Prague smiles and communist dreams
One of the strange things that still hasn't worn off for me about Prague is the lack of smiling as a general form of acknowledgement between people. I squeezed into the little red tram to ride home from dinner and reflexively smiled at the old man whose foot I'd accidentally stepped on, said "prominte" (sorry), and received... nothing. Not an icy stare, per se... just... blank. The baseline expression for people in public in Czech is a stony stare fixed about 200 meters away.
I asked my Czech friend why Czechs never smile. He told me that under communism, smiling made you stick out, appear independent, and being independent was "dangerous."
This blows my American mind. Sure, if you stick out too much in American culture or appear different then you pay certain social prices. But it's not usually "dangerous." I've been talking with the people I meet about communism a lot, trying to understand what it was like. I've come to the conclusion that I probably never will quite get it.
There are a lot of problems that have come to Prague with the rise of capitalism and the free market. There are a lot of people (older, usually, or unemployed workers who were assured of a job under communism) who speak nostalgically about the old days. The generation gap here is so much greater than anything I've ever encountered in the States. Here, the older people speak Czech, German, and Russian. The young people speak Czech, German, and English.
Then sometimes, like tonight, you see a aging gentleman with a perfect business suit carrying a ridiculously tiny basket of gift candies, or a grandmother bringing flowers to her daughter at work... and you know things are working themselves out here. It's just that I'm not used to being in a place where change is happening in history so quickly.
I wish this for America. I wish that we can change this radically this quickly. Because (as vintagehandbag says, christ on a bike) we really need to. The adaptative skills of the Czech people astound me and make me fall in love with them, a little.
I asked my Czech friend why Czechs never smile. He told me that under communism, smiling made you stick out, appear independent, and being independent was "dangerous."
This blows my American mind. Sure, if you stick out too much in American culture or appear different then you pay certain social prices. But it's not usually "dangerous." I've been talking with the people I meet about communism a lot, trying to understand what it was like. I've come to the conclusion that I probably never will quite get it.
There are a lot of problems that have come to Prague with the rise of capitalism and the free market. There are a lot of people (older, usually, or unemployed workers who were assured of a job under communism) who speak nostalgically about the old days. The generation gap here is so much greater than anything I've ever encountered in the States. Here, the older people speak Czech, German, and Russian. The young people speak Czech, German, and English.
Then sometimes, like tonight, you see a aging gentleman with a perfect business suit carrying a ridiculously tiny basket of gift candies, or a grandmother bringing flowers to her daughter at work... and you know things are working themselves out here. It's just that I'm not used to being in a place where change is happening in history so quickly.
I wish this for America. I wish that we can change this radically this quickly. Because (as vintagehandbag says, christ on a bike) we really need to. The adaptative skills of the Czech people astound me and make me fall in love with them, a little.