Prague, 10 Years Later

Ten years ago, I got off a train at the main station in Prague with an overstuffed backpack and duffel bag and began a yearlong adventure that ultimately resulted in my first book of stories, The View from Stalin's Head. Last Monday, I booked a last minute ticket on Czech Airlines and flew back there from Rome.

As I took bus 119 from the airport to the center, I was struck by how clearly I remembered so much of the landscape. Here I was again on Europe Avenue (which used to be Lenin Avenue), passing the Esso gas station that made a cameo appearance in one of my stories (with an inflated tiger on the roof who is no longer there). There was the Delvita supermarket, the path I used to climb uphill to my friend's house and my gym in Petriny, tram 26 that I used to ride to work every day, my old apartment.

In the city itself, I was glad to see so many of the little cafes where I used to go to write were still open, and even though they're smack in the middle of prime sightseeing land, they've somehow avoided being taken over by tourists. On the other hand, Dunkin' Donuts, which had staked out several posts in the city including prime territory on Wenceslas Square, is now out of business in Prague.

A lot has changed. Everywhere, prices are higher, even in state museums that used to charge Czechs lower entrance fees than tourists. Now everyone pays the same inflated price, which is still pretty reasonable by Western standards. There's a new museum of Communism, a period that is beginning to feel like ancient history. (I went in and stopped for a while in front of a display about the Stalin Monument that inspired the title of my book.)



Cinemas show American movies almost exclusively, and tickets that once cost two dollars are now up to seven. The food culture is also very different. Before, there were pretty much only Czech "hospody"--pubs--to choose from, all serving the usual national staples of pork, cabbage, and dumplings. Today, however, Italian restaurants, particularly pizzarias, have taken the country by storm, and you can find cappucino, tiramisu, and pizza margarita even in the most remote suburbs.

On a more serious note, I was glad to hear that the cause of gay rights had just scored a major victory when the Czech parliament overrode the veto of the conservative President Vaclav Klaus to legalize civil unions for same-sex partners. I was pretty disappointed in Klaus, who'd been the prime minister when I lived in Prague and whom I'd always liked because he bore an uncanny resemblance to Santa Claus, minus the beard.

The biggest change I noticed was the omnipresence of commercialism. Sometimes it seemed as if every last inch of free space had been plastered with advertisments. Drive a little ways out of the city, and you'll see the highways are lined with office buildings for Western companies, new apartment complexes, shopping malls that look as if they'd been airlifted from American suburbs, or megastores like Ikea and Bauhaus (the German version of Home Depot). A friend told me that the new Czech dream is to move to the suburbs, commute to work in town, and on weekends take your family for a stroll through a shopping mall. (Sound familiar, anyone?)

What made me happiest, though, was the most important thing that hadn't changed: friendship. Once again, I was chatting with my friend Milan about the latest squabbles in Prague's tiny and endlessly subdividing Jewish community, talking politics over tea with my friend Ivo, and communicating with a mixture of broken English, ersatz Czech, German, and hand gestures with my friend Pavel, who still has his same old earthy charm. I couldn't help tearing up when I visited Milan's "maminka," who as ever bubbled over with her infectious warmth. After cooking us a hearty lunch, she carefully wrapped a plastic box of cookies to take with me for the flight home.

Revisiting all these familiar people and places made me turn inward, to ask myself how have I changed since those days? I'd imagined that after living in Prague, I would come back home with a surer sense of my own identity, a strong drive to go after the things I wanted out of life. And it's true that since then I've accomplished quite a lot. I've been in a serious relationship for more than five years, I've moved to New York, I've gone to graduate school and written two books. And yet as I waved goodbye to Pavel and Milan at the airport, for a few dizzying seconds, I couldn't go forward, past the passport control and on to the security check. I still felt like that same scared kid who'd gotten off the train ten years ago and wondered, what next? What am I supposed to do now?