Our road: Luzicka, Vinohrady, Prague |
One
problem with expat writing is the tendency to varnish the image of
one's adopted home. Few people ever moan about where they've wound up
living because everyone ultimately wants it to look appealing. This
is one of the major motivations behind writing a blog, after all: to
convince the world, and yourself, that everything is just swell. But
I can honestly say, despite living here and really liking it, that
Prague is not the loveliest place in the world. It's just quite nice. And what most self-affirming blog bilge
tries to conceal is that most of us, even the most upwardly mobile,
successful and wealthy of us, live in places that are basically just
quite nice, and
that we happen to live in them
largely by chance. For the rare few who have always had a
dream place - say, New York or London - you either get lucky or
compromise. The rest of us are basically happy if there's a decent
pub nearby and good connections to a supermarket. I fall into the
latter group: I didn't always want to live in Prague but I do (for
now). It'll
never be New York, and there's good reason for that.
Near our flat: Part of a city centre or just a village? |
Prague
has always occupied a peculiar position between the cosmopolitan and
the backwater. As seat of the Holy Roman Emperor its splendour was
apparently unrivalled. But mythologising this cosy knot in the Vltava
proves too easy. Rudolf II might have relocated to Prague in 1575,
but this dotty mystic was more an advertisement for eccentricity than
raw imperial power. Modern times recall little of Prague's old
eminence, instead turning the ancient metropole itself into a nicely
fossilised anachronism. Its pre-Hapsburg landmarks - Hradcany,
the Radnice, Charles Bridge, the Tyn Church and so on - lie
upon it like an ill-fitting suit of armour. Bohemian defeat at Bila
Hora (White Mountain) put paid to native religious ambitions,
piety subsequently ditched for reasons of national resentment (this
long before any atheist-communist put pen to paper). So began the
national Dark Ages (doba temna),
the conclusion of which - depending on how pessimistic the person you
ask - remains uncertain.
On our road |
Every
year in January Prague briefly renews this national Dark Age. Life
retreats indoors, seams of churned snow clog every street, and a fog
thick enough to cushion a fall descends on the city. In the long
winter, the quiet back streets of Vinohrady (the suburb where we live) linger, empty and without
purpose, after the short dusk. Dog walkers tuck their heads inside
tufty hoods and rustle through the darkness. By day the sunken murmur
of coffee-drinkers defines all interiors; the weary thrum of trams as
they accelerate up and down Vinohradska and Korunni does the same for
the external world. The drooping pastel apartment blocks blanch beneath the snow and floods of mist. Everything assumes a murky,
discoloured layer of browned ice. Shattered faces seek out the
reassurance of subterranean cafes. There's something deeply charming
about this: the act of exchanging a bruised, mottled world for one of intimacy and warmth. But still, where's the vibrancy?
Where's the energy and relish of city life? This, then, is when a
place (like a person) has become truly familiar: when its defining
quirks are at once annoying and endearing.
Vinohrady with snow |
Jiriho z Podebrad farmer's market in February, Vinohrady, Prague |
Perhaps
it's the tedious reality of all cities: beneath the florid exteriors,
all are secretly tethered down by the rigorous monotony of work. It's
only in the imagination of the day tripper, off to see the bright
lights, that cities are carnivalesque playgrounds. Yet there is a
difference between Prague, with its working week austerity and its
sleepy, empty weekends, and the bigger European cities. Where can
compete with, say, London or Berlin, which in their different ways
daily regurgitate the truly vast human energy - financial,
industrial, administrative, creative - they draw in from around them
and the rest of the world? That, I suppose, is the benefit of being a
global entrepot sucking in and redirecting global trade and finance. Though historically it
was London which played that role, Berlin's expensive postcommunist
make-over, relatively cheap rents, and strong artistic and cultural
traditions have led it down a chaotic path to resurgence. Yet chaotic
is the key word: Berlin's social contradictions are in fact what make
it so appealing, not the success (or indeed lack thereof) of
"modernisation" (i.e. liberalisation) of the city's
economy. Despite the buzz around innovation (Europe's third "most
innovative" region, apparently), the excitement of Berlin comes
as much from the opposition to gentrification as the actual process
itself. Squats and artistic collectives have fought long and hard to
preserve Berlin's cheapness and the right to social benefits and
subsidy of the arts. In this sense, Berlin's older - sometimes
communist-nostalgist - citizens have something in common with the
progressive student-led young: the demand for affordability. There is
a certain convergence of tradition and newness in the context of
radical changes, making the city's future look open to those who can
seize it. The same cannot be said of the deeply polarised society of
London.
Wintry quiet: the school on the corner of our road |
Neither can it be said of Prague.
Although this city's ongoing liberalisation has generated
extraordinary concentrations of wealth, an increasingly difficult-to-fund welfare system has
tottered into what are seemingly its last days (the previous
government only held back because its momentum suffered from
corruption scandals; some social pruning seems inevitable, even under
the new Social Democrat-led coalition). And while the city has
continued to grow - especially relative to the rest of the country -
no satisfactory recycling of profits into social welfare has been
implemented. The Czech Republic has an apparently investment-pleasing
flat tax rate of 15%, making vital maintenance work costly for both
municipal governments and private community groups (many apartment
blocks remain cooperatively owned but underfunded). Thus
the housing-stock is deteriorating, while, increasingly,
average-income Czechs are pushed out to the periphery. The Czech economy is finally emerging from a recession of record length. unemployment, low by European standards, still stands at over 8 per cent.
To this observer at least this
process has given the centre of Prague an occasionally neglected,
stripped-to-the-bone feeling. Lots of the old early 20th century buildings
in Vinohrady, where I live, have had expensive renovation work done
to them, presumably by private individuals or by co-ops, who have
subsequently been unable to afford their upkeep. As such the walls
are regaining their famous communist-era layer of grime. Chunks of
plaster and paint regularly fall down from the roofs and balconies,
requiring whole pavements be roped off to avoid falling debris. And
there is a lot of dog shit. What better evidence could there be of
continuing alienation and distrust of the capital than the
willingness with which people let their dogs excrete on every
available surface? Talk about passive protest. To my endless
frustration, this means it's risky to ever lower my guard: look up
for falling shrapnel; down for fresh droppings.
The not so discreet charm of the bourgeoisie: Monuments to a vanished class in Vinohrady, Prague |
But
Prague still exercises a strange attraction. The city's grandeur is
sweetly tempered by its element of the shambolic; its
Old Town cannot be beaten for sheer beauty; its skyline is a perfect
blend of symmetry and asymmetry.
Vinohrady, this twice-gentrified suburb with its uptight, ageing
population and suspicious curtain-twitchery, mounts the eastern
slopes of the town like some civilisational still-life: the ruins of
a vanished kingdom where everyone aspired to bourgeois respectability
and kept a cat on a neoclassical balcony. It is the final remainder
of the new bourgeoisie of the nineteenth century, which built entire
city quarters in tribute to itself. The new world of the 21st
century stands uncomfortably in its shoes.
Photos by Siobhan
Photos by Siobhan
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