Afterthoughts

Greetings from the comforts of my bed in sleepy little Westerly, Rhode Island.  This morning, I woke up on the floor of my cousin's dorm room in Copenhagen, Denmark.  I spent an hour and a half on the freezing yet gorgeous island of Iceland, and then came cruising into Boston around midday, from which I headed home to Westerly.  I'd been in Denmark since Friday, after taking a 15-hour train from Prague to Copenhagen, and had the most amazing time with Maddie.  We traversed all over the city, explored Hamlet's castle, and had awesome burgers at a restaurant ironically called Halifax, and I had the first organic hot dog of my life, put my hands in the Øresund (the strait between Denmark and Sweden, where the Atlantic meets the Baltic Sea), and watched Maddie complete her first half-marathon.  Overall, my trip to Denmark was great, though I won't go into too much detail about it.  Here are some pictures that will have to suffice.

Maddie & me above the roofs of Copenhagen.

Nyhavn

At Hamlet's castle with Sweden in the background.

Hamlet's castle.

Sean & Mads running the Copenhagen Half Marathon!

On Wednesday night, my final night in the Czech Republic, Ivan called me and asked if I wanted to grab a beer.  One of his friends was leaving for a year abroad the next day, the same day as me, and so a small group of people wanted to get together for a send-off for the two of us.  I had never met the girl going abroad, and so we started chatting in the pub.  She looked at me and said in Czech, "So I have to ask...why are you here?  Why did you come to the Czech Republic?"  Ivan groaned and said, "This poor guy, he gets asked that question nonstop!"  Some of our friends there started laughing and said, "We all already know the speech.  Should we recite it for you?"

When people usually ask me this question, I say the following, "Well, I always wanted to learn a Slavic language, in fact Russian.  I didn't really like the Russian department at my university, though, so I took German instead.  I studied abroad in Graz, Austria, for a year, and I had a roommate from the Czech Republic.  He taught me a few words in Czech, and I really liked it, so I decided to take it, since there was a Czech course with a professor from Brno at my university in Graz.  I met more people from the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and I came to visit at Christmas, Easter, and in the summer, and just kept coming back."  That's my pretty standard response to this question, and anyone who's spent a little time with me in the Republika can recite it.

I took the train on Thursday to Prague before boarding the night train to Denmark.  I said my goodbyes in Brno, and then was meeting JoEllen for my final Czech send-off.  Before meeting JoEllen, though, I had a few hours to kill and found myself wandering around one of my favorite cities in the world.  Traveling to Prague makes me so incredibly happy, and when I walk the streets, I often find myself smiling for no reason, just caught up in the magic of the city.  I don't even think about where I'm going when I'm in Prague, my feet just know the way, and so I wandered around the Gothic city, once so foreign, now so much like home.  I ended up on Old Town Square, and I decided to take a short rest on a bench.  Despite two quite fat women from Alabama clucking away on the bench next to me, I was able to take in the scene.

Old Town Square

Old Town Square

I was sitting on a bench in the middle of Old Town Square in Prague in the very heart of Europe.  I was sitting in a place that has been visited by residents for hundreds of years.  People were born in the houses around me, people died perhaps in the spot I sat.  Wars were won here, wars were lost here.  Protests were held here, freedom given and revoked.  The city has grown, has changed with time, some things for the better, some things for the worse.  Much like people.

I started to think about my time in the Czech Republic, and the question loomed in front of me, "Why the Czech Republic?"  I knew my standard answer, but that just wasn't quite satisfying enough.  And suddenly, I started to laugh.  I thought about my first time in Prague, feeling completely overwhelmed by the small, cobblestone streets and crazy Czech language, though reassured by being with Czechs.  I thought of walking down the streets with Libor covering my eyes so that I wouldn't see certain monuments, since his cousin who lives in Prague wanted to show me them first.  I thought about my last night in Europe after my year abroad in Austria, spent alone in Prague, already more confident in the city and beginning to feel its secrets revealing themselves.  I thought about returning for my Fulbright year, meeting the people who have now become some of my closest friends, and living with them in Prague for a week.  I thought of drinking a beer with JoEllen next to Old Town Square at Thanksgiving, of standing on Old Town Square with Alex at Christmas beneath the giant Christmas tree.  I thought of showing my mother and aunt my absolute favorite building in all of Prague, hidden on Old Town Square in the heart of chaos.  I thought of sitting at the corner restaurant with my father and his wife, introducing him to svíčková, one of the Czech Republic's national dishes.  I thought of other memories from different places around the Czech Republic, of different people from around the Czech Republic, of different experiences from around the Czech Republic.  And I laughed out loud and had a great time doing so.

My time in the Czech Republic has almost been like living a second life inside my life.  When I first came to the Czech Republic four years ago, I knew next to no Czech and could not communicate.  Instead, I sat in silence and watched those around me.  Slowly, I ventured a word or two, but left it to others to guess what I wanted.  With time, I started to understand a bit of what was going on around me, but still relied on others to communicate for me.  As I grew more confident, I started to act independently, and was rewarded by others understanding me, encouraging me to continue.  With a little bit of education to learn the formal rules, I've reached the point where I am now, a fully-functioning person in the Czech language and culture.  It's a very strange experience to sit in the heart of a beating metropolis that was once completely foreign, strange, and scary, in which you once understood not a single word of what was happening around you, and yet suddenly you are an insider, you know the streets without a map, you speak the language, and you can spy those who are now the outsiders.  It's an even stranger feeling to know that city is the capital of a foreign country, and you are much more familiar with it than the capital of your own country.

These are just some of the reasons I came to the Czech Republic.  The people are so friendly, the culture so fascinating, the language so challenging, the architecture so beautiful, the location so prime, and so on and so forth.  Though I made the decision to return home, both based on poor work conditions and visa complications, I did also want to return home and am happy to be here.  Who can say what the future holds, but either way, the Czech Republic and Slovakia will continue to play a major role in it.

See you soon, Česká republika.