Lost in a New Town

I'm in Europe; in the Czech Republic; in Prague. That's a fourteen hour flight from Miami and many more miles (kilometers, rather). Why? Why the hell not?

That's exactly what got me lost for at least an hour and a half in this city of spires. It could also be the hundreds of streets that go this way and that and feel like sidewalks yet cars still drive on them and snow falls from the roofs and can easily crush you as it did this one tiny car and the names of all the buildings are in a language you don't understand.

But why not, eh?

I couldn't answer that yesterday. I haven't had a moment - no, not that. A memory: there has yet to be a memory. Sure, I remember the flight here (complimentary dinner and breakfast made me forget my worries) and the odd sense of being in a foreign land on my first day. Of course those are memories. Maybe I mean Memories; the ones that go in a scrapbook with the same title. Hmm, no, that still doesn't encompass what I mean. Ah, I got it! I mean the memories that you can't explain to someone unless they were there with you. To your benefit, dear reader(s), my chosen profession can easily be summed up as one which creates such vivid images - from memory or imagination - that anyone can feel a little bubble of awe and wonder rise in the deepest pits of their bodies.

That's the kind of memory I have of today, and it occurred completely by error.

Yesterday a kind-hearted member of the NYU in Prague staff showed me the locations of three theaters and a couple of cafés. Today I went to one of the theaters, Lucerna (Lantern, for you English-speakers), to watch Woody Allen's Play it Again, Sam. It's not quite part of Czech cinema's repertoire, but it was the only movie there that I could see - or so I thought.

Before I get there, however, I need to take you along on my nigh-on two hour walk. Don't get me wrong, I do believe losing your way is the best form of exploration but I had a destination in mind and my inability to reach it was just a bit much. See, unlike New York which has a boring yet efficient grid system, Prague has roads, walkways, and passages everywhere you turn. Cardinal directions won't help you here, as that eastward facing street snakes its way north. I eventually found the way I was supposed to go on a map, which was southeast, more or less, but my feet kept walking northward. Thankfully, I could find my way to the NYU Academic Center without a problem - I won't get totally lost. After listening to Selling England by the Pound and half of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, I gave up and retreated to the Center once more where I ran into Jessie and found my salvation.

Irony, of course, reared its head. In attempting to help her get to a metro station near where I needed to go (Wenceslas Square, or Václavské náměstí), she led me to the location because I, yet again, got lost. And she's the one with no sense of direction. Well, she did ask for help...

So! There we are, south of the square. We part ways and I head off to find Lucerna. This was straight-forward, so I got there without a hitch. Hell, I even bought a ticket! Though that did have one problem: the time read 20:45, yet I wanted to go to the 16:45 show. Oh yes, they use a 24-hour clock; it's not hard, but there are so many small changes that add a bit of a hurdle. I digress. Wrong time? Eh, whatever. I thought of asking the ticket booth about it, but having only been to Intensive Czech twice I felt my inarticulate self not getting me anywhere. Maybe I could get in either way? It's not like there'd be a price change; if there were, I had the more expensive ticket anyway!

Ticket in hand, my grumbling stomach took me to KFC for nourishment. Yup, Colonel Sanders is a fan-favorite here in Prague.

The time comes for the show and I head into the theater, and here begins the memory.

Lucerna was founded in 1909 and is  Bohemia's first permanent theater. To get inside, you clime some stairs and walk through a most exquisite restaurant. The theater was even more beautiful. It was a huge hall with two floors, a beautiful green curtain as the centerpiece and the most ornate columns. This felt too fancy for a film - AMC feels even more like trash now. There were, at most, fifteen people in that spacious hall.

As the curtains parted and the movie soon began, I found myself horrified. Czech names started appearing on the opening credits. This didn't seem like a Woody Allen movie...

Instead, I ended up watching Kawasakiho Růže (something Rose; I totally didn't register the title in my head), a film about a family nearly torn apart as the truth behind the patriarch's role as a dissident in the Velvet Revolution comes to light, all in the wake of a documentary of him being filmed in preparation for his acceptance of an award for being part of the fight. This could not have been more fitting.

One of the characters in the film was an artist who was persecuted during the Communist regime. His story made me consider my role as an artist in terms of society. I've never thought about my work in relation to politics, and even after Writing the Essay I still don't. It's a thought on my mind now, though, and it makes me wonder if the time came, would my desire to write wedge its way into becoming a vehicle for disobedience, for being something more than a story about people?

I'm afraid it won't, as right now I'm too concerned with getting the craft down. I'm not so sure this is wrong. There has been no need for me to put political thoughts into my work, but when the time comes, I'll be ready.

The film itself was very enjoyable. Superb acting and directing, with a solid story. But this experience ultimately wasn't about the film, but what it stood for. I just saw a Czech film about a modern family with ties to the Velvet Revolution in a one hundred year old theater in Prague, five minutes away from Wenceslas Square. The penultimate scenes were filmed right there, behind Wenceslas statue, and inside the National Museum! And I was five minutes away!

Want to know what topped it off?

Yesterday we had a brief history of the Revolution and it significance to the Czech populace by Jan Urban, a man who himself was a dissident. At the end of the film, it was he who presented the award to the family patriarch. The man who lectured me a day before had a cameo in the film I just watched.

That's a memory.