Prague in officialese daze

Press, 4 August 1987, Page 29

Prague in officialese daze

RALF UNGER,

chief clinical psychologist

for the Canterbury Hospital Board, reports on a recent visit to Czechoslovakia.

Prague today has moved far sideways from the bustling city of Franz Kafka and the Viennese-type coffee houses of the years before the Second World War. People seem to move almost in a daze. Service in restaurants is hopeless, with waiters refusing to have their eye caught by hungry diners. Queues are mutely accepted for every possible need from toilets to purchases of newspapers. Prague is a city waiting, not with an underlying sense of explosiveness, but philosophically for a new phase in history to occur.

To me, everyone in Prague seemed to be moving in slow motion. Perhaps some of this effect was caused by the drab clothing in dark browns and grays, reflecting the solid stonework of the squared-off buildings, and the lack of background city noise typical of the West Although the shop windows had photographs of all members of the staff team smiling out at

one, inside the service was grudging and disinterested. It was difficult to imagine the drama of Russian tanks coming up the wide main street — they would never have got through the narrow alleyways of the old quarter — with the city looking as if it had been unchanged and disinterested in the outside world for the last 50 years. Czechoslovakia requires planning to enter. We applied for our visa at the Czech Embassy in London, which is open only a few hours each day. A passport has to be valid for at least six months after requested entry, and internal travel and accommodation must be arranged before application. Other difficulties emerged. Ahead of me in the long queue was a pleasant middle-aged man who, when he handed in his passport and his visa application with the required six copies, two photographs and fee, had the solidly built woman embassy official barking at him: “Come back in two weeks.” “Two weeks?” he quietly said. “Two weeks," she barked back a little louder.” “But why?" “Your profession, it is the regulation.” He looked utterly and completely dazed: “I don’t know what to do now, what shall I do?” “Two weeks!” was the only response. “Should I change my profession then?” This brought only a Slavic shrug of the shoulders. After a pause, during which he tried to find some possible softening in her face, she said, “You want a visa?” He handed over his money and walked away, shaking his head. By this time, I had decided he must be at least a Secret Service agent known to the embassy, or a political agitator. What I finally discovered, however, was that he was a clergman. This is one of the categories that is penalised by having to wait two weeks before a visa is even considered. Had I, in my turn, mentioned that I wrote occasional pieces for a newspaper, I would have had a similar penalty, or might have been excluded from admission. Luckily, I had given myself the benign description of "hospital board employee." Prague is only a few hours by train travel away from the lightly romantic city of Vienna. Once over the border, though, the countryside population becomes sparser and the buildings older and more derelict We were quickly introduced to the

Eastern Bloc practice of searching trains, with guards coming into the carriage with their short ladders to climb into the ceiling and search for goods and people. Their dogs patrol outside, and stations are fenced off so that noone can leave without permission. At the hotel — almost new and 30 storeys high — we were issued with paper coupons, each with a set value in Czech currency, to allow us to pay for two meals a day during our stay. They were just sufficient, but only by careful planning of where meals should be taken. The coupons could be used in any State hotel in Prague (that is all hotels), but dining rooms had different scales of charges, depending on the choice of menu. In one, a Bohemian Gypsy quartet playing folk tunes moved from table to table, serenading the ladies. At our table, they played deeply soulful Hungarian tunes with wailing violins and tearful eyes. We applauded and appreciated it, but when the bill came I questioned an additional sum of about $l5 for products I had not consumed. I was told this was for the musicians who had played at our table. There is no tipping in Czechoslovakia but they have their ways. Shop windows in the “newer part” of the city of Prague are dingy. To purchase anything, the normal socialist State procedure applies — first a queue to get into the shop, then a movement past showcases and a noting of a product’s registration number. Then you go to the teller to have the price noted and the product paid for, then back to the salesperson to collect the purchase. Then out of the shop. At each stage there is a queue, and it is virtually impossible to handle what you want to buy which, when it is for instance a teddy bear and you want to know the texture, makes it a stab in the dark.

Old Prague is very old, and very beautiful. The cathedrals and castle which dominate the skyline, and the church spires with multiple spikes all over the dty, have a particular characteristic form not seen in other parts of the world. The classic bridge, with statues of saints and martyrs including King Wenczelas of Christmas fame in the centre, means walking in the footsteps of peasants,,kings and churchmen of the 1600 s. In the heart of the old quarter we went to the original Jewish Synagogue, first opened in the Middle Ages. It is of stone and virtually underground, and it is miraculous that it survived the

Nazi occupation, as did the clock with its Hebrew numerals. The cemetery did not fare so well, but tombstones that were smashed and removed have been replaced as they were before. Thousands of bodies buried in a small space give a higgledypiggledy appearance of gross overcrowding at different levels of burial.

In a building next door was an exhibition of children’s paintings. They were done at the concentration camp in Teresienstadt, not far away, from 1940 to 1943. The subjects were of dogs and guards and belching chimneys with the smoke of burning bodies, whips and jack-boots but also spiky smiling suns, flowers and streets full of shops and people and children playing with hoops and hopscotch. Courageous teachers had developed classes there before they themselves were transported away to be murdered. In each case the children’s painting had a card underneath with the name

of the child, the date of birth and then at the age of 10,11,12 or 13 the date they were transported to the death camp of Auschwitz. None of them returned. It was an art exhibition where people walked around silently, each one picturing to himself the real life and the imaginary life' those children lived for a short time. , / By the time we left Prague a few days later, we had become quite familiar with their efficient new underground train 7 system. Cheap and clean, it made up for the lack of cars and other transport in the streets, which made crossing even a main avenue very simple indeed. The coughing, rattling, slowmoving occasional cars signalled their approach from far away. A last exhibition seen was of peace posters from all over the world. They pictured imperialist aggressors trying to kill and irradiate the whole world, with the constant underlining of the East’s desire for peace forever.