It came to me as I walked past a block of old apartment buildings and storefronts atop a hill in my maternal grandmother’s hometown. I was lost with my little brother in a foreign country, and I didn’t speak the native language. I was confused and so exhausted that I had fallen asleep every time we boarded a bus or train.
And yet, I felt at home in a city I had never visited.
Plzen’s small town atmosphere and landscape of historic architecture and modern industry reminded me of my childhood hometown of Newburyport, Massachusetts. I may not have been able to understand the residents of Plzen, but I could almost imagine myself growing up in their city.
Of course, I might have just been intoxicated on fumes from the city’s famous brewery.
In any case, it was a turning point in a trip that had been both exhilarating and frustrating. After four days of traveling in the Czech Republic, I finally felt comfortable in our maternal grandparents’ homeland. The stress and troubles of the trip faded away. And while they would eventually return, I felt a surge in confidence that made me look forward to the last half of our adventure.
Our trip to the Czech Republic and Britain was my most satisfying experience of 2009, and I came home with a greater appreciation of the joys and trials of traveling and blogging abroad. Here are some of the lessons I learned on our trip.
Learning from being lost
Czech maps must have been designed to confuse and infuriate tourists. On our first full day in Prague, we walked in the opposite direction of our destination, the city castle complex, for at least 45 minutes because the map from our hotel was confusing.
Luckily, I thought to plot out our trip on Google Maps before leaving Florida. Once we doubled back on our path and turned the Google Map upside down, we found our destination. Eventually. We would have found it sooner if I hadn’t let my doubt get the better of me, ignored the map and let my intuition lead us in the opposite direction again.
Buses and trains are also an easy way to travel Prague. And passengers are surprisingly tolerant of an awkward traveler. Or at least they were polite enough to curse in Czech so I couldn’t understand.
Czech, Mate, do you speak it?
We quickly learned that it’s almost impossible to speak Czech if you didn’t grow up in the country or take years of lessons. The language is littered with letters like d’ (pronounced dyeh) and words that can be torture for the tongue if you’re unfamiliar with their pronunciation. It’s sometimes even difficult for those raised in the Czech Republic.
We stopped using our phrasebooks about two days into the trip, after we realized they only contained three words of any use. One of those was Prosim, which we thought meant please but has several definitions not listed in our books. The other was dekuji ,or thank you.
The last was na shledanou, or goodbye, which my brother and I mispronounced in two separate ways, leading to arguments between us and awkward looks from the Czechs we spoke to in our first days.
Thankfully, many Czechs in Prague speak at least a little English, especially those who work at the train and bus stations. Online pronunciation guides with audio samples can also help you become accustomed to the language before you leave for the Czech Republic, although we didn’t take advantage of them.
Strangers and family in a strange land
Who you travel with can define your trip. Exploring Europe with my little brother meant the journey was rife with fun and frustration.
We argued almost every day. David once admonished me for panicking about taking risks, like tasting pears growing in the former Nazi prison of Terezin Concentration Camp and Ghetto or climbing under a fence and onto private property to retrieve a sample of soil from the nearby river. On another day, I threatened to send David home early because he refused to wear a money belt so he couldn’t be pickpocketed.
But we also learned to cooperate and celebrate the joys and dilemmas of the trip together. David’s sense of humor helped me cope with the stress of the trip, and he was able to stay relatively patient whenever I had random freak outs. I couldn’t imagine enjoying the adventure as much if he hadn’t been a part of it.
Once we arrived in my grandfather’s hometown of Ostrava, our relatives played a large role in making our last days in the Czech Republic exciting and informative. They translated for us, treated us to a home-cooked meal and lots of alcohol, and helped us learn about our maternal grandfather’s family. Our time with our relatives was the most satisfying part of the trip for me, and I’m grateful I was able to connect with them.
It’s hard to travel with excess baggage
Foreign travel is often romanticized. There are countless tales of travelers who leave their old lives and worries behind and relax or change while vacationing abroad.
Those travelers didn’t have Asperger Syndrome.
The stress of the trip exacerbated my neuroses and made me irritable. I have trouble communicating with people in my own country, where I’m relatively comfortable. Trying to express myself and cope with the anxiety of being lost, being somewhat responsible for my little brother, and missing planes, buses and tours made me lose the slight restraint I’m usually able to maintain.
I ended up snapping at David for little things, like not acting excited enough about our trip, and I panicked about nuisances like not being able to negotiate a bus aisle with my overstuffed luggage.
I realized my anxiety was taking away from my fun and annoy my little brother, and I decided I needed to relax. I started to accept that not everything on the trip would go the way I needed it to, and I stopped obsessing about my mistakes.
Once I relaxed, I communicated more naturally and derived more pleasure from the journey.
And while I still got stressed out, I felt I dealt with my anxiety better in the later days of the trip. At least some of them.
The perils of Audacity
I originally planned to edit and post most of my Prague Blog entries while in the country. Obviously, that didn’t happen.
We endured severe delays on our trip to Prague, and the delay threw off our schedule. But I’m not sure I would have been able to post as much as I liked if everything had gone according to plan.
I wanted everything to sound natural, and we recorded the audio for our Soundslides presentations without a script. I had to sort through minutes of extraneous or inappropriate material to find content for my presentations. It also took at least three or four days to edit the audio and photos for each presentation.
If I ever attempt a project this massive again, I’m going to make sure I have a script and plan for how long it will take to edit audio presentations. I will also edit less heavily to make the presentations sound more natural than the earliest presentations I posted.
I had not edited audio for about a year before taking on this project, and I had never taken on a project this complicated with multiple tracks. I feel I improved my skills in audio editing and blogging on this trip, and I hope you guys enjoyed partaking in our adventures.
I enjoyed my adventures in Europe, and I’m looking forward to what the new year will bring for me and this blog. But mostly, I’m glad I no longer have to reserve a significant amount of my day or week to editing audio.
Now, enjoy this deceptively cut presentation of highlights, outtakes and rants from our trip.
Caution: The following slideshow contains adult language and content. Pictures were taken by me, David and Ondrej Vanek.
Long Nights and Hard Ledes will now return to its normal subject matter. Look for the next post in a week or so.
My grandmother’s identity book
Postcard from my grandmother’s aunts during World War II
