Phenomenon

18 Days In, 93 Days Out

I found the picture of the hands. Remember, the one from the Velvet Revolution?

Courtesy, Prague Post

"Katka recounted how students marched through Vysehrad, visiting graves of relevant figure in the National Cemetery there, marched down what's now Narodni Street in Old Town, which not so coincidentally translated to 'National' Street. Where there began only a few hundred students protesting, they numbered in the thousands by the end, the crowd being joined by students along the way as they marched. Katka remembers this because she as 14 at the time. Along Narodni, there's a statue depicting open hands, which represents the gestures the students made as they clashed with the police (Policie, in Czech). They held up their hands, saying, "Our hands are empty," and it became a symbol of the Velvet Revolution." (Read that post.)

Thinking about an assignment for class where we were to write about a Czech phenomenon we have observed since coming to Prague brought me back to Vysehrad. A lot of things tend to bring me back to that, I've noticed.

To get to Vysehrad, Katka shepherds us--a group of shining-eyed students with that still-fresh, tourist smell clinging to our American clothing--onto the 17 tram, at a stop with an almost unimpeded sightline of the Prague castle. The sounds of Old Town fade away little by little, so that the change goes unnoticed by the still-chattering students. It's not until we step off at Vyton and the tram screeches away that we can hear the difference. Here, it's quiet.

As we climb towards the entrance to Vysehrad, it's as if we are climbing deeper and deeper into clouds of silence. Vysehrad is what still remains of Prague's secondmost important castle. In recent times, Vysehrad is often overlooked, especially by the tourist mass, in favor of the more famous, more stunning, and intact Hradcany.

But there are people here, too. These are the locals, Czechs who have come to honor their own history, to pay their respects, for remembrance. Walking through the National Cemetery, we see not one tourist (Amendment: on my second visit, there were some tourists milling around, most of them Czech-speaking). My camera feels terribly sacrilegious, a careless click within the walls of this weighty, culture-rich ground. For the composers Dvorak and Smetana are buried here, and writer Karel Capek and artist Alfons Mucha, and multitudes of other names which I don't recognize, but are pointed out with reverence.

Locals are here, when I so rarely see them gather in Old Town, now chock full of tourists waiting impatiently to hear the chimes of the Astronomical Clock or gawking at the Tyn Cathedral. It's as though the Czechs have withdrawn to those places they deem safe havens from the swarms--places that hold as much history and tradition, if not more, as the spectacular, towering landmarks. Places that can sometimes be minutes--steps, really--off the beaten path.

There's something else, too. The cemetery still holds a lingering feel of the Czech people's search for identity. Katka says the cemetery was part of a Czech effort to establish and substantiate a national identity. It seems like Czechs have been deprived of cohesive, national pride for so long that they are loathe to let outsiders into their quietest, truest world.

Two minutes from the bustle of Old Town Square, a gap in the wall along Michalska street gives way to a tiny bar, packed with Czechs who are clearly frequent guests. Tourists move along outside, and strangely, their gazes seem to skip right over the bar, as if it's Hogwarts' Room of Requirement. The Czechs all know each other, and our arrival causes a brief lull in the level of noise. They are confused about the foreign students in their midst, it seems. The low hum begins presently begins again, and with it, such a permeating feeling of Czech normalcy and belonging that I wish I could visit these places every day.

I can, actually. They are mere steps away; it's simply a matter of finding them. It's not the Czechs' job, after all. The tourists beat the path. They just step off it.

This was much longer than I expected. Today, I close with a quote from an article from class. It resonated so strongly with me, and hope it will do the same for y'all who are studying abroad as well.

"We travel, then, in part just to shake up our complacencies by seeing all the moral and political urgencies, the life-and-death dilemmas, that we seldom have to face at home. And we travel to fill in the gaps let by tomorrow's headlines. When you drive down the streets of Port-au-Prince, for example, where there is almost no paving and women relieve themselves next to mountains of trash, your notions of the Internet and a "one world order" grow usefully revised. Travel is the best way we have of rescuing the humanity of places, ands aving them from abstractions and ideology." --Pico Iyer, Why we travel

Photo slideshow follows: