Prague

If there was a finite amount of beauty in the universe, we'd be in trouble because Prague would possess a disproportionate amount of it. Luckily, Prague's beauty doesn't detract from beauty elsewhere. If anything, Elsewhere, in the form of hoards of tourists, detracts from Prague's beauty by overrunning the downtown for several months every summer. It's humanity's way of balancing out the beautiful places in the world; the more beautiful the place (which usually means the less modernity has trampled all over it) the more that beauty is rendered unenjoyable by herds of bored westerners digitally recording every moment of their ennuei. The saving grace of tourists is that they tend to stick together, and though they may overwhelm one city hapless enough to be attractive, they will typicaly leave neighbouring areas more or less alone.

The reason Prague is so beautiful is that it escaped bombing in the Second World War. Europe, of course, used to be full of places like this, but war obliterated that. Prague is a reminder of what it used to be like. it reminds me of the way each generation of humans forgets how bountiful nature used to be. we know, academically, about the flocks of passenger pidgeons that used to blacken the sky for days, or the schools of cod you could practicaly walk across, but without direct experience of these sorts of things, our image of nature undergoes an innevitable deminishment into mediocrity. It's tragic that the bison don't have an equivilent of Prague to remind us of how they used to be.

Prague escaped bombing because some of its pilots, denied by political betrayal from defending their own country, escaped to England when the Nazis invaded, joined the RAF, and helped defend Britain. Prague was bombed once mistakenly when some bombers part of the force sent to annialate Dresden went off course and mistook Prague for doomed Dresden. A rare example of a tasteful modern building now stands on a corner by the river where one building was destroyed.

But beauty is superficial. I can take in a beautiful sight for a moment, but then i'm left asking, what more is there to this place? It reminds me of a scene in the Chevy Chase movie, Vacation: he and his family walks up to a lookout over the Grand Canyon, he puts is arm around his wife, they admire the vista for a few seconds, then Chevy say something like, "OK! What's next?" How do you interact with beauty? There's usually not much more you can do than sit in passive admiration of it, and that doesn't hold much appeal for me.

I much prefer interacting with the Czech Republic's beer. Prague is as liberal with its beer as Amsterdam is with pot. This could very well be the beer capital of the world: practially every little village has its own brewery (about 300 in total in the country); the beer is of excellent quality and dirt cheap (as low as $1 a pint); some bars never close (the infamous "nonstop" bars, where there are no windows and it's all too easy to loose track of whether it's day or night); the drinking age is not enforced; you can drink practically anywhere; and parks are dotted with "beer gardens". The beer literaly is cheaper than water. (Unless you go to the tourist areas; there you'll pay 5 times as much for beer. stupid tourists. the Czechs have every right to rob them blind.)

I can see why Prague is home to an estimated 30,000 American expats: it has an American feel about it, with it's wide, car-friendly avenues, relative affluence, and nice people. Last night, walking down the street, I almost felt i could be in Toronto (except there are few immigrants here). Prague is like North America, but with prettier buildings and cheaper beer. One thing I'm finding so far on this trip is how similar Europe is to N. America. Globalization has been doing it's work, for better or worse.

Couchsurfering is proving to be a godsend. it's a rope dangled down into the pit that tourists easily fall into, ready to haul you out and into the real culture. My Prague host, Vitezslav, showed me a great time yesterday. no sooner had we dropped my stuff off at his flat and met his American landlord and flatmate (just having his first beer of the morning, on day four of a party that began when his Slovakian wife left town for a couple weeks), did we head off for a park where the Prague couchsurfer (CS) community was meeting up. Vitek (as people call Vitezlav) is a hub in the CS community here, the one organizing things and pulling people together. He's not hosting right now, because of his roommates, but made an exception for me, perhaps because of the crazyness of my mission. The CS community is a really nice group of people. We drank beer (of course) and played frisbee in the park, took over a restaurant and had a good, cheap meal (full dinner and two pints of beer for under $10), took a long, dusky walk along the waterfront, and ended the day at a disco bar on a boat. Some of the nationalities represented in our group of a dozen or so (which included both hosts and current travellers) were: Ukranian, Colombian, Spanish, Italian, Canadian (besides myself), Swedish, Chinese/Australian, American, and of course Czech. I met the guy responsible for distributing Stella Artois and Becks in N. America, and a couple of guys cycling to China.

On the train here, we passed several rivers that i will later be canoeing on. It excited me to finally see these places I've long stared at on maps. Despite being in one of the most renowned cities in the world, I find that I keep casting longing glances at the Vlatava, that muscular snake of water around which Prague is built. Tomorrow is Monday, which means the stores will be open again, and I'll be canoe shopping.