struggling for placement to brush on mascara, to determine how best to cover the zits or sleep circles on our faces. As "The Killers" blared their pump-me-up tunes, we giggled like middle-schoolers and gave our honest opinion about outfits. We locked our door – a process that never ceased to give us grief – and clanked down our echoing stairwell. We passed our marijuana-scented bar on the street we called our own, rounded the corner past our peculiar neighbor with the metallic, skeleton dinosaur mounted on the stand that lit it up alternately with blue, green, and red light. We went to our stop and giddily boarded the tram, speaking English in a confined space filled with Czech-speaking average-joes, trying desperately to quench the fear of being noticed for the Americans that we were.

I remember the nights of tall, dark beers that cost us a gloriously low sum; the live band playing folk tunes in Czech, English, French, Russian; the surrounding unfamiliar faces that had the potential to become friends at any moment. I remember the wind-up to the inevitable dancing. I remember thinking, “I’m right where I’ve always wanted to be.” And though that realization almost always came with moments of crippling uncertainty following right behind, I recall feeling euphoric.

As with a lover, I fear putting down words in description. Somehow, the words take my thoughts and direct them to places I can’t control. But I suppose that the writing of the city is like living in the city – the uncertainty, the inability to control is always there. And the best way to honor it, to remember it, is to still ever attempt to put it down in writing. I fear writing about Prague because of not giving it justice in words. But I felt that I could not do it justice living there either. Maybe it doesn't matter. I just need to love it any way I know how.