As daydreams of spending the summer overseas played in my head, the pilot’s voice brought me back to reality announcing the plane’s descent into Prague. Instantly, the voice in my head screamed out “What have you done” and I felt my stomach and lower intestine tighten and re-coil in fear.
My sister and I were supposed to spend the summer chasing new adventures, learning about a completely different culture, and attending a writing seminar that would inspire us to pen the great American Novel. After all, Prague was likened to ‘Paris in the 20’s’, and many ex-pat writers, musicians and artists (or Gen X-ers trying to drop out for awhile) were said to line the inspiration-filled streets.
So when my sister got cold feet a few weeks before we were to leave, I was happy that I only skipped a (heart)beat or two, before continuing on with my travel plans.
It was the summer of 1999, and I was twenty-eight years old—old in some ways, and young in others.
Though I was no stranger to traveling alone, this trip was a complete jolt out of every comfort zone I had ever known.
If being removed from all that I knew did not force me to rediscover my true self, perhaps it would at least cure my writer’s block. And, if the trip was a complete disaster, I could return home at any time with some new writing material or create my own fiction-filled tale of my time away, who would know the difference?
After the initial shock wore off from the pilot’s words, the stewardess pried my hands from the back of the seat in front of me (ok, that is the fiction part I was talking about, but it sounds good), and I jumped on the Metro in search of my flat. (Thankfully I had few expectations, because the only worldly possessions included in the rental were a small cot-like bed, one blanket, and one pot on the stove.)
Breathe.
Yes, fresh air was needed before a panic attack ensued.
My feet carried me safely to the Charles’ Bridge (Karluv Most), the most traveled tourist destination in Prague, though not normally my bag, I wanted to hear the energy and languages of people from all over the world, to take in the jewelry, paintings, and other artists works that line the pedestrian-only cobblestoned bridge, and rub the St. John of Nepomuk statue that is supposed to bring good luck. I knew that once I felt the breeze from the Vlatna River, heard the sounds and smelled the smells of the city, my reason for coming would be confirmed.
And it was, almost instantly.
Visiting John Lennon’s Wall; the graffiti and artistic renderings of peace and freedom that the younger generation in Prague bravely painted on the wall each anniversary of Lennon’s death even when the city was still under Communist Rule, felt apropos, and for the first time in my life, I felt free.
No one knew me, so no one could judge me. No one had yet put me ‘in a box’ so I could liberate myself from the box I had put myself in. My friends and family weren’t there to mirror who they thought I was back to me, which allowed me to reinvent the roles I had played with them over the years.
I was a clean canvas. I could wake up whenever I wished and allow my instincts and impulses to lead me through the day. I could sit and watch the man who paints devil’s ears in all of his paintings for hours, or take photographs of the street performers who all seem to know something the rest of us don’t. I could get lost in the curvy backstreets looking for the oldest pub in the city where they claim to have invented beer, or watch a Czech movie and somehow understand it.
I had only myself to answer for; I had nowhere to be, no one to meet, and no plan.
