🇩🇰 Originally published in Danish — automatically translated
The magnolias are blooming in Prague in April, and the apple trees, and the cherry trees. After a week in the city, we have landed. It is obvious that we don't speak the language, though a few words are easy to pick out, especially in writing. It is also obvious that there is something in the national character, in the way people communicate — or perhaps a small bug that appears when Czech becomes English — that is a little hard for Scandinavians to absorb: a shifting between open, humorous warmth and aggressive, demeaning dominance.
The sun shines on us and we take long walks, getting to know this beautiful city while getting to know ourselves. In that sense, Prague is no different from any other context. You can't let yourself get pulled into exchanges that don't work. You can't let a bit of honking get under your skin. There's some kind of bug in the system; Czechs are surely lovely people, all of them, and it is most likely just a cultural difference that makes it hard to hear a co-host in the Airbnb system bring up cleaning five times in two days, or to be honked at while observing the speed limits in city traffic. Easy now — this is not about us. Not at all.
The sun comes in through the windows of our rented apartment in a newly built neighbourhood in Prague 8, near Palmovka metro station. There are trees and canals and paths outside, birdsong, morning runners, dog walkers. The city centre is an overrun nightmare of tourists and everything that comes with them; the beauty drowns under the weight of the crowds. We are all five of us strong people and experienced travellers — and still, the middle of the city is too much for us. It is simply overwhelming. You can, of course, put up a mental wall, but then you're not really there. To experience the beauty, you have to get up early and walk in the morning hours, before the shops open, before you can buy souvenirs, chimney cakes, coffee and beer, while the sun rises over Charles Bridge and the Astronomical Clock and all that beauty.
We have now settled into the city, and the first morning walk is planned for Thursday.
In the meantime, we are happy to be living a little outside the centre. Public transport is cheap and easy, and we enjoy walking through the parks and along the river. Everything is as it should be.
Above Letná Park, the motorised metronome swings — a reminder that time passes and everything changes. It stands where a Stalin monument once stood, and reminds us that every regime is gone one day. It moves slowly, pointing toward the blue sky. Letná Park itself is wonderful: plenty of green and a remarkable view. Up by the metronome, skaters hang out, and we did what we always do when we visit places like this. We simply went there and hung out. Even though only one of us skates. We watched the young people, with and without skateboards; we watched the other tourists drifting past; we watched dogs and beer cans and flowers, took our shoes off and enjoyed the sun.
It remains a good strategy, going somewhere with a single purpose. In reality, it is everything you happen to encounter on the way there, while you're there, and on the way back that creates the adventure. Letná Park and the metronome gave our family's skater a skate hangout. It gave us the experience of another skate spot in a tunnel under a large road — a spot that was a lot, where heavy joints were being smoked, with massive graffiti, a cool swing structure to rest on, and everything the skate culture needs. We got sunlight on the large glass facades of new construction and walked past one of the big communist-era buildings whose aesthetic can still make a person feel small and insignificant. We saw a beautiful Great Dane; we saw the low sun over the river; we enjoyed the flowers; we walked on our own legs past a film set shooting something set in the Second World War — old, beautiful cars and actors in dignified 1930s clothing — and felt something when we passed the ones dressed as Hitler Youth, even though we knew perfectly well they were actors.
And so we come back to the thing about feelings. About noticing them, letting them be what they are, learning to give them space without letting them take over, learning to temper them, learning to be a sounding board for each other, learning to listen when they speak, and finding peace in that. A walk through a city can be just as good a backdrop as any other context for unfolding these inner realisations.
On a completely different level, it is quite a bit more fun: the adventure of it. The magnolias are blooming in Prague, and the metronome points straight up at the sky while young people fall from their skateboards and get back up. And again. We talk about handling feelings — not because something is wrong, but because it is an interesting conversation. And just as regimes disappear one day, feelings too are something that passes. While they are happening, they can almost feel like a regime, almost like a dictator — and you have to learn to step to the side and think of the metronome: it swings from side to side, and that is okay. Even as it points at something, it is also in motion. Sometimes you just have to let time pass.
One of the things that makes nomadic life so good is how easy it is to find these synergies between the experiences out there in the world and the reflections, the learning, the conversations inside — in the space of understanding, even the space of feeling. The metronome and our city walk supported the theme of the conversation in the most beautiful way, almost as if there were a higher meaning behind it.
We have had teenagers in the family for thirteen years; our experience as parents of teenagers has itself become a teenager, and we love and respect teenagers' lives and inner journeys. We love talking with our teens and being part of the frame and the foundation they move from.
The magnolias are blooming in Prague now, and we take our walks, the metronome measures time slowly and persistently, and we learn and learn and learn. While we experience, while we wander, while we talk, while we are surprised, while we receive.
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