The Inside Outsider

It occurred to me as I walked back home from Václavské námĕstí last night that I am now an expert at spotting foreigners in Prague.  I am an 'inside outsider' now.  Not inside enough to belong here, but not an outsider enough to be clueless about what living here entails.  I can now usually tell which couples are here on a city break weekend.  They are the ones determined to dress up and find a nice restaurant to go to in the centre or the Old Town Square.  I saw one such couple last night, the woman dressed in a bright red layered skirt, optimistically looking all set for a night of either a romantic meal or for flamenco dancing, it could have been either I suppose.  

I imagine they'll be disappointed.  Prague has an uncanny ability to disappoint anyone who comes here with a romanticised view of the city due to its stunning architecture.  It's not lived up to by its inhabitants.  They know they've got some amazing buildings to show off, but there seems to be no corresponding desire to enhance that by providing excellent customer service and fine red wines to at least attempt to fulfil a romantic fantasy.  It's only other foreigners who cash in on that gap in the market and provide better service and import better food and drink to compensate who will offer an opportunity to live a fantasy for a weekend.

If you want the real Prague experience, you have to accept not having much choice, being dealt with matter-of-factly, not appreciatively, and settling for a down-to-earthness in place of a succession of attempts to please.  The only way to make Prague work in that romantic way is to go for walks by the river or pay for a table at a really overpriced restaurant with an enviable view and try to ignore the waiting staff's lack of smile or kind tone of voice.  

Prague is like a perpetual working class family who've stopped hoping for things to improve and have settled for a cup of tea and fish 'n' chips as fine dining.  The only way the middle class or the very wealthy manage here is by being able to leave on a regular basis and do their shopping and dining largely elsewhere.  You can have a nice life that way.  Lower rents, lower prices for basic meals, but an opportunity to get to another country quite easily as long as you have a car.  But if you're poor, you don't earn foreign money, then you're stuck because airfare and good quality food and wine are at international prices (or not available here so you have to travel to get them) and you cannot earn enough to reach international prices for things on a Czech salary.  The only answer is to earn money abroad at the same time.  Otherwise you are doomed.

And so it followed that I was thrilled by something small yesterday, that no-one in London would get excited about.  But there in the small branch of Tesco, on the shelf with the cabbages and leeks, was a clear plastic box of fresh basil.  Not once, in all the time I've been here, have I ever seen any fresh herbs in the small Tesco.  I'm always having to travel right across town to go to a big enough supermarket to get exotic things like basil and then there it was on my doorstep yesterday.  I was shocked and amazed. 

It meant I could add it to my comfort food meal of pasta and tomato, mushroom, carrot and bean topping, which I grated some cheese on and finished off with some basil leaves on top for my best efforts at good presentation, as well as yummy food:

(Yes, I know it's rather a big portion.  I was tired and cold and miserable.)