By Liam Scott
Contributing writer
In Asia, it's now the Year of the Ox, a very grounded zodiac sign suggesting this is a year to keep things simple and not look for change. At the Ruzyne- Prague Airport exchange bank, Honza Svoboda agrees, saying, ``We Czechs don't want to necessarily change to the euro; the Czech crown is a gaining currency in these bleak times.''
I'm convinced of the bleakness, at least as I'm changing euros to crowns at this airport, named ``Best in Central and Eastern Europe'' in 2006 and 2008, when some sort of Russian heiress-type in a swirl of real fur and expensive perfume brokers me to the side and drops down a healthy stack of $100 bills and barks something. I naively ask her in English if she is Russian and she ignores me, grabs the money, and walks away. Svoboda smiles and continues, ``It's funny. Once the Russians took anything they wanted from the Czech people (he smiles). Now, they come back and spend their money.''
I understand well. I am an American teacher living in Seoul and on vacation in the Czech Republic. It seems like I am meeting and talking to Honza for the second time. I taught English and lived in Prague for two years and now, a decade later, I feel that I am experiencing some of those results. But no, Honza was not one of my former high school students.
He brought his wife Jana over for a day trip to Karlovy Vary, where we shared beer and goulash at a standard Czech restaurant downtown, where a lot of local Czechs eat. Her English was perfect as she explained to us that she went to the same high school in Prague I taught at and that she graduated just two years after I had left there. We were both glowing from that coincidence and the effect of the local herbal liqueur, Becherovka, as she explained that now she teaches art in Prague while having the occasional show at respected galleries.
Honza wanted to show off his English and went back to the scene of where we met at the airport and explained to everyone within earshot how, when the Soviet-block Russians invaded Prague in spring 1968, the Czechs were in no position to physically confront them. What they did was change the names of the street signs to confuse their so-called comrades.
And this is also what's it like to travel in modern Central Europe and particularly the Czech Republic: one's personal and another's political history somehow mix together. And this is how to roll in Central Europe ― with the perception that anything that is going to happen to you here is known before it happens. Still, there is no way of predicting when you're going to encounter all this cause and effect. It is, in a word, Bohemian.
It's bitter cold but a bright day, and with both Russian and Asian men and woman in silver sunglasses and tall fur hats strolling along the Tepla River, Hapsburg Empire chic abounds. It's time to partake in Karlovy Vary's first claim to fame, the fresh hot mineral water from any or all of the 12 mineral fountains bubbling up from deep Central European earth.
Soon, the town librarian, Suzana Ullischova, joined us. Her pellucid blue eyes were stunning, and as we moved around the colonnades sipping the healthy briny waters, I got the impression that she felt somewhat aloof as the librarian of a tourist town.
She was explaining about the history of Balneology in Karlovy Vary, but at the Park Colonnade Fountain (where the 62 degree Celsius cure is good for quickening the flow of blood to the brain), I understood her Czech as she was explaining that this was where Milan Kundera's novel ``The Unbearable Lightness of Being'' was turned into a film by Milos Foreman. Jana began interpreting, ``Suzana is also on the board of managers for the Karlovy Vary Film Festival.'' The summertime film festival is another attraction here. And in 2006, Suzana met Daniel Craig when the recent James Bond smash Casino Royal was partly filmed up the promenade at the Grand Pupp Hotel.
The Pupp is at the top of the Karlovy Vary promenade and is definitely a summer hang out for Western European high rollers and Prague ``it-girls,'' and a winter hang out for Russian gangsters and Prague it-girls. Yet, even in this five-star luxury zone, the Czechs have a postmodern and fun sense of cultural style demonstrated by soft classical music airing in the lobby of the Grand Pupp and the hard rock classics of Deep Purple played in the cafe bar on the first floor's other side.
When I first came to Bohemia, Czechoslovakia was about to politically and personally split into The Czech Republic and Slovakia. I came to Prague just to walk around and because I had heard of a playwright and dissident-turned-politician named Vaclav Havel. Havel wrote six books of poetry and over a dozen plays, often writing while he worked in a Czech brewery. All of this and more led to him spending five years in a communist prison for being a troublemaker. When he got out, Havel continued to live his life the same way he always had, and in 1989, he found himself at the hub of the Velvet Revolution in Prague ― say that three times fast and tell me you don't want to go there ― that brought his countrymen freedom from oppressive Russia.
The streets were wild, and chants of ``Havel na Hrad'' (Havel to the Castle) filled the museums, churches, pubs and gained the streets and conquered every cobblestone alley in Prague. Those were special days, but my one disappointment on this trip is that I missed a lecture by Havel. He gave the January presentation at Klub Kpaderuski, something about the triumph of life over ideology.
Yes, I dabbled in Czech mythology and drank curing waters, I got into the Czech beer as my sight drew dim in the architecture and I even met Czech librarians and art teachers I might have taught. But how ironic to come all this way from Asia and miss seeing and listening and maybe even talking to a personal hero, the one who originally helped me pack my bags for Prague. But on my way back to Seoul, I remember something Havel used to say, ``The time for poetry is over and a time for prose must begin.'' In 2009, the year of the practical ox, it all makes perfect sense.
The writer lives in Seoul and is working on a novel. He can be reached at slsseoul@yahoo.com