Another world is ... here? In the Tchaiovna ;-)

So I try and try to describe Prague—the feeling I get here, the Bohemian-ness of it—I got perhaps closest when trying to describe/define hedonism.

But the other night when the Improv was there: We sat in the back and smoked a joint with our new friend Daragh, and the bartender Jeff (later described as “stoic” by one of the Improv trigger stories) had a hit off of it.

It’s not Starbucks for sure. Sometimes it takes awhile to get your drink. Sometimes it takes 20 minutes to get your sandwich. But you can be sure that Andy and Helen will do their best, that the ingredients are fresh, that the frozen strawberry or raspberry “Mafi-Osi” will fulfill your vitamin C requirement, that the beer is cool and fresh.

Sometimes Narnia is the exact right place for me, and sometimes there are people there with a vibe in which I don’t want to engage. Only once has it been too crowded (the whole place, not just Narnia) and I left soon after arriving.

The gentle tolerance there and desire to do good—to provide a place for the community, to create a community around art and music and pleasure and sustainability and locally sourced materials – gives me hope, as this is something I’ve been looking for since my first trip outside the US, when I saw that other worlds were possible.

                                                     

It seems to me a manifestation of Arundhati Roy’s

Another world is not only possible, 

she is on her way. On a quiet day, 

I can hear her breathing.

For my students who found it too smoky, too chaotic, I’m want to say, life is dirty and chaotic and to engage with it fully, sometimes you get dirty too. I think their complaint about “smoky” is more about the smell of trava, with which they were obviously uncomfortable, and yet at the same time too repressed and hypocritical to mention.

I find it interesting in that zajimovy way that the most sheltered—student A and student B—seemed to be actually the most open, except for, of course, student Y, who was a delight with that sunny personality and willingness to find beauty, pleasure and charm in everything.

All and all, the Prague summer program was an unqualified success: 

I look forward to doing many, many more.

Oh, and a few photos from Narnia, aka Amaze in Tchaiovna, 

my wonderful local in Prague  ;-)

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. 

Return to Peripatetica

As I prepare to go out on the road (or rather, into the air) again, I wanted to revive this blog to share more travel experiences and philosophies.

But first, I have this to say:  Can we stop with the Bono bashing, already?  The man is 55 years old, he and his bandmates are beginning to show their age, and yet they still put on the best show in rock ‘n’ roll (according to reviews of Innocence and Experience).

In fact, for me, a lapsed Episcopalian and aspiring pagan, a U2 show is the Church of Rock ‘n’ Roll, and it’s been a terrible long time since I’ve gotten to participate in the Eucharist.  I’ve yet to meet a single person (in 35 years) who has not been inspired and uplifted by a U2 concert.

He doesn't mean to bug ya. 

This bashing of Bono must stop.  He’s just a guy, a middle-class Irish guy, who happened to hook up with three other guys to make some great music.

And because of their middle class values, they were compassionate, and when they were asked to take part in a charitable event, they did.

Then Bono did what I would be thrilled if any titan of industry did—he made the effort to look deeply at the problem and tried to understand its complexity. He became the conscience of the band, of the fans, of a generation.  He took his concerns from the performance stage to the audience of public opinion to the political arena.  He got his hands dirty.  And he changed some minds.

He’s a decent guy.  He’s been married to the same woman his entire adult life, with four children, whom he has amazingly, heroically kept out of the spotlight. 

He’s well aware of both the temptations of having such a megaphone as well as his own tendency towards pomposity and preaching and publically ridicules himself for it regularly.

I can understand if you don’t like U2’s music—well, not really.  I guess it’s more like I’m aware that there are people who say they don’t like U2.  I’m not part of the really messianic cult, but I’m way up there in the second tier.  

But there are so many actually shitty human beings on this planet who are doing real damage, either individually or as part of a larger instrument, with malice aforethought. 

Bono’s just a guy who got to do what he loves and tries to use his voice and popularity to influence life and death on this planet.  Whether he actually is doing good, or the value of his contribution, can certainly be analysed and questioned; that’s not the issue. But hating on a man who is just trying to do some good in the world—I don’t get it. 

Why concentrate your hate on Bono?  Make fun of him, sure, fine.  But give the guy a break.  He’s just a guy.

Get your complimentary copy of The Last Bohemians

Until 25 October, when The Last Bohemians will go on Amazon Kindle exclusively (for three months), you can download a complimentary copy of the ebook.  

Go to https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/335265  

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The Čajovna

The čajovna, or tea-room, was becoming quite a phenomenon; there are almost as many tea rooms as beer halls in Prague now, I thought, as I followed him down the shadowy hall.... I caught the scent of some unfamiliar incense, just before he led me through a curtain of beads and down a narrow stone staircase. The walls were rough, ancient, and cold; I followed him around the spiral, hand on the rail for balance. When we reached the bottom, our steps went silent as we crossed a thick carpet. I realized that we were in the original sklep of the building; but the raw, usually unfinished cellar had been transformed with low tables, cushions and pillows, and raised platforms in the corners of the room. Another doorway to our left was also curtained by beads, and, I was sure, led to more rooms in the warren-like tea-room style.

– Chapter 3, "Děti Země", The Last Bohemians

Riding the trams of Prague:

The Prague tram network consists of 142.4 km (88.5 mi) of track, 972 trams, and 24 daytime routes and nine night routes with a total route length of 539.8 km (335.4 mi).   The system served 312.9 million passengers in 2011.  The first horsecar tram line was opened in 1875, and the first electric tram ran in 1891. - Dopravní podnik hl. m. Prahy. July 2012

I love the Prague trams.  My favourite tram has always been the #26 that (still) cuts right across the city from the northwest through the centre, all the way to the southeast corner.

It used to take me just over an hour, from the wild and legend-filled Divoká Šárka to the giant panelaky complex at Hostivař.  Past the charming bourgeois architecture of Dejvická, through the urban grit of hlavní nádraží and Žižkov, the creepy romance of(cemetary) and tidy suburb of Strašnice, the #26 reveals Prague’s many faces.  Wide tram windows, at perfect eye-level when you’re sitting down, provide a panoramic view; if you tilt and smudge your forehead against the glass, you can see all the way up the highest buildings with their baroque façades and Art Nouveau gargoyles.

In The Last Bohemians, Sam and researcher/translator Katka take a tram up to the landfill at Ďáblice:

"The tram rumbled around the corner of Na Poříčí and Revoluční, down the stretch to the Vltava. Though it was a chilly, blustery day outside, a bright spring sun poured through the wide windows, warming my cold hands as they gripped the stand-up passenger bar; at Dlouhá třída, a middle-aged couple sitting in front of us got off. We slid quickly into their seats, and I experienced one of the small luxuries of the freezing Prague winter: heated tram seats.

‘Ah-h-h-h,’ I sighed with pleasure and squirmed around to get the full sensation. The heat travelled down my thighs to my knees and up the small of my back. Katka pursed her lips in annoyance – only one in every three seats was heated, so she was sitting on cold ordinary plastic. It felt snug in the warm tram with the bright but cold day outside; small columns of mist rose up from the river as I looked, as I always did, at the white-water careening down the rocks of the dam on one side; on the other, fog caressed the spires of St Vitus Cathedral and the castle towering up on the hill.”

Back in the 90s, most trams were that soot-­‐stained rusty red-­and-­white that you still see today; by the end of the decade, however, the Prague Dopravní podnik (transport company) had begun to sell advertising so occasionally we were surprised by brightly painted submarine-­‐shaped cars gliding past:

In 2010, the city of Prague introduced the new, hyper-modern trams that wouldn’t look out of place in a Ridley Scott or George Lucas film.  These sleek machines, designed and built by Czech automaker Škoda, have even wider windows with central heat and comfy, colourful padded seats.

Instead of the jerky stop-starts and ear-piercing squeals around corners, these new trams are smooth and almost silent—they, as much as anything else, may be harbingers of Prague’s progress into the 21^st century. 

The old trams are still around, sturdy as Tonka toys and charming as ever.  In addition to being a testimony to Czech workmanship, they also foster my nostalgia—and that, perhaps, of others, who knew them well back in the 90s.