They let me have a flat in Prague on the only condition that when the owners returned at the end of the summer, there would be toilet paper and coffee. It was in front of the Kafka cafe, in the Jewish quarter. It was huge, and the facade so spectacular that, every time I went out into the street, a camera was pointed at the door. click I must have taken dozens of photos. Photos that maybe someone is still reviewing in some corner of the world. On paper, because it was 2003. I thought I would run away from the heat wave, but I was walking around at forty degrees. I took refuge in unconditioned bars, very cheap, without tourists. It said: "Good day". At the bar: "Pivo, please". And when they were carrying the giant half-liter glass: "Děkuji". A group of young people invited me to sit with them, and with gestures – almost no one spoke English – they explained to me that this was their meeting place, and that each (huge, wooden) table was reserved for a different group. Or so I understood.
With the bartender of another place called Cho-Cho, we communicated through the TV guide: The Simpsons were "family" and we had as many brothers or sisters as Barts or Lisas we could count on our fingers. Maggie equaled children; he had one, a child (he pointed to Maggie and Bart all at once). The translation of Friends was obvious. I dined in restaurants without knowing what I was ordering; point out what you point out in the letter, they always brought sauerkraut (it was called another way).
My neighbors were Orthodox. One day I saw one in the cellar, hidden behind the window. I'd swear he was pointing a shotgun at the front window. There was a pigeon on the ledge. I was so scared that I turned away and pretended I hadn't seen anything.
When you travel alone, you don't have to visit everything there is to see. Well, I went to the cemetery, and went down to the subway to check how deep they had built it. And when some acquaintances came who were passing through, we would go to the Charles Bridge, the Pólvora Tower, Kampa Island and Malá Strana. I became friends with a Czech-Parisian woman who took me to fashionable places. We spoke in French.
The copy of L'insoutenable légèreté de l'être that I found in the house was also in French. I had read it when I was sixteen in the Tusquets edition, he gave it to me the first time I got it. Then I would read everything you posted Kundera, Joke would be my favorite. When I was studying at the UAB, a guy I liked from the faculty dropped The book of ridiculous loves inside the train. With an e-book I wouldn't have known what I was reading and I might not have liked it as much.
With cell phones and social media, that trip to Prague would have been very different. As different as The Unbearable Lightness of Being seemed to me when I reread it there, ten years after the first time, half the time that has passed since then. That's why there are places and books to which I love not to return. Because I have a very good memory of it. And instead of revisiting and reliving them, I would feel that I can't find them, that they aren't there.
