Normality and other assumptions

In the midst of an incredibly stressful week due to impromptu renovation work in my flat, leaving me with a non-functioning toilet, I have begun to recognise one of the down-sides of a Czech quality that I had previously appreciated.  When I was meeting up with Czech friends back in London, prior to coming here, I used to be amazed and hugely comforted by the fact that whenever I was having a spectacularly difficult time and I needed to cry and talk it over time and time again, these kind Czech friends would say, "it's normal."  The kind of despair or ongoing battles I faced did not faze them.  With British friends, of whom I had very few, most were unable to tolerate too much of this bleak state and they were detrimentally affected by it.  Mainly because it frightened them.  If it could happen to me, maybe it would happen to them too.

Czech friends, on the other hand, displayed no such fear.  But the reason for that, I now realise is that they don't expect to avoid these kinds of pitfalls.  Czechs are always being told to expect things to go wrong.  That relationships probably will go wrong.  That you probably will live in abject poverty all your life.  That your skills and talents will more often that not,  count for nothing.  "It's normal."  And suddenly, there it is.  Something's wrong with this picture.  

Everyone knows life can be one hell of a struggle, most certainly, and a lot of people do get overlooked or miss out on great opportunities because they don't have enough outside support to be able to get beyond the time and energy involved in mere survival.  But to say, "it's normal" seems at least fractionally defeatist, not to mention desperately sad.  And so it is with this renovation work, that I find none of the builders sympathise with the fact that I work from home most of the time and this work is therefore very, very disruptive.  Nor have they considered the kind of stress (and the detrimental effects on my health this is causing) that not having a functioning loo in my flat will generate.  It is of course, a 'normal' consequence of living in an old block of flats.  Renovation was an inevitability I should not have expected to avoid or have any say in.  (Thank god my landlady is not typically Czech and has apologised for this terrible inconvenience and given me a key to another flat to be able to use the loo.)

Equally, when I stayed with the architect in his flat in the mountain town, having a hot water supply that ran out after both of us having a shower and doing one big amount of washing up, was 'normal' and I was accused of being a princess for expecting otherwise.  Hot water is a luxury, afterall.  Well, I can agree with that, having not had hot water for several weeks in previous places I lived in, in London.  That just means that I appreciate it all the more when there is hot water, and I like to be able to relish and enjoy it, rather than worry about its extremely limited supply.  The same goes for material things.  If you're brought up in a low-income family, there is often an emphasis on the virtue of being someone who can live without many of the commonly sought-after material things.  It becomes a noble attitude to be able to cut back and survive on very little and say things like, "we didn't have much, but we were happy."

Perhaps this notion is genuinely true for some, but for others, 'not having much' results in a battle to get as good grades as others who have the privilege of extra home tutoring, or those who have extra books and resources bought for them, to aid them in their studies.  This is not happiness.  There is no real pride in getting a 'B' grade and saying that it was, "good when you consider I did that without any help".  The music GCSE exam was a prime example of that.  In many schools, music education is an oddity.  You can pay extra for lessons on an instrument as an extracurricular activity but you can't get that kind of education as part of the free GCSE tuition alone, so that exam is one whereby the noble poor pupil with no after-school instrument teacher will get a low grade or even fail because having that extra-curricular teacher was a vital element in the others' capacity to pass the exam.  That's not happiness.

Nor is it happiness to be proud of not being affected by 'material things'.  If having a washing machine that works, having a kettle to make tea with, having a piano to write music on has no impact whatsoever on your level of contentment and ease with which you can conduct your life, not to mention the added joy you could derive from these things, then what kind of person are you?  What kind of person says that they are entirely unaffected by these types of things?  What kind of person is disinterested in having the choice between buying cheap, bad quality red wine and a spending a bit more for a decent bottle of Bordeaux because they are only interested in getting the lowest price?  Dare I say it, oh god forgive me, a Czech.  Or at least, a miserable, hopeless kind of Czech who's had the joy and hope knocked out of them on a regular basis.  The effects of a totalitarian regime do not die when walls come down and governments are changed.  The walls have already been formed in your head.  And those take far, far longer and an even more concerted effort to tear down.

I had one of these types as a meet-ee.  He really said it makes no difference to him having a computer and a washing machine and those kinds of things.  He wasn't grateful for them.  I suggested that he would be pretty annoyed if they suddenly broke.  And I'm sure he would be, though he's earning enough that he could simply replace them at the drop of a hat.  So the inconvenience might only last a couple of days.  And there are members of my family, with no such, "we lived through years of communism" for an excuse (though years of unquestioned Christianity might have had a very similar effect) who still buy cheap chocolate and don't think it's worthwhile spending more on getting something with more cocoa content than sugar in it, for a better taste and less damaging effect to one's health.  (Even the architect can tell the difference and would actually prefer the pricier stuff, so that's really saying something.)

I certainly feel a great deal happier when I do have functioning 'material things' in my life.  Access to a working loo within my own flat for one thing.  And I certainly enjoyed it when I used to have a piano to play loudly when everything else around me seemed doomed.  And today I'm grateful to have a warm new jacket to wear when it gets chilly, and a lovely new fluffy cushion to lean against and make the place feel homelier with.  All of these things bring or brought me comfort and happiness when I had them.  It is not noble to try to live without as though we're still living in a cold war.  I'm not in favour of wasting things, but nor am I in favour of not appreciating things when I do have them.  A life of drudgery and limited resources is not something I should accept and be content with.  It is NOT normal.

'Clueless-ness', coffee and communism

I realised today that maybe you don't really get to know a new place that you inhabit until one of your friends from your old territory comes to visit.  I met up with some friends at lunchtime, who are in Prague for just a couple of days and the first thing that they encountered was a general 'clueless-ness' from Czech cafes about skimmed or semi-skimmed milk.  I suppose it hadn't occurred to me to ask about it before because I so rarely go for a coffee that when I do, it's like a special 'treat' so I go the whole hog and get a coffee with cream, as if I were on holiday.

I must admit, I've never seen skimmed milk even in the supermarkets, but semi-skimmed is readily available, where whole milk is less so in my little Tesco.  Mind you, lots of foreigners shop in that one, so they have to cater to their tastes a little bit.  But it's funny how these little things suddenly say so much about the culture.  Where in Prague can you buy coffee and retain the choice of skimmed, semi-skimmed or whole milk?  The American coffee chains, of course.  

Ah, America, land of the fee.  If you can pay for it, you can have anything.  The immense freedom of such vast choice seems so enticing.  But the price tag will stand in your way some of the time, and it's that kind of poverty, either of the lowest classes or of a Communist background, that restricts you to the point of altering your own identity.  I perhaps feel more at ease with Czech culture because I'm not from a comfortable, middle class background, so I'm used to things like people 'tutting' if you seem to be developing delusions of grandeur.  Such as expecting to have a choice of three different types of milk as well as the choice of coffee or tea.  Hell, these days, the choice of flavours of coffee and varieties of tea are necessary options to provide people, but something my Nan would have a field day complaining about having missed out on.

Back in my Nan's day, people were "ever so grateful" for a cup of horrid instant coffee with coffeemate instead of milk at a church coffee morning.  They would fall over themselves if you offered them a rich tea biscuit as well.  (Quite frankly, I think they might have achieved a higher number of converts to Christianity if they'd served Irish coffees and chocolate biscuits, but they didn't go in for bribery then.  At least, not with adults.  Sunday school was quite another matter.  Kids are still young enough to be 'conditioned'...)

Somehow, years of Communism has meant many Czechs have never quite shaken off the attitude of having to put up with very little choice and that you shouldn't make too much fuss about that.  But worse still, is the issue of anything that is ,zadarma', as most Czechs would inaccurately translate it, "for free".  Whatever you do, don't get Czechs together in a room and tell them something is free.  Even if it's something virtually worthless, almost every single one of them will take it, just because there's no charge.  (Note that the president, Václav Klaus demonstrated this instinct perfectly, when he decided to take a PEN that had been provided at a conference.  It's just a pen, for god's sake!)

Nonetheless, despite the lack of choice with milk (and a whole host of other things here that you'll only notice once you've lived here a while) my friends were still wooed by the architecture.  As everyone is.  That row of buildings, known as 'Prague Castle' were the only things keeping me going on very early, very cold mornings when I first got here and had to travel by tram across the river to my meetings at a particular institution.  I would look at those buildings and inwardly tell myself, that that's what being in Prague is all about.  I may have been travelling around like the waged poor who clean government buildings for a living, but there was that beautiful array, just across the river on the hill, staring back at me.  And it thankfully never went away.  It was my equivalent of the Chrysler building for New Yorkers.  (Prague could not be more different of course.  But that would require a whole other blog post to cover.)

Suffice it to say, my friends were pleased to have had a chance to see me and see the cafe I recommended, and they left saying they'd definitely want to come back another time.  They liked the fact that so many well-known places are within walking distance and that there are so many interesting buildings.  But one winning thing that grips the hearts of many a traveller from more expensive worlds, won out:  the price of beer.  Alas, I'm not much of a beer drinker, so it means nothing to me, but, hey, each to their own.  As far as I'm concerned, I would be very happy living in a country where good quality red wine were easily affordable.  But alas, Paris was too expensive to find a flat in, so I had to settle for the Paris of Central Europe instead.  Heigh-ho.