Returning to Prague: The Little Mother Has Claws

“Prague won’t let you go. The little mother has claws.” – Franz Kafka

Returning to a place you loved is as glorious as it is fraught.

There’s always the chance that the place has changed in your absence. There are new shops, cleaner train stations, coffee shops long departed.

Or perhaps you have changed. Years have passed and the things that you want, the things that thrill you, are not the same as they were before. You are growing and the city is staying too constant.

And yet the familiar curve of the cobblestones or sound of tolling bells or smell of crisp spring air holds your heart. Your shoulders relax. You breathe deeper. You laugh easier. You know why you loved this place.

These are some of the emotions I had when I returned to Prague.

I arrived in Prague five years after I last left it. The hours before my flight were spent in Istanbul laughing in live-music bars and drinking gin in a hotel filled with typewriters and meowing parrots in antique birdcages. (A typically atypical Istanbul night.) I went directly from this surreal scene to the airport where I slept on the flight in fits. Eventually I arrived exhausted in Prague.

Prague felt like rediscovering a pair of shoes that fit you perfectly, but for some reason you haven’t worn in years. I slipped into the city with such ease. Spring had arrived and everything was blooming yellow and pink. Prague smelled like roses and fresh rain. The clang of the red trams turning a corner and the hazy spires of the skyline viewed from Letna Park and the familiar swoops of diacritic marks over Czech letters were so FAMILIAR and yet so exciting. I lived here once. This was a glorious place.

Nostalgia is dangerous, though. There is joy in it, but melancholy as well. For every thrill was a memory of a time that had passed. This is the street where my friend lived. This is the park where we had a picnic. This is where I turned 21, this is where we got lost and wandered down the wrong tramline, this is where I saw that guy for the last time.

There was a constant tension between the familiarity of the place and my status as a stranger in it— every street was lined with déjà-vu, every Czech word I spoke felt new in my mouth even as I remembered vividly how I learned it.

Prague was the perfect place to take a break from Istanbul, from its breakneck bigness. I reveled in Prague’s parks, the sidewalks, the bikers, the beers by the river.

I always thought Prague would be my backup plan if my leap into an Istanbul life had fizzled. Now I had a chance to confront that alternate timeline, that other choice. What if I had ended up in Prague? What if I still do?

It’s an emotional, complicated consideration.

In part, the experience was similar to the feeling I had in Amsterdam— Prague would be a great place to live with my sister and have late mornings in cafes and ride bikes (or trams) all over the city.

But when I was in Amsterdam, even as I could imagine a sort of ideal life, I was fighting to get back to Turkey.

And that’s the thing. Prague will always be there for me. It’s part of my heart, part of my past.

Istanbul is a city I fought to stay in. Istanbul is a city that fights back.

It’s a messy, frustrating, tangled place.

I’m madly addicted to it.

I love Prague. But Istanbul is the city I chose to live in.

For now. I still dream I’ll end up, someday, in Prague. I can’t imagine ever staying away.

“Cities exert a strong, strange fascination, and none is stronger or stranger than the pull of Prague upon the heart of the homesick traveller — sick that is not for his native place, but for the Vltava that he has left behind. Returning there, he feels he has never been away, and yet feels guilty, too, of forgetfulness, neglect, infidelity. Perhaps that is what this is, then, a peace token, a placatory gift tentatively proffered, or just a faithless lover’s letter of apology.” -Prague Pictures by John Banville

I read this quote in a lightly-perused book years ago and it stuck with me. Prague doesn’t let go. It holds a piece of your heart, it lingers in the back of your mind. Prague was my first travel love. I might not live in Prague, but Prague lives in me. Kafka knew what he was talking about: the little mother has claws.