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s l a c k e r C e n t r a lAffordable bohemia in the land of the Velvet Revolution BY MELISSA MORRISON | when communism collapsed in the Eastern bloc and young Westerners seeking
adventure
poured over the newly opened borders, Prague was deluged with some 50,000 new residents, most of them members of the post-college, pre-mortgage crowd. Prague's prime location in the middle of Europe had something to do with this, as did its combination of Western European appeal with Eastern European prices. Prague was a kind of comfort zone
between Bulgaria's tap water brown-outs to the east and Austria's $7
Big Macs to the west.
And in fact, it is a comforting place to live in many ways. The subway system, for example, consists of three lines. Anyone who's ever
studied
Paris' metro map, which resembles an intestinal diagram in a med-school
textbook, will
appreciate such simplicity. In a city this small, getting from point A to
point B is simple,
even if pronouncing the names of those points isn't.
In other practical matters, such as residency permits, Prague is likewise
easily negotiated.
Customs officials in London who glimpse a résumé among a tourist's
paraphernalia will
send him back across the Channel (as happened to an American acquaintance
of mine),
while people with job offers in Moscow grow mold waiting for their visas to
be issued (as several acquaintances of mine can currently attest). What about Prague? Just get
your 30-day
tourist stamp at Ruzyne Airport and then settle in. In a city of 1 percent
unemployment,
nobody cares how long you plan on staying.
And you can't blame us for staying. Right now, the parks are in full
bloom, the air is
scented with jasmine, strains of Dvorak and Vivaldi played by busking music
students fill
the cobblestone lanes, and a lot of the scaffolding has come off the
neoclassical and Art
Nouveau buildings, revealing candy-colored paint jobs in pink, lime, lavender
and
marshmallow shades of yellow, orange and blue.
Since 1989, when the
Russians departed
and the Americans invaded, the city has been methodically transforming
itself from
Cinderella, covered in 50 years of gray Communist ashes, to the belle of
the ball (but still
a cheap date).
Who wouldn't want to live in the city now overly described as the "Paris
of the '90s"? The Lost Generation had the real Paris, war-scarred and
cheap. We have
Prague.
And Prague has America, but only the best parts and only enough of it to make the city comfortable for us expats. Performers like David Byrne
and Wynton
Marsalis play concerts here but at prices slashed for the market. ("Are
there any Czechs in
the audience?" Byrne asked from the stage at the Archa theater in 1994,
after yet another
unaccented voice had called out, "We love you, man!")
The Globe Bookstore and
Cafe, also
known as expat central, doesn't have O.J.'s autobiography or coffee-table
books with titles
like "Barns" on its shelves, and it doesn't sell decaffeinated Milky Way
espressos with
Torani syrup shots or classical music compilation cassettes at its counter.
But it does have
some Raymond Chandler paperbacks among its translations of Rilke and Havel,
and its
sandwich menu is mostly vegetarian for those backpackers who are resolute
about eating
meatless in the land of pork.
"Sometimes I feel just like Ulysses," I overheard a bearded young man say
to a nose-ringed
girl at one of the Globe's wooden tables. Except that Ulysses had already lived
a bit before
sailing uncharted seas. On any given day, there's usually someone
scribbling thoughtfully
into her notebook or sketching the face of the girl drinking cappuccino
on the other side of the room. The success of this cafe store,
founded by five
decidedly nonslacker Americans, is based on creating an ideal slacker
atmosphere: high,
molded ceilings; jazz or Latin music on the stereo; a gilt-framed sign
advertising absinthe
for sale; a giveaway 'zine filled with cafe-sitters' literary
contributions; and plenty of
mirrors.
The Globe's bulletin board hints at Prague's possibilities. There are Czech
students offering
language lessons, musicians looking to
buy amps, a
flier for an open-air, English-language production of "Oliver Twist."
"Dying to experience the ultimate ride in the unknown," writes someone
looking for
companions on the Trans-Siberian railway. "Teach English in Bulgaria this
winter."
"Seattle solo songwriter/singer seeks musicians for a music project/band in
the memory of
days of smoke-filled clubs with torch singers of the past and the present
with twisted circus
tunes." "Leaving
Prague Sale! Ibanez guitar and flight case. Pre-gessoed canvas 1.5 meters x 2 meters.
Hard currency
preferable."
But what most crowd the bulletin board are pleas for flats. "Fabulous woman
looking for
place to live, preferably with cool, laid-back people. NO NUTCASES! Call me
soon.
Jessie." Housing is scarce in Prague, a leftover of central planning. A
cheap apartment in
Prague is the Holy Grail, the golden fleece, the Where's Waldo of the expat
experience.
Innocents whose worst previous housing crisis was sharing a dorm room with
a snorer find
themselves wandering from inn to inn, begging floor space or couch
privileges from
acquaintances. Spurred on by legends of early arrivals who snagged $20-a-month
apartments in river-front buildings with Prague Castle views, they post
fliers in desirable
neighborhoods, send word down the grapevine, call up people rumored to be
leaving town
and enlist Czech friends to write classified ads in Annonce, a weekly
circular.
Some locals
take advantage of foreigners' desperation, particularly young, attractive
foreigners. "I will accept one, two or three beautiful and nice
students (if possible)
older than 21 years old, unspoiled but without prejudice to live and share
life with me for
some time," ran one such ad. "Pleasure of life is necessary, payment is not."
Most of the searchers end up living, at some point, in panelaks, communist-era
skyscrapers on the outskirts of town. My first home in Prague after the hostel was a panelak in the
neighborhood optimistically named Garden City, with its Strawberry, Raspberry and Poplar
streets. In fact, the
only greenery was in a few scrubby courtyards shadowed by identical
10-story apartment
blocks. I slept in a room decorated in the height of '60s hip, its chair
upholstered in a piece
of orange shag rug and its bookshelves filled with the "Dictionary of
Philosophy" and
translated detective stories.
My flat belonged to a retired woman who had moved in with her grown children so
she could
sublet the place for $250 to me and my roommate -- not a lot of money but almost
four
times the actual rent. The woman traded her privacy for
a tidy monthly
profit and I got a lesson in the market system at work.
Thank God for panelaks. With all of their ugliness and
inconveniences, panelaks
are one of the very few remnants of 50 years of communism, something we
Americans
can cite in e-mails to our friends back home as proof that we are suffering a
little in a distant
land. There's not much else to support our claim. True, my phone is
out-of-order at
least once a week and there is still bad service in the restaurants, but
complaining about
having to wait 30 minutes for a 50 cent mug of locally brewed Pilsner
doesn't carry much
truck with my friends who have to drink $2.75 Coors.
Other than a few Socialist-Realist statues of muscular, smiling workers,
Czechs seem to
have decided to whisk away the past as quickly as possible. Their country
is the only
member of the former Eastern bloc not to have returned a Communist or reformed
Communist to power. The only echo of recent history is an inordinate number of revival bands formed by Czech musicians in homage to Western groups, which were
forbidden under Communism's cultural embargo. There are revival bands for
the Velvet
Underground, the Doors, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin,
KISS, U2, Deep
Purple, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. There are so many revival bands that
there's a
revival band that parodies revival bands: QABABABBA, an ABBA tribute.
"We listened to the Doors during the Bolshevik times," says Martin Kovician, the "Jim Morrison"
in the Doors revival band. "It was a problem back then to get a
Beatles record, but
it was impossible to get a Doors record. We had to search for it. Perhaps
because it was
harder to get, the Doors became mystical for us."
Rock resonates as high as the Prague Castle. Its occupant, President Vaclav
Havel, has counted
Lou Reed and the late Frank Zappa as personal friends, and treats visiting
rock stars such as
Mick Jagger, Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan as if they were heads of
state, turning up at
their concerts, then hanging out with them afterward, presumably discussing
world peace
and guitar solos.
Havel himself has a kind of rock-star quality. The former dissident
playwright, rewarded for
his courage by being elected president in 1989, has somehow managed to
maintain his
image as a heroic intellectual. This is despite Western-style democracy and its
accompanying
scandal-mongering.
Havel is a liberal's fantasy version of the presidency: No one seems to
connect his
past womanizing, drinking and smoking (which he stopped after half his lung
was removed
last year) with his ability to be an effective president. He gives speeches
on the topic of a
civil society, leaving the infighting over the economy and party politics
to the prime
minister. And he's a man of the people: My friend
Doug, an
early expat, was drinking and taking in a concert at the graffiti-covered
rock club Borat in
the early '90s when he rounded a corner and ran into the president, who was
there doing the
same thing.
Random Havel sightings are still possible, though under more formal
circumstances. I had
to wait -- but mine finally occurred last year after an evening movie near
the Charles Bridge.
While pausing to let a convoy of diplomatic cars pass before
crossing the
street, my boyfriend and I noticed a short, mustachioed man standing in a restaurant doorway,
waving good-bye
to the convoy's main passenger, the Finnish president. A bodyguard stood at a discreet distance. Havel watched the cars recede
into the distance,
alone in the lamplight. He looked lonely.
A lot has changed in the years since Havel could party in a rock club.
Rents are set to
double in July and Parliament is considering measures that would make it
difficult for
foreigners to get a green card. And there is more evidence that this period of free reign is ending: Prague is now home to the world's largest Dunkin' Donuts, and a Planet Hollywood just opened.
Yes, the window
is starting to close, and before too long it will land on the knuckles of those North Americans who arrived a few
years earlier
with just a copy of Kundera and a pair of Chuck Taylors stuffed into their
REI backpacks.
People like me.
Until then, though, it's a window with a great view.
Melissa Morrison is the European correspondent for Boxoffice magazine, and also has written for Rolling Stone and Sassy. She has been living in Prague for the past three years.
+ + + + + + + + One of the main reasons Prague has retained so much of its past is because it was under communism for so many years. Is it really better off now as it slowly loses it culture to Dunkin' Donuts or was it better the way it was before? Join the discussion in Table Talk. + + + + + + + + Interested in learning how to get to Franz Kafka's birthplace? Want to find out about the Czech Republic's specialty beers? Visit Wanderlust Marketplace's excellent Prague coverage for this information and more. Also see our Prague booklist for recommended readings on the city. |
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