Traveling alone definitely has ups and downs, and for me some of the worst downs have been getting really lost. At home it's fine to be lost because you can just whip out your phone and use the GPS to figure out where you are, but here I'm limited to WiFi. It has actually been great for me to not be able to use my GPS as a crutch, but also very frustrating at times.
Prague is a huge city, the biggest in the Czech Republic, and I now remember many places as places where I have been lost. Usually I'm functionally lost and can retrace my steps and figure out where I went wrong, but I got really lost a few days ago. The sun was setting, I was not in the best part of town, and I didn't know how to get to the tram stop I was looking for.
I waited at the tram stop I was at for a long time trying to regroup and figure out how to get back. I knew I was in the right district of Prague, just on the wrong line. The further from the city you get, the longer the time between trams, so it felt like I was waiting an eternity. Even though it was getting dark I decided to just walk in the general direction that I thought I should and stop being scared, and I found the right stop in less than five minutes. It seems like such a small thing, but small victories, like finding the right tram stop, are helping me become a more confident traveler.
As I study the art and politics of this city, I'm finding a lot of seemingly small, but actually huge, victories for art in its past. I toured the Municipal House, a huge Art Nouveau-style civics house, and learned that it was almost torn down during the communist era. Apparently the leaders didn't like the building's strong artisitic ideals and the fact that it housed Smetana concert hall/ballroom. The building was very expensive when it was built, however, and the communists soon realized that tearing it down would be equally as expensive. The demolition was put off again and again, and while the building fell into disrepair, it was never taken down and was meticulously restored in the 90s.
Another seemingly small victory for the arts was won by Max Brod, who directly disobeyed a friend's wishes. Brod's friend instructed Brod to burn all of his literary work and sketches upon his death, but Brod instead published them. Because of Brod we have the literary works of the now famous Franz Kafka, a Prague native.
The Lennon Wall is an ongoing example of the victories of art in this cultural and political capital. Czech youth in the 1980s greatly admired what John Lennon had stood for and decided to make a monument to him on a plain whitewashed wall. Every night people would write and draw on the wall: grievances, lyrics, pictures of Lennon, etc., and every day the communist regime would paint over the artistic rebellion. Even though the original graffitti has long since been covered by many new layers of messages, pictures, and lyrics, the initial meaning of the wall is still intact: to promote love, peace, and equality.
The Kampa Museum of Central European Modern Art has undergone a lot of natural disasters, most notably flooding (Kampa has definitely earned its water-logged nickname as "The Venice of Prague"). Despite sustaining damage over the years, the museum is still going strong.
What I'm trying to say with all of these examples is this: art is resilient. As I travel around and learn about all the art in this city, it's becoming clear how some of it is only here by sheer luck or happenstance. Even though lots of art has been lost over the centuries, some always remains. The compiliations of art that we have at our fingertips should be treasured because many of them are the results of small victories. I think that makes them even more beautiful.
