How will you spend your Thanksgiving break?
I went to Glasgow this weekend and had that transcendent traveling experience that everyone idealizes. It was gritty, wet, freezing and filled with scores of kids that seem perpetually en route from Hot Topic to a Paramore concert. Neds ("non-educated delinquents") wander the streets, hurling beer bottles against restaurants and accosting the odd hussbag.
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In other words, it's nothing like Prague, where people are too withdrawn to do much of anything except color their hair pink or stare at you on the subway for being wild enough to wear gym clothing on your commute.
This baffles me. While traveling and reporting here, I've gathered that Czechs generally view blending in and shutting up as cardinal virtues. There's a Czech artist named David Cerny who's a national celebrity, mostly because he's a little on the overt side. He was commissioned by the Czech government to do a map of the European Union, and he went a little wild with it. It blew everyone's mind. A swastika used in association with Germany? Romania portrayed as a brood of Count Chocula-esque vampires? This is supposed to be outrageous?
People here are oppressively reserved, almost as if they don't realize the Iron Curtain fell nearly 20 years ago. The Czech Republic — based on my limited perceptions as someone who's lived here for a month but has made a genuine effort to understand the country a bit — could probably use some collective treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder.
Call it a value judgment, call it whatever, but here's my opinion as an NYU study abroad student: Czech people can be stopped up — plugged, if you will — by too many bread dumplings. I have a lot of trouble feeling comfortable here on a day-to-day basis. As an American who likes to stand out a little and try to engage people, I feel like I'm viewed as some kind of squawking, feathered monster that's spewing fluorescent bile from my rump whenever I venture into the public sphere. Giant peacock, meet mortified stoic. American, Czech. Voilà.
It's hard — not to mention stupid — to say something such as "Glasgow is a better city than Prague," but I do know that I fell in love with the former as soon as I deplaned and that my stomach sunk a bit when I boarded my "bmibaby" vessel to leave.
Everyone expects to have that feeling when they land in their study abroad locations of choice, but it doesn't always happen, and I think people are afraid to admit that. I certainly was. It's probably why I've written about how "crazy" Karlovy Lazne and Hells Bells are. Crap like that composes about 2 percent of my experience here so far, but they've struck me as more interesting than almost everything else because I'm just not very impressed with Prague yet.
I'm not about to feel bad about this — my Glasgow could be your Prague, after all — no matter how many expatriates try to eviscerate me for my allegedly narrow view of the city each week. But I am going to keep trying to figure out this place. Doing anything else, like that look I just got on the subway, is so much — so much! — bullshit.
