A Foreigner in Prague Feb.7. 2012

It took me by surprise even though I knew it was coming. I have studied culture-shock and have experienced it previously. My first explosion and now my second have all been derived by language barriers. My first time, if you have read my previous blog from Abejar-Spain, struck me when the family sat at the dinner table exchanging stories, making jokes and feeling the warm fuzzies of family togetherness, I was an outsider in this moment. Although I have taken and understand Spanish, I am and, I fear, forever will be a student of this language. So I hunched in frustration as people spoke at a 100 miles per hour every person screaming over the first to be heard in a language I could not understand. In this moment I felt defeat and from then on when I hear about people who move to another country to create new homes in new places with new people who have different customs I have a great respect for those people. When I hear people who say, "this is America learn to speak English," I immediately see this person's judgement to a situation they now little about. And on every occasion I have come across these people who say this, I have learned that they have never been on the other side, never had they been the foreigner, never had they had to communicate to someone something important and found that, for now other reason than language, they could not.

It grew dark as I finally found the metro stop to where I needed to go. I had written the directions on my hand so I wouldn't forget. The hardest part is always getting out of the metro. Like the Cheshire Cat these signs point two directions for the same place. The map is helpful but if you can't figure out where you exited the metro the task is pointless. Orienting yourself is impossible. So as I stepped out of the metro stop I looked to my hand for some guidance; I remember seeing the little tram sign on my map near the correct street so I went toward the tram symbol on the orange sign above me. Like any foreigner, I do not know what streets are bad at night. I know well-lit is safer but this could be a corner full of drug-dealers and human-trafficking operations and I would not know. I would be walking in my mustard-yellow hat and pink gloves and somehow someone would study me and see that I was not Czech. They would know because I stop at every street to read the sign, I stand straight and perhaps I carry and air of fear that they can smell. So, of course, the worst possibilities come to mind. Every person is an enemy who will try to kill me the instant I loose my ground. Have you ever tried to look confident even though you were lost and kept thinking of how they would play out your murder? It's not easy. After about fifteen minutes of walking in circles, keeping my head down, I finally had an idea of where it should be. It's beyond dark now and the street lights never appeared. I promised myself to check the next street; if it is not there, I would go home and abandon this idea until morning. I turned the corner, cold and tired and found that it was there, my new enemy, the post office. Sending a box to myself turned out to be the worst idea I might have ever had. Of course, it was cheaper than overweight luggage. But was there anything in that box that I couldn't find here? No. Probably not. So I took my first steps into the building and realized I needed to take a number. There was a list of possible business that you needed to carry out, each with a corresponding ticket, of course, this list was in Czech. Not knowing what any of this meant I just pushed one and took a ticket. I sat down with a dozen other people and waited. Waited. Waited. I sat in my seat hovering over the slip of paper the USPS had given me-my package number and it's information, where it came from, who is going to ect. This I felt was my golden ticket, this everyone could understand, I would not need to talk or worry, I would just had the teller this. The people around me were quiet and stared at walls and at floors waiting in anticipation; wanting to get home to their families, run other errands, to get to another date somewhere across town. I do not know but I believe I was perhaps the only person who waited in fear. Is my box here? Is there somewhere else I should be? These are simple questions that anyone would ask coming to a new city, but language is the basis of everything; If they tell me I should be somewhere else, how will I know that is what they are saying? If they tell me my box isn't here, is it because they cannot understand me or because it really isn't there? I can tell them that I don't understand Czech (Nerozumin Cescky) all day, but that doesn't matter. Finally my number was called, I said hello to the teller in Czech (Dobry den) and asked her if she spoke English (mluvite anglicky?). I spoke too softly firstly because I was timid in knowing if this was correct and secondly because I didn't want everyone around me to know that I was English and perhaps a target for my walk home. So I repeated my response and she blankly looked at me. I started to panic, "Shit." I gave her the copy of my packing slip and she looked it over, her face was an open book and she obviously she had never seen something like this. She turns to her coworker to have a look at it and in Czech they talk about what to do with the foreign paperwork. She nods and looks and her computer. She doesn't type anything in she simply moves the mouse around and hits the arrow button a couple times and then she tells me simply, no. "Not here," she says. Now, I know its there, I know its there because I checked the USPS website and found that it has been in Czech Customs since January, 23rd. I also know because I went to a different post office early this morning in Praha 2 (which is another story in and of itself) and they told me my post must be in Praha 8. So when she told me my box was not there I had options; I could fight with the woman, persist that someone here should speak English and I want to talk to them, we could keep babbling back and forth her in Czech and I in English, I could look around to the people in the post office and shout for an English speaker that could come to my rescue, or I could walk away and try perhaps tomorrow when the world wouldn't seem against me. And so I turned unable to express my frustration or sadness or complete astonishment at how hard it is to be understood. Something so simple-pick up the box, a task impossible. Defeated again, I walked with my head down, hiding tears in the night with my gloves and whimpering slowly to myself. I was expecting it, I knew it was coming I knew that one of these days it would hit me and it did, perhaps, harder than I imagined.

I hope tomorrow I will be brave enough to go to the post office again. For I believe it is a courageous  act that few understand and yet so many like to comment on. I am a foreigner here and it was never so blatant than when I walked through the cold, dark night to the post office in Prague.