A brief distraction from the intercontinental word war.

So let me vent for a minute. I'm in the hostel that started the year off with a bang; it was full of people and I was wide-eyed at the beauty of ancient Prague. Now, nothing's changed, but nothing's the same. The seventy-bed single-room dorm hostel is like a tomb. I have no proof that there are other people staying here. The key rack is full, all the beds are made, and I don't have to wait half an hour for the internet. The last part is decidedly a good thing, but it's just such a weird contrast to last year, where they were booked out almost every night and there was always someone to talk to in the common room. I realized so starkly today how much I'VE changed, though. I realized Prague is an amusement park. It prays on people's proclivities for novelty, decadence, and vice; it's visible in the facade of every restaurant, souvenir shop, and third-rate titty bar. This place...is too easy, after a point. It's less a place to see and learn, more a place to get hammered and just...vedge. And the thing is this: none of this is Prague's fault. It's the fault of the people who infest this city every summer; they dictate the supply and demand system of the tourist economy, and they get what they want. But in the process, Prague has become a bizarre Disneyland with only the barest roots in reality. You walk the streets in central Prague and can go between ten and fifteen minutes without hearing a single person speaking Czech. Maybe this is only bothering me because I'm getting antsy about going home, but to be honest, the last two days or so I was in Prague all those months ago, I was starting to feel this, but I really couldn't articulate what bothered me about it because I didn't have any frame of reference.

Anyway, I get so...malaise-ridden when I walk the streets here that I have no idea what I'm going to do with myself for the next two days. Let me put it this way: these are the same quiet mysterious streets that Kafka and Dvorak used to walk...only now they're neither quiet nor mysterious. They try to affect it in places, but it's so put on it's painful. But enough about my malaise. I watched the Euro Cup final tonight on the huge tv on the main square. I ended up sitting with the homeless people by accident for most of the first half. Then the smell scared me away. But oh, the black dudes who try to lead you away to strip clubs (you might recall the Cali golden boys incident from about eleven months back)...I got accosted by like five of these guys and I was ready to deck like three of them because they didn't back off. I just wasn't to be flexed with today. But I ain't ungrateful. Prague is still one of the most beautiful places I've ever been, and living on tap water and sandwiches for three days won't kill me.

Stay strong, folks. Many of you will see me soon enough.

Fond regards to all, even Lana.

JBH

30.VI.2008