1990. The Red Army hasn't even left town yet, and already the Americans are swarming. The story is a familiar one: after watching a rust-corroded Iron Curtain crumble on CNN, thousands of twenty-somethings descend upon the euphoric Czechoslovak capital of Prague in search of beautiful bloc women and a bohemianism no longer possible in post-rent control urban America.
Thanks to a media-fueled reputation, expatriate Prague eventually grew into a subaltern superweed replete with its own institutions and a dynamic population well into the thousands. It is thus Prague, out of all the American replant communes around the world--from Hanoi to Managua--that has most famously updated the old cliché. This is partly the fault of journalists who in the early 90's went loudly searching for the next Hemingway, and partly the fault of publicity minded expatriates who started the "Left Bank of the Nineties" nonsense in the first place. But mostly it is the fault of fuck-ups like me who followed the rumors East.
And what were those now dusty rumors? Essentially that salvation awaited the MTV generation out in the eastern frontier, that a new artistic community was finding its own liberation on the dead carcass of Communism, and that in a land flushed with revolution anything was possible. The effect this mystique had on recent grads during a recession tinged Bush administration was strong. Why struggle to get by in a hyper-commercialized, over professionalized Babylon when you can live on pennies to the dollar teaching English and writing, all under the refined, benevolent watch of philosopher-king Vaclav Havel?
Cobblestone streets haunted by the ghost of Kafka. De facto legalization. No Home Shopping Channel. They came in droves. There was a sense this newly liberated zone offered a blank slate upon which Americans--and Czechs too--could create and maintain an alternative reality to that offered by temp agencies, Microsoft, and the LAPD.
Of course not everyone held the same hopes for this corner of the New World Order. The first-wave of suburban refugees consisted of young capitalists as well as young drop-outs. The typical young go-getter came armed with an econ degree, a small family loan and a freshly minted copy of The Economist magazine's Guide to Emerging Markets. But they were the minority. The more typical expat landed with an English degree, mildly radical politics, and earnest plans to write a novel and a screenplay. These were the kids that started the journals, ran open-mike nights, and lived according to the old ideals of the unshaded light bulb and the cracked wine-filled mug. Expatriate Prague under their influence became associated with boho rectitude and the rebirth of dignified poverty. Everyone had a manuscript, and you couldn't swing a dead cat without knocking over a poetry reading or some dip from Bard reading Proust.
That was then. Today's Prague is more Deutsche Bank than Left Bank, and most of those first-wavers who came clutching dog-eared copies of The Sun Also Rises have either moved further east or gone home to academic pasture in MFA programs. Disappointed and bored with themselves or the direction of post-Soviet society, homeward bound expats actually began proclaiming the 'death of Prague' by mid-decade.
And they were right. The haughty hopes of 1989 died young for us all. To sight only a few of the murder suspects: foreign investment has made parts of the Old Town indistinguishable from Malltown USA, class divisions are becoming stark, and skinheads are breeding like roaches alongside double-digit unemployment. Equally symbolic is a new mass student movement calling for the resignation of the ruling government, including the once sacrosanct President Havel. In a recent straw poll the party of unreconstructed Communists scored 23 per cent. Where there is not disgust with democratic politics, there is apathy. So much for the Velvet Dream Machine.
Prague at the end of the decade is thus less a romantic blank slate than a poorer reflection of the same society expats sought to escape. For someone who remembers the launching of the first Czech private television channel, the arrival of US-style cable packages, SUV's, and homelessness is depressing, if not entirely surprising. A decade on, the carpet bagging capitalists of '89 have been replaced by well-scrubbed young suits paying career dues for American consulting firms, and more than a few would-be writers have become alcoholic English teachers given to wondering aloud whether their life of exile doesn't constitute some sort of moral and political default, to say nothing of artistic/life failure.
And yet, Prague continues to draw. It's still a favorite haven for well-read debt artists and would-be writers looking to avoid surveillance cameras, telemarketers, Ally McBeal, and school loan officers. One-thousand dollars still buys you six months to lay low with like-minded Americans and figure out a next move. The cost of living remains on par with Mabel Dodge's Greenwich Village, and you can land a 15 hour-a-week teaching job without certification. Always evolving, the expat press currently consists of one weekly newspaper, two magazines, and several smaller journals. The literary scene remains happily vibrant, if soberly so and slightly pathetic.
For this the kids still show up wide-eyed at the train station. Drawn by faint echoes of the old myths or just interested in kicking it with Czech beer and Czech women, fresh blood has managed to keep pace with the cycles of exodus. These cycles occur roughly every two years, making one of the most common questions in expat circles "Do you remember so-and-so...?"
I myself remember a lot of them. Some are still in or around Prague. Some moved out to the countryside with Czech wives to start families. Some went home and put down roots again in the States. A few I knew started an artist colony in eastern Slovakia. And one veteran expat I know recently packed his duffle-bag for Cuba. "If you wait for the revolution," he said, "then you're already too late."
The schmuck is right.
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