Unseen yet Known: Prague & Its Narratives

What strikes you most about the eastern part of the Europe is that it somehow makes you feel at home; makes you go slow and yet attach an unknown melancholy to it unknowingly. The unknown is perhaps the best word we ever invented; it is a perfect metaphor for itself. We learn things, we see them and then we forget; we learn again somehow. The process: unknown still. My gratefulness ledger should actually have tons of writings of Prague. It has been beautiful, solitude, melancholic and happy at the same time. There have been exhausting times, exciting times, excruciating ones too but never dull and boring ones. Coming back to the tangible city you find the ruins of the baggage of history, being changed, being evolved and yet being very intrinsic. We learn cultures and history through narratives and narratives are those of people and indeed people have perceptions: that's the most beautiful part of it. History is indeed a very strong narrative of what it has to offer and shape the future of a place, a group, a nation and the individual in general. Yet, these narratives are so diverse, different and at most times, conflicting. You see Prague, you observe it. And once you do that keenly and attentively, you find something beneath the palimpsest of the current city. It is the desire to stand, to survive and an eagerness to see a different future: exciting, exhausting, excruciating yet never dull and boring. That's what narratives do to you as a society. They give birth to Faith. And faith is something that makes you move forward; the paradigm being Prague. A native once said, “Happy are those nations that have a boring history, yet happier will be those nations that have faith even in any history they have”. 

P.S Czechia, in fact, Prague, has been a playing ground and a place of acquisitions and re-acquisitions during the war and communist era. Very evident in the architecture of the country and the way society narrates its history, are its pains, pleasures and perceptions of the past decades. The write-up was written while sipping hot coffee in central Prague after a long morning walk under the shining sun and is a personal expression of the air felt.