Or "On The Devil, Apocalypse, and Finally, Peace"
The plan was to catch the 6:11 PM train from Prague to Ceske Budejovice (CB) with Madla. I'd left her flat at 10 that morning and figured I'd be able to spend the day in Prague without my bags and still have time to make my way back up the hill to Letna (her neighborhood) to pack my stuff and meet her at Hlvani Nadrazi (Main Train Station) - no worries.
At 10 AM, the skies were clear and the only threat in the way of weather was the threat of sweltering heat - the sort that makes you crazy.
When I took the tram down from Letna to Malastrana (or "small" or "lesser" town which sits below the Prague Castle - serfs used to live there; now it's home to swanky hotels and embassies), I did something that shocks and shames me. I went to Starbucks for the 2nd time in two days in Prague and this time it wasn't to take advantage of their free and easily accessible internet. I needed British Breakfast tea and I needed it badly. I needed a Big Gulp size and I needed it to go, a size and a convenience not available in other coffee shops in Prague. I needed not to have to think about how to order it in broken and stumbling Czech. I needed not to be on the receiving end of the look that Czechs give you when you are butchering their very beautiful, melodious and impossibly difficult to pronounce (for an English speaking) tongue. Actually, to be clear, there's not just ONE look that you might get. If you're very lucky, the Czech to whom you are speaking (if one is generous to consider your attempts at Czech speaking) might give you a look of bemusement as in, "Oh look, how cute. That silly American is trying to speak our language." If you're not so lucky, you get an impatient and contemptuous look of someone who thinks you are very small and stupid. Then they speak English back to you taking a figurative victory lap because they speak your language (and probably better than you do). And if you have no luck whatsoever, you run into a Czech who thinks that because you are an American, you are extremely spoiled (probably true) and therefore naive (again, chances are, true) and your language's excess of vowels is just testimony to the fact that you've always had way more than you ever needed so he'd be doing you a favor by ignoring you (in a contemptuous manner) and making sure that for the first time in your spoiled little life, you have to do without. I think it was that look that basically shut me up for the year I lived here.
Anyway, back to 10 AM on my first morning back the Czech Republic. I sinned and purchased a tea at Starbuck's and then, laden with guilt, sat in front of the travesty as their tables offered the only shade in sight. I was to meet my friend Jana (a Czech) at Malastrana Namesti and Starbucks is the obvious meeting place, as it dominates the otherwise historic square. Location, Location, Location. I read and waited, knowing that she was going to shake her head in disappointment at the sight of me there at this epitome of American conformity and commercialism in the middle of historic Prague.
So the shame was as thick as the cream I poured into my tea, but the tea tasted so good. That's the thing about sinning; it just feels too good not to. The Devil in me wins every time.
After a day spent exploring Prague and some of my old favorite places and checking out an exhibition of Roma (Gypsy in the popular vernacular) art at the Kampa Museum, I headed back to Madla's to pack and regroup for the 3 hour train ride to Budejovice. The skies at this point were looking a bit more ominous so I poked into the Tesco and bought an umbrella for 165 Kc.
After packing for the weekend, I headed out the door and down 6 flights of stairs (the lift is out of operation and therefore Madla and I have been getting lots of stair-climbing in our exercise routine which consists of climbing flights of stairs, walking around Prague and jogging up the Metro escalator steps, a habit that I think annoys many of the Czechs we pass). Once I was outside, the skies opened up and a rainstorm to end all rainstorms - a rainstorm of Biblical proportions - began. My 165 Kc umbrella was outmatched.
I had a small backpack and a duffle bag with me and as I ran down the hill to catch the tram (4 long blocks away), I noticed that my running shoes and socks were soaked completely through and that every step I took landed me in about 6 inches of water. I tried not to think about the habit some Czech men have of peeing on the sides of buildings. By the end of the first block, I looked like I'd been dunked in the Vltava River and I tried not to think about how wet all of my clothes for the weekend were. A thing simply fixed in America by sticking clothes in the drier becomes a bit more of an issues since clothes are line dried in this country.
I tried to wait for the tram under an awning but I needed to get a sense of how long this madness (me standing in 6 inches of water, soaked to the bone, hearing the crash and boom of lightening and thunder all around) would last. The answer was long enough that my skin started to get all wrinkly like when you've sat in the bathtub too long. When the tram finally saved me, I took it one stop to the Metro and then ran for my life ("I'm melting, I'm melting!") for the shelter of the tube station. There were many Czechs patiently waiting out the storm - they'd obviously had more patience waiting that I, having waited out Communism for 41 years). Maybe they figured that it surely couldn't go on long like this - even nature with apocolyptic promise has its limit and wears itself out. I ran down the stairs, happy to be out of the storm but recognizing that it truly didn't make a difference if I were still standing in it; I'd hit the point of saturation two blocks back!
As I waited in the train station for her, I looked down to assess the water damage and realized what a mistake I'd made earlier after showering and putting on what I thought was lotion. From the suds running down my legs, I realized, a bit too late to save myself from the humiliation, that what I had lathered on my legs was not lotion but, in fact, soap. It helps to be able to read the labels.
I'd decided that I'd have to change my clothes; I was cold and wanted to put some pants on. I thought that surely, somewhere in the middle of my bag, there must be a pair of pants that aren't soaked completely through. The thought of changing in the dark, dingy and very small train station bathroom was not appealing to me, but the situation was dire. Madla arrived took one look at me and said, "Noooo - you were not kidding. You are absolutely soaked." And then she laughed at me.
When I emerged from the bathroom 7 Kc poorer (the price one pays for the privilege), Madla informed me that the trains are delayed due to wind. She'd heard 30 minutes and the latest report was 45 but that estimate was accompanied with a warning that further delays loomed on the horizon. After standing around the station watching a homeless man accost a woman and then cower away when her companion, a man with obviously more time for the gym, turned and gave him a look of stern warning, we decided that we'd take the bus with Wi-Fi, coffee and tea service in the morning instead. Madla's preference anyway because it's cheaper and gets to Budejovice in two instead of three hours. Madla laughed at my disappointment about not being able to take the train. She said something about me being nostalgic as we descended the escalator steps, leaving the train station and its beggars, pigeons, and delays behind.
I write this from the Korda family cottage in Mezilesi, a village about 30 minutes outside of Budejovice. We've been here for one night and I woke to the sound of an owl right outside our window. I'm dry, my clothes are dry, the temperature is a comfortable 75 degrees F (I've haven't slipped back into my ability to tell temperatures in C). When I rolled out of bed at a leisurely 8.30 this morning, Eva (Madla's mother and my former colleague) had tea waiting for me and she was full of stories about her neighbors and the history of this little village, a rich and complicated history since the cottage is in the Sudentenland area (more on that later). Madla's father is quietly going about his business of fixing things around the property, never asking for help. Madla is elbow deep in some type of meat she is preparing for the BBQ tonight. When I ask what I can do, they say, "Drink your tea and chat with us." This is one of my favorite places on earth - a destination certainly worth the journey.
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