The unlikely happiness of Prague

Czech faces and psyches still bear lines embedded in them by every hour of their history. It doesn't matter that a photo might have been taken in May 2018 at an antique auto show in downtown Prague. It could as well have been 1938 or 1948, at some point when the people were under the thumb of another power, as they were from the end of the Second World War until the Velvet Revolution.

A woman who heard us conversing in English one day at the tram stop asked if she could help us find our way. She gave us perhaps our most useful piece of advice since arriving in Prague--a real-time app that searches for the perfect tram route to a given destination. (Only once did it go so wrong as to suggest we needed to make five different connections and wouldn't be back home until past midnight.)

She admitted that the predominant Czech personality trait is pessimism and that what most older Czechs like to do best is complain. Although over 60 herself, she seemed not to be one of them.

Jan Schubert, owner of a vast antique warehouse in the old Zizkov Freight Station, volunteered that his main regret was that he could not make himself be more trusting. Having looked over his shoulder throughout the communist era, he can't shake a deep-rooted pessimism about human nature.

A local watering hole for working-class sorts tried to offer them a bit of a treat one night by presenting them with a topless young bartender. There was a larger crowd than usual, but it barely gave her a glance. More wives than usual showed up, to keep their eye on things, but not one of them cracked a smile.

A Liverpool couple, who were taking shelter at an Old Town Irish pub that stood between streams of walking tours with flags and parasols, observed, "The Czechs aren't very friendly, are they? We asked one for directions, and he said, 'I'm not a tour guide!'"

And yet, for every survivor of the communist era who can't unlearn the traumas and shortages of occupation, every cranky local who can't bear the influx of tourist kitsch that also means tourist dollars, there are happy Czech people everywhere in Prague, sometimes where you least expect to find them.

The Kolbenova flea market, the largest in Europe, if not the world, displays the full cross-section of Central European emotions--not just iron-jawed pessimism and despair, but also hopefulness that a big sale will be made today.

 

Even at Kaufland, our large local supermarket, a moment that could have been captured at a local bistro passes contentedly in a wine bar just beyond the checkout lines. These happy folks had nothing to complain about that day.

And even though Jan Schubert complained that Czech schooling is too tough and stressful for its children, this group of young gymnasts didn't seem exactly beaten into submission while enjoying a celebratory pizza meal at Don Vito's.

Another local bistro brimmed with diversity--30-somethings on dates, including one lithe young woman who put away three sliders all by herself, licking her fingers afterwards; students; an Estonian family on holiday, whose kid needed to be taught how to twirl spaghetti; a young Oriental couple; an older businessman humoring a grizzled old gent from the neighborhood; and us Americans, trying not to look like tourists.