Hedonism and Revolution in Prague

So, I was planning to revive my blog upon my return to Prague, but life got in the way.  Planning for students, sorting out housing and seeing old friends prevented me from having time to write about all the reasons I love being here and all the ways this city and the people just lead to a complete revitalization of life for me.

Students, Trina, Thomas and Sue say good-bye to Praha-ha-ha.

Now that the students are gone (well, sort of—one coming back) and I’ve sent off Trina with many great photos, keepsakes and memories, I can reflect a little.

Trina at Strahov, looking down over the city (see the bridges?).

One element of Prague’s charm is the hedonism, which (apparently) not everyone finds.

That’s almost certainly a good thing, as I don’t know that it would work if everyone who came here discovered it.  We were discussing the other night, what hedonism means.  Then, serendipitously, I found an article about how the Czechs are the most decadent.

I see “decadent” as a pejorative term for hedonistic, one that has a certain “bad boy” appeal, which Trina ascribed to such activities as smoking cigarettes and drinking too much. 

But I do believe that many if not most Czechs achieve hedonism in moderation—of course there are some alcoholics, of course some addicts, some who smoke too much or don’t care enough for themselves.  But the majority achieve a balance between the hard-working, innovative Czech work ethic that made Czechoslovakia one of the G7 between the two World Wars, and such a prize for Hitler’s Nazis, and the beer-drinking, pot-smoking, art-idea-and-absurdism wielding creatives like Václav Havel, David Černý, my dear friend Pavla Jonssonová (was Slabá, née Fediuková) and anarchist-visionary Petr Bergmann, who has cut his hair and retreated to the country but still had the power to electrify my students and friends with his passionate discussion of pre-, during, and post-Velvet Revolution Prague.